The United States celebrates Independence Day on July 4th, marking the day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress approved the independence of the American colonies from Britain. The Constitution was adopted in September of 1787, the Bill of Rights was proposed on September 28, 1789, and the Constitution was finally ratified by all states on May 29, 1790. But July 4, 1776, is the day that started it all and the date we chose to commemorate. This year, Sotheby’s auction house anticipated the holiday with an auction of early printings of the Founding Documents of the United States on June 26.
Sotheby's Auction House
The auction, held in New York as part of Sotheby’s Fine Books & Manuscripts events in June and July, consisted of four lots: the Declaration of Independence; the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and a copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, sent to the towns of Rhode Island before their ratifying vote.
The copy of the Declaration of Independence, which sold for $3,360,000, was printed as a broadside in the July 11, 1776, issue of the newspaper New-York Journal, or The General Advertiser. Printer John Holt devoted four pages to it, including a note “to oblige our customers, who intend to separate it from the rest of thee paper, and fix it up, in open view.” Broadsides were a form of paper ephemera, meant to be temporarily posted in public to distribute information, then discarded after they had served their purpose. Only five copies of this printing remain.
A copy of the Constitution was also published in a newspaper. It was the first publication of the document, printed by John Dunlap and David Claypoole, official printers of the Constitutional Convention, in The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, the first daily newspaper in the United States, on September 19, 1787. Its remarkable place in U.S. history helped bring its price to $1,020,000.
The copy of the Bill of Rights was a letterpress handbill, apparently printed for the Pennsylvania General Assembly. It was the only survivor of an edition of one hundred and sold for $1,200,000.
In 2021, a first edition of the U.S. Constitution sold at Sotheby’s for a record $43.2 million. While this sale’s prices may seem like bargains in comparison, no one would deny that the significance of the documents makes them priceless.
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