The Mystery of the Pinckney DraughtNott, Charles C.
History
The Mystery of the Pinckney Draught
Nott, Charles C.
Constitutional history -- United States; Pinckney, Charles, 1757-1824
Besides the provisions in the draught which have passed into, and in a
literal or modified form, have become parts of the Constitution, there
was some work of the committee which must have involved consideration,
discussion, and a waste of time. These hindrances left a perilously
narrowed period within which a committee must draught the Constitution
of the United States.
It was therefore no time to stand upon trifles or to pause to adjust
formal niceties. Within the closed doors of Independence Hall would be
impatient men who had given their time since the 25th of May and who
were sitting unceasingly through the heat of the Philadelphia summer,
defraying in whole or in part their own expenses, though many of them
were men of narrow means, ill able to give either their time or their
money. To their anxious eyes the end seemed far away, and success far
from certain, and they would resent unnecessary delay. It would be just
to young, ambitious Mr. Pinckney to return his draught, unsullied, to
the Secretary that it might tell the story in future years, unquestioned
and unquestionable, of his splendid contribution to the Constitution. It
would be proper and according to parliamentary usage for the committee
to hand in their draught in writing, covered by a report attested by
their signatures, both of which would remain in the archives of the
Convention and perhaps in the archives of a future government. But the
committee could not linger for these desirable things. Pinckney's
draught must be sacrificed to hasten the good work along, to save time,
if it were but a day; and their own report and draught must be
"delivered in" figuratively, that is to say by the mouth of their
chairman and by the means of the printed copies, one for each member.
The committee, so all the circumstances unite in telling us, took
Pinckney's draught and considered it; some provisions they retained;
some they corrected, some they amended, some they changed, some they
struck out. The amendments they wrote on the broad margin of the large
foolscap sheets or wrote out on separate slips of paper which they
wafered to the margin. When they had finished this work Pinckney's
draught had become "printer's copy." For one brief week it served a
great purpose and was the most useful document in the world. Then it was
scrupulously destroyed; and concerning it no man of the men who knew its
contents is known to have spoken a single word.
Apart from the inferential and conjectural statements of the preceding
paragraph, the stricter principles of law lead to or toward the same
conclusion. The draught was placed in the committee's hands to be used
but not to be destroyed. Nevertheless the right to use, like the right
of eminent domain, was commensurate with the necessities of the
situation, and the committee might use it by destroying it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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