Declaration of Independence | A rare printing on silk of the first facsimile of the Declaration of Independence

Declaration of Independence

In Congress, July 4th. 1776. The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America. [Washington]: Benjamin Owen Tyler, [1818]

Engraved broadside (approx. 770 x 660 mm). Printed on silk, by Peter Maverick of Newark, New Jersey, after Tyler; minor instances of fraying along the raw edges, some minor pulls in the weft, stray spots, two ink stains to the verso at head showing through, one to the recto at lower margin.

A striking and rare silk copy of the first, and most sought after, facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, and the first publication of it in the form of the original document, with a highly faithful rendering of the signers' signatures.

In the period following the War of 1812, Americans began to look back, for the first time with historical perspective, on the era of the founding of the country. The Republic was now forty years old, and the generation of the Revolution, including the Signers of the Declaration, was passing. With nostalgia and curiosity, many Americans began to examine the details of the nation's founding, as documents such as the debates of the Constitutional Convention, among others, were published for the first time. Others revisited the Declaration—not the often reprinted text, but the actual document itself, then preserved in the State Department—discovering remarkable differences between the original and the published versions. First, the title of the document was different (the manuscript original was as given above); secondly, the names of the Signers, now revered as the Founders, were omitted in all the published versions. It seemed extraordinary that the document, as created, was unknown to Americans, when the text was so central to their national identity.

Benjamin Owen Tyler, a writing master, endeavored to create a calligraphic version of the Declaration, giving the title and text as it appeared in the original manuscript (although not directly copying its format), and then recreating exactly the signatures of the Signers as they appeared on the original. He achieved a remarkable degree of verisimilitude, as John Bidwell notes: "Tyler ... retained every stroke and nuance of his models, preserving their proportions, stress, and weight ... so convincing are his signatures that they masquerade as the originals in a recent book on American autographs" (p. 256). Tyler's work won the endorsement of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and, more importantly, that of the author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, to whom his edition is dedicated.

The use of copperplate engraving allowed not only for the faithful reproduction of the signatures, but also for the text to have greater stylistic flourish and variation in comparison to letterpress broadsides. Tyler's "engraved Declaration rendered the 'emphatical words,' as he called them, in gothic, shaded, and flowered styles that the letter founders of his day were only beginning to translate into cast type. Such a profusion, such a concatenation of ornamental script was rarely seen outside of writing manuals. Phrases like 'General Congress' and 'Supreme Judge' must have leapt to the eye of Tyler's customers, who were as yet unaccustomed to reading decorative letter in quantity. The contrasting background of his perfectly regular, evenly flowing, round hand also heightened the effect" (Bidwell, pp. 278-279).

The Tyler facsimile was printed on paper (sold for five dollars each), on vellum (sold for for seven dollars each), and just a very few were printed on silk, as is the present copy. Tyler boldly claimed to have received orders for more than 3,000 copies of his broadside, "a figure difficult to believe given his fondness for hyperbole. Even one third that number would have tried his printmaking capabilities ..." (Bidwell, p. 261). Indeed, his original subscription book, held in the Albert H. Small Declaration of Independence Collection at the University of Virginia, records just over 1,000 names in total.

Printings of Tyler's facsimile on silk are exceedingly rare in any market: we can trace only two other copies in the standard auction records.

REFERENCE:

John Bidwell, "American History in Image and Text," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1988, Vol. 98, pp.247-302