Download or read book The Papers of James Madison written by James Madison and published by Rarebooksclub.com. This book was released on 2009-08 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842 edition. Excerpt: ... VOL. 1. PREFATORY NOTE. Mr. Madison took his seat in the Congress of the Confederation on the twentieth day of March, 1780, but did not commence his diary of its Debates till the fourth of November, 1782. It was continued through the sequel of that year, and until the removal of Congress was decided, on the twenty-first of June, 1783, from Philadelphia to Princeton, where the task was not renewed. In February, 1787, being again a member, he resumed his diary, which was continued till the second of May of that year, when he left Congress to give his attendance in the approaching Convention at Philadelphia, which was to prepare a new Constitution for the United States. On the close of that Convention he returned to his seat in Congress, which he held till March, 1788, when he was called to Virginia with a view to his being elected to the State Convention which was to decide on the Constitution proposed by the General Convention. During this period it appears that no diary was kept, the effect perhaps of the share he had in writing the Federalist. Nor was it resumed in the interval between his return from the close of the State Convention, and his final departure from Congress, then in the last stage of its existence, to become a candidate for a seat in the approaching House of Representatives under the new Constitution. The series of debates now published, though generally condensed into their substance, are not without more detailed discussions on particular topics; and being, --with the exception of the debates in 1776 on the Declaration of Independence and on a few of the Articles of Confederation, preserved by Mr. Jefferson, which are also prefixed, --the only known or probable materials of what passed in Congress in that form, they.