“Our Union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.”

Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood, and hunt us from the face of the earth?

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude, than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.

May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

— Samuel Adams, Son of Liberty, in a speech given to the Philadelphia state house (1776)