History of the Printed Archetype

Two archetypes of the Constitution of the United States of America exist, both authorized by the Federal Convention which drafted it.

One is the copy engrossed on parchment which was signed on September 17, 1787, by the members of the Federal Convention and deposited as its "report" with the Continental Congress, the "United States in Congress assembled" of the Articles of Confederation. This is the copy enshrined in the National Archives.1

The other archetype was simultaneously printed by the Federal Convention for its members. It was reproduced by the Continental Congress for the ratification of conventions in the States and finally published by the Congress of the United States with its first session laws as a "correct copy".

For approximately a century this printed archetype was the model followed in official editions of the laws and other governmental issues. Discrepancies in editing crept in the texts printed with the laws in the official editions of 1796, 1815 and 1845 are not identical. On the other hand, the frequent prints for the use of the Houses of Congress in what became the Senate and House Manuals reproduced the printed archetype with great fidelity, although after about 1819 no archetype seemed to be available.

The engrossed copy bearing the holograph signatures of the makers of the Constitution in the Federal Convention was well known and became famous as a result of its display by the Department of State at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. It was first reproduced by direction of Congress in Revised Statutes of the United States, 2d Edition, 1878, and thereafter became the accepted archetype of the Constitution.

The first printed edition of the Constitution was made on September 18, 1787, for the members of the Federal Convention under the direction of its Committee of Style and Arrangement, which also controlled the text of the engrossed copy of the "report". That printed copy was the working paper of the Continental Congress in formulating its resolution of September 28, 1787, which transmitted this "Report of the Convention lately assembled in Philadelphia" to the Legislatures of the States for ratification.

1 Since December 15, 1952, when it was transferred with the Declaration of Independence from the Library of Congress, where they had been on display since February 28, 1924. The two documents were in the Department of State until September 30, 1921.

This display of the engrossed copy contrasts with earlier treatment of the document. J. Franklin Jameson wrote that in 1882 when he "first visited the Library of the Department of State at Washington, the Constitution of the United States was kept folded up in a little tin box in the lower part of a closet while the Declaration of Independence, mounted with all elegance, was exposed to the view of all in the central room of the library." (Introduction to the Study of the Constitutional and Political History of the States).

by Conventions of Delegates. This text, as reprinted by the Congress for that purpose and ratified by the States, is here reproduced.

The first Congress convened under the Constitution by a resolution dated July 6, 1789 directed that a "correct copy" of the Constitution be printed with the laws of its first session. This third edition of the printed archetype is identical with the one issued by the Continental Congress, except that House, Senator and Representative are given initial capital letters.

ORIGIN OF THE ARCHETYPES

The "United States in Congress assembled", as the Continental Congress established by the Articles of Confederation of July 9, 1778, was officially called, resolved on February 21, 1787, that a convention be held in May 1787 at Philadelphia—

for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States render the federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government and the preservation of the Union.

The Federal Convention was called at Philadelphia for May 14, 1787, but the necessary quorum of deputies or commissioners of seven States was not present until May 25. On September 8 the work had advanced far enough for the convention to appoint a Committee of Style and Arrangement "to revise and place the several parts under their proper heads" of what was already being referred to as a constitution. The committee consisted of William Samuel Johnson (Connecticut), Alexander Hamilton (New York), Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania), James Madison, Jr. (Virginia), and Rufus King (Massachusetts). Working with the print of August 63 and the subsequent records, the committee, on September 12, reported "the Constitution as revised and arranged" and it was "ordered that the Members be furnished with printed copies thereof".

The Convention continued a second reading procedure on provisions of the instrument and the Committee of Style and Arrangement proceeded to revise and refine the language until Saturday, September 15, 1787. On that day the Convention by unanimous vote "Ordered to be engrossed and 500 copies struck", as James

2 Acts passed at a Congress of the United States of America, begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday the Fourth of March in the Year M,DCC,LXXXIX. v-xiv (New York, Francis Childs and John Swaine, n.d.).

