BENTONVILLE — Long before the days of 24-hour cable news networks and Twitter, and even before telephones or the telegraph, America’s founding fathers needed a way to get the word out that a radical document known as the Declaration of Independence had been drafted.
So, some two weeks before Congress ordered up a final parchment copy of the document and John Hancock’s flourish of a signature was added, a young printer with a high-tech method went to work.
John Dunlap, 29, used his Dunlap Broadside printing technology to inexpensively create 200 typeset copies on the night of July 4, 1776, filling a rush order to be shipped to the ratifying states and the public.
Today, the whereabouts of only about 25 of these copies are known, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has borrowed one from a private collector for a display of Revolutionary War-era documents that will open at 11 a.m. Saturday.
“This was an information-delivery tool,” said David Houston, the museum’s curatorial director.
The copies were delivered by riders on horseback, he added.
“You could tell it was printed in haste,” Houston said of the copy on display during a media preview Thursday, noting that it contains misspellings and letters typeset backward or upside-down. The mistakes were corrected for the final parchment version with its cursive writing and rows of signatures.
“They had to print theDeclaration and be able to distribute it throughout the Colonies to let people know what was going on,” said James J. Gigantino, an assistant professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
“It’s a great opportunity for people to see very rare documents. I think there are 20, 25, or 30 of these left,” said Gigantino, whose areas of expertise include Revolutionary and Colonial America. In doing so, museum visitors can see how Americans at the time learned about the Declaration.
One display for the exhibition, which is titled “Declaration: Birth of America,” describes the Dunlap Broadside method involving a “manual letterpress printer” that imprints ink on paper:
“It was the quickest, most effective way to disseminate information well into the19th century and was the preferred way to announce one of the most important events of the modern world prior to the invention of the telegraph and the radio.”
“The Declaration is essentially an argument that outlines all the dastardly deeds of the king,” Houston said, referring to the monarch of Great Britain.
The exhibition is free and doesn’t require tickets, museum officials said.
Museum members can preview the exhibition from 9 a.m.-9 p.m. today, and 9 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday.
The other documents in the exhibit include British and American papers, a map of the colonies, and an inflammatory message directed at the king using numerous capital letters. Also, the typography of the time used a “long s,” which resemblesa lower-case, uncrossed “f,” for when an “s” is used in the middle of words.
For example:
“Like that fell Monfter, and INFERNAL TYRANT Charles the Firft, you are determined to Deluge the Land with INNOCENT BLOOD,” the angry letter reads. “Fired with Rage at the more than Savage Barbarity of your Mercenary Troops, you curfed Inftruments of Slaughter in America.”
Randy Lawson of Bentonville said he and his wife, Valorie, helped sponsor the exhibition out of a love for the subject.
“I’m a student of history,” said Lawson, founder and CEO of Lawco Energy Group in downtown Bentonville. “An amateur historian.”
“I have a real passion for the Declaration of Independence because it’s one of the few documents in the world that has changed many nations and mankind,” he said.
The exhibit is scheduled to run through September.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 06/29/2012