Chevron

The Declaration of Independence

"In Congress, July 4, 1776. A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled."

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. ...

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent 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; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Signed by order and in behalf of the Congress, John Hancock, President, Attest, Charles Thomson, Secretary. New-York: Printed by John Holt, in Water-Street, July 11, 1776

This is the only copy in private hands of just five recorded copies of one of the earliest printings of the Declaration of Independence: a unique newspaper-broadside hybrid printed within a week of John Dunlap’s first edition broadside.

John Holt’s printing was conceived and executed with an intentionality and understanding of the significance of the moment uncommon in other newspaper printings.

Holt devoted the entirety of the third page of that day’s paper to the Declaration, attractively set in double columns in a variety of type sizes and enclosed by decorative border of type ornaments. While not a broadside in the strictest bibliographical sense of the word, Holt’s Declaration was clearly meant to be employed like one. On the facing second page of the July 11 issue, headed by a manicule, or pointing finger, Holt added this editorial comment in italic type:

“The Declaration of the United States of America, is inserted in this paper, in the present form, to oblige a number of our Cust.mes rs, who intend to separate it from the rest of the paper, and fix it up, in open view, in their Houses, as a mark of their approbation of the Independent Spirit of their Representatives.”

The rarity of this printing of the Declaration may indicate that Holt’s proposal was followed by a great many of his subscribers—at least until the landing of British troops in New York City.

When the Continental Congress convened in May of 1776, the issuance of a such declaration was far from a foregone conclusion. A coalition of delegates from Mid-Atlantic states, led by Pennsylvania's John Dickinson, advocated a cautious approach towards independence and may even have harbored hopes for an equitable reconciliation with Britain.

The first step towards the Declaration was Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee's resolution of June 7, "that these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, free and independent 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." This provoked sharp debate in the chamber, with South Carolinian Edward Rutledge confiding to John Jay that "The Sensible part of the House opposed the Motion. ... They saw no Wisdom in a Declaration of Independence nor any other Purpose to be answer'd by it, but placing ourselves in the Power of those with whom we mean to treat. ..." But firebrands like John Adams carried the day and on June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five members to draft a declaration endorsing Lee's resolution. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and Robert R. Livingston of New York formed the committee.

Jefferson was chosen to write the Declaration, in recognition of his (in John Adams's words) "peculiar felicity of expression." His extensively reworked Rough Draft, as it is commonly known, is preserved in the Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. In addition to Lee's resolution, Jefferson drew heavily on two other fundamental sources for his text: George Mason's bill of rights, adopted by Virginia on June 12, 1776, and his own draft of a proposed constitution for Virginia. Jefferson felt great satisfaction for the rest of his life in having been privileged to serve as chief author of this greatest of American documents. Shortly before his death, Jefferson wrote to Richard Henry Lee, responding to the remarks of John Adams and others that the Declaration only stated what everyone at the t.mes believed. He had been concerned, he wrote, "not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not.mes rely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent ... it was intended to be an expression of the American mind."

As is evident from their annotations on the Rough Draft, Adams and Franklin read and commented on Jefferson's version, making relatively small changes. There is no direct evidence of revision from the hands of Sherman and Livingston. A (now-lost) fair copy, incorporating these changes, was submitted to the full body of the Continental Congress, which debated it for three days before approving it on July 4, 1776.

The most substantial modification made in Congressional discussion was that the final point of Jefferson's charge against the British king, that of "violating [the] most sacred rights of life & liberty" by encouraging the slave trade, was struck out. Jefferson's own Notes made at the t.mes of the debates state that this was done "in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it."

With that major change, Congress adopted the Declaration and authorized its printing, resolving "That the committee appointed to prepare the declaration superintend & correct the press; That copies of the declaration be sent to the several Assemblies, Conventions & Committees or Councils of Safety and to the several Commanding Officers of the Continental troops that it be proclaimed in each of the United States & at the head of the army." In the final sentence of the Declaration, the phrase "with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence" was also added.

Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull (1819) | Public Domain

That same evening, a manuscript copy of the Declaration, evidently bearing the authorizing signature of John Hancock, president of the Congress, and the attestation of Charles Thomson, the secretary of Congress, was taken to the shop of John Dunlap, official printer to Congress, who was located within walking distance of the Statehouse. Dunlap evidently spent the evening of July 4 setting the Declaration in type. Finished copies were pulled and delivered to Congress the morning of July 5, and the process of distribution began that very day. The number of copies printed is unknown, but it is likely that the Dunlap broadside was printed in substantial numbers, perhaps between 500 and 1,000 copies.

