The Declaration of Independence at The Huntington

Key Takeaways

• The Huntington holds six rare printings of the Declaration of Independence produced within five weeks of July 4, 1776—an unmatched West Coast collection that reveals how the Declaration was printed, circulated, read, debated, and used during the founding months of the United States.
• Among The Huntington’s most significant printings is the John Holt broadside, one of only five known copies, printed in New York as that province debated whether to join the break with Great Britain. Handwritten notes by John McKesson, co-secretary of New York’s Provincial Congress, make The Huntington’s copy unique. 
• Newspaper and pamphlet versions from Pennsylvania show how quickly the Declaration entered public debate, transforming a closed congressional decision into news and a constitutional argument about popular sovereignty.
• The Ezekiel Russell broadside, one of only 12 surviving copies, carried the Declaration into Massachusetts churches, where ministers read it aloud to communities living through war, uncertainty, and a smallpox epidemic. 
• Two of these printings—the John Holt broadside from New York and the Ezekiel Russell broadside from Massachusetts—are on view in “This Land Is …,” open to the public in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery. 

The Huntington Library holds six rare printings of the Declaration of Independence produced within five weeks of July 4, 1776. Together, they show the Declaration’s movement from Congress into public life—through newspapers, political pamphlets, official broadsides, public readings, and churches. 

Two are broadsides: one printed by John Holt in New York City between July 6 and July 8 as a working document for New York’s Provincial Congress, and another printed by Ezekiel Russell in Salem, Massachusetts, shortly after July 17 for ministers to read from the pulpit. 

The Huntington also holds three contemporaneous newspaper printings: two in copies of the July 6 issue of Benjamin Towne’s Pennsylvania Evening Post, the first newspaper to print the Declaration, and one copy in John Dunlap’s July 8 issue of the Pennsylvania Packet. The sixth printing, published July 8 in an anonymously authored political pamphlet, was the first Declaration to appear in a book. 

These six printings arrived in San Marino during the 1920s, the decade of the nation’s 150th anniversary, when The Huntington’s co-founder Henry E. Huntington, a lifelong member of the Sons of the Revolution, eagerly sought copies of the Declaration for his collection. A century later, as the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, the printings invite a different kind of attention: not only as rare survivors, but as evidence of how independence became public, political, and collective. 

In the early 20th century, collectors valued printed editions chiefly as bibliographical rarities, not historic relics. That status belonged to the “Original Charter” of the Republic: the parchment manuscript of the Declaration signed by the 56 members of the Second Continental Congress. In September 1924, that manuscript was enshrined in the Library of Congress. In 1952, it moved to the Rotunda of the National Archives building, where it remains on view. 

For collectors in the 1920s, the most coveted printed Declaration was

From Resolution to Declaration: May 10–July 4, 1776

In the summer of 1776, the Declaration of Independence was not yet a national icon. It was a wartime document, drafted in secrecy and shaped by political procedure.  

The Second Continental Congress met behind closed doors in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania State House, today’s Independence Hall.  Secrecy protected both the cause of American liberty and the lives of its advocates. Delegates were “under the strongest obligations of honor” to keep proceedings confidential until Congress decided otherwise. 

Congress did not simply announce a decision. A resolution set for publication required a preamble to explain the decision. The rule, rooted in ancient Roman practice, reflected an aversion to unnecessary and arbitrary legislation, then regarded as a sign of tyranny. Once authorized by the president or secretary of the Continental Congress, the resolution and its rationale appeared as a printed leaflet or broadside to be “published,” meaning read out loud by a local magistrate and printed in newspapers.  

This process shaped a document sometimes called “the first declaration of independence.” On May 10, 1776, Congress advised the colonies to establish permanent governments. Before the resolution could be “published,” a committee of John Adams of Massachusetts, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia drafted a preamble. Approved on May 15, the preamble stated that because “his Britannic Majesty, in conjunction with the lords and commons of Great Britain” had acted as a hostile foreign power, the authority of the British colonial administrations could no longer be recognized.  

