America’s National Treasure
The Declaration of Independence & William J. Stone’s Official Facsimile
America’s National Treasure
The Declaration of Independence & William J. Stone’s Official Facsimile By Seth
Preface by David
Kaller M. Rubenstein
Introduction by Glenn
M. Grasso, Ph.D.
Afterword by Richard
Brookhiser
Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies washington, d.c.
The new facsimile of the Stone Declaration of Independence prepared for American embassies around the world
preface
F
lags have historically served as readily-recognized symbols of a country, and the Stars and Stripes certainly plays that role well for the United States. But another symbol, one unique to the United States, is the one-page document that announced to the world why the thirteen colonies were doing what was once unthinkable—breaking the legal bonds between them and their mother country. This document, the Declaration of Independence, was largely drafted by Thomas Jefferson at the request of his fellow delegates to the Second Continental Congress. The idea had been that Congress should provide a public rationale for the anticipated vote to declare independence from England. That vote occurred on July 2, 1776. Over the following two days, the delegates debated the arguments provided by Jefferson. Their focus was largely on the perceived offenses of King George III against the colonies. Ironically, little attention was paid by the delegates to the Preamble, which in subsequent years became the most quoted, remembered, and symbolic part of the Declaration. And that is principally because the Preamble contained a sentence which succinctly and eloquently stated an enduring principle of freedom and democracy: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Perhaps because of that one sentence, the Declaration has come to symbolize not only the heroic act of the colonies breaking legal ties with England but also the founding principle upon which the new, independent country was to be based. When the final text of the Declaration was agreed upon by the delegates on July 4, they left Philadelphia but returned to sign the engrossed text in early August of 1776. That original signed Declaration is now in the Rotunda of the National Archives, and it has been there since 1952 (when transported there under military guard from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.). Regrettably, the text and signatures are barely readable, for the Declaration was not treated with the care and sensitivity needed for such a fragile document. Fortunately, though, when John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State, the original Declaration was in the possession of his department. He recognized that the original was already fading, and, with the approval of Congress, he arranged to have two hundred perfect copies made of the original Declaration. Those replicas—known as Stone copies, after William Stone, the individual who engraved and printed them—are now what the public invariably sees when it pictures an image of the original signed Declaration. Because the Declaration of Independence has—like the Stars and Stripes—become a symbol of the United States, and because the Stone copy of the Declaration is the most recognizable version of that historic document, I thought it would be appropriate to have a new copy of a Stone Declaration placed in each of the American embassies around the
world. My hope was that everyone who visited an American embassy would see not just our flags, but also this unique symbol of our country. Towards this end, I worked with the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE) to have a copy of the Declaration, placed in a replica of an historic frame, appropriately displayed in each of the United States’s embassies. I am deeply appreciative of the untiring efforts and support of FAPE’s leaders, Jo Carole Lauder and Eden Rafshoon, for making this display possible, and to Seth Kaller, a leading expert on historic documents, who also helped with my own acquisition of a number of Stone facsimiles. I am also quite grateful to Secretary of State John Kerry and the professional staff of the State Department for facilitating the placement of this important symbol of the United States. I hope all who see the Stone copy will take some time to reflect on the importance of the Declaration, and the powerful message of its Preamble, to the continuing evolution of democratic government in the United States as well as in the rest of the world. David M. Rubenstein Washington, D.C.
