American Visions, 1776-2026
Reflections on the 250th Anniversary
of the U.S. Declaration of Independence
Commentary by Ed Voves
Original Photography by Anne Lloyd and Ed Voves
The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States is at hand. Or to give the occasion its full, official title, the Semiquincentennial.
In the mind of most Americans, Independence Day - July 4th - is America's birthday. Other dates figure prominently in the story of the Declaration of Independence. I will have a few comments on these events later in this essay.
What Semiquincentennial really means is a lot of candles on the U.S.A.'s birthday cake!!
I wish to extend to America - and to my fellow Americans - many "regards of the day." By way of a present, I have made a small selection of works of art which I believe can be cherished by all on this 250th anniversary of the birth of modern democracy in 1776.
What kind of works of art or actual examples should I place in my gift box for the Semiquincentennial?
Traditionally, a patriotic painting like Emmanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware would have an honored place inside. I highly esteem this iconic work. So, it would seem, do a lot of art fans visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have never seen the gallery featuring Washington Crossing the Delaware without enthusiastic admirers gathered around it.
Ed Voves, Photo (2022)
A gallery view of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing
Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1850
Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, however, is as much a European work of art as an American one. Leutze (1816-68) was born in Germany, came to the U.S. as a child and then returned to Europe for a number of years. An ardent believer in democracy, Leutze painted this stirring, if inaccurate, depiction of the American Revolution to show his support for the abortive 1848 Liberal uprisings in Europe.
Mythic history, however impressively handled, is not what I have in mind. Instead, I found my first choice a couple of galleries from where Leutze's mighty narrative is displayed in the American wing of the Met.
By comparison with Washington's patriot band, Jerome B. Thompson's The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain hardly qualify as "pioneer stock." But for insight into the American identity, this genre painting has a great deal to say.
Ed Voves, Photo (2022)
Jerome Thompson's The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain,1858
Thompson specialized in creating depictions of pleasant outdoor occasions, especially those going by the title of "pic nic." Sure enough, these intrepid members of "Young America" have scaled the highest mountain of Vermont, Mount Mansfield, with a wicker basket full of provisions.
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Having made it to the mountain top, the protagonists of Thompson's painting can now look out in the favorite direction of nineteenth century America - to the west. Flowing across this impressive oil on canvas is a thin silvery, gold line, the shimmering waters of Lake Champlain. Beyond, in the far, far distance, is the real frontier. Trouble is brewing there - "Bleeding" Kansas.
Ed Voves, Photo (2022)
Detail of Thompson's The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain,1858
The year is 1858. But these appealing young people need not be concerned - yet.
What I find fascinating about this painting is the time of year in which it is set. It certainly is not late winter or fall - no sign of autumn foliage down below. Nor is it the spring. May and June are the Black Fly months in Vermont when hordes of these pestiferous insects invade the North Woods. By the look of the early evening sky, the Summer Solstice is past, but recently so. The month, according to my observations, is July.
Looking at The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain, I believe these good folks with the picnic basket have scaled Mount Mansfield to celebrate the Fourth of July. There, they can bask in the glory of God's creation, reflect on the freedoms won by America's 1776 Revolution and hope for the best.
The clock, however, is ticking. One of their party holds-up his pocket watch to remind his friends that light is fading and they still have to climb down Mount Mansfield to get home safely. Most likely, Thompson included the detail of the pocket watch as a moral lesson - tempus fugit, time passes.
There is a possibility that Thompson was warning Americans that they were living on borrowed time. The next year, 1859, time ran out and the once-United States began to unravel. John Brown's "raid" on Harpers Ferry was followed a year later by the secession of the Southern states, then Fort Sumter and on and on...
The "belated party" who journeyed to the top of Mount Mansfield were fated to experience the horrors of the American Civil War. When - if - they survived, an invaluable treasure was there to help them rebuild their country and their lives.
This was the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration was a shared, sacred legacy, an article of near-religious faith and a living, active force in achieving the "new birth of freedom" proclaimed by Lincoln at Gettysburg.
For many Americans today, the Declaration of Independence is still "all of the above."
The Declaration of Independence, 1776
The Dunlap Broadside
Divided into two sections, the immortal words of the preamble and the long list of grievances justifying independence from the British Crown, the Declaration may seem to suffer from a "split" personality. The Declaration of Independence is undeniably a masterpiece of political expression. But can it be esteemed as a work of art? Is it an act of creative genius?
