[Declaration of Independence]:

$60,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776. THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA...[caption title]. The Declaration of Independence, the foundation document of the United States, has been printed myriad times since its original publication in 1776. At first as broadsides, then as an essential addition to any volume of laws, it was from the beginning a basic work in the American canon. The present document is from one of the earliest broadside reproductions of the Declaration, done within a few years of the first broadside republications. 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 American Revolution, including the signers of the Declaration, was dropping away. With nostalgia and curiosity, many Americans began to examine the details of the nation's founding. Among other things, such documents as the debates of the Constitutional Convention were published for the first time. It seemed extraordinary that the Declaration of Independence, as created, was unknown to Americans, when the text was so central to the national ego. Several entrepreneurs set out to bridge this gap by printing reproductions of the document, often featuring calligraphic text, portraits, or other decorative flourishes. The most accurate of these early reproductions was an official facsimile, sponsored by Secretary

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