Honorable treason

"This timely book takes you behind the scene and gives you firsthand accounts of the struggles and personal anxieties suffered during the months prior to July 4, 1776. In a refreshingly candid manner, each of the signers is profiled according to how his contemporaries saw him. The well-known among them are sketched here -- Thomas Jefferson, the penman of the Declaration; John Adams, the Colossus of Independence; Richard Henry Lee and Samuel Adams, the strategists who guided the Declaration through Congress. But also here are the less-known figures, and from behind their signatures they emerge as distinct and lively personalities: John Witherspoon, Arthur Middleton, Button Gwinnett, Roger Sherman, John Hancock, George Taylor, Matthew Thornton, William Whipple, and Lewis Morris." -- Taken from the book jacket flap.