passage in which George III. was denounced for encouraging the slave-trade. … No interpolation of any consequence was made. Jefferson had ample cause to congratulate himself upon this event of the discussion. … He himself spoke not a word in the debate. … The burden of argument, from which Jefferson wisely shrank, was gallantly borne by John Adams, whom Jefferson gratefully called 'the colossus of that debate.' Jefferson used afterward to take pleasure in tingeing the real solemnity of the occasion with a coloring of the ludicrous. The debate, he said, seemed as though it might run on interminably, and probably would have done so at a different season of the year. But the weather was oppressively warm, and the room occupied by the deputies was hard by a stable, whence the hungry flies swarmed thick and fierce, alighting on the legs of the delegates and biting hard through their thin silk stockings. Treason was preferable to discomfort, and the members voted for the Declaration and hastened to the table to sign it and escape from the horse-fly. John Hancock, making his great familiar signature, jestingly said that John Bull could read that without spectacles; then, becoming more serious, began to impress on his comrades the necessity of their 'all hanging together in this matter.' 'Yes, indeed,' interrupted Franklin, 'we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.' … Amid such trifling, concealing grave thoughts, Jefferson saw his momentous document signed at the close of that summer afternoon." _J. T. Morse, Jr., Thomas Jefferson, chapter 3._ "The statements relative to signing the Declaration are conflicting. Jefferson states that it was signed generally on the 4th (Memoirs i, 94), and he in other places reiterates this statement, but this manuscript is not known to be extant. … According to the journals, Congress, on the 19th of July, resolved that the 'declaration, passed on the 4th, be fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and style of "The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America," and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.' On the 2d day of August, the journals say, 'The Declaration being engrossed, and compared at the table, was signed by the members.' … This manuscript is preserved in the office of the Secretary of State." _R. Frothingham, The Rise of the Republic, page 545 and foot-note._