Talking about if nowol the news other parts of the world where political leaders will insist that the values we take for granted, they say thats culture imperialism. Thats your system but we dont live that way. Well, its not clear that those leaders have always consulted their own people about how they feel about those pronouncements from the top. So thank you for that question. Are we out of time . Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] next up from the bill of rights day festival. Mary sarah bilder talks about James Madisons note on the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Well, good morning. Im mike earhart, the scholar in residence at the National Constitution center. A great privilege for me to do that. Normally teach at unc chapel hill, which is not that far, at least by airplane, and its terrific to be here today with mary bilder to talk about her terrific new book, which is called madisons hand. Revising the Constitutional Convention. So im going to talk to mary for roughly an hour, but youll also have the chance to write down questions. There will be people coming through, giving you the chance to jot down some questions on index cards. Just as also built of little bit of background, mary is a professor of law and distinguished scholar at boston sorry, also micd, which hopefully is going to carry throughout the room but we are here today with mary sara bilder, whose book is madisons hand revising the Constitutional Convention. Mary is a professor of law and distinguished scholar at Boston College law school, where she teaches property, trust and estates, and american legal and constitutional history. And in case you missed it, i am mike gearhart, scholar in residence here at the ncc and also constitutional law professor at unc. But back to mary, which is much more important. Mary is also has also been a visiting professor at both columbia and Harvard Law School and a member of a number of distinguished places, including the american law institute, and a fellow of the american bar foundation, and her 2004 book, the transatlantic constitution, colonial legal culture and empire, was awarded an award from the american historical association. Expect great things for the next book, which well talk about now as well, which is a remarkable study of madisons relationship with his notes. Now, that may seem a little dull but i can tell you its not. Because they are one of the primary ways we understand the american constitution. Mary, why do people think of madison as the father or the snugs. So James Madison outlived everybody else and if you live the longest you get the last word. That historian drew mckoy called him last of the fathers in another wonderful book on madison, and by the time he was he died when he was 85 years old, and as he got older he started to keep track of what was left from the convention. Young men used to visit him and ask him about the convention, and he theyd ask him could you pressure your notes, and he said issue dont know, let me think about it. People would write him, we think youre the last one. He is like, no, this person is still there. This person is still alive so by the end of his life he really was the only remaining person who had participated in the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the constitution, and because of that, sought of outliving everybody, he got to be the most important, and also he left this remarkable set of notes. Its the only sustained account of what happened at the convention that wrote the constitution. So he sort of doubly important. Yes so madison is a very competitive fellow, as well discover in a minute, and turns out to be quite a constitutionally significant way. So, how does it come about that he was taking those notes . So, let me backtrack. People might think like, notes, whatever. The notes are held by the library of congress and theyre considered a top treasure of the american people. Theyre probably one of the most important manuscripts held by the library of congress, and the book argues that he took those notes originally as a diary. He was particularly interested in keeping track of the proceedings for Thomas Jefferson. We tend to sometimes think that Thomas Jefferson was at philadelphia, but he wasnt. He was in france, and he missed the whole thing. Like a big party and he thought the party was in europe, but the party was back in the United States, and he actually doesnt come back until after the constitution is ratified. So, madison, i argue in my book, took the notes for himself but also very much so that he could share with Thomas Jefferson upon jeffersons return, or in letters, what hat happened that summer. Yes. In fact the notes sometimes are given an authoritative status in the construction of the United States constitution, which were looking at, whether or not they either have that status or, more importantly, what that status might actually allow for, or mean. How did you discover that madison revised his notes . So, every theres hundreds and how much books written about the Constitutional Convention, and every single one of them tells the story that madison tells in his notes because it was the only version of what happened that makes it seem like an exciting drama and a play, and its the only account we have. And when i began to write this book i have little kids and thought id write my first book took a lot of research, so my second book i thought i would just sit in my office and read the notes and tell the story of madisons version in the notes, and i became very interested in what the notes probably looked like on the day he finished writing them in 1787 because when