At the opening of the Convention which framed the Constitution, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina presented a draught of a constitution that was referred to the Committee of the Whole. This draught was not a subject of notice or comment by any speaker or writer of the time. One might infer from the silence of all records and writers that it was the fanciful scheme of an individual which exercised no influence whatever on the Convention and did not contribute a single line or sentence to the Constitution. On the adjournment of the Convention its records and papers were placed under seal and the obligation of secrecy was set upon its members. When ultimately the seals were broken and the package was opened, more than thirty years afterwards, the draught of Pinckney was not found. John Quincy Adams then Secretary of State applied to Pinckney for a copy; and he on the 30th of December 1818, sent to the Secretary of State the duplicate or copy of the draught now in the Department of State. The document was published and remained unquestioned until in 1830, six years after the death of Pinckney, it came, or was brought, to the attention of Madison; and he at different times wrote to at least four persons concerning it and also prepared a statement which was subsequently published with it in Gilpin's edition of Madison's Journal, and in Elliot's Debates; and then the Pinckney draught slept unnoticed in constitutional publications until a review in the columns of the Nation awakened an interest in Mr. Worthington C. Ford and he in 1895 published the letter which accompanied the draught when it was placed in the State Department. Nevertheless, if the copy in the Department is identical in terms, or substantially identical in terms, with the paper which Pinckney presented to the Convention, then Charles Pinckney contributed more of words and provisions to the Constitution of the United States than any other man. And this draught so prepared by him was so largely adopted in a silent way that the law student who might chance to read it, not knowing of the comment of Madison and its rejection by all commentators, would be tempted to speak of the Constitution of the United States as the constitution of Pinckney. The reason why the Pinckney draught has received so little attention, and he has received no credit at all for what apparently is an extraordinary piece of constitutional work can be readily explained.