Yes to both questions, as I hope to show.
The Declaration of Independence
Comparison of the title and preamble in the Dunlap Broadside (top)
and the William Stone engraving (1823) of the Engrossed Copy
The Declaration of Independence exists in four basic formats:
- The Dunlap Broadside. As soon as the final, edited Declaration of Independence was ratified on the morning of July 4, 1776, the text was taken to the Philadelphia print shop of John Dunlap. There it was typeset into a proclamation or broadside. Next morning, couriers were sent riding to carry 200 printed copies to the state legislatures, to Washington's army and to supporting Patriot organizations. On July 8, the first public reading was held in Philadelphia and, next day, Washington had the text proclaimed to his troops, positioned to defend New York.
- The Engrossed (handwritten) Copy of the Declaration of Independence was commissioned by Charles Thomson, Secretary of the Second Continental Congress on July 19, 1776. The text was transcribed onto parchment with superb penmanship by Timothy Matlack and signed by most members of Congress on August 2, 1776. The Engrossed Copy was not originally intended for public display, the signers' names (except for John Hancock) remaining anonymous.
- The Goddard Broadside is the rarest version of the Declaration of Independence, only nine copies remain. After Washington's victories at Trenton and Princeton, Congress ordered authenticated printed copies of the Declaration with the signers' names included. A woman printer active in the Patriot cause, Mary Katherine Goddard of Baltimore, was tasked with the job. In an act of defiance to British authority, she printed her own name at the bottom.
- The final version of the Declaration of Independence, printed nearly a half century after the events of 1776, is, in its way, the most remarkable. After decades of constant exposure, the Engrossed Copy, penned by Timothy Matlack, was fading away. In 1820, John Quincy Adams, the U.S. Secretary of State, commissioned an engraver, William Stone, to try and make a facsimile. Working quietly for three years, Stone produced a copper plate engraving whose fidelity to the original was astonishing. No one has ever figured out the transfer technique used by Stone to achieve such accuracy.
The Declaration of Independence, 1776
The Engrossed Copy, handwritten by Timothy Matlack
The Declaration of Independence
The William Stone engraving (1823) of the Engrossed Copy
From these brief summaries, it is clear that the Declaration of Independence was never a "one and done" event, signed, sealed and delivered on July 4th. It was a dramatic train of decisions, actions and results, occurring over an extended period. The courier carrying the Dunlap Broadside did not reach Charleston, South Carolina until August 2, 1776. That was the day when most of the delegates of the Continental Congress actually signed the Engrossed Copy of the Declaration in Philadelphia.
The drama of the Declaration of Independence continues to this day. Safeguarding life and liberty require constant vigilance.
Significantly, there are no ironclad guarantees of happiness in the Declaration.
Nor can we evoke or depict the "pursuit of happiness" in a single, July 4th image.
However, after the Civil War, the idea and ideals of happy American childhood took hold. This was the age of Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and the barefoot boys and apple-cheeked girls in Winslow Homer's 1870's paintings.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)
Winslow Homer's Snap the Whip, 1872
Originally, I intended to place Homer's Snap the Whip in my Semiquincentennial gift box. It seemed a fitting choice and a perfect illustration of happiness, however elusive it may be. Instead I chose a picture of another barefoot youngster, a 12-year old girl from Vermont. Taken by Lewis Hine in August 1910, this photo would seem to have nothing to do with happiness.
Lewis Hine, Addie Card, 1910
Lewis Hine, the courageous sociologist who used his photographic skill to document the dangerous conditions related to child labor, took approximately 5,000 such photos. The terse documentation which Hine included with each photo often sounds perfunctory, almost dismissive.
Anaemic little spinner in North Pownal cotton mill. see photo No. 1056. Location Vermont.
Hine initially did not include the girl's name in his notes. He frequently worked in threatening conditions, menaced by angry factory managers and security guards. But an assistant did secure details of her identity: Addie Card, aged 12. She had begun working in the cotton mill at the age of 8, during the summer vacation, and now was employed full-time.
Lewis Hine, Addie Card (detail), 1910
As Hine's photos and reports began to be released - along with those of other like-minded reformers - a remarkable social shift in America occurred. And this is where the "pursuit of happiness" clause made its presence felt, once again.
Young children had worked under brutal conditions since the dawn of time. In the bondage of slavery and serfdom, in the grinding conditions of chimney sweeps and match girls, children had suffered and often died. But in the U.S. there were words proclaiming the right to "pursue" happiness. It was deemed an essential part of life, especially in the lives of children.