It was time, Congress said, for “the Assemblies and Conventions of the United Colonies” to form governments in a manner “best conducive to the happiness and safety of their constituents.” 

Congress ordered the resolution and preamble printed as the official “Extract from the Minutes” attested by Charles Thomson, secretary of Congress. Dunlap printed the broadside of this extract, which was read on May 20 in what is now Independence Square to cheers of the “People,” given in “testimony of their warmest approbation.”  

The Declaration of Independence began in the same procedural world. On June 7, Lee introduced three “resolutions respecting independency.” The first resolution stated that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States” absolved “from all allegiance to the British Crown” and free of “all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain.” The others called for “the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances” and “a plan of confederation” among the independent states.

By July 1, most delegations had new or amended instructions from their home colonies. They could now vote for “declaring the United Colonies Free and Independent States.” 

At New York’s request, Congress delayed the vote until July 2. New York’s Provincial Congress had told its delegation in Philadelphia that the original instructions, issued by a special assembly in April 1775, could be amended only by an explicit mandate from the colony’s voters, who were about to elect a new congress at the end of June. The Provincial Congress could only advise voters to tell candidates of “their sentiments relative to the great question of independency.” Until then, the New York delegates in Philadelphia remained bound by the original instructions to secure “American rights and privileges” only “[in] harmony” with Great Britain. 

The late-June elections in New York showed that most voters favored independence. The New Yorkers in Philadelphia might have sought permission to vote in favor of independence from the sitting Provincial Congress, but the imminent threat of a British invasion forced the Provincial Congress to move from New York City to White Plains, about 20 miles north. Unable to muster a quorum, the Provincial Congress expired quietly. The new Provincial Congress would not meet until July 9. 

When the Continental Congress voted July 2 on independence, 12 colonies voted in favor; only the New York delegation abstained. All they could do was send a dispatch back to New York.

On July 4, when Congress adopted the Declaration’s final wording, the New York delegates again withheld their votes.

The final text was no longer a mere congressional document. The preamble, the list of grievances, and the declaration at the end formed a solemn manifesto, signaling that the movement for American home rule had turned into a revolution. The declared revolution sought to turn the British colonies into a national union of “free and independent states,” replacing “allegiance to the British crown” and “political connection” to “the State of Great Britain” with the bonds of a shared commitment to “self-evident truths.” Congress envisioned a government whose “just powers” derived from the “consent of the governed” and existed to secure citizens’ “unalienable rights” to “effect their security and happiness.” 

Lee’s June 7 resolution became the coda written in the voice of “the representatives of the United States of America,” who affirmed “the rectitude of our intentions” to “the Supreme Judge of the world” and spoke in “the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies.” 

Congress ordered the Declaration authenticated and printed so copies could be “sent to several assemblies, conventions, and committees or councils of safety, and to the several commanding officers of the continental troops.” It was to be proclaimed “in each of the United States, and at the head of the army.”

After John Hancock, president of Congress, and Thomson signed the manuscript, but before it went to Dunlap’s press, a New York delegate copied it by hand and sent it with a letter by express back to New York.   

Proclaiming Independence: July 5–30, 1776

The Declaration did not become revolutionary simply because Congress adopted it. It became revolutionary because people read it, printed it, debated it, proclaimed it, and acted on it. 

The principle of consent of the governed required soldiers and civilians to be “fully apprized” and “universally informed” of the revolution made on their behalf. On the afternoon of July 5, Hancock received about 200 copies of Dunlap’s broadside and sent them, with a cover letter, to civil and military authorities. His letter announced that “the Congress have judged it necessary” to declare the former British colonies “free and independent States” and asked recipients to proclaim the Declaration in “the Way you Shall think most proper.” 

