 By way of introduction, allow me to take a moment to present my credentials. Timothy Matlak, merchant, brewer, clerk of the Second Continental Congress, storekeeper of military supplies, member of the Philadelphia Committee of Inspection, secretary of the Committee of Officers of the City's Militia Battalions, secretary to Congress's Marine Committee, commissary and clerk-in-chief of the Committee of Claims, Colonel of the Fifth Battalion of Rifle Rangers, delegate to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, secretary to the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, trustee of the New University of the State of Pennsylvania, secretary of the American Philosophical Society, co-founder of the Religious Society of Free Quakers, architect of the Free Quaker Meeting House, and the Anthony Morris Mansion, the Highlands. Surveyor of the Headwaters of the Susquehanna River, scribe of the Olive Branch Petition, George Washington's Commission as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, and the Declaration of Independence. Now, if you've heard my name at all, it's probably in connection with this document here. Now, of course, Thomas Jefferson wrote all the words to the Declaration of Independence. In fact, he wrote a lot more words than actually made it into the Declaration. It seems that some of his ideas were considered too radical by Congress in those times, and they decided that it was bad enough they were demanding their independence from Great Britain, but they didn't want to say anything that was going to make the King really mad at them. So, by the time they got done nitpicking Tom's Declaration, it looked like this. Now, you can't hold up something like this as the birth certificate of a new nation. Official documents should look really official. Now, every government office had a clerk or two whose sole job was to take the rough copies of all the declarations and proclamations and new laws and make them bigger, more impressive, and official. Why, any young fella who wanted to get a nice job out of the hot sun could take a few lessons in penmanship and find a nice career as a scribe or an engrosser or a scrivener or an engraver or whatever you wanted to call him, and you didn't have to have a university education. I never had one. I was born in Haddonfield, New Jersey. My parents were good friends. That is to say, they were members of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. When I was eight years old, we moved to Philadelphia, the Quaker City. We rented a nice old house right next door to a very clever fellow named Benjamin Franklin. My father started the first of several unsuccessful businesses, and I went to the Quaker School where I excelled at, can you guess, penmanship. When I was thirteen, I was apprenticed to a prosperous Quaker merchant to learn the mercantile business. Now, if your family wasn't rich, then they couldn't afford to send you to England to go to a university. You had to learn a trade to support yourself. Now, you had plenty to choose from. In those days, every single thing that was picked up, put down, put on, taken off, given to or taken from, anything like that had to be made by somebody with their own two hands. So, there were lots of opportunities for you. Did you ever wonder why there are so many people named Smith? Well, there was the black Smith, the white Smith, the gold Smith, the silver Smith, the copper Smith, the Cooper Smith, the tin Smith, the lock Smith, the gun Smith, who made the gun lock, stock and barrel, and a horn Smith who made very clever things out of cow's horns. Don't want to be a Smith? You have rights. The real right made the wheels that went on the cart made by the cart right. The cart took your goods down to the boat made by the boat right. The boat rode out to the ship made by the ship right, and then you sailed off down the river waving goodbye to your wife in the house made by the house right. Don't care for that? That's all right. There's a whole laundry list of other opportunities and I have it right here somewhere. How about Tinker, Taylor, Cooper, Sawyer, Joiner, Miller, Tanner, Courier, Fuller, Weaver, Chandler. They make candles. Barber, Baker, Hatter, Cutler. They make knives. Shoemaker or Cobbler. Cobbler repaired the shoes. Or maybe Potter or a printer. Well, choose wisely because you're going to spend the next seven years learning that trade. I spent my seven years learning how to run a business, mostly writing letters and orders and keeping the store records, which was very good practice for my penmanship. When my father's brewery business failed, so did his health. He died when I was only 16. And then we all had to pitch in to help support our mother. I was hired by Benjamin Franklin to copy a very massive petition to the king all about the treaties that the Penn family had made with the native tribes. It would not be the last message I would write to the king. In time, I married and started my own business, or I guess I should say businesses. I had no more luck at business than my father had. But I did get very involved in politics. Things were heating up on the political front. Everybody was dissatisfied with the way that England was treating the colonies. So I began to go to town meetings and serve on committees and take part in other duties. And until finally, in 1774, I was called upon to engross what Congress is calling the Olive Branch Petition, a sort of peace offering to the king. They wanted it done in a fine dignified manner. And Charles Thompson, secretary of Congress, remembered the work I had done for Ben Franklin, so I got the job. The Olive Branch Petition looks like this. Very impressive, huh? I'm sure the king would have been impressed too if he'd bothered to read it, but he didn't bother to read it. And things just got worse. I was given the job of writing a commission naming George Washington the commander-in-chief of the new continental army. By that time, I was the official clerk of Congress. Now, George Washington is a very impressive fellow. But no matter how impressive you are, you can't just walk into the continental army and announce that Congress has sent you to take over. You've got to have a very impressive paper to prove it. So I wrote this. Very impressive, huh? Signed by John Hancock himself. Everybody knew who he was. Well, while George Washington was keeping the