Voting on the Declaration

Was unanimity necessary to ratify the Declaration?

The colonists felt it was important to secure unanimity across states in their call for independence, in order to present a united front and to maintain their strength in the war against Britain.

This unanimity across states is to be distinguished from unanimity across all colonists or even individual delegates — more info below on how votes were counted.

How were delegates chosen?

Each colony chose its own number of delegates to send, without any correlation to actual population.

How were votes counted? What if there was dissent within a state's group of delegates?

Within the Congress, each state was given one vote

First, every delegate from the colony voiced his own vote
Second, the delegates’ votes were tallied to determine that colony’s vote
If the delegates were evenly split, that colony was considered “divided” and the vote did not count

Timeline of amassing support for the Declaration of Independence

June 10, 1776

Consideration of the Lee Resolution was postponed until July 1, as several states had not yet received guidance on how to vote, or were not authorized to vote yes. These states included Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York.

Congress formed a committee to draft a declaration of independence.

June 11, 1776

The Committee of Five was formed to draft the declaration of independence.

June 15, 1776

Delaware authorized to vote yes.

June 21, 1776

New Jersey authorized to vote yes.

June 28, 1776

Maryland authorized to vote yes.

The Committee of Five presented their draft of the Declaration of Independence to Congress.

July 1, 1776

Congress voted for the first time on the Declaration.

Nine colonies voted for
Two colonies (Pennsylvania and South Carolina) voted against
- Delegates from PA were split on their support for independence
- Delegates from SC had received only general marching orders, but had not been expressly told how to vote
  - They were not necessarily opposed to the motion, but they felt the timeline was rushed: they wanted the colonies to first form a practical plan of confederation before declaring independence
  - As Jefferson recounted it, "Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina then requested the determination might be put off to the next day, as he believed his colleagues, though they disapproved of the resolution, would then join in it for the sake of unanimity."
New York abstained: the delegation had not received guidance from their state as to how to vote
Delaware was split, negating their vote: one delegate voted for, one delegate voted against, and the third was absent

July 2, 1776

Congress voted for the second time on the Declaration.

Twelve colonies voted for
- Pennsylvania's delegation reversed their vote by voting 3-2 in favor of independence
  - John Dickinson and Robert Morris, both opponents of independence, abstained
  - Dickinson did not vote because he recognized the symbolic importance of a unanimous decision. Realizing he could no longer stay in Congress, Dickinson left and volunteered for the Pennsylvania militia.
- As Rutledge predicted, the South Carolina delegation reversed their votes one day later
- Delaware finally cast a vote when its third delegate, Caesar Rodney, rode 70 miles through a thunderstorm to Pennsylvania in order to break his delegation's deadlock
Only the delegation from New York continued to abstain, in the continued absence of instructions from the state

Some of the delegates, including John Adams, considered July 2 to be the actual day of independence.

July 4, 1776

After changing some of the wording on the Declaration, Congress approved the document and forwarded it to John Dunlap, a printer, for publication

Who signed the Declaration of Independence?

Ultimately, 56 delegates signed the Declaration of Independence — a full list by state is available at the bottom of this page.

As mentioned earlier, while all states ultimately signed, not all the individual delegates signed

70 delegates were meant to be in attendance that day
- 55 were actually in attendance
- Only 39 actually signed on the day of
Reasons for not signing:
- Got sick
- Left early
- Didn’t want to
One of the most famous reasons why people didn’t sign was that the document lacked a legitimate Bill of Rights which would protect the rights of States and the freedom of individuals.

It took over 6 months to collect the full 56 signatures for several reasons, including the fact that some delegates needed time to travel back to Pennsylvania to sign the document.

While the document was sent to printing on July 4, most of the signers actually placed their signatures on the document on August 2, which meant that some delegates were no longer physically available to sign.
For example, Delaware’s Thomas McKean was the very last to sign despite being part of the decisive vote, and also participating in the debate over the final wording of the document.
- A few days after July 4, he left Congress to join a volunteer militia association, making him unavailable for the signing session on August 2.
- It’s unknown when he signed, but his signature does not appear on the authenticated printed copy from January 17, 1777 — so it was certainly after that date, and possibly as late as 1781.