The “Star Spangled Banner” flag on display at the Smithsonian
“Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776,” by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
A page from one of Thomas Jefferson’s drafts of the Declaration
introduction
The Declaration of Independence: From Idea to Icon “
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e must all hang together,” Benjamin Franklin quipped at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” From a 21st century vantage point, hindsight has validated the act of rebellion undertaken by Franklin and his brethren during the summer of 1776. At the time, however, they were committing an act of high treason in their attempt to throw off the imperial yoke. None could foresee the end game, nor the consequences of signing the Declaration, nor whether their actions would result in success—and the birth of a new nation—or failure and execution. Seeking independence from any 18th-century imperial power was itself a bold move. Lining up for a fight against the world’s premiere military machine was another story entirely. Yet, over two centuries after the Declaration, we more remember the document itself than the near-suicidal act of its drafting. The Declaration of Independence was a testament to Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers: the culmination of centuries of western thought. A clever blend of English and French political philosophy, notably John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and JeanJacques Rousseau’s On the Social Contract, the document itself reflects both the hopes and the tensions present in the fledgling nation. Even so, representatives from colonies disparate in climate, religion, economics, and demographics all united in their desire for their nation’s chance to determine its own path in the world. These upstart Americans consecrated their ideals in a written document—a first in world history. Asserting “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” was heady stuff for a group of men who, less than a year before, had sought to reassure George III of their continued loyalty to the Crown. Nonetheless, the revolutionary ball, once rolling, became nigh-impossible to stop. Events on both sides of the Atlantic ensured that the colonists started thinking of themselves less as English subjects and more as independent Americans. Sweating under punitive imperial acts, the colonials grew more united with the recognition that what could happen in Boston could just as easily happen in Baltimore or Hampton Roads. Were the founders perfect? Far from it. They blithely discussed their own “slavery” under his Britannic majesty with no hint of irony. Indeed, Jefferson’s original draft, stating that “all men are created equal & independant,” was amended to avoid conflicting with American slaveholding. The founders had no intention of recognizing all men as “independant.” Still, for the first time in the history of the world, a group of men decided to break free their
bonds with the mother country by using the very tools of their imperial oppressors: laws, logic, and rationality. From the vantage point of 1776, there were no guarantees; in fact, the odds were stacked substantially against the Americans. But Americans were on their home turf. European warfare techniques held little truck in the hills of Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Virginia. George Washington had mastered the strategy of tactical retreat: living to fight another day. Perhaps most important, the Americans were not fighting in a vacuum. The United States gained its first allies as European imperial rivalries played out in the New World just as they had two decades earlier when Old World conflict spilled over into North America during the French and Indian War. Finally, the British cut their losses, deciding instead to concentrate efforts on holding their lucrative Caribbean sugar islands instead of the 13 peripheral colonies on the edge of wilderness. The American perspective had undergone a radical change by 1820, when William J. Stone was charged with creating a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence. Most of the Revolutionary generation had passed. The United States had survived its second conflict with Great Britain, thus assuring both sides that the United States would remain an autonomous player in the community of nations. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory doubled the size of the country, and possibilities unimagined were about to unfold. Against this backdrop of national development, a new generation looked back to the icons of their nation’s founding, and none was more tangible in the American mind than the document severing the imperial bond. The Declaration of Independence was the antecedent to the Articles of Confederation that formed a government to win the Revolutionary War, the Constitution that created the government still working today, and the Emancipation Proclamation and Constitutional amendments that would guarantee the “certain unalienable Rights” acknowledged in our founding document to everyone regardless of race, creed, or gender. Commissioned at the crest of a wave of patriotic optimism and national opportunity, William J. Stone’s engraving captured the essence of the Declaration as it was written in the summer of 1776. As important as its words, the symbol of the Declaration of Independence helped bring its values forward for future generations of Americans. Glenn M. Grasso, Ph.D. New York, N.Y.
