The Role of James Madison in the Creation of the Bill of Rights

When the Constitution was promulgated on 17 September 1787, it met with widespread approval. Yet, because it was a document of compromises, no one approved it in its entirety. Even Federalists such as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and James Wilson objected to some parts of the Constitution.

James Madison’s thinking on the need for alterations to the Constitution is illustrative of how the issue of amendments evolved from 1787 through 1789. At the Philadelphia Convention he was opposed to including a bill of rights in the Constitution. Beginning with the Massachusetts convention in February of 1788, states began submitting proposed amendments to the Constitution. The New York and Virginia conventions both submitted forty recommendatory amendments; twenty were proposals for structural changes to the Constitution and twenty were basic rights. Madison was opposed to structural amendments since he perceived they would would undermine the operation of the Constitution. While campaigning for a seat in the US House of Representatives in the first federal congress, he promised to work to add amendments to the Constitution. After being elected, he would in fact lead the effort to add amendments that were guarantees of basic rights and liberties. He essentially ignored the structural amendments that had been proposed by many of the state conventions.

Another factor during the ratification process influencing Madison’s position on amendments was a movement among Antifederalists advocating for a second constitutional convention. Madison feared such a convention would use many of the proposed amendments made by state ratification conventions as the basis for an entirely new constitution. This concern was paramount in Madison’s evolution in thinking on the necessity of amendments.

Ken Bowling’s article provides an excellent narrative of the complete process of how the Bill of Rights was created. See Kenneth R. Bowling’s “A Tub to the Whale: The Founding Fathers and the Adoption of the Federal Bill of Rights.”

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The letters and speeches below trace Madison’s thinking on the need for amendments and a bill of rights from 1787 at the Philadelphia Convention through 1789 when he served as a congressman from Virginia in the U. S. House of Representatives.