On Saturday, July 4, philanthropist and Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein announced he would be making a move that combines two of his foremost passions: American history and sports.

Rubenstein, who co-founded the private equity firm Carlyle Group, told Bloomberg he plans to distribute replicas of the Declaration of Independence to each of the 30 Major League Baseball teams and 30 National Basketball Association teams for display in their stadiums, according to eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

Under then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, the United States printed 200 replicas of the Declaration of Independence in 1823. Created by engraver William Stone, less than a quarter of the original 200 still exist today. Rubenstein owns about a dozen of them.

Rubenstein plans to distribute life-sized copies of the foundational American document later this year, with the aim of having all 60 on display as soon as possible.

This isn’t the first time Rubenstein has donated Declaration replicas. Earlier this year, at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., where Rubenstein is chairman, he told a crowd that he would be donating copies to all 50 state governors in the United States. At that same event, he told the story of the 200 copies.

“In 1823, John Quincy Adams, secretary of state, said, ‘We need to make sure that everybody can see this document that people signed and that my father signed, so let’s have perfect copies made.’ So, they had a printer in Washington named William Stone, and he came up with a process where he took a wet cloth, put it on the original document, took off the ink, and then put this ink that he had from the wet cloth on a copper plate, and he made 200 perfect copies,” Rubenstein said.

Interestingly, the National Archives stated in 2003 that, “In 1881, a National Academy of Sciences committee asserted that the poor condition of the Declaration was the result of a wet copy technique, but there is no way to confirm the claim.”

Rubenstein said that the replicas he has commissioned of the original replicas he bought are accurate enough that only a “real document expert” could tell the difference. Soon, fans of the Baltimore Orioles, Los Angeles Lakers, Houston Astros and 57 other teams will be able to get up close and personal with what amounts to a very close replica of the document that declared the United States as an independent nation.

Appropriately, this comes right around the 250th anniversary of the nation.

In March 2025, Rubenstein explained to Baltimore Jewish Times how he began collecting historical documents.

“I stumbled into buying [a 1297 copy of] the Magna Carta, which is the only one in private hands and the only one in the United States,” he said at the time. “And once I did that, people started offering me other historic documents. … I think I have the largest collection in the United States of Declarations of Independence, more than the U.S. government. And I lend mine to the U.S. government very often, as I have with the Magna Carta, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, the Bill of Rights, and so forth.”

Since then, Rubenstein has contributed to fixing structures like the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

The 1823 replicas of the Declaration, though, hold a special significance to this nation. The reproductions displayed in ballparks and arenas across the country will provide an opportunity to engage with one of the nation’s founding documents, reminding fans of what mattered to the framers, and what should matter to us.

In Rubenstein’s talk at the The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., he discussed one part of the document that drew little attention at first but has evolved into a foundational message to and for all Americans.

“Nobody paid attention through the preamble. The preamble was something that had been written by Thomas Jefferson, modestly edited by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, and had a sentence that now has been considered to be the most famous sentence in the English language,” he said. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that we’re endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”

“So, what happened is, when they got that document drafted, nobody paid attention to the preamble that later became famous, because that sentence became the creed of our country,” he added. “Although we didn’t live up to it to start, and we still have a ways to go, the idea that all men are created equal, really, all people are created equal with certain rights, is something that we’ve aspired to, and it inspired revolutions around the world.”

aguckes@midatlanticmedia.com