Charters of Freedom

at the opening of the Charters of Freedom Shrine, February 28, 1924.|Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam at the opening of the Charters of Freedom Shrine on February 28, 1924 Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam collected the Declaration and Constitution from the State Department safes and brought them to the Library of Congress in a mail wagon. Putnam requested funds to allow the documents to be put on display so "might be treated in such a way as, while fully safe-guarding them and giving them distinction, they should be open to inspection by the public at large". Declaration of Independence Constitution At first there was little interest in the parchment object itself. James Madison had custody of it as Secretary of State (1801–1809) but having left Washington DC, he had lost track of it in the years leading to his death. A publisher had access to it in 1846 for a book on the Constitution. In 1883, historian J. Franklin Jameson found the parchment folded in a small tin box on the floor of a closet at the State, War and Navy Building. In 1894 the State Department sealed the Declaration and Constitution between two glass plates and kept them in a safe. On inspection of one of the remaining copies held at the National Archives, there is an apparent spelling error in the original parchment Constitution in the Export Clause of Article 1, Section 10 on page 2, where the possessive pronoun its appears to be spelled with an apostrophe, turning it into ''it's. However, the letters t and s'' are connected, and the mark interpreted as an apostrophe is somewhat inconspicuous; different U.S. government sources have transcribed this phrase with and without the apostrophe. The spelling Pensylvania is used in the list of signatories at the bottom of page 4 of the original document. Elsewhere, in Article 1, Section 2, the spelling that is usual today, Pennsylvania, is used. However, in the late 18th century, the use of a single n to spell "Pennsylvania" was common usage — the Liberty Bell's inscription, for example, uses a single n. The copies for Georgia, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania went missing. The New York copy is thought to have been destroyed in a fire. Two unidentified copies of the missing four (thought to be the Georgia and Maryland copies) survive; one is in the National Archives, and the other is in the New York Public Library. North Carolina's copy was stolen from the State Capitol by a Union soldier following the Civil War. In an FBI sting operation, it was recovered in 2003. The copy retained by the First Congress has been on display (along with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence) in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom room at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. since December 13, 1952. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared December 15 to be Bill of Rights Day, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. In 1991, the Virginia copy of the Bill of Rights toured the country in honor of its bicentennial, visiting the capitals of all fifty states. Formation of the Union documents The "Formation of the Union" display contains documents related to the evolution of the U.S. government from 1774 to 1791. Articles of Association (1774) Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (1778) Treaty of Paris (1783) Washington’s Inaugural Address == Preservation of the Charters of Freedom ==

researcher James West looks for the first signs of water vapor condensation in the encasement of the U.S. Constitution in April 2008. In 1952, the Charters were sealed in specially prepared airtight enclosures of tinted glass filled with humidified helium to protect the documents, along with 12 sheets of paper custom-made by the National Bureau of Standards. However, in the late 1980s, archivists began to notice signs of deterioration in the Charters. Micro-droplets of liquid and tiny white crystals were forming (in a process known as crizzling) on the surface of the protective glass, and it was feared that they might continue growing if left unchecked, and could be a sign of unexpected moisture inside the enclosure. In 1998, Langley Research Center researcher Joel S. Levinee was asked by the National Archives and Records Administration to form and lead a team to identify the precise cause and origin of the crystals, without opening the encasements, if at all possible. Additionally, his team was asked to try to answer the following: • Had the helium gas used to protect the Charters leaked out of the hermetically sealed encasements? • Did chemically corrosive air (with its variety of acids, humidity, and trace elements of ozone) leak in? • What was the relative humidity in the encasement atmospheres? In order to ensure reliability of his methods and measurements, Levine decided to split his team into three groups, each of which would work independently of each other. Two of the teams would use non-invasive measurement techniques to study the atmosphere through the glass encasement, while the third team would determine the chemical composition of extracted samples from each case. All of the teams would be made completely unaware of the others’ methods and findings until the very end, to ensure complete scientific independence. Ultimately, all teams produced very consistent results. which cooled an extremely small, localized portion of the glass encasement, and measured the resulting condensation to determine interior humidity. The third team directly measured the gas content when the encasement was opened in March 2000. All three methods showed nearly identical measurements, confirming that the results were legitimate. Levine's team presented their findings to NARA in 2002. They ultimately discovered that the helium atmosphere in the hermetically sealed encasements contained significantly more water vapor than previously believed. Levine said: "There is nearly twice as much water vapor in the atmosphere around the documents as there should be. Too much water vapor in a closed system like an encasement can cause the glass to chemically decompose, which will lead to the deterioration of the documents." "The U.S. Constitution is one of the most important documents in the history of the world. It was an honor and a privilege to be asked to perform this research," said Levine. "We're happy we were able to apply technology, originally developed at Langley for atmospheric science, remote sensing, laser spectroscopy and wind tunnel measurements, to ensure the future stability of the Charters of Freedom." ==See also==