American Scripture

Maier’s story begins on February 14, 1995, with a detailed description of the National Archives’s conservation efforts to preserve “the nation’s vital documents,” or what they call the “Charters of Freedom.” These include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Conservators and scientists used the latest, most sophisticated technology to assess the documents’ physical condition and to gather data that could reveal previously unknown causes of deterioration. The evaluation’s data gave researchers more questions than answers, particularly concerning physical changes to the Bill of Rights and the role of the glass in the document’s display case. Overall, the results of the evaluation were inconclusive.

Maier then goes back in time to show that the documents—especially the Declaration of Independence—haven’t always been handled with reverence. The Declaration was copied on low-quality parchment in 1776, then traveled several times in harmful conditions between different cities until 1823. Its decay became apparent to viewers that year, so after the Declaration underwent the damaging process printers used to create a facsimile, it was displayed on a wall in the national Patent Office. Through the next century, the State Department moved the Declaration to different locations in an effort to slow its decay.