PREFACE
The available sources of our information for studying the work of the convention that framed the present Constitution of the United States are scattered through various printed volumes; and some material has never been published. The present work was undertaken with the primary purpose of gathering all available records into a single work of two or three volumes, but it was also intended that these records should be in trustworthy form. The latter aspect has subsequently developed into the more important feature of this edition.
It has been found that most printed texts of the more important records cannot be accepted implicitly because of the liberties that have been taken with the manuscripts in preparing them for publication. Furthermore, in the case of the most important record of all, Madison’s Debates, it is easily proved that, over thirty years after the Convention, the author revised the manuscript and made many changes upon insufficient data, which seriously impaired the value of his notes. This is also true of other records. It has accordingly become the first purpose of the editor in this work to present the records of the Federal Convention in the most trustworthy form possible. Mistakes and inaccuracies are unavoidable, but no effort has been spared to reduce these to a minimum.
The other purpose of this work, to gather all of the available records into a convenient and serviceable edition, has not, however, been neglected. From the editor’s own experience and from that of others in studying and teaching the subject of the formation of our Constitution, certain needs have presented themselves in quite definite form, and the attempt has been made to meet those needs in the present edition. The extent and variety of the material has made the task a difficult one to accomplish, and the results are by no means satisfactory. Other methods of arrangement have been tried,
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