the notes were finally published by Dolly Madison she mention that it were revised. Everyone has known they were revised. I was interested, what did they look like on the day he left the con sentence is a went back to try to reconstruct that, more and more mysteries began to be apparent that the manuscript that we had taken as having been written that entire summer, probably hadnt been written the entire summer. So the book argues that madison actually never finished the manuscript that summer but finished it somewhat later. Its almost like a detective story because we discovered the notes werent just revised but may well have been revised with a very important purpose in mind. And to take us back a little bit more towards the beginning, in what capacity did madison come to the Constitutional Convention . Madison was when he went to the Constitutional Convention and we think of him as famous. This is the picture my publishers put on the cover. A very nice a beautiful picture of madison, the picture i wanted but they were right i wanted the picture in the middle of the book. Probably cant see it. But he looks like a kid. He looks 14 years old, and he wasnt. He was this is a couple years before the convention, and i thought that was a great picture. Actually a beautiful portrait of him, but he was very quite young. In this mid30s. Looked even younger. He actually wasnt famous yet. He was he wanted to be famous and thought he was really smart, but when he showed up at the convention, there were people like benjamin franklin, George Washington, other people who had already made their reputations, and so part of the story that i tell in the book is about a different madison than we sometimes think we know. A madison who is in some ways trying to figure out who is he . And trying to persuade everybody to agree with what he thinks is the right new foundation for the country. Also part of the virginia delegation, which you might want us to about. Turns tout be a very significant delegation there at the convention. So madison goes the Constitutional Convention was actually the second effort to write a National Constitution. Madison had been very involved in an effort the Previous Year at annapolis that failed because not all the states had shown up. The virginians persuade congress to authorize a Second Convention, the convention we know as the Philadelphia Convention, and the virginians were the major movers and they get to philadelphia early, they had decided to hold the Second Convention in philadelphia because that meant that the people who they thought were the other really important players, the pennsylvania delegation could just roll out of their houses in the morning and wouldnt be late. That would be a good idea. And so the virginians put together a very important delegation that includessed Edmond Randolph and George Washington and though go to philadelphia and everybodys is late. So they spend a lot of time figuring out what plan they should advance. From the beginning of the convention, the virginians present a plan, and if you im a lawyer and if you do any kind of lawyering, you know that one of the most personality things is to sort of the most important things toils get your plan as the foundation and then everybody elves is arguing against your plan. Thats what the virginians are able to do. Then they sit around and wait and wait and wait, and madisons extremely aggravated that nobody else is on time for the convention. So the Convention Starts over a week late while theyre waiting for enough other delegations to begin, and when he takes his notes the first day, he writes, the date the convention was supposed to start and says, it doesnt start til and then on the next line he finally writes may 25, when enough people finally showed up in town to begin. So he is part of the important virginia delegation that writes the very first plan, draft, for our new discussion. D new constitution. Was the the report ore was there a reporter. There was a reporter, william jackson, who kept an official record of the convention, and the National Archives holds that record today and thats the official record that was kept, but the way you were supposed to write an official report was you just wrote down the motions and the vote. You didnt write down what everybody said. No one at this time thought that you ought to have a verbatim record, and so a number of members of the convention took notes themselves during the convention, and madison took extensive notes and then wrote them up twice a week and thats the manuscript we have today. The notes he took turn out to be not necessarily the notes weve got. Right. So, how extensive are the notes he took during the convention and then what did he end up doing with those notes . So, i teach when you teach, your students transcribe everything. They type super fast. Madison was writing with a quill pen and didnt know short hand. In fact the kind of shorthand tom people took wouldnt have been able to keep up with the speaker. So madison took a set of rough notes during the convention itself, using abbreviations, and then on wednesday night, when he wrote his correspondence and on sunday he turned the notes into a more finished project. And anybody else who tries to figure out notes a couple of days later knows you have to do some creative interpretation. So, even as madison took the record we now have we was obviously figuring out what he meant and he also knew what Health Writing only twice a week. So he his notes reflect often what happened. One thing that was really fun in writing this book was, once it became vowels he was writing twice a week, it solved a major mystery. People