LMH student finds early draft of the US Constitution

While reviewing documents the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) has catalogued as James Wilson's First and Second Draft of the Constitution, Lorianne Updike Toler found an abbreviated introductory section of what appeared to be a third draft written upside-down on the back of a subsequent draft. The short, incomplete text begins with a ‘We the People’ preamble and two sections vesting legislative power in a Congress composed of two houses—similar to the beginning of the current US Constitution. She wondered if there was more.

According to a transcription of Wilson's drafts by Yale scholar Max Farrand published in 1911, a missing document entitled ‘Continuation of the Scheme’ apparently picks up where the abbreviated introduction ends. However, this document was nowhere to be found in HSP catalogues.

After obtaining permission to enter the vaults to look through Wilson's boxes of uncatalogued legal documents, Lorianne was intrigued by a box labelled simply ‘Volume 2’. Without cataloguing, the identity and contents of such documents are not known to either patrons or staff. Inside the box Lorianne was delighted to find an unmarked folder with the missing ‘Continuation of the Scheme’, along with a wealth of Wilson's constitutional treasures.

‘This was the kind of moment historians dream about,’ said Lorianne. ‘This was national scripture, a piece of our Constitution's history…The significance of this discovery lay not only in its being found. It was, obviously, “known” to scholars. But it had not been viewed in, well, at least 40 if not 99 years.’

A former lawyer, Lorianne is Founding President of the Constitutional Sources Project (www.ConSource.org), a non-profit organisation based in Washington, which promotes an understanding of and access to US constitutional documents.

Lorianne’s research interests are constitutional legal history, specifically the impact of British constitutional history on the US Constitution.  She is holding a conditional offer to start a doctorate programme in US History at LMH in the autumn.

Read an article from The Philadelphia Inquirer here.