Given today’s technology, the idea of writing the Declaration of Independence with quill pens on parchment paper seems daunting. But that’s what the scribe charged with the task had at his disposal in 1776.
It’s also why a collaboration between Utah Valley University and Pembroke College at Oxford University is called the “Quill Project.” They’ve developed an interactive digital model that maps the intricate, step-by-step process of drafting the declaration.
“How did we get from a simple proposal from the state of Virginia, put forward by Richard Henry Lee, to declare colonies independent and sever allegiance to the crown?” said Matthew Brogdon, senior director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University.
The project wants to help people visualize those deliberations. It digitizes historical manuscripts to illustrate how proposals were adopted into the text. The goal is to make that history accessible to people and to underscore how collaborative the process was.
“How did we get from that simple resolution to the text that we ultimately adopted and published on July 4? That's a lengthy process,” said Brogdon, “but it's very important for people to see that the way Americans engage in constitutional self-government is not by locking away a philosopher king in a room, but instead by meeting together in deliberative bodies face to face and working through language that everyone can agree on.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pamela McCall: How does digitization make these documents more accessible?
Matthew Brogdon: The Quill Project takes that repository, that archive that we've created, and then allows you to create visual models of it to show people what the process looks like, so that you could ask a question like, well, when was this language inserted or eliminated, and find that point in the deliberative process and see what's happening. Also, see who's contributing and what they're contributing, and how frequently, so that you can really see the human input into those deliberative processes.
PM: How can people navigate the website?
MB: Right at the top of the front page is a button that says “Explore the Declaration of Independence.” What that will take them to is what we have called Jefferson's rough draft. What we have been able to do with all of the available documentary evidence is try to discern where that process started. What did the first draft that Jefferson produced look like? They can use the Quill Project to walk forward from that point and see each of the alterations in the declaration text as they were made.
PM: How did UVU students contribute to the Quill Project?
MB: Students are really involved in not just transcribing these documents, but then at some point looking at each action taken and figuring out what is being proposed here. How do you classify it in terms of the rules? You could almost think of it as a game. Certain text gets included if it meets certain requirements; other text gets eliminated. So this involves students really understanding the minutiae, the nuts and bolts of how a deliberative process works, and that's a really important kind of knowledge, one that we crucially need as a society.
