James Wilson's Draft of the Constitution, Part I (handwritten)

Do you want to go straight to a particular resource? Use the Jump Tool and follow 2 steps:

Look for the pages that have the shortcut code symbol Quill - Jump To Icon (e4242)

Jump To

e4242
You can click this icon to copy the jump to url to that page to your clipboard, ready to paste into emails, notes, documents or research papers as needed.

This can usually be found in the top hero section of overview, delegations visualize, session visualize, event visualize, commentary collection, commentary item, resource collection, and resource item pages.

Enter the shortcut code for the page that you wish to search for.

Retrieving full text, please wait

References:

Max Farrand, *The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787*, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911).

William Ewald et. al., "Committee of Detail Documents," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 135, No. 3 (July 2011), pp. 239-365.

William Ewald, "The Committee of Detail," 28 CONST. COMMENT 197 (2012), pp. 197-285.

Retained titles given by Ewald to the documents identified by Farrand as Documents I-IX in his *Records,* but did not retain the order of documents as such, for clarity. When the Historical Society of Pennsylvania digitized their manuscript copies of Wilson's papers, they chose to collate certain pages, such as parts I and II of Wilson's first draft of the Constitution, in an order incongruous with Farrand and Ewald's methodologies. Each collection item therefore features a link to the digitized primary source, with the corresponding page numbers in the explanation below.

Collection associations (0)

None

26 July- 4 August, 1787: The Meeting of the Committee of Detail

1787-07-28

Included on pages 1-2 in the History Society of Pennsylvania's "United States Constitution first manuscript draft by James Wilson, 1787," which corresponds with Document VI in Farrand's sequence.

Link to Online Library of Liberty transcription (from Farrand): http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1786#lf0544-02_label_428

Link to Historical Society of Pennsylvania digital library below.

We’ve dated this document to 28 July, 1787 based on William Ewald’s judgment that it constitutes “a proper draft of a Constitution—the second after Randolph’s, and the first clearly produced by the Committee” (Ewald, Committee, 248).

Jump To

Search Results

James Wilson's Draft of the Constitution, Part I (handwritten)

26 July- 4 August, 1787: The Meeting of the Committee of Detail

Details

Related People

Related Organisations