McKean, in 1814, said it was not so,[709] and the best investigators of our day are agreed that the president and secretary alone signed it on that day, though Lossing, following Jefferson, has held that, though signed on that day on paper by the members, it was in the nature of a temporary authentication, and it did not preclude the more formal act of signing it on parchment, which all are agreed was done on August 2d following. Thornton, of New Hampshire, signed as late as Nov. 4th; and McKean, who was absent with the army, seems to have temporarily returned so as to sign later in the year. Thornton's name appears in the printed _Journal_ as attached to the Declaration on July 4th, and McKean's is not, though McKean was present and Thornton was not. The fact is, the printed _Journal_ is not a copy of the record of that day, and was made up without due regard to the sequence of proceedings, when prepared by a committee for the press in the early part of 1777. There is in Force's _American Archives_ (4th ser., vol. vi. p. 1729) a journal constructed by combining the original record (of which we have no printed copy) and the minutes and documents of the official files. From a collation of all these early records it appears that the vote of January 18, 1777, ordering the Declaration to be printed with the names attached,—then for the first time done,—made it convenient to use this printed record in making the published _Journal_ entry under July 4th. In this way the name of Thornton, who signed it even subsequent to Aug. 2d, appears in that printed record as having been put to the Declaration on July 4th. That any paper copy was signed on July 4th is not believed, from the fact that no such copy exists; and if it be claimed that it has been lost, there is still ground for holding rather that it never existed, inasmuch as no vote is found for any authentication except in the usual way, by Hancock and Thomson, the president and secretary. McKean's criticism was the first to confront the usual public belief of its being signed July 4th, as many respectable writers have maintained since who preferred the authority of the printed _Journal_ and of Jefferson and Adams. Such was Mahon's preference, and Peter Force rather curtly criticised him for it, in the _National Intelligencer_.[710] Force did not explain at length the grounds of his assertions, and Mahon did not alter his statement in a later edition; but a full explanation has been made by Mellen Chamberlain in his _Authentication of the Declaration of Independence_ (Cambridge, 1885), which originally made part of the _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, Nov., 1884, p. 273. He gives full references.