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A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875
Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 7 May 1, 1777 - September 18, 1777 --Philadelphia Printers
[ca. July 7, 1777](1) The Congress desire to have a bible printed under their care & by their encouragement, & request you to inform them
1. How many thousand pounds of Types would be sufficient to set, or Compose a whole bible of the common sort; and what they would cost ?
2. In how long time such a bible could be set & Printed ?
3. What it could be sold for, as well bound, as our common bibles?
4. Whether Paper fit for the purpose, & a sufficient quantity of it could be had in this country, so as to carry on the work with expedition?
5. How Long the Types when set would continue good, and fit for this purpose of casting off a new edition from time to time?
6. What would be expected from the Congress to carry on this work, that it might be well done & sold nearly as cheap as common school bibles ?
An answer to these queries is requested against Friday at 6 o clock in the afternoon-to be given to the Committee of the Congress at the state house in this City.
RC (DNA: PCC, item 46). In an unidentified hand. Addressed: "To Mr. Henry Miller Printer." The same letter was also sent to Robert Aitken, Thomas Bradford, John Dunlap, and William Sellers. Another, nearly identical copy of the committee's letter, in the same unidentified hand but addressed "To Mr. Sellers Printer " is in ibid., fol. 175.
1 Three Philadelphia Presbyterian clergymen-Francis Alison, John Ewing, and William Marshall-this day submitted a petition to Congress praying that "unless timely care be used to prevent it we shall not have bibles for our Schools, & families, & for the publick Worship of God in our Churches." "We therefore," they continued, "think it our Duty to our Country & to the Churches of Christ to lay this design before this honourable house, humbly requesting that under your care, & by your encouragement, a Copy of the holy Bible may be printed, so as to be sold nearly as cheap as the Common Bibles, formerly imported from Britain & Ireland, were sold." See JCC, 8:536, and PCC, item 42, 1:35.
The petition was referred to a committee consisting of John Adams, Daniel Roberdeau, and Jonathan Bayard Smith, who promptly submitted the queries contained in this document to several Philadelphia printers to determine the
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Link to date-related documents.
feasibility of the petitioners' request. For the printers' responses, one of which is dated July 10, 1777, see PCC, item 46, 1: 155-73.
The committee eventually reported against the petitioners' recommendation because of the expense and difficulties involved in procuring the proper types and paper for such an edition of the Bible, and Congress instead adopted the committee's recommendation to "order the Committee of Commerce to import 20,000 Bibles from Holland, Scotland, or elsewhere." JCC, 8: 733-35. As this decision was not reached until September 11, the day of the battle of Brandywine and only one week before Congress was forced to flee from Philadelphia no action was taken to implement this order.
Another document related to the committee's work in the summer of 1777 bearing the heading "Regulations proposed for the Printing of a Bible for common Use under the Direction & by the Authority of Congress," is also located in PCC. See item 46, 1: 163-64. It consists of 15 articles pertaining to the production of an American edition of the Bible to be carried out under the "Inspection" of Congress and essentially endorses the proposals embodied in the petitioners' memorial. Indeed it may have been drafted as the committee's original report, although the report finally read in Congress on September 11 rejected the practicality of executing such an American edition and recommended instead importing 20,000 Bibles. It has been printed in William H. Gaines, Jr., "The Continental Congress Considers the Publication of a Bible 1777," Studies in Bibliography 3 (1950-51): 275-76, where it has been misidentified as the petition of the Presbyterian ministers.
It was not until 1782 that the first English language American edition of the Old and New Testaments finally appeared. For information on the circumstances that led to the publication of Robert Aitken's edition of the Bible, which appeared with an official congressional endorsement of September 12, 1782, see Margaret T. Hills, "The First American Bible, as Published by Robert Aitken," Bible Society Record 113 (January 1968): 2-5; and JCC, 19:91, 23:572-74.
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