FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT

THE FIRST AND MOST FEARLESS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Many people think the Declaration of Independence in the National Archives was published on July 4, 1776, but that parchment was not written until weeks later. Philadelphia printer John Dunlap published the first Declaration at breakneck speed just hours before thousands of British troops pounced.

Even though his metal types or letters wore out, and mysterious quotations found their way into the text, John managed to get out about 200 posters or broadsides that night of July 4. Riders fanned out all over the countryside to deliver them to colonies. General George Washington read the Declaration aloud to his troops at New York under the noses of the British soldiers.

For the past ten years, Jenny has been researching and writing Freedom at Midnight: The First and Most Fearless Printing of the Declaration of Independence, a concise middle-grade narrative non-fiction, showing how this flawed, forgotten hero bent destiny to his will.

Why a children’s book and not a biography for adults? John had all his success as an adult, but he had that internal grit as a boy when he emigrated from the village of Strabane in what is now Northern Ireland. He sailed for about seven weeks across the Atlantic to arrive in Philadelphia at the print shop of his uncle William Dunlap, where he would serve as an apprentice.

He never lost his true 10-year-old self, inspiring generations of children as they grow into their own “independence.”

He went on to print not only the Declaration, but the Constitution, as well as found the first successful daily newspaper in America. He was a wily businessman who “allowed” the young, broke Congress with its wildly unstable currency, to pay for its printing in land instead of money. During the Revolutionary War and shortly after, Congress had acre upon acre of property confiscated from Loyalists, going cheap in such a glutted market. Needless to say, before long property values soard, making John a very wealth man.

The more Jenny researched John, the more she admired this charming rogue,. He was scruffy, a climber, a drinker, and not someone who left any high-minded letters or diaries behind. His statue would never be carved, and he would never be put on a pedestal with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson or John Adams. But doesn’t everyone deserve to have their story told, even ordinary men and women whose contributions were still vital? After all, few of us will go down in history, and yet we all aim to be heroes, at least in some way, to the people and principles we love.