DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE PICTURE LICENSE

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE PICTURE LICENSE

As seen above, it incorporates a lot of creative license - it modifies the room itself (Diethorn says the real room looks nothing like it) and includes members who weren't present for the signing. The most famous painting of the signing, completed by John Trumbull, is a fiction. John Trumbull's depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Our idea of the Declaration of Independence is just one version of many And for early Americans, it was one of many ways of imagining independence. The Continental Congress carried, rolled, and folded that copy to take it to many different locations during the Revolutionary War in order to preserve it and keep it safe from the British.Įven though most early Americans saw a very different physical version of the document, this one was considered the truly enduring version of the Declaration of Independence. That's also why it was put on vellum, material made from calfskin. 'The reason for the formality is to say, 'We are dead serious.'' 'It's evidence of their collective commitment,' Diethorn says. Including all those signatures on a handwritten page was appropriate for the significance of the dangerous commitment they'd made to revolution.

Diethorn says the Declaration of Independence served as a roll call for the men who supported the revolution and, consequently, treason against Britain. As importantly, it called for accountability from the men who endorsed it. That task merited a more hallowed document than a typeset sheet - a handwritten one, penned by a scribe. 'It's a declaration of principles.' In modern terms, it was a lot like a mission statement. 'It's the ultimate manifesto of enlightenment philosophy,' Diethorn says. By that time, the American revolt was old news. After that, it wasn't circulated widely until almost a year later. The declaration was signed almost a month after its adoption, on Aug(of course, that date is the subject of controversy). 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. The classic picture of the Declaration of Independence is a handwritten document made of calfskin.

Declaration of independence picture