On July 4, 1776, Tradecraft Travel did what no responsible travel advisor should attempt: we went back in time, slipped into Philadelphia, and asked members of the Continental Congress where they would go if money, war, weather, roads, ships, horses, politics, and smallpox were not immediate obstacles.
Strictly speaking, July 4 was not the day every signer lined up for the famous parchment. Congress adopted the Declaration that day; the better-known signing process began later, on August 2, and the final list of 56 signers came together over time. Historians also note that not everyone later associated with the Declaration was physically present or eligible to sign on July 4. So think of this as a mock “Declaration Summer” travel survey: fictional interviews, real personalities, historically grounded destinations.
No one asked for California. That is not a criticism of California. In 1776, San Francisco was only just emerging as a Spanish frontier outpost, with the Presidio and Mission San Francisco de Asís tied to Spain’s northernmost colonial presence in the region. For the delegates in Philadelphia, California may as well have been the moon with better weather.
Thomas Jefferson, Virginia: Rome, the Veneto, and a very long look at the architecture
Jefferson did not ask for a beach chair. He asked for time.
“I should like,” he said, after adjusting a stack of papers he claimed not to be worried about, “to see the buildings of Rome, the villas of Palladio, the farms of France, and any garden that improves the mind without making a man useless.”
His dream trip would begin in Paris, move through the vineyards and gardens of France, and then continue south toward Italy: Roman ruins, classical architecture, instruments, books, seeds, and enough notebooks to make the baggage situation unpleasant. This tracks. Jefferson’s later life was saturated with architecture, science, gardening, wine, and the classical imagination; Monticello itself was his architectural experiment on a Virginia mountaintop.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Jefferson would overpack, under-sleep, and return with 11 design changes for his house.
John Adams, Massachusetts: The Dutch Republic, then home
John Adams looked suspiciously at the premise.
“Travel is tolerable,” he said, “when it teaches a man something useful. I would see the Dutch towns, their canals, their countinghouses, their habits of credit, their civic order. Then I would go home.”
Adams’s dream trip would be an institutional study tour: Amsterdam, The Hague, town halls, banks, courts, docks, and churches. No leisure for leisure’s sake. Later, as a diplomat, Adams would in fact serve in Europe, including the Netherlands, where he helped secure Dutch recognition and loans for the United States.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Adams would write a 34-page trip report before breakfast and complain that no one read it carefully enough.
Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania: Scotland, conversation, science, and supper
Franklin did not hesitate.
“Scotland,” he said. “Good company lengthens the journey and shortens the road.”
Franklin’s ideal trip would be an Enlightenment circuit: Edinburgh, Glasgow, scientific societies, printers, philosophers, inventors, dinner tables, and hearths where people argued well. This is not guesswork. Franklin wrote warmly of Scotland after his travels there, calling his six weeks there among the happiest of his life.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Franklin would be the easiest client to please and the hardest to retrieve from dinner.
John Hancock, Massachusetts: Madeira, Lisbon, and the finer ports of the Atlantic
Hancock’s answer arrived with polish.
“I should like a proper Atlantic itinerary,” he said. “Madeira, Lisbon, perhaps the better houses of trade. Good wine, competent captains, and no customs officers with theatrical ambitions.”
As a wealthy merchant and Patriot leader, Hancock would have understood the Atlantic world not as abstraction but as business, status, risk, and opportunity. The man remembered for the grandest signature in American history would not have booked the cheapest cabin. The National Park Service describes Hancock as both merchant and statesman; that is exactly the combination this itinerary needs.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Hancock would demand the best suite, sign the folio flamboyantly, and tip well if the captain annoyed the British.
Samuel Adams, Massachusetts: Meetinghouses, taverns, and political terrain
Samuel Adams rejected the idea of a “dream destination” as insufficiently public-spirited.
“Show me towns,” he said. “Not courts. Not palaces. Towns. Meetinghouses. Printers. Taverns where men speak plainly. Roads by which news can travel faster than tyranny.”
