Posted on 07/04/2013 9:55:12 PM PDT by Jeff Winston
I was wondering what the newspaper coverage was when the Declaration of Independence was signed. They DID have newspapers in those days!
I think the initial reaction was simply to print the Declaration in its entirety. The first newspaper to do so seems to have been the Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, which printed the Declaration (in German translation) the next day, July 5, 1776.
Below is an image of that printing.
I would be interested to see other early coverage of the fact that Independence had been declared.
The Declaration of Independence was printed during the late afternoon on Thursday, July 4, by John Dunlap, a local Philadelphia printer.
Congress ordered that copies be sent “to the several Assemblies, Conventions, and Committees or Councils of Safety, and to the several Commanding officers of the Continental Troops, that it be proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the Army.”
By the next morning copies were on their way to all thirteen states by horseback and on July 5 the German Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, published by Heinrich Miller, became the new nations’s first newspaper to announce that the Declaration had been adopted .
On Saturday, July 6, the first newspaper print edition of the full text of the Declaration appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Post.
On Monday, July 8, the Declaration of Independence was “proclaimed” (read aloud) by Col. John Nixon of the Philadelphia Committee of Safety at the State House in Philadelphia. It was also read again that evening before the militia on the Commons. Throughout the city, bells were rung all day.
On that day as well the Declaration was publicly read in Easton, Pennsylvania, and Trenton, New Jersey.
It was these first public readings which constituted America’s first celebrations of the Fourth of July. Typically in towns and cities across the nation accompanying the oral declarations were loud shouts, huzzas, firings of muskets, and the tearing down of the British emblems.
In Baltimore, for example, on July 29, the town was illuminated and “the Effigy of our late King was carted through the town and committed to the flames amidst the acclamations of many hundreds. The just reward of a Tyrant.”
Wow. I grew up on the Pennsy side across from Trenton and now am in NC where last week saw an historical marker for one G Washington’s campaigns. Haven’t been able to go back and drive slower to photograph it, but I will!
BTW, the first commercial halftone printed photo was on December 2, 1873, about 100 years later.
In 1776, it would have been an etching.
Freegards,
Pb
Man, that stylistic “f for lower-case s” thing makes for hard reading.
How would you print “It sucks...”?
Just remember, while the War of Independence started in the North, it was won in the South, particularly in North Carolina.
The three battles that turned the tide of the war, King’s Mountain, Cowpens, and Guilford Courthouse were all fought within hours of Charlotte.
PING!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.