The Mystery of the Pinckney Draught

by Charles C. Nott

CHAPTER XV

CONCLUSIONS ON THE WHOLE CASE

There are three reasons why the Pinckney Draught has been too readily discredited. The first is our respect for Madison, our belief that his knowledge far exceeded our own, and our deference to his repeatedly expressed opinion. The second is that the draught was never before the Convention and consequently never received the recognition of discussion. It was referred at the beginning to the Committee of the Whole; but it was not yet wanted, for the Committee debated only abstract propositions couched in formal resolutions. It was referred to the Committee of Detail; but that Committee reported only their own draught and the Convention had before them only the Committee's. The draught of Pinckney never came to a vote, was never discussed, and never received the slightest consideration in the Convention.

The third reason for discrediting the draught is to be found in the exaggerated value which has been set upon it. It has seemed to be altogether too great an instrument to have been the work of one man. We have felt in a vague way that to concede that one man could have contributed so much to the great instrument would be to detract from the work and fame of the great men whom we call the framers of the Constitution, and from the Constitution itself.

But the fact is that the draught of Pinckney is not so great as it seems. Coming from a man so well equipped for the work, so experienced in the existing affairs of our mixed governments and with such a clear comprehension of the conditions of the case, and having such a mass of material ready to his hand, the draught is not a marvelous production. That is to say the work considered as the work of so young a man is not so wonderful as at first it appears to be. It may come within the range of the improbable but not of the impossible.

Madison has himself borne witness to the fact that the subject of a substitute for the tottering power of the Confederated States was in every man's mind; and that every intelligent man of that day was more or less fitted to draught a general outline of a new national government:

"The resolutions of Mr. Randolph, the basis on which the deliberations of the Convention proceeded, were the result of a consultation among the Virginia deputies, who thought it possible that, as Virginia had taken so leading a part in reference to the Federal Convention, some initiative propositions might be expected from them. They were understood not to commit any of the members absolutely or definitively on the tenor of them. The resolutions will be seen to present the characteristics and features of a government as complete (in some respects, perhaps more so) as the plan of Mr. Pinckney, though without being thrown into a formal shape. The moment, indeed, a real constitution was looked for as a substitute for the Confederacy, the distribution of the Government into the usual departments became a matter of course with all who speculated upon the prospective change." Letter to W. A. Duer, June 5th, 1835.

The difficulty of the hour was not in draughting a constitution, but in draughting one which would not arouse the jealous antagonism of the several States. That difficulty did not trouble Pinckney. His plan contemplated having the people of each State fairly, i. e., proportionately represented in his House of Delegates, and in making the several States as States unequivocally submissive to the new national authority.

Pinckney had been for two years immediately before the sitting of the Convention, a delegate in the Congress of the Confederation. He had been the representative of South Carolina in the "grand committee" appointed to consider the alteration of the Articles of Confederation. He had been chairman of the subcommittee which draughted the committee's report of August, 1786; and (as Professor McLaughlin has pointed out) "the introducing phrases, as appears by reference to the manuscript papers of the old Congress, were written in Pinckney's own hand." In witnessing the inherent weakness and increasing degradation of the Congress, he had learned to appreciate the incapacity of the confederate system, and the necessity of a National government. No member of the Convention better appreciated those two things, or was better equipped for the task which he undertook; and there was no man in the country, except Madison, who had been through such a preparatory course and had such a combination of resources at his command. He was young, talented, experienced, ambitious, wealthy, unemployed and a ceaseless worker. The index of Madison's Journal witnesses to the immense amount of work which Pinckney did irrespective of the draught. If we discard the draught—the original draught, the disputed draught, and the draught described in the Observations, the fact will remain that Pinckney was an important contributor to the work of framing the Constitution.