Announcement This exhibition at Morven Museum & Garden in Princeton examines the lives of the Declaration’s signers, and those they enslaved, through over 100 historic artifacts. April 30, 2026 — 1 min read “Congress Voting Independence” (1796-1817), probably Edward Savage after Robert Edge Pine (purchase, Historical Society of Philadelphia/Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel University) In June 1776, the provincial congress of New Jersey sent five replacement delegates to Philadelphia.  In a letter, John Adams confidently referred to them as “independent souls.”  Five Independent Souls: The Signers from New Jersey at Morven Museum & Garden examines the lives of these lesser-known signers — Abraham Clark, John Hart, Francis Hopkinson, Richard Stockton, and John Witherspoon — and confronts a confounding actuality: while risking their lives for liberty, freedom, and equality, they denied these rights to the people they enslaved.…