The Grand Convention - The Constitution of the United States

4 months of argument, 60 ballots on the presidency alone, 2 walkouts, 1 near-collapse over representation, and a bargain nobody in the room was proud of — and this is what came out of it. The Constitution of the United States, read start to finish exactly as Jacob Shallus inscribed it on the parchment: the original spelling, the original capital letters, the numbers written out in words, the errata note recording where “Thirty” was scraped over an erasure on the first page, and all 39 signatures by state. Every clause in it was fought over in a closed room on Chestnut Street between May and September of 1787, and this season has followed those fights one at a time. Here is the finished machine, with the arguments taken out and nothing left but the text: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union...”

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