Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Composing America

The reasons behind having two copies of the Declaration of Independence, one written and one printed, seem practical enough. The overall goal was to give the new nation legitimacy across a broad audience. Settlers across the 13 colonies needed to feel that this new nation belonged to them, not simply to a group of men in Pennsylvania. To fight to defend a nation you own provides much more motivation than fighting between one king and another. On the other hand, the monarchs of Europe would've seen a printed copy as a joke. Anyone could hire a printer to create documents; They were how lesser classes communicated. The government documents of England and other sovereign nations were all written, and so America's had to be also.

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