"New digital technologies and traditional historical investigation suggest that James Madison did not finish his famous Notes until after the Convention. The Notes are the most important, and most misunderstood, account of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. This biography of the Notes follows Madison as he created and then repeatedly revised a remarkable manuscript of American history. Originally a diary kept in part for the absent Thomas Jefferson,...

In 1787, the American union was in disarray. The incompatible demands of the separate states threatened its existence; some states were even in danger of turning into the kind of tyranny they had so recently deposed. A truly national government was needed, one that could raise money, regulate commerce, and defend the states against foreign threats-without becoming as overbearing as England. So thirty-six-year-old James Madison believed. That summer,...