The first edition of the Declaration of Independence numbered perhaps one hundred or two hundred copies, printed on the evening of 4 July, 1776. Twenty-six copies are known to have survived. This one belonged to Benjamin Chew (1722–1810), Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. Sympathetic though he was to the American cause, Chew—a Quaker by birth and a committed pacifist—refused to support armed resistance against the king. When the British troops approached Philadelphia, he was arrested and exiled to New Jersey. Chew was rehabilitated after the revolution and spent his last years presiding at the Pennsylvania High Court of Errors and Appeals.
In Congress, July 4, 1776. A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America. Philadelphia: Printed by John Dunlap, 1776. Gift of the Robert Wood Johnson Jr. Charitable Trust, 1982. PML 77518.