James Madison Deserves a National Memorial: Dale Pullen’s New Book Makes the Case for the Man Who Built Our Constitution
The 17th of September 1787 Constitution Day by Dale Dungen Pullen
Dale Dungan Pullen: Author of The 17th of September 1787 Constitution Day
Dale Pullen's posthumously published book argues that the country still hasn't given the Constitution's chief architect his due.
FL, UNITED STATES, August 4, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Ask most Americans to name the Father of the Constitution, and many will draw a blank. Dale Dungan Pullen’s The 17th of September 1787 Constitution Day, now available on Amazon, wants to change that.
The Virginia delegate James Madison arrived in Philadelphia two weeks before the Federal Convention began in May 1787. He came loaded with notes on the failed governments of the past. Madison had already met with Pennsylvania delegates to plan a framework for debate. That framework, introduced by Edmund Randolph on May 29, became the Virginia Plan, which set the agenda for the entire convention. He was just 36.
Not only that, but Madison also took notes on nearly every session, a record so complete that historians still treat it as the primary account of what was said and by whom that summer.
He was outmaneuvered on the question of equal state representation in the Senate, a defeat he never fully accepted. He called the outcome a “departure from justice” and was the convention's most consistent voice for a strong national government, arguing the case in committee, on the floor, and later in print.
After the convention, Hamilton recruited Madison and John Jay to defend the new Constitution in the New York press. Then Madison went home to fight for ratification in his own state. Virginia's convention in June 1788 pitted him against Patrick Henry, the country's most famous orator, in a debate historians still study. Madison, his voice often too weak to carry across the room, out-argued and out-organized Henry anyway. Virginia ratified 89 to 79.
Madison wasn't finished. He went on to write the amendments that became the Bill of Rights and shepherded them through the first House of Representatives. He then led his own state in approving them.
Despite all of this, Washington, D.C. has no memorial to James Madison. There's a Library of Congress building bearing his name. But that is “hardly a memorial” for “the nation's greatest national legislator,” writes late author Dale Pullen, who wrote this book to give Madison his due. He is pictured on the cover and title page, and the Introduction begins with his timeless quote: “Only a well-instructed people can be a permanently free people.”
Pullen’s book seeks to instruct American citizens about the Constitution and how it came to be. Madison is the through line, but the book tells the full story: the fight over slavery, the compromises that nearly broke the convention, and the ratification battles in Virginia and New York. If you want an unflinching yet accessible history of the Constitution, The 17th of September is a must-read.
Book Details
Title: The 17th of September 1787 Constitution Day
Author: Dale Dungan Pullen
Genre: American History / Civics
Language: English
Availability: Available now on Amazon in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle
Claude J Pullen
Amazon Books Publication
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