Hancock did not prescribe a method. The army folded the reading into general orders, while the states adapted the process to the “exigencies of their own affairs.” 

Pennsylvania’s Committee of Safety received the first copy. Although Dunlap broadsides were meant for official distribution, stray copies reached private hands, including those of Elbridge Gerry and Adams. One reached Benjamin Towne, the publisher of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, the only American newspaper published three times a week. The Declaration appeared on the front page of its Saturday, July 6, issue—the first newspaper publication of the text.

Two days later, the Declaration became part of Pennsylvania’s political life. The Pennsylvania Committee of Safety had ordered the Declaration read “at the places where the Election for Delegates are to be held.” July 8 was election day, when Pennsylvanians chose delegates to the state constitutional convention. Local sheriffs received Dunlap broadsides to read at polling places. In Philadelphia, John Nixon, a Committee of Safety member and army officer, read the Declaration aloud.

That same day, the Declaration appeared in an anonymous pamphlet printed by Philadelphia printer Robert Bell. The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution contributed to a heated debate over Pennsylvania’s state constitution. The author, writing under the pseudonym “Demophilus,” rejected the view that the old colonial legislature embodied the British constitutional tradition. “Demophilus” argued instead for popular sovereignty, asserting that true ancient “Saxon” constitutional authority rested with the people. The Declaration strengthened that argument, which drew on an English treatise of 1771.

In Massachusetts, the Declaration moved through a different channel: the pulpit. A Dunlap broadside sent to Boston on July 5 arrived July 12, delayed by a severe smallpox epidemic and poor roads. The Massachusetts Executive Council commissioned Ezekiel Russell of Salem to print the official state broadsides. A July 17 resolution directed that copies of the Russell printing be sent to “the Ministers of each Parish, of every Denomination, within this State.” Pastors had to read the Declaration at the end of the divine service.

Russell’s press had completed the broadside by Aug. 5 at the latest, and in the weeks that followed, copies were distributed to parishes and congregations across the state. When the Rev. Isaiah Dunster of Harwich, Cape Cod, received his copy, independence was no longer fresh news. Read from the pulpit at the end of a Sunday service, the Declaration likely stirred less enthusiasm than it would have in a town square weeks earlier. That delay may explain why Dunster did not submit his copy to the town clerk, as ministers were instructed to do, so it could be “preserved as a perpetual Memorial.” Dunster’s copy was passed down through his family until 1920, when it was acquired at auction for The Huntington.

In New York, the Declaration arrived amid military danger and political uncertainty. On July 6, three days after British forces landed on Staten Island, two sets of Dunlap broadsides left Philadelphia for New York. One package was addressed to George Washington; the other, to the “Honorable Convention of New York.” 

Washington received “several Declarations” by the evening of July 8, in time for his adjutant to finalize the next day’s orders. On July 9 at 6 p.m., commanders of the four Continental Army brigades stationed around New York City read the Declaration to troops assembled on their parade grounds. Intended for enlisted men, the readings also drew anxious civilians. The most famous reading, which prompted the toppling of an equestrian statue of King George III, took place on the city’s Bowling Green, within sight of the British fleet in the harbor. 

The copy intended for New York’s civil proclamation seems to have disappeared. No civilians in New York City were authorized to arrange a public reading.  The Committee of Safety, which handled state matters between Provincial Congress sessions, had been folded into the military command, and the New York Convention had not yet been formed. New York’s newly elected Provincial Congress, originally scheduled to convene in New York City on July 8, met instead in White Plains the next morning. 

The broadside published by John Holt in New York City includes the unanimous resolution adopted by New York’s Provincial Congress on the afternoon of July 9. Having found “the Reasons assigned by the Continental Congress for declaring the United Colonies Free and Independent States cogent and conclusive,” the Provincial Congress approved the Declaration and pledged to “join other Colonies” in supporting it, even at “Risque of our Lives and Fortunes.” The resolution also ordered copies sent to counties within the state of New York for “publishing.”

