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Our Documents Teacher Sourcebook Preserving Our Documents The following essay is intended to impart teachers and students with an understanding and appreciation of the process by which our nation’s documents are preserved. Preserving the Charters of Freedom By Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, Supervisory Conservator, National Archives and Records Administration & Catherine Nicholson, Senior Conservator, National Archives and Records Administration Reprinted Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration n 1952 the Declaration of Independence, For half a century, staff at the National Archives the Constitution of the United States, and monitored the condition and evaluated the Ithe Bill of Rights (collectively known as safety of the Charters to ensure their survival the Charters of Freedom) were first exhibited for future generations. As technology in the Rotunda of the National Archives Build- improved, new monitoring techniques were ing in Washington, D.C. Shortly before they used. In the late 1980s small irregularities were were displayed, the documents were placed observed on the inner surface of the encase- into protective encasements under the best ment glass. Closer examination revealed tiny conditions that science and technology surface cracks, crystals, and droplets. Glass could provide. experts advised that the irregularities are symptoms of glass deterioration. Although the documents are not in any danger, eventually the deteriorating glass will turn opaque, obscuring the documents. 1941 President Lend Lease Act— Executive Order 8802: Franklin Roosevelt’s When war broke out in Europe in 1939, the United States Prohibition of Discrimination Annual Message to officially remained neutral. President Roosevelt, however, in the Defense Industry— Congress— believes the United States is obligated to assist Great Britain War is raging in Europe and This speech delivered by in its fight against Germany. Calling upon the United States Asia, and United States President Roosevelt on to be the “great arsenal of democracy,” President Roosevelt defense-related industries Jan. 6 is known as his proposes a system for supplying England with war goods expand as the nation supplies “Four Freedoms Speech,” without requiring cash payment. The system allows the war goods to the fighting nations. A. Philip Randolph, due to a short closing lending or leasing of war supplies to any nation deemed President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, portion describing the “vital to the defense of the United States.” Congress threatens to March on Washington if President Roosevelt President’s vision in approves the proposal as the Lend Lease Act on March 11, doesn’t make employment opportunities in the growing which the American and the United States immediately begins shipping war government-run defense industries available to African- ideals of individual supplies to England. Americans in addition to whites. In response, Roosevelt liberties extend issues Order 8802 in June, banning discriminatory throughout the world. employment practices by federal agencies and all unions and companies engaged in war-related work. The order also establishes the Fair Employment Practices Commission to enforce the new policy. 72 ■ www.ourdocuments.gov Design of each unit. The documents will be mounted so that glass never touches them. The new The National Archives and Records Adminis- design makes it possible to incorporate future tration and the National Institute of Standards conservation techniques as they are developed. and Technology are nearing the end of a multi- On page 75, is a cutaway view of the encase- year project to design and fabricate new ment that shows some of the design details. encasements for the Declaration Of Indepen- dence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights with funding provided from the United States Prototypes Congress and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The National Institute of Standards and The deteriorating glass in the existing units Technology has designed and fabricated proto- presents the opportunity to entirely redesign types of the new encasements. A manufactur- the encasement. Using the best technology ing model was created, followed by Prototype available, an interdisciplinary team of 1. Delivered in late 1999, Prototype 1 currently conservators, archivists, engineers, design and encases the transmittal page of the Constitu- exhibit specialists, architects, chemists, and tion. That prototype has been under constant physicists are working with materials and fab- monitoring since early 2000. The environment rication experts to design and build new, state- within the encasement is tested to ensure there of-the-art encasements that will preserve and is an airtight seal and that the document protect the Charters for generations to come. remains in the best condition possible. The existing encasements, which contain Prototype 2 was delivered in the fall of helium and a small amount of water vapor, are 2000, and it houses the second page of the soldered shut and cannot be opened without Constitution. Prototype 2 is the production breaking the seal. The design of the new model for the remaining encasements to be encasements permits conservators to open and delivered to NARA conservators in 2001. reseal them if it is ever necessary to examine Those encasements will house pages one, the documents or modify the special monitor- three, and four of the Constitution and its ing and preservation components that are part 1942 Joint Address to Congress Leading Executive Order 9066: to a Declaration of War Against Japan— Japanese Relocation Order— On Dec. 7, Japanese torpedo planes and dive- Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, bombers kill almost 2,400 Americans and destroy Executive Order 9066 is issued. It hundreds of aircraft, battleships, cruisers, and authorizes the evacuation of all 1944 destroyers at the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Japanese-Americans from the West General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Harbor, Hawaii. In response, President Roosevelt Coast to relocation centers guarded by Order of the Day, June 6— asks Congress to declare war on Japan, to military police further inland. This order authorizes the D-Day invasion of the avenge what he calls a “date which will live in beaches of Normandy, by American troops, in an infamy” when “the United States of America was effort to liberate France, which had fallen to the suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and Germans earlier in the Second World War. air forces of the Empire of Japan.” He receives near-unanimous approval from Congress to Servicemen’s Readjustment Act— declare war on Japan, and the United States Also known as the G.I. Bill, this act, signed into enters the Second World War. law by President Roosevelt on June 22, provides veterans of the Second World War funds for college education, unemployment insurance, and housing. www.ourdocuments.gov ■ 73 transmittal page, the Declaration of the Charters of Freedom, NARA’s conserva- Independence, and the Bill of Rights. tors finally reached the day that pages 2 and 3 of the U.S. Constitution, along with the Removing Transmittal Page, were transferred from their the Charters storage vault to the special, secure room from where the conservation treatment would be the Old carried out. The documents were removed Encasements from the vault in their old encasements for National Archives conserva- the last time. tors work very carefully The room in which the work is done is when handling archival designed to assure close control of the temper- records, especially so with ature and humidity to which the documents the Charters of Freedom. will be exposed when they are removed from These photos show conser- their old encasements. vators at work as they Parchment responds to changes in moisture remove the documents from by expanding and contracting. When it is their original encasements exposed to a moister atmosphere, it expands; and place them in the when it is exposed to a drier atmosphere, it new encasements. The documents undergo contracts. Because parchment is the stretched, painstaking conservation treatment before preserved skin of an animal (often a cow or a they are transferred. sheep), different parts of the same skin may After months of planning and coordination respond differently to changes in humidity, with colleagues throughout NARA and NIST causing unexpected ripples and bumps on for the construction of new encasements for the surface. 1945 Surrender of Germany— Manhattan Project Notebook— In France, on May 7, German General Alfred Johl United Nations Charter— The Manhattan Project, so-called signs the unconditional surrender of all German In Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C., because it is run after 1942 by a forces on all fronts, ending the European phase and San Francisco the Allied powers section of the army code-named the of World War II. The official German surrender, create an international agency that “Manhattan District”, is assigned the scheduled to take effect on May 8, follows Nazi will resolve conflicts among members, task of developing an atomic bomb. leader Adolph Hitler’s suicide, Berlin’s surrender and discourage aggressor nations with This notebook records an experiment to the Soviet Army, and the surrender of several military force if required. This new agency is of the Manhattan Project, the all-out major German armies to British forces in known as the United Nations. but highly secret effort of the federal northern Europe. government to build an atomic bomb Surrender of Japan— during World War II. Recorded here On Sept. 2, Japanese
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