12 HAYS—DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, {Jan, 19, 
o’Clock, on Monday, to proceed to the State House, where the 
Declaration of Independence is to be proclaimed.”’ 
As is well known, the Declaration was read and proclaimed 
on the 8th by John Nixon, on behalf of William Dewees, the 
Sheriff of Philadelphia, from the platform of the observatory in the 
State House Square which had been erected by the American Philo- 
sophical Society to observe the transit of Venus in June, 1769. 
The printed copy from which it was read, and, presumably, the 
copy enclosed to the Council of Safety by the President of the Con- 
gress, was carefully preserved by Mr, Nixon and is now in the posses- 
sion of his descendant, Mrs, Charles C, Harrison, of Philadelphia. 
A copy of the Declaration was likewise transmitted to General 
Washington, and we find that on July 9 he sent orders from New 
York to General Ward to ‘‘ cause this Declaration to be immedi- 
ately proclaimed at the head of the Continental Regiments in the 
Massachusetts Bay’’ (dm. Archives, 5th Series, Vol. i, p. 142) and 
on the eleventh he wrote to General Schuyler that in obedience to the 
order of Congress the enclosed Declaration ‘‘ must be proclaimed 
throughout the Northern Army”? (2éz¢., p. 194). 
Among the ‘Washington Papers’’ in the Department of State 
there is a broadside copy, which Mr, Andrew H, Allen, Chief of 
the Bureau of Rolls and Library, informs me, is believed to be the 
copy sent by the President of the Congress to General Washington 
to be read at the head of the Army. 
The Washington and Nixon copies are of the same edition as that 
wafered in the rough journal of the Congress, 
There has recently been found among the unarranged papers of 
this Society a large and handsome broadside of the Declaration 
printed on vellum by John Dunlap, whose printing office was in 
Philadelphia and who was the official printer to the Congress, and 
to the Council of Safety of the Province of Pennsylvania, This 
edition appears to be unknown to the bibliographers of the Declara- 
tion, and I have been unable to learn of a copy being in any of the 
principal collections in the country. I am informed by Mr, 
Andrew Allen that it is not to be found in the Bureau of Rolls and 
Library of the Department of State at Washington, 
The following is a line for line transcript of the head lines of this 
which appears to be the second edition of the Declaration ; 
