Declaration copy survives hidden in home
During the Civil War, the precious document was hidden behind wallpaper in a home in Virginia to keep Union soldiers from finding it.
Later, it sat in a closet in Kentucky, in a broken frame, unappreciated and stored in a cardboard box.
And later still it was stuck behind a cabinet in the office of an energy executive outside Houston.
It was a rare parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence, made in Washington in the 1820s for founding father James Madison, and apparently unknown to the public for more than a century.
Now, the copy, one of 51 that scholars are aware of, has resurfaced via its recent purchase by billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein.
It is one of the exquisite facsimiles made from the original handwritten calf skin document crafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776. Scholars say it bears the image of the Declaration that most people know, in part because the original is now so badly faded.
“This is the closest ... to the original Declaration, the way it looked when it was signed in August of 1776,” said Seth Kaller, a New York rare document appraiser who assisted in the sale. “Without these ... copies you wouldn’t even know what the original looked liked.”
Two hundred of the facsimiles were ordered by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, a future president, who was concerned about the already worn condition of the 40-year-old original.
Master engraver William Stone made the copies in his shop on Pennsylvania Avenue, and created an extra one for himself.
In 1824, the facsimiles were distributed to Congress, the White House, and various VIPs like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Madison. Each man got two copies.
In time, both of Madison’s copies vanished from view, and it is only now that one has surfaced, Kaller said in a recent interview.
“There was no idea that it had survived,” he said.
The fate of the second Madison copy, and over 100 of the others, is not publicly known, he said.
When the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, it sent a working manuscript, also now lost, to a local printer to set in type.
The printer produced several hundred copies for Congress and other officials the next day, Kaller wrote in a historical pamphlet.
On July 19, Congress ordered a handwritten, or “engrossed,” copy made on calf skin, to be signed by the members.
The job went to Timothy Matlack, a congressional aide who was known for his superb penmanship.
This hallowed version now resides in the National Archives, so washed out that many signatures, including Thomas Jefferson’s, are either gone or barely visible.
It is through the foresight of John Quincy Adams that excellent copies of the original — except for a few interesting tweaks — survive. Kaller wrote that by 1820, the original had been handled, rolled, unrolled and marred by the efforts of earlier engravers to make decorative copies.
“Every one of the worst things that could have happened to the original” had happened, he said.
A grimy hand print was added to the damage many years later.
John Quincy Adams gave it to Stone, and the engraver worked on copying it for about two years.
Kaller said he believes Stone likely first traced the original with tracing paper. He then used the tracing to hand-engrave an image of the Declaration on a copper plate, from which the facsimiles were then made.
But Stone may have made some minute textual changes, possibly to distinguish his copies from the original, Kaller wrote.