The Mystery of the Pinckney Draught

by Charles C. Nott

"Printed Draught of the Constitution, received from the President of the United States, March 19th, 1796 by

"Timothy Pickering
"Sec'y of State"

The name of the printer who did his confidential work so well, I regret to say, is not upon the paper.

It has been supposed and said that this copy of the draught was Jackson's, the inefficient Secretary of the Convention, and that he used it to save himself the trouble of writing out the proceedings in the journal by noting amendments on the margin. This like much other imaginary history is erroneous.

When I first saw the draught of the committee, I observed that the notes on the margin were written in two different hands. I also observed that one of these though not familiar was a hand which I had seen before. On calling the attention of Mr. S. B. Crandall of the Bureau of Rolls to it, he instantly recognized this writing as Washington's. A further examination showed that 115 notes and interlineations were written by Washington and 7 by Jackson. This copy of the draught was Washington's own copy!

Whether he placed the copy among the papers of the Convention on September 17, 1787 when the Secretary brought them to him; or whether he transferred his own copy to the Secretary of State in 1796 is unknown and probably unascertainable, but the indorsement makes it certain that the paper came to the Department directly from Washington; and the 115 carefully made emendations in his handwriting are for us the highest evidence in the world of its authenticity.

The notes by Jackson are easily explicable; they are lengthy amendments which Washington could not take down from hearing them read; and he handed his printed copy to the Secretary to have them correctly and fully written out.[1]

[1] For the benefit of those persons who are so fortunate as to have a copy of the Documentary History of the Constitution (Department of State, 1894) I will add that the marginal notes which are in the writing of Jackson are those of Art. V, Sec. I; Art. VI, Sec. 3; Sec. 13, Art. VII; Sec. 1, Art. XI; Sec. 4, Art. XV; (see Doc. Hist., Constitution Vol. I, p. 285).

If the Committee of Detail—Rutledge of South Carolina, Randolph of Virginia, Gorham of Massachusetts, Ellsworth of Connecticut and Wilson of Pennsylvania—intended to keep their work a profound secret, and the secret to be buried with themselves, they could not have planned better than they did. The work was done in secret; they employed no secretary; their report was not in writing. After the committee was discharged no hint or word seems to have escaped them. No man boasted of his own part or disparaged another's. There is no journal which tells us how they worked. No son or daughter or grandchild has revealed a word that any member subsequently said. In 1813 when Edmund Randolph died, the secret of the members of the Committee of Detail died with him.

The third germinal stage was based on the draught of the Committee of Detail and extended from the 6th of August to the 12th of September. The draught of the Committee constituted the divide in the march of the framers. Behind them was the plain of philosophical disquisition on which there had been many contests, but exclusively as to what might be and might not be. Before them were many hills of difficulty to be surmounted in the practical application of abstract propositions by incorporating them in provisions and conditions to be written into the Constitution. But the work of the Convention and the debates of the members were in connection with the draughted Constitution of the Committee of Detail, or in connection with amendments thereof or additions thereto. There were indeed new provisions framed sometimes by grand committees, sometimes by special committees, sometimes by the Convention itself—provisions concerning which the Convention had not at first sufficiently instructed the Committee of Detail—provisions which the Convention had not then considered and determined even in the form of abstract propositions. The most difficult of the compromises, that between the large and the small States in the choosing of the President, was effected; and the method first proposed by Wilson and rejected by the Convention, June 2nd, that the choice should be made through the agency of electoral colleges was reconsidered and adopted. The power to try officers impeached by the House of Representatives was taken from the Supreme Court and given to the Senate; the power to appoint ambassadors, and judges of the Supreme Court, was taken from the Senate and given to the President; the power to appoint the Treasurer of the United States was taken from the Legislative branch and given to the Executive; and the important treaty-making power which at first was lodged exclusively in the Senate was transferred to the Executive subject to the ratification of the Senate. But all that was considered and agreed upon was attached to the draught of the Committee of Detail.