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
"and on the question to strike out "it passed in the
negative.""
If Pinckney's article 3 had really provided that members of the first
house should be chosen _by the legislatures_ of the several States,
certainly his article 5 would not have provided that "each State shall
prescribe the time and manner of holding elections by _the people_."
Article 3 laid down the basic principle that representatives were to be
chosen by the people, and article 5 provided for the time and manner
when and whereby the people should elect their representatives; and
article 4 provided that Senators should be chosen, not by the people or
the legislatures of the several States, but by the House of Delegates.
In all these provisions we again see that the draught in the State
Department is consistent with itself.
It is possible that the person who gave the "copied draught" to Mr. Read
was Pinckney himself; and it is probable that by the 20th of May he had
changed his mind concerning the election of delegates by the people and
had determined to make his draught conform to the views of his fellow
delegates from South Carolina. We know, as will hereafter appear, that
he contemplated making many amendments to his draught before presenting
it to the Convention; and that he hastily and prematurely presented it
on the 29th of May so that it should go with the Virginia resolutions
to the Committee of the Whole. The change we are considering may not
have been made in the written instrument which he laid upon the
Secretary's desk, though he made the change in his own mind. But be that
as it may, it is as certain as existing knowledge goes that no man saw
the original draught with the words "by the people" twice stricken out
and the words "by the legislatures of the several States" twice written
in; and until this change in the original draught is shown by positive
testimony, unequivocal in terms and above suspicion in character, the
circumstantial evidence that the draught went to the Convention with the
words "the people" in the 3d and 5th articles is overwhelming.
There are some other things specified in the Note not of great
importance, but which serve to show how eagerly Madison clutched at
anything that would operate as a makeweight against Pinckney and his
draught.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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