who speak on saturdays in madisons notes always give great speeches, and people said, wow, the saturday speeches were great. One of the best saturday speeches were great there was no Convention Held on sunday so he had a whole day to write notes um just from the day before, and so its not surprising that if you looked at the notes, the saturday speeches are dominant. Of course the people giving the speeches are talking at the convention know madison is taking notes but dont necessarily realize that the notes he is taking will take on an iconic status. Right. And many of them were taking notes also. We have a lot of different notes from the convention he want the only notetaker. Some of the folks talking at the Convention May have if theyd known better would realize that somebody that didnt necessarily respect them or agree with them would end up with the authoritative notes, madison is transcribing. Hamilton and pinckney. So, madisons notes historians and law professors and judges have tended to think when madison took notes he was taking them the way we would think a report were take notes, but he wasnt hitch was taking them for himself and Thomas Jefferson. So he focused on people who were either allies of the virginians or were his arch enemies, or were people who said things he thought were interesting. And theres a lot of people who dont ever show up in madison notes and who knows. They might have said things but madison didnt write them down. A couple of people loom very large in the notes. Madison was fascinated by Alexander Hamilton, and so Alexander Hamilton wasnt there for the entire convention, but his speeches loom very large. Madison was, i argue found Charles Pinckney from South Carolina extremely annoying. Pinckney thats the only way fountain it. Pinckney was about madisons age. He was theres these letters in the library of congress with pinckney that pinckney wrote madison. Pinckney had this big hand writhing, huge, and after the convention, pinckney actually writes madison this letter that says, here i am, im married, having a fine time, i gather youre still a bachelor. Which was in your face. And pinckney and madison were staying at the same house together, and theres a lot of competition between them, and pinckney actually introduces a plan also at the convention, at the beginning, and madison doesnt record it. In fact madison basically leaves pinckney out almost entirely through the beginning of the of his notes so when we read the notes it looks like pinckney never even had a plan. Historians now believe that pinckney had a plan. Actually a quite interesting plan. And so tell us about the other plans that were introduced. The virginians had plan the virginians thought the problem with the government under the articles of confederation that had been set up at the time of the revolution was that the states were too powerful and they thought we didnt have a Great National government and we needed a Great National government to defend the country. To. I press the european pures and have the economic power at that time the European Countries would lend to the United States, and George Washington thought it was an enormous problem. Soldiers had not been paid so the virginians wanted a strong National Government, very, very strong National Government, and pinkney also wanted a strong National Government, and there were another group of states, states will delegates where they were very small populations, small boundaries, the small states, and they were very worried about these plans where the large states, they felt, would dominate, and so everybody who came to the convention came trying to figure out who would actually run the National Government, and the large states wanted the population to be largely determinative. They would basically run the government. Then the small states very much wanted to keep the state representation that had existed under the articles of confederation because they then wouldnt be completely dominated by the large states. So, turns out that madisons course is not just revising his notes at the time, more or less of the convention, but later. So tell us more about the times when madison actually was literally revising his notes. So, one of the really wonderful things about writing this book was eventually the library of congress, which is just wonderful, decided i wasnt a complete nut. For a long time they thought i was a crazy person. Then theyve took a lot of pictures for me. I was writing can you take a picture of is . Thin the decided i was not crazy and they would let me see the manuscript, which is in a vault. The manuscripts from in a big vault and we went down into the conservefors lab and i wanted to put the manuscript on the light table so you can see the water marks and how the papers changed. It was a wonderful opportunity and one of the really incredible things about the manuscript is its quite small. Madison had he was a very he wasnt a large person, about my size, and he had this tiny little handwriting so the manuscript is only this big but covered with revisions, and you seek the revisions the library of congress has a lot of images up on its web site of the revisions and pictures in the book, and the book argues that madison finished the manuscript about twothirds of the way through until august, and then he got sick and started to serve on committees and never finished the manuscript. And then two years later when Thomas Jefferson is returning to the United States, madison had promised jefferson that jefferson could read the manuscript of the conventionbuffs its not finished. So madison has to try to finish it and he secretly borrows from <