John Binn's Engraving Of The Declaration Of Independence

 

Decorative Engraving Of the Declaration Of Independence By John Binns

John Binns lived in Northumberland Pa from 1802 to 1807.  In those 5 years, he was editor of the Republican Argus, participated in a duel in Montandon, and he was married, with Joseph Priestly performing the ceremony.  It was his friend Priestly who encouraged Binns to write his autobiography in his old age.

Binns moved to Philadelphia in 1807, where he published the most popular newspaper of the time, for more than a decade.  During this time, he came up with the idea of making an engraving of the Declaration of Independence, and selling prints of it.

After 9/11, nearly everyone in America was hanging an American flag.  After the War of 1812, it was copies of the Declaration of Independence that were in demand.

"Numerous ceremonial copies of the Declaration of Independence were created in the surge of nationalism following the War of 1812. At that time, most signers had either passed away or were quite elderly, and interest in the Declaration was resurfacing. Three of the more prominent copies included the Tyler engraving, the Binns engraving, and the Stone engraving."

In 1816 the publisher John Binns was first to announce plans to publish a decorative broadside of the Declaration of Independence, to be sold by subscription for $10 each But once he announced his ideas, others rushed to copy it.

The first to complete a design was Benjamin Owen Tyler. According to a blog post in the National Archives, "The two men engaged in a bitter and public competition to be the first to publish and sell their engraving with the official text of the Declaration. Their feud played out in rival newspapers, with Binns accusing Tyler of stealing his idea, plagiarizing his work, and violating the custom of their trade."

"In July 1819, Binns sent an unfinished proof to Thomas Jefferson asking for suggestions on improvement. He also told Jefferson he planned to dedicate his engraving to the people of the United States rather than to any individual connected with the document."

Jefferson, having not seen the proof, thanked Binns and offered no suggestions. 

Binns' project was completed in 1819, by which time four others had already imitated the idea and issued less ornate and less expensive copies, including a pirated copy of the Binns."

Binns’s engraving included a note at the bottom from Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, son of signer—and former President—John Adams. It stated, “I certify, that this is a CORRECT copy of the original Declaration of Independence, deposited at this Department; and that I have compared all the signatures with those of the original, and have found them EXACT IMITATIONS.”

 Binns later said that his publication cost him $9,000, an astonishing amount at that time.  (roughly the equivalent of  $250,000 in 2025)  

Binns engraving exactly copied the signers’ signatures, and  added the seals of the 13 original states along with  portraits of George Washington, John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson.

Binns wanted to have his copy adopted as official, and one was displayed in the House of Representatives. For political reasons—and perhaps because Binns failed to include an engraving of John Adams—John Quincy Adams soon after commissioned William J. Stone to make an exact facsimile (in 1823). Despite the competition Binns’ print remains the best decorative reproduction of the Declaration of Independence.

In September 2020 a framed copy sold for more than $39,000

========================

John Binns

1772-1860

========================

John Binns was born in 1772, in Dublin Ireland, the son of an ironmonger. His father died when John was just two years old, leaving  "considerable property." 

John received a good education but, becoming involved in the revolutionary movement in Ireland, was arrested and two years imprisoned. 

"On account of his connection with the schemes of the United Irishmen, the grand just of the county of Warwick found a true bill against him."

At trial, he was acquitted, but when he left for London on February 21 1898, he was arrested and placed in the tower.  Again he was tried, and again acquitted.   Soon after he was once again arrested, this time being held until March of 1801.

 Soon after his release in 1801, he went to Baltimore and in March 1802, he founded the Republican Argus newspaper in Northumberland Pa.  [Unfortunately, all issues from his years as editor appear to have been lost, or mutilated]

In 1805, Binns published an anonymous letter, which Sheriff Samuel Stewart of Lycoming County too offense to.  When Binns refused to divulge the source of the letter to Stewart, Stewart assaulted him.  Binns, an Irishman,  then formally challenged Stewart, a Scotsman,  to a duel.  The men conducted themselves as gentlemen, adhering to the 1755 Irish Duello Code - the 26 commandments to be followed when having a duel.

More about the duel in Montandon, Pa, here:

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-binns-stewart-duel-montandon-1805.html

In March of 1805 Governor Thomas McKean authorized the Northumberland Republican Argus to print Pennsylvania’s laws, and on 22 July 1805, the treasury of Pennsylvania paid Binns for this service. 

In March of 1806 John Binns married Mary Ann Baxter.  Joseph Priestly performed the ceremony.

Not everyone was a fan of Binns - which is not surprising.  Politics were divisive, and contentious.   Those on opposing sides were often not civil.

"As a newspaper editor, Binns played a key role in the emergence of Pennsylvania’s Republican “Quid” faction and the election of Governor Simon Snyder in 1808. Binns was a firm proponent of industrialization, a position that helped shape his political evolution from Jeffersonian Republican to Whig. During the 1820s, Binns bitterly opposed Andrew Jackson, served as a Philadelphia city alderman, and eventually published his autobiography in 1854 "

In March of  1807 (it's amusing how many of this Irishman's important life events occurred in a March) Binns was publishing the Democratic Press, the leading paper of the state, in Philadelphia.  In 1824 he used his paper to oppose the election of General Jackson, supporting John Quincy Adams.  In November of 1829, when Jackson was elected, Binns abandoned his editorial career.  

