The Constitution was written in a sealed room, through one of the hottest summers anyone could remember, with the windows shut on purpose. Why the Convention's secrecy rule, unsettling as it first sounds, was the condition that made honest argument and real compromise possible, and why the line they drew, private drafting, public deciding, still matters.

Field Notes on the Republic was written and read by Michael Fowler. It was produced for Quorum (Supply Co.), an American civic purveyor. Music is "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," performed by the U.S. Military Academy Band, West Point.