Because they preserve the text of the Declaration as first written and read, July 1776 printings like this are more original than the “original” engrossed manuscript, the prized treasure in the National Archives. Although the popular image of the Declaration of Independence remains the manuscript signed by John Hancock and 55 others and titled “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,” that is not how the document was first promulgated. The Declaration could not have been given that title when it passed: the vote was one shy of the desired unanimity because New York’s delegates followed their state’s specific instructions and abstained. As seen in this newspaper, on July 4 the document was titled “A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled” and was signed only by Continental Congress President John Hancock and Secretary Charles Thomson. The Congress did not even order the Declaration to be calligraphed on vellum until July 19, and Timothy Matlack, the clerks charged with writing out the Declaration, did not complete this task until August 2.

Copies of Dunlap’s broadside were available nearly a month before that, and as they were distributed throughout the thirteen colonies, they were used as copy texts for other, local printers, who produced their own editions—which were themselves often reprinted in turn—all in an effort to fulfill the public hunger for the Declaration.

Holt’s handsomely designed and displayable edition is among the very earliest printings of the Declaration—those printed within a week of Dunlap’s first edition. The seventeen printings of the Declaration that were issued by July 11—fourteen certainly and three plausibly—were clustered in Pennsylvania and two neighboring states:

A t.mes line of the Earliest Printings of the Declaration of Independence (4–11 July 1776)

4-5 July Broadside. Philadelphia: John Dunlap (27 copies, some fragmentary, including a single partial proof and a recently discovered issue bearing the imprint of Dunlap’s Baltimore office)
6 July Philadelphia: Benjamin Towne, The Pennsylvania Evening Post. The first newspaper printing. (19 copies recorded: 17 institutional and 2 private collects ions)
8 July Philadelphia: John Dunlap, Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet or the General Advertiser (Approximately 11–14 institutional copies recorded)
8 July Philadelphia: Robert Bell, July 8, 1776, per the terminal advertisement leaf. First book printing, placed as a stop-press addition at the conclusion of the pseudonymous The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution. Carefully collects ed from the best Authorities; with some Observations, on their Peculiar Fitness, for the United Colonies in General, and Pennsylvania in Particular. By Demophilus. (Approximately 25–30 copies recorded: at least 16 institutional)
9 July ca. Broadside. Philadelphia: Steiner & Cist, German-language printing. (2 institutional copies recorded)
9 July Philadelphia: John Henry Miller, Heinrich Miller’s Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, German-language newspaper. (2 institutional copies recorded)
9 July Baltimore: John Dunlap, Dunlap's Maryland Gazette, or the Baltimore General Advertiser. (2 institutional copies recorded)
10 July Philadelphia: William and David Hall, The Pennsylvania Gazette. (16 institutional copies recorded)
10 July Philadelphia: William and Thomas Bradford, The Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser. (9 copies recorded: 8 institutional and one private collects ion)
10 July Baltimore: Mary Katherine Goddard, The Maryland Journal, and the Baltimore Advertiser. (2 institutional copies recorded)
10 July New York: John Anderson, The Constitutional Gazette. (one institutional copy recorded)
11 July New York: John Holt, The New-York Journal; or the General Advertiser. (5 copies recorded: 4 institutions [Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Library of Congress, Library Company of Philadelphia, Yale] and the present copy)
11 July New York: Samuel Loudon, The New York Packet and the American Advertiser. (4 institutional copies recorded)
11 July Annapolis: Frederick Green, The Maryland Gazette (5 institutional copies recorded)
11 July ca. Broadside. New York: John Holt. Headed by July 9 resolution of the New York Assembly in White Plains (5 copies recorded: 4 institutions and one private collects ion)
11-20 July ca. Broadside. [New York: Samuel Loudon (?)]. (2 institutional copies recorded)
? July Broadside. No imprint. (one institutional copy recorded [New-York Historical Society]; traditionally assigned a spot here in the sequence of broadsides despite lack of evidence of place or t.mes of publication)

Among this group, Holt’s printing is unique in combining the aesthetic and utility of a broadside with the context of other contemporary reporting provided by a newspaper. And, in fact, many newspapers presented the Declaration simply as another piece of news, with little headlining and often with the text spread across multiple pages. (Only two other papers, both of which are later and less decorative than Holt’s design, are known to have produced a full-page display for the Declaration: the July 16 New Hampshire Gazette, Extraordinary, of Exeter, New Hampshire, and the July 20 Freeman’s Journal of Portsmouth.)

**Pulling down the statue of King George III, Bowling Green, New York. Illustrated by Thomas Addis Emmet, 1880 | Public Domain**

The July 11 New-York Journal, however, while not neglecting other vital and stirring military and political intelligence— including a British officer’s account of the capture of transports George and Annabella by Boston patriots; an address by “Americus” to the “People of England”; and reports on the reception of the Declaration, including New Yorkers pulling down the statue of King George III at Bowling Green—leaves little doubt about the significance of the recent pronouncement by Congress, hailing the Declaration of Independence as “the most important event that ever happened in the American Colonies” and publishing it in a befitting manner.

