Declaration Of Independence

Ever since the story broke about a collector finding a copy of the first printing of the Declaration of Independence worth $1 million tucked behind an old painting in a frame he bought at a flea market for $4, people have been ransacking their attics, basements, libraries and closets for another copy of what is considered the most important single printed sheet in the world.What they have found for the most part are worthless souvenir copies on crinkly parchmentlike paper that have been sold for years at Independence Park or the National Archives.

Tucked away in the state's capital, adjacent to the Naval Academy, sits the Peggy Stewart House, a historic house that played an important role in the American Revolution and was home at different times to a signer of the Constitution and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The Georgian-style home, built in the 1760s and designated a National Historic Landmark, is on the market for $3.2 million. The remodeled home at 207 Hanover St. has five bedrooms, 31/2 bathrooms, six fireplaces and an eight-car garage.

NEW YORK -- A first printing of the Declaration of Independence, said to have been found in a picture frame bought at a flea market two summers ago, was auctioned for $2,420,000 yesterday at Sotheby's."

The modest-looking document travels with a team of security guards and a historian and sits behind bullet-proof glass in a climate-controlled and light-protected environment. One of only 26 known original copies of the Declaration of Independence, it was on hand Monday at the University of Maryland, College Park to help launch a National History Day celebration. The event showcases the history projects of middle and high school students from across the country, who spoke of their awe at seeing the famous document.

From a secluded garden in downtown Baltimore, shaded by four ailanthus trees, there's hardly any sense of the high-rise office buildings several blocks away or the traffic whizzing by on the Jones Falls Expressway. The garden once bordered the estate owned in the early 19th century by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Much later, it became part of the Baltimore City Life Museums campus, a public attraction that told the story of Baltimore's history before the museums closed abruptly in 1997.

To the servers at Philadelphia's City Tavern, Thomas Jefferson was a regular. Week after week that spring and summer of 1776, they'd see the tall man with the reddish hair and courtly manners stepping in from Second Street for a drink or a meal. Something big was doing a few blocks away at the State House, but exactly what connection Jefferson had with all that would not be widely known for many years by anyone, much less the City Tavern staff. Mostly, the guy was a customer. Because even when you're busy orchestrating the brilliant rhetorical crescendo of Enlightenment thinking called the Declaration of Independence, you gotta eat. Jefferson's 18th-century contemporary, the gastronomic pioneer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, said, "Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are."

The last remaining Signer of the Declaration of Independence died just before dawn on a Wednesday morning in November 1832, in a house that still stands on the edge of Little Italy at Lombard just off President street. Charles Carroll of Carrollton passed peacefully into the mythology of the Founding Fathers, thanking his doctor for making him comfortable on his deathbed. He was 95 years old and he had lived six years longer than John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who both died on July 4, 1826.

TV PICK--Saving the National Treasures-- Preserving the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. (MPT, Tuesday, 8 p.m.)

An article about collectors of Election Day newspapers in yesterday's Today section misquoted collector Rick Brown as saying that the Declaration of Independence was signed on Sept. 17, 1787. Mr. Brown had correctly said that the Constitution was signed on that date. The Sun regrets the error.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, delegate to the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. senator and one-time Howard County resident, was born Sept. 19, 1737. He had the best of everything, including a European tour as a young man, a legal education at the Inns of Court in London and a 10,000-acre estate waiting when he returned home at the age of 28. In his late 30s, he was a leading revolutionary in Colonial Annapolis, making his lavish home a center of society and political ferment.

A new plan to build up to 325 detached homes instead of a retirement community at historic Doughoregan Manor in Howard County is being quietly presented to community groups in western Ellicott City. The Carroll family, descendants of the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, is preparing to take their new plans public early next month before submitting them to the county, said Joseph Rutter, a former county planning director who is acting as developer. The housing would take 12 to 13 years to be completed if approved, and the project would likely produce 171 new county schoolchildren for all grades, Rutter said.

