Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v1.djvu/142

122 of a national government. This draft formed the general text of debate from that time till the 8th of September; many additional resolutions being, in the course of the deliberations, proposed, and referred to and reported upon by the same committee of detail, or other committees of eleven, (a member from each state,) or of five.

On the 8th of September, a committee of five was appointed "to revise the style of and arrange the articles agreed to by the house."

On the 12th of September, this committee reported the Constitution, as revised and arranged, and the draft of a letter to Congress. It was ordered that printed copies of the reported Constitution should be furnished to the members, and they were brought in the next day.

On the 17th day of September, 1787, the Convention dissolved itself, by an adjournment without day, after transmitting the plan of the Constitution, which they had prepared, to Congress, to be laid before conventions, delegated by the people of the several states, for their assent and ratification.

The last act of the Convention was a resolution that their journal and other papers should be deposited with their president, to be retained by him, subject to the order of the Congress, if ever formed under the Constitution.

On the 19th of March, 1796, President Washington deposited in the department of state three manuscript volumes, one containing, in 153 pages, the Journal of the Federal Convention of 1787; one the Journal of the Proceedings of the same Convention, while in committee of the whole, in 28 pages; and one, three pages of lists of yeas and nays, on various questions debated in the Convention; and after an interval of eight blank pages, five other pages of like yeas and nays. There were also two loose sheets, and one half sheet of similar yeas and nays; a printed draft of the Constitution, as reported on the 6th of August, 1787, with erasures and written interlineations of amendments afterwards adopted; two sheets containing copies of the series of resolutions offered to the Convention by Mr. Edmund Randolph, in different stages of amendment, as reported by the committee of the whole; and seven other papers, of no importance, in relation to the proceedings of the Convention.