How the Declaration of Independence Was Printed—and Protected

In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted a document that declared thirteen British colonies free and independent states — an act of rebellion whose rhetoric of liberty rang with painful irony for the hundreds of Indigenous nations already inhabiting the continent. The Declaration of Independence was rushed to the Philadelphia shop of John Dunlap, who that night printed an estimated 200 poster-sized broadsides for distribution to the colonies and to General George Washington’s army. But the printed proclamation that reached the public was not the document Americans venerate today. The version enshrined in the National Archives rotunda is the ‘engrossed’ parchment — a hand-copied animal-skin manuscript ordered by Congress on July 19, 1776. Its survival across war, fire, insects, and neglect is a story of material culture, preservation science, and archival discipline. It is also a story that must be told alongside the sovereignty of Native nations whose lands and treaties the same government was already moving to dismantle.

From Printing Press to Parchment: The Genesis of Two Documents

Two documents, not one, emerged from July 1776. The first was the Dunlap broadside — a fast, utilitarian poster printed on rag paper with simple type, designed for public reading and rapid distribution. It carried no delegate signatures. By July 6, newspapers in the colonies were already reprinting the text, and public readings triggered the tearing down of royal symbols, toasts, and celebrations in towns from Massachusetts to Georgia.

The second was the engrossed copy. On July 19, Congress resolved that the Declaration be ‘fairly engrossed on parchment’ and signed by every delegate. The scribe is generally identified as Timothy Matlack, an assistant to the secretary of Congress, who completed the calligraphy by August 2. Beginning with John Hancock, 56 delegates eventually signed — including several who had opposed independence or had missed the original vote. The parchment was never intended as a public document. It was, as scholars such as Emily Sneff of William & Mary has argued, an internal instrument of governance meant to authenticate the act of Congress itself.

Material and Craft: Why Parchment Preserved — and Betrayed — the Text

Engrossing parchment required preparing animal skin — typically calf, sheep, or goat — by soaking, scraping, and stretching it into a smooth, durable writing surface. Ink was iron gall, a mix of tannic acid, iron sulfate, and gum arabic that bonded chemically with the collagen of the skin. Correctly kept, such a document could last centuries. Misused, it could degrade spectacularly.

Because the parchment was carried with Congress as it fled British forces, it was likely rolled and unrolled dozens of times. Repeated flexing cracked the ink layer. Exposure to light faded the iron gall. Handling left stains and tears. On the lower left of the parchment, a mysterious faint handprint remains — an anonymous trace of the document’s long, undignified travels. It is a reminder that the methods used to preserve a founding document in the 18th century were closer to those used for durable utilitarian artifacts than to modern conservation standards.

The Road: Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the Wartime Flights

Under British military threat, Congress evacuated to Baltimore in December 1776, hauling the parchment in a wagon. Over the next decade it moved to Lancaster, York, and back to Philadelphia; then to Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton, and New York City. From 1790 to 1800 it returned to Philadelphia before being shipped by water to the new federal capital, Washington, D.C.

The most dramatic escape came during the War of 1812. As British troops marched on Washington in 1814, State Department clerk Stephen Pleasonton — acting, he later claimed, against the advice of the Secretary of War — stuffed the Declaration and other state papers into linen bags and removed them to a private dwelling in Leesburg, Virginia. The city burned; the parchment did not.

This period coincided with the same federal government’s first major treaty encroachments on Native land. The supposed sanctity of parchment underscores a hard historical reality: agreements recorded on paper were often honored only when they served the state. Contrast that selective reverence with the much broader record of broken compacts described in the Proclamation of 1763 and its legacy.

Decades of Neglect: The Patent Office, the Fire, and the Steel Safe

Housed in various government buildings, the parchment spent much of the 19th century in spaces hostile to organic material. Its most notorious residence was the old Patent Office (today the National Portrait Gallery), where, according to National Archives senior conservator Amy Lubick, it endured ‘high light levels and extreme temperature and humidity fluctuations.’ It was displayed both vertically and horizontally at different times. The building contained an open fireplace; smoking was permitted. By the 1870s, one observer described the document simply as ‘old and yellow.’

In 1876, it was exhibited at Independence Hall in Philadelphia for the Centennial Exposition. It was moved to the State Department library months before a fire ripped through the Patent Office. That move was luck, not planning. By the 1890s, the State Department — alarmed by the document’s condition — removed it from display and locked it in a steel safe. It returned to public view in the 1920s at the Library of Congress.

In December 1941, days after Pearl Harbor, the Declaration was moved by train to Fort Knox, Kentucky, where it remained until 1944. Two Harvard-affiliated conservators performed the first documented repair effort there. Further conservation followed in 2003. Humidity and protein-eating beetles at the Library of Congress ultimately forced a move, and in 1952, under military escort, the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were installed at the newly built National Archives.

