James Madison

President of the United States (1809–1817)

• Born: March 16, 1751
• Birthplace: Port Conway, Prince George County, Virginia
• Died: June 28, 1836
• Place of death: Montpelier, Orange County, Virginia

Madison was the primary architect of the US Constitution and the fourth US president. His lasting reputation is based less on his conduct as president or as secretary of state than on his contribution to the writing of the Constitution and securing its ratification. He also is remembered for helping to establish the new government and political parties, and for being a superior legislator and nation-builder.

Early Life

James Madison was the son of James Madison Sr. and Nelly Conway Madison. James Jr. was the eldest of twelve children. The family was not wealthy but lived in comfortable circumstances. Young Madison was enrolled at the age of eleven in the boarding school of Donald Robertson, and he studied under him for five years. He studied two additional years at home under the tutelage of Thomas Martin, an Anglican minister. In 1769, Madison entered Princeton. Because of his previous training, he was able to complete the four-year course in two years, graduating in September 1771. This effort took a toll on his health. He appears to have suffered from depression and nonepileptic seizures.

In May 1776, Madison began his political career as a member of the convention that drew up the Virginia constitution. He was then elected to the Virginia Assembly. There, Madison joined with Thomas Jefferson in an effort to disestablish the Church of England. They eventually became lifelong friends and close political associates. Madison was not reelected, but he was chosen by the legislature in 1778 to the governor’s council. Despite his unimposing five-foot, six-inch stature and a slender frame and boyish features, Madison obviously made an impression upon the legislature with his intelligence and diligence. He was never a great orator, but he was an agreeable, persuasive speaker. He possessed great political skill and generally was a dominating figure in legislative bodies throughout his career.

In December 1779, Madison was chosen a delegate to the Continental Congress. He took his seat in March 1780 and quickly established himself as one of the most effective and valuable members of that body. For most of the next forty years, he would play an important, and at times major, role in the critical years of the early republic.

Life’s Work

In the Continental Congress, James Madison took a nationalist position. He often collaborated with Alexander Hamilton. He labored hard to strengthen the government and amend the Articles of Confederation to give it the power to levy duties. Madison wrote an earnest address to the states, pleading for national unity, but it was to no avail, and the amendment failed.

In 1784, Madison was elected to the Virginia legislature, where he worked to defend religious freedom. His famous “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” helped defeat a scheme by Patrick Henry to impose a general assessment for the support of religion. Madison then pushed Jefferson’s “Bill for Religious Liberty” to passage, completing the disestablishment of the Anglican Church begun in 1779. Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance” foreshadowed the clause on religious liberty in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Madison was a delegate to the Annapolis Convention of 1786, and he was named to the Virginia delegation to attend the federal convention at Philadelphia in 1787. When the Constitutional Convention opened in May, Madison had prepared an extensive proposal to revise the Articles of Confederation. The Virginia Plan, presented by Edmund Randolph but based on Madison’s ideas, became the basis of discussion throughout the summer months. Madison led the movement to grant the federal government greater authority over national affairs. While he did not always carry his point of view, he clearly was the dominating figure in the convention, so that he is often called the “Father of the Constitution.” The journal that he kept on the convention is the most complete record of the proceedings available.

Madison also played a prominent role in securing the ratification of the Constitution in Virginia. His influence was crucial in overcoming the opposition of Patrick Henry and George Mason. In retrospect, perhaps his most important work was in cooperating with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in writing a series of essays for New York newspapers that were later collected and published in 1788 as The Federalist, also known as the Federalist papers. Madison wrote nearly thirty of the eighty-five essays, which are justly celebrated today as still the most authoritative commentary on the US Constitution and a major contribution to political science. His most notable contributions were his reflections on the plural society in numbers ten and fifty-one; the dual nature of the new government, federal in extent of powers and national in operation, in number thirty-nine; and the interrelationship of checks and balances in number forty-eight.

Madison was elected to the House of Representatives, and within a week of entering the House in April 1789, he began the work of establishing a strong and effective central government. He led the movement to establish revenues for the new government by imposing import duties; he presented a motion to create the Departments of State, Treasury, and War and gave the executive broad powers over these offices; and he proposed a set of constitutional amendments that eventually became the Bill of Rights.

Madison served in the first five Congresses. His inherent conservatism manifested itself in his growing opposition to Hamilton’s fiscal policies and the government’s pro-British tendency. After 1790, Madison organized the congressional alliances that became the basis for the first national political parties. More than Jefferson, Madison deserves to be called the founder of the modern-day Democratic Party.

On September 15, 1794, at the age of forty-three, Madison married a young widow, Dolley Payne Todd. It proved to be a long and happy marriage, and the young wife, Dolley Madison, gained a reputation as a famous hostess during her husband’s presidential years.

Madison retired from Congress in 1797. Federalists, taking advantage of the hysteria generated by the XYZ Affair and the quasi-war with France, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts to curb foreign- and native-born critics of the administration. Madison and Jefferson drafted resolutions adopted by the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures in 1798. These resolutions not only criticized the Alien and Sedition Acts but also struck down the doctrine of nullification for states’ rights. In later years, Madison argued that these statements were protests intended primarily to secure the cooperation of the states, but they also expressed positions dangerous to the unity of the new republic. Nevertheless, these resolutions contributed to the overthrow of the Federalists and secured the election of Jefferson in 1800. Jefferson brought his longtime friend into the government as his secretary of state.

Later, in 1807, Madison became president, primarily a result of support from Jefferson, but his presidency was beset by many problems in the early years of the nineteenth century. Foreign relations with Britain, which had been deteriorating for many years, came to a breaking point in 1812. The final straw for Madison was the Royal Navy "impressing," or seizing and putting to work, American sailors. In what has often been termed the Second War for American Independence, the United States saw the burning of its newly built capital, Washington, and a failed invasion of Canada, among other humiliations. Despite this, the young country managed victory in 1814 and in so doing gained pride, territory, and a measure of security against the British-aligned Potowatomis, Shawnees, and other Plains Indian nations.

In the closing years of his presidency, Madison signed bills establishing a standing army and enlarging the naval establishment, reauthorizing the Bank of the United States, and passing a protective tariff. He did, however, veto an internal improvement bill as unconstitutional. He left office on March 4, 1817, and except for participation in the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1829, his political career was over. He lived his remaining years quietly at Montpelier. Occasionally, he offered advice to his successor, James Monroe, and he wrote defending his actions over his long career. He also devoted time to arranging his notes on the Constitutional Convention for publication. They were not published until 1840, four years after his death on June 28, 1836.

Significance

James Madison was truly a nation-builder. Perhaps the outstanding political theorist and political writer in a generation that produced many first-rate thinkers, Madison often carried his position by sheer brilliance and cool, dispassionate reasoning. He lacked the dramatic style often useful in public life. He advanced because of his abilities and not because of his personality. He was a first-rate legislator, one of the most effective this country has produced. He was, on the other hand, only an average administrator. He failed to provide dynamic leadership during his presidency, especially during the War of 1812.

There are certain consistent themes throughout his career. First, there were his efforts to secure freedom of conscience and other personal rights and liberties. Second, he consistently supported and advanced the republican form of government based broadly on the popular will. Finally, throughout his life his devotion to the union was paramount. One of the last actions of his life was to write a document entitled “Advice to My Country.” It concluded with the advice that the union “be cherished and perpetuated.”

Bibliography

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