The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America

Opening of the book

THE DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
Introduction
Written by Michael S. Hart for the official rerelease:
This file was never copyrighted, Sharewared, etc.,
and is thus for all to use and copy in any manner
they choose. Please feel free to make your own
edition using this as a base.
In my research for creating this transcription of
our
first
Etext,
I
have
come
across
enough
discrepancies
[even
within
that
official
documentation provided by the United States] to
conclude that even "facsimiles" of the Declaration
of Independence are nary identical to the original,
nor of other "facsimiles." There is a plethora of
variations in capitalizations, punctuation, and
where names appear on the documents [which names I
have left out].
The resulting document has several misspellings
removed from those parchment "facsimiles" I used
back in 1971, and which I should not be able to
easily find at this time, including "Brittain."

[JT, Apr 2005: "Brittish" is spelled as in the
original.]
[RO, Aug 2025: MH's original justified text widths
are
restored
as
closely
as
possible
in
the
introduction. Minor text alterations were made to do
so.]
Transcribers’ Notes
This HTML rendition of the original etext #1 was
first produced on August 4, 2018, updated August 28,
2025. The styling used simulates the look of the
original etext, as presented on computers and
terminal displays of the era.
A table of contents and images of Thomas Jefferson's
hand-drafted copy of The Declaration of Independence
have been added to this HTML presentation.
THE
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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