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Event Recap

James Madison is known as the 鈥渇ather of the American Constitution鈥� for his crucial role in drafting that document and its Bill of Rights. It is no surprise then that historians have traditionally considered his personal notes from the constitutional convention to be the most reliable source of information we have about the convention鈥檚 debates. But as Mary Sarah Bilder argued in a lively presentation on October 29, the notes produced by 鈥淢adison鈥檚 Hand鈥� (the title of her forthcoming book on the subject) are much less spontaneous鈥攁nd perhaps more interesting鈥攖han previously thought.

Professor Bilder, a legal historian at the Boston College Law School, said that she was inspired to write a book about Madison鈥檚 notes when she realized the discrepancy between the prevailing view of Madison鈥檚 notes鈥攁s minutes of the convention鈥攁nd the reality that these notes were neither complete nor contemporaneous. To begin with, Bilder noted, the writing technology available to Madison prevented him from providing a transcript of the debates. Quill pens required constant re-inking, and modern shorthand script had not yet been developed; he simply could not have kept pace with the flow of conversation (let alone transcribe his own comments while speaking them).

Furthermore, Madison edited鈥攁nd in some cases entirely rewrote鈥攖he notes he did take multiple times throughout his lifetime. He destroyed his 鈥渙riginal,鈥� contemporaneous, notes from the convention when re-writing them after the convention, and in subsequent iterations he added some material from the quasi-official record and removed other material that he thought might be offensive to those at the convention. Though Madison always insisted that his notes were his personal reflections, not an official transcript, historians would mistakenly come to treat them as such.