"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
The document that gave rise to the United States, and the embodiment of American innovation.
Thomas Jefferson called it “an expression of the American mind.” Approved on 4 July 1776 after three days of debate, the Declaration of Independence was swiftly printed by John Dunlap, Congress’s official printer.
Dunlap’s broadside spread through the thirteen colonies, where local printers hastened to create their own versions to meet the public’s demand for evidence of independence. This rare broadside, printed by Robert Luist Fowle in Exeter, New Hampshire, in July 1776, is one of just ten known copies, with only two others sold at auction in the past century. It carries the distinguished Goodspeed-Sang-Streeter provenance.
Unlike the engrossed Declaration now in the National Archives, only the names of John Hancock and Charles Thomson, respectively president and secretary of Congress, appear on the 1776 broadsides of the Declaration
The official date of adoption by the Continental Congress
This Essex printing is one of seven of the thirteen contemporary broadsides to have the Declaration set in two columns
The introduction to the Declaration articulates Enlightenment ideals of natural rights and social contract theory, establishing the philosophical foundation for independence
This section enumerates specific grievances against King George III
Jefferson’s original draft included a condemnation of the transatlantic slave trade. Its removal, driven by political compromise, sought to ensure the agreement of the Southern states to the cause
