In 1876, to honor the nation’s Centennial, the parchment Declaration of Independence traveled from Washington to its hometown of Philadelphia for a six-month visit. Since then, the badly faded document has never left the capital, except for a trip to a secure vault at Fort Knox after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
For this year’s 250th anniversary of American independence, the Declaration will continue to receive throngs of admirers at its grand permanent home at the National Archives. But starting in March, some of its closest friends will be hitting the road, 21st-century style.
The National Archives and Records Administration on Tuesday is announcing plans for a special Freedom Plane, which will carry six other precious 18th-century documents to eight cities across the United States.
The documents trace the arc of the Founding Era, from the pre-1776 resistance to British rule to the writing of the Constitution in 1787. They will be on view in museums in eight cities, mostly outside the 13 original colonies.
The project will be unveiled at the National Archives building on the National Mall in Washington, near the grand rotunda where the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights are kept in hermetically sealed, bulletproof cases that are lowered into secure vaults every night.
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The idea is to take representatives of the Charters of Freedom — as the three documents are collectively known — to those who can’t make it to Washington.
The traveling exhibition, titled “Documents That Forged a Nation,” is loosely inspired by the American Freedom Train, which crisscrossed the United States for 15 months to celebrate the Bicentennial of 1976.
The train went to 138 cities and drew an estimated seven million visitors, who climbed aboard to see more than 500 artifacts spanning 200 years of American history, from Jefferson’s handwritten draft of the Declaration to Judy Garland’s dress from “The Wizard of Oz,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s pulpit and a moon rock collected by the Apollo mission.
The brainchild of a New York commodities trader and sometime steam engineer, the train became a cultural phenomenon, drawing celebrity visitors and inspiring tributes like the Dorothy Parton and Porter Wagoner song “Here Comes the Freedom Train.”
After the 25,000-plus- mile tour wrapped up, part of the train was sold to the National Museums of Canada, which created its own rolling national exhibition. (The only surviving locomotive with its original paint job is currently on view at the B & O Museum in Baltimore.)
Jessie Kratz, a longtime National Archives employee who curated the Freedom Plane, said that plans for the project began taking shape last April, in partnership with the National Archives Foundation, a private nonprofit group that supports the archives.
Six documents and one airplane — a specially painted Boeing 737 — might seem simple. “But this is probably one of the most complicated things I’ve worked on,” Kratz said.
One challenge: finding important documents that were not already slated to be on view at the National Archives or on loan to other institutions, as part of the crush of exhibitions planned for the Semiquincentennial.
Another: lining up museum partners that met geographic, security, conservation and other logistical requirements, including having free admission. (Visitors will not be able to board the plane itself.)
The first stop is the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., where the documents will be on view from March 6 to March 22. The last, from July 30 to Aug. 16, is the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle. The other cities on the tour are Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Miami, and Dearborn, Mich.
Representing the Declaration will be a rare original printing off the so-called Stone engraving, a copperplate facsimile created in 1823, when the parchment signed in 1776 had become badly faded. (The copperplate itself is on view at the National Archives as part of its recently opened $40 million permanent exhibition, “The American Story.”)
The earliest document is the Articles of Association, adopted in 1774 by the First Continental Congress, which urged colonists to boycott British goods — the congress’s “first major unified act of resistance against Britain,” according to the archives.
Next in the chronology, after the Declaration, are the 1778 oaths of allegiance to the Continental Army signed by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr at Valley Forge, Pa. There is also the 1783 Treaty of Paris, signed by John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and the British negotiator, David Hartley, which formally ended the war of independence and recognized the United States as a sovereign nation.
The Constitution is represented by two documents: a draft copy printed during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, with a delegate’s handwritten notes, and a tally of the votes approving the document.
The Freedom Plane focuses on the Founding era. But in Washington, the archives will also be extending the timeline of American freedom.
This spring, it will add two new documents to the Rotunda, near the Charters of Freedom: the Emancipation Proclamation and the 19th Amendment.
Jennifer Schuessler is a reporter for the Culture section of The Times who covers intellectual life and the world of ideas.
The post Now Boarding the Freedom Plane: Precious Founding-Era Documents appeared first on New York Times.
