The Mystery of the Pinckney Draught

by Charles C. Nott

Upon this question of fact there are two witnesses, Madison and Yates. The evidence which they have left to us is negative and positive, the one showing inferentially, what could not have occurred in the Convention on the 29th of May 1787 and the other stating positively what did occur; the one absolutely silent as to any speech by Pinckney; the other telling us that "Mr. Pinckney a member from South Carolina then added that he had reduced his ideas of a new government to a system which he then read."

Madison has written for us an account of the manner in which he took his notes and wrote out his Journal—a most interesting account, showing us the method he pursued, the efforts which he made, and reminding us how much we owe him for his fidelity to his self-imposed task.

"The curiosity I had felt during my researches into the history of the most distinguished confederacies, particularly those of antiquity, and the deficiency I found in the means of satisfying it, more especially in what related to the process, the principles, the reasons, and the anticipations, which prevailed in the formation of them, determined me to preserve, as far as I could, an exact account of what might pass in the Convention whilst executing its trust; with the magnitude of which I was duly impressed, as I was by the gratification promised to future curiosity by an authentic exhibition of the objects, the opinions, and the reasonings from which the new system of government was to receive its peculiar structure and organization. Nor was I unaware of the value of such a contribution to the fund of materials to the history of a Constitution on which would be staked the happiness of a people great even in its infancy, and possibly the cause of liberty throughout the world.

"In pursuance of the task I had assumed, I chose a seat in front of the presiding member, with the other members on my right and left hands. In this favorable position, for hearing all that passed, I noted in terms legible, and in abbreviations and marks intelligible to myself, what was read from the chair or spoken by the members; and losing not a moment unnecessarily between the adjournment and reassembling of the Convention, I was enabled to write out my daily notes during the session, or within a few finishing days after its close, in the extent and form preserved, in my own hand, on my files.

"In the labor and correctness of this, I was not a little aided by practice, and by a familiarity with the style and the train of observation and reasoning which characterized the principal speakers. It happened, also, that I was not absent a single day, nor more than a casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech, unless a very short one."

Yates was at the time of writing his Minutes 49 years of age. During the Revolution he had written political essays highly esteemed over the signature of the Rough Hewer. He had been for eleven years a judge of the Supreme Court of New York—a judge of the old school before the days of stenographers and printed arguments and was well trained in taking notes of what counsel said.

The Minutes of Yates are manifestly the work of a man accustomed to take down the ideas rather than the words of public speakers. His reports of the debates are briefer than Madison's showing much less of the reporter and much more of the lawyer or judge accustomed to analyze and to note the scope and sense of an argument. His report of the chief speech of Pinckney, that of June 25th, when compared with the full speech written out by Pinckney for Madison is a remarkably clear and accurate and full abstract. It is also valuable as giving us an abstract of the conclusion of the speech which Pinckney neglected to furnish. Madison says in his letter to Judge Duer, "Mr. Yates's notes as you observe are very inaccurate; they are also in some respects grossly erroneous." There are indeed mistakes resulting from his non-acquaintance with the delegates; and especially in his confusing the names of the two Pinckneys, the first name of each being the same as the first name of the other and both being delegates from the same State. But be that as it may, Yates correctly characterized the speech of Randolph as "long and elaborate," and Pinckney's draught as a "system" of a "new government"; and he certainly knew enough to distinguish between the delivery of a long speech and the reading of a formal document.

The fact therefor must be regarded as established as firmly as any fact recorded in the annals of the Convention that on the day when Pinckney presented his draught to the Convention he did not deliver and could not have delivered a speech making 27 pages of printed matter.

There is another fact to be considered in connection with the foregoing. Between the opening statements of the Observations and the title to the pamphlet there is a flat contradiction. In the speech he says expressly that the "plan will admit of important amendments"; that he does "not mean to offer it for the consideration of the House"; that he has "taken the liberty of mentioning it because it was his duty to do so." In the title to the pamphlet he says, "Plan of Government submitted to the Federal Convention in Philadelphia on the 28th of May 1787." It is plain that the speech and its title were written at different times and that in this the two are irreconcilable. It is also plain that Pinckney when he wrote a title for the printer in New York had forgotten the detail of the contents of the speech and did not take the trouble to examine it. We may therefore conclude that the two events were far apart, the one having taken place in Charleston before the assembling of the Convention and the other taking place in New York when the publication of the speech required that a title should be given to it.