Proclaiming Independence
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hen the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in May of 1776, its members were torn between hope for reconciliation with Britain and recognition that the mother country was unwilling to compromise on political or military control of her colonies. The Revolutionary War had begun in earnest a full year earlier, and a growing number of Americans felt that nothing short of a complete split from Britain would achieve their goals. The issue came to a head on June 7 when delegate Richard Henry Lee, acting on instructions from the Virginia Convention, introduced a resolution calling for Congress to declare the united colonies “free and independent states.” Furious debate ensued. As six of the thirteen colonies were “not yet matured for falling from the parent stem, but were fast advancing to that state,” Thomas Jefferson noted, “it was thought most prudent to wait a while for them.” Congress postponed a final decision until July 1 but appointed a committee to write a Declaration of Independence in the meantime. The committee — Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston — chose Jefferson to produce a draft that they reviewed and edited. The committee submitted its final proposal to Congress on June 28. Though still debating the text of Jefferson’s Declaration, on Tuesday, July 2, Congress voted on and passed Lee’s resolution: “Resolved, That these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independant states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the british crown and that all political connection between them and the State of great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.” Roughly 100 miles away, the British fleet and army began arriving in New York harbor, and on July 3, thousands of Redcoats began landing on Staten Island. On July 4, 1776, Congress took the final step and voted to approve the full Declaration of Independence with the delegates pledging “our Lives, our Fortunes, our sacred Honor” to uphold the principles it set forth. Only two men signed the manuscript of the approved text that day: Continental Congress President John Hancock and Secretary Charles Thomson. Congress then ordered the committee responsible for writing the Declaration to supervise its publication. Philadelphia printer John Dunlap set the document in type and delivered freshly-printed copies to Congress on the morning of July 5. (Several hundred Dunlap broadsides were printed, but only 27 are known to survive.) Over the next few days, John Hancock sent the official broadsides—single-page printings used to spread news—to the Revolutionary state governments, to George Washington, commanding the Continental Army in New York, and to other military commanders. On July 6, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the
first newspaper to print the text. Members of Congress sent Declaration copies to their families, friends, and associates, as did private individuals and members of the press. The first copies quickly made their way into the hands of local printers from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Charleston, South Carolina. These early printings were the primary vehicle by which everyday Americans learned of their independence. As Declaration copies arrived, they were read aloud to troops and the general public, and followed by huzzahs, thirteen-gun salutes, parades, toasts, and bonfires. On July 9, Washington ordered his copy of the Declaration read to the Continental Army in New York. Following the readThe Dunlap broadside ing, a mob pulled down the lead statue of George III in Lower Manhattan’s Bowling Green. The king and his horse were transported to Connecticut and cast into 42,088 musket balls for the American cause.
Pulling Down the Statue of King George III
Almost Unanimous When the Continental Congress voted for independence, New York’s delegates had been instructed to abstain. Thus, all of the broadsides and newspapers printed in July were titled “A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled.” On July 9, New York added its support to the other 12 states in favor of independence. Congress then re-titled the document to reflect the newfound unanimity. Finally, on July 19, Congress ordered the Declaration to be engrossed (officially copied in a formal hand) on vellum (specially-prepared calfskin) and signed by the members of Congress. The “National Treasure” Document The “National Treasure” description had been used even before the popular 2004 movie starring Nicolas Cage. The earliest we have seen is in a circa 1846 Boston broadside. The official document that has earned that moniker was engrossed by Timothy Matlack, the assistant to Secretary of Congress Charles Thomson. Matlack copied the text onto a large vellum sheet headed “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America” to be signed by the delegates. On August 2, 1776, an entry in the Journal of Congress recorded that “the declaration of independence being engrossed & compared at the table was signed” by the members of Congress assembled at that moment. They proceeded geographically, with the delegates from New England signing first. Eight of the signers had not been members of Congress on July 4. Five signers were absent for the final vote on July 4. Three had abstained:
Excerpt from the Journals of the Continental Congress
William Floyd and Francis Lewis, per their instructions from the New York Provincial government, and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania. One signer, George Read, had voted against independence. Moreover, while only 39 delegates actually voted for independence, the 56 eventual signers of the engrossed Declaration include several men not present on August 2: George Wythe signed on August 27; Richard Henry Lee, Elbridge Gerry, and Oliver Wolcott on September 4; Matthew Thornton (appointed to Congress in September) on November 19. Thomas McKean was the last to add his signature, in 1781. The names of most of the signers remained unknown for six months. Then on January
18, 1777, after the decisive battles of Trenton and Princeton, Congress ordered authenticated copies of the Declaration, complete with the signers’ names, for distribution to the states. Baltimore printer Mary Katherine Goddard produced these copies, and, after being signed by John Hancock and Charles Thomson, at least one was sent to every state.