The Declaration issue of Holt’s newspaper predicts that the adoption of the Declaration “will doubtless be celebrated through a long succession of future ages, by anniversary commemorations, and be considered as a grand Æra in the history of the American States,” and provides lengthy coverage of two events that took place within a mile of his printing shop, the reading of the Declaration to George Washington’s troops and the pulling down of a statue of King George III:

On this auspicious day, the Representatives of the Thirteen United Colonies, by the providence of God, unanimously agreed to, and voted a Proclamation, declaring the said Colonies Free And Independent States, which was proclaimed at the state house on Philadelphia, on Monday last, and received with joyful acclamations. Copies were also distributed to All the United Colonies — On Wednesday last it was read at the head of each Brigade of the Continental Army posted at and near New York and everywhere received with loud huzzas, and the utmost demonstration of joy. The same evening the equestrian statue of George III, which Tory pride and folly raised in the year 1770, was, by the Sons of Freedom, laid prostrate in the dirt, the just desert of an ungrateful Tyrant! The lead wherewith this monument was made, is to be run into bullets, to assimilate with the brain of our infatuated adversaries, who, to gain a peppercorn, have lost an Empire.* — “Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.” [‘Those whom God wills to destroy he first deprives of their senses.’] A Gentleman who was present at this ominous fall of leaden Majesty, looking back at the Original’s hopeful beginning, pertinently exclaimed, in the language of the Angel to Lucifer, “If thou be’st he; but ah–!– how fallen ! how chang’d !”

* Lord Clare, in the House of Commons, had declared that a pepper-corn, in acknowledgment of Britain’s right to tax America, was “of more importance than millions without it.”

John Holt (1721?–1784) was a peripatetic printer who had offices in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Virginia as well as in New York. A poor businessman, often in debt, Holt was nonetheless a fierce patriot, closely affiliated with the Sons of Liberty. In addition to newspapers, Holt published or reprinted a number of significant political tracts, among them Daniel Dulany's Considerations of the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies (1765), William Hicks's Nature and Extent of Parliamentary Power (1768), John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768), and A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger (1770). Indeed, Kevin J. Hayes writes in American National Biography that “Based on his total number of publications and the number of his pamphlets that were reprinted throughout the colonies, Holt ranks among the most important colonial American printers before the revolutionary war.”

In June 1774, Holt had removed the King’s arms from his paper’s heading and substituted the image of a snake, cut into pieces labelled with the initials of the states (NE employed to cover all the New England states) and captioned, “Unite or die.”

Beginning in December 1774, Holt changed the masthead logo to the form it remained in for this July 11, 1776 issue. Dr. Robin Shields of the Library of Congress describes the new design: “The double coiled snake with its tail in its mouth proclaims in the body, ‘United Now Alive and Free, And Thus Supported, Ever Bless our Land, Firm on this Basis Liberty Shall Stand, Till t.mes Becomes Eternity.’ Within the coils is a pillar standing on the Magna Carta surmounted by the cap of liberty. The pillar on each side is supported by six arms and hands, representing the colonies.”

On July 9, two days before Holt’s newspaper-broadside appeared, the New York Convention, meeting in White Plains, ordered 500 copies of a “handbill,” or broadside, of the Declaration to be printed and distributed “to all the county committees of the State with orders to publish it in the districts.” John Holt was given the commission to print the official New York broadside of the Declaration. Although the order for that printing was dated July 9, it is clear that the broadside came after Holt’s newspaper-broadside and was, in fact, printed from the same setting of type. The official broadside corrected a centering oversight in the headlines (critical for establishing priority), added the resolution of the Convention to have the Declaration printed, and elaborated the decorative border.

Holt’s official broadside is of particular significance because the state’s delegates to the Continental Congress had abstained during the vote to adopt the Declaration of Independence. Holt was incorrect—or at least premature—in writing in the July 11 newspaper that “the Representatives of the Thirteen United Colonies, by the providence of God, unanimously agreed to, and voted a Proclamation, declaring the said Colonies Free And Independent States.” Once the Declaration reached New York’s legislature, however, the state’s assent was added.

*Battle of Long Island* by Alonzo Chappel (1858) | Public Domain

Although the Declaration of Independence boosted the spirits of the troops and patriotic New Yorkers, it did not delay the inevitable loss of the city. After meeting with General Howe’s representatives at the end of the month, and refusing their offer of clemency, Washington was badly defeated in the Battle of Long Island. By mid-September, the British had occupied New York City.

Holt fared poorly in the aftermath and had to abandon his newspaper at the end of August. In the summer of 1777, however, he was appointed the official printer for New York and set up a shop in Kingston, where he revived the New-York Journal. A further British incursion forced him to relocate to Poughkeepsie in May 1778. And the end of hostilities he returned to New York City where he published the Independent New-York Gazette, which was continued after his death by his wife.

As much as the Dunlap first broadside, the contemporary regional printings of the Declaration of Independence provide a tangible link to the birth of the United States.

Typically utilitarian and intrinsically ephemeral productions, Holt’s newspaper-broadside stands out as being designed and printed for posterity.

Sotheby’s is grateful to Seth Kaller for his contributions to this description.