“Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.” —Samuel Adams (1781)
*Image: “The Committee of Five” [detail] from The Declaration of Independence by John Turnbull, 1818 [U.S. Capitol Rotunda, Washington, DC]. Presenting the Declaration [to John Hancock, not shown here] are John Adams on the left, Thomas Jefferson in the center, and Benjamin Franklin on the right, with Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston behind.