Date of Signing of the United States Declaration of Independence

Signing of the United States Declaration of Independence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Date of signing[edit]

The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, by Armand-Dumaresq, (c. 1873) which has been hanging in the White House since the late 1980s.

The date that the Declaration was signed has long been the subject of debate. 

Within a decade after the event, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams all wrote that the Declaration had been signed by Congress on July 4, 1776.^[1] 

This seemed to be confirmed by the signed copy of the Declaration, which is dated July 4. 

Additional support was provided by the Journals of Congress, the official public record of the Continental Congress. 

When the proceedings for 1776 were first published in 1777, the entry for July 4, 1776, stated that the Declaration was engrossed (the official copy was handwritten) and signed on that date.^[2]

In 1796, signer Thomas McKean disputed that the Declaration had been signed on July 4, pointing out that some signers were not then present, including several who were not even elected to Congress until after that date.^[3] 

"[N]o person signed it on that day nor for many days after", he later wrote.^[4] 

Although Jefferson and Adams disagreed with McKean, his claim gained support when the Secret Journals of Congress were published in 1821.^[5] 

The Secret Journals contained two previously unpublished entries about the Declaration. The entry for July 19 reads:

Resolved That the Declaration passed on the 4th be fairly engrossed on parchment with the title and stile of "The unanimous declaration of the thirteen united states of America" & that the same when engrossed be signed by every member of Congress.^[6]

The entry for August 2 stated:

The declaration of Independence being engrossed & compared at the table was signed by the Members.^[7]

The Syng inkstand was used during the signing of the Declaration

In 1884, historian Mellen Chamberlain argued that these entries indicated that the famous signed version of the Declaration had been created following the July 19 resolution, and had not been signed by Congress until August 2.^[8] 

Historian John Hazelton confirmed in 1906 that many of the signers had not been present in Congress on July 4, that the fifty-six signers had never been together as a group, and that some delegates must have added their signatures even after August 2.^[9] 

While it is possible that Congress signed a document on July 4 that has since been lost, historians do not think that this is likely.^[10]..."

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