I really like stories like this. It reminds me of the guy who finds a box of comics in an attic with a Detective Comics #27 or an Amazing Fantasy #15.

Of course, an unknown copy of the Constitution is a bit more important than the first appearance of Superman:

On the back of a treasured draft of the U.S. Constitution was a truncated version of the same document, starting with the familiar words: “We The People. . . .”

They had been scribbled upside down by one of the Constitution’s framers, James Wilson, in the summer of 1787. The cursive continued, then abruptly stopped, as if pages were missing.

A mystery, Toler thought, until she examined other Wilson papers from the Historical Society’s vault in Philadelphia and found what appeared to be the rest of the draft, titled “The Continuation of the Scheme.”

The document – one of 21 million in the Historical Society’s collection – was known to scholars, but probably should have been placed with the other drafts, said constitutional scholar John P. Kaminski, director of the Center for the Study of the American Constitution in the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“This was the kind of moment historians dream about,” said Toler, 30, a lawyer and founding president of the Constitutional Sources Project (www.ConSource.org), a nonprofit organization, based in Washington, that promotes an understanding of and access to U.S. Constitution documents.

“This was national scripture, a piece of our Constitution’s history,” she said of her find in November. “It was difficult to keep my hands from trembling.”

It’s hard to imagine there are documents like this just laying about, waiting to be found.

Related posts:

• Ron Paul – “We have become soft on the issue of liberty”
• Huckabee Calls Constitution a “Living, Breathing Document”
• Thank You For Your Service. Now Draft Me.
• Political Biology
• Win The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution!