During the summer of 1787, while delegates met in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention, the company Dunlap & Claypoole made two printings of committee proposals containing draft text of the Constitution. The Philadelphia printers, who were sworn to secrecy, printed an estimated 120 printed drafts for the Convention. Three copies are in the National Archives’ holdings.
Two of them are the first printed draft as reported by the Committee of Detail on August 6, 1787. After the delegates had agreed to 23 general resolutions, based primarily on the Virginia Plan, they elected members to the Committee of Detail to draft a document. Committee members included Oliver Ellsworth (CT), Nathaniel Gorham (MA), Edmund Randolph (VA), John Rutledge (SC), and James Wilson (PA).
On August 6, 1787, Rutledge delivered a working draft of the proposed Constitution and provided printed copies to the delegates. This copy comes from the papers of David Brearley, a delegate from New Jersey. It included his notations in the margins of the Convention’s work. Another copy is George Washington’s, who presided over the Convention. It was annotated by both Washington and William Jackson, the convention’s secretary. Washington and Jackson’s annotations included the additions and deletions that delegates adopted between August 6 and September 3.
Another later draft is also housed in the papers of David Brearley. It’s the printed draft of the Constitution reported by the Committee on Style and Arrangement that was distributed to delegates on September 13th. It has Brearley’s handwritten annotations of the changes the delegates made after the document was printed, including the last-minute change to reduce the cap on the number of people House members could represent from 40,000 to 30,000.
