[remarkEon]

If only there was a body of scholarship that we could look at to discern what their intent was.

I'm being glib, but your broader point is right - Jefferson was skeptical of permanency, but other Founders weren't. I also think Jefferson was just wrong. One of the things that needed to be balanced or accounted for was figuring out how to provide a sense of stability, which the Monarchy had done previously. I am super skeptical that the US would have survived as long (or survived the Civil War) if the Constitution went through a re-write every generation. There's no way to have any sort of long term vision in this scenario.