Sherman Copy

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

This article, while intended to inform the readers about one of the several working drafts of the Declaration of Independence, while being researched also revealed for me an interesting tidbit that I have been teaching in my Constitution Classes, but had not until this point been fully confirmed by a scholarly organization or historian. In my Constitution Classes, based on my own personal research and observation of the grammatical tendencies of the authors of the U.S. Constitution and other documents and correspondences, I teach that there are various words in those documents which are capitalized for the purpose of providing emphasis.  The upper case condition of the words in question do not fit any of today's grammatical rules or tendencies, and some folks who oppose my originalist point of view of the U.S. Constitution have argued that the capitalization was nothing special, they "capitalized all nouns as was customary among the Germans".  The problem with that argument is that all nouns are not capitalized in our various founding documents, only certain ones, leading one to believe the practice was either deliberate, or they screwed up and missed a few nouns.  I have argued that I do not believe the Founders committed grammatical "oopsies" in the writing of key documents, and there is evidence of the capitalization being purposeful for the reason of emphasis.  For one, they were handwriting the document, and something like italicizing for emphasis would not reasonably recognized by the reader.  While slanting words for emphasis pre-dated the settlement of the English Colonies it was preferred by many of the writers in Early America to either capitalize the first letter of a word, or to ALL CAPS the word such as Thomas Jefferson does with the word MEN in the "Original Draft of the Declaration of Independence," and as Jefferson did with the words REAL CHRISTIAN in a letter to Charles Thompson with appears in the 1902 copy of Jefferson's "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth" (of which I own a copy of).

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Sherman Copy

The Sherman Copy is the first page of an early working draft of the Declaration of Independence, used to inform Roger Sherman of the draft status of the Declaration during the fourth week of June, 1776. It provides unique insight into the drafting process of the founding document, showing editing within the manuscript and revealing purposeful over-scripting of lowercase characters with uppercase letters. On the document are the initials “T.P.”, suggesting Thomas Paine's direct involvement in its drafting process, a notion debated over the last two centuries. A number of working drafts were used, but the newly discovered partial Sherman Copy appears to have been made for Benjamin Franklin (the initials B.F. are situated center of page), and then passed on to Roger Sherman (the Initials R.S. are located in the upper right corner), a fellow member of the Committee of Five. Also printed on the document is "A beginning perhaps-/Original with Jefferson/Copied from Original/with T. P.'s permission" situated near the B.F. initials. The Sherman Copy was discovered folded within the pages of an estate auction booklet of General Hugh Lowrey White, a Brigadier General in the War of 1812, which was located within a box of discarded papers by an amateur historian in Georgia. The Sherman Copy was created shortly before The Adams Copy. Based on penmanship, it is believed John Adams penned The Sherman Copy.

The draft is printed on hand-made wove paper, believed to have been supplied by Franklin.  Evidence reveals that despite notions that wove paper was not available in The Colonies until after the Revolutionary War, Franklin had access to wove paper in Pennsylvania as early as 1764.

The website for the Thomas Paine National Historical Association confirms my argument that the capitalization of some words in the founding documents was for the purpose of emphasis. 

 “Over time, readers of the Declaration have discussed probable reasons for why Committee of Five members decided to capitalize seemingly random words throughout the text. Early Germanic roots of the English language demonstrated how capitalization of letters mid-sentence was utilized to place emphasis on significant words. Throughout the Declaration, especially in this manuscript, nouns were selected to emphasize words of significance; a characteristic that is evident in the Preamble. Capitalization survived the written drafts, into John Dunlap's official print on the eve of July 4. As the approximately two hundred Dunlap broadsides traveled from Dulap's print shop to their respective locations and representatives, including the copy Washington read to his troops on July 9 in New York City, the intention of this capitalization was realized as the reader's voice brought life to the Declaration. This manuscript draft has provided the first opportunity to view the contemplation of words the Declaration's authors felt should hold emphasis within the body of text and when read aloud.”

There are two complete manuscript copies of the original draft of the Declaration of Independence; one of them is known as the John Adams copy, a fair copy because of its neat penmanship and organization, which is held by the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston; and the Jefferson rough draft in the Library of Congress collection, which demonstrates the numerous edits made by the Committee of Five selected to draft the Declaration; a copy in which the 138 words of anti-slavery language remains intact but was removed on July 1, 1776 and not included in the final draft of the Declaration of Independence due to disapproval of the language by two of the Thirteen Original States, South Carolina and Georgia revealing that the American Revolution, despite arguments to the contrary by the purveyors of Critical Race Theory was not only not fought to preserve slavery, it was fought with the hope of righting the wrong of slavery in America of which Jefferson blamed British leadership of perpetuating the institution of slavery in the English Colonies.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary