The Man Who Engrossed the Constitution BY JOHN C. FITZPATRICK THE SUPREME COURT has answered quite a number of important questions that have been asked about the Constitution of the United States; but one that has been asked daily since the Constitution was placed on public view in the Library of Congress at Washington remains yet to be answered. It is: Who wrote the Constitution? Not who composed those sentences and paragraphs; but who was the penman who engrossed on those four huge sheets of parchment the principles of our government? It may seem strange that this question has remained unanswered since the year 1787; but the convention that framed the Constitution sat behind closed doors, its members were pledged to secrecy as to its proceedings, and in the bitter political struggle over its adoption, the name of the penman became an unimportant detail. When the convention's work was finished, all its miscellaneous records, reports, resolves, memoranda of every kind were destroyed by order of the convention itself. Everything except the bare journal of the proceedings and a record of the yea and nay votes were burned by the secretary. Some of the deputies retained possession of a few unofficial papers, over which the convention had no control, and these were not destroyed, but came to light years later. The principal one of these was the notes of the debates made by James Madison; but the record that held the answer to the question "who engrossed the Constitution?" went up in the smoke of the fire kindled by Secretary William Jackson. Who engrossed the Constitution is a perfectly legitimate question and a perfectly natural one, for the writing is beautifully regular and cleanly impressive. If the convention records had not been burned the answer would be easy; but with an intentionally created vacancy staring the investigator in the face, successful identification of a penman who lived one hundred and fifty years ago seemed well-nigh hopeless. The search was undertaken in behalf of the United States Consti tution Sesquicentennial Commission because of the steady persistence with which the question was asked by the hundreds of visitors at the shrine of the Constitution at the Library of Congress and because it seemed that this detail of constitutional history should be known. The story of the search for, and the finding of, the unknown scribe will be a curious and interesting one to the average person, though the procedure followed is a familiar one to historians; for this procedure parallels, in a general way, some of those followed by sleuths of the law in running down fugitives or unearthing evidence in difficult cases. In beginning the search the first and natural move was to visit the "scene of the crime" and carefully examine the ground for possible clues. Obviously this did not mean a trip to Philadelphia, where the Constitutional Convention had been held one hundred and fifty years ago; but it did mean a careful scrutiny of all the available data connected with the convention. Just as the detective collects, and accepts or rejects, data as inherently valuable or worthless for his purpose, the mass of information already accumulated and available concerning the Constitution and the convention had to be sifted and weighed. Much previous research had trodden the ground of the Constitutional Convention over and over again for innumerable purposes; but never so far as was known, for the express purpose of identifying the penman of the document. And it is a curious fact, well known to all historians, that documents which have been examined and sifted many times over for different purposes and are looked upon as fully analyzed will yet yield an amazing amount of new information when approached from a different viewpoint. In a search of this kind the historian has one great advantage over the detective, in that there is no need of haste; the quarry has long since departed this life and the surviving evidence may confidently be counted on to continue to survive, barring always accidental destruction. But the parallel nevertheless is close, for where the detective must work at top speed for fear the trail will grow cold, the historian is blocked by the dusty curtain of time from a trail that is never warm. The "scene of the crime" in the present instance was the meager surviving records of the Constitutional Convention. Carefully every contemporaneous writing and all published matter officially connected with the convention was examined anew: the manuscript material first; then the printed records. The original journal of the proceedings in the writing of Major Jackson yielded nothing. Jackson himself was eliminated at once from consideration, as he did not have SEARCH FOR THE PENMAN 763 the pen skill so evidently possessed by the engrosser of the Constitution. Along with Jackson were eliminated also all the deputies to the convention, not only for the same reason, but because it was obvious none of them would have undertaken so laborious and mechanical a task. James Madison, William Paterson, Alexander Hamilton, and others took notes of the debates as the convention progressed; but none of these notes yielded a clue. Gouverneur Morris, a deputy from Pennsylvania, was a member of the Committee of Style, which came into existence near the end of the sessions, and, because he was largely responsible for the literary form of the final text of the Constitution, the story gained credence, among the unthinking, that the parchment signed document was in his writing. Even the most cursory comparison of the penmanships demonstrated the impossibility of this being the fact. The convention records having failed to furnish a clue, the next logical step was to examine the Papers of the Continental Congress, to which body the convention reported and which had, on September 20, 1787, agreed to meet the overhead expenses of the convention. Here it was hoped to find among the financial accounts of that Congress, an entry, or receipt, which would disclose the name of the penman of the Constitution. But the financial records of the Continental Congress are now, in many respects, as unsubstantial as was its paper money which, as is well known, gave rise to that contemptuous saying "not worth a Continental." The papers of that Congress were grouped subjectively and bound up, many years ago, in such wise that the close detailed search demanded for identifying an unknown penman was little better than groping through a fog. Thrown together at the end of the large group of Treasury Papers are various volumes of financial statements, of unsettled accounts, estimates, memoranda, etc., etc., devoid of indexing and inconsistently arranged. Through these, volume by volume, page by page, and piece by piece the search plodded, until imbedded in a mass of financial memoranda the following was found: 1787, Sept. 21. Dollars Stationery purchased for the use of the Foederal Convention, paid William Jackson esqr. late Secretary to the Foederal Convention To William Jackson esqr. Secretary to the Foederal Convention 36. 