Linen-backed broadside engraving on wove stock, measuring 22½x25½". Wood hanger and roll at top and bottom. Handsomely framed, entire piece measures 30¾x29¾".
The scarce Huntington calligraphic rendering of the Declaration of Independence, one of the earliest broadside reproductions, with the signatures of the signers in exact facsimile. The Declaration of Independence, the foundation document of the United States, has been printed a myriad of 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 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 40 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. The first to do so was a writing master named Benjamin Owen Tyler, who created a calligraphic version of the Declaration and published it in 1818, recreating exactly the signatures of the signers as they appeared on the original. Three other broadside printings of the Declaration were issued in 1818 and 1819, each containing ornamental borders or illustrations. These were followed in the early 1820s by the present printing by Hartford engraver and author on penmanship Eleazer Huntington. Huntington followed Tyler’s example by creating a calligraphic facsimile of the Declaration, but stripped out the ornaments and illustrations that had been added by previous publishers, returning the document to the simple title and text of the original, and providing the signatures of the signers in exact facsimile. According to John Bidwell’s list, this is the sixth broadside reproduction of the Declaration of Independence. Bidwell locates three copies of the Huntington printing of the Declaration in institutional collections: the Huntington Library, Massachusetts Historical Society, and the American Antiquarian Society (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 98: 247-302).