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
Another provision is the compromise relating to slave representation. In
the State Department draught it is provided that the number of the
delegates shall be regulated "by the number of inhabitants" (Art. 3) and
that "the proportion of direct taxation shall be regulated by the whole
number of inhabitants of every description." In the Observations he says
that his plan contains a provision "for empowering Congress to levy
taxes upon the States, agreeable to the rule now in use, an enumeration
of the white inhabitants, and three-fifths of other descriptions." In
the Convention on the 12th of July, "Mr. Pinckney moved to amend Mr.
Randolph's motion so as to make 'blacks equal to the whites in the ratio
of representation.' This he urged was nothing more than justice. The
blacks are the labourers, the peasants of the Southern States: they are
as productive of pecuniary resources as those of the Northern States.
They add equally to the wealth, and, considering money as the sinews of
war, to the strength of the nation. It will also be politic with regard
to the Northern States, as taxation is to keep pace with
Representation."
This is conclusive as to Pinckney's views. It confirms the draught in
the State Department and shows too that the copy of the draught on which
the Observations were founded differed in this detail from the draught
presented to the Convention.
On a review of the entire case I have reached the following conclusions:
1. The draught in the State Department agrees so closely with the
draught of the Committee of Detail, in form, in phraseology, in
structure, in arrangement, in extent, in its beginning and its ending
that unquestionably the one draught must have followed the other. There
can be no middle ground here.
2. With the uncovering of the Committee's draught and the bringing of
the Observations into the case and the confirmatory matter in the
Randolph and Wilson draughts, it becomes evident that the suspected
fraud was an impossibility. That is to say, when Pinckney described in
the Observations the draught which he was subsequently to present to the
Convention he thereby described the draught which he was ultimately to
place in the Department of State. In a word, if a fraud was perpetrated
in 1818, it must have been begun in 1787, before the Convention met,
which is a reductio ad absurdum.
3. The Observations were printed and published during the lifetime of
every member of the Convention, including the five members of the
Committee of Detail, and Pinckney immediately republished them in the
South Carolina State Gazette. In 1819 when the copy of the draught was
published and circulated as a public document there were 16 members of
the Convention still living, among whom was Madison, the chronicler of
the Convention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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