Hine's Anaemic little spinner became a revelatory image for the social reform movement in the United States. Hine's photos contributed mightily to the passing by Congress of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
In 1998, the U.S. Postal Service issued a series of commemorative stamps documenting twentieth century America. Hine's photo of the Anaemic little spinner was one of the images used.
Researchers, with much effort, traced Addie Card's life history. She had changed her name to Pat (disliking Adeline) and lived to 1993. "Grandma Pat", her descendants said, was completely unaware of the photo which had so benefited the lives of America's children.
The lives of all Americans changed to an incredible degree from the summer evening when the Belated Party relaxed at the summit of Mount Mansfield to when Addie Card had her photo taken in 1910.
A great urban revolution occurred, eclipsing Thomas Jefferson's vision of America as a nation of self-sufficient farm families. In 1860, less than twenty percent of U.S. citizens lived in cities. By 1910, the figure had more than doubled. Today, the urban population of the U.S. is approximately eighty-three percent.
How can one illustrate such a transformation with a single image? The closest one can come, I think, is Berenice Abbott's photograph, New York at Night, 1932.
Abbott set to work on the shortest day of the year when darkness comes early to Manhattan. She positioned her camera in an upper-floor room of the Empire State Building and set the film exposure for fifteen minutes. That way the lens could adjust to the darkness, enabling Abbott to take the picture before the office lights were turned-off.
For a brief quarter of an hour, the world stood still. Abbott waited and then she recorded the indelible image of New York City, of the modern day American city.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)
Berenice Abbott's New York at Night, 1932
In terms of photographic technique, I don't have much to add. Abbott's genius speaks for itself.
Yet, this photo exerts such magnetic power that I want to keep looking into it. Down and down, further and further, focusing my eyes until I am able to peer into the windows and behold the people therein.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022)
Berenice Abbott's New York at Night (detail), 1932
There is a spiritual essence to this photo, as well. To my eyes, each of those lights represents a human soul, the soul of a citizen of the U.S.A. and a citizen of the Planet Earth.
Each of these souls is "endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Today is July 8, 2026. Two hundred fifty years ago, on July 8, 1776, Col. John Nixon of the Pennsylvania Militia proclaimed the words of the Declaration of Independence for the first time. Nixon spoke to a throng of anxious citizens gathered before the building now called Independence Hall.
It would not be long before the audience listening to the words of the Declaration of Independence would be all of humankind.
William Anders, Earthrise-Apollo 8 - Dec. 24, 1968
May these words continue to be proclaimed and practiced, for as long as the World shall live.
***
Introductory Image. Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Jerome B. Thompson's The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain, 1858. (Detail, full citation below)
Ed Voves, Photo
(2022) Gallery view of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing
Emmanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1850.
Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Jerome B. Thompson's The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain, 1858. Oil on canvas: 38 x 63 1/8 in. (96.5 x 160.3 cm.) Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Declaration of Independence, The Dunlap Broadside. United States. In Congress, July 4, 1776. A declaration by the representatives of the United States of America: in general Congress assembled. Philadelphia: Printed by John Dunlap, 1776. The Morgan Library and Museum. PML 77518
The Declaration of Independence, The Engrossed (handwritten) Copy. Copied by Timothy Matlack. Manuscript on parchment page. Original resource at: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Digital image downloaded from Library of Congress website. Library of Congress control # 2021667571
The Declaration of Independence, The William J. Stone engraving (1823) of the Engrossed Copy. Third printing from the William Stone copperplate engraving of the Declaration of Independence that was carried out by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in 1976. Digital image downloaded from National Archives website. National Archives control # 1656604
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Winslow Homer's Snap the Whip, 1872. Oil on canvas: 12 × 20 in. (30.5 × 50.8 cm) Metropolitan Museum of Art.
U.S. Postal Service. Celebrate the Century: Child Labor Reform - 1910s, 1998. (Image of Addie Card by Lewis W. Hine)
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2022) Berenice Abbott's New York at Night, 1932. Gelatin Silver Print: Image and sheet. 13 3/8 x 10 5/8 in. (34 x 27 cm.) Philadelphia Museum of Art.
William Anders, Earthrise-Apollo 8 - Dec. 24, 1968. Photo ID:68-HC-870. Image credit: NASA.
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