Sun, smoke and a mysterious handprint
The people entrusted to take care of the Declaration had two duties that were often in conflict: preserving it and making it accessible to the Americans who owned it. Many of their well-intentioned efforts only rendered it more delicate.
By 1820, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams was so alarmed by the document’s physical decline that he commissioned master engraver William J. Stone to make an exact copy. But the process of producing the facsimile — creating a copperplate through a “wet sheet transfer” from the parchment — lifted much of the original ink.
Fewer than 50 of Stone’s roughly 200 copies are known to exist; billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein has bought nine, according to his spokesman. In an interview, Rubenstein said he acquired the most recent from a descendant of James Madison, its original owner.
“They degraded it purposely to make these replica copies, and so that’s why it’s so degraded now,” Rubenstein said.
Then came two more enemies: sunlight and carelessness. The Declaration spent 35 years in the mid-1800s on a south-facing wall of the Old Patent Building (which now houses two Smithsonian art museums), absorbing the sun’s rays and exposed to fluctuations of temperature and humidity. It was then moved to the State Department library, where it was subjected to diplomats’ second-hand cigar and cigarette smoke and an open fireplace, for 17 years.
The mysterious handprint and other finger marks appeared some time between 1912 and 1924, a span when the document was transferred from the State Department to the Library of Congress, said National Archives historian Jessie Kratz.
Kratz hopes to crack the century-old cold case, with help from the FBI’s historic fingerprint database.
“In the forties, they had a million fingers already,” Kratz said. “So I would like to get imaging to the FBI, to try to see if they can do the fingerprint — just to find out whose it is. Because we blame the State Department. We blame the Library of Congress. Who was it?”
But she acknowledged that, unless the archives can figure out a way to produce a clearer image of the print, it may not be possible to track down the culprit.
The Declaration demands all this attention because it is more than a mere relic. “It’s a time machine that brings us back to that moment when the world was going to be new, and when all of our best hopes were possible, and signed by the men who brought this country into being,” said historian Michael Auslin, author of a new, deeply researched book titled “National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America.”
Rubenstein, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, has made copies of his replicas, framed them and sent them to the owners of every major league baseball and basketball team. He plans to do so with National Football League owners as well, in hopes the Declaration will go on display in stadiums across the country.
“What I’m trying to do is explain why the document is so important,” he said. “Any civilization should know about its past if it’s going to avoid some of the mistakes of the past and do better things in the future.”