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
"The penmanship of all three papers (the draught and the letter to the
Secretary of State and a previous letter to the Secretary December 8,
1818) is contemporaneous, and the letter of December 30 and the draught
were written with the same pen and ink. This may possibly admit of a
difference of opinion because the draught is in a somewhat larger
chirography than the letter, having been, as befitted its importance,
written more carefully. But the letter and the draught are written upon
the same paper, and this paper was not made when the Convention sat in
1787. There are several sheets of the draught and one of the letter, and
all bear the same watermark, 'Russell and Co. 1798.'" Vol. III, p. 16.
The draught, as before shown, contains a few verbal corrections, one or
two trivial erasures, two or three obviously necessary interlineations
but no alteration. That is to say it contains no alteration of
substance--nothing which indicates on the part of the writer an intent
to change or add to the substance of what he has written--there is no
additional provision interlined, no obscure expression amplified, no
omitted thought supplied--the corrections are one and all clerical. The
document, therefore upon its face does not appear to be a "rough
draught."
When the Secretary of State had written to Pinckney "I now take the
liberty of addressing you, to inquire _if you have a copy of the
Draught_ proposed by you, and if you can without inconvenience furnish
me at an early day, _with a copy of it_" and Pinckney replied that among
his notes and papers he had "found several rough draughts of the
Constitution" and that "I send you the one I believe was it," and with
the letter sent a document which obviously was not a rough draught, the
fair and reasonable interpretation of his language (apart from an intent
to defraud) is that he was sending what the Secretary of State had asked
for, viz., "a copy" of the "copy of the draught proposed by you" to the
Convention; and that what he meant to say was, "I send you 'a fair copy
made by myself of the one I believe was it.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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