Up next on American History tv, a Panel Discusses the textual tradition of the declaration of independence. Including how it reflects the times to which it was written and the newer reproductions that followed the original. Panelists include historic document dealer and the editor of the papers of Thomas Jefferson. Among the questions they examine is how punctuation influences how the declaration is read and interpreted. The National Archives hosted this event. It is about 90 minutes. Ted the declaration. This is 2 hours and 45 minutes. Good morpning, everybody. Its a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for joining us. I want to start by thanking our hosts, the archives. Its been extraordinary, the way theyve jumped into supporting my effort to bring more attention to the question of how we read the declaration of independence and how we think about the diversity of the declarations textual tradition. We are punctuating happyinesshappiness. Were focused on the second sentence intently of the declaration of independence. Im going to reintroduce the second sentence to you and invite my panelists to expand. Well each speak for 12 minutes, leaving time for questions from all of you. I understand we may also have some questions coming in over email or twitter, possibly. Im not sure exactly how that works. I imagine somebody will. Thatll become magically clear at the relevant point. Let me as i said, reintroduce all of you to the second sentence of the declaration of independence. We hold these truths to be selfevident selfevident, that all men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain and unalienable rights. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are instituted among men. Whenever any form of government becomes detruktive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and Institute New government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Now, i expect that all of you are not surprised by how long this sentence is. As i have gone around the country talking about the declaration over and over again, people have expressed surprise at just how long this sentence is. Its important to dwell on the length of it to recognize that there are two moments that happiness appears in the sentence. After pursuit of happiness, where were talking about individual rights and then down at the end of the sentence, when we come to the peoples responsibility for organizing government in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their shared or collective safety and happiness. So the sentence establishes an important balance between the individual and whats shared or united or collective for all of us. As we look at this sentence we realize there are these five clauses, all which start with that. Selfevident truths, dependent on the opening clause. We hold these truths to be selfeve departmentself selfevident. The sentence is making an argument. We see a theory of revolution. We even see that there is a specific logical structure underneath the sentence. A structure that philosophers would identify as a syllogisms. Ill remind everybody what a syllogism is. The conventional example a syllogism has a conclusion. The conclusion follows from the premise. I like to use bill gates instead of socrates. Its a more immediate charge to think about bill gates in these charge. Take as the first premise of the syllogism, bill gates is a human being. We know that by observation. Its a basic fact. Second premise, all human beings are mortal. We also know that in a basic way. From those, we draw the conclusion that bill gates, too, is mortal despite our grand perception of him. Thats a syllogism. Thats the underlying structure of the second sentence in the declaration. Lets make that clear. The first three clauses taken together are the first premise, that all men are created equal. Theyve been endowed by their creator, alienable rights. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those belong together as a single premise. They lead us to the second premise. To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, driving their powers from the consent of the governed. Then the big conclusion, the articulation of the theory of revolution, whenever governments dont do this basic job of securing the rights that were in the first premise the people need to change those governments so that they do do their job. Now, a philosopher practicing philosopher with a phd would insist there is a missing premise in this syllogism. That all people have a right to whatever is necessary to secure what they have a right to. Once you do stick that missing premise in, it is a logically secure syllogism argument. Syllogisms were things that those who went to school in the 18th century learned about consistently, in terms of how they learned to write. This is a page from a book by isaac watts. He wrote a lot of hymns. Also the businessyinessy bee poem. He also wrote this handbook on logic t logic, the art of reasoning. By 1789 it went through 16 editions. The 16th edition is a philadelphia printing. Youll see from this page, as he begins to describe logic that a syllogism is a joining of several propositions together. It produces an argument whereby we want to infer something less known from truths that are more evident. The idea of selfevidence itself is closely connected to the use of syllogisms for forming arguments and reasoning in 18th century argumentative practice, rhetorical practice. So why is it that when the the syllogism is as important as it is . It gives us this theory of revolution. Weve lost sight of n entirety of the argument. We have multiple versions of the text starting from 1776. Let me start with the latest end of our textual tradition. Thats the archives. Well summarize the syllogism again, from the declaration. All people have rights to life liberty, pursuit of happiness. All people have a right to a properly constituted government. Thats what it boils down to fundamentally. As i said, why is it that we lose track of that argument . If you go to the National Archives website, which is first on google and pull up the transcription of the declaration, you get a text that has a period