During the Civil War, the precious document was hidden behind wallpaper in a home in Virginia to keep Union soldiers from finding it.

Later, it sat in a closet in Kentucky, in a broken frame, unappreciated and stored in a cardboard box.

And later still it was stuck behind a cabinet in the office of an energy executive outside Houston.

It was a rare parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence, made in Washington in the 1820s for founding father James Madison, and apparently unknown to the public for more than a century.