When I first saw the draught of the committee, I observed that the notes on the margin were written in two different hands. I also observed that one of these though not familiar was a hand which I had seen before. On calling the attention of Mr. S. B. Crandall of the Bureau of Rolls to it, he instantly recognized this writing as Washington's. A further examination showed that 115 notes and interlineations were written by Washington and 7 by Jackson. _This copy of the draught was Washington's own copy!_ Whether he placed the copy among the papers of the Convention on September 17, 1787 when the Secretary brought them to him; or whether he transferred his own copy to the Secretary of State in 1796 is unknown and probably unascertainable, but the indorsement makes it certain that the paper came to the Department directly from Washington; and the 115 carefully made emendations in his handwriting are for us the highest evidence in the world of its authenticity. The notes by Jackson are easily explicable; they are lengthy amendments which Washington could not take down from hearing them read; and he handed his printed copy to the Secretary to have them correctly and fully written out.[1] [Footnote 1: For the benefit of those persons who are so fortunate as to have a copy of the Documentary History of the Constitution (Department of State, 1894) I will add that the marginal notes which are in the writing of Jackson are those of Art. V, Sec. I; Art. VI, Sec. 3; Sec. 13, Art. VII; Sec. 1, Art. XI; Sec. 4, Art. XV; (see Doc. Hist., Constitution Vol. I, p. 285).] If the Committee of Detail--Rutledge of South Carolina, Randolph of Virginia, Gorham of Massachusetts, Ellsworth of Connecticut and Wilson of Pennsylvania--intended to keep their work a profound secret, and the secret to be buried with themselves, they could not have planned better than they did. The work was done in secret; they employed no secretary; their report was not in writing. After the committee was discharged no hint or word seems to have escaped them. No man boasted of his own part or disparaged another's. There is no journal which tells us how they worked. No son or daughter or grandchild has revealed a word that any member subsequently said. In 1813 when Edmund Randolph died, the secret of the members of the Committee of Detail died with him.