The New York Public Library Commemorates the 4th of July with Display of the Declaration of Independence

Documents Written by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others on View June 30 through August 5, 2006; closed July 2 through July 4

The New York Public Library’s copy of the Declaration of Independence written in Thomas Jefferson’s hand, and including his denunciation of slavery, will be the centerpiece of a display including several other landmark versions of the document and early newspaper printings. The exhibition will be on view from June 30 through August 5, 2006, in the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Admission is free. Please note the Library will be closed July 2 through July 4 for the Independence Day holiday.

On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, appointed a committee of five men to draft a Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson assumed the role of primary author while the other members of the committee, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston, made only minor suggestions. Also on view is a letter to George Washington dated June 21, 1776, in which Franklin indicates illness has kept him from Congress. He writes, “I know little of what has pass’d here, except that a Declaration of Independence is preparing.” Forwarded to Congress on July 1, the Declaration was ratified on July 4, after a number of changes had been made. Jefferson was distressed by these alterations, most notably the removal of his lengthy condemnation of slavery. In the days immediately following July 4, he made several copies for friends of the text that had been submitted to the Continental Congress, underlining the passages to which changes had been made. Aside from the Library’s fair copy --a clean, full-text version without corrections or alterations-- on view in the exhibition, only one other complete copy and one fragment are known to have survived.
 
The inhabitants of the thirteen Colonies learned about the change in their political affairs through public proclamations and the distribution of printed versions of the Declaration of Independence. The Philadelphia printing, exhibited at the Library, was issued by Congress on July 5 and is the first of all the various printed versions. All official pronouncements, even the formal Charter of Freedom housed in the National Archives, were copied from this broadside. This is one of only twenty-five extant copies.
 
Many people learned of the Declaration from their local newspapers. The display includes three of the earliest newspaper printings drawn from the Library’s collection of early American newspapers. Rounding out the display is a copy of the first broadside printing with the signers’ names, commissioned by Congress six months after independence had been proclaimed. This copy is authenticated by autograph signatures: John Hancock signs as President of the Congress, and Charles Thomas, the Secretary, attests the official nature of the document. It is also significant in social history as the work of an early American woman printer, Mary Katherine Goddard.

Films
"We hold these truths...": A Dramatic Reading Of The Declaration Of Independence
A 14-minute film, showing continuously in the South Court Visitor's Theater

Support for The New York Public Library’s Exhibitions Program has been provided by the Celeste Bartos Charitable Fund and by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.

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Contact: Jennifer Lam, 212.704.8600
 
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