James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and the Preservation of the Declaration of Independence
A Reassessment of the Origins of the William J. Stone Facsimile, 1814–1824
Stanley Y. Klos
Prepared for the James Monroe Memorial Foundation
I · Introduction
The celebrated William J. Stone copperplate facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, completed in 1823, is conventionally associated with a single figure: Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. Stone himself engraved the government’s authority directly onto the plate: “ENGRAVED by W.I. STONE for the Dept. of State by order / of J.Q. ADAMS Secy of State July 4th 1823.”1 Adams unquestionably administered the project, employed Stone, supervised the work, and left the clearest surviving statement of why an archival facsimile was needed at all.
But the conventional account begins too late.