America’s universal document: a curious history

Marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, Michael Auslin speaks to Paul Lay about the document’s powerful yet often strange afterlife. From Philadelphia in 1776, through the Civil War, the Gilded Age, both World Wars and the Cold War, America’s founding document has been a perennial symbol of hope. Image: An illustration from ‘Columbia's Courtship: A Picture History of the United States in Twelve Emblematic Designs in Color with Accompanying Verses’ by Walter Crane (1983). Credit: Alamy