# A wartime poster prints the Declaration, the First Amendment and the Thirteenth

A text-only blue poster catalogued at 1941, with no image, issuer or date printed, quotes three founding passages in full: the Declaration of Independence on equality and unalienable rights, the First Amendment, and the Thirteenth Amendment's ban on slavery and involuntary servitude (NAID 514336).

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- A wartime poster prints the Declaration, the First Amendment and the Thirteenth

      From the Declaration of Independence

      A wartime poster prints the Declaration, the First Amendment and the Thirteenth
      A 1941 text-only poster quotes the Declaration of Independence, the First Amendment and the Thirteenth Amendment, with no issuer printed. NAID 514336.

## Techniques named on the archive record

TransferGlittering generalities
      Date1941Made byIssuer not printedMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 514336; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Issuer not printed. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-842 (NAID 514336).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A text-only blue poster catalogued at 1941, with no image, issuer or date printed, quotes three founding passages in full: the Declaration of Independence on equality and unalienable rights, the First Amendment, and the Thirteenth Amendment's ban on slavery and involuntary servitude (NAID 514336).

## Three passages, and nothing else

The sheet is blue and carries only words. There is no picture and no slogan of its own, and the maker did not print a name. Each passage is introduced by its source.

From the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

From the Constitution, the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

From the Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 514336, local id 44-PA-842, Record Group 44.

## The choice of passages is the argument

The archive tags transfer, since the authority of the founding documents is placed on the sheet without comment, and glittering generalities. Both fit. Yet the selection says something on its own. Out of the whole Constitution, the maker chose the amendment that limits Congress on religion, speech, press, assembly and petition, and the amendment that bans slavery and involuntary servitude. Next to them is the Declaration's claim that people are endowed with unalienable rights.

Those are texts about what the state may not do. Filed among the World War II posters, they read as a reminder addressed to the government as much as to the public. A reader who took this sheet seriously had grounds to object to censorship, to forced labor, and to treating any group of citizens as less than equal.

## The same file holds sheets that test those words

The National Archives keeps this poster with the other World War II posters in Record Group 44. That file also holds a text-only espionage-law warning, catalogued at the same year, that threatens death or up to thirty years in prison for five numbered acts, and Rockwell's Freedom of Speech, whose page on this site notes that the First Amendment is left off the canvas. Here it is printed in full. The Roosevelt administration essay covers the Office of Censorship, the voluntary press code, and Executive Order 9066.

A Lincoln text poster catalogued at 1941, As I Would Not Be a Slave, takes the same plain form.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, From the Declaration of Independence, 1941. Issuer not printed. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-842, NAID 514336, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/from-the-declaration-of-independence-1941/