A careful search has failed to reveal the existence of the original manuscript, so that in the present work the editor has been compelled to reprint the Secret Proceedings from the first edition. As they are next in importance they have been placed immediately after Madison’s notes in the records of each day.
Madison
It was well known that James Madison had taken full and careful notes of the proceedings in the Convention, and he had often been urged to publish them. He had, however, decided that a posthumous publication was advisable.[1] Madison died in 1836. His manuscripts were purchased by Congress, and shortly afterwards, in 1840, under the editorship of H. D. Gilpin, The Papers of James Madison were published in three volumes.[2] More than half of this work was given over to his notes of the debates in the Federal Convention,[3] and at once all other records paled into insignificance.
- ↑ Appendix A, CCLXXV, CCLXXXIV, CCCXI, CCCXII, CCCXIV CCCXVI, CCCXXIV, CCCXXVI, CCCXL, CCCXLI, CCCLVIII, CCCLXVII.
- ↑ Washington: Langtree and O’Sullivan. Other issues of this edition with change of date were published in New York, Mobile, and Boston. (P. L. Ford, Bibliography of the Constitution.)
- ↑ The Debates entire and some of the other material from Gilpin were published in a revised form as volume V of Elliot’s Debates in 1845. Albert, Scott and Company (Chicago, 1893) reprinted, both in a two-volume and a one-volume edition, the Gilpin text of the Debates, but inexcusably entitled the work The Journal of the Federal Convention. In 1900 the Bureau of Rolls and Library of the Department of State reprinted Madison’s Debates with great care as volume III of the Documentary History of the Constitution, and in such a way as to show the corrections and changes Madison made in his manuscript. This appeared originally as an appendix to Bulletin no. 9 of the Bureau of Rolls and Library. For subsequent editions, see above, note 8. The Congressional edition of 1901 inserts (pp. 796a–796o) Madison’s introduction to his Debates, of which only a partial version had appeared on pp. 1–7 of the previous edition. The preparation of the material for this volume of the Documentary History was more difficult than for the Journal, and the work was not done as accurately nor as satisfactorily. The present editor has noticed a considerable number of mistakes in the reading of the manuscript—some of which are important—and, as is shown below (note 23), the person who did the work was frequently misled in the endeavor to indicate corrections in the manuscript. Gaillard Hunt includes the Debates in volumes III and IV of his edition of The Writings of James Madison (New York, Putnam’s, 1900), again unfortunately entitling them the “Journal”. Mr. Hunt states in the preface to volume III that the “original manuscript has been followed with rigid accuracy,” which is apparently true, but with one important limitation—the original manuscript was not copied, but the Gilpin text was corrected from the manuscript; accordingly a large number of errors (minor ones, in general) to be found in Gilpin will be found in the Hunt text also. Hunt’s text is not quite as accurate as that of the Documentary History.
