"The Newburgh and New York Railroad Company was organized December 14th, 1864, the road was completed September 1st, 1869. J.C. Bancroft Davis was elected President of the Board of Directors"-[on] August 1st, 1868."
Given his distinguished background, and his having worked with James Taylor and Jay Cooke of the railroads in late 1860s, it's hard to imagine that Davis would insert "corporations are persons" into the record of a Supreme Court proceeding without understanding full well its importance and consequences, even if he was encouraged to do so by Justice Field.
So here is the fourth and final possibility: John Chandler Bancroft Davis undertook to rewrite that part of the United States Constitution himself, for reasons that to this day are still unknown, but probably not inconsistent with his own personal political worldview and affiliation with the railroads, and that he did it with the encouragement of Fields.
Waite was so ill that he missed the entire session of 1885 Court, was very weak and sick in 1886 and 1887, and died in March of 1888: in all probability he never knew what Davis had written in his name.
Regardless how it happened - whether it was a simple error by Davis, or Davis was bending to pressure from Fields, or if Davis simply took it upon himself to use the voice of the Supreme Court to modify the United States Constitution - the fact is that an amendment to the Constitution which had been written by and passed in Congress, voted on and ratified by the states, and signed into law by the president, was radically altered in1886 from the intent of its post-Civil War authors.
And the hand on the pen that did it was that of J. C. Bancroft Davis.
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