See the Declaration Before It’s Too Late!

If you haven’t yet seen the exhibition that David McCullough calls the one “every American ought to see,” you might want to make a trip to the Library within the next few days.

The original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand, with edits by John Adams and Ben Franklin, will be cycling out of the “Creating the United States” exhibit Oct. 29. It will be replaced by George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, a document that influenced Jefferson and the Founding Fathers.

It will likely be your last chance to see the “real deal” for the next several years.  (“Creating the United States” and the rest of the Library of Congress Experience will be available for visitors at least until 2011.)

Even if you can’t make it to DC, there’s a terrific online version of “Creating the United States” that includes an interactive that lets you virtually explore the draft along with several of its antecedent documents.

The Washington Post wrote about the exhibit today here.