The Great Debate That Made the U.S. Constitution. Madison James
record, which in the main they support, and which occasionally they elucidate.
December 30, 1818, Charles Pinckney wrote to John Quincy Adams that he had made more notes of the convention than any other member except Madison, but they were never published and have been lost or destroyed.5
In 1819 (Boston) was published the Journal, Acts and Proceedings of the Convention, etc., under the supervision of John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, by authority of a joint resolution of Congress of March 27, 1818. This was the official journal of the convention, which the Secretary, William Jackson, had turned over to the President, George Washington, when the convention adjourned, Jackson having previously burned all other papers of the convention in his possession. March 16, 1796, Washington deposited the papers Jackson had given him with the Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering. They consisted of three volumes, — the journal of the convention, the journal of the proceedings of the Committee of the Whole of the convention, and a list of yeas and nays, beside a printed draft of the Constitution as reported August 6th, showing erasures and amendments afterwards adopted, and the Virginia plan in different stages of development.
In preparing the matter for publication Secretary Adams found that for Friday, September 14, and Saturday, September 15, the journal was a mere fragment, and Madison was applied to and completed it from his minutes. From General B. Bloomfield, executor of the estate of David Brearley, a delegate in the convention from New Jersey, Adams obtained a few additional papers, and from Charles Pinckney a copy of what purported to be the plan of a constitution submitted by him to the convention. All of these papers, with some others, appeared in the edition of 1819, which was a singularly accurate publication, as comparison by the present editor of the printed page with the original papers has shown.
The Pinckney plan, as it appeared in this edition of the journal, was incorporated by Madison into his record, as he had not secured a copy of it when the convention was sitting. But the draft furnished to Secretary Adams in 1818, and the plan presented by Pinckney to the convention in 1787 were not identical, as Madison conclusively proved in his note to his journal, in his letter to Jared Sparks of November 25, 1831, and in several other letters, in all of which he showed that the draft did not agree in several important respects with Pinckney's own votes and motions in the convention, and that there were important discrepancies between it and Pinckney's Observations on the Plan of Government, a pamphlet printed shortly after the convention adjourned.6
It is, indeed, inconceivable that the convention should have incorporated into the constitution so many of the provisions of the Pinckney draft, and that at the same time so little reference should have been made to it in the course of the debates; and it is equally extraordinary that the contemporaries of Pinckney did not accord to him the chief paternity of the Constitution, which honor would have belonged to him if the draft he sent to Mr. Adams in 1818 had been the one he actually offered the convention in the first week of its session. The editor has made a careful examination of the original manuscripts in the case. They consist (1) of Mr. Pinckney's letter to Mr. Adams of December 12, 1818, written from Winyaw, S. C., while Pinckney was temporarily absent from Charleston, acknowledging Mr. Adams's request for the draft, (2) his letter of December 30, written from Charleston, transmitting the draft, and (3) the draft. The penmanship of all three papers is contemporaneous, and the letter of December 30 and the draft were written with the same pen and ink. This may possibly admit of a difference of opinion, because the draft is in a somewhat larger chirography than the letter, having been, as befitted its importance, written more carefully. But the letter and the draft are written upon the same paper, and this paper was not made when the convention sat in 1787. There are several sheets of the draft and one of the letter, and all bear the same water-mark — "Russell & Co. 1797." The draft cannot, therefore, claim to be the original Pinckney plan, and was palpably made for the occasion, from Mr. Pinckney's original notes doubtless, aided and modified by a copy of the Constitution itself. Thirty years had elapsed since the close of the Constitutional Convention when the draft was compiled, and its incorrectness is not a circumstance to occasion great wonder.7
Correspondence on the subject of the convention, written while it was in session, was not extensive, but some unpublished letters throwing light upon contemporaneous opinion have been found and are quoted in the notes.
The editor desires to record his obligation for assistance in preparing these volumes to his friend, Montgomery Blair, Esq., of Silver Spring, Md.
GAILLARD HUNT.
CHERRY HILL FARM, VA.,
September, 1902.
1 Madison to Randolph, April 21, 1789.
2 Mrs. Madison's brother.
3 Orange County, Va., MSS. records.
4 Volume iii of The Documentary History of the United States (Department of State, 1894) is a presentation of a literal print of the original journal, indicating by the use of larger and smaller type and by explanatory words the portions which are interlined or stricken out.
5 See p. 22, n.
6 See P. L. Ford's Pamphlets on the Constitution, 419.
7 See p. 19, n.
Chronology of James Madison
1787.
1787. Prepares the "Virginia plan" in conjunction with the May 6-25. Virginia delegates.
May 14. Attends the first gathering of the delegates.
May 30. Moves postponement of question of representation by free
population.
Moves that congressional representation be proportioned
to the importance and size of the States.
Makes his first speech on this subject.
May 31. Advocates representation in one house by popular
election.
Opposes uniting several States into one district for
representation in Senate.
Doubts practicability of enumerating powers of national
legislature.
Suggests the impossibility of using force to coerce
individual States.
June 1. Moves that the powers of the Executive be enumerated.
June 2. Objects to giving Congress power to remove the President upon demand of a majority of the State legislatures.
June 4. Favors giving power to more than a majority of the national legislature to overrule an Executive negative of a law.
June 5. Opposes election of judges by both branches of Congress.
Advocates submission of constitution to conventions of the people.
Favors inferior judicial tribunals.
June 6. Speaks for popular representation in the House.
Seconds motion to include a portion of the Judiciary