rocket. Never has page of any letter been turned more swiftly to the signature, and never has there been a keener disappointment, for the name signed at the end of the communication was "Thomas Mifflin." To find a mere Speaker of the General Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania, albeit also a member of the Convention, when the hope was for the engrosser of the Constitution of the United States was too much! The first reaction was one of supreme disgust. Mifflin was an erratic penman, as well as a trifle more than erratic in other ways; but any familiarity at all with his changes of pen pace forbade that he could have engrossed the Constitution. Second thought came swiftly; the clerk who wrote letters for the Speaker's signature should not be hard to find, and the search was at once narrowed to the employees of the civil government of Pennsylvania in the year 1787. Now at last, in possession of the long-sought writing and knowing whither the trail led, it was only a matter of persistence to unearth some documents which were both written and signed by the wanted penman. Once again a rigid comparison and analysis was made of both the engrossed Constitution and the writings of this clerk. The dictionary definition of engrossing is that of transcribing a formal document in a bold, regular writing. This exactly and completely describes the Constitution of the United States of America. The general characteristics of slant of writing, spacing both of words, and letters within words, and the fundamental agreement of the writing of the Constitution with the more rapidly and freely written documents found, was solidly established; for though the Constitution was engrossed with a firmly guided quill, the speed with which the transcribing had to be done, permitted more of the natural pen characteristics to crop out in this engrossing than might otherwise have been the case, and the variations noted in the Constitution script from the identified writing are comparatively few and none of them significant. The agreements on the other hand are fundamental, important, and too numerous to be discounted, or ignored. The sweep and swing of the quill agree at every point; whole words are practically identical, despite differences naturally to be expected between the engrossing and the free-flowing hand of the same writer. The revealing habit of word and letter separation within the words, and the letter formations, agree to such close extent as to forbid any other conclusion than that these documents were written by one and the same man. Jacob Shallus, a young Pennsylvania "Dutchman," was the man who engrossed the Constitution of the United States of America. And who was Jacob Shallus? His selection for the work was logical in every way and the result certainly justified the choice. It is curiously satisfying how, once his identity was established, every detail of his life's history fell into place; it was almost like obtaining the signed confession of the wanted man after he had been run down. When the Revolutionary War began Jacob Shallus volunteered and was appointed quartermaster of the First Pennsylvania Battalion. With that battalion he marched to Canada and shared in the terrible sufferings of Montgomery and Arnold's attempt on Quebec. With the remnants of that expedition he returned home and became a barrackmaster of the Continental Army; later he served as a deputy commissary of the State of Pennsylvania. It is evident that his integrity and ability were known from these recognitions. The hardships of the Quebec expedition left their mark on Jacob, and in 1778 he resigned from the army. The next year he joined a partnership in fitting out the privateer sloop Retriever to prey upon British commerce and, incidentally, to secure some tidy profits for himself. The profits evidently came, for in the tax lists of the succeeding years Jacob appears as the owner of an ever increasing amount of real estate in and around Philadelphia. When the Revolution ended he became the assistant clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly and held that office for many years. He was the secretary of Pennsylvania's constitutional convention in 1790, became a notary and tabellion-public shortly after engrossing the Constitution of the United States, and died near the end of President Washington's second administration at the comparatively youthful age of forty-six. It was while Jacob was assistant clerk of the General Assembly in 1787, in the same building (the Pennsylvania State House, now known as "Independence Hall") in which the Constitutional Convention was holding its sessions, that the hurry call came from that convention for a trustworthy and dependable engrossing clerk. The need was for a speedy job and the probabilities are strong that the engrossing was done in the same building. When the Constitution was engrossed it was not known, of course, whether it would be adopted by the people or not and, even when Shallus died, in 1796, it was by no means the firmly established set of governmental principles it has since grown to be, so there was no apparent reason for Jacob to boast of his connection with it; to him it was merely a thirty dollar or less job of engrossing. The signed Constitution of the United States of America is now, by order of a President of the United States, on public view in the 222964-40- -50 COMPARISON OF PENMANSHIP 769 Library of Congress at Washington. Hundreds daily visit its bronze and marble shrine, and look with eager interest at the parchment sheets on which are inscribed our principles of government; but though the name of the engrosser is nowhere to be found thereon and though he had no part in defining those principles, yet he was one of those young men who, as soldiers, gave freely of their youth, health, and strength that they and we might live in peace and safety protected by those principles. It seems then but just that the skill and exactitude with which the Constitution is so clearly recorded, should gain for Jacob Shallus a small, but honored, place among the memories that will forever cluster around that shrine of American Liberty. The facsimiles given opposite of Jacob Shallus's ordinary writing and the engrossed hand he used when writing the Constitution may interest the curious. It is not always easy to reproduce enough samples of writing to show agreements in so limited a space, as pairs of words do not often occur in available lines or paragraphing; but the fundamental agreement in pen-swing and pen-holding is fully shown. Note particularly the consistent agreement in the bottom level of letter combinations, despite the extra care used in engrossing the Constitution. Individual words like "State," "United States," "The," "Congress," "House," "of," and "and" show perfect agreement. Variations are more apparent than real, e. g., the closed loops of all the "l's" in the Constitution and the open loops in the Pennsylvania document seem contradictory until we examine the "l's" in Shallus's signature. Catalogue of the Loan Exhibit of Portraits INTRODUCTION ONE OF the most important phases of the celebration of the Sesquicentennial of the Constitution was the loan exhibit assembled by the Commission and shown in the Corcoran Gallery of Art from November 27, 1937, to March 1, 1939. The exhibit included portraits not only of the deputies to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 and the signers of the Declaration of Independence, but also of members of their families and associates in their great task of the formation of the Union. A few articles connected with these men were also shown. On previous occasions, notably during the Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of George Washington as First President of the United States in 1889, and the George Washington Bicentennial Celebration in 1932, exhibits of portraits of George Washington were held in which portraits of his associates were included. However, this most recent exhibit was unique in that it was the first exhibit of a large group of persons associated in the formation of our government. It included nearly all of the men who, by their wisdom, courage, and foresight, left a political heritage unequalled in the annals of history; and it was particularly fitting that their portraits be assembled during the celebration of the 150th year of their great work. The Commission directed a nation-wide celebration to inculcate in the minds of the people a knowledge of the Constitution of the United States and an appreciation of its fundamental law. It is hoped that no one left the Galleries without a more intense feeling of respect for the character and accomplishments of these distinguished men. The biographies in the catalogue here are little more than identifying notes, but in the original catalogue they were more extended, giving some account of the personality, attainment, and history of the individual, and of the history and ownership of the |