3 Department of State, Bureau of Rolls and Library, Documentary History of the Constitution of the United States, 1787-1870, I, 285-308, 338-60; III, 338-85 (Congressional set, vols. 4184-86); Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, II, 177. The original is on 7 proof pages. This draft, printed by Dunlap and Claypoole, on 6 pages, is reprinted in Documentary History, I, 362-85, and III, 720-33, and in Farrand, op. cit., II, 590.

McHenry (Maryland) recorded in his notes of the proceedings. " Or as Washington put it in his diary:

Adjourned till Monday that the constitution which it was proposed to offer to the People might be engrossed—and a number of printed copies struck.

The convention thus provided for the simultaneous preparation of an engrossed copy and a printed copy of its decisions. The Committee of Style and Arrangement, which met daily through September 15 when the Convention completed its approval, was still responsible for any question respecting the text. Both engrossment and printing were under its direction. The engrossed and printed copies of the report which the Federal Convention was directed to make to Congress by the resolution of February 21, 1787, were prepared at the same time, under the same authority, but had very different histories.

THE ENGROSSED COPY

The engrossed copy was made by Jacob Shallus, assistant clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, on four parchment sheets, 131⁄2 x 15%1⁄2 inches (34 cm. x 39 cm.), and was laid before the Convention at its final meeting on Monday, September 17, 1787. The engrossed Constitution was read through article VII. Benjamin Franklin made a speech in which he moved its signing and proposed that the enacting clause read: "Done in Convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present", etc. An amendment was adopted to article I, section 2, clause 3, where "forty thousand" was changed to "thirty thousand". The "enrolled" Constitution was then agreed to for signing. The amendment was made in the engrossed copy by an erasure. The testimonium clause was already in the engrossed copy. All the members of the Federal Convention except three signed the document. Their last acts before adjournment sine die were to remove the injunction of secrecy, and direct the secretary to carry it to the Congress. It is, of course, the original signatures of the makers of the Constitution that give the engrossed copy a unique character.

William Jackson, secretary of the Federal Convention, took the engrossed copy to New York, "to lay the great result of their proceedings before the United States in Congress".10 He left Philadelphia by stage at 10 a. m. September 18 and arrived in

5 Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, II, 634.

6 Farrand, op. cit., III, 81; Documentary History, IV, 277.

7 Sesquicentennial Commission, History of the Formation of the Union under the Constitution, 770, gives the story of his identification.

& Its form had been drawn up by Gouverneur Morris, who had been the stylist of the Committee of Style and Arrangement, and who had put it into the hands of Benjamin Franklin for presentation (Farrand, op. cit., II, 643).

James McHenry's notes, Farrand, op. cit., I, 650.

10 The Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser, September 18, 1787.

New York at 2 p. m. September 19." On September 20 he delivered it to the Congress and it was placed in the files, while the members of Congress studied the document in the printed form received from Philadelphia.

The engrossed copy, after its transmittal to the President of the United States in Congress assembled on September 20, 1787, was filed and the delegates deliberated over printed copies of the Federal Convention. Two years later, on July 25, 1789, President Washington instructed Charles Thomson, secretary of that Congress, to deliver to his former deputy secretary, Roger Alden, "the books, records and papers of the late Congress", 12 which included the "Report of the Convention lately assembled in Philadelphia". The act of July 27, 1789 (1 Stat. 28), established the Department of Foreign Affairs and further provided that the Secretary "shall forthwith after his appointment, be entitled to have the custody and charge of all records, books and papers the office of Secretary for the department of foreign affairs heretofore established by the United States in Congress assembled." The act also provided for a chief clerk who, during any vacancy in the post of "principal officer" had "the charge and custody of all records, books and papers appertaining to the said department.” The act of September 15, 1789 (1 Stat. 68), which changed the name of the department to Department of State, completed the transfer of papers.

in

John Jay, who had been the Secretary since September 21, 1784, under the Articles of Confederation, continued in the office under the Constitution until March 22, 1790. He made his Under Secretary, Henry Remsen, Jr., his chief clerk in charge of foreign affairs, and by appointing Roger Alden 13 chief clerk January 1, 1790, accessioned to his department the "records, books and papers of the Congress".

