The Declaration of Independence as it appears today. The handwritten declaration was a roll call But there was a particular reason the revolutionaries made a fancy handwritten copy, too. The document used to be a string of text, not an immutable piece of vellum, enclosed behind museum glass. The first newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence, as it appeared in the Pennsylvania Evening Post. If people didn't happen to see those, they likely saw the text in the newspaper, like this one, the first newspaper printing of the Declaration of Independence, from July 6, 1776: The broadsides, named for the printer who made them, don't have any of the familiar signatures at the bottom, but they were quick to create and distribute. "They're the first text of the declaration that's released," says Karie Diethorn, chief curator at Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park museum. Broadsides were the same format often used for posters or ads. The "press release" for the revolution appeared in the "Dunlap broadsides" - printed versions of the document made on July 4, 1776. The initial Declaration of Independence was breaking news - and for that reason, most Americans saw a typeset version. The Library of Congress's copy of the Dunlap broadside. The declaration most Colonial Americans saw wasn't handwritten at all
The true physical nature of the document says a lot about its meaning, both in the 1700s and today. So why was the declaration so backward for its time? But printing presses existed in 1776 - Benjamin Franklin was even a printer in Philadelphia. opened in the Patent Office Building (now the National Portrait Gallery), and what better thing to display than the Declaration of Independence? It sounded like a smart idea, but over the course of 35 years on display, the document was exposed to damaging light that further faded what little ink remained.The classic picture of the Declaration of Independence is a handwritten document made of calfskin. In 1841, the first exhibition hall in Washington D.C. This removed some ink and accounts for some of the faded look we see today, especially around the signatures. Step one of this involved pressing wet fabric against the ink to transfer an exact copy of the words onto the plate. It was a good idea, but the method of the day involved engraving the image on a copperplate. The resulting copperplate is dated July 4, 1823. While Secretary of State, future president John Quincy Adams commissioned full-sized copies of the Declaration to be made to limit the exposure of the original. Restorers with the best of intentions can still do plenty of harm, and early efforts to protect the Declaration damaged the document further. The National Archives Good Intentions, Terrible Results
“Two primary vertical fold lines run from top to bottom, and there are numerous horizontal fold lines especially in the lower part of the document.” “Evidence of previous folding and rolling is still visible on the Declaration,” says one National Archives analysis. As you can imagine, this rough treatment led to permanent damage. The document had no permanent home during the earliest days of the Revolutionary War, resulting in crude folding and rolling, causing some of the ink to flake off. Over time, that dark color mellows to a soft brown.īut the current custodians of the document-the National Archives-will tell you that almost no original ink remains on the Declaration of Independence. “This powder would make for a perfect traveling ink, created only as needed to avoid the opportunity for mold growth.” The scribe would etch letters that would gradually darken as oxygen works on the iron. “The ingredients could also be mixed dry, which would produce ink the moment water was added to it,” the website continues. Ground gall nuts, taken from an oak-like tree, were boiled to draw out tannic acid, which was mixed with iron sulfate scraped from nails.
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