Jill Lepore

Yeah, this is weird to me.

There's a great book by Jonathan Gnapp that's just out this year.

And he he had laid this all out, I think, in a law review article previously, but it's it's in his new book as well, in which.

And it really shakes up your sense of the, I don't know, the scripture-like quality of the document.

So when the first Congress is held, they have an election, Washington becomes president, then they seat the first Congress.

And James Madison is a member of that Congress.

Madison's often thought of as the father of the Constitution because he sort of wrote the first draft.

Madison had been really opposed to amending the Constitution, and he had been really opposed to what the anti-federalists most wanted was a Bill of Rights.

This is a bad idea.

And he has a really solid argument about that.

But he runs for the Senate.

He loses the Senate seat because people are like, that guy doesn't even like amendments.

And so he he's like, OK, I'm now I recognize we have to amend the thing.

We promised that we would.

And so it's like every day of the first session of Congress, he's like, we said we'd amend it, and nobody wants to do it.

They have a lot of other things to do.

It's like the first Congress.

They have a lot of other things.

But it gets to be June of 1789.

And on June 8th, he gets up and he gives this speech.