after happiness. There is good reason for this period. Ill come back to that. It has a big influence. I was at an exhibit at the american philosophical society. I was standing behind kids reading the declaration with the period in it. Among these is the life, liberty, pure suitsuit of happiness. They didnt finish reading the sentence. We teach kids a period completes a thought. When you get to the period, you stop and understand that complete thought. So the period affects our reading practice. From my point of view, it shortchanges people, in terms of giving them access to the whole argument i showed you. Of course, its not simply from google that this comes. It comes from a long tradition. This is the stove engraving. You realize its got the same period after pursuit of happiness. Right there. So thats from 1823. That text has been our basic text of the declaration since 1823. It was what we looked to, because its legible. It has that great advantage of being beautiful and legible. What about the parchment itself . As you know this is its state. There is a mark after pursuit of happiness, but its hard to tell, in fact. We hear more about this, whether its a period or comma. Does the parchment give us a single sentence or not . Hard to say. How would we answer this question . What would we do about this mystery . Old humanities gave us the tools of theology. Building a textual family tree, figuring out what you have on it. We have new humanities. The capacity to use instrumentation, like imaging which analyzes the ink on parchment or paper and figure out the layers and what might have been there. Both are tools we can try to make sense of the mystery on the march parchments. We have seven manuscripts of the declaration. They all punctuate as a single sentence. Congresss corrected minute book is a single sentence. Jefferson was in charge of overseeing publications in 1776. Dun dunlaps was a single sentence. The first with a period was july 6th 1776, in the Pennsylvania Evening post. Look how different this looks in his newspaper. When you get this printing on july 6th. Youll hear more about this printing. It circulated all over the colonies. Right from the getgo, from july 6th onwards, we had both versions circulating in the colonies of the declaration. That which made the syllogism accessible and focused on the individual rights. To new humanities. Well hear more about this on the fourth panel. This is an example well probably see again from worked on at the library of congress of jeffersons original first draft. Beneath the word citizens jefferson originally had written subjects and changed it to citizens. This is the thing that new technologies help us do. Where does that leave us . Ill conclude and hand it over to my colleagues. Simply by saying, it leaves us with a diverse textual tradition. There isnt one text of the declaration. We start with john dunlap, in terms of official printings. There are four official printings. The printing by congress which is a single sentence. Then thomsons man youuscript and the record book one sentence. The parchment the mystery text. We cant tell. Then we have the final printing commissioned by congress, and she puts a period after pursuit of happiness. The four early versions commissioned by congress, two punctuate as a single sentence, one is a mystery and one splits the sentence into two with a period. All right . So we have a diverse textual tradition. Ill hand it over at this point to mr. Caller. Thank you. As a dealer in historic documents and a collection builder, i often start at the end. There is ink on a piece of paper or parchment that i have to look at and figure out, is it real . What does it mean . Is it valuable historically or monetarily . Here with any document, we have all of the knowledge and experience that led authors and or scribes to put that ink on that medium. This particular document, the declaration, i have personal history with because i can say that im here and have gone into the history field because of a trip i took nearly 40 years ago to the National Archives. Looking at the declaration of independence, i, a somewhat bored student in school, was inspired by American History and the power of that document. And i saw the engrossed declaration and felt a pride of ownership, that i hope every american, and even every human being, can feel by reading the text from that document. Lets see if i can get to my powerpoint. May need a little help with that, just to find the right powerpoint. Or i could give danielles speech again. Okay. I would add, the last screen showed four official versions. Great. So im going to talk about preserving the image and proclaiming the news of independence. So start inging more with the present but then going back. And this is what we have today at the end. The declaration engrossed manuscript manuscript, that people still think of as the original declaration of independence, but it wasnt something that existed on july 4th or july 2nd when america declared its independence. This is what we see today, and this is the stone facsimile a copper plate engraving by stone. John quincy adams ordered it to be done in 1820. He noticed that from handling, from people walking into the secretary of States Office and saying, id like to see the declaration of independence it was already deteriorating. Also, there had been a couple of not facsimiles but decorative prints done in 1818, 1819 1820 to showcase the declaration of independence. This is just a couple of years after the war of 1812 where americas independence was convinced. Actually, im going to go back and just point to a couple of things on this. Besides mostly scholars in the audience, i know there are people watching online. Their first thought is probably i have a declaration of independence. Is it real . Didnt mean that. Okay. The first thing to look at to see whether youre looking at a stone declaration First Edition is this little imprint up here and up there. A second edition would have one, a smaller w. J. Stone right down there. This is a decorative print of the declaration, that is still valuable because there were other 200 copies ordered. Stone printed the 201st