Scholars have assumed that Holt printed the broadside in his New York City shop a few days after the resolution passed. The Huntington’s copy, covered with hastily scribbled notes by John McKesson, a New York lawyer and co-secretary of the Provincial Congress, suggests otherwise. 

McKesson’s notes, later incorporated in the convention’s official minutes, are not especially significant on their own. But his use of the broadside for note-taking on the morning of July 9 shows that Holt’s printing must have been produced before the White Plains session. 

Holt’s text differed slightly from Dunlap’s official printing. In the grievance blaming the king “for quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us,” the word “Armed” is omitted. The same word is absent from the Declaration as entered in the minutes of New York’s Provincial Congress on July 9, when members “received and read” the letters sent July 2 and 4 by New York’s delegation at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The July 4 letter included a handwritten copy of the Declaration. The missing “Armed” was most likely an unintended omission by the transcriber.

The July 4 letter enclosing the Declaration must have reached New York City by express rider about July 6, arriving before the Dunlap broadside by two days. Because Holt’s Water Street printing shop also served as the post office, he may have been the person who received the packet. 

Holt printed New York’s still unadopted draft resolution to approve the Declaration, supplied by McKesson’s colleague Robert Benson, above the version of the Declaration reported by New York’s Philadelphia delegation. This broadside, which must have been completed by the evening of July 8, functioned as a working document for New York’s Provincial Congress in White Plains the next day. 

McKesson’s notes on the front of the broadside show how the July 9 Provincial Congress resolution changed. In the left margin, McKesson added a clause authorizing New York’s delegation in Philadelphia to “Concert & adopt all such measures as they may deem conducive to the Happiness & welfare of the united States of America.” 

On July 11, the day after New York’s Provincial Congress voted to change its name to the state’s Constitutional Convention, Hancock’s July 6 letter and enclosed Dunlap broadside reached White Plains. Somewhat smugly, New York’s Convention told Hancock it had already been “informed of that Declaration by our Delegates” and had already devised a plan to proclaim it. 

The amendment McKesson recorded in the margin of the Holt broadside called for 500 handbill copies. Given New York’s volatile political and military situation, that was a tall order. No handbills matching this description have surfaced. 

When the chairman of the Westchester County committee read the Declaration from the steps of the White Plains courthouse on July 11, he held a copy of Holt’s printing. Holt also reused the convention broadside as an insert in the July 11 issue of his newspaper, the New York Journal, “to oblige a number of our Customers” who wished to “fix it up, in open view, in their Houses, as a mark of their approbation of the INDEPENDENT SPIRIT of their Representatives.” 

The Declaration was not formally proclaimed in New York City until July 18. Following the reading, the British coat of arms was taken off the city courthouse and burned, and the portrait of King George III was torn apart. 

From Declaration to Founding Compact

On July 18, the same day the Declaration was formally proclaimed in New York City, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia took another step toward making it the nation’s founding text. Congress ordered that “the Declaration, passed on the 4th, be fairly engrossed on parchment,” under the title “The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.” The manuscript was to be “signed by every member of Congress.”

The manuscript was ready on Aug. 2. Over the next several weeks, the 56 representatives of all 13 states added their names after the final sentence: “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.” 

The signatures made the Declaration a compact, and the signers became heirs to the 25 barons who bore witness to the approval of Magna Carta in 1215 and the 41 passengers of the Mayflower, who, in 1620, “covenanted” themselves into “a civil Body Politick.” 

On Jan. 18, 1777, Congress proclaimed the “authenticated copy of the Declaration of Independency, with the names of the members of Congress subscribing the same” to be the official text. Mary Katharine Goddard, a Baltimore printer, produced the first broadsides of this copy, which were “sent to each of the United States” to “put upon record.” The Declaration’s evolution from congressional resolution to founding compact was complete. 

This story draws on research and interpretation by Olga Tsapina, Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts.