the draught: according to Burwell’s later recollection, TJ and others worried that the Virginia House of Delegates would respond to the resolution of the Massachusetts General Assembly calling for the end of the three-fifths rule “in a style calculated rather to confirm the prejudices” of Virginia’s “enemies” in the north than to “refute their fallacious reasoning.” A determination was made “that Mr Madison should write the answer, which should be inclosed to me, & thus placed in the hands of the Chairman of the Comtee to whom the M. amendment was referrd.” To maintain secrecy, committee chairman James Barbour agreed to claim authorship of the draft presented to the state legislature on 27 Dec. (Gerald W. Gawalt, “ ‘Strict Truth’: The Narrative of William Armistead Burwell,” VMHB description begins Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1893- description ends , 101 [1993], 113-14; Richmond Virginia Argus, 8 Dec.; Richmond Enquirer, 1 Jan. 1805; Madison, Papers description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, J. C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962- , 41 vols.; Sec. of State Ser., 1986- , 11 vols.; Pres. Ser., 1984- , 10 vols.; Ret. Ser., 2009- , 3 vols. description ends , Sec. of State Ser., 8:517-18n; Stanley Griswold to TJ, 26 Nov.).