Jennifer Schuessler, An Unknown Declaration; Scholars say the parchment copy offered clues the debate over the Constitution. New York Times, Apr 22, 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/ ... atching-ensues.html
Quote:
"its [the Sussex copy's] subtle details, the scholars argue, illuminate an enduring puzzle at the heart of American politics: Was the country founded by a unitary national people, or by a collection of states?
"It remains to be seen what scholars will make of the discovery, which will be announced on Friday [Apr 21, 2017; see (1) above] at a conference at Yale. A paper, posted online, runs through a wealth of textual and material evidence supporting the claim that the document, while found in Britain, was created in America in the 1780s. Ms Allen and Ms [project manager Emily] Sneff's conference presentation will focus on their leading candidate for person behind it: James Wilson, a Pennsylvania lawyer and one of the strongest nationalists at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, who probably commissioned the parchment
"The new discovery grew out of the Declaration Resources Project, which [Professor Danielle] Allen * * * created in 2015 * * * July 4, 1776, when Congress commissioned a broadside from the Philadelphia printer John Dunlap, and 1800. (The parchment 'original' at the National Archives was in fact signed in early August 1776, nearly a month after independence.)
"Soon after the [project] effort started, Ms Sneff, the project manager, noticed an entry in an online catalog of British archives listing a parchment copy of the Declaration held by the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester, England, but providing no date or other detail. * * * (The document, deposited in West Sussex in 1956, had come from a law firm connected with the dukes of Richmond.)
"The parchment — the only known iteration of the Declaration oriented horizontally [that is, the height is shorter than width; an image of the Essex is seen at the top of the online, but not print, version of this NYT report]
"it [the Essex copy] deviated from that [original] parchment — along with every known 18th-century version of the Declaration — in one striking respect: the ordering of the 56 signatures. All known 18th-century iterations, Ms. Allen said, show the signatures grouped by state, with some printers even adding state labels. But here they were all jumbled.
"There are other riddles to be unwoven, including with just how the document got to England.
Note:
(a) United States Declaration of Independence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un ... ion_of_Independence
(is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776)
(b) physical history of the United States Declaration of Independence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ph ... ion_of_Independence
(section 2 Broadsides [qv; broadside = poster]; section 2.1 Dunlap broadside: printed on the night of July 4, 1776 [which was not signed/ bore no signatures: there was no photocopy then]; section 3 Parchment copies, section 3.1 The Matlack Declaration)
(i) Matlack is a variant of Matlock.
(ii) The English surname Matlock is place name "from Matlock in Derbyshire, named in Old English as 'meeting-place oak,' from mæthel meeting, gathering, council + ac oak"
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press.
(c) 1776 (musical)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776_(musical)
(premiered on Broadway in 1969)
(d) "That random order [of signatures on the Essex copy], Ms Allen and Ms Sneff argue, was meant to send a political message: The signers pledged 'to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,' as the last line [of Declaration of Independence]puts it, as individuals, not as representatives of states.
(e) The Project website says, "Material evidence dates the parchment manuscript to the late 18th century [circa 1780s]" -- not carbon dating.
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发表于 4-22-2017 12:32:06
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