University of Virginia Library

THE JOURNALS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL
CONVENTION.

James Madison's contemporaries generally conceded
that he was the leading statesman in the convention
which framed the Constitution of the United
States; but in addition to this he kept a record of
the proceedings of the convention which outranks in
importance all the other writings of the founders of
the American Republic. He is thus identified, as
no other man is, with the making of the Constitution
and the correct interpretation of the intentions
of the makers. His is the only continuous record of
the proceedings of the convention. He took a seat
immediately in front of the presiding officer, facing
the members, and took down every speech or motion
as it was made, using abbreviations of his own and
immediately afterwards transcribing his notes when
he returned to his lodgings, A few motions only
escaped him and of important speeches he omitted
none. The proceedings were ordered to be kept
secret, but his self-imposed task of reporter had the
unofficial sanction of the convention. Alexander
Hamilton corrected slightly Madison's report of his
great speech and handed him his plan of government
to copy. The same thing was done with

Benjamin Franklin's speeches, which were written
out by Franklin and read by his colleague Wilson,
the fatigue of delivery being too great for the aged
Franklin, and Madison also copied the Patterson
plan. Edmund Randolph wrote out for him his
opening speech from his notes two years after the
convention adjourned.[1]

In the years after the convention Madison made a
few alterations and additions in his journal, with the
result that in parts there is much interlineation and
erasure, but after patient study the meaning is
always perfectly clear. Three different styles of
Madison's own penmanship at different periods of
his life appear in the journal, one being that of his
old age within five years of his death. In this hand
appears the following note at the end of the journal:
"The few alterations and corrections made in the
debates which are not in my handwriting were dictated
by me and made in my presence by John C.
Payne."[2] The rare occasions where Payne's penmanship
is distinguishable are indicated in the notes
to this edition.

The importance attached by Madison to his record
is shown by the terms of his will, dated April 15,
1835, fourteen months before his death:

"I give all my personal estate ornamental as well
as useful, except as herein after otherwise given, to
my dear Wife; and I also give to her all my manuscript
papers, having entire confidence in her discreet

and proper use of them, but subject to the
qualification in the succeeding clause. Considering
the peculiarity and magnitude of the occasion which
produced the Convention at Philadelphia in 1787,
the Characters who composed it, the Constitution
which resulted from their deliberations, its effects
during a trial of so many years on the prosperity of
the people living under it, and the interest it has
inspired among the friends of free Government, it is
not an unreasonable inference that a careful and extended
report of the proceedings and discussions of
that body, which were with closed doors, by a member
who was constant in his attendance, will be
particularly gratifying to the people of the United
States, and to all who take an interest in the
progress of political science and the course of true
liberty. It is my desire that the Report as made
by me should be published under her authority and
direction."[3]

This desire was never consummated, for Mrs.
Madison's friends advised her that she could not
herself profitably undertake the publication of the
work, and she accordingly offered it to the Government,
by which it was bought for $30,000, by act
of Congress, approved March 3, 1837. On July 9,
1838, an act was approved authorizing the Joint
Committee on the Library to cause the papers thus
purchased to be published, and the Committee intrusted
the superintendence of the work to Henry
D. Gilpin, Solicitor of the Treasury. The duplicate

copy of the journal which Mrs. Madison had delivered
was, tinder authority of Congress, withdrawn
from the State Department and placed in Mr. Gilpin's
hands. In 1840 (Washington: Lantree & O'Sullivan),
accordingly, appeared the three volumes,
The Papers of James Madison Purchased by Order
of Congress, edited by Henry D. Gilpin. Other issues
of this edition, with changes of date, came out
later in New York, Boston, and Mobile. This issue
contained not only the journal of the Constitutional
Convention, but Madison's notes of the debates in
the Continental Congress and in the Congress of the
Confederation from February 19 to April 25, 1787,
and a report Jefferson had written of the debates in
1776 on the Declaration of Independence, besides a
number of letters of Madison's. From the text of
Gilpin a fifth volume was added to Elliot's Debates
in 1845, and it was printed in one volume in Chicago,
1893.

Mr. Gilpin's reading of the duplicate copy of the
Madison journal is thus the only one that has hitherto
been published.[4] His work was both painstaking
and thorough, but many inaccuracies and
omissions have been revealed by a second reading
from the original manuscript journal written in
Madison's own hand, just as he himself left it; and
this original manuscript has been followed with rigid
accuracy in the text of the present edition.

The editor has compared carefully with Madison's
report, as the notes will show, the incomplete and
less important records of the convention, kept by
others. Of these, the best known is that of Robert
Yates, a delegate in the convention from New York,
who took notes from the time he entered the convention,
May 25, to July 5, when he went home to
oppose what he foresaw would be the result of the
convention's labors. These notes were published in
1821 (Albany), edited by Yates's colleague in the
convention, John Lansing, under the title, Secret
Proceedings and Debates of the Convention Assembled
at Philadelphia, in the Year 1787, for the Purpose
of Forming the Constitution of the United
States of America. This was afterwards reprinted
in several editions and in the three editions of The
Debates on the Federal Constitution, by Jonathan
Elliot (Washington, 1827–1836). Madison pronounced
Yates's notes "Crude and broken." "When
I looked over them some years ago," he wrote to J.
C. Cabell, February 2, 1829, "I was struck with the
number of instances in which he had totally mistaken
what was said by me, or given it in scraps and terms
which, taken without the developments or qualifications
accompanying them, had an import essentially
different from what was intended." Yates's notes
were colored by his prejudices, which were strong
against the leaders of the convention, but, making
allowance for this and for their incompleteness, they
are of high value and rank next to Madison's in
importance.