Pasadena Theatre Company, showing a good sense of timing or a little bit of luck, scheduled in the middle of an election season a musical chronicling the vote for independence by the Continental Congress in the summer of 1776. The theater group knew about the historical parallels between the 1969 Broadway opening when Americans were divided over the Vietnam War and the present political divisions over Iraq, but it is unlikely to have anticipated the wrangling in Congress over the financial crisis during this musical's opening week.

Americans are celebrating Independence Day this election year as the presidential candidates of the two major parties engage in a spirited debate over the direction the country should take over the next four years. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soaring gas prices and rising unemployment, falling home values and a slumping economy are only the most visible challenges facing the nation. But the patriotism of the two major-party presidential contenders, which has figured as a subliminal but increasingly disturbing undercurrent of discontent on the talk-show circuit and on the Internet, is not one of them, and it should not be. Patriotism is the love of one's country, its people, its culture and, perhaps most important, its ideals, which represent the nation's most cherished hopes in a world that remains far from perfect.

KIGALI, Rwanda - Today I will be celebrating the Fourth of July in a different context than ever before. In Rwanda, July 4 is a holiday that commemorates the liberation of the country from the genocidal regime that murdered 1 million Tutsis and tens of thousands of Hutu political moderates who were committed to freedom and democracy, from April to July of 1994. It is a celebratory day, for it marks the end of the genocide and the establishment of a nonracist state that upholds the principles of liberty, equality and the peaceful coexistence of all Rwandans.

Threat is seen to U.S. sovereignty History tells us that we will be celebrating the 220th year our Constitution has existed. It is certainly a landmark for our republic when you consider the efforts made by different individuals and groups to ignore or disparage it. During the week of Sept. 17-23, Americans throughout the country will be celebrating this unique document, which with the Declaration of Independence, forms the basis for our government. It states that our rights do not come from governor, king or government, but from God and are inalienable, meaning that they cannot be removed by any ruler or any government.

From a secluded garden in downtown Baltimore, shaded by four ailanthus trees, there's hardly any sense of the high-rise office buildings several blocks away or the traffic whizzing by on the Jones Falls Expressway. The garden once bordered the estate owned in the early 19th century by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Much later, it became part of the Baltimore City Life Museums campus, a public attraction that told the story of Baltimore's history before the museums closed abruptly in 1997.

President Clinton's trip to China has given that country a taste of the freedoms the United States has come to appreciate since the Declaration of Independence was signed and proclaimed 222 years ago today.The declaration towered over the Great Wall as President Clinton gently lectured Chinese President Jiang Zemin that government derives its being from the rights of the governed.Its ideals could be heard at Beijing University, where the American president carried the founding document's message of individual liberties to a receptive generation reared in a Communist, and often repressive, society.

AFTER A ONE-YEAR hiatus -- caused by reconstruction of Main Street -- the city of Annapolis will resume its traditional Fourth of July parade, followed by a Naval Academy Band concert and fireworks. This is splendid news and an occasion to recall the intriguing role that Maryland's state capital played in events leading to America's Declaration of Independence in 1776.The Boston tea party is well-known. But Annapolis, responding to calls for action from Massachusetts activists, organized its own tea parties as well.

Today, we celebrate 231 years of American independence - or, rather, declared independence. Anyone who has read David McCullough's compelling account, in 1776, of Gen. George Washington's troubles in Boston and New York that fateful year knows the July 4 signing was a high point during a period that brought its share of defeats for the revolutionaries and reformers. Last week, I was in Katmandu to give a series of lectures to Nepal's civic, military and major-party leaders about that country's attempt to form a constitutional government.

America's Founding Fathers didn't spend the Fourth of July in the backyard standing over a hot grill. It is more likely that the founding wives and mothers or their servants spent the day in front of a hearth, where temperatures might reach 170 degrees, juggling cast-iron and copper cookware over an open flame. The Fourth of July in the late 1700s wasn't celebrated with hot dogs and hamburgers. And there was no corn on the cob, except maybe in the American frontier, which in 1776 might have been just to the left of Pittsburgh.