A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Some of the most important documents from the days of the American Revolution are flying around the country this year in something called the Freedom Plane. Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports on a part of the country's 250th birthday celebration.
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FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: The Freedom Plane, a red, white and blue Boeing 737, put down in Kansas City hauling heavy steel boxes full of irreplaceable historical papers. The CEO of the National Archives Foundation, Patrick Madden, stepped off the plane and slipped under an 80,000-pound door into a 100-year-old hangar for a press conference.
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PATRICK MADDEN: I'm thrilled you could join us for this momentous and historic day as the Freedom Plane and these documents make its very first landing.
MORRIS: Madden says some of this stuff has never been out of the National Archives, let alone on an airplane. The Articles of Association is in there. That's from 1774, the first time all the colonies stood up to Britain. There's a secret draft of the Constitution with side notes and edits. Matthew Naylor, who runs the National World War I Museum, where the papers are going on display here, likes the one capping the Revolutionary War.
MATTHEW NAYLOR: The Treaty of Paris is a really significant one where you've got George Washington and others who have signed this, and then a British guy who signs it on the other part, recognizing the United States now is separating.
MORRIS: There's only nine documents on tour, but most of them made changes that stick to this day. For instance, the oath of loyalty to the United States - and specifically not a king - that General George Washington signed in 1778. That one speaks to Army Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Betson (ph), who helped unload the papers here.
ANDREW BETSON: As an officer in the United States Army, I don't swear an oath to an individual. I swear an oath to an idea. I swear to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That precedent established by George Washington in the beginning and then, you know, captured in this particular document.
MORRIS: The Freedom Plane has seven more stops before wrapping up the tour at the end of summer. Organizers hope the documents on board will remind people how hard, messy and dangerous it was to set up the democracy that Americans have enjoyed for almost 250 years.
For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Kansas City.
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