Signing Their Rights Away (38 page)

A Constitutional Miscellany

Here is an assortment of odd facts about the United States Constitution. How is it preserved? Who’s responsible for all the fancy calligraphy? Who is William Jackson and why is his name buried in the far left corner of the document? We’ve got all the answers right here.

Preserving the Constitution

When Americans love something, they love it to death—which might explain why the original copy of the Declaration of Independence has faded to the point that it is barely legible. The U.S. Constitution, on the other hand, is in much better shape and can still be read fairly easily.

The disparity in the conditions of the two documents owes much to the way they were preserved (or not) over the years. Created during wartime, the Declaration traveled up and down the East Coast of the United States to protect it from marauding armies. It was manhandled at every turn. After the War of 1812, the Declaration was displayed on a wall and exposed to the damaging rays of the sun. Meanwhile, the Constitution napped cozily in a steel box, virtually forgotten. Many people felt it just wasn’t as important or as venerable as the Declaration—and this wrongheaded thinking saved it for posterity.

In 1952 both the Declaration and the Constitution went on display in a special shrine built for them within the National Archives, locked permanently in glass cases filled with helium. Over time, however, the cases deteriorated, threatening the documents inside. So in 2001, conservators at the archives embarked on an ambitious program to rescue the documents with space-age technology.

Today all three Charters of Freedom—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—are preserved in titanium cases fitted with special glass that can withstand bombs, bullets, hurricanes, and the most vitriolic of filibusters. The panes shield the documents from ultraviolet light while allowing tourists to see through to read the text. The temperature inside the cases is kept at about 67°F (19°C), and the atmosphere contains not oxygen but humidified argon. The touch of moisture prevents the documents from becoming too brittle.

The Penman of the Constitution

If you’ve ever inspected the words “We the People” on the original Constitution, you’ve probably marveled at the skill with which the letters have been perfectly formed. The man who copied the entire Constitution by hand in flawless calligraphy is Jacob Shallus, a clerk about thirty-seven years old. Born to a Dutch family who had immigrated to Pennsylvania, Shallus served in the Revolutionary War, working as a quartermaster, or supplier. No one knows when he realized his gift for exquisite penmanship, but after the war he began working as a clerk in the Pennsylvania Assembly, the state’s lawmaking body. He worked in the same building in which the delegates met and was, therefore, the most logical scribe for the job.

Shallus had to work quickly. He was handed the final text for the Constitution on Friday, September 15, 1787, and was requested to turn in a finished copy on Monday, September 17.

Considering it was a weekend, he possibly worked at home, though that’s unlikely since he needed easy access to equipment. He used quill pens and ink, probably of his own manufacture; the parchment, which is made of stretched calf skin, was likely bought from a local supplier. To help keep the words and letters even, he used a straight edge to mark faint lines on the parchment, which are still visible on the originals (and can be seen in high-resolution images available on the National Archives’ website). If he made a mistake, he would have been forced to scrape off the ink with a knife and rewrite the offending word or letter. In fact, some errors did work their way into the final document. Shallus listed the ones he spotted in a small errata paragraph, visible at the bottom of the fourth page of the document. But the Constitution contains others that Shallus did not catch, such as odd misspellings and punctuation issues that he may have copied from the original papers. Rules for grammar and style varied widely in the eighteenth century, and it was not unusual for people to spell even their own names two different ways in a single document.

Come Monday, the delegates had the finished document ready to be signed, and Shallus, penman of the State House, pocketed $30 for his moonlighting gig, an amount equivalent to more than $700 in today’s money. Not bad for a weekend’s work, but apparently not enough to keep Shallus from running into financial trouble. Within a year, he was facing a stay in a debtors’ prison, only barely managing to avert that disaster. When he died, in 1796, he was just forty-six years old.

Twentieth-century scholars were unaware of Shallus until 1937, the 150th anniversary of the Constitution, when a little detective work revealed his small but vital contribution to the history of the United States.

William Jackson: The Fortieth Signer

The bottom far-left corner of the Constitution displays a signature that does not belong to any of the official delegates at the Constitutional Convention. It reads: “Attest William Jackson Secretary.”

Sometimes described as the fortieth signer—though he did not sign as a representative of any state—Jackson was born in 1759 on the border between England and Scotland. After his parents died, he was sent to Charleston, South Carolina, to be raised by a family friend.

During the Revolutionary War, Jackson joined the fighting in South Carolina, first as a cadet and eventually achieving the rank of major. In 1780, during the siege of Charleston, he was captured and paroled to Philadelphia; he was later released in a prisoner exchange. He then served as secretary to Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, who was Washington’s aide, traveling with him to France to orchestrate the shipping of supplies for the war. Once back in Philadelphia, Jackson was made assistant secretary at war to Major General Benjamin Lincoln, for whom he had served in the south.

After the war, Jackson tried business and law in Philadelphia. He lobbied hard for the secretarial job at the Constitutional Convention and almost didn’t get it. On the first day of the convention, signer James Wilson suggested Temple Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, for the post. Most folks didn’t care for Temple, who was viewed as a narcissistic fashion plate and playboy who had already fathered a child out of wedlock with a married woman. The popular (and perhaps Puritan-inspired) perception was that Temple’s time in France with Grandpa Franklin—also known for his love of the ladies—had rendered the boy’s character a little too effetely French. Jackson, however, had connected with Alexander Hamilton during the war. Hamilton vouched for Jackson, whom he thought would be a good fit for the post and whose military service he found impressive.

But Jackson, it must be said, proved to be a weak link. John Quincy Adams, while serving as secretary of state, complained that Jackson’s convention notes were an illegible mess; his records were so sparse, in fact, as to be distinctly unhelpful. For instance, Jackson made no entries on September 17, the day of the signing. On top of this omission, he had thrown away, according to Adams, all the “loose scraps of paper” and other notes given to him by the delegates. In his defense, he may have done so to follow the delegates’ instructions to keep only the official journal and toss all else. In this sense, Jackson probably did his duty by safeguarding convention secrets. But, as a result, historians have been forced to rely solely upon the notes taken by James Madison. As we’ve learned
from the tale of the Pinckney Plan, Madison may not have been the most impartial recorder of events. Imagine all the juicy tidbits upon which ravenous historians could feast today if we still had the papers that Jackson burnt, tossed, or shredded. Delicious scandal! Scrumptious fights! Delectable power plays! Alas, we are left only with Madison’s version.

Jackson became Washington’s secretary during the latter’s presidency, but financial difficulties caused him to resign in 1791. He then became a businessman and a lawyer and was appointed surveyor of customs for the port of Philadelphia. He also served more than twenty-five years as national secretary for the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization made up of Continental Army veterans.

William Jackson’s grave in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia had grown so dilapidated that for many years no one even knew the resting place belonged to him. Only recently did tour guides at the site investigate the church’s records and deduce that the person buried under the broken and poorly repaired stone was the convention’s unremarkable secretary.

Will the Real Constitution Printer Please Stand Up?

We know who signed it, and we know the man responsible for the fancy handwriting—but who
printed
the first public copies of the Constitution?

The honor has historically gone to the printing team of David C. Claypoole and John Dunlap, better known for printing the “Dunlap Broadside,” the first typeset version of the Declaration of Independence. For about two hundred years, these two men have been credited with printing the first public copy of the Constitution as well, which appeared in their Philadelphia paper,
The Pennsylvania Packet
, even though four other papers published the Constitution on that same day. New evidence has led some scholars to believe that someone else might have scooped them all.

Here’s the time line: On Friday, September 15, the convention delegates ordered an engrossed copy of the Constitution from penman Jacob Shallus, and five hundred plain printed copies of the text from Dunlap and Claypoole, which were to be widely distributed so that Congress and the states could be informed of what the delegates in Philadelphia had created. The engrossed and other copies were needed by Monday, September 17, at which point the delegates would sign the engrossed copy. The original and the other five hundred copies would be sent to New York, where Congress awaited the results of the convention.

Shallus and Dunlap and Claypoole met their deadlines, but the delegates wanted to make some pesky last-minute changes, and everything had to be ready in time for the 10 a.m. stagecoach to New York City on the morning of September 18. The changes were made to the engrossed copy, but the five hundred printed copies had to be tossed. Dunlap and Claypoole printed a quickie six-page version of the new document, and that broadside (eleven are known to exist) went on to serve as the source document for all other printings.

So when was the new Constitution released to the rest of the world? Enter Robert Smith, a printer who had worked for Dunlap and Claypoole’s
Pennsylvania Packet
in 1786 and launched
The Evening Chronicle
the next year. In 2001, a copy of a broadside titled
Plan of the New Federal Government
and dated September 17, 1787, was found with Smith’s name in plain view. It is believed by some historians to have been printed as an insert in the September 18 edition of
The Evening Chronicle
, but no complete copy of that edition of the paper exists—only the broadside itself.

Was there a hot-off-the-printing-press leaked copy? Errors in Smith’s version and other evidence point to a hasty printing. An infantry paymaster in Philadelphia wrote in his diary about seeing a printed version of the Constitution as early as September 18. But five Philadelphia papers—including
The Pennsylvania Packet
—published the Constitution on September 19, a day
after
the printing to which the paymaster refers, leading researchers to believe that Smith’s broadside was the only one the paymaster could have seen. If this recent evidence is true, it would make for quite the revolutionary scoop. Somehow Smith got hold of the document and set it in type before anyone else could, including his old boss. Despite his valiant, Jimmy Olsen–type efforts, Smith’s
Chronicle
went out of business in November 1787. Today only twenty-five copies of the September 19, 1787, edition of
The Pennsylvania Packet
are known to exist, and only one Smith broadside is known to exist. It was sold at auction in 2006 for $160,000 and turned for sale shortly after for $335,000.

Who Signed the Bill of Rights?

Most Americans know more about the Bill of Rights, a k a the first ten amendments to the Constitution, than they do about the Constitution itself—and for good reason. The Bill of Rights sets forth the terms of individual liberties enjoyed by Americans, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so on. But this beloved document was not part of the original four pages signed by the delegates on September 17, 1787, much to the dismay and outright anger
of those who signed and many more who did not.

As soon as the Constitution went into effect and the first U.S. Congress met, the Bill of Rights was at the top of the agenda. Hoping to stave off another Constitutional Convention, James Madison drafted and presented seventeen proposed amendments in the first few months the new Congress was operational under the Constitution. This list was whittled down to twelve amendments, which President Washington sent to the states for ratification. The first two, concerning Congressional issues, were not ratified. But the remaining ones became the first ten amendments by 1791.