How History Unfolds on Paper: Important Americana from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part X

Journals of Congress. Containing the Proceedings In the Year, 1776
Philadelphia: Printed and Sold by R. Aitken, 1777. Volume II. First edition, first issue. 8vo. (ii), 513, (22) pp. Full contemporary mottled calf, red morocco spine label, stamped in gilt, joints worn, spine and boards dry and scuffed; edges stained red; marbled endpapers; uneven toning at rear. Evans 15684; ESTC W20602; Hildeburn 3577; Reese, The Revolutionary Hundred 48

This is the earliest obtainable printing of the Declaration (pp. 241-246) to print the Signers' names, as the January 1777 broadside by Mary Goddard (the first to print the Signers' names) survives in only nine known copies.

On September 26, 1776 Congress authorized Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken to produce a uniform series of the Congress's journals. For the first volume of that series Aitken reprinted and combined the 1774 and 1775 Journals that covered the First Continental Congress. For the present, second volume in that series, he reprinted his so-called "Cartridge Paper" edition, the monthly issues printed for members of the Second Continental Congress that covered January-May 1776. The second half of this volume was the first publication of Congress's journals from June to December of that year. It was completed by him in the spring or summer of 1777. According to Aitken's account book, 532 copies of the first edition were printed. An unclear amount of these copies, along with Aitken's own press, suffered the plunder of the invading British Army in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1777. Some sheets did find their way to York, Pennsylvania, then the seat of the American government. By Aitken's own recollection, according to Hildeburn, "I printed 800 copies of the second volumes, 60 were carried to Lancaster, and committed to the care of Mr. Dunlap. I find of the 760 other copies only 682 were delivered. I allow 218 copies as they have been lost or embessled.''

In May 1778, Congress appointed John Dunlap, printer of the first printed version of the Declaration of Independence, as its new official printer. Using the recovered Aitken sheets (pp. 1-424), he reprinted the remainder of the volume (coming out to a slightly different pagination from Aitken's version), and added a new title-page, under his imprint at York, and with a notice on the verso noting his appointment as printer to Congress. That is considered the second issue of the present work, and it presumably came out between his appointment on May 2 and the return of Congress to Philadelphia in July 1778.

The present first issue is decidedly more rare than the Dunlap second issue, and is one of the rarest of all editions published in the series. According to RBH, we can find only about five other copies in the past ten years at auction (some included as volumes in complete sets of the Journals).