Declaration of Independence transcript contains a 'serious' error, says Princeton academic

A transcript of the Declaration of Independence contains an error which creates a “serious misunderstanding”, according to a Princeton academic.
The paper is America’s founding charter and one which declared to the world that the thirteen American colonies were separate from Great Britain.
It was signed by the Second Continental Congress in 1776 by Timothy Matlack, according to the New York Historical Society. Mr Matlack was clerk to the secretary of the Congress.
But now Danielle Allen has told the New York Times the official transcript from 1823 of the declaration produced by the National Archives and Records Administration has a full stop where she stresses it is not found in the original parchment.
Ms Allen, professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, said the error can be found in the middle of the sentence that begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident”.

The full sentence in question is: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/10948277/Declaration-of-Independence-transcript-contains-a-serious-error-says-Princeton-academic.html

Very interesting -- so the 1823 transcript reads:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Whereas the original document reads differently (I've bolded the spot where it's different):

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

One sentence, not two -- and as Allen points out, the original makes a stronger connection between government and its role in securing rights.

very interesting. buts its all down to interpretation at the end of the day. you put a document in front of 2 people and chances are high that they will interpret it differently. I frankly get sick and tired of hearing what people say Jefferson or Madison or Adams were thinking when they wrote the Declaration or the Constitution. They are not here to ask so its all supposition. it was a different time and in a sense a different place then.

interesting aside - Mr. C and I have been watching TURN which just finished based on the book Washington's Spies (I highly recommend both) but in the finale I pointed out to him that here we saw the reasons behind and the beginning of the 2nd amendment. All down to British so we can thank them for it.

To be honest me Lady, you will find many aspects of history are down to interpretation, you find this with many characters and events through history, where people can only go on where others have written accounts of them. Of course the job is easier to have different accounts where they corroborate on points.

I did find this interesting mind, where more to the point why was the full stop added later, or was it just a genuine mistake?

Didge wrote:To be honest me Lady, you will find many aspects of history are down to interpretation, you find this with many characters and events through history, where people can only go on where others have written accounts of them. Of course the job is easier to have different accounts where they corroborate on points.

I did find this interesting mind, where more to the point why was the full stop added later, or was it just a genuine mistake?

That's the million-dollar question. 1823 makes it a bit hard to read the political motivations that might have been behind a deliberate act, and with just a full-stop missing it's tough to read more into it than "mistake."

Then again, there are always people who will take things out of context or worse. I remember a Fox News segment covering an Obama speech on health care reform; Obama was talking about how health insurance corporations drop sick people from their coverage and he said, "Now, insurance executives don't do this because they're bad people."

But the Fox News pundit categorized this as Obama calling insurance executives "bad people.'

 ::hdintowll:: ::hdintowll:: ::hdintowll:: ::hdintowll:: ::hdintowll:: ::hdintowll:: 

Ben_Reilly wrote:Very interesting -- so the 1823 transcript reads:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Whereas the original document reads differently (I've bolded the spot where it's different):

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

One sentence, not two -- and as Allen points out, the original makes a stronger connection between government and its role in securing rights.

How many schoolboys and girls has this question perplexed?  Ms. Allen is certainly not the first.  The first clause (if you take them separately) works, but the second is ungainly if not patently incorrect as a separate sentence:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The second clause doesn't start with a subject/predicate, as would a normal self-contained sentence, but appears to pick up from something foregone, consistent with Ms. Green's thesis.  If it were a separate sentence under the usage of the day, it would read:

Governments are instituted among Men to secure these rights, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The original text used "that" as a conjunction, intending a single sentence.  A conjunction is a joiner, a word that connects (conjoins) parts of a sentence.  http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/conjunctions.htm  Note that the word that appears as a conjunction in the first clause as well, suggesting that the writer was using parallelism to list all the points of self-evident truths:

that all men are created equal, (1st clause)
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, (1st clause)
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness  (1st clause)
that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  (2d clause)

The writer intended to include in his/her list of self-evident truths the fact governments derive just powers from the consent of the governed.  That is the point of the overall list...to itemize all of the things that are "self-evident" and "true."  The list (equality, inalienable rights, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness) would be incomplete without consent in government.

The entire passage should be read as one sentence by all evidence of the day, and of English grammar.  Most schoolkids already take it that way.  

The issue is with the 1823 manuscript, and most schoolkids have never seen nor heard of it.