Interesting though it would be, it is impossible herein to give in detail the remarkable story of the four months’ Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. It began on May 14 and its last day was September 17. It is recommended to every American, who desires any real knowledge of what his nation really is, that he read, in preference to any other story of that Convention, the actual report of its debates by Madison, which he himself states were “written out from my notes, aided by the freshness of my recollections.” It is possible only to refer briefly but accurately to those actual facts, in the history of those four months, which are pertinent to the object of this book. At the very outset, it is well for us Americans to know and to remember the extraordinary nature of the recommendation which had come from Annapolis and of the very assembling of that Philadelphia Convention. The suggestion and the Convention were entirely outside any written law in America. Every one of the thirteen colonies was then an independent nation. These nations were united in a federation. Each nation had its own constitution. The federation had its federal constitution. In none of those constitutions was there any provision whatever under which any such convention as that of Philadelphia could be suggested or held. The federal Constitution provided the specific mode in which ability to amend any of its federal Articles could be exercised. Such provision neither suggested nor contemplated any such convention as that to be held at Philadelphia. For these reasons, Madison and Wilson of Pennsylvania and other leading delegates at that Convention stoutly insisted that the Philadelphia Convention had not exercised any power whatever in making a proposal. “The fact is, they have exercised no power at all; and, in point of validity, this Constitution, _proposed_ by them for the government of the United States, claims no more than a production of the same nature would claim, flowing from a private pen.” (Wilson, Pennsylvania State Convention in 1787, 2 _Ell. Deb._ 470.) “It is therefore essential that such changes [in government] be instituted by some _informal and unauthorized propositions_, made by some patriotic and respectable citizen or number of citizens.” (Madison, _Fed._ No. 40.) But there was a development even more remarkable on the second day of this unauthorized Convention.