It advanced, persuasively, that the document the "Committee on Stile" used as the text from which to draft the Constitution had been submitted by Charles Pinckney of South Carolina. That original document was missing from the papers of the Convention, kept very sloppily by Major Jackson, its original Secretary.
As for the Amendments, James Madison, a Member of the House in the First Congress, was tasked with distilling the 200+ demands for items in a Bill of Rights into a specific set of amendments. He drafted 17 amendments, which passed the House. The Senate then reduced those to 12 Amendments, which were sent out for ratification.
Of those twelve, the third through twelfth were quickly ratified, and became the Bill of Rights. What was the Third Amendment as submitted, became the First Amendment as ratified. The original Second Amendment, concerning congressional pay raises, did not get ratified until 1992, as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. The original First Amendment was defeated.
I have all this history in one of my books. I wrote the Introduction to the facsimile reprint of Robert Yates' Secret Procedings and Debates of the Convention to Form the US Constitution. Trust me, I know these things.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "We Are Running for Congress -- Maybe," discussion thread on FR.
Thank you for your input. Your books sound very interesting. But you didn't say yay or nay on Gouverneur Morris and his role in writing the Constitution. Will we meet this rake in your tome?