Between 1818 and 1836, the magnitude of this and its importance as an historical document was forced upon Madison's attention from time to time by younger men who took a warmer interest in the Constitution and its history and its framers than their fathers had taken; and it is apparent that he was astounded at the historical importance of the document. Marshall was then drawing near to the end of his majestic judicial reign, and though assailed and thwarted by the cavilings and dissents of lesser men, had placed his imperishable impress upon the Constitution and revealed to his countrymen its greatness and consistency and power of nationality. The growing interest in the great instrument would not be quieted. Madison would fain have kept silent, as he advised his two most trusted correspondents to do. But he could not! He was the greatest of authorities, living or dead, in all that pertained to the making of the Constitution; the last living member of the Convention; the sole chronicler of its secret history. It is as plain now as it was then that he must speak. What could he say?
Madison was not able to say, "I read the Pinckney draught when it was before the Convention, I studied it, I knew the contents well; the paper in the State Department is not a substantial duplicate of that paper." There remained then but this alternative; he must confess that he knew no more about the Pinckney draught than did the men who were interrogating him or he must do precisely what he did do, he must attack it on documentary evidence as an advocate, and must remain silent as a witness. If he had testified as a witness; if he had said of his own knowledge that the paper which Pinckney placed in the State Department was not a copy of the paper which he had laid before the Convention and was not a substantial duplicate worthy of consideration, that would have been the end of the matter. Certainly I should never have felt called upon to make the present investigation. But Madison did not so testify. Under the pressure of steadily increasing interest in the Constitution, inquirer after inquirer came to him to explain how a man whom they did not regard as a wise statesman could have contributed so much to the Constitution, which they had regarded as the composite work of a number of great men. They did not come to him for reasons or advice or references to documentary evidence, but because he was the one survivor of the men who could have testified, the only chronicler of what had happened in the Convention from first to last, and they sought his personal knowledge. They asked him to tell them what he knew concerning the Pinckney draught, the original draught, the one which was before the Convention; and he answered not a word! We must reject Madison as a witness because he rejected himself.