Charters of Freedom

The term Charters of Freedom is used to describe the three documents in early American history which are considered instrumental to its founding and philosophy. These documents are the United States Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. While the term has not entered particularly common usage, the room at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. that houses the three documents is called the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom.

The National Archives preserves and displays the texts in massive, bronze-framed, bulletproof, moisture-controlled sealed display cases in a rotunda style room by day and in multi-ton bomb-proof vaults by night. The ‘Charters of Freedom’ are flanked by Barry Faulkner’s two grand murals, one featuring Thomas Jefferson amidst the Continental Congress, the other centering on James Madison at the Constitutional Convention. Alongside the Charters of Freedom is a dual display of the "Formation of the Union", which is documents related to the evolution of the U.S. government from 1774 to 1791. These include Articles of Association (1774), Articles of Confederation (1778), Treaty of Paris (1783) and Washington’s First Inaugural Address (1789).

At first there was little interest in the parchment object itself. James Madison had custody of it as Secretary of State (1801-9) but having left Washington DC, he had lost track of it in the years leading to his death. A publisher had access to it in 1846 for a book on the Constitution. In 1883, historian J. Franklin Jameson found the parchment folded in a small tin box on the floor of a closet at the State, War and Navy Building. In 1894 the State Department sealed the Declaration and Constitution between two glass plates and kept them in a safe.

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