Declaration of Independence (Dunlap Broadside)
After John Samuel Hill Fogg was paralyzed in 1875, he gave up his medical practice and pursued with a passion a hobby he’d taken up as a student at Bowdoin College: collecting autographs. His autograph collection of more than 5,000 items was donated to the Maine Historical Society after he and his second wife died.
Among the treasures of that collection is one of 26 known copies of the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. Known as the Dunlap broadside, this printing of the Declaration was made hours after the Second Continental Congress approved the debated and edited text written largely by Thomas Jefferson. It does not include the signatures of the signers. The formal parchment version on which the signatures were added was created a few weeks later.
After Congress shortened and softened the text, including removing a section condemning the slave trade, the body approved the Declaration and sent it to Philadelphia printer John Dunlap to have copies made overnight on the night of July 4–5, 1776. How many copies Dunlap printed that night is not known, but it is generally accepted that at least 200 were made. The hastily made copies were distributed throughout the rebelling colonies in the following days, including one to George Washington and another to England.
How John Fogg acquired his copy of the Dunlap broadside is unclear, but the Maine Historical Society had the document authenticated in 1991. Because of its fragility and rarity, the historical society’s copy is normally kept in secure climate-controlled storage and only occasionally displayed publicly. During the semiquincentennial year, it will be exhibited at the historical society and then tour all of Maine’s 16 counties.
Author: Stephanie Bouchard
