Michael Hattem

that could be spread as quickly as possible.

So those are made.

It seems like he only made a few hundred copies of those, and there's a few dozen that are still known to be extant.

But the other way that the Declaration spread was in newspapers.

And interestingly enough, the first...

printing of the text of the Declaration in a newspaper actually happens in a German-language newspaper.

Because of the large German population in Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia, there had always been a few German newspapers, and it's one of the German newspapers that publishes the text of the Declaration first.

The first English-language printing happens in an issue on July 6th,

Pennsylvania Evening Post.

And the reason that doesn't happen on the 4th or the next day is because colonial newspapers were only published once a week, right?

And so for that reason, and for the distance that these broadsides would have to travel, you know, it took weeks to

It took weeks for people to get the news of the Declaration all throughout the colonies, especially if you think of up further north or further down south.

You're talking upwards of three weeks before people in Georgia knew that they were independent.

Yeah, and that's a scene that played out everywhere.

Exactly.

All throughout the colonies.

The most famous reading is on July 9th, and the Declaration arrives in New York, and George Washington orders that all the troops are there because the British have landed on Staten Island, and all the troops are in Manhattan.

And Washington orders the new declaration be read to the troops.

But it's not just the troops that turn out on the common to hear it.

Lots of the inhabitants of the city also turn out.