First Public Reading of the Declaration

Congress adopted the Declaration on July 4, 1776, but almost no one in Philadelphia had heard a word of it. The printer John Dunlap worked through that night, and copies went out to the states and the army over the days that followed. The first public reading was set for Monday, July 8, at noon.

Colonel John Nixon of the Committee of Safety read it from a wooden platform in the State House yard — the observatory built seven years earlier to watch the transit of Venus. When he finished, the crowd cheered and the bells of the city rang for the rest of the day; by tradition the State House bell, the one later known as the Liberty Bell, was among them. That evening the King's coat of arms was taken down from the courtroom and burned in the street. The next day Washington had the Declaration read to his army in New York.

For most Americans this was the moment independence became real — not signed in a closed room, but spoken out loud, in daylight, to anyone who would listen.

The painting stands in the crowd. Nixon is above them on the platform, paper in hand, blue coat and buff waistcoat, with the State House and its bell tower behind him and a flag lifting off the pole at his side. Hats and muskets go up across the whole yard. A fifer and a drummer play in the foreground, and on the right a boy rides a man's shoulders to see over the heads. The light is high-summer gold, and the bell hangs visible in the open arch of the tower.