About this Item
Broadside, 29½ x 25 inches, printed on thin paper. The Declaration of Independence, the foundation document of the United States, has been printed myriad times since its original publication in 1776. At first as broadsides, then as an essential addition to any volume of laws, it was from the beginning a basic work in the American canon. The present document is from one of the earliest broadside reproductions of the Declaration, done within a few years of the first broadside republications. In the period following the War of 1812, Americans began to look back, for the first time with historical perspective, on the era of the founding of the country. The republic was now forty years old, and the generation of the American Revolution, including the signers of the Declaration, was dropping away. With nostalgia and curiosity, many Americans began to examine the details of the nation's founding. Among other things, such documents as the debates of the Constitutional Convention were published for the first time. It seemed extraordinary that the Declaration of Independence, as created, was unknown to Americans, when the text was so central to the national ego. Several entrepreneurs set out to bridge this gap by printing reproductions of the document, often featuring calligraphic text, portraits, or other decorative flourishes. The most accurate of these early reproductions was an official facsimile, sponsored by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and created by William J. Stone in 1823. Stone made an exact facsimile of the Declaration (then kept in the State Department), printed actual size on both parchment and paper. Bidwell calls this facsimile "a magnificent replica," and it is from this facsimile (likely from Stone's original printing plate) that Peter Force made the present facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, printed between 1843 and 1848 and published in the fifth series of his American Archives. It is an exact facsimile of the actual Declaration, on a slightly smaller scale, accurately reproducing the restrained force of the original document. A most desirable, attractive, and scarce facsimile of the Declaration of Independence. John Bidwell, "American History in Image and Text" in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Vol. 98, 1988, pp.247-302 (also issued as a separate pamphlet by AAS), item 7 (note) Expert archival reinforcements along folds on verso. Framed Broadside, 29½ x 25 inches, printed on thin paper.
Seller Inventory # 371088
Contact seller
Report this item
