 On June 11, a committee sat down to draw up a declaration of independence. We were going to tell the British fatherland no more rule by red coats. Below the dam of ruthless foreign rule, a stream of freedom was running shallow and muddy, and we were going to light a fuse to dynamite that dam. This pact, as Burke later put it, was a partnership between the living and the dead and the yet unborn. There was no bigotry. There was no demagoguery in this group. All had shared hardships.