Second sentence of the declaration of independence. We hold these truths to be selfevident that all men are crated equal, they are endowed by their crater with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the bridges of happiness. The pursuit of happiness. Uit 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 f i expect that all of you are not surprised by how long the sentence is. But as i have gone around the country talking about the declaration over and over again people have expressed surprise at just how long the sentence is. It is important to recognize that there are two moment happiness appears in the sentence. We are talking about individual rights and 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. It establishes an important balance between the individual and what is shared for all of us. If you look at the sentence, you realize the five classes all start with that. All dependent on that opening clause. But as we spend more time with it, even, we come to realize the sentence is making an argument. We begin to see that as a theory of revolution in the sentence. More significantly, we even see there is a very specific logical structure underneath the sentence. A structure that philosophers would identify as [indiscernible] i would like to remind everybody of exec or what that is to help us to go about what is going on in the sentence. The conventional example is, in fact, a premise and a conclusion, which conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. I like to use bill gates instead of socrates because these days people have take the first premise, bill gates is a human being. We know that simply by observation. It is a basic fact. The second premise all human beings are mortal. We also know that based on empirical observation. And so we can draw to the conclusion that bill gates is mortal. Despite our grand perception of him. So that is that and it that is the a structure that is the underlying structure of the sentence. It means they have been endowed by their creator with unalienable rights. Those three clauses belong together as a single premise. They then lead us to the second premise, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of govern. And then a big conclusion. That whenever government dont do this basic job of securing the rights that were in the first premise people need to change those governments so they do do their job. Now, a philosopher practicing with a phd from a Philosophy Department would also insist there is a missing part. That all people have a right whatever they need to secure. It really is a logic argument. It is important to stress the structure underneath the sentence because it is something that those went to school in the 18th century learned about. This is a page from a book by isaac watts if you go into any church today and pick up a hymnal and flip through, you will see an incredible number of hymns that were written by watts. How does the busy little bee and he also wrote this handbook on logick, which was published in england originally, but by 17 89, had already gone through 16 editions. And you will see from this page, as he begins to describe what you do in logic, that a syllogism is joining several propositions together and produces an argument that we want to infer from something that is left known lesserknown. And it is perfectly connected to the use of syllogisms in 18th century argumentative practice and writerly practice. So, why is it that when this argument is as important as it is it gives us a theory of revolution we have lost sight of that. The entirety of the argument. And i say that because we have i differs textual tradition for the declaration. We have multiple verses of the text. Let me start with the latest. That is the National Archives there we go. We can summarize. To make it as simple as possible. All people have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Properly and all people have a right to a properly constituted government. Again, why is it that we lose track of that whole argument . If you go to the National Archives website and pull up a trench option of the declaration, you get a text that has a after happiness has a period after happiness. And there is a good reason for this. Last summer, i sat behind a group of High School Kids that read out a copy of the declaration that had this period in it. They turned around and they walked away. They didnt finish reading the sentence. And for good reason, a get because we teach kids that a period completes a thought. So when you get to a period you are supposed to thought and understand that complete thought. It shortchanges people in terms of giving them access to that whole argument that i just showed you. Of course, it is not simply from google that this comes, it comes from a long tradition. When you look at a closing, you realize it has that same period after pursuit of happiness. Right there. That is from 1823. And that text has been a basic text since 1823. It is what we look to because it is legible. It has that great advantage of being beautiful and legible. But what about [indiscernible] there is a mark after pursuit of happiness. It is hard to tell whether it is a period or a comma. How would we answer this question what would we do about this mystery . Humanity give us tools of the allergy. To try and figure out one text from the next would to have on it. We also have new humanities these days, the capacity to use instrumentation, which can analyze the chemical formulation of ink on parchment or paper and figure out layers and how long they have been there. Both of these are tools that we can use to make sense of what is on the parchment. As far as old humanity is concerned, we have seven manuscripts of the declaration. We have congresss