Moreover if the draught was a tissue of fraud detection was always possible; and detection would have blasted the life of Pinckney nowhere with greater severity than in his own State. In 1818 sixteen other members of the Convention were still living, and three of them had been members of the Committee of Style, and two of them (Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Pierce Butler), had been delegates from South Carolina. Letters too from members might disclose the fatal truth. A son of some member might come forward with his father's draught of some of these provisions. Autobiographies, diaries and personal reminiscences of members might exist. Detection was possible, and in the ordinary course of human events, certain. Conversely it is proper here to note the fact that in all these years not a line of writing has been found to thrown a shade of discredit upon the Pinckney draught.
The temptation, too, was relatively small. The Constitution was not then in the estimation of the American people what it is now. No one then had proclaimed it to be "the greatest work ever thrown off by the brain and purpose of man." In 1818 the first work on the Constitution (Rawle's) had not yet been written. Monroe was President, and the country was just emerging from the poverty which followed the war of 1812-15. Pennsylvania and Georgia had defied the federal power and the latter had passed a statute making it a crime punishable with death to enforce the process of the Supreme Court of the United States. State feeling was always stronger in the South than in the North and out of State feeling had grown the doctrine of State rights. The South at that time could cherish no warm regard for the man who had first written "all acts made by the legislature of the United States, pursuant to this Constitution, and all treaties made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land."
It must also be noted that Pinckney was not a volunteer in this matter--that he did not thrust his draught upon the Secretary of State--that he never came before the public claiming to have contributed this or anything to the Constitution. The subject was introduced by Mr. Adams and not by Pinckney; and the draught was produced in response to Mr. Adams' inquiries concerning it. Pinckney showed no great solicitude about it then. His letter is slovenly and careless and manifestly not written for posterity, and it contains no indication of his regarding it as any thing more than a personal explanation. It was due to Mr. Adams to tell him that this draught which he inclosed was not a literal duplicate of the one which he had placed before the Convention; and it was due to himself to say that it contained provisions of which he had subsequently disapproved and which he had opposed in the Convention. Pinckney certainly did not suppose that he was writing history or biography when he wrote that letter.