Rufus King, a delegate from Massachusetts, kept
a number of notes, scattered and imperfect, which
were not published till 1894, when they appeared in
King's Life and Correspondence of Rufus King (New
York: Putnam's).

William Pierce, a delegate from Georgia, made
some memoranda of the proceedings of the convention,
and brief and interesting sketches of all the
delegates, which were first printed in The Savannah
Georgian, April 18–28, 1828, and reprinted in The
American Historical Review for January, 1898.

The notes of Yates, King, and Pierce are the only
unofficial record of the convention extant, besides
Madison's, and their chief value is in connection with
the Madison record, which in the main they support,
and which occasionally they elucidate.

December 30, 1818, Charles Pinckney wrote to
John Quincy Adams that he had made more notes
of the convention than any other member except
Madison, but they were never published and have
been lost or destroyed.[5]

In 1819 (Boston) was published the Journal,
Acts and Proceedings of the Convention, etc., under
the supervision of John Quincy Adams, Secretary of
State, by authority of a joint resolution of Congress
of March 27, 1818. This was the official journal of
the convention, which the Secretary, William Jackson,
had turned over to the President, George Washington,
when the convention adjourned, Jackson
having previously burned all other papers of the

convention in his possession. March 16, 1796,
Washington deposited the papers Jackson had given
him with the Secretary of State, Timothy Piekering.
They consisted of three volumes,—the journal of the
convention, the journal of the proceedings of the
Committee of the Whole of the convention, and a
list of yeas and nays, beside a printed draft of the
Constitution as reported August 6th, showing erasures
and amendments afterwards adopted, and the
Virginia plan in different stages of development.

In preparing the matter for publication Secretary
Adams found that for Friday, September 14, and
Saturday, September 15, the journal was a mere
fragment, and Madison was applied to and completed
it from his minutes. From General B. Bloomfield,
executor of the estate of David Brearley, a
delegate in the convention from New Jersey, Adams
obtained a few additional papers, and from Charles
Pinckney a copy of what purported to be the plan
of a constitution submitted by him to the convention.
All of these papers, with some others, appeared
in the edition of 1819, which was a singularly
accurate publication, as comparison by the present
editor of the printed page with the original papers
has shown.

The Pinckney plan, as it appeared in this edition
of the journal, was incorporated by Madison into
his record, as he had not secured a copy of it when
the convention was sitting. But the draft furnished
to Secretary Adams in 1818, and the plan
presented by Pinckney to the convention in 1787

were not identical, as Madison conclusively proved
in his note to his journal, in his letter to Jared
Sparks of November 25, 1831, and in several other
letters, in all of which he showed that the draft did
not agree in several important respects with Pinckney's
own votes and motions in the convention, and
that there were important discrepancies between it
and Pinckney's Observations on the Plan of Government,
a pamphlet printed shortly after the convention
adjourned.[6]

It is, indeed, inconceivable that the convention
should have incorporated into the constitution so
many of the provisions of the Pinckney draft, and
that at the same time so little reference should have
been made to it in the course of the debates; and it
is equally extraordinary that the contemporaries of
Pinckney did not accord to him the chief paternity
of the Constitution, which honor would have belonged
to him if the draft he sent to Mr. Adams in
1818 had been the one he actually offered the convention
in the first week of its session. The editor
has made a careful examination of the original manuscripts
in the case. They consist (1) of Mr. Pinckney's
letter to Mr. Adams of December 12, 1818,
written from Wingaw, S. C., while Pinckney was
temporarily absent from Charleston, acknowledging
Mr. Adams's request for the draft, (2) his letter of
December 30, written from Charleston, transmitting
the draft, and (3) the draft. The penmanship of all
three papers is contemporaneous, and the letter of

December 30 and the draft were written with the
same pen and ink. This may possibly admit of a
difference of opinion, because the draft is in a somewhat
larger chirography than the letter, having been,
as befitted its importance, written more carefully.
But the letter and the draft are written upon the
same paper, and this paper was not made when the
convention sat in 1787. There are several sheets of
the draft and one of the letter, and all bear the same
water-mark—"Russell & Co. 1797." The draft cannot,
therefore, claim to be the original Pinckney
plan, and was palpably made for the occasion, from
Mr. Pinckney's original notes doubtless, aided and
modified by a copy of the Constitution itself. Thirty
years had elapsed since the close of the Constitutional
Convention when the draft was compiled, and
its incorrectness is not a circumstance to occasion
great wonder.[7]

Correspondence on the subject of the convention,
written while it was in session, was not extensive,
but some unpublished letters throwing light upon
contemporaneous opinion have been found and are
quoted in the notes.

The editor desires to record his obligation for
assistance in preparing these volumes to his friend,
Montgomery Blair, Esq., of Silver Spring, Md.