“One of the most widely held misconceptions about the Declaration is that it was signed on July 4, 1776, by all the delegates in attendance.”

– The Declaration of Independence: A History

Happy Independence Day!

The American colonies actually chose independence on July 2, 1776. The Declaration wasn’t signed until August 2, 1776, and all the signatures weren’t even added that day. But we celebrate July 4 because that’s the anniversary of the finalization of the text.

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented to the Continental Congress, representing the 13 colonies, a resolution for independence from Great Britain. A Committee of Five was soon appointed to draft a statement of independence, and it worked throughout June. Among the five members of the committee (which also included Benjamin Franklin and John Adams), Thomas Jefferson was given the task of actually drafting the document.

On July 1, Congress reconvened.

On July 2, all 13 colonies except one adopted Lee’s resolution: New York abstained.

Revision of Jefferson’s document was completed by Congress on the morning of July 4, at which point the resolution was considered officially adopted.

The first printed copies of the Declaration of Independence were turned out from the shop of John Dunlap, official printer to the Congress… On the morning of July 5, copies were dispatched by members of Congress to various assemblies, conventions, and committees of safety as well as to the commanders of Continental troops. Also on July 5, a copy of the printed version of the approved Declaration was inserted into the “rough journal” of the Continental Congress for July 4. The text was followed by the words “Signed by Order and in Behalf of the Congress, John Hancock, President. Attest. Charles Thomson, Secretary.” It is not known how many copies John Dunlap printed on his busy night of July 4. There are 24 copies known to exist of what is commonly referred to as “the Dunlap broadside,” 17 owned by American institutions, 2 by British institutions, and 5 by private owners.

The Dunlap broadside.

On July 9 the action of Congress was officially approved by the New York Convention. All 13 colonies had now signified their approval. On July 19, therefore, Congress was able to order that the Declaration be “fairly engrossed on parchment, with the title and stile [sic] of ‘The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America,’ and that the same, when engrossed, be signed by every member of Congress.”

During July, the document was engrossed – written out in a long, clear hand – and on August 2, 1776, what we familiarly know as the Declaration of Independence was signed, starting with John Hancock, the President of the Congress. But that’s still not exactly the image we’re familiar with.

By 1820, the ink on the original Declaration was starting to fade, so Secretary of State John Quincy Adams commissioned an official facsimile. It took three years; it was completed by William J. Stone in 1823, probably etched into a copper plate for easy, endless printing, “with the greatest exactness and fidelity.”

That’s the image we’re familiar with today.

The Stone facsimile.

More links:

The Declaration of Independence: A History – an essay about the creation of the Declaration and the travels of the original document since that time. (Most of this blog post is taken from there.)

The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence – an essay about the document’s writing style. “The Declaration of Independence is perhaps the most masterfully written state paper of Western civilization… no assessment of it can be complete without taking into account its extraordinary merits as a work of political prose style.”

Declaring Independence: Creating and Re-creating America’s Document, an exhibit at the University of Virginia.

Happy Independence Day.