The Discovery and Identification of an Original Copy of the Constitution of 1816” By CHRISTOPHERB. COLEMAN On December 11, 1815,the territorial Legislature of Indiana petitioned for admission into the Union. On December 11, 1816, the President approved the bill which made Indiana the nineteenth state. The most important step in the whole process was the holding of a Constitutional Convention at Corydon in June, 1816,and the framing of a state constitution. As the convention finished its work, it directed the making of official copies of the constitution in the following resolution : Resolved, that there shall be two complete copies of the Constitution of Indiana, one of which shall be lodged with the president of the convention, to be kept by him until the meeting of the first general assembly, at which time the constitution shall be laid before them, and to be disposed of in such manner as they may direct.1

Thus the convention ordered two copies t o be written out, one of which was to be given t o the President of the Convention, Jonathan Jennings. At the first session of the General Assembly the President of the Convention, who, as it happened, became also the first governor, was to give the copy entrusted to him to the General Assembly. On November 11, 1816, the Governor delivered the copy of the Constitution in his possession to the State Senate, which copy was deposited with the Secretary of State.2 The Constitutional Convention did not provide for the disposal of the other copy, and the writer has found no direct reference to it except in the Journals of the House and Senate for the session of 1826-27.* In that session the Speaker laid before the House the following communication which he had received from William W. Wick, then Secretary of State: Herewith is transmitted, for inspection of the House of Representatives, one of the original duplicates of the constitution of this state, and of the ordinance adopted by the people thereof, in convention, handsomely bound in morocco and gilt. The time will come when these documents, and particularly the handwriting of the fathers of our state, whose signatures are thereto

* This article in adapted from a portion of a paper entitled, “Two Restorations: The First State Capitol and the First State Constitution.” which the author read at a meeting of the Southwestern Indiana Historical Society at Evansville on March 17. 1988. ‘ T h e Cavmtiun Jozlrlzol for June 29, 1816. 1 ~ ~ e mJt eW ~1 .Session, 20. Journal of the House of Repreamtatives, Sesaion of 1826-27, 172-178.

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annexed, will be sought after with avidity, and seen with delight as we11 by the future antiquarian, as by a grateful posterity. Viewing the subject in this light, I have, as a small tribute of respect for, and gratitude towards the people and government of my adopted state, used this means of preserving from injury and decay, the original evidences of the independence of our state, and they are respectfully presented to the view of each branch of the Legislature, under the impression that their preservation is interesting to all the representatives of the people, and especially to those who were members of the body who originated them.4

A reasonable inference from these letters of Secretary of State Wick is that both of the original official manuscripts had been brought from Corydon to Indianapolis in 1826,when the capital had been moved, that they were both in his possession in 1826, and that he had caused both of them to be “handsomely bound in morocco and gilt.” He apparently showed one of them to the Senate and the other to the House. There is now in the office of the Secretary of State at Indianapolis only one manuscript copy of the Constitution of 1816. It presumably is the copy ordered by the Convention to be given to Jonathan Jennings and by him given to the Senate, and by the Senate in turn given to the Secretary of State. The history of the other copy, save for the pride of Mr. Wick in both copies recorded in the Journals, is wholly lost in darkness. However, the provision which the convention made for printing the Constitution leads one to wonder whether the second copy was not used for that purpose. It providently recommended “to the early attention of the first General Assembly of the State of Indiana, the necessity of making an appropriation to pay for the printing of the Journals of the Convention and the Constitution of the state.6 It further provided “that the committee appointed t o contract for printing the Comtitution and Journals of this convention, be authorized to have them, when printed stitched and forwarded t o the several counties,” specifying that eleven copies should be given to each member of the convention, and two copies to each of the secretaries.e It also directed the president of the Convention to forward one printed copy of the Constitution to the President of the United States, one to the President of the ‘See ibid. The same communication, mutatis m u t d i s , under the same date, was laid before the Senate. 6 See Convsllth JOUTWfor June 28. 0

Ibid.

