I visited the Museum of the American Revolution ahead of America’s 250th anniversary. Here are the coolest things I saw.

The text on the bowl, which is in the museum’s permanent collection, reads “Success to the Triphena,” which was a merchant ship that traveled between Philadelphia and Liverpool, England. The bowl would have been used at one of the local taverns that existed in Philadelphia between 1760 and 1770, where the museum now stands.

The Triphena carried a letter from Philadelphia businesspeople to their British associates protesting the Stamp Act, which imposed a tax on all printed documents and helped spark the Revolution.

Phillis Wheatley, born in Gambia, was captured as part of the transatlantic slave trade and sold to the Wheatley family in Massachusetts in 1761. The Wheatleys taught her to read and write, and she published her first poem in 1767 when she was about 12 years old.

The Wheatleys sent her to live with their son in London since no one in the colonies would publish a book of her work. The first edition of her book, “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” was published in London in 1773.

“Even though it’s not turned to that page because we have to constantly turn the pages for light protection, she signed this copy,” Whaley said.

The fowling piece was typically used for hunting birds, but militias of minutemen employed it during the early days of the war, illustrating the resourcefulness of the Revolutionaries as they battled British soldiers.

“These would’ve been used when he was having meetings with people like the Marquis de Lafayette, Alexander Hamilton, and John Laurens,” Whaley said.

The inscription, which reads “Camp Cup owned and used by General Washington during War of the Revolution,” was engraved on the cups after the war.

Continental Army soldiers wore coats featuring these pewter buttons.

Whaley’s likeness is featured in an exhibit centered on the contradiction of American troops fighting for freedom while treating enslaved people as property and currency.

“Enslaved people who were captured by revolutionaries were considered contraband, and revolutionaries were being paid in contraband in some places at some points in the South,” she said. “People were getting paid two-thirds of an enslaved person. It’s like, how do you cash that check, and what did that mean? That’s a real tension as we think about ‘How revolutionary was the war?'”

Jefferson likely sat in this chair while drafting the Declaration of Independence. King sat on this steel bench as he wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963. Displayed side by side, they tie together similar themes of striving for freedom.

“This juxtaposition is really meant to get people thinking about that ongoing story of the revolution,” Whaley said. “Two revolutionaries, 200 years apart, and yet here are the objects that help connect them.”

The Declaration’s Journey also included a copy of the Aurora de Chile, a political newspaper printed on this printing press in the 1800s, that described Fourth of July celebrations in Santiago, Chile.

“American revolutionaries were supporting revolutions in other places, whether it’s sending printing presses, whether it’s sending books and materials, whether it’s sending money, and so this is a really tangible example of that,” Whaley said.

The first three volumes of “History of Woman Suffrage,” chronicling the movement for women’s voting rights, were published by Stanton along with Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage between 1881 and 1886. Ida Husted Harper compiled the final three volumes and completed the project in 1922, two years after the 19th Amendment passed.

Stanton also wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.”

When I told a friend who grew up in Philadelphia that I was visiting the Museum of the American Revolution, this is the permanent exhibit she told me not to miss. (Spoilers ahead!)

First, a narrated film depicted Washington’s leadership during the Revolutionary War, when his tent served as his private office and sleeping quarters. It also included historical photos showing how the tent was preserved and passed down through his descendants.

Then, the curtain rose, and the tent appeared before us.

The exhibit’s lighting and sound design illustrated the tent enduring extreme weather conditions, and even projected Washington’s pacing silhouette within.

The presentation ended with narration saying that Washington’s war tent “remains a symbol of the fragile American experiment, the power of the people to secure their own freedoms.”

The tent is shown on the hour in low lighting due to its fragility. If you see one thing at the museum, make sure it’s this.

Many museums and historic sites across the US are offering special programming to commemorate America’s semiquincentennial. The Museum of the American Revolution offers the unique opportunity to engage with the ideals, battles, and artifacts that started it all.

R. Scott Stephenson, president and CEO of the Museum of the American Revolution, told Business Insider, “The museum is devoted to uncovering and sharing those stories — of everyone from George Washington to James Forten to common soldiers and contributors whose names rarely grace the pages of history books — who, like us, had to make decisions with imperfect information, without knowing what the consequence would be, and who could never have imagined the great nation they would go on to create.”