Post by Princeton University

This is #America250 at Princeton University. 🇺🇸 Associate professor of history Michael Blaakman, who co-curated the "'Nursery of Rebellion': Princeton & The American Revolution" exhibit at Princeton University Library, talks through the Dunlap Broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence, now on display at the exhibit. This is the first printing of the Declaration of Independence, made on the night of July 4th, 1776 by a 29-year-old Irish immigrant named John Dunlap. Dunlap produced perhaps 200 copies, 26 are known to survive today, one is at Princeton. The Broadside at the Princeton University Library was made on a movable type printing press, so every letter and space was individually arranged by hand. On this copy and others, the lines and margins aren't perfectly straight, and there are signs that they were folded before the ink was perfectly dry. This is all evidence of the hurry in Dunlap's print shop to get the word out. While the handwritten parchment at the National Archives was drawn up and signed gradually over the ensuing weeks, the Broadsides were the copies that were rushed out from Philadelphia, read aloud to Washington's troops, and to citizens gathered in courthouse squares across the former colonies as independence was literally declared. To learn more about historical artifacts in and around Princeton, visit the exhibit at the Ellen and Leonard Milberg Gallery at Firestone Library, open to the public through July 12. Get exhibition hours and sign up for a tour: https://bit.ly/4xYDJqr

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