George Washington's Annotated Copy of a Draft of the U.S. Constitution

On Monday, July 23, 1787, nearly two months after the Constitutional Convention began in Philadelphia, delegates established a Committee of Detail. Committee members included chairman John Rutledge (SC), Nathaniel Gorham (MA), Oliver Ellsworth (CT), Edmund Randolph (VA), and James Wilson (PA). Their job was to prepare a report and a printed draft of a Constitution “conformable to the proceedings of the convention.” In other words, they were to bring some sort of order to the resolutions that had been approved to date.

Two weeks later, on August 6, the committee submitted a printed rough draft to the delegates for their consideration. In this draft, the Preamble began, as the Articles of Confederation had, with a list of the 13 states in order from north to south. It read:

We the People of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Providence Plantation, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, do ordain, declare and establish the following Constitution for the Government of Ourselves and our Posterity.

This document is George Washington’s copy of the draft, showing his handwritten notes. Serving as the president of the convention, he annotated his copy, as did the other delegates, reflecting the discussion and noting changes proposed during the next five weeks.

On September 8, the delegates appointed a final committee, the Committee of Style, comprised of Chairman William Samuel Johnson (CT), Alexander Hamilton (NY), James Madison (VA), Rufus King (MA), and Gouverneur Morris (PA), to “revise the stile [sic] of and arrange the articles which have been agreed to by the House.”

Just four days later, the committee submitted its draft to the convention. In this draft, the Preamble had undergone major changes—primarily at the hand of Gouverneur Morris. First, rather than listing each of the states individually, now the charter began with “We the People of the United States.” The state names were omitted in part because the delegates did not know which states would ratify the Constitution, and future states were expected to join. This change also strengthened the idea of popular sovereignty—that the new government’s power came from the people rather than the states.

Second, the Preamble had expanded from 44 words that simply introduced the document, to a total of 52 words that not only explained the document’s intention, which was to establish a new government for the United States, but eloquently articulated the purposes of that new government. Those purposes included establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty.

On September 15, the delegates were in agreement and ordered that a final draft be engrossed on parchment. On September 17, thirty-nine delegates signed the Constitution and sent it to Congress for its approval, before it would be sent to the states for their ratification.

Text adapted from “George Washington’s Printed Draft of the Constitution and Mike Wilkins’s Preamble” (May/June 2009) in the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) publication Social Education.