The Federal Convention on September 17, 1787, directed that its President "retain the Journal and other papers, subject to the order of Congress, if ever formed under the Constitution".14 President

Washington complied with that direction and Secretary of State Timothy Pickering gave a receipt for them on March 19, 1796.15 The papers contained the printed draft of the Constitution of August 6, 1787, but no copy of the Convention's print of September 18, 1787.

11 Diary of William Samuel Johnson, with whom Jackson traveled. The Johnson diary is in the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.

12 New York Historical Society, Collecttions, Publication Fund Series, XI, 250-53. "The Great Seal of the Federal Union and the Seal of the Admiralty" were also delivered to Alden.

13 Alden was transmitting current papers on August 25, 1789, and was chief clerk from January I to July 25, 1790. He was preceded and succeeded by Remsen (Department of State, Register, 1874, part 2, p. 43).

14 Farrand, op. cit., II, 648; III, 82.

15 Documentary History, I, 47; Farrand, op. cit., III, 370.

A resolution of the 15th Congress approved March 27, 1818, directed

that the journal of the convention which formed the present constitution of the United States, now remaining in the office of the Secretary of State, and all acts and proceedings of that convention, which are in the possession of the government of the United States, be published under the direction of the President of the United States (3 Stat. 475).16

President Monroe charged Secretary of State John Quincy Adams with the task of compiling the publication, which was printed by Thomas B. Wait at Boston in October 1819, entitled Journal, Acts and Proceedings of the Convention . . . which formed the Constitution of the United States. This volume did not reproduce either the copy of the document ordered printed on September 15, 1787, or its engrossed counterpart ordered at the same time and signed by the delegates for transmission to Congress. It ended with the ratifications by the States of the Constitution (p. 392-438) and the "Constitution of the United States, with all the ratified amendments, as at present existing" (p. 489-510). This text was an edited form of the archetype of Congress, using fewer initial capitals, but otherwise having the distinctive characteristics of the copy which was ratified, including the full names in the signatures.

Immediately after publication of that volume an edition of the engrossed parchment "copied from and compared with the roll" was issued "under the direction of the Department of State" in 1820. The search for the Journal papers in the disordered 17 files had apparently brought its four sheets to light.

17

In 1846 William Hickey published his Constitution of the United States of America, with an Alphabetical Analysis, a governmental manual which for 30 years was a "fireside companion of the American citizen". Hickey was bothered by discrepancies which he found in editions of the Constitution-in one, 204, and in another, 176 errors, by his count. So he asked the Department of State to give him an authentic text. James Buchanan, Secretary of State, gave him a certificate on July 20, 1846, that the Constitution in his edition had been "critically compared with the originals [the engrossed copy] in this Department and found to be correct, in text, letter and punctuation". Copies of Hickey's book were

16 The further distribution of the 1,000 copies printed was determined by a resolution approved January 19, 1820 (3 Stat. 609); also 3 Stat. 719; 4 Stat. 607.

17 The clerk in charge of the papers, Josiah W. King, wrote in March 1825:

"A great portion of my time is occupied in searching after old papers, and documents connected with the Offices of the Secretary of the Congress, and of foreign affairs under the Confederation—which papers from the repeated Removals of the Archives of this Department, before they were transferred to this City, and since that period from house to house here, are necessarily in a state of much disorder and confusion—and consequently require more time and labor for researches thro' them.”—Natalia Summers, Outline of the Functions of the Office of the Department of State, 1789-1943, 111 (National Archives).