 On June 11, a committee sat down to draw up a declaration of independence. We were going to tell the British fatherland, no more rule by redcoats. Below the dam, a ruthless foreign rule, a stream of freedom was running shallow and muddy. And we were going to light a fuse to dynamite that dam. This pact, as Burke later put it, was a partnership between the living and the dead and the yet unborn. There was no bigotry. There was no demagoguery in this group. All had shared hardships.