Of the 56 brave patriots who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died during the Revolution, many lost their wives and children, five were captured, twelve had their homes burned, seventeen lost their fortunes and all had prices on their heads. YET NOT A SINGLE SIGNER EVER RECANTED THEIR SUPPORT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
That was real courage.
The following November, when British troops were rapidly approaching Princeton, Stockton took his family to the home of a friend in Monmouth County for safekeeping. While there, he was betrayed to the British by Loyalists and was dragged in bitterly cold weather to Perth Amboy. He was later taken to New York and put in the notorious Provost Jail, where he suffered brutal treatment until January 3, 1777, when a formal remonstrance from Congress led to his release.
Upon Stockton's return to Princeton, it became known (according to a letter from President Witherspoon to his son, David) that during his imprisonment the British had persuaded him to sign General Howe's Declaration, which required an oath of allegiance to the Kin~g -- an act Stockton revoked later that year by signing oaths of adjuration and allegiance prescribed by the New Jersey legislature. His health shattered, his estate pillaged, his fortune depleted, he continued to live in Princeton, an invalid, until his death from cancer on February 28, 1781, in his fifty-first year. ``It was one of his earliest honors to have been a son of this college,'' said Vice President Samuel Stanhope Smith at Stockton's funeral in Nassau Hall, ``and it was one of the first honors of his college to have given birth to such a son.'' He was buried in the Quaker burial ground at Stony Brook Meeting House.