What happens when the most important document in American history leaves the room where it was written, with no plan for how to tell the world?
The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, and produced one of the most iconic texts in history to explain why. But Congress had no communication strategy. It sent a single copy to France, which was lost at sea. Printers across the new nation set the text however they liked, introducing errors along the way. And translations happened only because individuals and state governments took it upon themselves.
Emily Sneff, author of When the Declaration of Independence was News, joins us to explore how people actually learned about the Declaration of Independence in 1776, through broadsides, newspaper columns, public readings, pulpit announcements, and verbal translations at treaty councils with Indigenous nations.
About the Show
Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.
It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Episode Summary
Emily Sneff is a leading expert on the United States Declaration of Independence and a consulting curator on exhibits including The Declaration’s Journey at the Museum of the American Revolution and Window to Revolution at Historic Trappe. Her new book, When the Declaration of Independence was News, traces how the Declaration spread across the new nation and the Atlantic World in 1776.
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- How the Continental Congress authored the Declaration as a collective body, and why Thomas Jefferson was deferential about his own signature on the parchment copy
- How the first formal acknowledgment of the independent United States came from a Wolastoqiyik chief named Ambrose Bear
- How Philadelphia’s German printers translated not just the words of the Declaration of Independence, but its meaning too.
What You’ll Discover
- Why the Declaration of Independence was the product of the Second Continental Congress, not Thomas Jefferson alone
- Why Thomas Jefferson left space above his signature
- The Continental Congress’s lack of a communication plan for the Declaration
- John Dickinson’s warning that declaring independence
- How Benjamin Towne became the first newspaper printer to publish the Declaration
- How printers across the new nation set the Declaration’s text however they liked, introducing errors and variations
- Why Mary Katherine Goddard added special type ornaments to highlight the Declaration on the front page of her Baltimore newspaper
- Public readings of the Declaration of Independence
- The choices Anglican ministers faced after independence
- Why the first foreign language translation of the Declaration was German
- How the Wolastoqiyik and Mi’kmaq chiefs received a verbal translation of the Declaration
- Why Congress never sent an official copy of the Declaration to King George III or Parliament
- How British printers in London excerpted and censored the Declaration’s text
Links to People, Places, and Publications
Time Warp Question
What might have happened if the Continental Congress had created a communications committee headed by someone like Benjamin Franklin? How might the dissemination of the Declaration of Independence have been different?
Complementary Episodes
🎧 Episode 018: Our Declaration
🎧 Episode 119: The Heart of the Declaration
🎧 Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
🎧 Episode 388: John Hancock
🎧 Episode 415: The Fourth of July
🎧 Episode 431: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense at 250
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Sponsors
This episode is sponsored by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the first historical society founded in the United States in 1791. Emily’s book draws directly on the MHS’s collections, including the Adams Family correspondence, Polly Palmer’s letter of August 4, 1776, Isaac Bang’s diary, and Hartford Doors’s annotated newspaper printing of the Declaration.
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