Declaration of Independence broadside, printed by Mary Katherine Goddard
Rediscovering the Declaration
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ollowing the War of 1812, Americans experienced a resurgence of patriotism. They had again weathered war with Great Britain, and the young nation was expanding physically, politically, and especially, economically. With the 50th anniversary of independence on the horizon, Americans were drawn to democratic symbols, and the Declaration of Independence naturally began to serve as one of the nation’s icons of freedom. The engrossed Declaration was soon the subject of two ambitious engravers: Benjamin Owen Tyler and John Binns. Tyler’s engraving, published in 1818, was the first copy of the Declaration that reproduced the now-famous signatures. A professor of penmanship in Washington, D.C., Tyler wrote the text Tyler’s Declaration print in beautiful ornamental scripts. Engraved on a copper plate, his facsimiles of the signatures were said to be so exact that Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush attested to their precision, claiming it would be “difficult, if not impossible, for the closest scrutiny to distinguish them, were it not for the hand of time, from the originals.” Binns’s engraving had been announced in 1816 but was not published until 1819. The delay was caused by difficulty gathering artwork; the complete text of the document was crowned with an eagle and surrounded by portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and Hancock as well as the seals of the original 13 states. The signatures were squeezed into the lower portion of the print, disturbing their order of signing. The Binns engraving also included an attestation by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. The Binns and the Tyler engravings sold well by advance subscription, which encouraged two other printers to take advantage of their competitors’ work. Several months before the release of the Binns print, William Woodruff beat him to press with a pirated version. Connecticut calligrapher Eleazar HuntingBinns’s Declaration print
ton went on to produce his own engraving, smaller in scale, amalgamating elements from both Tyler and Binns. The Department of State had assumed custody of the original in 1790. By 1820, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams was already concerned about its fragile condition. In the four-plus decades since its signing, it had been unrolled and handled frequently for display to visitors. Efforts by the early publishers to reproduce the document had taken a toll as well. In 1819, when Adams authenticated the accuracy of the Binns engraving by comparing it against the engrossed Declaration, he observed “the original itself has suffered by the handling of Stone’s advertisement in the July 3, 1820 the Engraver to take these fac-similes.” City of Washington Gazette In July of 1820, master engraver William J. Stone approached Adams soliciting the Department of State’s engraving work. Stone’s shop on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., specialized in copperplate printing of maps, charts, and diplomas as well as more standard printing fare. The meeting resulted in a number of projects for Stone. With the approval of Congress, Adams commissioned Stone’s magnum opus—an exact copy of the Declaration. Stone labored on his facsimile until the first week of October 1822 when he delivered an initial impression to show his progress. “He has finished the signatures and they are well done,” Adams noted in his diary, “but upon the Declaration itself, he has yet much to labour.” Stone worked another six months to complete the plate, to which he added an imprint across the top left: “ENGRAVED by W. I. STONE, for the Dept. of State, by order” and continued across the top right: “of J. Q. ADAMS, Sect. of State, July 4th. 1823.”
