Printed and Manuscript Americana

An Extremely Rare Broadside Printing of the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms--One of Only Three Known Copies of this Providence Imprint and the Only Known Remaining in Private Hands

"The arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties..."

Providence: Printed by John Carter, 1775. Printed broadside, 16 5/8 x 10 3/8 in. (422 x 263 mm). Text in three columns (recto only). Signed and dated in type at bottom by John Hancock as President of the Continental Congress and Charles Thomson as Secretary, Philadelphia, July 6 ,1775. Old docket on verso, "Declaration of Independence". Creasing from old folds, long separations along same; scattered edge wear; scattered light soiling. Alden 627; ESTC W15200; Evans 14548

America takes up arms against Great Britain: One of the most significant documents issued by the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, and a critical and stirring precursor to the Declaration of Independence.

On June 23, 1775, shortly after the opening salvos of the American Revolution at the Battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, the Second Continental Congress formed a committee charged with drafting a declaration on the causes and necessities of taking up arms against the English Crown. It was comprised of five men: John Rutledge, William Livingston, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Thomas Johnson. After some debate, and the creation of a now lost draft by Rutledge which was deemed inadequate, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia were added to help complete the text. Jefferson quickly produced a new draft, which was deemed by some committee members to be too provocative, which Dickinson then revised. The final work, which proved to be more severe than Jefferson's original, was approved by Congress two weeks later, on July 6. It stands as one of the first attempts by Congress to justify to the American people, and to the world, the necessity for armed resistance, and represents the beginning of a trajectory that would ultimately lead to independence the following year.

The document enumerates numerous grievances and provocations at Parliament, including the losses of personal and property rights, including the suspension of trial by jury, the quartering of soldiers, the use of vice admiralty courts, taxation without representation, and the passage of the hated Coercive Acts and Declaratory Act, among others, that led to the taking up of arms. It then exhorts its constituents by asserting the justice of their cause, before closing with a prayer for reconciliation to avoid a civil war. "If it was possible for men who exercise their reason to believe, that the Divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others...the inhabitants of these Colonies might at least require from the Parliament of Great-Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them has been granted to that body....Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable...With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that...the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die Freemen, rather than live Slaves."

First printed in pamphlet form in Philadelphia by William and Thomas Bradford, this Providence printing is one of only four known single sheet editions, the others being: two printed by John Holt in New York (Evans 14545, printed on recto and verso; Evans 14546, printed on recto only), and one printed by Daniel Fowle in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (Evans 14550, printed on recto and verso).

Extremely rare, this is one of only three copies of this Providence printing that is known to survive, and it is the only copy known to still remain in private hands. According to Alden, Shipton & Mooney, and RBH, Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach was in possession of a copy (listed in his catalogue ca. 1948), and which was sold by him in 1951 to the Atwater Kent Museum in Philadelphia. The museum is now the Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel University, in Philadelphia (that copy is apparently mounted, browned, and dampstained). The other copy is in the John Carter Brown Library, at Brown University.

According to RBH, only this very copy of the Providence printing has ever come to auction, selling in these very rooms (Fine Books and Manuscripts, September 14, 2006, Lot 436).

A landmark and highly consequential document in the history of America's independence.