The New York Yearly Meeting of Quakers Read Their Minute on Torture.

The New York Yearly Meeting of Quakers put a minute together on torture and then made a video of people reading it.

We Mutually Pledge To Each Other Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor - July 4th, 1776

Click on the image to hear the moving full reading of The Declaration that NPR's Morning Edition did two years ago. It features NPR correspondents each reading a paragraph. [8 Min 56 Sec]

A note from me, lapsed Historian that I am. The quote they use at the end about King George III writing in his diary is a great story, but apocryphal. It's probably worked it's way from the French revolution. On July 14, 1789 — the date of the storming of the Bastille — Louis XVI of France wrote in his diary "rien (nothing)."

The Signers

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Photo: Independence Day by drewmyers on Flickr. Via: Creative Commons License.