In the Rain at Constitution Gardens: The People Behind the Declaration’s Signatures
WASHINGTON — Rainwater covered the granite stones at Constitution Gardens when I visited June 28, reflecting the branches overhead around signatures engraved in gold-colored lettering. Beyond them lay a lake, curving paths, and the Washington Monument beneath a gray sky.
The names belonged to the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Some remain immediately recognizable: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and John Adams. Others receive considerably less attention, although their signatures committed them to the same revolutionary decision.
During my Washington trip in America’s 250th anniversary year, the memorial offered an opportunity to consider the people behind those names. Their occupations, religious convictions, family backgrounds, and political judgments differed. Independence brought them together without ending those differences.
The gardens themselves added another anniversary connection. Dedicated in May 1976 as an American Revolution Bicentennial tribute, Constitution Gardens reached its own 50th anniversary in 2026.
From river landscape to national remembrance
Walking east from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I encountered a landscape whose appearance conceals a substantial transformation.
The roughly 50 acres of Constitution Gardens were once beneath the Potomac River. Army Corps of Engineers dredging and reclamation work in the late nineteenth century created the land that became this portion of Potomac Park. During World War I, Navy and Munitions Department offices occupied the site in buildings described as temporary. They remained for decades before their removal in the early 1970s. President Richard Nixon directed that the area become a park.
Today, a small footbridge leads onto the island containing the signers’ memorial, dedicated July 2, 1984. Its low granite blocks carry each signer’s signature, name, hometown, and occupation. The arrangement groups them by the colonies they represented.
That attention to occupation is significant. Behind the familiar image of assembled statesmen were men whose working lives included commerce, law, surveying, printing, education, and ministry.
The familiar names—and the work behind them
Jefferson was the Declaration’s principal draftsman, but the document emerged through a collective process. Congress appointed a Committee of Five comprising Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Adams and Franklin helped revise Jefferson’s draft, and Congress made further changes. Livingston served on the drafting committee but did not become one of the document’s signers.
Congress voted for independence July 2, 1776, and adopted the Declaration’s text July 4. Signing of the engrossed parchment began August 2, with additional signatures added later. The memorial therefore commemorates a decision and a commitment that developed through debate, revision, and successive acts of signing.
Hancock’s prominent signature is particularly visible in my photographs. His later career also connects the Declaration to the Constitution. Presiding over Massachusetts’ ratifying convention in 1788, he supported adopting the Constitution while recommending amendments—a compromise that helped secure ratification.
Adams and Jefferson, meanwhile, illustrate how revolutionary cooperation could become political rivalry. In the new republic, Adams became associated with the Federalists, while Jefferson helped lead the Democratic-Republicans. Those later divisions should not be projected backward as party affiliations held by the signers in 1776.
Franklin’s life also changed over time. A printer, scientist, and diplomat, he helped negotiate the peace recognizing American independence. His household had held enslaved people, and his newspaper had published advertisements connected to slavery; later, he became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Some signers were slave owners, participating in an institution legally established and widely accepted in eighteenth-century colonial society. Readers should distinguish those historical laws from today’s prohibitions rather than forcing/imposing present-day criminal standards retroactively. At the same time, slavery was beginning to be contested within their own generation: antislavery petitions, abolition societies, and Pennsylvania’s 1780 gradual abolition law demonstrate that people began to have diverging opinions on the subject. It is important to understand the slavery had been around for over 20,000 years and only in the last 161 years has been it been illegal anywhere in the world. In fact it still exists even today in much of the world. Understanding the signers requires examining both the institutions they inherited and the choices available during their lifetimes.
Roger Sherman: A shoemaker at the founding
Sherman deserves attention beyond his membership on the drafting committee.
Born in Massachusetts, he learned shoemaking from his father and received limited formal schooling. He subsequently worked as a surveyor, merchant, and lawyer before becoming a prominent Connecticut public official. His career offers a different route into revolutionary leadership from that of a wealthy planter or college-trained attorney.
