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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:19:12 2006 |
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======================= HES POSTING ===================
Fred Carstenson wrote:
>
> By the time the Constitution was being written (largely by Madison),
Largely by MADISON? I don't THINK so. It came out of committees;
the person credited with the actual writing of most of it is
James Wilson of Pennsylvania. Particularly such crucial components
as the single president elected by the populace, and the rewording
of the preface (until the last draft, it read "We the People of
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, ...")
Much of what we KNOW about the Constitutional convention is due to
Madison's notes, but that does not mean he wrote the document.
And there are no notes for what went on in the committees.
Madison did write the Bill of Rights -- under protest, by the way,
as part of an agreement with his constituents in Virginia who wanted
it (he did not). (But he said, if I have to approve of it, I'll
write it -- there were over 100 proposed amendments that were
eventually narrowed down to the 10 we are familiar with.)
The deification of Madison began with Charles Beard's discovery that
Federalist #10 actually mentioned republican politics as a way of
ameliorating discord -- which was what Beard was looking for with
regard to his own theses of the needs of democracy -- and is almost
entirely a creation of the 20th century looking backwards.
Madison was a very intellegent and productive man. But he did not
write the Constitution, largely or otherwise.
Mary Schweitzer
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