Hi-tech Imaging Reveals 'Edit' in Declaration of Independence

It's like something out of a recent Nicolas Cage movie, except no one was hurt in the process.

Out of the Library of Congress comes word that new high-tech science has revealed proof of a word change that Thomas Jefferson made while writing the Declaration of Independence.

By using a hi-res digital camera on an early draft of the Declaration (wonderfully preserved, of course), preservation scientists at the Library of Congress have uncovered stunning proof that Jefferson made a word change. How do we know this after all these years? The digital camera, through a technique called hyperspectral imaging, showed one word underneath another.

The Declaration of Independence includes an extensive list of grievances that the American colonists had against King George III of England. Toward the end of this list, Jefferson makes reference to the British captive of capturing American sailors and forcing them to fight against their American countrymen.

As it reads now, this grievance begins: "He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country …"

The key word in that sentence is citizens. In the earlier draft examined by the Library of Congress, Jefferson used the word subjects, which has an altogether different connotation. A subject acknowledges sovereignty of someone else; a citizen, on the other hand, considers his membership in a society independent of that society's ruler, particularly a monarch.

The Declaration of Independence makes very clear that many Americans in the late 18th Century considered themselves already independent from Great Britain. Stunned by a series of severe taxes, the colonists on the eastern seaboard of North America revolted, crying out for the right of taxation without representation, self-government, and other "inalienable rights." Jefferson's words in the Declaration were a clear representation of those sentiments and dearly held beliefs.

The scientists at the Library of Congress were very safe in their handling of Jefferson's early draft, exposing it to air only as long as necessary and making sure that it was transferred back and forth from lab to resting place under armed guard. And, in photos they revealed to the world, there was clear evidence of Jefferson's "live edit," a wipeout of one word and replacement with another — two words that were at once close in meaning yet worlds apart in interpretation.