~ Background Information ~
The Continental Congress made the charge of committing to paper the
American colonies' declaration of independence from Britain to five
individuals: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert
Livingston, and Roger Sherman. Most scholars today now view the
authorship of this document to be highly collaborative both between these
five individuals (who made forty-seven alterations to Jefferson's original
statement) and between the members of Congress who made another
thirty-nine alterations after voting for independence on July 2, 1776.
After approving the Declaration on July 4th, it was immediately
set in type and printed overnight by John Dunlap, who was the official
printer to Congress. Copies of the printed version were immediately
distributed to all of the colonies, where in some instances they were
reprinted by local printers so that by July 18, twenty-four newspapers had
republished the text of the Declaration. It was through the printed
version of the Declaration that all the colonies agreed to support it.
Once that was achieved, Congress commissioned a calligraphic version,
which was signed by all members. Various engraved versions of this
handwritten document circulated widely after the 1820s and this is one
such version. [1]
1. Starr, Thomas, "Separated at Birth: Text and Context of the
Declaration
of Independence," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society,
Vol.
110 part 2. Also see Maier, Pauline, American Scripture (New York:
Alfred
A. Knopf, 1997); Wills, Gary, Inventing America (Garden City,
Doubleday, 1978); and Ellis, Joseph, Founding Brothers (New York:
Alfred A.
Knopf, 2000).
From the Graphic Arts collections of the American
Antiquarian Society
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