To Alexander Hamilton from James Madison, 9 June [1788]
From James Madison1
Richd. June 9. [1788]
Dr. Sir
The Heat of the weather &c. has laid me up with a bilious attack; I am not able therefore to say more than a few words.
No material indications have taken place since my last.2 The chance at present seems to be in our favor. But it is possible things may take another turn. Oswald3 in Phila. came here on Saturday; and has closet interviews with the leaders of the opposition.
Yours affcy.
Js. Madison, Jr.
Alexr. Hamilton Esqr
ALS, Hamilton Papers, Library of Congress.
1. Madison was in Richmond where he had gone to attend the Virginia Ratifying Convention which met on June 1, 1788.
2. Letter not found.
3. Eleazer Oswald, a native of Great Britain who had come to America at the outbreak of the Revolution, was a bitter foe of the proposed Constitution. As publisher of The [Philadelphia] Independent Gazetteer, he published many of the attacks on the Constitution by the Antifederalists of Pennsylvania. In describing the Virginia Ratifying Convention, Henry Lee’s biographer has written: “Eleazer Oswald, a picturesque artillery colonel of the Revolution, who wore a black patch over one eye, appeared at the doors of Academy Hall with messages from the opponents of Federalism in Philadelphia, who urged their Virginia friends to defeat ratification of the document” (Thomas Boyd, Light-horse Harry Lee [New York, 1931], 173).