Robert Treat Paine

Some of the signers were a royal pain (pardon the pun). Throughout the debates, Paine never offered a positive idea or suggestion, but spoke against most of the ideas and suggestions others made.

He was the prosecuting attorney in the trial of the British soldiers who fired into the crowd at the Boston Massacre. It seemed an open-and-shut case against the men. Only one lawyer in Massachusetts was willing to defend them—John Adams—and he won.

Though he lost the case, it made Paine famous, and paved the path to his political future. He was descended from a man who signed another important document: the Mayflower Compact.

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