On September 12, 1787, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia received a near-final revised and arranged draft of the proposed United States Constitution from its Committee of Style. Appointed on September 8 to “revise the stile of and arrange the articles” already adopted by the Convention, the five-member committee consisted of William Samuel Johnson, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, James Madison, and Rufus King.
The committee’s task went beyond mechanical editing. It organized the Convention’s accumulated resolutions into a coherent seven-article document and gave the text a consistent voice. Gouverneur Morris is widely credited as the principal draftsman of the committee’s report, including the Preamble’s opening words, “We the People of the United States.” Earlier drafts had begun by listing the states individually; the revised opening instead grounded the proposed government in the people of the United States.
The September 12 report was not yet the final signed Constitution. Over the next three days, delegates reviewed it and adopted further changes. They approved the final draft on September 15, after which Jacob Shallus prepared the engrossed parchment copy for signing on September 17.
The Committee of Style therefore did not create the Convention’s major political compromises, but it played a crucial role in giving those agreements their final organization, language, and constitutional form.