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Senate, and one to the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.’ James Lenon and Robert A. New were appointed a committee to superintend the printing of the Constitution, with instructions to report to the first General Assembly.s This committee reported to the House of Representatives, at its first session, on December 28, 1816; and the General Assembly appropriated two hundred dollars for printing and stitching the Constitution and Journ.uls.10 Three different printings of the Constitution dated 1816 are known : one printed in Louisville, Kentucky, by Butler and Wood ; one printed in Washington, D. C., by William A. Davis by order of the House of Representatives of the United States; and one printed by Elihu Stout at Vincennes. All are excessively rare items today among book dealers. The first of the three is undoubtedly the one contracted for by the committee appointed by the Convention for that purpose, for the first General Assembly of the State appropriated two hundred dollars to pay Mann Butler for printing the Journals and the Constitution. The reprints of the Constitution in the volume entitled A c t s of 1819 and in the Revision of 1824, though differing in numerous minutiae from these 1816 editions, seem to belong to the same “family.” As one of the official copies of the Constitution was given to Jennings, it seems likely that the other was used by the committee appointed to supervise the printing of it. Whether this was the case or not, both copies were in the possession of William W. Wick, Secretary of State, in 1826. One has been retained in the office of the Secretary of State ever since and the other disappeared at some time earlier than the memorj of anyone known by the author. There is, to be sure, a tradi. tion, but no direct evidence, that it was in the Harrison County Courthouse at Corydon, the old State House, about thirty or forty years ago. Since it was in Indianapolis in 1826, there seems to be little probability of its reappearance at Corydon later. This missing copy of the enrolled Constitution of 1816 turned up in 1932 in the hands of a dealer in historical manuscripts. It was eventually purchased by the Indiana Historical Ibid. slbid.. Zune 29.

House J o u d , 1 Session, 105. ‘OLaws, 1 Session, 239.

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Society for the William Henry Smith Memorial Library, bequeathed to the Society by the late Delavan Smith. A comparison of it with the copy in the office of the Secretary of State left no doubt of its authenticity. Materials, general characteristics of the handwriting, binding, and signatures of the delegates and officers of the Convention are practically identical. Both documents contain the same material, including preliminary matter as well as the Constitution itself. The two manuscripts, however, show interesting variations. Capitalization agrees as consistently as could be expected. In manuscripts of that time and place it is often difficult and sometimes impossible, to tell whether a letter is capitalized or not. There appear to be differences in capitalization in a number of words, but the two manuscripts do not differ in this respect from each other more than each scribe differed in the capitalization of the same word in different places. Punctuation in Indiana in those days was a most inexact, not to say inexplicable art. Commas and dashes came so thick and fast that they actually interrupted the sense. It is only natural that punctuation marks and marks which look like punctuation marks, but may not have been, differ throughout the two manuscripts. Such differences, of course, must be ignored. The mistakes existing in the official copy of Indiana’s first state constitution in the office of the Secretary of State are a reflection on the care in matters of detail exercised by the Constitutional Convention. On page one, in the Preamble, that copy reads “one thousand thousand seven hundred and eightyseven,” instead of “one thousand seven hundred and eightyseven.” Either the word “any” was erroneously later inserted in the Secretary of State’s manuscript in Article 111, Section 14 (“guilty of any disrespect”) or it was erroneously omitted from the recovered copy. “In extraordinary occasions” in Article IV, section 13, in the former manuscript, is “on extraordinary occasions” in the latter; “the army of the United States” in Article VII, section I, reads “the armies of the United States”; “they arrive,” in Article VII, section 9, reads “they shall arrive” ; and “humanity, honesty, industry and morality,” in Article IX in the Secretary of State’s copy reads “humanity, industry and morality” in the recovered copy. On the whole, the copy recovered by the Historical Society seems

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to have somewhat fewer mistakes than the copy of the Secretary of State, but the advantage is not very great. The supposition that the copy recently obtained by the Historical Society was the copy used by the committee appointed by the Convention to supervise the printing of the Constitution is supported by the fact that the early printed copies follow it more closely than they do the other copy; follow it, that is, in most cases in which it differs from the other copy. Careful editors of later reprints have followed, as they should, the copy now in the office of the Secretary of State. It is possible, of course, that this last mentioned copy is not the one which the Constitutional Convention entrusted to Jonathan Jennings, which he transmitted to the Senate, and the custody of which the Senate in turn gave to the Secretary of State. Jennings himself may have furnished the copy for the printers who turned out the first printed edition of the Constitution. What was done with the other copy before Secretary of State Wick had both duplicates bound and shown, one to one branch of the General Assembly and one to the other branch, does not appear in the record. It is only a surmise that it was used by the committee on printing. All that is known is that it also was in the possession of Secretary of State Wick, in 1826, and was bound by him, like the other copy, “in morocco and gilt.” There is justification for the belief that the copy which at some later date was allowed to pass out of the office of the Secretary of State was the one used in making the first printed copies. It is not stated positively whether it was the copy governed by the explicit direction of the Convention, or the copy about which the Convention was silent. If the former, the writer supposes the manuscript copy of the Constitution of 1816 now in the office of the Secretary of State, became the official, authoritative copy only from the time the other copy (now in the State Library) disappeared. If the latter, it was the official copy from the beginning.