Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 1.djvu/23

Virginia Resolutions on May 29. On account of his brother’s illness, he left Philadelphia on June 1, and remained away during June and July, but in August he returned to the Convention and to his note-taking with all the enthusiasm of the beginner. The records became more and more brief as time passed, but they are valuable because they are, for the latter part of the Convention’s work, almost the only material we have besides the Journal and Madison’s Debates.

Pierce

The notes of William Pierce of Georgia, which were first printed in the Savannah Georgian in 1828,^[1] add somewhat to our information of the proceedings of the first few days of the sessions. The character sketches of his fellow-members in Convention, which accompany these notes,^[2] are not only interesting, but are also helpful in portraying the delegates as they appeared to a contemporary.

Paterson

The notes of William Paterson, of New Jersey,^[3] were evidently taken solely for his own use. While they are of little help in studying the general proceedings of the Convention, they are of great assistance in following Paterson’s own line of reasoning, and in particular in studying the development of the resolutions Paterson presented on June 15, commonly called the New Jersey Plan. This is here given in its various stages of construction.^[4]

Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton’s notes were found among the Hamilton Papers in the Library of Congress.^[5] They are little more than brief memoranda and, like those of Paterson, are of importance not so much in determining what others thought or said as in tracing the development of the writer’s own reasoning.

1. Reprinted from the original MSS. in the American Historical Review, January 1898, III, 310–334.
2. Appendix A, CXIX.
3. American Historical Review, January, 1904, IX, 310–340.
4. Appendix E.
5. Edited by Worthington C. Ford and first printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for June, 1904. Carefully revised for reprinting in the American Historical Review for October, 1904, X, 97–109.