A fac-simile of the engrossed document as signed is given in The Declaration of Independence (Boston, 1876), and others are in Force's Amer. Archives, 5th ser., i. 1595; and one was published in N. Y. in 1865. The earliest fac-simile is one engraved on copper by Peter Maverick, of which there are copies on vellum, as well as on paper. It is called Declaration of Independence, copied from the Original in the Department of State and published, by Benjamin Owen Tyler, Professor of Penmanship. The publisher designed and executed the ornamental writing and has been particular to copy the Facsimilies exact, and has also observed the same punctuation, and copied every Capital as in the original (Washington, 1818).
Note.—The cut on this page is a reduction of a broadside issued in Boston, of which there is a copy in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society, where there are copies of similar broadsides issued in Philadelphia and Salem. The fac-simile given in Gay's Pop. Hist. U. S. (iii. 483) is of the Boston broadside without the imprint at the bottom of the sheet. The first impression made for Congress was printed at Philadelphia by John Dunlap, and the copy sent to Washington is in the library of the State Department. It was also later printed in broadside at "Baltimore in Maryland, by Mary Katharine Goddard", and those of the copies which I have seen, as attested by Hancock and Thomson in their own hands, in addition to the printed signatures, and sent to the several States by order of Congress, Jan. 18, 1777, are of this Baltimore imprint. Such a copy is in the Mass. Archives, cxlii. 23, together with the letter of Hancock transmitting it to that State. There is another copy, similarly attested, in the Boston Public Library; and a reduced fac-simile of such a copy, with its attestations, is given in the Orderly-book of Sir John Johnson (p. 220). It was generally, I think, inscribed on the records of the several States, and I have seen it in the records of the towns in New England. (Cf. N. H. State Papers, viii. 200.) It is copied as it appeared in the Penna. Journal, July 10th, in Moore's Diary of the Rev., i. 262; and in England it was reprinted in Almon's Remembrancer, iii. 258; Annual Register, 1776, p. 261; and in the Gentleman's Mag., Aug., 1776.
The earliest authorized reprint in any collection appeared at Philadelphia in 1781, in The Constitutions of the several States of America; The Declaration of Independence; The Articles of Confederation; The Treaties between his most Christian Majesty and the United States of America. Published by order of Congress (Sabin, iv. 16,086, who says 200 copies were printed, and who gives various other early editions). The Rev. William Jackson edited at London, in 1783, The constitutions of the independent states of America; the declaration of independence; and the articles of confederation. Added, the declaration of rights, non-importation agreement, and petition of Congress to the King. With appendix, containing treaties. It can be found in Bancroft, viii. 467; H. W. Preston's Documents illustrating American History; Sherman's Governmental Hist. U. S., p. 615; Frothingham's Rise of the Republic, p. 539; and in very many other collections and places.