The imprint at the top left and top right of the first copies of the Stone Declaration
On May 28, 1823, Daniel Brent, Senior Clerk at the Department of State, wrote to Stone requesting him to print 200 copies “from the engraved plate . . . now, in your possession, and then to deliver the plate itself to this office to be afterwards occasionally used by you, when the Department may require further supplies of copies from it.” At least two Washington, D.C., newspapers—the City Gazette and the National Intelligencer — mentioned the Declaration facsimile at that time. Stone printed the 200 copies along with one he kept for himself as was customary though not specifically authorized in this case. This resulted in some controversy until Stone’s
widow donated his copy to the Smithsonian Institution in 1888. The 201 copies were printed on vellum, a standard medium for very important documents, and also the same material on which the engrossed Declaration itself had been written. On New Year’s Day of 1824, Adams reported to Congress that the printed Stone Declarations were now at the Department of State. Congress formally responded on May 26, 1824, approving distribution of the facsimiles. Beginning in June, Adams forwarded the Declarations to their designated recipients. Two copies each were sent to the three surviving Declaration signers—Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton—and to President James Monroe, Vice President Daniel D. Tompkins, former President James Madison, and the Marquis de Lafayette. The Senate and House of Representatives split twenty copies. The President’s house and the Supreme Court received two copies each. The various departments of government received twelve copies. Adams sent additional copies to the governors and legislatures of the states and territories, and to various universities and colleges in the United States. Adams evidently retained some copies for subsequent presentation—possibly even for purposes of political patronage. All subsequent facsimiles of the Declaration descend from Stone’s plate. At some point, the legend at the top was burnished out of the plate and replaced with a shorter imprint at bottom left just below George Walton’s printed signature: “W. J. STONE SC. WASHn.” A close examination of the original plate at the National Archives reveals the barely-visible vestiges of the old legend at the top. Stone’s plate was next used in some fashion to print a second edition—on paper, not
Congress directs the distribution of the Stone Declarations
vellum—for inclusion in historian Peter Force’s American Archives: A Documentary History of the United States of America. Most descriptions date the “Force” printing to 1848, when American Archives Series V, Volume I, which included the folded Declarations, was finally published. But Force had already procured the Declaration facsimiles 15 years earlier when Congress initially authorized the project and the Department of State contracted for 1,500 copies of his work. On July 21, 1833, Stone invoiced Force for 4,000 prints of the Declaration. Perhaps Force thought he could sell as many as 2,500 additional copies of American Archives by subscription. In 1843, Force received Congressional re-authorization, but with mounting expenses and increasing delays, he scaled back his subscription plan to 500 copies.
Politicking for the Presidency Did the Stone Declaration facsimile help Secretary of State John Quincy Adams win the hotly-disputed 1824 presidential election? At least three of the surviving Stone Declarations bear manuscript inscriptions indicating they were special presentations by Adams. The name on one was penned by Adams himself but can no longer be deciphered. The other two are inscribed to influential Maryland politicians Thomas Emory and Joshua Prideaux. Researcher Catherine Nicholson suggests that John Quincy Adams these inscriptions show Adams “politicking for the presidency by presenting or being ready to present Stone engravings to politicians beyond those authorized explicitly by the May 26, 1824, joint resolution of Congress.” Adams was a popular favorite in New England, but held far less sway in Maryland. In the 1824 presidential election, that state’s electors picked Andrew Jackson over Adams seven to three. But when Jackson failed to garner a majority of votes in the Electoral College, the election was thrown to the House of Representatives. The Maryland Congressional delegation, despite their state’s electors and the popular vote, chose Adams over Jackson five to three, thereby helping Adams win the Detail of the Stone Declaration presidency. presented to Thomas Emory
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How Did Stone Do It? Stone’s facsimile is as close to an exact copy of the original manuscript as was humanly possible at that time. How did he achieve such accuracy before the use of photographic imagery? Many historians have suggested that Stone used some sort of wet or chemical process to take a direct copy of the engrossed Declaration, thus damaging the original manuscript. This method involved pressing a dampened piece of tissue paper against the written side of a document to lift a Detail of Stone’s copper plate layer of ink from the surface of the original. If so, Stone probably ran the dampened Declaration and transfer paper through printing rollers, put the sheet on the wax covering a copper plate, and either traced into the wax to mark the plate for engraving or used a needle-like tool to mark the outlines of the letters with tiny dots and went back later using tools such as a graver or burin to deepen the engraving. A close comparison of several Stone and later edition imprints to high-resolution images of the engrossed Declaration and to the original Stone plate (in the National Archives) suggests to us that Stone could have used the more traditional method of tracing the engrossed manuscript by hand. Scrutiny of the finished product also reveals clues that the engraver left, either intentionally or unintentionally, to distinguish The imprint on Force copies, bottom left the original from the copies. For example, the capital “T” in “The” at the top of the Stone prints has a decorative 45-degree diagonal line through it, running from lower left to upper right. The line is not visible on the original engrossed manuscript. The engrossed manuscript also has a heart-shaped, scalloped flourish (photographically enhanced below) joining the final calligraphic element to the top of the “T,” whereas the Stone copperplate, vellum, and paper facsimiles have a rounded flourish without the dip. Stone reportedly had possession of the original engrossed Declaration for at least part of the three-year period he needed to Left: The “T” from the Stone facsimile, create the facsimile plate. He would have with the crossbar and curved flourish had ample time to use any of the aforeRight: the original manuscript without the crossbar and with heart-shaped flourish mentioned techniques.