His political judgments evolved. Initially cautious about popular resistance to British policies, he eventually supported independence. After the war, he participated in the Constitutional Convention, where he and fellow Connecticut delegate Oliver Ellsworth helped develop the compromise combining population-based representation in the House with equal state representation in the Senate. This was an important compromise because say if California has more power to shape US laws that govern what Wyoming residents can do in their own state then there no incentive for Wyoming to be part of the US since it will not be treated as a an equal member with equal voting power to states larger than itself. Of all the compromises that led to the establishement of the United States of America, this one was the most important. Get rid of it and you destroy the USA.
Sherman signed the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. His life connects the decision to separate from Britain with the difficult work of designing the government that followed.
Nearly All Signers Were British Subjects
Several signers were born across the Atlantic. Understanding their journeys requires attention to the political world that existed when they moved.
John Witherspoon arrived from Scotland in 1768; James Wilson had arrived in 1765. Both settled in British America before the United States existed. They moved as British subjects between parts of the Kingdom of Great Britain, rather than entering an already foreign country.
In that sense, their journeys can be understood as internal migration within the country to which they then belonged. Shared British allegiance, cultural traditions, and political inheritance connected North America with the rest of the Kingdom of Great Britain, although their governing arrangements and local experiences differed. Like Scotland and Wales, the colonies had their own governing bodies but unlike the former, the colonies had no representation in the British Parliament. Independence subsequently turned that internal relationship into an international one: the Declaration expressly severed the colonies’ political connection to Great Britain.
Their Scottish backgrounds also remained meaningful. A common British identity did not erase regional traditions, religious differences, or distinctive intellectual influences. And we see this in America as well where each state has its own political system, history, traditions, and cultures.
John Witherspoon: A minister and educator
Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister who came to lead the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. He expanded its educational ambitions beyond preparation for ministry, teaching subjects that included history, moral philosophy, and literature. James Madison was among his students.
He became the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration. His support for independence brought religious conviction and political judgment together; concerns about interference in colonial affairs helped shape his position. He later supported adoption of the Constitution.
John Witherspoon’s position on slavery combined criticism of forced enslavement with support for gradual rather than immediate emancipation. In his moral philosophy lectures, he rejected taking people’s liberty merely through superior force and disputed the claim that improved living conditions justified enslaving them. Nevertheless, he remained a slave owner and argued that existing owners were not obliged to emancipate people immediately at the cost of their own financial ruin. In 1790, the New Jersey legislative committee he chaired recommended no further action, mistakenly anticipating that slavery would disappear over time. His position reflected Presbyterian religious assumptions and concerns about economic and social disruption. Understanding that record requires distinguishing ownership permitted under contemporary law from present-day standards.
The memorial’s signature identifies the revolutionary statesman. His biography supplies the minister, educator, and slaveowner whose choices require fuller examination.
[Photo 3: PXL_20260628_185643925.jpg — Align right with text wrapping, beside the next section. Caption: “John Hancock’s signature appears prominently among the memorial stones. State names in the paving help visitors follow the signers’ groupings. Photo by Rebecca Canales.”]
Charles Carroll: Irish ancestry and Catholic faith
Charles Carroll of Carrollton represented another religious experience.
Born in Annapolis, he descended from an Irish Catholic family. His grandfather, Charles Carroll the Settler, came to Maryland in 1688. The family’s history included restrictions on Catholic public life and worship; the elder Carroll’s Annapolis home provided space for Catholic Mass when worship was restricted to private settings.
The signer became the only Roman Catholic among the 56. His presence complicates any assumption that the Declaration represented a single Protestant denomination or an entirely uniform religious outlook.
Carroll’s Catholicism distinguished him within a group drawn overwhelmingly from Christian cultural traditions. Their shared background nevertheless encompassed substantial disagreements over doctrine, church authority, and religious liberty; Jefferson’s beliefs, for example, departed from traditional Christianity. Contributions to independence also extended beyond the signers. Jewish participants included Haym Salomon, whose financial brokerage supported the revolutionary government, and Francis Salvador, who died fighting for American independence. Their contributions deserve recognition in their own right, while claims about any participant’s religion should rest on evidence from the relevant period.
