Who wrote the presidential oath of office?

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"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
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That's it. In just 35 words (or 37 words if you count the alternative "or affirm") an individual swears the Oath of Office to The Presidency of The United States for the next four years. Yet, most Americans don't know who wrote the oath, mainly because no single person did.

The oath is written in the United States Constitution, and appears as the only sentence placed in quotation marks. James Madison--who would later become the fourth president--is largely credited with being the author of the Constitution, but an array of Founding Fathers offered their own thoughts of what to include in the document.

In the middle of the following draft from August 6, 1787, in the National Archives, George Washington annotated the presidential oath with his own thoughts, striking out "judgment" and changing the wording to a president's "abilities" (later changed again to "ability"):

During the Constitutional Convention, multiple committees of delegates debated various factors of the document, including a Committee of Detail and a Committee of Style and Arrangement, the latter of which included Madison and Alexander Hamilton, among others.

In the end, no one person can lay claim to the crafting the words forty-four men have said, and a forty-fifth will say later this week. It seems the presidential oath, like American democracy, is a child born of many fathers.