During the Civil War, to keep Union soldiers from finding it, a copy of the Declaration of Independence was hidden behind the wallpaper in a home in Virginia. Then it was stuffed in a closet in Kentucky, in a broken frame. Later, it was stuck behind a cabinet in the office of an energy executive outside Houston. The rare parchment copy of the document was made in Washington in the 1820s for founding father James Madison. It was apparently unknown to the public for more than a century, but now, the copy resurfaced via its purchase last month by billionaire philanthropist David M. Rubenstein. The copy is one of 51 copies of the Declaration of Independence that scholars are aware of. This one is made from the original handwritten calfskin document written in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776.
“This is the closest … to the original Declaration, the way it looked when it was signed in August of 1776,” said Seth Kaller, a New York rare-document appraiser who assisted in the sale, to The Washington Post. “Without these … copies you wouldn’t even know what the original looked like.”
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams ordered 200 copies to be made, and so master engraver William Stone made the copies in his shop on Pennsylvania Avenue and created an extra one for himself. They were given to Congress, the White House, and various others like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Madison.
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