866.60 133.30 133.30 1787, Sept. 21. To Messenger 4 months at 300 dollars pr. annum.... Dollars 100. 30. Here was distinct and unexpected development; more than one penman apparently, was possible, though the account was a general one covering the whole of the convention; but a critical examination of the engrossed Constitution failed to show the slightest variation of writing throughout the entire text and it is physically impossible for different individuals to engross a long document like the Constitution without revealing some differences of pen handling. One man, and only one engrossed the entire Constitution. The other clerk, or clerks, may have done the bold, decorative lettering of "We the People" and the captions of "Article I," "Article II," etc. But thirty dollars was a small sum to pay for carefully engrossing over four thousand words on four huge sheets of parchment (five really, for the resolve of September 17, submitting the Constitution to the Continental Congress was included in the job), and carefully lettering the first two words and seven article headings, even if the amount covered no work except this engrossment. The impossibility of identifying the letterer was conceded at once, for the limited amount of this penwork does not furnish enough material for study and comparison; lettering, being more restricted work than cursive penmanship, seldom permits enough freedom of movement to reveal pen characteristics. But, after all, the main interest is in the man who engrossed the text, and the letterer and lettering is of minor importance; so the search for the latter was abandoned and all efforts concentrated on the engrosser of the text. The memoranda of account having neatly pocketed the logical trail in a blind alley, the next move was one faintly analogous to the old "hue and cry," or rather its more modern adaptation of distributing descriptive handbills of the wanted man, far and wide; only, in this case, as the man's identity was unknown, in lieu of issuing a handbill, the pen characteristics of the Constitution were studied and analyzed until the writing literally soaked into the consciousness and supplied a permanent picture which could be compared with every penmanship encountered. Just as the detective, with the features and appearance of his quarry firmly fixed in his mind, keeps on the look-out for his man in the crowd on every side, so also the historian in his daily work, while pursuing lines of different research, is subconsciously on the alert for the wanted writing while examining groups of manuscripts which he knows might, logically, be expected to contain it. A great difficulty, however, was that the penwork of CLUES 765 the Constitution was engrossed with a painstaking regularity and care that reduced, or rather submerged, the pen characteristics to a mechanical agreement with much of the formal writing of the same period. This was not only a disguise, albeit an unintentional one, but created an added difficulty. If the hunted criminal had brains and skill enough to follow this line of disguise he would be much less liable to detection; but he merely seeks to change his appearance, rather than to alter his looks, to agree closely with a definite and commonplace type. Yet in tracing the engrossing hand of the Constitution, some logical procedure was possible. The chances were that in obtaining a penman who could deliver such a big piece of work between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning the man selected would be, necessarily, one who was well known in Philadelphia as a competent and trustworthy engrosser. The Constitutional Convention, remember, sat behind closed doors and therefore the man who was entrusted with the result of its labors must be thoroughly reliable. This narrowed the search, of course; but not enough to promise success. There were a number of such men to be found in Philadelphia in the fall of 1787; some of them had been in the employ of the Continental Congress, and all of them were skillful writers. In fact, when using their engrossing hands some of them would put modern engravers upon their mettle to match the beauty and regularity of their work. A few of these men had been clerks in the office of the secretary of Congress; some had been in the accountant's office of the Continental Treasury, and some had been in the office of the secretary for foreign affairs. One after another specimens of their penmanship were compared with that of the Constitution and, one after another all, except two, were regretfully eliminated. The two who remained as possibilities were Major John Clark, formerly one of the auditors for the Continental Army and with a proud record as a soldier; and Joseph Hardy, at one time a clerk in the Continental Treasury. The penmanship of both these men showed many little variations from the pen characteristics of the Constitution; but the writing of both agreed in one or two quirks of pen detail. Both could be located in Philadelphia in September 1787 and, over and over again an analysis of their handwriting was made in hopes of resolving the doubts, but without success. The obstacles could not be surmounted. Yet Philadelphia was the logical hunting ground, so the Philadelphia area was scrutinized again and again. At last, unexpectedly, in following an historical trail far removed from the subject of the Constitution (just as the detective in a crowded street suddenly recognizes the wanted man) the wanted handwriting blazed out like a |