Chapter 3 opener illustration depicting the Revolutionary period
A depiction of an early partisan brawl on the House floor, in 1798. Roger Griswold, Federalist of Connecticut, struck Matthew Lyon, Democratic-Republican of Vermont, with a walking stick; Lyon then brandished a pair of fire tongs to defend himself. Photograph by Rythum Vinoben for The Atlantic. Document courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library.

Secrets of a

radical duke

The Sussex Declaration, discovered in the West Sussex Record Office in Chichester in 2015—the only known large-scale parchment of the Declaration of Independence other than the one on display at the National Archives

photo of large unfolded handwritten parchment titled The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

West Sussex Record Office, Add Mss 8981

How a lost copy of the Declaration of Independence unlocked a historical mystery

By Danielle Allen