‘We are enshrining these documents for future ages,’ President Harry S. Truman said at the time. Today the engrossed Declaration rests in a gold-plated titanium frame behind bulletproof glass, in a climate-controlled case lowered each night into a vault beneath the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The Many Declarations: Broadsides, Facsimiles, and What Survives

The engrossed parchment is not the only Declaration. Twenty-six surviving copies of the Dunlap broadside are known. At least nine copies of the Mary Katharine Goddard broadside — printed in Baltimore in 1777 and the first public version to name the signers — remain. In 1823, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams authorized William J. Stone to produce a copperplate facsimile of the now-worn original; Stone’s version is the image most commonly reproduced in textbooks. Stone’s friend Peter Force later used the same plate to print copies on translucent tracing paper. Fewer than 40 original Stone copies and perhaps a couple hundred Force copies survive. A fragment of the earliest draft, the ‘original rough draft,’ and the ‘fair copy’ presented to Congress also persist in institutional collections.

What the Parchment Worships — and What It Omits

The reverence Americans direct at the engrossed Declaration is not matched by reverence for the Indigenous nations whose lands the new republic would soon claim. In the same decades that the parchment was being transported in wagons and stuffed into linen bags, Congress was passing the Northwest Ordinance, authorizing treaty negotiations with Native nations, and setting the legal scaffolding for westward expansion. The phrase ‘merciless Indian Savages’ — present in the adopted text of the Declaration — remains a documented part of the document’s language. Its inclusion is a historical fact, not a rhetorical flourish, and any honest reading of the parchment must reckon with it.

This is why historians distinguish between the Declaration as a philosophical text and the Declaration as a political act. It asserted universal rights while authorizing a republic built on dispossession. The same parchment that calls tyranny a crime against mankind was being preserved by a State Department overseeing treaty negotiations designed to remove Native nations from their homelands.

Historical Context & Key Cultural Takeaways

The story of the Declararion’s printing and protection is fundamentally a story about the value societies assign to their records.

• Two Texts, One Event: The Dunlap broadside was the public Declaration; the engrossed parchment was the government’s internal authentication. Conflating them — as most Americans do — obscures how the text actually reached the public.
• Material Matters: Parchment, iron gall ink, rag paper, and copperplate printing each shaped what survived and what faded. Preservation is a technical discipline, not a sentiment.
• Movement Degrades: The parchment’s decline was caused almost entirely by decisions made to move and display it. Wartime evacuation, exhibit-driven transport, and building conditions did more damage than any single fire.
• Selective Reverence: The federal government’s care for the Declaration contrasts sharply with its record of treaty-making and treaty-breaking with Native nations throughout the same period.
• Scholarly Shift: Modern historians such as Emily Sneff argue that focusing solely on the signed parchment misses how the Declaration circulated, how ordinary people responded, and how its language was later used by movements for Indigenous and civil rights.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is physically different between the Dunlap broadside and the engrossed parchment?

The Dunlap broadside is a printed poster — single-sided, rag paper, simple typography, no signatures. The engrossed parchment is a handwritten animal-skin manuscript copied in formal script, ordered by Congress on July 19, 1776, and signed by 56 delegates beginning August 2, 1776.

Who actually wrote out the engrossed copy?

Scholars generally attribute the engrossing to Timothy Matlack, an assistant to the secretary of the Continental Congress. He is believed to have completed the task by August 2, 1776.

Where is the Declaration today, and how is it protected?

It is displayed in the rotunda of the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C., sealed in a gold-plated titanium frame behind bulletproof glass with humidity and light controls. Each night it is lowered into a vault shared with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

How many Dunlap broadsides survive?

Approximately 26 copies of the Dunlap broadside are known to exist. At least nine copies of the 1777 Mary Katharine Goddard broadside — the first to list signer names — also survive.

Was the Declaration applied to Native nations?

The adopted text contains the phrase ‘merciless Indian Savages,’ and the political program it authorized — independence, western expansion, and centralized federal authority — directly affected Native nations. Treaties negotiated in the following decades routinely displaced Indigenous communities. Recognizing this is not a reinterpretation; it is documented history.

Concluding Synthesis: Legacy, Preservation, and Honest Memory

The engrossed Declaration’s survival is a remarkable technical achievement — the product of 19th-century improvisation, 20th-century conservation science, and 21st-century climate-controlled engineering. But the story is more than a conservation success. It is a case study in how nations choose which records to preserve and which to ignore. The same government that wrapped its founding parchment in linen and whisked it to safety in 1814 was simultaneously authorizing the removal of Native nations from lands guaranteed by treaty. The document’s honored place in the National Archives rotunda is real, and so is its complicated inheritance. Reading the parchment properly requires holding both truths at once — an act of historical honesty no framing can substitute for.