Proclaiming Independence

In 1789, historian David Ramsay (1749–1815) marveled that the United States was a nation “born in a day” and that American subjects of a king “became citizens” overnight—a wildly simplified notion of U.S. history that later would be repeated in many a Fourth of July oration. Even though news of the break from Great Britain did spread quickly, by 18th-century standards, it took more than a month to spread the word. The Huntington holds items that reveal the complexity of that story.

On July 1, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia began to debate the resolution to dissolve all political connection between Great Britain and the “Free and Independent States of America,” some congressional delegates argued that they could not consent to such a declaration without the explicit mandate of the people, who had not yet “accommodated their minds to a separation from the mother country.”

Nonetheless, on July 2, the resolution to sever connections with Great Britain was adopted by most representatives from 12 of the colonies. The delegation from the 13th colony, New York, abstained. (The New York Provincial Congress, which favored reconciliation with Great Britain, did not give its congressional delegates guidance on how to vote.) The adoption of the resolution took place behind closed doors, and all members of Congress were told to “consider themselves under the strongest obligations of honor to keep the proceedings secret, until the majority shall direct them to be made public.”

Despite this warning, the news leaked, as can be read in The Huntington’s copy of the July 2, 1776, issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post: “This day the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS declared the UNITED COLONIES FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES.” It is bitterly ironic that the advertisement next to this announcement features the promise of a reward for the return of an enslaved man named Ishmael.

On July 3, as 150 British ships and 9,000 soldiers arrived unopposed at Staten Island, the Congress in Philadelphia debated the draft of the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson and made numerous changes.

Congress considered it imperative that the declaration’s official text be disseminated as quickly and widely as possible. With today’s technology, of course, such rapid distribution could be accomplished almost instantaneously. In 1776, however, Congress had to rely on a combination of the printed and spoken word.

The declaration’s final text was approved late in the morning on July 4. Immediately after the vote, from which the New York delegation again abstained, the manuscript—signed by John Hancock, president of Congress, and attested by the secretary of Congress, Charles Thomson—was rushed to the print shop of John Dunlap, a few blocks from the Pennsylvania Statehouse (now Philadelphia’s Independence Hall), where Congress convened.

On his way to Dunlap’s, the person who carried the manuscript, most likely Timothy Matlack, clerk to the secretary of Congress, stopped on the Statehouse steps to read the proclamation to the assembled crowds.

Dunlap’s printers finished the job on the morning of July 5. Some 200 copies of what came to be known as the Dunlap broadsides were delivered to Hancock’s office. The manuscript, cut into sections to speed up the typesetting process, did not survive.

While John Hancock’s staff was still packing broadsides to send them to the states’ “assemblies, conventions and committees, or councils of safety,” Benjamin Towne, the publisher of the Philadelphia Evening Post, printed the declaration in his paper on July 6, scooping Dunlap, whose own paper, The Pennsylvania Packet, did not publish it until July 8.

The Dunlap broadsides, however, were still the first, original text versions of the Declaration of Independence to be “proclaimed in each of the United States” as well as “at the head of the army.”

On July 9, the Dunlap broadsides were delivered to George Washington’s Continental Army headquarters in New York City and handed out to brigadier generals and regimental colonels to read to their troops.

Even though these readings of the declaration were intended for enlisted men, they were attended by crowds of anxious civilians and had a powerful effect. After one reading in front of an army brigade on the parade grounds of the city’s bowling green—located in the middle of what is now the Financial District of Lower Manhattan—the statue of King George III, erected just six years earlier, was pulled down, the “just des[s]ert of an ungrateful Tyrant!”

On July 17, the Executive Council of Massachusetts directed that the official text of the declaration be printed and copies be sent to “Ministers of each Parish, of every Denomination.” The ministers were charged with reading the declaration on the first Sunday after they received their broadsides.

The printing was done by Ezekiel Russell (1717–1796) of Salem, Massachusetts. The Rev. Isaiah Dunster (1720–1791) of Harwich on Cape Cod probably received his copy of the declaration shortly after Russell’s shop finished the print run, which was no later than Aug. 5. Dunster read the Declaration from the pulpit later that month.

Dunster apparently failed to surrender his copy of the declaration to the town clerk, who was to preserve it “as a perpetual Memorial thereof.” Dunster’s copy, one of only 12 Russell printings of the Declaration to survive the passage of time, was passed down through Dunster’s family until 1920, when it was sold at auction to The Huntington.

Olga Tsapina is the Norris Foundation Curator of American History.