His trip would not be a vacation. It would be a resistance network inspection: Boston, Worcester, Providence, Hartford, New Haven, and Philadelphia, with stops wherever a printer could be persuaded and a committee could be formed. Adams was central to revolutionary organizing, including Massachusetts’s committees of correspondence.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Adams would turn every welcome reception into a strategy session.
Roger Sherman, Connecticut: A practical tour of useful towns
Roger Sherman asked whether the survey had a purpose.
When told it was about travel, he replied, “Then I would travel where a man may learn what is useful. A courthouse, a workshop, a farm, a school, and a town meeting would be preferable to ruins.”
Sherman’s trip would be modest, disciplined, and deeply American: Connecticut towns, New England workshops, legal offices, churches, and civic halls. He began life as a craftsman and became one of the most consequential constitutional figures of the age, the only person to sign the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Sherman would decline the upgrade and still get more value from the trip than anyone else.
Robert Morris, Pennsylvania: Ports, ledgers, and a functioning line of credit
Robert Morris wanted the route map before he answered.
“Where are the ships insured?” he asked. “What is the exchange rate? Who is carrying the letters? What is the cargo? What is the risk of seizure?”
His dream trip would be a merchant’s grand tour: Philadelphia to the Caribbean, then Lisbon, Bordeaux, Amsterdam, and back by way of any port where credit could be improved and supplies could be secured. Morris was one of the wealthiest merchants in America and later became known as the “Financier of the Revolution.”
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Morris would pay for half the group, quietly control the itinerary, and somehow own the ship by the time everyone disembarked.
Caesar Rodney, Delaware: A clean bed and a fresh horse
Caesar Rodney answered from the doorway, still looking as if he had outridden the weather, the roads, and his own body.
“My dream destination,” he said, “is the next inn. Clean sheets. Dry boots. A horse that has not already done its duty. If there is supper, I will consider the journey a triumph.”
Rodney’s place in the travel survey is earned. He is remembered for riding overnight from Delaware to Philadelphia to vote for independence, a feat that makes most modern complaints about airport connections look weak.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Rodney would appreciate logistics more than luxury.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland: France, learning, and the Catholic world
Charles Carroll’s answer was measured.
“I would return to France,” he said, “not as a boy sent away, but as a free man able to choose what is worth revisiting.”
Carroll’s ideal itinerary would connect St. Omer, Paris, Jesuit schools, legal study, churches, libraries, and perhaps Rome. He was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration and received an extensive education in France before studying law in London.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Carroll would choose the best guides, speak the language, and notice every slight.
Edward Rutledge, South Carolina: London, law, theater, and polish
Edward Rutledge, the youngest signer, did not pretend to dislike refinement.
“London has its uses,” he said. “The law, certainly. The theater, naturally. The clubs, if the company is tolerable.”
His dream trip would be a young lawyer’s return to London: Middle Temple, courtrooms, theaters, drawing rooms, and a fast education in power. Rutledge studied law at Middle Temple and was called to the English Bar before returning to South Carolina.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Rutledge would dress better than the guide and negotiate the bill.
John Witherspoon, New Jersey: Scotland, Princeton, and the moral education of travelers
John Witherspoon treated the question like a sermon text.
“A journey,” he said, “should improve judgment. Otherwise it is motion mistaken for progress.”
His itinerary would run from Princeton back to Scotland: Edinburgh, pulpits, universities, booksellers, and debates over moral philosophy. Witherspoon was born in Scotland, became president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton, and was the only active clergyman and college president to sign the Declaration.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Witherspoon would approve educational travel and disapprove of almost everything sold near the exit.
Benjamin Rush, Pennsylvania: Edinburgh, hospitals, and public health
Rush, who joined Congress later that July and signed in August, filed a late but emphatic survey response.
