Contemporaries attributed Madison’s Bill of Rights obsession to Patrick Henry’s militia objections

Evidence

After his electoral victory, Madison set out during the First Congress to craft a Bill of Rights. With everything at stake, he was like a man possessed. Congressman Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts thought Madison was so fixated on a Bill of Rights because he was “constantly haunted by the ghost of Patrick Henry,” who had made it so clear at Virginia’s ratifying convention that he could not abide the idea that the federal government would control the militia. Pennsylvania senator Robert Morris was also convinced that whatever had happened at the convention had made Madison “so cursedly frightened…that he dreamed of amendments ever since.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 793

Categorization

• CANDY: “Constantly haunted by the ghost of Patrick Henry” and “dreamed of amendments ever since” are wonderfully quotable portraits of a founder driven by political fear.
• SHARE: For a constitutional-law friend: contemporary eyewitness quotes attributing Madison’s Bill of Rights push to fear of Patrick Henry’s pro-slavery militia argument.