The Department of State and Further Distribution of the Declaration In the decades following the distribution of the Stone first editions, the Department of State continued to disseminate the facsimiles. The Department’s retained letterbooks of domestic correspondence show periodic shipments to newly-credentialed colleges and universities, libraries and historical societies, and governors of new territories and states. The Department sent early printings to at least some U.S. diplomatic posts. For instance, in 1832, Secretary of State Edward Livingston shipped a Declaration facsimile to the new chargé d’affaires to Belgium, as “a suitable ornament for the office of the Legation.” The nature of these facsimiles is not clear. The shipments may have included remaining copies of the original vellum Stone Declarations, examples of the same on paper, paper copies of the 1833 second edition printed by Stone for Force’s American Archives (bearing the shorter imprint), and other subsequent printings. Only about a quarter of the 201 Stone Declaration facsimiles are known to survive. About half of these are in institutional collections; the rest are privately owned. Very few can be traced back to their original recipients. Exceptions include one of Lafayette’s copies, donated by collector Albert Small to the University of Virginia, and one of Charles Carroll’s copies, which is at the Maryland Historical Society. Perhaps more of the 150 or so lost Stone facsimiles will yet be found. Correspondence in the Department of State Archives indicates that the vellum facsimiles were shipped to recipients rolled up. Those that were never framed might easily have been overlooked. Even if framed, considering the innumerable reproductions of our founding document made since Stone first engraved his facsimile, unrecognized examples may be hiding in plain sight. As libraries, archives, and state and federal agencies sort through closets and storage spaces, we hope that additional examples will come to light. *
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Very little of the original engrossed manuscript of the Declaration is legible today after its nearly-complete deterioration over the course of two centuries. The first edition of Stone’s engraving remains the best representation of the engrossed Declaration manuscript as it looked in 1776, and it is certainly the image most familiar to the world.
Unanswered Questions There remain many unanswered questions regarding the Stone facsimile. We still do not know the exact technique William J. Stone used to make the plate, nor to what extent his work affected the original document. There are six or more extant paper copies with the first edition imprint. Are any or all of these his printer’s proofs? The precise timing of Stone changing his imprint between first and second editions is also unknown, as is the final dispensation of the last of the vellum editions. Approximately 150 of the vellum examples are not currently located, including those sent to Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. Perhaps most tantalizing, since we know that some of these were sent to United States diplomatic missions, are there any undiscovered Stone Declarations in U.S. consulates and embassies abroad?
