Category: History - American

The Mystery of the Pinckney Draught

When I began the studies which have resulted in this book someone asked me what I was doing, and I chanced to answer that I was looking into the mystery of Pinckney's draught of the Constitution. Afterwards I received a letter from Professor J. Franklin Jameson in which he spo...

Chapters

18. CHAPTER XVI

Pinckney was in the fourth generation of a family which had been distinguished for more than one hundred years for its public services. He had been elected to the provincial leg...

12. CHAPTER XI

Since Madison's time there have been uncovered four papers of which he knew nothing, and they bring us into an almost new field of inquiry. These papers are in the handwriting o...

10. CHAPTER IX.

The Observations of Pinckney, in Madison's estimation, fully sustained his arguments and justified his attacks on the verity of the draught in the State Department. The publicat...

17. CHAPTER XV

There are three reasons why the Pinckney Draught has been too readily discredited. The first is our respect for Madison, our belief that his knowledge far exceeded our own, and...

9. CHAPTER VIII.

The most incisive reason given by Madison against the authenticity of the draught in the Department of State, the reason which he most reiterated, if not the one upon which he m...

13. CHAPTER XII

Up to this point the subject of consideration has been the charges preferred by Madison against the copy of the draught in the State Department. I now propose to press the inves...

5. CHAPTER V

At this day Madison is regarded as one of the chief statesmen in the group of leading framers of the Constitution; but his best appreciated work was his keeping the only record...

7. CHAPTER VII

Notwithstanding Madison's ignorance of the contents of the draught, and the fallacy of the inference which he drew from the fact that Pinckney did not adhere to all the provisio...

11. CHAPTER X

Up to this point the draught in the State Department has been considered precisely as Madison desired it should be considered; that is to say upon his objections. The inquiry mo...

16. CHAPTER IV

The style of the Constitution, we owe to Pinckney. Behind him, perhaps, was Chief Justice Jay, whose hand appears in the first Constitution of New York, but none of the men conn...

1. CHAPTER I

When I began the studies which have resulted in this book someone asked me what I was doing, and I chanced to answer that I was looking into the mystery of Pinckney's draught of...

4. CHAPTER IV

Having now seen what Pinckney said in 1818 and what he did and where he stood, let us turn to the other party in the controversy, Madison, and examine the testimony which he gav...

15. part I was extremely so, for putting my hand to my pocket I missed my

copy of the same Paper, but advancing up to the Table my fears soon dissipated; I found it to be the handwriting of another person. When I went to my lodgings in the Indian Quee...

14. CHAPTER XIII

It was the only draught of a constitution which had been before the Convention; it had been referred to the Committee of the Whole and referred to the committee charged with the...

6. CHAPTER VI

The position taken by Madison in private letters to individuals, he had a right to modify, abandon or withdraw; and it would not be treating him fairly to hold him to words hast...

2. CHAPTER II

The Pinckney draught in the Department of State is written on unruled paper larger than common foolscap, hand made, and with untrimmed edges. The interlineations are few and tri...

3. CHAPTER III

Pinckney had been a Senator of the United States, Governor of South Carolina, Minister to Spain and had just been elected to the important Congress which was to grapple with the...

8. did. The most diligent member of the Convention, the chronicler of its

transactions, the sole survivor of its members and, consequently, a witness who should speak with the greatest care; and yet we find him, at one end of the line, ignorant of the...