In 1854, Binns published his autobiography

John Binns, from his 1852 Autobiography

Which he was encouraged to write by his friend Joseph Priestly

"Although circumstances have carried me into crowds, given me strange companions, made me a  fugitive from thief-takers, and the inhabitant of  many prisons, from the Bastile to the Tower of  London, I can assure my female readers that, in  these Recollections, there is nothing to wound their  feelings, or tint their cheeks. " - John Binns

============

Binns Time In Gloucester Prison

============

Binns was a member of the London Corresponding Society, which had formed in 1792, with the aim of campaigning for parliamentary reform. The leaders of this society, and its most active members, were frequently arrested, interrogated and sometimes put on trial. John Binns had been held in a number of jails, including the Tower of London, several times before being  sent to Gloucester Prison in May 1799.

 In a committee report to parliament in which Binns was named as ‘a person particularly zealous in organizing political associations, in opposition to the government’. Binns was detained on 16 March 1799 and held in Clerkenwell Prison in London until 9 May, when he was sent to Gloucester on the orders of the Duke of Portland, the Secretary of State.

"At one o'clock the same day, a carriage, with two Bow  Street officers, drove into the prison yard. They were  accompanied by a tall, genteel-looking, elderly man. His  name, I afterwards ascertained, was Mason. I knew,  from the silver grayhound suspended at his breast, that he was a king's messenger. He drew from his pocket a slip  of paper, which he courteously handed me to read. It  was a warrant to arrest the body of John Binns, with all  his papers, &c., "upon a charge of high treason;" signed  "Portland;" his Grace, the Duke of Portland, being, at  that time. Secretary of State for the Home Department. "

 As Binns  had not been tried and convicted for committing a crime, he was treated like a prisoner waiting for trial.  "As a man of higher social status", combined with strict orders from  The Duke of Portland that Binns was not allowed to mix with other prisoners, Binn's was given special privilege's, including a dayroom for his sole use. For the next three months, it  was there that  he spent most of time.   He was prohibited from reading any  newspaper, and the warders and officials had strict orders not to talk to him about national or international events, however, he had access to the entire library of the Dean of Glocester, and several of the board of visiting magistrates offered to lend him books as well.  

He also had use of an 'abundantly large' yard, where he exercised for three to four hours a day, and he was  given two plots of ground, on which he cultivated vegetables, for his own use.  He kept two pets, a cat, and a toad.  (Upon his release, he took the cat with him, but set the toad free.)

"It is due not only to my personnel friends, but to many liberal-minded  men to whom I had not the honor to be personally known, to acknowledge  that, from the hour of my arrest to my liberation, every attention  and care was paid to supply not only books, but everything I desired,  which it was the pleasure of the Government to permit to be brought  to me. "

Three months after his arrest, two more members of the  London Corresponding Society joined Binns at the prison, sharing the day room and exercise yard with him.    Binns recalled that they got along well for the first few months,  spending their days using books to learn French and mathematics, and exercising in the yard allocated to them.

In January 1800, the governor noted in his journal that the three State prisoners had been put into separate rooms for fighting. Binns, in his autobiography, recalled that that one morning, he and his companions were exercising in their yard, ‘whipping tops’, when Bone and Keir were summoned to appear before the Board of Magistrate. After about forty-five minutes the men returned, and Binns was sent before the same Board. There he was told that Bone and Keir had claimed that for some time past, two or more evenings a week after the others had  all been locked in their cells, Binns had been taken to the governor’s rooms, where he would spend the evening in company with the governors family, until the outer prison bell was rung, at which time he would be conveyed back to his cell and locked in.

Binns expressed great surprise at the charge, as neither of the two prisoners ‘had ever apprised me of their mean suspicions or petty jealousies, nor warned me that they had, or thought they had, cause of complaint against me.’ He denied their accusation and was then taken back to the yard. 

‘I no sooner found myself in the yard, on my return from the board, and within striking distance of my worthy compeers, than I began thrashing them soundly; while they, to do them justice, “ran and roared” lustily, until the turnkeys came and took them out of the yard into the prison.’

"Binns stated that he never saw then in the jail again, but his memory of the incident may have dimmed over time, as according to the prison journals, they were in the same dayroom until October 1800, when Keir was separated from the others after Bone complained that Keir had prevented him from keeping their room clean."

===============

READ MORE

================

https://gloscrimehistory.wordpress.com/tag/john-binns/

https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/artifact/john-binns-engraving-declaration-independence-1819

John Bidwell, “American History in Image and Text” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1988, Vol. 98, pp.247-302 (also issued as a separate pamphlet by AAS), item 5.

John Binns, Recollections of the Life of John Binns: Twenty--nine Years in Europe and Fifty-three in the United States, Written by Himself.... (Phila, 1854), pp.234-7.