Washington's Personal
Copy of the Declaration
of Independence

The Declaration of Independence
[Philadelphia: John Dunlap, July 4, 1776]
Broadside
Manuscript Division

This is the only surviving fragment of the broadside of the Declaration of Independence printed by John Dunlap and sent on July 6, 1776, to George Washington by John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. General Washington had this Declaration read to his assembled troops on July 9 in New York, where they awaited the combined British fleet and army. Later that night, American troops destroyed a bronze-lead statue of Great Britain's King George III that stood at the foot of Broadway on the Bowling Green. The statue was later molded into bullets for the American Army.