EXTREMELY SCARCE EARLIEST KNOWN REPRODUCTION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 1818, WITH FIRST APPEARANCE OF FACSIMILE SIGNATURES OF THE SIGNERS, ENDORSED BY ITS AUTHOR, THOMAS JEFFERSON

(DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE). In Congress, July 4th 1776. The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America. Washington: Benjamin Owen Tyler (Peter Maverick, engraver, Newark, New Jersey), 1818. Double elephant folio engraved broadside, measuring 24 by 30 inches, framed with original wooden scroll rods. Entire piece measures 42 by 35 inches.

First copperplate engraved version of the Declaration of Independence, and its first publication in the form of the original document, with remarkably exact renditions of the signers’ hands. Dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, who endorsed the production. Rare and important, most impressive with original wooden scroll rods.

The Declaration of Independence, the foundation document of the United States, has been printed myriad times since its original publication in 1776. 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 forty years old, and the generation of the Revolution, including the signers of the Declaration, was passing away. With nostalgia and curiosity, many Americans began to examine the details of the nation’s nascent years. Among other things, such documents as the debates of the Constitutional Convention were published for the first time. Others revisited the Declaration— not the often-reprinted text, but the actual document itself, then preserved in the State Department. They discovered remarkable differences between the original and the published versions. First, the title of the document was different; secondly, the names of the Signers, now revered as the Founders, were omitted in many of the published versions. It seemed extraordinary that this document, in its original form, was relatively unknown to Americans, when the text was so central to the national identity. Several entrepreneurs set out to remedy this gap. The first to do so (and make it into print) was a writing master named Benjamin Owen Tyler. Tyler decided to create a calligraphic version of the Declaration, giving the title and text exactly as it appeared in the original manuscript (though not replicating the actual engrossed text of the document— that would not happen until some five years later, with the Stone facsimile) and recreating exactly the signatures of the Signers as they appeared in the original. This he did to a remarkable degree: “Tyler retained every stroke and nuance of his models, preserving their proportions, stress and weight, so convincing are his signatures that they masquerade as the originals in a recent book on American autographs” (Bidwell). Tyler won the endorsement of Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush (whose office “collated it with the original instrument and found correct”), and, more importantly, that of the author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, to whom his printing is dedicated.

Tyler’s printing of the Declaration is important not only for its precedence among a series of printings that would soon follow; it was also the first to effectively emphasize concepts through its design. “Whatever strange or fantastic alphabet Tyler could coax from his pen, an engraver would execute on copper. His engraved Declaration rendered the ‘emphatical words,’ as he called them, in gothic, shaded and flowered styles… Tyler did not simply choose a word here and there to display his skill; he sought to express the rhythm, stress, and dynamics of a spoken document, fully deserving the art and might of an orator on the Fourth of July. The ornament in the last paragraph grows larger and more insistent, as if reaching a thunderous and joyful conclusion to the creation of a free people” (Bidwell). The Tyler Declaration remains the first and most sought-after “facsimile” of the founding document of the United States. It is believed that as few as a thousand copies were made (far fewer, of course, have survived). The Tyler facsimile was printed on both vellum and paper (as is this copy); only three copies on vellum are known to exist. Shaw & Shoemaker 46130. Bidwell, American History in Image and Text. Nash, American Penmanship 87.

Expert tissue repairs to verso, entirely linen-backed, original surface varnish worn away in spots, probably from rolling. Very good condition, beautifully framed. Extremely scarce.