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Two volumes. [2],310,[12]; [2],520,[27]pp. Modern half morocco and marbled boards, spines gilt. Light foxing and soiling. Very good. Untrimmed. A nice set of the Journals of the Continental Congress for the first two years. The first volume was published by Robert Aitken in Philadelphia, and was the first collected set of the Journals. These had been published previously in two separate volumes (both of extreme rarity) in 1774 and 1776. This collected issue became the first volume of the series, which continued until the end of the Confederacy and the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1788. The volume contains a wealth of the most important documents of the Revolutionary period, with all of the proceedings of the first, and part of the second, Continental Congress for 1774 and 1775. Rare in such nice condition and especially so with the twelve pages of index. The second volume was published by John Dunlap in York, and is one of the rarest of the series issued from 1774 to 1788, with a peculiar and romantic publication history. Textually it covers the exciting events of 1776, culminating with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, an early printing of which appears here, as well as all of the other actions of Congress for the year. It is thus a vital document in the history of American independence and the American Revolution. Through the middle of 1777 the printer of the Journals of Congress was Robert Aitken of Philadelphia. In 1777 he published the first issue of the Journals for 1776, under his own imprint. This was completed in the spring or summer. In the fall of 1777 the British campaign under Howe forced the Congress to evacuate Philadelphia, moving first to Lancaster and then to York, Pennsylvania. The fleeing Congress took with it what it could, but, not surprisingly, was unable to remove too many copies of its printed Journals, which would have been bulky and difficult to transport. Presumably, any left behind in Philadelphia were destroyed by the British, accounting for the particular scarcity of those volumes today. Among the material evacuated from Philadelphia were the printed sheets of pages 1-424 of the 1776 Journals, printed by Aitken. Having lost many complete copies in Philadelphia, and not having the terminal sheets to make up more copies, Congress resolved to reprint the remainder of the volume. The journals, however, had not in fact made their way all the way to Lancaster or Yorktown: they remained with a papermaker named Frederic Bicking, who had been instructed to hide them from the British and local Tories. During the fateful winter of 1777-8, Massachusetts representative James Lovell (who was on the committee overseeing the printing of the Journals) wrote to George Washington at Valley Forge to request a search party be sent to find them. "I am not insensible of the great Affairs which press your Excellency on every side," he wrote, "but, I really thought this Business of recovering the Journals was important enough to warrant the Freedom I now take of applying to you." Washington agreed, and responded a week later that the Journals had been found and brought to Valley Forge, soon to make their way to York. While Aitken had not evacuated his equipment, John Dunlap, the printer of the original Declaration, had. Congress thus appointed Dunlap as the new printer to Congress on May 2, 1778. Dunlap then took the recovered Aitken sheets and reprinted the rest of the volume (coming out to a slightly different pagination from Aitken's version). He added to this a new titlepage, under his imprint at York, with a notice on the verso of his appointment as printer to Congress. This presumably came out between his appointment on May 2 and the return of Congress to Philadelphia in July 1778. Because of Dunlap's name on the title, it has often been erroneously assumed that this volume contains a printing of the Declaration of Independence by Dunlap. In fact, that appears in the section of the original Aitk.
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