1898.] HAYS — DRAUGHT OF DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 99 



This original draught of the declaration is framed between strong 

 glass Plates so as to be perfectly viewed and examined by those 

 who feel an interest in it. The other Original sent to Congress, 

 cannot be found. The form of Declaration finally adopted, & 

 signed by the Members of Congress exists at Washington in the 

 Department of State, but the originally proposed form has not been 

 found, from which circumstance the Document in possession of the 

 Society has with propriety become the sole original Draught. 



France having largely contributed to the obtaining this Inde- 

 pendence, the undersigned (in whose charge this document now is) 

 has been led to think that a correct account of it, and the mode by 

 which it was obtained, would be received with some interest by his 

 Royal Highness the Prince de Joinville, who has now an oppor- 

 tunity of examining it. Under this impression this account has been 

 drawn up by 



Jn. Vaughan (aged 85) 

 Librarian of the Am. Phil. Society. 



A letter identical with that to the Prince de Joinville, but with 

 the last paragraph omitted, was also sent by Mr. Vaughan to Mr. J. 

 K. Tefft, of Savannah, on October 5, 1841, and is now preserved in 

 the Emmet collection in the Lenox Library in New York,^ and 

 previously, on March 27, 1841, he sent a letter of similar purport 

 to Mr. George Combe, of Edinburgh,'- in which he answers the 

 charge of the Edinburgh Review (No. 141, p. 134, 1839) that he 

 had hoaxed Captain Marryatt. 



Captain Marryatt, in his Diary in America, page 43, Vol. iii, 

 says, ''Mr. Vaughan stated to me that he had ioww^ \ki& original 

 draft of the Declaration of Independence in the handwriting of 

 Mr. Jefferson," and the Edi?tburgh Review, commenting thereon, 

 states that if Captain Marryatt 'Miad ever read that very interest- 

 ing book {Memoirs of Jefferson, Vol. i, p. 17) he would have been 

 aware how grossly a Mr. Vaughan, of Philadelphia, was hoaxing 

 him when he talked of having discovered the original draught of 

 the Declaratioii of Independence." Mr. Combe in his Notes on the 

 United States (p. 330) says that ''on my second visit to Philadel- 

 phia, in March, 1840, Mr. Vaughan enabled me to peruse original 



1 For a copy of this letter I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Wilberforce 

 Eames, Librarian of the Lenox Library. 



2 Copy in the Society's collection of MSS. 



