May 24, 1950, the functions were transferred to the Administrator of General Services, National Archives and Records Service. It had taken 30 years to round out a system for taking care of the Constitution in a manner to which it was entitled after the abandonment of the record book begun by the Secretary of Congress. The procedure prescribed in 1818 was not exercised until 1865 when the 13th amendment was acted upon. Such lapses of time between periods when the text of the Constitution is an issue emphasizes the importance of maintaining a completely correct official record of the fundamental document. THE VARIETY OF OFFICIAL PRINTS The failure to designate some copy as the archetype to be regarded as the final text of reference created no question for many years. It was not until 1796 that the Constitution was prefixed. again to the laws, the Folwell compilation. A series of separate prints by the Houses of Congress from 1799 on faithfully reproduced the print of September 28, 1787, with the effective amendments. The Bioren and Duane compilation of the laws in the first volume in 1815 carried an edited text, with case citations, and the Department of State publication of the proceedings of the Federal Convention in 1819 carried that text and the ratifications as an appendix. Presumably in connection with that compilation the engrossed copy of September 17, 1787, was brought to light, for in 1820 the Department of State printed an edition of it as of historical interest, though it was not until the Centennial Exposition of 1876 that it really came to public notice. The House Manual in 1824 and the Senate Manual in 1828 included the Constitution and the other three documents of the edition of September 28, 1787, and continued to do so until 1879 and 1868, respectively. In 1845 Statutes at Large began publication, containing a freshly edited edition of the same text. There were then five variant texts extant, three in the three successive compilations of the laws, the text of September 28, 1787, in the House and Senate Manuals, and the print of the engrossed copy. In 1846 William Hickey undertook to publish the Constitution with an index and manual of government. He noted the discrepancies in the several texts of the Constitution and asked the Department of State to straighten out the matter. James Buchanan as Secretary of State gave him a certificate on July 20, 1846, that the engrossed copy, which he printed, had been "critically compared with the originals in this Department and found to be correct, in text, letter and punctuation." Hickey's manual was bought in quantity by Congress for the next 30 years. The Buchanan certificate gave the four parchment sheets of the engrossed copy signed in the Federal Convention standing which it had not previously had. Those sheets were truly "originals" and, since all copies of the Constitution are dated September 17, 1787, it is understandable that the requirement of ratification of this "Report" to Congress should have been disregarded. The question of style was the particular one raised at that time, when the relation of a copy of the Constitution to the process of putting it into effect was not yet examined. For many years the mass of papers taken into the Department of State from the Office of the Secretary of Congress were in disorder or just packed. Papers relating to the Constitution were separate from the other two groups, and it was not until 1818 that those documents were given much attention, in connection with the related project of publishing the records of the Federal Convention. Secretary of State Henry Clay in a letter of February 16, 1826, reported that his department had the care of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (Senate Document 109, 21st Cong., 1st sess., Serial 193), undoubtedly referring to the engrossed copies of each. Subsequent exhibition of them and the original of the Bill of Rights resolution in the Department of State, the Library of Congress and the National Archives has made them familiar to the public. The assumption that the engrossed "Report of the Convention lately assembled in Philadelphia" was the real archetype of the Constitution was easy to make. It was a contemporaneous "original," prepared by order of the Federal Convention and submitted to the Congress. As a parchment manuscript it had an apparent authenticity superior to printed copies of the same period, if they were positively identified, as they seem not to have been until the 1890's. The engrossed copy was in the files of the Department of State which had custody of the other papers constituting the official file of the Constitution, ratifications by the States of the basic instrument and its amendments. The question which brought the Department of State to commit itself in 1846 to calling the engrossed copy the "original" of the Constitution was not substantive, but a matter of style in order to reconcile editorial variations which had been made in official prints. A historical predilection affected the situation from the outset. The Federal Convention has always been regarded as more important with relation to the Constitution than the United States in Congress assembled, which created the Federal Convention and was the responsible organ for its origination and acceptance. Not only have the members of the Federal Convention been honored throughout the country's life as the "Founding Fathers" but the Congress itself took a back seat in the process of the Constitution's acceptance. In its resolution of September 28, 1787, it only "received the Report", transmitted it to the States for action "in conformity to the Resolves of the Convention." In a technical sense the Congress asked