John Trumbull’s “Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776” (1818) now in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building
A Well-Travelled Parchment
The National Archives receives the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights
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fter its signing on August 2, 1776, the engrossed Declaration is presumed to have travelled with the Continental Congress as it met in various cities. Between August and December 1776, the Declaration was most likely held by Continental Congress Secretary Charles Thomson. On December 12, Congress removed to Baltimore ahead of the British, taking the Declaration with it. If the Declaration continued to move with the Continental Congress, it went from Philadelphia, to Lancaster, to York, and then back to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the remainder of the Revolution. The Continental Congress then met in Princeton, New Jersey (1783), Annapolis, Maryland (1783-1784), Trenton, New Jersey (1784), and New York City (1785-1790). In July 1789, the First Congress met in New York and created the Department of Foreign Affairs with responsibilities that included “the safe keeping of the Acts, Records, and Seal of the United States.” Congress soon re-named the agency the “Department of
State.” First headed by Thomas Jefferson, the Department held the engrossed manuscript from 1790 to 1800. As the federal government relocated from New York, to Philadelphia, and finally to Washington, D.C., the Declaration travelled with State Department records. The Patent Office held the engrossed Declaration of Independence from 1841 to 1876 until it was displayed at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. In 1877, it returned to the State Department and was held in what is now the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. In 1921, the founding document was moved to the Library of Congress. The Centennial Exposition was not the first time the Declaration left the seat of the national government. During the War of 1812, with the British threatening Washington, D.C., Secretary of State James Monroe recommended to President James Madison that the nation’s most valuable documents be moved out of harm’s way. On August 24, 1814, the very day British troops burned Washington, Department of State clerk Stephen Pleasonton oversaw the removal of 23 carts of important papers to Rokeby Mansion outside Leesburg, Virginia. Similarly, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Declaration, along with other essential documents, was transported under heavy guard to Fort Knox, Kentucky, where it resided from December 1941 through September 1944. Even in the midst of war, the Declaration returned to Washington for a single day, April 13, 1943, to be displayed at the dedication of the memorial to its author, Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration finally returned to the Library of Congress and was displayed there from October 1, 1944, to December 13, 1952, when it was delivered to its permanent home, the National Archives building.
“Capture of the City of Washington,” engraving by J. & J. Gundee, London, 1815
The engrossed Declaration of Independence as it appears today
afterword
T
he Declaration is not fundamental law—the Articles of Confederation, and later the Constitution, were that—but Americans have long turned to it for guidance. In 1784, Alexander Hamilton, then a young lawyer, was defending merchants who had done business during the Revolution in British-occupied New York against punitive post-war state laws. He cited the Declaration to argue that the Treaty of Paris, which forbade such reprisals, took precedence over state laws. “By the Declaration of Independence . . . the United States assert their power to levy war [and] conclude peace. . . . Congress then had complete sovereignty!” In the early 1830s, the Declaration was cited in a more dangerous controversy over the powers of states. South Carolina announced that it would nullify a federal tariff. President Andrew Jackson’s threats and Senator Henry Clay’s revisions to the tariff temporarily ended the crisis, but it provided Justice Joseph Story the opportunity to pass judgment on it in 1833. The Declaration, he said, “was not an act done by the State governments. . . . It was emphatically the act of the whole people of the united colonies. . . . From the moment of the Declaration [the United States] must be considered as being a nation de facto.” In mid-century, Abraham Lincoln would turn to the Declaration not as an assertion of unity but as a statement of principle. His longtime political rival, Stephen Douglas, said that its affirmation of equality applied only to white men, not to blacks “or any other inferior and degraded race.” A former colleague from Lincoln’s single term in Congress, Alexander Stephens, declared that the doctrine of human equality was simply wrong. It tried “to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.” Lincoln would have none of it. “My ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal;’ and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.” Lincoln made his most eloquent profession of his political faith in the Gettysburg Address where he said that the United States had been “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” A century after the Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “I Have a Dream” speech, called the Declaration a “promissory note” from “the architects of our Republic. . . . This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Americans celebrate their independence as John Adams predicted. They also celebrate their Declaration of Independence. It announced not only that we were a nation but also what sort of a nation we ought to be. Richard Brookhiser New York, N.Y.
