Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Tuesday, March 19
The Indiana Daily Student

Holding history

Getting to know a Founding Father is easier when a letter from him sits in your hands

In 1989, a man unknowingly bought a national treasure, hidden behind a painting, for $4 at a flea market.

Though he disliked the painting itself, a drab and dreary country landscape, the beautifully carved frame caught his eye. After bringing his purchase home, he took the painting out and set about inspecting the frame.

To his dismay, it wasn’t as well-made as he had hoped and had to be thrown away. There was one piece of the purchase, however, he kept. Between the unpleasant artwork and the unsalvageable frame sat a piece of parchment folded up to be about the size of a business ?envelope.

It was an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, printed by John Dunlap on the night of ?July 4, 1776.

This impossibly lucky man went on to sell the well-preserved piece of parchment at an auction for $8.1 million in 2000.

His unwittingly purchased artifact is called a “Dunlap broadside” Declaration, because it is a broadside, or a large sheet of paper with text on one side, printed by John Dunlap, the official printer to Congress at the time of the revolution.

Over 235 years ago this week, on the night the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration, Dunlap was instructed to print approximately 400 or 500 copies to be sent out to the colonies the next morning. These copies were the only versions actually printed on Independence Day. Only 26 are now known to survive.

One of them is in Bloomington.

The printing sits in the vault of the Lilly Library behind a case of Plexiglas. It was given to the university by J.K. Lilly Jr., an avid collector of historical texts. He purchased it from David A. Randall for $13,500 in 1951.

Though the document is deeply creased, with some holes in the middle and rips on the edge, it is one of the best preserved in the country. It does not hold any signatures, other than the typed name of John Hancock, who was the president of the Continental Congress at the time.

The library also possesses the letter which accompanied the Declaration, sent by Hancock to the governor of Rhode Island. His famously large signature marks the bottom of the request for Gov. Nicholas Cooke to proclaim the news to his colony.

“As things are becoming more and more digital, a lot of people are coming back to physical objects and finding that they have a lot to tell us,” Isabel Planton, a Lilly Library employee, said. “You can see the size and the way it was printed and the letter form. It’s like holding history.”

Because the Dunlap broadside is so historically significant, visitors are welcome to look at it but not touch. There are other ways, however, they can physically hold papers written by the Founding ?Fathers.

Inside a large green box in the library sit 56 pieces of paper. Each one holds the handwriting of a different man who signed the Declaration. Under the careful surveillance of librarians, visitors can hold the fragile pieces of parchment, read the elegant cursive and run their fingers over the signatures of historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Benjamin Harrison and Thomas Jefferson.

“I am sorry to hear that the Indians have commenced war, but greatly pleased you have been so decisive on that head,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Page in 1776. “Nothing will reduce those wretches as soon as pushing the war into the heart of their country, but I would not stop there.”

Planton said it’s documents like these which allow visitors to better understand the people behind the history.

“That’s part of the importance behind primary documents,” she said, surveying Jefferson’s work. “We can write however many books we want about who we thought he was, but when you see his letters right in front of you, that’s when you get to know him.”

Twenty-eight of the letters in the box are from 1776 and 16 of the documents are from years during the Revolutionary War. One note holds Benjamin Rush’s description of Benjamin Franklin’s death.

“Last evening at 11 o’clock the great and good Dr. Franklin closed his useful life,” the letter begins.

“Part of it’s sentimental,” Sarah Mitchell, a library employee, said. “The emotional content behind the letters gives them a lot of gravity. It’s not like reading a Wikipedia page. You start to hear their voice in their letters and learn who they were as individuals.”

Mitchell said she is proud of how accessible the Lilly Library makes these documents. After a five-minute registration process, anyone is welcome to look over the texts.

“It’s a powerful connection to the past,” Mitchell said. “For a long time libraries have tried to dictate who was worthy of handling documents like this, but everyone should get to experience it. This is everyone’s history.”

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe