Historians Reveal Original Draft Of Constitution Included 593 Mentions Of Spiders

WASHINGTON—In a finding that sheds light on the particular concerns and interests of the Founding Fathers, historians at the National Archives revealed this week that the original draft of the U.S. Constitution included 593 mentions of spiders. “Early renditions of the Constitution show us that James Madison and the nation’s other Founders seemed to view spiders as one of America’s main threats and, interestingly, potential allies,” said constitutional historian Lawrence Marks, who pointed to discarded clauses in the formative document that repeatedly described spiders as “eight-legged demons” and “web-spinning angels,” explaining that these were clear signs the Founders believed the nation would fail without directly addressing the issue of spiders. “They were quite careful to outline the powers delineated to the spider branch of government, which you’ll see in the now-discarded Article VIII. Most intriguingly, you can look to the ambiguously worded Clause 1 of Section 2, which said American citizens had the right to own as many spiders as they wanted. There’s also the Bill of Rights’ so-called Arachnid Clause, which mostly consists of the word ‘spiders’ repeated several hundred times with period etchings of spiders in the margins. Eventually, of course, the document’s drafters decided to remove virtually all of this language due to Benjamin Franklin’s concerns that it gave too many rights to spiders.” Marks went on to discuss a rudimentary map from the period that was created by the Founding Fathers and that labeled each of the original 13 states as “Spiderville.”