The first draft of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence---already edited by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston---was presented before Congress on June 28. 39 revisions were made on the text before it was adopted on the 4th of July, 1776.
On that same day, the Declaration was sent to Philadelphia printer John Dunlap, who produced the first printed text of the document. President of the Continental Congress John Hancock immediately began to have copies distributed, including one to General George Washington in New York.
There, on July 9, Washington had the Declaration read to the army. Afterwards, revelers in the city pulled down the statue of George III, which resided in New York's bowling green, and subsequently melted George and his horse into several thousand lead balls for Continental army muskets.
The first official printer of the Declaration, designated by the Congress some months later, was a woman, Mary Katherine Goddard of Baltimore. Goddard edited the Maryland Journal and had been in the printer's trade for over ten years when Congress called upon her services.
