"IT IS A RISING NOT A SETTING SUN": FIRST EDITION OF MADISON'S MASSIVE THREE-VOLUME PAPERS, 1840, WITH HIS VALUABLE NOTES ON THE SECRET DEBATES OF THE 1787 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

MADISON, James. The Papers of James Madison. Washington: Langtree & O'Sullivan, 1840. Three volumes. Octavo, modern half brown morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled boards and endpapers. $11,500.

First edition of the seminal collection of Madison's influential writings, including his copy of Jefferson's notes on the 1776 debates over the Declaration, and Madison's own invaluable record of the secret debates of the 1787 Constitutional Convention—"by far the fullest and most complete record of the debates themselves" (Smith, 91)—an exceptional three-volume work.

"One of the nation's greatest founders… James Madison worked best in conventions or congresses… [and] in secret" (Wills, Madison, 1-3). Published posthumously according to Madison's wishes, this three-volume Papers of James Madison offers particular evidence of that often cloaked genius in his comprehensive notes on the "Debates of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States… together with the Debates taken by him in the Congress of the Confederation in 1782, 1783 and 1787." Also containing Madison's copy of Jefferson's notes on the 1776 debates on the Declaration (xxiv), this important work provides valued insight into America's crucial Revolutionary years and the contributions of America's fourth President—a man "so essential at so many points in the creation and conceptualization of the new republic that we necessarily perceive the product partly through his eyes" (Banning, 2). When the members of the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in May 1787, they held their deliberations in secret in order to encourage complete candor. "The committee decided that 'nothing spoken in the House be printed, or otherwise published or communicated without leave.' Journalists and curious spectators were forbidden to attend, sentries were stationed at doors, and delegates, sworn to secrecy, remained tight-lipped to outsiders… During a sultry Philadelphia summer, in the face of thick swarms of tormenting flies, the blinds were often drawn and the windows shut to guarantee privacy… Seated front-row center was James Madison, who staked out this pivotal spot to take minutes. 'In this favorable position for hearing all that passed… I was not absent a single day, nor more than a casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech, unless a very short one" (Chernow, 227-29). One of the delegates wrote of Madison, "Every Person seems to acknowledge his greatness… The affairs of the United States, he perhaps has the most correct knowledge of, of any Man in the Union" (ANB). Madison "was not only one of the most influential members of the convention but [his] painstaking notes provide the greater part of what we know about the actual discussions that took place in the convention" (Smith, 90). With index and manuscript facsimiles. Sabin 43716.

Occasional light marginal dampstaining, most notably to first few pages of Volumes I and II, Volume III page edges with faint discoloration. Handsomely bound.