The White House
Washington, D.C.
Richard Nixon
Preface
Nearly two hundred years have passed since America proclaimed her independence. Yet this action and the beliefs and hopes motivating those responsible for it are as central to us as a people today as they were to Abraham Lincoln, whose words still remind us that “... our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal....”
To understand what we have become, we must know what we have been. This volume illuminates the role of those who framed the Declaration of Independence and took the bold risk of putting their signatures to it, thus bringing into being a new Nation on a new model of stated principle. It will stimulate our visual memory of the persons and events that cast this Nation upon its course, and I commend it to all who would more fully appreciate that heritage.
Rogers C. B. Morton
Secretary of the Interior
It is my hope that this volume will not only increase popular knowledge of the Declaration of Independence and its signers, but that it will also undergird the efforts of historic preservationists to protect sites and buildings associated with them. Written records alone cannot convey the appreciation and understanding that come from personal acquaintance with historic places. Thus, while we preserve and study the documents of the American Revolution, we must also save and experience what physical evidences remain to illustrate the lives of those who so boldly brought it about. With the assistance of this book, many more Americans may come to know the sites and structures frequented by the signers of the Declaration, to visit them personally, and to appreciate more deeply the importance of their preservation.
Credit for the preparation of this volume is shared widely by persons both in and out of the National Park Service. The historic preservation activities of the Service have particularly benefited from the assistance of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, cosponsor of the National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings. The Survey is authorized by the Historic Sites Act of 1935.