selected sources
Bidwell, John. American History in Image and Text. (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1988). Boyd, Julian P. “The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 100 (1976): 438-467. Department of State. Domestic Letters of the Department of State, 1784-1906, NARA M40. http://research.archives.gov/description/568025 Dube, Anne Marie. A Multitude of Amendments, Alterations and Additions: The Writing and Publicizing of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States. National Park Service, May 1996. Updated January 17, 2003. http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/dube/inde1.htm Dupont, Christian Y., and Peter Onuf, eds. Declaring Independence: The Origin and Influence of America’s Founding Document (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Library, 2008). Ford, Worthington C. et al. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 (Washington: GPO, 1904-37). Gustafson, Milton O. “The Empty Shrine: The Transfer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the National Archives.” The American Archivist 39 (1976): 271-285. Hunt, Gaillard. The Department of State of the United States: Its History and Functions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914). Kaller, Seth. “The Declaration of Independence: Rare Copies of America’s Founding Document.” Autograph 20 ( July 2009): 56-61. Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Knopf, 1997). Massachusetts Historical Society. The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection. http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/index.cfm National Archives and Records Administration. “Travels of the Declaration of Independence: A Time Line,” in The Declaration of Independence: Our National Treasure. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/treasure/declaration_travels.html Nicholson, Catherine. “Finding the Stones: National Archives Discovers Several Engravings of the Declaration.” National Archives and Records Administration, Prologue 44 (Summer 2012). http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/summer/stone.html Nicholson, Catherine. “The Stone Engraving: Icon of the Declaration.” National Archives and Records Administration, Prologue 35 (Fall 2003). http://www.archives.gov/ publications/prologue/2003/fall/stone-engraving.html Resolution Providing a Place of Deposit for Portrait of Columbus, and Directing the Distribution of Certain Copies of the Declaration of Independence. May 26, 1824. U.S. Statutes at Large 4 (1846): 78.
This booklet was written to accompany a new facsimile of the Declaration of Independence distributed to American embassies worldwide. The facsimiles are displayed in custom frames reproduced from the only known surviving original frame associated with an 1823 Stone Declaration. The symbolic ornaments and aesthetic choices of the frame’s design, first identified by frame historian and former Smithsonian conservator William Adair of Gold Leaf Studios in Washington, D.C., are remnants of the spirit of the American Revolution. The Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies would like to thank David M. Rubenstein for making the publication of this booklet possible.
Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies 1725 I Street, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006 info@fapeglobal.org • www.fapeglobal.org • 202-349-3724 FAPE is the leading private, non-profit organization dedicated to providing permanent works of American art for U.S. embassies worldwide. For over twenty-five years, FAPE has contributed to the U.S. Department of State’s mission of cultural diplomacy by partnering with American artists whose works encourage cross-cultural understanding within the diplomatic community and the international public. All artworks commissioned or placed by FAPE are gifts, representing generosity and patriotism among some of the United States’ greatest artists and donors. FAPE receives no government funding and it has raised more than $75 million in art and monetary contributions to date. Thanks to Dr. Glenn M. Grasso, William Steere, and Marc Cheshire at Seth Kaller, Inc. Also thanks to Ellen Pawelczak for research and editing, researcher Catherine Nicholson, Karie Diethorn, Chief Curator of Independence National Historical Park, as well as Dr. Peggy Brown for research in the archives of the Department of State, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives. Copyright © 2014, Seth Kaller, Inc. A census of known copies of the first edition Stone imprints is kept current at http://www.sethkaller.com/stone-census Please contact us if you can help locate any additional examples. photo credits William Adair/Gold Leaf Studios, page 2 American Antiquarian Society, page 14 (top) Bureau of Engraving and Printing, page 16 (top) The Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, page 15 Library of Congress, pages 5, 6, 12, 13 (bottom), 21 National Archives and Records Administration, frontispiece, pages 11, 17 (top and bottom right), 20, 22 Private collections, courtesy Seth Kaller, Inc., pages 10 (bottom), 13 (top), 16 (bottom), 17 (middle) David M. Rubenstein Collection, cover, pages 14 (bottom left and right), 17 (bottom left), back cover Smithsonian Institution, page 4 The Architect of the Capitol, page 19 Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, page 10 (top)
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”