Four Declarations Compared
![]() | ![]() |
![]() | ![]() |
Here are four readable jpegs of early printed copies of the Declaration of Independence featured on the cover of Printing History NS38.
There are not the only early examples but I’lll leave that to scholars like John Bidwell, author of The Declaration in Script and Print: A Visual History of America’s Founding Document reviewed in the same issue.
The images were harvested from public sources cited on the inside cover and modified here:
Four printed versions of the Declaration of Independence: [top to bottom]: the Dunlap Broadside, the Goddard Broadside (courtesy of the Library of Congress); the “unofficial” (and probably earlier) of two Salem broadsides (courtesy of Georgetown University Library); and the Exeter Broadside (courtesy of the Boston Public Library).