After independence, Carroll supported a stronger national government and became a Federalist. He lived until 1832, becoming the last surviving signer after Adams and Jefferson died July 4, 1826.
Religious exclusion and economic privilege existed together in his life.
James Wilson: From Scotland to constitutional debate
Wilson’s Scottish background contributed an intellectual influence as well as a birthplace. His education exposed him to the Scottish Enlightenment before he settled in Pennsylvania in 1765.
He became a lawyer, signed the Declaration, and later helped shape the Constitution. His constitutional thought emphasized the authority of the people, making his career a useful connection between the Declaration’s justification for independence and subsequent debates over the source of governmental power.
Wilson argued that the people were the original source of legitimate governmental authority. Because the people stood above the governments they created, they could entrust different responsibilities to state and national institutions while retaining ultimate authority themselves. Under the constitutional system, however, even the power of the popular majority is constitutionally limited. Government exercises delegated power within the Constitution, and constitutional changes must follow the amendment procedures established by Article V.
Wilson and Sherman were among the six men who signed both the Declaration and the Constitution. Their continued participation underscores that establishing independence and constructing a durable union were related tasks carried out through different documents and debates.
More names beyond the familiar circle
Even these biographies cover only a small portion of the memorial.
Abraham Clark of New Jersey worked as a surveyor and lawyer and served as a sheriff. George Taylor of Pennsylvania was an Irish-born iron manufacturer whose public career brought him into the Continental Congress in 1776. Taylor signed the Declaration but died in 1781, before the war ended. Today he would have been considered a blue collar worker. An account of his political life cannot include a postwar party affiliation he never lived to hold.
Such lives help explain the value of examining the entire circle of stones. National fame is an uneven measure of contribution. The memorial preserves names whose public service rarely occupies the same space in popular accounts as that of presidents and famous diplomats.
Different beliefs, a shared declaration
The religious differences among the signers also resist a single label.
Witherspoon’s Presbyterian ministry and Carroll’s Catholic faith were central parts of their public identities. Jefferson’s personal beliefs followed another course. He valued Jesus’ moral teachings while doubting important elements of traditional Christian doctrine, including miracles and the divinity of Jesus. It would be inaccurate to claim he was never a Christian or that he completely rejected Christianity. He grew up in its traditions and accepted its teachings but he questioned the stories about miracles and divine intervention. Neary all of the other founder's however gave divine intervention credit for the birth of America. With Washington himself saying that both American independence and the establishment of the US Constitution were the result of divine interventions. Nearly all of the other signers took the same position as Washington, that America won its independence because of God's intervention. Christianity was part of the foundation of the United States of America but they rejected putting the church in charge of the state and they rejected giving the state power over the church. Nor did they support banning all religious expression, including proselytization from public property or political life. Candidates are allowed to talk about their faith but they are not allowed to use the laws to impose it. Government can fund religious schools but it cannot force anyone to adhere to faiths of those religious schools.
The signers’ agreement on independence consequently should not be mistaken for agreement on theology, government, or every implication of liberty. Their later careers reveal both continued cooperation and serious disputes.
That distinction is visible in the memorial’s design: individual signatures belong to a collective document. Each name remains identifiable within the larger arrangement.
A Bicentennial park during America’s 250th
Constitution Gardens eventually received a separate recognition honoring the Constitution. On September 17, 1986, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed it a living legacy tribute to that document in anticipation of its bicentennial. The island memorial, however, specifically honors the Declaration’s signers.
The distinction brings the place’s history together. Reclaimed riverland became government office space, then a Bicentennial park containing a memorial to the people who declared independence. Several of those same men subsequently helped write or secure support for the Constitution.
Explore Constitution Gardens’ lake and island in 360 degrees, with the Washington Monument visible beyond the shoreline. Photography by Rebecca Canales
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My photographs record that landscape during a wet June visit: willows beside the lake, visitors following the paths, and water reflecting branches across the polished memorial stones.
At the island, the scale of remembrance becomes personal. A visitor can read a signature, locate a state, and encounter a name that deserves more attention. For an America 250 journey, those lesser-known names offer a substantial part of the story.
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