the States to act directly upon the report of a committee which it had created. The resolution of September 13, 1788, "for commencing proceedings under the said constitution" was scarcely more assertive of the primary function of Congress to carry out the plans laid down by the Federal Convention, its committee. This putting forward by Congress of its committee's document and procedure for enacting it obscured the actual responsibility of Congress, which alone could, by obtaining and authenticating ratifications, make the Constitution operative. This obscuration extended to the text of the Constitution, or "frame of government," as it was frequently described in the States. The officially printed copies of September 18, 1787, by the Federal Convention and of September 29, 1787, by the Congress, as well as the "correct" copy printed under the resolution of the new Congress of July 6, 1789, were essentially the same and differed from the signed engrossed copy chiefly in the engrossment technique of capitalizing all nouns. Not even differences in punctuation have raised questions of legal interpretation. The result of this similarity has been a disregard of the political fact that the Constitution written by the Federal Convention was only a draft until the States ratified it and the United States in Congress assembled authenticated the ratifications. The availability of the engrossed copy as a parchment manuscript-obviously an "original document"-together with the interest attaching to it by reason of the holograph signatures of its makers probably accounted for Buchanan's certifying it as the archetype in 1846. Why a Department of State which consistently held that treaties were valid only after ratifications were exchanged and was continuously printing laws only as approved without regard to their identity with the text as reported from committees should have certified the "Report of the Convention" as the ratified Constitution has no recorded explanation. There was no master file to refer to, but one might have been constructed. If the volume "Ratifications of the Constitution" had been consulted, the text used there might have been accepted, or the printed copy thereof sought, or the research might have pointed to the text in the first session laws attested as a "correct" copy. An edition of the engrossed copy "compared with the original in the Department of State, September 17, 1872," the 85th anniversary of its signing, gave further credence to it as the official text. The exhibition of the engrossed parchment sheets at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876 introduced it extensively to the public. The second edition of the Revised Laws of the United States of America in 1878 contained it by resolution of Congress. It was thereafter substituted for the former text in the House and Senate Manuals. The Department of State published separate editions in “literal print" a dozen times between 1891 and 1934. The engrossed copy was reproduced in the United States Code. Of the numerous separate editions of the Constitution published by Congress, only the text printed in the first session laws was attested as a "correct" copy. Until 1878 such issues followed that text with great fidelity; after the issuance of the Revised Statutes the engrossed copy was adhered to, frequently with additional material, such as the index, ratification records, quotations of statesmen, with the amendments. These editions were usually authorized by simple resolutions of Congress. Notable exceptions to these editions occurred in 1934 and 1956 under concurrent resolutions, “in such form and style as may be directed by the Joint Committee on Printing." Senate Document No. 79, 73d Congress, Ist session; Serial 9747, and House Document No. 459, 84th Congress, 2d session; Serial 11934, are both entitled The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. They are of interest both because "form and style" were editorial considerations and because the text of the Constitution reproduced is that printed copy of September 18, 1787, which is identified as belonging to James Madison, a member of the Federal Convention. These prints of the Constitution, the resolution and letter of transmittal from the 6-page Philadelphia print are reproduced and the Congress print of the resolution of September 28, 1787, also. The four documents can be distinguished from the 4-page double-column print of September 29, 1787, which was submitted to the States for ratification only by the signature of Charles Thomson on the resolution of Congress being printed instead of handwritten. The third form and style of the Constitution printed by Congress is this literal print of the document as “approved by the Continental Congress, transmitted to State Legislatures for ratification and ratified by Conventions of the original thirteen States." It is accompanied by detailed notes by a former officer of the Department of State who was assigned its duties relating to the Constitution. The study which resulted in this reproduction of the Congress copy of September 29, 1787, from the Resolve Book of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Continental Congress began with an inquiry from a foreign government for an "official" copy of the Constitution of the United States. Almost by the same mail the secretary of state of a Western State wrote for an "official" copy which he was required to prefix to the session laws of the State. What was an "official" copy of the Constitution? It should Applying such criteria, it appeared that the text of the Con- The Department of State's replies to the inquiries which started Failure in the period of transition from the United States in |