The Words Get Out

Philadelphia is hot enough to make the ink sweat. Congress has been shut inside the State House for days. We hear the word independence in the street now, but still in lowered voices.

July 1776: Congress met behind closed doors in the Pennsylvania State House, now Independence Hall.

Two days ago, they voted to break with the king. Today they are fighting over the words. A draft lies marked with cuts, additions, and one sentence bright enough to outlive the room.

Congress voted for independence on July 2, then revised the Declaration's language before approving it on July 4.

No bell announces the vote. No crowd hears the speeches. The decision comes as paper and orders: the Declaration is approved. Copies must be printed tonight.

On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the Declaration and ordered it printed.

At Dunlap's shop, we set the type by hand. Letter by letter. Line by line. The words are not yet sacred. They are metal pieces in a composing stick, easy to drop, impossible to forget.

Printer John Dunlap produced the first printed Declaration, now known as the Dunlap Broadside.

The press bites down. The first sheets lift black and wet from the platen: In Congress, July 4, 1776. I hold one edge while the ink shines like it is still alive.

The first broadsides were likely printed the evening of July 4 and early morning of July 5.

Copies leave before dawn. Some go by rider, some by boat, some folded into official packets. The king will hear. The army will hear. So will every colony still wondering if this is madness.

Dunlap broadsides were sent to state assemblies, commanders, and newspapers across the colonies.

On July 8, people crowd the State House yard. Colonel John Nixon reads the words aloud. Philadelphia hears the sentence we printed in whispers become a public thing.

The first public reading in Philadelphia took place in the State House yard on July 8, 1776.

The broadside reaches Washington in New York. On July 9, his brigades form on their parade grounds. The words are read to soldiers who may soon face the largest British army yet sent across the Atlantic.

Washington ordered the Declaration read to the Continental Army in New York on July 9, 1776.

Soon there is another copy, engrossed on parchment for signatures. Most names will go down on August 2. Fifty-six men will make themselves visible to an empire.

Congress ordered an engrossed parchment copy on July 19; most delegates signed it on August 2, 1776.

The war will last seven more years. The words will not free everyone they promise to include. But once printed, they can be carried, argued over, invoked, and demanded.

The Declaration became both a revolutionary war document and a standard later generations used to challenge the nation's exclusions.