Customer Reviews

Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this period of seeming upheaval in the American government, constitutional questions are thick on the ground and the least-used clause in that document is again being exercised. We'd do well to examine what actually happened so many years ago. Familiarity with the Constitution itself is not enough--indeed, it's never enough. To borrow a page from "Star Trek," we should know the thoughts of those 55 men as well if we are to truly understand what they intended for the United States.

"Notes on Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787" is the perfect source for beginning that exploration. If you want the information and the arguments advanced for each section of the Constitution, here they are. This volume is the actual journal of the Constitutional Convention, kept by James Madison (later the 4th President under that document). Preserved after the convention approved their work, it was later published. It still exists as an excellent source of political thought from the age of the Enlightenment; though the Declaration of Independence is more of a proof of those philosophies (based on the contract theory of David Hume), the Constitution was also influenced by these ideas, and represents a distillation of 18th-Century political theory.

It's not an easy read; it is, after all, a product of its time, written in a dense style, with antique language and grammar (to 20th century minds), by one of the best educated men in the Colonies. But even a leaping study of the highlights, the famous debates over the plans for how to establish the Congress, etc., repay the reader. Just an examination of the opening days shows that the representatives came prepared to essentially flout their instructions, throw out instead of revise the defective Articles of Confederation, and start afresh. Several members came prepared with draft proposals, and none appeared overly embarrassed to offer them. Seeing how many differences there are between the first drafts and the final Constitution is quite interesting.

Highly recommended, and all encourgement to the person who chooses this book.

January 27, 1999

In a biography on Madison I read that every day of his life after the Consitutional Convention he was asked to reveal the notes he had taken of the debates, and not until well after he and every one else present at the convention died, in 1840, did Madison allow these notes to become public. Others had surrepticiuosly taken notes of the procedings, but none were substantial. Everyone knew Madison's notes would reveal the truth about what happened during the Constitutional debates.

I actually didn't have that hard a time reading the text, as I was expecting the worst. Admittedly, I only read the first two hundred pages and scattered sections. The text is over 600 pages long, though it is nicely broken up by days during the four month long marathon.

The text of the debates does have its entertaining moments. It was fascinating to hear the leading men of the day discuss the plusses and minuses of various rules for structuring their nation to be.

My major criticism of this particular edition is that there is no background information given on each of the "combatants" at the debates or explanatory footnotes within the text. The more I read on the founding of the United States, the more I realize that there were many politicians besides Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, etc. These lesser-known men's lives are very relevent and interesting, too, and I felt that I would have gotten more out of the reading if I had known more about the characters and the local background of the issues at that time. I do plan on returning to the Notes of the Debates in the future.

Othewise, the text can only be rated at 5 stars.

add (2/12/06): I would highly suggest reading "Decision in Philadelphia" by Collier and Collier if you are unfamiliar with the participants and issues in the 1787 Consitutional Convention. It is an excellent book and an extremely easy read.

He told us exactly what happened. No editorializing. No Political correctness. Lots of detail. Pure Honesty.

We get to see what the Constitution was meant to be from the point of view of the founders themselves. Before you read any popular media work on the Consitiution, Read this. You'll need to think a little, but well worth it.

--George Stancliffe

This is not only fascinating reading, but is a critical primary source for understanding our Constitution. This is Madison's first hand account of the secret proceedings of the Constitutional Convention. You'll see how the debate unfolds and understand more fully the difficulty of creating a governing document for our nation.

Most importantly you'll see the difficulty in divining the original intent of our founders. There were many intents and many "founders" of this important document. It is not surprising that many involved in the creation of our constitution could afterwards disagree on the substance of what different articles "meant." That is why the argument over original intent can never be resolved, and why, for better or worse, the Constitution remains open to interpretation.

~Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison~ is an insightful chronicle of the proceedings of the Philadelphia Convention. There is no denying the immense historical value of Madison's notes from the Convention to draft the Constitution. It's an excellent study tool to understand the framing of the United States Constitution, and follow the debates and see how the document was shaped and who influenced it. As a matter of fact, Madison offered a salient defense of the compact nature of the Union, as opposed to the nationalist theory of Joseph Story and Daniel Webster. Among the other note-takers at the Convention (e.g. Robert Yates), James Madison offered the most thorough exposition of the proceedings. He apparently nearly wore his hand ragged transcribing all of this stuff in such detail, but he had an intuitive sense that they were really making history in 1787. The problem I have with modern constitutional historiography is that it does accurately portray the purpose of the Convention or its power and authority. As a result, the ambiguous special pleadings for ratification known as the Federalist Papers are overvalued while the subsequent state ratifying conventions are ignored and marginalized. The fact that the people of the several states never ratified Hamilton's opinions, and the fact that Hamilton had offered a plan for complete consolidation at Philadelphia only to leave that Convention early also discounts the value of his special pleading for adoption of the Constitution as the be-all and end-all summation of original intent. In Federalist #40, Madison accurately stated that the Philadelphia Convention had no authority but to draft a Constitution and its powers were "merely advisory and recommendatory." Madison also disclaimed the value of his notes and contended that we should look for original intent not in the deliberations and proceedings of the convention to draft the Constitution, but in the text itself and in the proceedings of the state ratifying conventions. Madison observed, "...the legitimate meaning of the Instrument must be derived from the text itself; or if a key is to be sought elsewhere, it must be not in the opinions or intentions of the Body which planned & proposed the Constitution, but in the sense attached to it by the people in their respective State Conventions where it received all the authority which it possesses." In point of emphasis, "all the authority which it possesses." John Taylor in the Virginia House of Delegates debates expressed a similar sentiment, noting that the proceedings of the state ratification debates "ought to be looked upon as a contemporaneous exposition... constitution." In other words, Madison's and Yate's notes are helpful, but serious students of the Constitution would gain insight on original intentions by studying the proceedings of the various state ratifying conventions as well. Thankfully, the Wisconsin Historical Society has produced the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.

