It’s common for Americans on July 4 th to read and discuss the Declaration of Independence, and to reflect on its principles and ideas. Those principles and ideas are often attributed solely—though ...

In January 1777, Baltimore printer Mary Katharine Goddard published the first copies of the Declaration of Independence that included the signers’ names. By then, the document was already old news.

“The Declaration’s Journey” opens with a dramatic juxtaposition: A Windsor chair owned by Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, faces the small, rusting steel bench on ...