Seth Kaller, Inc.

This momentous issue of Dunlap & Claypoole’s Pennsylvania Packet is regarded as the first public printing, as well as the first newspaper printing, of the Constitution.

“WE, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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.”

Having won their independence, thirteen too-loosely associated states found themselves unequal to the tasks at hand. Another universal truth soon became evident: independence is never enough. To be free and secure, we also need food, shelter, and community—civil society, rule of law, and justice. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention, chosen to improve the Articles of Confederation, realized that small changes would not suffice. They created a blueprint for an entirely new system designed to help citizens and the nation meet existential and everyday challenges. The focus went from a Declaration to a Constitution, from independence to interdependence.

To navigate between humility and hubris, faith and doubt, ideals and interests, dogma and compromise, the new nation was designed with separation of powers, checks and balances, and a built-in mechanism for amendments.

[U.S. CONSTITUTION]. The Pennsylvania Packet, and Daily Advertiser, No. 2690, September 19, 1787. Philadelphia, PA: John Dunlap and David Claypoole. 4 pp., 11? x 18¼ in.

Inventory #27904       PRICE ON REQUEST

On the afternoon of September 17, 1787, after the Convention’s 39 delegates had signed the engrossed Constitution, they passed two resolutions and approved a transmittal letter, which Convention president Washington signed. The resolutions submitted the proposed Constitution to the Confederation Congress in New York with the request that it be sent to the state legislatures for ratification and urged Congress, “when the Conventions of nine States shall have ratified this Constitution” to call for elections for a president and members of Congress. The Philadelphia Convention adjourned, and their pledge of secrecy expired upon the public reading of the Constitution in the Pennsylvania General Assembly at about 11 a.m. on September 18.

The words of the transmittal letter to the Confederation Congress, signed by George Washington, still resonate today:

“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; and on the present occasion this difficulty was encreased by a difference among the several States as to their situation, extent, habits, and particular interests.”

Only two draft printings precede this Pennsylvania Packet printing, for the Committee of Detail and the Committee of Style, intended solely for the use of delegates, the “official” edition of the final text, which was printed for submission to Congress and private distribution (Evans 20818), and the other an intermediate contemporaneous printing known only in two copies, Dunlap and Claypoole, the official printers to the Convention, printed all of these versions.

Historical Background
Once Dunlap and Claypoole finished their printing work for the Convention, they immediately prepared this special September 19, 1787, issue of The Pennsylvania Packet, containing the full text of the Constitution and the two transmittal documents, with no advertisements or other normal newspaper business. (Four other newspapers printed the Constitution on that same day, but Dunlap and Claypoole’s is regarded as the first.) Publishers throughout the United States soon printed the Constitution in newspapers as well as a very few as broadsheets and pamphlets or in magazines. Within twenty days of the close of the Federal Convention, at least fifty-five of the approximately eighty newspapers of the period had printed the Constitution. (Rapport).

John Dunlap, with David Claypoole likely first an employee and then junior partner, had printed nearly everything issued by Congress since 1775, including the Declaration of Independence.

As Rapport notes, the 5,000 words of the Constitution represented “nearly one man-day of composition time” for the printer, so, sensibly, to make use of the wider margins of the Packet’s larger sheets, they reset the preamble in large type, with a large capital “W”below the masthead and simply reimposed the rest of their standing type to fit onto the paper’s four larger-size pages. The Pennsylvania Packet text of the Constitution was struck from the identical setting of lead type that had printed the sheets of the official Congressional printings which calligrapher Jacob Shallus used when he engrossed onto parchment the text that the delegates then signed.

Congress followed the request of the Convention, arranging a printing in New York of the proposed Constitution to send out to the states to be ratified by the people.

Thanks to a free press, the great debate on its ratification would begin, and continue through its ratification by a sufficient number of states in 1788, and by the last of the original 13 states in 1791, culminating in 1792 with the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

The states of the new nation were precariously connected, with citizens of vastly different cultural, religious, ethnic, educational, and class backgrounds. Even their economic systems and currencies were different. When the new government of the United States of America was established in New York City in 1789, the success of the American Constitutional Experiment could not be taken for granted

Census: We count 20 institutional copies. From our thorough search of auction and dealer sales records back to 1968, we find only ten other copies (including ours) likely to be in private hands. Of those, two we acquired for David Rubenstein are intended for donation. The institutional copies are located at American Antiquarian Society, Chicago History Museum, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New-York Historical Society, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (two copies), Indiana Historical Society, Indiana University (Lilly Library), Library Company of Philadelphia, Library of Congress, Massachusetts Historical Society, National Constitution Center, New York Public Library, Pennsylvania State Library, Rutgers University, University of Chicago, University of Michigan (Clements Library), University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin, and Yale University.