Perhaps no work, outside of the Federalist Papers, is more crucial to understanding the US Constitution. Madison's Notes, drawn from those hot days at the Constitutional Convention show the building of our federalist system. From what was included, to what was rejected, to what was never proposed, Madison reveals so much.

This is a most remarkable book and I recommend it highly. It is 700+ pages of densely packed type, will take a long to read, is sometimes hard to follow, and is something I enjoyed reading immensely.

Regardless of your political persuasion, you must admit that the US Constitution is an amazing document that charted a new course for Democracy for the entire world in the centuries that followed. Perhaps you have wondered how it was constructed. You have read the Federalist Papers (for which, see), and you may have even read the Anti-Federalist Papers (for which, see). Yet, these are all simply newspaper editorials advocating for or against the finished product when the elections for it were imminent. This book, however, is a day by day, blow by blow, argument by argument record of how each and every word in the Constitution came to be.

I was unaware that such an account of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in Philadelphia even existed. Indeed, it was first published only in 1966 by the Ohio University Press. The current volume is a reprint from 1987 by Norton as part of the Bicentennial of the Constitution.

Here, roughly, is a synopsis:
**The original Virginia Plan (VP) presented on May 28 (p. 30). I have often read the VP was the original blueprint of the Constitution, yet it seems to be much, much less. It was merely an agenda of items to be considered. The structure of items the delegates heaped upon it made the final product bear little, if any, resemblance to original VP.
**After much rancorous debate, a rough outline was finally constructed on July 26. The outline is listed on p. 379-385. At this point, it was referred to a `detail' committee that fleshed out the minutiae. No account is given of this.
**On Aug. 6 (p. 385-396), the first rough draft of the Constitution was presented. At this point, the delegates began hashing out the specific wording and details.
**On Sept. 10, the final details were agreed upon, and the final draft was prepared and presented on Sept. 12 (p. 616-626).
**On Sept. 17, the final draft was signed.

The course of the debates was very interesting.
**Madison is often referred to as the father of the Constitution. Yes, he was the Secretary and was keeper of the notes and texts. Yet, most of the ideas he presented were voted down.
**Many items were agreed to by unanimous consent.
**Some items were the subject of repeated, acrimonious disagreement. Indeed, I would be willing to bet that some delegates grew tired of the same people making the same arguments over and over again, and would roll their eyes every time this happened.

These are some of the more common subjects of disagreements:
**how to count, tax, handle slaves
**anything that involved taxes (direct taxation, imports, exports, etc.)
**how long the terms of office of the various branches would be
**How the president should be elected, his powers, and eligibility of reelection
**Ditto for the Senate
**Vetoes
**Who should be allowed to vote for what and how the elections should be held
**North vs. south, rich vs. poor, east vs. western, small vs. big states

Even the last day was interesting:
**The final draft was ready to be signed, yet some delegates were still trying to get their changes made
**Only 3 delegates did not sign: 2 from Virginia (!?!) and one from Mass.
**The notes of the convention were put into Madison's hands for safe keeping. The delegates were afraid the publication of records of these proceedings would serve as ammunition against the approval of the Constitution. It also explains why these notes were never published until quite recently.

While it is vital that we all understand occured behind closed doors at the Constitutional Convention (at least from one man's seat), what is more important is what the ratification conventions in the several States understood the document meant.

The true meaning of the Constitution rests upon the Constitution's plain meaning and understanding as communicated from those who advocated for it, the Federalists, to those who ratified it, to include any ratification documents submitted to Congresss.

It is the ratifiers that give the consent to be governed, not the framers. Those that advocated for the adoption, through the public words they wrote and speaches they gave, are what secured the ratification of the Constitution from the State ratification conventions.

This book is an excellent historical account of the decisive event that created our American form of government-the democratic republic.A complete understanding of the nature of the debate between the conservatives(George Washington,Alexander Hamilton,Thomas Jefferson,James Madison,Benjamin Franklin,John Jay)and the Libertarians(George Mason,William Randolph,Thomas Jefferson,Patrick Henry,Thomas Paine,and,for a time,John Hancock)is necessary in order to fully grasp what was at stake in 1787.A reader who purchases this book is also urged to purchase The Federalist Papers,written by Hamilton,Madison, and Jay.The great and inherently conflicting differences between Conservatism and Libertarianism , given that they are different political and economic philosophies, were put on full display at this convention in 1787.For instance,the conservatives favored a strong central government,strong executive branch,a strong,independent central bank to regulate currency and banking,and the establishment of federal excise taxes in order to fund the federal government.Hamilton later instituted an economic development and industrial-manufacturing growth policy based on high tariffs(import taxes).The Libertarians favored an extremely weak "federal"government, like that established by the Articles of Confederation,a weak executive branch,free banking,no national currency,and no federal government power to tax.This last issue was not decided until Washington ,acting as our first elected president, had to personally lead Federal troops to put down the Libertarian revolt, called the Whiskey rebellion, in Western Pennsylvania in 1793-1794.The revolt was based on the claim that the federal excise tax on whiskey,a tax that had been passed by the first Congress ,was an illegal seizure of private property.This revolt had a number of similarities to the earlier 1786-1787 revolt led by Daniel Shays that had revealed the major weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.Fortunately,the conservatives(Washington and Hamilton) won the day while the libertarians lost.

Seller was quick and the book was in good condition. I would buy from this seller again.