which he kept. There was scandal when people realized that, though it was the common practice. His family donated that copy to the smithsonian. Danielle asked me to consider the declaration engross manuscript and the stone, and talk about the process of the creation. Because there is this story that stone took the original manuscript, which he had for about three years and used a chemical process to lift ink off of the original. As the basis for his plate, from which he engraved the copper plate, from which the declarations were then struck. And if that were the case, it would tell us certain things about the exactness of the manuscript and the stone plate which then we would know would be more original, in a way. Because you cant see the engross manuscript now but if youre looking at an exact chemicalmade copy that lifted ink from the original then it really does connect very deeply. What i found is that its a very difficult question to answer. Ill show you why. We have this is from the engrossed manuscript. Thats from the copperplate thats on display here now. This is from a paper printing of this stone which is firstith the First Edition. This is from the official stone, and in the the second edition. Weve tried to prepare different points in each of those to see if they tell us whether the chemical process was used and how exact the stone declaration is. We have found some interesting things like this little mark here a hickey, its actually called. It exists on some of the stone declarations but not on all. We dont know if that was on the original and faithfully copied or if that was a ding of the plate and copied in every subsequent edition. So there are very few points where we actually have enough information to make any real conclusions. This is a blowup of the initial the in the declaration. Weve helped it a little with contrasts here. I will compare it to the stone declaration, which is obviously much more visible. If you look at the two together we find some interesting points. Number one, this does not exist, as far as we can tell, on the manuscript manuscript. As far as we can tell, it never did. That would be just a printers or engravers tip, that stone may have added. A facsimile by definition is an exact copy. Engravers wouldnt make an exact copy without a markengraving of it. There is also this clean line in the stone, and this almost heartshaped line in the original manuscript. What does that tell us . It tells us basically that stone may not have used a chemical process. He was one of the finest engravers of his day. He actually was hired by John Quincy Adams to produce beautifully engraved ships passports, maps and other things that the government needed. And he had the original for up to three years. So a master engraver could actually create such a plate by hand using maybe a tracing, but without needing a chemical process. So my summary of that point is that i would not assume that he used the chemical process. The first notice that ive heard that stated that he did as a fact was 1904. I think this that was an assumption because i dont believe theres any evidence that was used to base that, expect the look. Oh, this document is so deteriorated, and we know, especially by 1904, there are these processes that can be used to lift ink off the original to make the plate. Therefore, thats what stone did. Im showing this french printing, after all, they helped make the declaration of independence come true, by helping us achieve our freedom. This is a french printing from 1804. If you look at it, it looks a lot like the stone engraving. If you look a little more closely though, the top of that french engraving looks very much like the stone. But as you get further along in it the engraver was running out of time. Hes doing this for a book that has to be published. He starts doing it very quickly. Now, youll notice that he even forgets to cross a lot of ts and dot a lot of is. The reason its important here, i think, is because if i didnt point that out, and you were looking at the french printing of the declaration, or the stone declaration, you might assume that they were both created in the same process. You might have assumed, also, that this was based on either a stone for the next generation printing. When, in fact, this couldnt have been done by the chemical process because, if it had been all of the ts would have been crossed and the is would have been dotted and it would have been a more exact copy. So this isnt proof that stone did his engraving by hand, but its certainly an indication that he could have. Since i dont really have an answer to the question i was asked her for, ie for, i figured id bring in a couple more questions because we have a distinguished room. 52 are known. This is one of three that have a presentation on the bottom. Presented by the honorable John Quincy Adams secretary of state, to thomas emery president of the executive council of maryland. Kperist ist interestingly, two of the three transcribed are not on congresss official list of people who should get copies of the stone declaration. Theyre both in maryland. Could the honorable John Quincy Adams have been giving them out for political purchases . Maryland was one of the states whose vote for the presidency, when he was running against John Quincy Adams wasnt known. Maryland bucked the trend in support of adams. It is an interesting point that the two known legible are to maryland people who arent on the official list. But another thing that is worth pointing out is, of the 52 that are known, those do not include the copies that we know were given to Thomas Jefferson, john adams, James Madison james monroe. So if youre digging in an institutional collection, be on the lookout. Maybe youll make that great discovery. Heres another copy of the stone First Edition. This is the third one i mentioned being inscribed. But we cant read the inscription thats down there. So im hoping later on when we talk about multispectral images, this is the kind of project that might be looked at also. This is presented by the honorable John Quincy Adams which weve looked at it understand the lights and technology infarared or ultraviol