The framer's working dinner

Madison has been thinking about the problem of faction for years, and the Convention has given him a laboratory for his ideas. Over a working dinner he lays out the argument he will later publish: that a large republic, with many competing interests, is safer for liberty than a small one.

Franklin, who has seen a great deal of human nature, is amused by the young man's system but agrees with its conclusion. Washington listens in his usual silence, and Hamilton pushes Madison to be bolder about the powers the national government will need. They eat scrapple, pepper pot, and cornbread, with jumble cookies and mulled cider, and Madison takes mental notes for the essays he will write the following year.