corrected book. Jefferson was and tried to the committee overseeing publications in the summer of 1776. The First Official printing punctuated as a single sentence. The first text to use theperiod was an unauthorized the pe riod was an unauthorized Newspaper Printing. Looks how different this looks in his newspaper when you get this printing on july 6. It circulated all over the colonies. Right from the get go, from july 6 onwards, we have those versions circulating in the colonies. That would mean the whole argument accessible, that which focused on the individual rights. Two new humanities, we will hear more about this from the panel but this is a little example we will probably see again from the work done at the library of congress. Where after the imaging, it was possible to see that the word citizens had originally been written subjects. This is the kind of thing that new technologies can help us to do. What does that leave us . Let me conclude and headed over to my colleagues simply by saying it leaves us with a diverse sexual tradition. There is not one text of the declaration. We start with john dunlap and have four official printing. There are posted commissions by congress. Then we have thompsons manuscript. And we have the parchment where we cant tell. That is our mystery tax. And then generally, 1777, we have a printing permission permitted by congressp. She puts theeriod after pursuit of the eriod after the period after the pursuit of happiness. We have a diverse textual tradition. I will hand it over at this point. Seth thank you. As a dealer in historic documents and a collection builder, i often start at the end of 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 documents, weve got all of the knowledge and all of the experience that led authors or scribes to put pen on that medium. This particular document, the declaration, i have a personal history with. Because i can say that i got into the history field because of a trip i took nearly 40 years ago to the National Archives. And 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 declaration itself deprived 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. I may need a little help with that. Just to find the right powerpoint. Or i could give daniels speech again. Danielles speech again. [laughter] seth ok. I would add that it showed four official versions. [indistinct chatter] seth ok. Great. So, im going to talk about preserving the image and proclaiming the news of independence. So starting more at the present but then going back. And this is what we have today at the end. The declaration and grossed manuscript. The people still think of as the original, but it wasnt something that existed on july 4 or july 2, when america declared its independence. But this is what we see today. And this is created by the copperplate engraving by william j stone. Johnson adams, who was secretary of state, or did it to be done in 1820. He noted that from handling, from people walking into the office and saying i would like to see the declaration of independence, it was already deteriorating. And also, there had been a couple of not facsimiles, but decorative effects that were done in 1819, 1822 showcase the declaration of independence. This was just after the war of 1812 where americas independence was really confirmed. Actually, i am going to go back and just point to a couple of things on this because as there are mostly scholars in the audience, i know there are some people watching online and their first caught is probably, is it real . Thought is probably, i have a declaration of independence, is it real . The first thing to look at is this little imprint up here and up there. The second edition would have one, the smaller stone, right down there. So this is a decorative print. It is still very valuable because there were only 200 copies that were ordered. Someone printed it 201 that he kept, and there were some scandal when people realized that although that was the common practice. His family solved it by donating that copy to the smithsonian. And danielle asked me to consider the declaration engrossed manuscript and the stone manuscript and to 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 to as a basis for his plate from which he engraved he engraved the copperplate from which the declaration was 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 and away. Because you cant see the engrossed manuscript now, but if youre looking at an exact chemical aged copy that lifted income the original, then it really does connect very deeply paired what i found is that it is a very difficult question to answer. And i will show you why. This is from the engrossed manuscript. That is from the copperplate that is on display here now. This is from a paper printing of this stone with the first edition. This is from the second edition. And we have tried to compare different points in each of those to see if they tell us whether the chemical process was used and how exact this dont declaration is. We have found some interesting things, like this little mark here. A hickey it is exley called, exists on some of the declarations, not at all. We dont know if that was on the original and faithfully copied or if that was created in the zinc of the plate and was then copied in every subsequent edition. So there is a few points where we actually have enough information to make any real conclusions. This is a blowup of the initial the in the declaration. We have helped it a little bit here with contrast. I will compare it to the stone declaration. Which is obviously much more visible. Now 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. And as far as we can tell, and never did. And that would just be the engravers help really. The stone might have added but