“Whatever may be the judgment pronounced on the competency of the architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of the edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and solemn conviction… that there never was an assembly of men charged with a great and arduous trust who were more pure in the motives, or more exclusively of anxiously devoted to the object committed to them, than were the members of the Federal Convention of 1787 to the object of devising and proposing a constitutional system which should,… best secure the permanent liberty and happiness of their country”
“Preface to Debates in the Convention of 1787,” unfini8shed draft written in 1835 or 1836, Farrand 3:551.