In 1775, partially in reaction to the news of Lexington and Concord, leaders of the patriot supporters in Georgia took action by establishing a provisional congress, Council of Safety, and electing delegates to the Continental Congress. The Georgia colony was slow to commit to the cause of the Revolution, but their full commitment was signaled in July of 1776 when George Walton, Button Gwinnett, and Lyman Hall signed the Declaration of Independence. On January 18, 1777, Congress, sitting in Baltimore, ordered that copies of the Declaration of Independence printed by Mary Katherine Goddard of Baltimore be sent to the states to be recorded in the states’ official records. This was the first published version of the document to include the names of all the signers. This is significant because the signers were announcing publicly that they supported the treasonous act of declaring independence from Great Britain.
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View the original Declaration of Independence from the National Archives.
Read a transcript of the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives.