>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:18 >> Roberta I. Shaffer: I think we'll go ahead and get started because under the conditions of commuting into this city this morning, it's really impossible to predict when people might arrive and what their voyage will be like. It's my pleasure to welcome you this morning to the 265th celebration of James Madison's birthday. My name is Roberta Shaffer and I have the pleasure and privilege of serving as the Law Librarian of Congress. This building that we are in is with James Madison Memorial Building. It is the only memorial to James Madison in Washington, and I'm going to argue that it is the most appropriate memorial possible to James Madison. And here are my reasons. First, even though Thomas Jefferson gets all the credit, I think James Madison was himself a huge fan of books, a bibliophile if I may say. He had a large collection at his estate in Montpelier. And when he died, he was very concerned about where his books would go. So in my view, that qualifies you as a lover of books and a bibliophile. It's also appropriate that a building for the Library of Congress be named for Madison because he served in numerous positions in government and of course had a huge influence on the very form of government that we have enjoyed for all these many years. The statue that is in Memorial Hall on the very first floor as you come into the building has-- depicts James Madison holding a book and it is an encyclopedia, a French encyclopedia, nonetheless, but an encyclopedia that covers all subject matters. So, he is memorialized in his Memorial Building with a block in his marble hand. But the last reason I think it's appropriate that James Madison have a building that's part of the Library of Congress footprint named for him is because I think he really understood the idea of America's library. So anybody who has ever worked at the Library of Congress knows two quotes by heart. In fact, I think you have to recite them after one week of work. And these are two quotes by Thomas Jefferson, the first, "I cannot live without books." And most of us who work here share that very philosophy and passion. And the second is that there is no discipline or book for which Congress might not have a need to refer. And that's a big paraphrase, but it's something along those lines that Congress needs universal knowledge. But there is a quote by Madison that I think talks in a little bit different way about the need for America's library or a national library. And I'm probably going to paraphrase it, and I just wrote it down quickly. But I'm sure I don't have it by heart. But it goes along the lines of "Knowledge shall forever govern ignorance, and people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power of knowledge." And this quote or something very close to it is enshrined at the very entrance to our building, on the outside of the building. And to me, that speaks to giving the people a library and not just Congress. So, that is my argument for why it is so appropriate for James Madison to have this building named for him and why we're so delighted today that you are joining us to celebrate what would have been his 265th birthday. And who knows if he was a man of our times with all of the biotechnology, he might very well be celebrating here with us his 265th birthday. I am going to just very, very briefly tell you about our process for today. I have no idea what that noise is, but let's just forget it. OK. We're going to have a little bit smaller panel than we initially anticipated. Michael Signer, we advised him not to try to drive this morning from Charlottesville fearing that he would hit immense traffic jams when he hit the beltway. So, he is not joining us but please do keep a lookout. We will reschedule his talk for sometime later in the year. He is the author of a new book "Becoming Madison, The Extraordinary Origin of the Least Likely Founding Father". And he's also the mayor of Charlottesville. We do however have the distinct pleasure of David Stewart to my extreme left. And David's recent book is "Madison's Gift, Five Partnerships that Built America". And he will talk to us about this sort of networking skills of Madison, I believe. David is the president of the Washington Independent Review of Books, a phenomenal online book review. And I urge you to consult it if you haven't and don't frequently, I do. And he is also a scholar, an author on a number of other presidents-- other books on Madison, but also presidential issues. I think there's a book on the Lincoln presidency. And then, to my closer left is Mary Sarah Bilder, a professor of law and distinguished scholar at Boston College in Boston, Massachusetts. And Mary is particularly a poster child for the Library of Congress because not only has she done work on a research on Madison here within our extraordinary collections which Jim Hutson, the chief of the Manuscript Division will talk to you about briefly in a moment. But Mary also used our conservation technologies to uncover some very interesting forensics about Madison. And we're hoping she'll talk to us about that. Mary is a scholar in her own right. But I understand that she comes from a long line of legal scholars. So without further ado, I'm just going to say one or two more things and then ask Jim Hutson to come up to the podium and talk to us about the libraries which collections with-- of Madison and the 23 other presidential collections perhaps he'll just mention briefly. But we're going to have our program this morning. And then this afternoon, you are all invited to a cake reception in Madison Hall. You can go to Madison Hall and have cake and see the wonderful Madison inscriptions that are down there. So, that's just the very first floor closest to the Independence Avenue entrance. And we hope you'll come and have cake. In light of the circumstances of metro today, I would venture to say that there'll be more cake for everybody. And the happy news is that David, Mary and Jim actually have more time. And I think knowing their incredible scholarship, they will use that time very productively for our benefit. If you would be so kind as to complete the evaluation form that was in your program, this will help us with other programs. And I will ask you-- Oh yes, in the unlikely event of a water emergency or other emergency, library staff will safely escort you out of the building. But for now, if you will please make sure that any of the carry-ons you brought for this journey this morning are safely tucked either in front or under your own seat, that your cellphones are not in airplane mode, but turned off, and that your minds are in their open and upright position. So without further ado, I bring to the podium my very esteemed and honored colleague, Jim Hutson, chief of the Manuscript Division. >> James Hutson: Thank you. ^M00:09:09 [ Applause ] ^M00:09:13 Thanks, Roberta. I wonder if Madison still thinks that knowledge will govern ignorance. ^M00:09:19 [ Laughter ] ^M00:09:23 As you know, he died in a-- I'll talk just a little bit about our-- the Madison collection we have here. We also have incidentally a-- in addition to Madison Hall, have a Montpelier or which we call a Montpelier Room down the hall here which is a very nice venue for symposia. It was a dining hall at one point. Have they ceased that now? Yeah. But it holds about 300 people. It has a wonderful view of-- towards the airport. And-- So, that's also a small gesture on Madison's behalf. ^M00:10:05 He died in 1836 of course, and the family was always needy. John Payne plays into this immediate-- that's the stepson who virtually bankrupted Madison I suppose with his spending habits. But Dolley sold some of the collection to Congress at 1837 and 1848. The 1837 sale, I'm going to say very little more about that, but that did contain Madison's notes, which we now have-- is one of our great treasures. It's-- We have a group of things here called top treasures among other, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence. All of which are very carefully preserved in a-- deep in the bowels of the library, in a safe-- they're-- we hope they're secure. But the-- No, I mean at one point, we were thinking of moving them to Fort Knox actually, and did not do that. That was after 9/11. But they're-- So, they're still here, Professor Bilder saw those. We do let people look at them if they can convince us that they have a really need. Generally-- That's true. Most kind of valuable manuscripts are on the library if for instance in the Manuscript Division, if you walk in there and wanted to see Madison's papers, we would ask you or anybody else is that we film-- you'd have to use a microfilm, nobody likes that. And I get a constant stream of people coming over and say, well, you know, I can't-- you know, I can't use this, couldn't I see the original. But-- And generally, we'll let people-- if people are doing handwriting analysis or looking at inks and so forth, we'll let them look at that. And we will let somebody-- I mean, she's not the first person who's ever seen this. And so, we will let people see some of these treasures. But they have other-- I mean to put them on an exhibit, you have to-- there has to be an armed guard and that kind of thing. So-- But in any case, the 1837 sale did contain the notes. And I'll leave that alone and not talk about the nature of the notes, which has been a kind of a subject of [inaudible], isn't he the first one who accused Madison for forging the note so to speak? ^M00:12:46 [ Inaudible Remark ] ^M00:12:47 Hamilton [inaudible], OK. But there's a long-- there's a history of this. Yeah. Yeah. OK. So, Congress got some papers at 1837 and 1848 and treated these-- and generally, the 19th century didn't seem not to have much of an appreciation, at least custodians were, the sanctity of what we might call, you know, important manuscripts. Congress lent some of the stuff out to William Cabell Rives, a biographer, I guess just sort of handed them over. I mean, Rives was Madison's first biographer or first-- that's not-- maybe not true, but he was well-connected. So, he got substantial number of papers. Eventually, they were returned by a relative and they're called-- we call those the Rives's-- that's the Rives's section of the Madison Papers. But I-- Apparently, Rives did not turn-- Rives's representatives did not return everything, something. So, we have those papers leaving and some not returning. And then John Todd Payne of course who was always broke, and Madison-- he almost bankrupted Madison, didn't he, supporting the guy. Well, he sold some of them off. Really, he sold some of them off to a man named McGuire, a lot of them off actually, something about 2900 of them. McGuire kept them, at his death, I believe in 1892, they were auctioned, some of them, most of them and bought by Walter Benjamin, a important manuscript collector at that point. He sold them to the Chicago Historical Society, and the library bought them back from the Chicago Historical Society. In 1905-- So we got those back. That's-- That-- It was after, however, in 19-- that the State Department in the 19th century was the keeper of government manuscripts, not the Library of Congress. The library didn't have room. You've seen-- Some of you may have seen some pictures of the library just overwhelmed by paper. But the State Department was the-- that was the National Archives until 1903 when the government-- I don't know, John Cole I think is out. Was a law passed or was it just an executive order ordering the State Department to return whatever archives it had over to the Library of Congress. >> Executive-- >> James Hutson: I think it was an executive order. So, that-- that's how we got-- that's how the library really got the-- most of our great manuscript-- Washington, Jefferson and others. The State Department turned-- Because it didn't have any room and we just moved into a large empty building in 1897, the Jefferson Building. So, that really was the basis of the Manuscript Division and the source of our-- some of our greatest collections. So in 1905, the State Department turned over such Madison Papers out of its hand, and that was about 8600 items. We did, as I say, buy back those things and most of them went to McGuire. That was about 2,900. And over the years, we've acquired more by gifts and purchases. The present time that, we-- In 1961, there was a program, this was, you know, at the heart of the Cold War. The library was directed by Congress to microfilm all of the presidential papers and distribute those microfilms around the country. So if we were wiped out here, there would be microfilm collections available. And we microfilmed Madison Papers of course. Those microfilm collections have now all been digit-- all of them have been digitized, we just actually finished. Some of the 20th century collections are huge as you can imagine. We stopped getting presidential collections when the presidential libraries-- we don't compete with them. So, Calvin Coolidge is the last person we have. So, you now-- since they have been digitized from the microfilm and then a new edition is coming that will correct some of the problems of the microfilm. So to finish, if you-- the papers are now available to the public and-- not however in transcriptions. If you want those, there's this massive project at the University of Virginia publishing the Madison Papers, transcribed in good transcriptions. Those can-- Those are also on film now, the so-called Rotunda Project. And there's, as most-- in many institutes too, you have to have a-- I mean, you can't-- I don't think you could probably purchase the right to see them at your home computer. But most large libraries would have those-- would have that edition as well online. So, you could see you would not be troubled with trying to puzzle out what Madison wrote. Although, he had a good had, a small one. So, that's what I can tell about our collection, we're very proud of it. And, you know, we have 23 presidential collections here stopping with Coolidge. We don't have the Adams family, that's in Massachusetts. We have film-- microfilms of those papers in the division. And we don't have Millard Fillmore and some other luminaries of the late 19th century. But it's the place to go if you want. Well, not now since everything is on film and online, you don't need to come here. And that's a problem for us because we live off statistics and the reading all over the library. So, that's good news, bad news thing. And so I don't know if we should prevent, what should we do, Roberta? ^M00:19:07 [ Inaudible Remark ] ^M00:19:09 That is correct. So with that, I'll turn it back over to the speakers then. ^M00:19:15 [ Applause ] ^M00:19:18 [ Inaudible Remark ] ^M00:19:21 >> Mary Sarah Bilder: Let me put this up here. I'm delighted to have been invited to speak on this wonderful panel in honor of James Madison's birthday. I woke up this morning and my dear friend, Judge Hiller Zobel, had e-mailed me, Happy Madison Birthday to you. So, somewhere in the world, other people know about it. I'm very appreciative to the library for having invited me and to Roberta Shaffer for that wonderful introduction and to [inaudible] for unbelievable assistance in trying circumstances. The inability to get here reminds me a little bit of the convention itself. ^M00:20:02 Madison arrived on time and then was aggravated by everybody else's delay. So, he would, more than other people, probably appreciate the difficulties of arriving. I wish I'd thought for myself that 2016 was Madison's 265th birthday. Because I realize now, it would have been better for my book to have come out this year instead of last fall. 2015 was a odd book to publish a book about Madison and the convention. It was the 228th anniversary of the constitution. And luckily, I published with a university press that doesn't care about publicity at all. And so-- Because it was a little hard to be like, hey, it's the 228th anniversary. But I came to view this non-anniversary as peculiarly appropriate for a book that argues that Madison's notes as taken in the summer of 1787 were not written for us. In essence, they were not written for posterity because Madison, like the other members of the Philadelphia Convention, did not know they were going to write the Constitution. And they would have been surprised, I think, to know that, you know, you could buy their document on playing cards, right? I mean, they would just be astounded, like really, playing cards? Or this is my favorite tchotchke now when I give talks. I was down at Montpellier, and sometimes, I travel with my James Madison bubblehead, but TSA really dislikes it. It looks like something strange, heavy material and a wire in my suitcase. So, I've stopped traveling with that. It slows me down. But this is wonderful. You can get this at Montpellier when you go there. It's a magic towel. You know, it becomes a big towel. The joke is, it reconstitutes itself. So, you can go find one of-- you can find one of those. My book, "Madison's Hand, Revising the Constitutional Convention", is a biography of the note. And the book argues that the notes do not date in their entirety to the summer of 1787, but were revised by Madison as he changed his understanding about the convention, the constitution and his own role. And it explores the manuscript as a text and also has a historical object, basically, an artifact. And I'm going to be back at the beginning of May to give a lecture in the books and beyond series. And there, I'm going to focus specifically on the research, particularly a lot of the forensic research that underpins the book. And so, today, I thought I would just talk generally about Madison and the Constitutional Convention. And I'm going talk about Madison and the convention and some of the themes of my book through four aspects of Madison, Madison the notetaker, Madison the politician, Madison the drafter and Madison the reviser. And David and I, while being sad that Michael was not joining us, are secretly happy because there's nothing happier than speakers being told they have slightly more time to speak than they originally thought. So, we're-- I think we're going to make good use of that. But we did realize that I had written my talk to talk on the convention, and Michael was going to handle who Madison was, and we're missing that. So, I'm going take the liberty of reading four sentences from my book to set Madison up. So, this all you need to know about Madison for anything. This is actually all I talk about Madison's early life in my book. "Born on March 16th, 1751," hence the day we're celebrating today, "Madison was the eldest in a large family. At 20, he graduated from the College of New Jersey, now Princeton, and he stayed on an extra year for additional studies." He was of course from Virginia, and had traveled north to school. "And afterwards, he focused on politics. At 25 years of age, he was elected to the Virginia Legislature, three years later, to the Confederation Congress. In 1783, Madison was considering law as a possible profession. And he eventually decides not to be a lawyer," and Madison's notes that he's taken are also at the library. And in that sense, I think, David and I probably love that aspect of Madison, trained a little bit in law but no longer practicing. OK. That's all we need to know to set up what I'm going to talk about Madison. So, I' m going to talk first about Madison, the notetaker. In 1815, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams about Madison's note of the Constitutional Convention. And they were then not yet published. And Jefferson remarked, "The whole of every thing said and done was taken down with a labor and exactness beyond comprehension." And Jefferson wrote that, "It was the ablest work of this kind ever yet executed." And Adams says, I will unlikely not live to see it. And that was true, both he and Jefferson of course died on July 4th. Ten years-- 11 years later in 1826. And to Jefferson, Madison seemed the consummate, notetaker. But the reality is somewhat different. Madison's most significant and lasting contribution to the convention is perhaps his notes. And this record of the convention usually referred to as Madison's notes are the most complete and detailed description of the Constitutional Convention. An official record of the convention was compiled by Secretary William Jackson, the National Archives holds that record, and notes also survived from 10 other delegates. But Madison's notes are the only ones that cover every day of the convention, beginning on May 14th and ending on September 17th 1787. And no other notes are as long. The manuscripts comprise of 136 and a half sheets of paper, folded in half, and he wrote on big sheets, and they fold it in half, with four pages of writing. He wrote on the front, opened it, wrote on the second and third page, reversed it, wrote on the back. So, it's over 500 pages of manuscript. And no other notes depict the convention as Madison's notes do, as a political drama with compelling characters, lengthy discourses on political theories, crushing disappointments and seeming miraculous successes. And the notes are, as the library catalogues them, properly considered a top treasure of the American people. But what kind of notetaker was he? The notes have often been relied on as if they'd been taken by a court reporter or stenographer for the Congressional record. But the original notes were actually an example of a genre we might call a legislative diary. In the 18th century, legislative proceedings were closed, much like the deliberations of judges and justices remain today. And we'll forgive anybody, who at 11 o'clock needs to look at their phone, to find out who the next Supreme Court justice nominee is going to be. What the public had a right to was the final product, the legislation and the formal general procedural motions. Indeed, although the House of Representatives would open its doors in 1789, the Senate actually remained closed to the public until 1795. And without published accounts of debates, legislators relied on private diaries. So, Madison's notes at the convention were taken for himself and likely Thomas Jefferson. Madison had taken similar notes when he had served in the Confederation Congress and Madison had shared these with Jefferson. Jefferson was in Paris since 1784, he will miss the convention entirely. At the convention, Madison's notes practiced political ideas, his strategies and the positions of allies and opponents. And the original notes reflected what he cared about and they omitted what he did not find interesting. As past scholars, including Jim Hutson, have estimated Madison's notes contain only about 10% of what was likely said at the convention. But that 10% related almost entirely to Madison. Madison's notes were not a contemporaneous complete account. Most likely twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays when he did his other correspondence, he wrote up rough notes that he had taken during the proceedings. His rough notes were likely filled with abbreviations he did not know shorthand. And the notes began as a fair copy of these no longer extant rough notes. Thus in the notes, the longest speeches appear usually in Saturday's notes. Not necessarily because they were the most important, but because a Sundays without meetings gave Madison time to decipher his rough notes. And when Madison wrote about events that had happened on Monday or Thursday, he knew what the convention had gone on to decide in the succeeding days. These days therefore were always written with hindsight. And so, from the first day, Madison was revising his understanding. Now, I love talking about the notes with law students because they know from firsthand experience that one cannot take notes while one is speaking. In law schools, we still maintain, particularly in the first year, the formal tradition of spontaneously calling on people, Ms. Bilder, tell us about the case. And you now, at that moment, your mind is blank. You cannot sit and try and answer the question and write notes. When they're called on in class, they either leave their notes blank or what they often do is they compose that section later, reflecting what they realized afterwards was the right answer. ^M00:30:05 And most of my students tell me that in their notes, if they write them, they're filled with brilliance of what they must have said in class. Madison's own speeches in the notes are thus troubling in terms of reliability. Madison wrote what he wished he'd said. Indeed, his famous June 19th speech supporting the national Virginia Plan was recorded by a number of other notetakers. And in their notes, it's rather meandering. But in Madison note-- Madison's notes, it's a well-organized six-page disquisition on political theory. Moreover, in the years immediately after the convention, Madison likely replaced several of the sheets containing his speeches. His motivation is unknowable, but it may have been to clarify and expand arguments that he made or to delete statements that he might have been misunderstood in terms of later controversies. So now, let me, second talk about Madison, the politician. In famous correspondence, several years after the convention with Jefferson, Madison Riley referred to the naked eye of the ordinary politician. We don't always think of Madison as a politician. Now, I think, David's book does a wonderful job of emphasizing this aspect. And the original notes reflected Madison's political aspirations. In them, he emerges as a proactive political strategist. The original notes from June to July 1787 are fixated on Madison's almost obsessive desire to create a powerful national government with proportional representation in both houses. More than anything, he wanted the states to lose their representation in Congress. Madison came to the convention desiring what he called the due supremacy of the national authority leaving the states, or as he put it, local authorities, as far as they can be subordinately useful. OK. He wanted to end equality of suffrage of the states. He wanted the national government to have the power in cases requiring uniformity. He wanted the national government to even have a negative, what we might now call a veto, over state laws. He wanted the constitution to be supreme to state constitutions. As he put it, he planned to strike so deeply at the old confederation. Madison opposed completely and thoroughly the federal compromised that Congress now embodies in which the house represents population in the Senate-- the state. At first, Madison thought he would succeed on June 13th. The convention prepared a committee of the whole report in which many of Madison's hopes were realized. And in the notes, Madison recorded this report on its own sheet. His handwriting is beautiful. It's carefully spaced. He left the last page blank. In the many revisions of the manuscript, he never wrote on this blank page. Other places, he had to even fill in little scrunchie things, he left that last page blank. Why? June 13th ended a critical phase of the convention and never again would Madison's vision and that of the majority aligned so closely. Now, those familiar with the traditional narrative know what happened. The small states successfully fought back. They worried about future political dominance and the other two large states, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Madison rejected repeated suggestions that he compromise and permit one branch of Congress to reflect the equal suffrage of the states. In the notes, he even recorded John Dickinson warning him privately, "You see the consequences of pushing things too far." Madison wrote down the advice, and then ignored it completely. He dismissed it. It would be a fatal error not just for Madison, but for the country. Madison's commitment to ending state representation in Congress was so strong that he came up with a plan to persuade the three southern states to join with the three large states. He repeatedly hinted at a sectional division between northern and southern states over slavery. And Madison then proposed a bicameral Congress based on this division. One branch would represent free white inhabitants. The other would represent all people free and enslaved African-Americans. But enslaved African-Americans of course would not vote. Madison's plan thus gave voting power to states that legalized slavery. And Virginia, by this calculation, would have benefited the most, it held nearly 300,000 people, enslaved nearly half the enslaved population in the United States. Madison's idea was never formally adopted. But his insistence on a sectional division over slavery and his suggestion that the slave states needed to protect their interests in the national government instigated, I believe, the dynamic that led to five constitutional provisions protecting slavery in the constitution. And although after leaving the convention, Madison would blame South Carolina and Georgia for what has been seen now as an inevitable compromise over slavery. Madison was equally at fault. His willingness to embrace slavery in the constitution reflected his personal compromise over slavery. He believed it to be against the principles of the revolution, but he could not imagine a multiracial American nation. He freed no one at his death. Indeed, his will left the profits from the sale of the notes of the convention to the American Colonization Society, a group dedicated to sending freed African-Americans back to Africa specifically Liberia. Now, on July 14th, I think fortunately for us, Madison lost his quest to prevent the states from having equal representation in one branch. And Madison was mad. On Monday, he recorded failed efforts to resurrect proportional representation in both branches. He writes of an early morning meeting among the large states, nothing was accomplished. He complained, "The time was wasted in vague conversation." Although in future years, he actually became reconciled to American federalism. Initially, the loss was not at all palatable to him. He was so mad. He went on to do something he would later regret. A mid-disagreement over the executive on July 17th, a motion was made from Virginia for an executive on good behavior. That is an executive who would serve for life without term limits, only dismissible through impeachment. Madison and the Virginians joined three other states to vote in favor of it, lifetime tenure for the president. Whether or not you agree with that, it depends on whether or not you like the president. The vote was likely actually aimed at emphasizing the need for the executive to have free agency from the states, but the vote would haunt Madison after the convention. It looked like Madison had voted for a secret monarchical national government. And this sheet in the note is one he replaces and then repeatedly tries to explain by adding footnotes along the side and up the margins, it's the sheet that's most marked up in the actual note. So now, let me talk about Madison, the drafter. On July 18th, after this vote, Madison wrote Jefferson referring to the drudgery of taking his notes. On July 18th, Madison was just depressed beyond all anything. But ironically, it was his notes that would save him. In fact, if Madison had quit taking notes on July 17th, we would have only his account of his failures and he might have been a permanent outcast at the convention. But gradually, Madison emerged from defeat and failure into a new role. He became a constructive participant and was chosen for the most important committees. Initially, Madison was such an outcast because of his adamant stances for bicameral representation-- bicameral proportional representation that he wasn't even elected to the first drafting committee, Randolph was elected instead. And after the drafting committee came back, each member was given a printed draft. And unlike everyone else at the convention, Madison copied in hand the first draft over into his notes. This process of copying gave him an intimate familiarity with the structure, language and substance. He noticed every word. He even noticed that the printer had made an error in writing Roman numeral sixth above both the sixth and seventh articles. So, he knew the draft as well as anyone who had served on the committee and he had no stake in it. Madison's notes, now rougher and more erratic, reflected Madison's fascination with the drafting process. He loved drafting. He had loved it in the Virginia Legislature. He loved words and the struggle to find the right word. And now in the convention, he turned out to have a talent for working out semantic compromises that sidestep theoretical disputes. He found himself proposing textual changes or he was often able to point to a later provision in the draft that resolved a seemingly intractable issue. ^M00:40:04 Madison was thoughtful on questions about which matters belonged on a constitution and which would be more appropriately left to ordinary legislative politics. And the notes reflected his growing conviction that the constitution should avoid unnecessary specifics. By the third week of August, Madison was rehabilitated in the eyes of the convention, no longer was he the obsessed proponent of bicameral proportional representation and a somewhat petulant loser. He had become a valued drafter. Now, the notes here reflect the complexity of the drafting process. The delegates sent controversial issues late in the convention to committees. In fact, there were six committees between August 18th and the end of the convention. The increase in committee work led the convention to change its adjournment time from 4 p.m. to 3 to allow for all the committee work. In the last three and a half weeks of the convention, Madison served on the three most important committees, a committee dealing with slavery, a committee handling everything that they had postponed like including everything about the president as well as the five-men final draft committee. And at this very moment, when Madison was completely involved in the production of the constitution, his original notes stopped. August 24th 1787 is the last page of the original notes. And although there are notes for the remaining weeks, I argue, in the book that they were composed two years later in the fall of 1789. This collapse of the notes is not surprising. Madison had little time given his committee work. In fact, if you chart out his committee work, there's literally almost no day on which he could have written his rough notes up. And moreover, he became sick, something that he was susceptible to under stress. And most importantly, he was too involved with drafting the constitution to bother with notes. And I think he could not keep distinct decisions made in committee with those in the convention. Thus, at the very moment, when the convention decided many of the issues we debate today, certain Congressional powers, impeachment, the vice president, the Electoral College, all the presidential powers and the grouping and relationships that converted the 23 final articles into our seven, the notes are the most unreliable. But this collapse of the notes reflected the contemporary inability of Madison and all the delegates to see the final constitution in the sense that we mistakenly imagine they could. The collapse of the notes means that Madison's great successes in the final weeks are invisible to us. So finally, let me talk about Madison the reviser. Two years would pass before Madison composed the final weeks of the notes. And by then, his rough notes were undoubtedly difficult to decipher. And moreover, in the intervening two years; the convention had begun to acquire a different set of meanings. In fact, as a member of the First Congress, Madison had repeatedly confronted the difficulties of interpreting the constitution. In addition, he'd champion the successful amendment of the constitution with 12 amendments, the ratified 10 we know today as the Bill of Rights. Significantly, Congress's decision to add rather than interweave those amendments made the constitution and the conventions work for the first time begin to be seen as sacred. In the fall of 1789, Jefferson was expected to return from Paris. And Madison decided to finish his notes. He secretly acquired the official journal of the convention from George Washington. And George Washington's diary that would have recorded this is missing. OK. Madison made a copy of the entire convention journal, Yale holds that copy. And then he used this journal copy to reconstruct the notes. He interspersed the official record of the proceedings with remnants of speeches from whatever remaining rough notes he had in his memory. And then, Madison went back over the first part of his notes and he began to add in more material from the journal to alter words and phrases here and there. He even substituted three sheets in early June to replace earlier unsatisfactory versions of his speeches. After Jefferson returned, Madison continued to revise his notes. Jefferson became obsessed that Hamilton and his allies were secretly devoted to a more monarchical government. And this devotion had begun at the convention, Jefferson believed. In the early 1790's, Madison replaced five sheets. Each containing a speech or vote capable of being read as Madison aligned with Hamilton. Now, you probably wish as he was given Hamilton is like making in a 900-dollar tickets, OK. I haven't seen it. Madison could not completely rewrite his speeches or pretend he had not spoken, too many members remained alive, many with notes, but you could ensure that sentences in his own handwriting would not be used as evidence against them. In comparing other versions of his speeches, I speculate that Madison carefully eliminated his most controversial conclusion and he also sprinkled in occasionally Jefferson's new buzzword, Republican Government. And during these years, Madison began to revise the notes to convert his diary into a record of debates. And along the way, he converted himself into a different Madison. In the original notes, he's caddy, grumpy and annoyed. But by altering a word here, a phrase there, he became the moderate dispassionate observer, thoughtful intellectual founder, future statue downstairs, right, person. He revised concepts, terms, narrowed general statements, added caveats through-- in cross references. At times, his revisions border on fussiness. And after retiring from the presidency in 1817, Madison continued to revise the notes. By this point, the Madison-- the manuscript was covered in revisions in various shades of ink, some even showing the shake and slant of his later years often with small slips attached. Although he repeatedly flirted with publication he refrained, he worried about other accounts. By 1829, Madison was finally the only living member left and he settled on posthumous publication. Only after his death were his notes finally published in 1840. I believe that Madison understood his revisions as repeated efforts to create a record. His record of what he saw is significant in the convention. And yet, every revision increased the distance between Madison's notes and the actual convention. As a narrative of the convention, Madison's notes emphasized his inability and the other delegates to perceive the extraordinary document that the constitution would become. And equally importantly, the original notes of the convention reflect Madison's inability to perceive the extraordinary person that he would become. I think the Madison of 1787 would be astounded that over two centuries later, we'd be celebrating his birthday. And so, happy birthday James Madison. Thank you very much. ^M00:48:00 [ Applause ] ^M00:48:07 >> David O. Stewart: That was a great talk. And we are all, those of us who tell this particular field, in debt to Mary for the amazing work she's done on this treasure of the American people. And as I told her before, there were a few times reading our book, I had thought to myself, wish I'd known that. But I also wanted to thank the library of course for having us here to honor Madison's birthday. I always feel that it takes me a bit out of the corner of weirdness that there are other people honoring his birthday. And also, to proclaim, maybe not for the first time, but first time for me that we have to recognize that they're-- we are on the edge, I hope, of a rebirth of interest in this era. And I would call the current age, the Age of Miranda. Many of you, you know, there's already been a reference to the musical Hamilton created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, he was at the White House with the cast on Monday leading programs for the high school kids. And I saw it last year, it's an amazing show, it's wonderful. And I did what any author would do. I immediately went home and mailed them a copy of my book. And he wrote a lovely response. He said, thank you so much. I know I didn't do justice to Madison, but I only had so much time. And I was particularly struck by this just yesterday when I ran into a neighbor of mine who has middle school-aged kids. I mentioned Miranda would've been at the White House and all. She said, "Oh, my kids and everybody at Tilden Middle School in Bethesda can't stop singing his songs. ^M00:50:04 And it has apparently swept the young people. They are all singing Hamilton songs. And apparently in her house, they-- she has three kids. They'll actually say, "OK, you sing Burr's part, you do Jefferson's, I'll be Hamilton," which is an amazing explosion of interest. I am very used to speaking to crowds of gray heads and the notion that there are young people who are getting interested in this is very exciting. OK. I became fascinated with two facts about James Madison that led me to want to write my book. The first is I really concluded that he was just so central to the nation's founding. He was, in my view, the second most important figure. Washington is above everybody. You can't touch Washington. You couldn't touch him then and you can't still. Without him, I'm not sure there is a country. But I do believe Madison is second. And let me just tick off the list of his achievements. He would-- He and Hamilton were central to the calling of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 at a time when the nation really was drifting arguably towards more anarchical or at least a fractured state. Of course, the writing of the constitution, we've heard something of his involvement in that and his notetaking. The fight for ratification, he and Hamilton write the Federalist Papers which are the best political writing by any Americans ever. The battle for ratification itself, the political fight he and Hamilton lead. He is the leading member of the First Congress, often referred to, in that first year, as Washington's prime minister. He writes the legislation that creates the government. He writes the Bill of Rights and fights for their adoption. He confounds the first American political party, then called the Republican Party. Now, it's still with us, called the Democratic Party, and it's changed a bit. But it was a remarkable achievement. He was secretary of state during the Louisiana Purchase, doubled the size of the nation, transformed the nation. He was our first wartime president. He led us into the war of 1812. And I would maintain, and you can think about this afterwards, that he was our only two-term president who had a better second term than his first term. If you think about the presidents in our lifetime, the second term can be tricky, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, housing crisis. Yet, Madison leaves office really with an incredible swelling of support and prosperity around the nation. So, that's his amazing list of achievements. The second fact though is that he is so often unnoticed. I found myself telling my editor that he's sort of the zelig of the founding. He's always in the picture, but nobody is paying attention to him. And it's an interesting question, why was that? There is a flip answer. He was short, he was skinny, he had a small voice, he was losing his hair. And in rooms filled with noisy people like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton or with large charismatic figures like Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Madison was easy to miss. I think that echoes through the historical memory, and it is true. But there's another answer that I think is a lot more interesting, which is that he really was different from most great leaders. Most great leaders, and you-- if your mind wanders to current presidential candidates that-- I can't prevent that, they often have strong streaks of narcissism. They need to be at the front of the parade, preferably on a white horse with a band playing. They crave recognition and acclaim. Madison had none of that. There's a wonderful moment when he's at his inaugural ball as president in 1809, it's the first inaugural ball ever, and an on old friend comes up embraces him and says, "Isn't this wonderful." And Madison says, "Well, I'd really rather be home in bed," which was really Madison. He cared about results, not applause, about making the American experiment and self-government a success in realizing the promise of the revolution. I was struck by a description by a long-term colleague that under all circumstances, he was ever mindful of what was due from him to others and cautious not to wound the feelings of anyone. I think many of our leaders are very mindful of what is due from to them, much less the reverse. I became persuaded also that many of his great achievements, really most of them, were the result of great partnerships. And it was almost as though he had taken a modern personality assessment, one of these things that determines whether you're an ISPJ or an introvert or an extrovert, and had concluded that he was in fact short, he was skinny, he has a small voice and he had zero personal magnetism. All true. But an honest self assessment would also have concluded that he was smarter than almost everybody he met. He had a rear capacity for hard work. He had good political judgment and foresight. And he had a gift and that's the gift in the title of my book. A gift for working with others for checking his ego at the door and making something happen. That gave me the lens to look at his career as a man who understood the power of partnership. I studied particularly five partnerships because this is a somewhat condensed program I'm going to speed through them. The fifth one I may linger on for a minute because it was, for me, the most interesting. The first of course was Hamilton but this was before he could rap. But he was such a contrast in character, flashy, charismatic personality, an orphan from the West Indies, comes with nothing, incredible talent. He was good at everything, he tried soldier, lawyer, statesman, financier. And he meets this quiet fellow from Virginia who's a fortunate son. His father owns 5,000 acres of land and 100 slaves. And they connect, this is in the early 1780's and a Congress that was not filled with distinguished people. And they recognized in each other, I think, two things. One was that they both were smarter than everybody else. And that they both were committed to making the United States a great place and a great nation in the world. They collaborated on the calling of the convention arguably the most important step that was taken in creating this new government. And then, at the convention, Madison had an up and down convention as Marry has described. Hamilton had a catastrophic convention. He actually gave a speech that lasted for five hours. That alone is enough to cause trouble. But he then, in his speech, argued in favor of a president for life and a Senate that would serve for life. But he came back at the end of the convention and announced he would support the constitution even though no man's opinions are more different from this than mine. And he's the one who came up with the idea for the federalist papers as an advocacy piece to get people to support the constitution. Because when it was published, there was much more opposition than, I think, they had anticipated. He tried to recruit people to help them with the writing, three didn't work out. He ended up finding-- his fourth choice was James Madison and a brilliant choice it was. They ended up producing 190,000 words of extraordinary insight. Then, they put down their pens and went off and led the ratification fights in their state conventions. Now, the second alliance or partnership was with George Washington. He was not a pear, nobody was a pear of Washington, I'll quote the great Miranda again. There's a moment in the show when George the third learns that Washington is resigning, which he can't believe anybody would actually give up power. He says, "Can you do that?" And he hears that John Adams is going to be his successor and he says, "Compared to Washington, they all seem small." And that was the way our society had to develop our nation. Madison figured out very fast that if he wanted to have an impact on the new nation, he-- standing close to Washington was a great idea. Washington is famously referred to as the indispensable man and Madison made himself the indispensable man to the indispensable man. He got legislation that Washington wanted. He wrote speeches that Washington needed. He famously wrote the inaugural address that Washington delivers at the beginning of the government. And there's a wonderful moment then when Congress receives this address. It's short, it's very measured, only asks for one thing, the Bill of Rights. And they think, well, we're setting presidents here, we ought to acknowledge the speech. So, they need to come up with something to say in response. So, they asked James Madison to write it. And then, Washington gets their response and he's a courtly Virginian and he doesn't want to give offense so he needs to say something in replay. So, asks Madison to write that. So, the early year of the government is, in many ways, James Madison talking to himself. ^M00:59:59 The third partnership is with Thomas Jefferson and that's the one we mostly think of with Madison. They were soul mates. They grow up 30 miles apart. They-- Jefferson was eight years older but they had so much in common. They were both fortunate sons with rich fathers. And I focused on a part of their relationship which lasted for 40 years and covered every subject. What I focused on was the achievement, I think, they would probably be least proud of, which is creating America's first political party. This was an era when it was stylish and necessary for a public figure to insist that he really didn't believe in parties, that they were the elements-- that they were the instruments of self interest. Small minded people were engaged in factionalism not great leaders. But Jefferson and Madison found themselves with a big problem in the early 1790's. Hamilton and his financial program were being the adopted. Washington supported them and did not support Madison and Jefferson's view that those financial programs were dangerous that they would create a much more powerful government than they had intended or that we should have. And they needed to oppose it but they couldn't oppose Washington. So they began developing what was originally the republican interest in Congress. Around Madison, he-- like minded Congressman and began to gather around him. They then reached out to political leaders in the states and ultimately recruited newspaper editors and they formed the Republican Party by the election of 1796. They have an actual party. In then, in 1800, Jefferson wins the election. It's often said that the true test of a democracy or a republic is whether you can have a peaceful transfer of power between contending parties. We passed that test in 1800 with that political party. An externally powerful force for much of our life as a nation but certainly, the first 60 years from 1800 until the Civil War, it was the dominant political party in a way that we really haven't seen since. The fourth partnership was with James Monroe. Monroe was not somebody you would ask to write any of the federalist papers. He was a military figure. I was a little distressed to find that many of his contemporaries would say of Monroe, "Well, he's a nice fellow but he's a little dim." And it seemed that Madison and he had a much more relaxed relationship with-- the correspondence between Madison and Jefferson is wonderful, it's rich, they talk about everything. You know, that design of hinges and philosophy and science and some politics. With Monroe, the subject is politics and it just feels he--Madison doesn't have to work as hard when he's dealing with Monroe. An interesting feature of their relationship was that they were opponents, direct opponents twice. First, in a campaign for the Congress in 1789, when the first Congress was elected, Madison was identified with the ratification forces. And the people who opposed that, principally Patrick Henry in Virginia wanted to be Madison. It was going to be the post-- he would be the poster child of the bad constitution. So they recruited this handsome strapping military veteran, James Monroe to run against him. And in an era when people stood for election rather than run for election, and Madison hated to campaign, he really had to campaign against Monroe. They went around the district doing campaign events at churches. And he did ultimately win that contest pretty handily. But then, 20 years later they fall out. And I skipped one thing, even though they opposed each other, they pick up their friendship immediately thereafter without any real trouble. Twenty years later it doesn't work that way. Monroe is in England. He's asked to negotiate a treaty with the British. It's a very tough assignment. The British and the French are fighting the Napoleonic Wars, it's a duel to the death. They're both praying on our shipping and on our sailors and they could care less about America, we're military weak. And so, to try to get some piece, Jefferson asked Monroe to negotiate this treaty. Monroe spent three years on it, sends back a terrible treaty. He got nothing. And Madison and Jefferson on the first day agreed that they would simply put it in the files and never speak of it again. Monroe was mortified and he-- then, when he comes back to this country in 1908, he allows his name to be entered as in an opponent of Madison in the presidential election. And I could find no trace of Madison taking any step to campaign for the office of president in 1808. He must have done something. I mean, he had to talk to some people. It just had to happen. But with Monroe, you can find some evidence that he was working with a few people on his campaign. His campaign was really not a serious matter. He only got three electoral votes. But he was bitter and it was a measure of how bitter he was. And for two years, these close friends for decades did not speak and did not have any connection. They did not correspond. Ultimately, Madison is-- knows he's going to end up with a war with Britain, he needs a strong secretary of state. He cannot abide the one he has a fellow named Robert Smith from Maryland who was an unfortunate public official. And it was hard to get fired by Madison. But Smith managed too and Madison at that point reaches out to Monroe. Recruits him back in to the family, basically. Appoints him secretary of state and Monroe was a key member of his administration, served as secretary of state, secretary of war. And for two periods, he served simultaneously as secretary of state and secretary of war, which is unparalleled. No on else has ever done that. Now, the final partnership of course is with his wife Dolley. You know, I'd like to spend a minute or two more with her because she's so much fun. She was originally Dolley Payne. She came from the Virginia plantation world but with one big difference from Madison's background, her family was Quaker and when she was a young teenager, the Quaker meeting in Virginia decreed that all good members of the Quaker meeting would not own slaves. So, Mr. Payne freed his slaves and moved his family to Philadelphia where he promptly became a cropper in business. His wife was forced to convert their house into a boarding house in order to keep food on the table. But Dolley flourished, she was tall for her time. She had an hour glass figure, a mischievous smile, black hair, creamy complexion, bright blue eyes, men liked her a lot. And I always like to point out that Madison surely was short and he was loosing his hair and he was skinny. But of all the frank founders, he had the hottest wife. Dolley had a first husband, he and one of their sons died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, leaving her as a single mother. Madison somehow became aware of her and fascinated by her, she was-- she had many suitors not just he. And you can see her playful nature and sophistication in the letter she writes the day that Senator Aaron Burr is to bring Madison over to introduce him, Burr was actually a lodger in Mrs. Payne's boardinghouse. And Dolley writes that she's going to meet the great little Madison. And it's perfect because he was little but he also was great. He was rich. He was intelligent. He was kind and he was a political power house. You could do a lot worse than James Madison and she understood it. Writing about Dolley gave me a chance to see some sides of Madison you don't often see. Let me just mention a couple. In their first term in the White House, Dolley's sister Lucy was widowed and so she moved into the White House with her three children and lived there for three years. And Madison really enjoyed Lucy but apparently something he liked to do was to kiss Dolley in front of Lucy and turn to Lucy and say, "Does that make your mouth water?" It's a little creepy, I'll admit it. But, you've never thought about James Madison that way before. They never had children of their own but they were not this semi-sad childless couple that is sometimes imagined. They had more than 50 nieces and nephews who often were with them, which spend weeks and months living with them. James, although as very dull fellow in a large setting, was quite lively and entertaining in smaller groups known to tell great anecdotes. Dolley was always fun and it was always fun with a purpose. ^M01:10:09 They were setting a social tone for the whole nation. One of my favorite stories involves in retirement, Dolley had grown wider with the years, James had not. And she would load him up on her back and carry him around the house. And they ran races on front portico of Montpellier. They were fun. But Dolley was in truth of political partner as well, she had to be vivacious and charming and the center of attention because James couldn't do it. And during his presidency, they would have a couple of social events a week and she would started wearing white turbans of velvet or silk and she would put flowers in the top or feathers or even a piece of fruit. And James would come and great everybody very soberly and work the whole room and then go off into a corner with some gentlemen and talk business. Dolley would be in the middle of the room, everybody would know who she was. Everyone would be listening with one ear to what she was saying. And she made his career far more effective. Indeed, the man who lost Madison in 1808 wrote that he had lost to Mr and Mrs. Madison. I might have had a better chance had I faced Mr. Madison alone. And Dolley, of course, is often best remembered for saving the Gilbert Stuart portrait when the British came to burn the public buildings of Washington. I think, we tend not to appreciate the importance of that at the time. America had no kings, we had no history, the nation was not even 30 years old. What we had was George Washington and that Stuart portrait had been made into prints and those prints hung in many American homes. And had we lost the Stuart portrait, it would have been, in fact, a great blow to American morale, at a time when having foreign troops burn our public buildings and our national capital was already a tremendous blow to our morale. Let me just mention two last things. Mary talked about this and I'm glad. It's easy for us to get lost in sort of wonder of his times and his achievements. But I think it is important for us never to forget that he was a slave holder for 85 years. The question tortured him. He understood completely the hypocrisy between what he said in terms of being committed to human liberty and the way he lived. As a young man, he bought land up in Mohawk Valley of New York and wrote a friend that he hope to live there never relying on the labor of others. He never did it. I think it was awfully comfortable having those hundreds slaves and Virginia gave him an amazing political platform. Jefferson was a neighbor, Washington was a fellow countryman. It was the biggest state in the union. But then, in his retirement years, again, with sort of a nascent abolition movement, he became tortured by this issue more. He wrote memos to himself about, which was something he did, about how he might sell off all the lands out west and use the money to buy slaves out of bondage and ship them somewhere else. They were all a pipe dream but it was a measure of what he really did understand was unfinished business in his life and a permanent mark on his legacy. And I have talked a good bit about his partnerships of course, but I'd like to close by focusing again on Madison himself. He is often portrayed as this disembodied intellect. But I do think his greatest qualities were his genuineness and integrity and modesty and open-heartedness. That's what all these different partners found in him. And I thought that those qualities shown through in the way he received the news of the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. It's in February of 1815, he's living in the Octagon House over on 17th street because of course, the White House was burned. And a rumor arrives that a treaty has been signed with Britain. A Pennsylvania senator rushes to the Octagon House to ask the president if it's true. Let me just read a couple of sentence from the book. "The senator found the house dark, the president sitting solitary in his parlor, in perfect tranquility, not even a servant in waiting. The senator asked if the rumor was true. Madison bade him sit down. "I will tell you all I know," he said, then confirmed that he thought there was peace, but he had no official confirmation. The senator recalled with some wonder, what he called the president's self command, and greatness of mind. The world of 1812 had truly been Mr. Madison's war as his opponents called it. It was about principles not gain. It was fought with a quiet tenacity often ineptly, and with endless tolerance of those who opposed it. A friend of Madison's wrote years later, that the war had been conducted in perfect keeping with the character of the president. And when peace came, Madison welcomed it a darkened house, sitting alone with his thoughts." Thank you. ^M01:15:53 [ Applause ] ^M01:16:00 >> Roberta I. Shaffer: Well, this has been an extraordinary morning for me. I have learned so much about Madison beyond what I knew as a young child that he was the first one to think about creating a library for Congress at the Continental Congress in 1783. And then also that of course, he was the sitting president when we purchased Jefferson's books and I always believed-- and John Cole, the library's phenomenal historian can correct me for posterity, but I think the must have had a role in that. But I've learned so much including David when the origination of power couple came into being in Washington. So, that was just a fabulous morning to learn more about Jefferson-- excuse me, about Madison-- >> That always happeneds. >> Roberta I. Shaffer: I know. They're so much alike, they get confused all the time, in fact, some people call this the Jefferson building. It's just terrific to learn from both of you about really Madison much more the man and his, you know, positives and some negatives. And maybe we'll be more forgiving of our leaders of today knowing that as well. We do have a little bit of time for questions and we do have a roving microphone. Your question will be recorded, the session was recorded so please be aware of that as you ask a question. And just raise your hand and a microphone will come to you. This person right here. ^M01:17:36 ^M01:17:40 >> Let me see. Dr. Bilder mentioned that in the notes, Madison had in his notes one of the significant pages on which you-- he wrote a lot of footnotes and a lot of-- all around the page was an apology for his position regarding an autocratic president who would serve for an indefinite term. And then, David Stewart mentioned that same thing about Hamilton that in his five-hour speech proposed this and it was not well received. I'm wondering if you could-- I'm curious to understand why-- what was the thinking behind their belief that this was a good form of a good aspect of the government to have, a president who would serve without a definite term? >> Mary Sarah Bilder: Well, I'll start and then-- and David who wrote but also in his first book can chip in. There-- Hamilton gives this great speech, this long speech in June and people have different interpretations about it. Did he really mean it or did he not mean it. I believe it was a strategy, at that time, the national plan that had been proposed by the Virginians was under attack by the small states who wanted a very weak-- a weak plan. And I think my own view on this is that Hamilton basically agreed to walk in and give a speech that suggested that the-- that there could be a far worse plan. And Hamilton's plan was actually never adopted. He never introduced it formally, he just spoke and if you look at the plan that was recorded by Madison, Hamilton went out of his way to make everything like as extreme as possible. So, I think in a funny way, I don't know if people remember a very fine book by political scientist Graham Allison, that argues that policy makers inevitably move to the B position once presented with an A and C. And so, I happen to believe that Hamilton created a C position under which the national plan became seen as moderate. ^M01:20:02 I think that was plausible because Hamilton was from that world and he did want strong power. So, I think that explains Hamilton's position, I-- you know, there was no president in the western world so they were trying to figure out what a president would look like and they were really wrestling with this incredibly difficult notion of how did you get the president elected and then allow the president to be independent of control. And at that time, they assumed the president would be elected by Congress and that the senate would be elected by the state legislators. So, for Madison, the anxiety is that the president is going to become a man totally of the state legislatures. And so, at that moment he, I think, votes strategically thinking, arguably maybe this would be better but more likely that it would shock people into trying to think how you make the president more independent. And it's still a really difficult question. So, in some ways, I think they're both moments where there's strategic moments. But David's also written about particularly the Hamilton part. >> David O. Stewart: Yeah. Hamilton may have been interested in the strategic notion that it would terrify the state's rights people. But I do think it was what he believed in. I think he did believe it was critical to have a powerful executive, an independent executive and both Hamilton and Madison worried about stability. It's a point on which Madison often disagreed with Jefferson, one of the few. And Madison cared about stability. So, my reading of Hamilton's moment in the convention and his later behavior where he basically leaves because he's being denounced, many other delegates talked about what a dopey idea his speech was. And his fellow New York delegates have also left that he just can't be much of a contributor anymore. So, he comes back for couple weeks later but he's mostly gone after that-- maybe a week after the speech. So, I see it as much more what Hamilton really would have liked. For Madison, I think it was a mistake, he may have been sort of peeved, as Maria suggested. It's wonderful in his notes he says what-- and it's sort of embarrassing, I shouldn't say wonderful. He says, "Well Dr. McClurg recommended it." Who was a very obscure member of the Virginia delegation and I wanted to sort of support Dr. McClurg. And he makes a big point that Washington did not support it in order to protect Washington. This is in, you know, he's writing the notes years later. But I think in that moment, he goofed, he made a mistake. And that's much more how I'm inclined to read it. >> Roberta I. Shaffer: Any other questions? Yes, right here. >> Well, as you say that Madison, you know, they probably at the time didn't realize how impactful this document would be but-- and this may not be a fair question, but can you speculate, either of you or both on what Madison would make of the arguments of original interpretation versus the constitution being a living breathing document? >> Mary Sarah Bilder: You know, I think one of the things that probably interests a lot people who've worked on this is you-- is at the very moment they finished the constitution, they already began to disagree over what it meant. So, I believe there is no moment when the constitution is not contested. The debates over ratification were basically different ways of reading the constitution. And Madison was fascinated in this. There's a great debate in the very beginning of the very first Congress over the question since the Senate has to prove the presidential appointments, how do you remove presidential appointments? Does the Senate get involved in that? Or does the president-- it's something called the removal debate. And Madison writes letter after letter to people. This is great and wonderful and the document doesn't say anything and there's these four positions and how are we going to figure it out. And so, I think-- and at the time in the first Congress some people argue they ought to follow what the people of the convention said. And actually, most of the people of the convention say, "No, don't follow what we said, let's think this through," because the document is already ambiguous. So, I think my own view is that they built a document deliberately broadly so that it would have more power than the articles of confederation which had written itself out of existence within the first decade. So, that would be my own view. I don't know what David's going to say. >> David O. Stewart: Well, that's exciting, isn't it? >> Mary Sarah Bilder: Yes. I can guess. >> David O. Stewart: I've never understood the originalist position very well as a litigator, I wouldn't look at the constitutional provision and if it was clear, I didn't have a law-- then I didn't have a law suit. And if it wasn't clear, then I could go in and argue about it. And if it's not clear well then, we don't have an original position. So, you know, if the case gets to the Supreme Court it's not clear. There was a wonderful exchange in an argument a few years back over violent video games and Justice Scalia was hammering some poor lawyer about, you know, what did James Madison think of, you know-- and Justice Alito broke in and said, "Council, what Justice Scalia wants to know is what was James Madison's position on violent video games." The world has changed. You just can't have this frozen thing and we never have as Mary said. So, it's a puzzle to me. ^M01:26:37 ^M01:26:41 >> Roberta I. Shaffer: Seeing no other questions, I'm going to invite you once again to our cake reception in Madison Hall this afternoon at 1 o'clock. I hope you will come to that. But more importantly, I actually hope that everyone in the room particularly, the people who work at the Library of Congress, will be in this building often and will be very proud to be here. And for those of you who do not work here, I hope you will visit the library physically or virtually. We count virtually also so don't worry if you come virtually, it's not hurting us. And in fact, we are delighted that technology that, I guess, Madison did not have the benefit of, enables us to reach greater and greater audiences everyday with more and more materials and more sophisticated technology because as I think, everyone in this room knows, in addition to Madison and the other presidents, we have just the most incredible asset here that any asset could ever be. And that is the asset of knowledge. So please enjoy the rest of the day. Have an easy journey wherever it is that you have to go after this morning. And we thank you so much for coming today knowing that it's never easy in Washington to get around. But this morning was a real, real challenge. Thank you very, very much and thank our speakers. ^M01:28:05 [ Applause ] ^M01:28:07 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.