page_title: The Papers of James Madison
section_title: James Madison's papers
hierarchical_section_title: The Papers of James Madison / James Madison's papers
caption_attribution_description: English: James Madison, 4th president of the United States
context_page_description: The Papers of James Madison project was established in 1956 to collect and publish in a comprehensive letterpress edition the correspondence and other writings of James Madison, the Virginia statesman best remembered for his public service as "Father of the Constitution" and fourth president of the United States.
  The volumes provide accurate texts of Madison's incoming and outgoing correspondence, newspaper essays, speeches, and pamphlets. The texts are accompanied by informative annotation and made accessible through comprehensive indexes. They are valuable research tools for students of Madison's life and those interested in the general history of the period in which Madison lived.
context_section_description: Unlike the large volume of personal documents surviving his compatriots George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, comparatively few papers exist to chronicle James Madison's personal life. Madison appears to have destroyed many of his own letters and plantation records, which he did not feel were of historical importance. Those that survived were mostly scattered among friends, family, and autograph collectors.
  However, Madison did retain, collect, and organize many of his public papers, particularly during his retirement when he presumably had more time to attend to the task. Recognizing the historical importance of these documents, he arranged and edited them "with a view to their appearance in print after his death." He chose for this publication "his notes on the debates of the 1780s and many of his letters and other papers bearing upon public affairs during that decade," including his notes on the proceedings of the Federal Convention of 1787. Madison expected the posthumous publication of his papers to both benefit history and to provide for his wife, Dolley Payne Todd Madison.
  In 1837, a year after Madison's death, Dolley sold to Congress his notes from the Constitutional Convention of 1787, as well as those he had taken on the debates "in the Congress of the Confederations in 1782, '83, & '87." These were published in 1840 in Henry Gilpin's three-volume edition The Papers of James Madison, Purchased by Order of Congress; Being His Correspondence and Reports of Debates during the Congress of the Confederation and His Reports of Debates in the Federal Convention . . . .
  When Dolley ultimately sold the remainder of Madison's papers to Congress in 1848, she apparently did not realize that her son, John Payne Todd, had retained for himself many of the more valuable manuscripts from that collection. These he sold periodically to various creditors until his death in 1851, gaining funds to pay his gambling and liquor debts.
  Over the years, collections of Madison's papers have repeatedly sold at auction, and even today some still circulate in this manner. By these means, Madison's papers became widely scattered over time. A fuller detailed history of the papers is provided in the introduction to the first PJM Congressional Series volume.
caption: James Madison, Fourth President of the United States
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