It might surprise you to learn that an amateur forensic investigator from 200 years ago may have inadvertently helped save American democracy. More surprising yet, this particular detective was also an American president — and while his methods may have been crude by today's standards for laboratory detective work, the results speak for themselves.
The story begins with James Madison, who is best known as America's fourth president — during which time he led America through the War of 1812 — as well as a co-author of both the United States Constitution and the Federalist Papers. Yet in the final years of his life, Madison took it upon himself to debunk a document that its writer claimed had been an early draft of the Constitution. That author, South Carolina politician Charles Pinckney, had been a delegate at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, so his assertion was at least superficially plausible. Yet Madison was convinced that Pinckney was wrong about the purported early draft, and went about proving exactly that.
