July 4 story: This book is one of 50 snuck out of Philadelphia and hidden in the countryside west of Philadelphia as the British approached.
It contains one of the first official printings (1777) of the Declaration of Independence. It looks different than you might expect. 🧵
Congress ordered the Journals of Congress, including the Declaration, printed for the public, and Robert Aitken started printing the Journals in 1777 as fast as possible.
He got some of them off the press, but knew he was running out of time as the British approached the City:
Ultimately, Aitken ran out of time.
On Sept. 18, 1777, Congress received a letter from Hamilton: “If Congress have not yet left Philadelphia, they ought to do it immediately.”
One of the last orders Congress gave before fleeing was to remove the printing presses from the City:
Congressman James Lovell stayed behind and went to Aitken's shop to load up his press.
Aitken refused though, and, instead, they loaded his copies of leaves of the half-printed Journals onto a wagon and sent them into the countryside to be hidden from the British.
Months later, Washington was dug in at Valley Forge when he received a letter from Lovell telling him about the Journals in hiding and the “Course of Disappointments” attending them.
He asked Washington to send a search party into the countryside to try to find the Journals.
Washington agreed, and nearly a week later wrote back to Lovell telling him--remarkably--that a solder "well acquainted with the ground" had found the Journals and brought them back to Valley Forge.
Washington promised to send them on to York, PA where the Congress was sitting.
They made it to York, and another printer, John Dunlap, took the large sheets of the unfinished Journals, including the Declaration, and finished the printing of the Journals, Declaration and all.
