We the People: The Handwriting of Our Forefathers

Quick: Name five men whose signatures appear on the U.S. Constitution.

If your answer included “John Hancock,” try again; his signature famously appeared on the “Declaration of Independence.” However, a host of political luminaries affixed their signatures to the document, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. The most important document in US history was signed 225 years ago on Monday, though in my own humble opinion, far too little attention was given to this historic event. Look, when you’re celebrating the document that outlined the most ambitious political experiment of modern history, couldn’t you get a parade together? Maybe a concert? A Google Doodle, or heck, a story to break the top 20 on Google News?

**clicks Google News**

**Top Headline: Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj don’t deny Idol Feud!!!!”**

Or, sure. We could pay attention to them instead.

But I’d rather turn my focus back to the Constitution, if it’s all right by you. Now, granted, I am just an ardent admirer of the document, and by no means a political historian, so trenchant analysis of the document is going to have to come from other sources. However, I can admire the structure of the document, the foresight of these great thinkers, and of course, their handwriting.

What Can We Learn From Handwriting?

Penmanship in the time of Washington and his contemporaries was a sign of class and prestige; it was considered an essential skill for those who would be pursuing law, business or other professional endeavors. The finer the handwriting, the more refined the man, and the higher the likelihood that he was in a position of authority and influence (women were rarely taught how to write, nor were those who taught how to write educated to the same degree of refinement as men).

The handwriting of our forefathers is also a political statement – as the historians at DoHistory.org note, “The earlier arcane, very difficult to read Court Hands of England were not favored in the more democratic early national period of the United States.” To eschew the complex, ornate penmanship of English government and instead set forth their ideas in a comparatively clear and simple hand is revolutionary on multiple levels. It stated both explicitly and implicitly that they ways of England would not be the ways of this new country, and that the rejection of the heavy burden of monarchy would begin with both the governance of the land and the way in which it would be expressed.

Benjamin Franklin once said, on the subject of writing, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Safe to say, the authors of the Constitution did both.

If you’re interested in trying your own hand at 18th Century penmanship, DoHistory.org’s archives houses an 18th Century instruction manual on handwriting, complete with instructions on how to make a pen. If you give it a go, make sure to send the results our way!