![]() ![]() ![]() That has had a journey of its own, being moved at least 20 times, including sitting in the sun for about 35 years in the Patent Office, in a State Department library room with an open fireplace for another 17, and a trip to Fort Knox to wait out World War II. The engrossed version, handwritten, was signed, first by John Hancock, beginning on August 2. 26 of these “Dunlap broadsides” are known to survive one discovered hidden in a picture frame at a flea market in 1991 fetched $2.5 million dollars at auction. Congress made a further 39 edits, which seriously annoyed Jefferson who by now was feeling more than a little protective of the prose, later calling his colleagues “pusillanimous” in trying not to offend the British people too grievously.Īnyway, adopted it was, and the committee took it to their official printer, John Dunlap, that night to have printed copies made. We celebrate the adoption of the Declaration on the 4 th as our national holiday rather than, say, the adoption of the Constitution or even, as John Adams predicted, the 2 nd, when the decision was actually made. The original resolution on declaring independence was passed on the 2 nd, but nobody remembers that. To this day, research goes on about the writing and editing processes, including recent sophisticated imaging studies of Jefferson’s drafts.Ĭongress debated the committee’s submission over three days before adopting it on July 4. For example, somehow we got from “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” to “self-evident.” Who did that? Franklin, Adams, Jefferson? We don’t know. It’s got crossouts, additions, boxes, even a pasted-on flap, showing how the text evolved, if not the reasons or people responsible. ![]() There are 7 versions and fragments in Jefferson’s hand, including what’s known as the “original Rough Draft” which looks like exactly that. He borrowed freely from numerous sources, and his initial effort went first to the rest of the committee, including Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who then made some 47 changes, mostly minor, adding several paragraphs. The basics: Jefferson was much more interested in helping to prepare Virginia’s new constitution and only somewhat reluctantly took on the task of drafting it John Adams later claimed he talked him into it. There are many, many stories about the Declaration, including the early printed copy I nearly sneezed on one winter’s morning at the Library of Congress, but those will have to wait for another day. But pride of place goes to the document drafted by Thomas Jefferson in a second-floor rented apartment on the corner of 7 th and Market Streets in Philadelphia on behalf of a committee of five members of Congress. The first volume of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published, as was the Wealth of Nations, Catherine the Great is in the middle of her reign, Louis XVI in the third year of his, and the Phi Beta Kappa society is founded at William and Mary that winter. ![]() I’m Joe Janes of the University of Washington Information School, and that date is so ingrained in the American consciousness that it sort of blots out everything else going on that year. This wasn’t always the case, and one of our most cherished and fundamental documents underwent a serious of edits and revisions from the trivial to the profound, and we are largely in the dark as to how and why, and one piece in particular, taken out in one of the most pivotal decisions in our early history, resounds, even – especially - in its absence, today.Ī document that changed the world: A passage, beginning with “He has waged cruel war,” deleted by the Second Continental Congress from the Declaration of Independence, 1776. This is often true, particularly, in lawmaking in a contemporary legislature, meticulous minutes are kept recording proposed amendments, speeches made, votes taken and so on, so that the public, and future generations, can know, if they care, how it all happened and moreover who to thank or blame if their particular provision made it, or didn’t. There are lots of examples the creative process at work in all its messy, myriad varieties - multiple drafts of novels, plays, poems, symphonies and so on, showing us how works are tweaked and pruned and sometimes taken apart and put back together again. How do you read something that isn’t there? Well, you can’t, unless somehow you know it used to be there. ![]()
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