You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

Yeah, it's easy to assume that what is left in the final printed version of the Declaration

is the sum total of all of the conversations that had been happening in Congress.

But I think there were certainly other things that were discussed that did not make it into

the list of grievances or that did not become

part of this conversation about what independence means. The declaration could have been much shorter.

It also could have been much longer. It ended up at about 1,300 words.

Hello and welcome to episode 415 of Ben Franklin's World, the podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our early American past have shaped the

present day world we live in. And I'm your host, Liz Covert.

When you picture the Declaration of Independence, what comes to mind?

Most people envision a single iconic document,

parchment, signatures, maybe even a scene from National Treasure.

But what if I told you the Declaration of Independence

isn't just one document, but many documents?

And that each version of the Declaration tells a different story, a story not just about

American independence, but about the people who printed, read, preserved, and even rewrote

the Declaration.

Emily Sneff is one of the leading experts on the Declaration of Independence.

She has spent more than a decade researching the origins of the Declaration and its

ideas and its different copies.

She's the former research manager of the Declaration Resources Project at Harvard,

a consulting curator for Revolution 250 exhibits at the Museum of the American Revolution and the American Philosophical Society, and I'm proud to say, she was our very first intern here at Ben Franklin's World.

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