engravers whenever make an exact copy without adding some little mark that shows that this is their engraving of it. There is also this very clear line here in the stone. And a heartshaped line in the manuscript. What does that tell us . It tells us, basically that stone may not have used the chemical process. He was one of the finest engravers of his day. He was exley hired by John Quincy Adams to produce beautifully crafted maps, passports, 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 may be a tracing, but without needing a chemical process. So my summary of that point is that i would not assume that he used a chemical process. The first notice that i have heard that stated that he did was about 1904. And i think that was an assumption because i dont think theres any evidence that was used to base that, except the look. Oh, this document is so deteriorated. And we know, especially by 1904 that there are these processes i can be used to lift ink of the original to make the plate therefore that stone is legit. But 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 about 1804. And, if you look at it, it looks a lot like the stone in grieving. Stone engraving. If you look a little more closely, though, the stop of the top of that french engraving looks very much like the stone. But as you get further along the engraver is running out of time because he has to do this for a book that is going to be published and he starts doing it very quickly. Now youll notice that he even forgets to cross a lot of tees ts and dot a lot of is. If you are looking at the stone declaration, you might assume that they were both created in the same process. And you might have assumed, also, that this was based on either a stone or nextgeneration printing, when in fact, this couldnt have been diabetic chemical process because if it had been, all of the ts would have been crossed and all the is would have been dotted. So this has improved since stone at his engraving by hand, but it is certainly an indication that he could have. Since i dont really have an answer to the question i was asked here for, i figured i would bring a lot of couple of other questions, though, because we have such a distinguished room. This is one of the stone declarations. There were 201 printed. Roughly 52 are now known. This is one of three that has a presentation on the bottom. Presented by the honorable John Quincy Adams, secretary of state. Interestingly, two of the three that are inscribed the two that are legible are not on congresss official list. The are both in maryland. So, could the secretary of state have been giving these out maybe for political purposes . Maryland was one of those states whose vote for the presidency when he was running against John Quincy Adams was a really known and maryland did the trend and support buck the trend and it support John Quincy Adams. But another thing that is with pointing out his of the 52 that are known, those do not include the copies that we know we given to Thomas Jefferson john adams, james madison, james monroe. So if you are taking in an institutional collection, be on the lookout and maybe you will make that great discovery. Here is another copy of the stone first edition. This is the third when i mentioned being inscribed. But we cant read the inscription. That is down there. And so, i am hoping that ron will he talk about imaging, that this is the kind of project that might be looked at also. This is presented by the honorable John Quincy Adams which we have looked at under lights and technology, infrared, ultraviolet that we have, and i know that that is written by John Quincy Adams, unlike the others do. But we cannot tell who it was inscribed to. So that is a question i would love to get back to. And this is another engraving by Benjamin Tyler from 18 1818. One reason i bring it up your i bring it up your, with this, Benjamin Tyler this decorative engraving of the declaration, John Quincy Adams remember was pointing out that the declaration was already significantly faded by the time he gave it to william stone. He blamed the creation of this engraving for a lot of the deterioration. And it did, in fact, infect the ink certainly guess he used it to create the ink, but we dont know if chemical process or from the display. But im going to go back very quickly because there are more questions that we can see looking at other documents. This is the dunlop printing of the declaration. The first printing, july 4. And this is the Pennsylvania Evening post, the first Newspaper Printing on july 6. We noticed many differences and we will talk about that on a later panel in punctuation of them. Particularly the capital letters. That are within sentences. Not at the beginning of a sentence where they belong, but used for style. And i want to go into depth about this, but this is a jefferson handwritten draft and a adams handwritten draft. One thing that we found is that we think, at least, that john adams, not jefferson, was the one who went to dunlop with a manuscript on july 4 and we think jefferson went to town on july 6 with his draft. Here you have a broadside printing. A broadside is a single printed page with information only on one side. This is the press release of its day. It was meant to share news. It was meant to proclaim, to get the word out. And each of these broadsides a different. That is from salem. This is actually by the same printer in the american gazette newspaper. He made just a couple of adjustments and kept most of the typesetting impact. This is the same declaration. This printer exley had a different broadside. Actually had a different broadside. Then you have the dunlop, the official printing sent by congress. And he we did it to follow that style integrating the official printin