“I would see hospitals, lecture halls, anatomy rooms, and the arrangements by which cities preserve health or destroy it.”
His dream trip would be a medical education itinerary: Edinburgh, London, hospitals, medical lectures, sanitation, quarantine practices, and the human consequences of crowded cities. Rush was the only signer with a medical degree and had studied at Edinburgh.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Rush would return with health recommendations, several of them correct and several exhausting.
Francis Hopkinson, New Jersey: Venice, Florence, music, and design
Hopkinson smiled at the question as if it were a design problem.
“I should like a trip with music in the morning, painting in the afternoon, satire at supper, and a national emblem by evening.”
His dream trip would be Venice and Florence, with time for music, theater, visual design, seals, flags, paper, and wit. Hopkinson was a lawyer, judge, author, composer, and artist; historians often credit him with a role in early American flag design.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Hopkinson would redesign the luggage tags, improve the theme music, and submit an invoice in wine.
George Wythe, Virginia: Law libraries and the architecture of justice
George Wythe answered softly.
“Show me the law of a people,” he said, “and I shall know more than if you show me only their monuments.”
Wythe’s ideal journey would be built around courts, legal libraries, universities, and the civic architecture of justice: London, perhaps Rome in imagination, and Williamsburg always in comparison. He was a lawyer, judge, law professor, civic leader, and Thomas Jefferson’s teacher and mentor.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Wythe would ask the best questions and tolerate no sloppy briefings.
John Dickinson, Pennsylvania/Delaware: A quiet constitutional retreat
Dickinson was not a signer of the Declaration, but he was in the room’s moral weather. He had argued against declaring independence too soon and refused to sign, not because he was loyal to tyranny but because he feared the colonies were unprepared.
His travel answer was the most cautious of the day.
“I would go somewhere quiet,” he said, “where men may write constitutions before they require armies to defend them.”
His dream trip would be a working retreat: no grand ports, no triumphal dinners, just a table, drafts, letters, and time to think through the consequences. Dickinson abstained from the vote and refused to sign, understanding the damage it would do to his reputation.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Dickinson would be a difficult client, but not a foolish one.
Richard Henry Lee, Virginia: The old republics and the road home
Lee’s answer came with the cadence of a man who already knew how history wanted to sound.
“I would see where republics rose,” he said, “and where they failed. Then I would return to Virginia and consider the warning.”
Lee’s itinerary would move through the classical imagination: Rome, the ruins of republican ambition, Mediterranean ports, and then back to the plantations and political networks of Virginia. He introduced the resolution for independence, though his actual signing chronology is messier than popular memory allows.
Tradecraft Travel assessment: Lee would want a guide who understood both rhetoric and consequences.
The result: no all-inclusive, no airport lounge, no California
The survey revealed a pattern. Franklin wanted conversation. Jefferson wanted beauty disciplined by reason. Adams wanted institutions. Hancock wanted the Atlantic world with better service. Sherman wanted usefulness. Rodney wanted rest. Rush wanted public health. Hopkinson wanted design. Witherspoon wanted moral improvement. Dickinson wanted more time.
None of them wanted an airplane, because none of them could have imagined one. None wanted California, because the American map in their heads did not yet reach the Pacific in any practical political sense. Their travel dreams ran along the roads, rivers, sea lanes, schools, churches, countinghouses, courts, and capitals that shaped their world.
That is the real lesson. Travel is never just where people go. It is what they think the world is made of.
For the founders, the world was made of letters, ships, horses, law, credit, argument, faith, weather, disease, empire, and risk. For us, it is made of boarding passes, passports, points, itineraries, and the dangerous assumption that distance has been conquered.
It has not. It has only been negotiated.
And that, happily, is still what good travel planning is for.
Happy 250th, America!
Planning an America 250 journey of your own? Continue with America’s Revolution Through Travel for a broader look at the places that shaped independence, or explore America 250 by Rail for an itinerary built around historic cities and train travel.
