That the work was Pinckney's we know, for the provisions set forth in articles 12 and 13 of his draught are described in the Observations.
But though the work of Pinckney was built of the thoughts, phrases and provisions of other men, the structure was his own; and in its details as in its general design, he never failed in his intent that the new republic which he was trying to found should be a nation, and that its government should have all the powers, duties, responsibilities and authority essential and incidental to nationality. The thought may have been in other minds but another draughtsman by a slight change of expression might have warped the idea and left it of no avail. It is this comprehensive generality of treatment and expression which I am now inclined to hold was Pinckney's greatest contribution to the Constitution. Indeed if Marshall had laid his hand on Pinckney's shoulder and said, "Young man, so frame your constitution that I shall be able to interpret it according to the necessities of the Republic and in harmony with the general requirements of our nationality," Pinckney would not have needed to change a single line.
For more than 70 years, Pinckney has been a condemned and misrepresented man, and what is strange, though not inexplicable, his disgrace was primarily caused by the indispensable work which he unselfishly performed for his country without honor and without reward. I began the foregoing investigation of the authenticity and verity of the draught in the State Department in consequence of the publication of Pinckney's letter to the Secretary of State in 1818 in which he states frankly that the paper sent is not a literal duplicate of the draught presented to the Convention and that the draught contained provisions which he subsequently condemned and openly opposed during the debates. I knew of the worst side of Pinckney's character--his egoism, his garrulousness, his lack of cautious common sense--and in my early study of the Constitution the Pinckney draught had seemed too much to be the work of one man, and the charges of Madison with the implications of Elliot and the silence of Story and the censure of Bancroft had confirmed my suspicion and left me with a poor opinion of the draught in the State Department and of the man who placed it there. The most which I expected from this investigation was that I should be able to say with tolerable certainty that a section here or a paragraph there in the Constitution, was the work of Pinckney. But when under the pressure of unquestionable facts, the charges of Madison fell to pieces; and when with the refutation of a charge, just so much of the draught would be positively verified and affirmed; and especially when it plainly appeared, not only that in sections and articles, and provisions and sentences, the one instrument agreed with the other but that in form and style, and phraseology and arrangement from the words of the preamble, "We the people do ordain, declare, and establish the following Constitution for the government of ourselves and posterity" to the words of the last article, "The ratifications of ---- States shall be sufficient for organizing this Constitution," the draught of the Committee of Detail follows the draught in the State Department, and the Constitution follows the draught of the Committee of Detail, I was slowly forced to the conclusion that the young South Carolinian on whom I had placed no high estimate, had rendered a great service at a critical time, and that but for his needed work, the Constitution would be, at least in form, a very different instrument from the one which we revere. My slowly formed conclusion is that if wise and judicious forethought, and much patient work well done, and a breadth of view commensurate with the greatness of the subject, and the production at a critical moment of a paper which all other men in or out of the Convention had neglected to prepare, entitle a man to the lasting recognition of his countrymen, there is no framer of the Constitution more entitled to be commemorated in bronze or marble than Charles Pinckney of South Carolina.