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Sent to and Used by the States for Ratification - Signed by Secretary of Congress Charles Thomson

One of the Official Signed Ratification Copies of the Constitution, The Only Located Privately Held Copy

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America...”

[UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION – ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION CONGRESS] Broadsheet, Printed Document, from September 28, 1787 run of just 100 copies, four-page folio printed in New York by John McLean for Dunlap and Claypoole of Philadelphia (who held the contract as ‘official printer’ of the Confederation Congress), double column of text, set at a slight tilt on watermarked paper, with original uneven top and bottom edges, signed “Chas Thomson Sec’y” at bottom of fourth page immediately following the ratification resolution of the Confederation Congress, light period marginalia in graphite “Adopted it must be & shall be”, and elsewhere “Taylor” with other flourishes by an unknown hand, 11 x 15-3/4 in. Evans #20817

Following the full text of the Constitution and the Convention's resolutions sending their proposal to the Confederation Congress in New York, this printing adds Congress’ September 28, 1787 resolution officially launching the ratification process.

“Resolved, unanimously, That the said Report, with the Resolutions and Letter accompanying the same, be transmitted to the several Legislatures, in order to be submitted to a Convention of Delegates chosen in each State by the people thereof, in conformity to the Resolves of the Convention made and provided in that Case”

Of the 100 archetype Constitutions originally printed by McLean, only a fraction were signed by Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Congress. Until now, only eight or nine of those signed copies were known to have survived the ages. (The only prior auction appearance of a signed ratification copy of the Constitution was in 1891. We don’t know if that copy still survives, and if it does, whether it is now among the eight known institutional copies).

Provenance: Passed down through generations at the historic Hayes Plantation in Edenton, North Carolina. Hayes Plantation sits on property purchased in 1765 by Samuel Johnston, who in 1787-1789 was Governor of North Carolina.  He presided over North Carolina’s conventions where the Constitution was ratified. The main house at Hayes was completed by Johnston’s son in 1817 and is a National Historic Landmark. For more information on Hayes Plantation and its history in the Johnston and Wood Families, see ncpedia.org/hayes-plantation

Please note: this lot is offered without a reserve

Among the documents discovered at Historic Hayes Plantation was a rare Dunlap, broadside of the Declaration of Independence, which the family sold in 1993 at Christie’s to Williams College for $412,500, setting a record at that time. So important was the Hayes Plantation treasure, that the library, including its documents, books, and archives were donated to the State Library, and recreated in full at the University of North Carolina. One can visit a replica of the room, exactly as it was found at the Plantation, at the Wilson Library at UNC Chapel Hill. The group of documents offered here, including the rare archetype copy of the Constitution, remained at Hayes undisturbed, until their discovery in 2022. Brunk Auctions is honored to have the privilege to offer this rare and important piece of American History at public auction.

One of the most important documents in all of history, this printing is deceptively simple in appearance, with none of the flourishes we are familiar with from the engrossed signed parchment at the National Archives in Washington, DC. In the words of James Madison, the Constitution, “...was nothing more than the draft of a plan, nothing but a dead letter, until life and validity were breathed into it by the voice of the people, speaking through the several State Conventions.” The idea that our new government would be born only after being affirmed by the voice of the people was in a way even more revolutionary than the Declaration of Independence – a document which had been proclaimed to-rather than ratified by-the People. By launching the ratification process, this humble looking archetype became the cornerstone of our modern democracy.

Without taking anything away from Philadelphia’s celebrated role as the birthplace of the Constitution, this document introduces to many the part that New York played as the seat of the Confederation Congresses and the birthplace of the United States of America under the Constitution.

In 1787, the greatest task the United States in Congress Assembled had was the ratification of the newly proposed Constitution. It fell upon Charles Thomson–the Secretary of the Confederation Congress whose signature is on this document–to see to that ratification.

