Traces of the Real: Autographomania and the Cult of the Signers in Nineteenth-Century America

During the early nineteenth century a popular obsession with autograph collecting swept through the United States. Among such “autographomaniacs”, handwritten signatures belonging to the signers of the Declaration of Independence—and collections bringing together the signatures of all 56—soon emerged as the most rarified. The intersection of autograph collecting and the Declaration of Independence provides fertile terrain for exploring the performative and preservative functions of the signature. This paper examines the special nature of the signature as a privileged site of authenticity and, in the special context of the Declaration, as a site of ritual reenactment and collective memory.