Turns out a long-lost original of the Declaration of Independence has been found in the National Archives in London. Apparently, Haiti had sent copies out all over (and since they were so ubiquitous, nobody thought to keep them for posterity) and the British Governor of colonial Jamaica ended up stashing his copy amongst his other papers.
In any case - from what I hear, the writing is just amazing - here's a taste:
"It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; it is not enough to have restrained those ever-evolving factions that one after another mocked the specter of liberty that France dangled before you. We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. In the end we must live independent or die."
True - we've had access to these words, since copies had been made, but finding the original . . . well, for a history guy, it's pretty exciting and a time for celebration.
Here's a link to the archives page where you can see the Declaration in the original French.
No comments:
Post a Comment