The job of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia (then called the Federal or Philadelphia Convention) was to propose improvements to the system under the Articles of Confederation. The Convention officially reported back not to the states, but to the Confederation Congress then sitting in New York. When the work of the Convention was completed on September 17th, the first copies were printed in Philadelphia (by Dunlap and Claypoole) for the Convention through the night. On the morning of September 18, 1787, William Jackson, the secretary to the Convention, took the Constitution as well as Washington’s signed cover resolutions and unsigned printed copies to deliver to Congress in New York. At some later point, the Convention printing became known as the “Official Edition,” but that moniker doesn’t account for the crucial step that was lacking to make it truly official – the action of Congress. After a couple days of heated debate, on September 28, Congress voted to follow the Convention’s request, and send the document without alteration to the states for ratification. It is that resolution, along with Thomson’s signature, that makes the present copy one of the true official editions of the Constitution as it went to the states for ratification. It was this document that was then reproduced by the states for each of their debates on ratification.

The Constitutional Convention’s Cover Resolutions

The first resolved that the proposed United States Constitution be “laid before the United States in Congress assembled,” meeting in New York under the Articles of Confederation. It provided a succinct plan for them to send the Constitution to the states for ratification, and once ratified, to implement the new Federal government by electing representatives, convening Congress, and electing the first president. The second was a transmittal letter to the Confederation Congress. Hoping to avoid Congress and the states relitigating every hard-fought issue, Washington and the Convention acknowledged that every state, if considering their interests alone, would disagree on certain points, but that compromise was necessary for the greater good of all.

“It is obviously impracticable in the federal government of these states, to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and safety of all: Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest… It is at all times difficult to draw with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and those which may be reserved... the several states as to their situation, extent, habits, and particular interests.

“In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence. This… led each state in the Convention to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude, than might have been otherwise expected; and thus the Constitution, which we now present, is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.

“That it will meet the full and entire approbation of every state is not perhaps to be expected; but… that it is liable to as few exceptions as could reasonably have been expected, we hope and believe; that it may promote the lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all, and secure her freedom and happiness, is our most ardent wish.”

Census of Thomson Signed Ratification Copies of the Constitution (Evans #20817)

• Boston Public Library (Rare Books H.90.87 pb). Inscribed by John Quincy Adams at the head of page 1: “An original copy of the Constitution of the United States, attested by Charles Thomson secretary to the Confederation Congress. Issued 28 September, 1787.” Donated by Charles Francis Adams in 1891. Separated into individual leaves; portion of lower left margin of each leaf is excised, with no loss to text. https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/ms35v795h.

•  Brown University (John Carter Brown Library, Rare Books ; MD8-13)  

•  Brown University copy #2

•  National Archives (Papers of the Continental Congress, Resolve Books, Item #122, pp. 98a+)

•  New-York Historical Society. Per Myers, but unconfirmed

•  New York State Archives/Library (copy 1) (George Clinton Papers)

•  New York State Archives/Library (copy 2) (Andrew Elliot Papers, SC 13349). Per Myers, but unconfirmed. The New York State Archives notes that both copies would have been heavily damaged by the fire of 1911, and may no longer be legible.

•  North Carolina State Archives (Vault Collection, VC. 26)

•  Private hands. The present example 

Sales history of Thomson Signed Ratification Copies of the Constitution

• C.F. Libbie, Jan. 6, 1891, lot 2107 - $400.

References

• Bernstein, Richard B. Are We To Be A Nation? (Harvard University Press, 1987).

•  Brigham, Clarence S. History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, Vol. II, pp. 942-944

•  Davis, David Brion & Mintz, Steven. The Boisterous Sea of Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

•  Myers, Denys Peter, The Constitution of the United States of America . . . (Washington, D.C., GPO: 1961).

•  Rapport, Leonard. “Printing the Constitution: The Convention and Newspaper Imprints, August – November 1787” in Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives. Vol. 2 No. 2, Fall 1970. pp. 69-90

•  Seth Kaller, Inc. Private records and research.

This lot was viewed by representatives of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and the Department does not at this time have reason to believe that the Lot contains any out-of-custody public records.