British army busy up into England, the Continental Congress was keeping itself busy arguing with itself about what to do about England. What is our situation? Should we stay or should we go? My good friend Thomas Paine wrote a little pamphlet he called Common Sense to encourage them. It was about 40 pages long, and he had it printed, so I didn't have to write it up. Pretty soon, everybody was talking about it, and Congress listened. And so, on the 4th of July of 1776, the Continental Congress approved of the Declaration of Independence. And Tom Jefferson wrote a nice, clean copy to take to the print shop so they could print up nice print copies. Perfectly serviceable. They were sent out all over the countryside so that people could read them or have them read to them and approve or disapprove. We were committed now. What we had to do was officially sign the Declaration of Independence. There was only one small problem. The clean copy that Thomas Jefferson had provided for the printer never came back. It's never been heard from since. I suspect the apprentice took it home for a souvenir, perhaps. Anyway, Congress needed something impressive looking to sign when Congress came back into session. So, on the 19th of July 1776, it was decreed that a fine copy be engrossed on parchment paper. So I had a big job to do. Fortunately, we had these printed copies to go by. When you are using typeface to write a document, you can get a lot more words on the paper than if you were writing it out by hand. This paper is 19 by 14 inches or so, but a handwritten copy is going to be much bigger. This official copy is 29 and three-quarter inches by 24 and one-quarter inches. Well, there was going to be a lot of calculating to do. First of all, you needed to understand exactly how you wanted the text to appear. Figure out how to put the sentences all even on one side and keep the paragraphs from looking all choppy on the other side. And you needed to count all the words. There are 1,337 words. You had to scribe very fine pencil lines on the paper all the way down so that the sentences would be even and level. You need to figure out how big the text was going to be on the paper so there would be room at the bottom for the signatures and room at the top for the title. You might want to write up a couple of practice copies just to see how it's going to look that everything will look neat and balanced on either side. Very impressive, you see. Well, when you're satisfied that you had everything ready, you went to work slowly, carefully, concentrate. A quill pen will hold enough ink to write four or five, maybe six words and dip it back in the ink again so there's no hurry. You might make a mistake now and then, but that's all right, just let the ink dry and then you can shave it right off with a very sharp blade. That's possible on parchment paper. Well, then once you're satisfied with the finished product, all I had to do was inform Charles Thompson, Secretary of Congress, who informed John Hancock, President of Congress, who chose August the 2nd, 1776, as the date to sign the official copy of the Declaration of Independence. Job done. Well, of course as they say, the rest is history. The Declaration of Independence has been admired and displayed all over the world. I might be so bold as to say that it is actually a work of art as such. It has been examined and questioned and queried by experts and students alike. I'm constantly getting questions about it. Some more came in today and I'm glad to share them with you. Question. Why are the words of the 13 United so small compared to the rest of the title? Well, if you look at the July 4th print copy, you'll see that it doesn't say the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America. That's because New York's delegation didn't vote until July 9th. So they couldn't say unanimous. But once they voted, well, you had to change the title. You wanted to reflect the fact that it was a unanimous declaration and highlight the idea that we were now states instead of colonies. Also, using a smaller set of words there allowed me to put the title on in only two sentences instead of five like the printed copy. And you remember I had to leave room at the bottom for the signatures, especially John Hancock's. Huh. Why did you put in all those dashes? Yes, the dashes throughout the text indicate where a new paragraph would be in the old paragraph left off. If you look at a normal document, paragraphs generally start on the left-hand side of the text and are indented. Now, as I said, that would make the declaration look all choppy. So I only did that twice. The very first line is indented, and the six lines from the bottom, it's indented at the beginning of the concluding paragraph. Why do so many words have Fs in them? It sounds funny when you read them. Well, those letters are not Fs at all. They're actually Ss, the old-fashioned long S that dates all the way back to ancient Roman times. If you examine the declaration, you'll notice that those Fs only appear where there are two Ss in a word and never at the end of a word. They stick out like sore thumbs all over the printed copy. Eventually, printers got tired of getting those long Ss mixed up with the actual Fs in their type trays, so they simply stopped using them. Ah, question. Were there any mistakes on the copy that you missed? Yes, as a matter of fact, there were three mistakes that I missed. When the document was examined by Congress on the 2nd of August, they noticed that there were three mistakes. 16 lines down, the word representative had the E N left out of it, and we had to put that back in. 11 lines from the bottom, the word only was left out of one of the sentences, and that had to be put back in to make sense. Directly under that, the word British was spelled with two T's. But in those days, spelling was a matter of opinion, so we just left it there. You've got to give me credit. Only three mistakes out of 1,337 words isn't so bad. Question. Is there a secret map on the back of the Declaration of Independence? In a word, no. That is just an adventure story. Totally fiction. People like adventure stories, and the more improbable they are, the more they seem to like them. But no. The Declaration of Independence is a national treasure all by itself. I'm glad you like it. Well, for the Second Continental Congress, I'm Timothy Matlak.