FoundingTimesConvention Day-by-Day
Walk through Madison's Notes as they happened — each of the 116 sessions annotated with the questions debated, the votes taken, and the deals struck.
The Founders wrote the charter.
You decide whether it still governs today.
Read the record. Ask the Founders.
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Questions Answered
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Founding Documents
Ask the Founders
Ask the Founders.
Receive answers sourced only from the Constitution, Convention debates, Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, Jefferson, Madison, and the founding records.
Answers come from the Constitution as ratified and its founding-era records. Later amendments are excluded — and disclosed when they bear on your question.
Sourced from 1776–1791. Never modernized, always cited. Free, and no limit.
Consulting the records of the Convention…
From the Founding Records
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The record, asked and answered.
Every founder question and its cited answer is preserved and searchable. Here are a few from the archive. Search the full Bank →
The Reading Room
View the originals
The documents themselves — ink, quill, and hand. Each card opens the official archival scan, free and public domain.
Scans courtesy of the U.S. National Archives, the Library of Congress, and Yale's Avalon Project. All originals are public domain.
Open to everyone
The Convention Room
The deeper archives — annotated tours through the debates and drafts the framers themselves argued over.
Federalist ↔ Constitution
Every clause in the original seven articles, mapped to the Federalist essays that defended it. Ask any framer's question and jump straight to the debate.
The Dissenters' Voice
Cato, Brutus, and the Federal Farmer — the essays warning against ratification, presented alongside the objections they raised state by state.
A place to begin
Twelve questions worth asking
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