Seth Kaller, Inc.

Passed from hand to hand, read aloud at town gatherings, or posted in public places, broadsides such as this (single pages printed only on one side) spread the news and fanned the flames of independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Broadside [attributed to Robert Luist Fowle, Exeter, New Hampshire, ca. July 15-19, 1776].

Inventory #26937       Price: $3,500,000

With a very brief resolution on July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress boldly proclaimed the United States to be “Free and Independent” from Great Britain. The delegates then began debating the formal Declaration of Independence text, which was approved on July 4 and immediately taken to John Dunlap’s print shop to be published. 

On July 4, New York’s delegation abstained from voting for independence, so this and all July 1776 printings are titled “A Declaration, By the Representatives of the United States of America, In General Congress Assembled.” (The title was changed to The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States” on July 19, after New York sent new delegates instructed to add their vote for independence.) 

On the morning of July 5, the freshly-printed Dunlap broadsides were delivered to Congress. Over the next few days, they were sent to the thirteen former colonies, to General George Washington and other top military commanders and revolutionary leaders. 

During the following weeks, the Declaration was re-published throughout the country in broadsides and newspapers, both official and unofficial. Coincidentally, thirteen broadside editions of the Declaration are known from July and August, 1776, printed in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. This is one of five editions that do not identify their printer or place of publication. 

For this particular edition, the provenance of several examples suggested that the publisher was located in southern New Hampshire or northern Massachusetts. In 1947, the chief of the Rare Books Division at the Library of Congress, Frederick Goff, compared this text and style to the three newspaper printings of the region. He found this to be most similar to that of the New Hampshire Gazette, or Exeter Morning Chronicle issue, thus attributing the present broadside to its publisher, Robert Luist Fowle. 

All of the editions vary in layout, spelling, punctuation, etc. The vast majority of the differences are in capitalization, by no means standardized at the time. Thomas Jefferson was the e e cummings of his age; he often didn’t even capitalize words at the beginning of sentences. His polar opposite, John Adams, used what we call “internal caps” for effect in the middle of sentences—more than any other writer we know. Spelling could also vary; the secretary of Congress spelled his name Charles Thomson, but it was very often printed as Thompson, as here and in nearly all of the New England printings. In our expanded description, we delve into our study of errors and variations that have helped us track the original distribution of the Declaration, bringing us closer to a definitive ordering of all July 1776 printings. 

Two copies of a first state, misspelling Hancock as “Hacock,” and eight of the corrected state of this rare July 1776 Declaration broadside are known to survive, including those at the Library of Congress, New Hampshire Historical Society and Yale University. 

 

Provenance — Goodspeed, 1964 > Thomas W. Streeter (his sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, April 19, 1967, lot 784) > Phillip Sang (his sale, Sotheby’s, April 26, 1978, lot 83) > descendants of the purchaser > Christie’s, April 22, 2021 > private collector > Sotheby’s, Jan. 24, 2025.