When tourists journey to Washington, D.C., this year to help celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary, many of them will surely pay a visit to the National Archives to see the original Declaration of Independence. But without the courage of a State Department clerk back in 1814, they would be staring at an empty shrine, the priceless scroll having been incinerated with much of Washington so long ago. More than two centuries after his heroics, it’s time to formally recognize Stephen Pleasonton for saving America’s national treasure.
Born in 1778, during the Revolutionary War, Pleasonton became one of three clerks in the State Department sometime in the early 1800s. Among the irreplaceable documents in his care was the parchment Declaration signed by John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and members of the Continental Congress in 1776.
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