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Show THE DAY THEY LAUNCHED THE PAPER SKIFF 2 There was cause for worry among those human men who have grown statue-high, heroic size, and come to be known as our Founding Fathers. News from the fighting front was, as usual, dolorous, no new victories, men deserting in favor of their neglected farms and families, the farmers demanding gold for goods, and the soldiers in Washington's army less than eight thousand half-starved, half-clothed, half-armed and discouraged. Thirty thousand crack troops, Hessian hirelings were expected daily to blanket the horizon of the Atlantic. General Philip Schuyler, after defeat in Quebec and a miserable winter of stalemate, had sorely weathered an outbreak of small pox among his troops. The day before, Monday, July 1, had gone badly. From an almost placid^1 expectation that independence would be carried by at least a majority, a new threat came when John Dickinson rose and gave an eloquent speech against it. His seemed the voice of doom, his the prophetic utterances that, "because agreement between the colonies" seemed impossible to gain: "A partition of these Colonies will take Place if Great Britain can't conquer Us. " Dickinson's eloquence came with his speech, and the notes which survive hardly hint at the deep impression his voice made on Congress. A few weeks earlier a young Philadelphian had heard Dickinson defend his anti-independence views before an unsympathetic audience. Dickinson's words, the young man wrote, "appeared to be unpremeditated effusions of the heart. His graceful actions, the emotions of his countenance and a |