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Did he say it?

We don't know.

John Morton, dying signer of the Declaration.

Still four years from American victory in the revolution told his critics those who thought he was foolish to have voted for independence and to have signed the Declaration of Independence.

Tell them that they will live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it to have been the most glorious service that I have ever rendered my country.

It's a great quote, but no one heard it at the time or said anything about it until a century later, more than a century.

Man of Finnish, Swedish, descent from Pennsylvania who lived about 16 miles from the capital,

Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly for time, to siding state.

But it's delegates were exactly split with folks like James Wilson and Benjamin Franklin on one side and George Reed and others on the other.

It came down to John Morton who went for independence there by putting Pennsylvania in the yay column.

Now, Morton was for it originally.

He writes to Thomas Powell a merchant in London in 1775 letter and says this,

you have declared the New England people rebels and the other province is eaters and a bettors.

This is putting the halter about our necks and we may as well die by the sword as be hanged like rebels.

This has made the people desperate.

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