Archive in the Sky

In addition to the Freedom Trucks discussed yesterday, the federal government and its corporate donors are sending the Freedom Plane around the country bearing documents of national importance from the Founding period.

Those documents are listed on the plane’s own website. They are:

• William Stone’s 1823 engraving of the Declaration of Independence, which is both more common and more legible than the handwritten original. (This artifact is on loan from David M. Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group and collector of historical documents, while all the others are originals from the U.S. National Archives.)
• The Continental Congress’s Articles of Association from 1774, laying out the Continental Association boycott of goods from Britain.
• Oaths of allegiance signed by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr as Continental Army officers in 1778.
• The Treaty of Paris from 1783.
• A copy of the draft Constitution printed for delegates to the 1787 convention to debate and revise, this one with notes by David Brearley of New Jersey. 
• Chart of votes by states at that convention, including “The Constitution unanimously agreed to” (though Rhode Island didn’t send a delegation and New York’s was incomplete). 
• The Senate markup of the Bill of Rights in 1789, showing revisions of the language that came out of the House of Representatives. 

Legally the main omission is any form of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, which actually formed the United States of America into a single country. But we always overlook that. 

The plane’s itinerary is Kansas, Georgia, southern California, eastern Texas, Colorado, southern Florida, Michigan, and Washington. This national tour includes no stop in the Northeast.