Lawyer Makes Find of a Lifetime: Early Draft of Constitution
In a find of a lifetime, researcher Lorianne Updike Toler discovered that papers she was examining were an early draft of the U.S. Constitution, in the handwriting of framer James Wilson, of “We The People” fame.
Toler, a lawyer and founder of the nonprofit Constitutional Sources Project, had been examining Wilson’s writings at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania when she read the famous words, “We the people.” The cursive continued, but stopped. It seemed to Toler that pages were missing, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
So Toler continued looking through Wilson’s 1787 writings and found what appeared to be the rest of a draft titled, “The Continuation of the Scheme.”
The find shows that Wilson wrote three drafts of the Constitution, rather than the previously documented two, Toler asserts.
“This was the kind of moment historians dream about,” the 30-year-old Toler told the Inquirer.
One historian, however, downplayed the significance of the find, saying that its presence was known, though the writing probably should have been placed with other drafts of the Constitution.
But Toler was moved by the experience.
“This was national scripture, a piece of our Constitution’s history,” she said. “It was difficult to keep my hands from trembling.”
Related material:
ConSource: “Questions about Lorianne Updike Toler’s re-discovery of James Wilson’s 3rd Draft of the Constitution”
