The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1872-06-06
WHO Wrote the Constitution?

him serve on petty jury at General Sessions.
WHO Wrote the Constitution?
The following communication, which we copy
from the May number of the Southern Maga-
zine" will be read with deep interest by every
South Carolinian:
To the Editor Of the Southern Magazine:
| SIR-Having read with much interest re-
cent communication in a. daily paper ON the
subject of the authorship of the United States
Constitution, have carefully examined the
journals of the great convention which framed
and adopted that illustrious contract and form
of government, and have verified the correct
| ness of the statements adduced in that article,
viz: 1st that the original brief draft or plan OF
| federal constitution was, on 18th May, l7S7,
presented to the convention by that distin-
guished lawyer, Charles Pinckney, of South
Carolina; I'd, that the complete report OF the
present Constitution of the United States was
written, and on 9th August, 1887, submitted to
the convention by the chairman OF special
committee, the eminent statesman and JuTist,
John Rutledge, of South Carolina, who had
been chief Justice under the old Confederation,
and who had, in the first convention of the
Colonies (held in New York in October, 1865,
and called the "Stamp Act Congress- written
the celebrated memorial to Parliament, and
afterwards the Constitution of South Carolina,
of which separate sovereign State he was Pres
ident from l773 to 177S, and was afterwards, in
1895, chief justice of the United States. The
descendants of those two distinguished states
men have claimed for South Carolina, that her
we'll known Interpretation (being that of its au-
thor,) as we'll as that of the great statesmen
Calhoun, McDufie, Preston, Hamilton and
| others of South Carolina's ablest men, is to be
considered like that also of Jefferson and
Madison) and to be accepted as the true con-
struction. This is matter of great impor-
! tance to the South, and particularly to South
Carolina, where it has always been contended
that the author of the constitution must have
known moro of the true meaning of his own
production than any other man, and where his
friends and descendants we'll know that he al
ways claimed the perfect right of any State OF
this confederacy of republics to leave the part
nership in the same manner as each had en-
tered it, viz: by the action of the .primordial
organic convention of the people of each sep
arate State, wherein alone the true sovereignty
resides being the supreme constitution-mak
government-making power. The separate pri-
mordial conventions of the States of New
| York, Virginia and Rhode Island, in adopting
and ratifying the United States Constitution,
expressly declared that they reserved to them
selves the right to reassume the powers delega-
ted whenever they should be perverted to the
injury of their people'-in other words, the
absolute right of secession, which was thus first
asserted and maintained by the State OF New
York as her reserved and sovereign right.
In regard to the authorship of the constitu-
ton, it is indeed remarkable fact that this
most important question should have been 80
completely neglected and ignored, and that
credit should never have been given to the dis
tinguished Rutledge, of South Carolina, for the
composition and completion of the most admi-
rable form and system of government lbefore
its recent destruction) that was ever devised by
the wisdom of man while the author of the
Declaration of Independence has been almost
dei6ed for that mere declaration of liberty and
separation from the mother country-a paper
certainly far inferior to his other great decara-
ton Of the sovereign rights of the States con-
tanned in his celebrated Kentucky resolutions
of 1859. The authorship of the United
States constitution has been usually and with
out consideration attributed to Madison, who
was styled ''the father of the constitution -
which designation has led to the belief that
this great production had been composed and
| written by him, whereas the truth is that las
shown by the journals of the convention) he
was not even upon the committee which framed
and reported the constitution, but was las him
self declares) so constantly occupied in writing
his own journal and commentaries that he had
not time even to participate to any extent IN
the debates of the convention. The title OF
"father of the constitution" was bestowed upon
Mr.. Madison for the following reasons: LIST,
because he had first proposed the calling of the
convention to frame that instrument; End, be-
cause he had so earnestly and industriously ad-
vocated it in his able essays in that admirable
work called the Federalist; Sd, because he had
so ably supported and carried its adoption in
the Virginia Convention against the united op.-
position of all the other most distinguished
men of Virginia, amongst whom was that
great orator and statesman, Patrick Henry,
who with wonderful prescience and prophetic
vision predicted the very infamous state ., OF i
things that now exists, and declared that if the
constitution as it stood should be adopted with
out further restrictions upon the general gov
ernment, it would result las it has ii few
leading and designing demagogues inducing
Congress to usurp all power, and to destroy the
prerogatives of the Executive and the Judicia-
ry 1t may be regarded AS one of the signs OF
the degeneracy and Generalization of thepres-
ent era that the importance and value of the
constitution in its original purity are so utterly
disregarded, and that consequently its author
ship should be equally ignored and neglected.
Still it is with lingering hope that there may
be yet some few patriotic statesmen and schol-
ars who would be ashamed of being ignorant
of the authorship of the greatest political pro-
duction of our country, and who would wish to
be able to answer the constantly repeated in
quiry of foreigners, "Who wrote the constitu-
ton of your country"
WANTED SKILLET AND DIDN'T DRINK.
The Lebanan (Ky.) Herald tells the follow
Judge Greene relates that, as he was walk
ing down West Main on Monday afternoon, he