JAMES MADISON

JAMES MADISON

To James Madison, often called “The Father of ce Constitution,” America owes much. Besides ae Constitution, his name is principally associated wkh the “Federalist Papers” and the War of 1812. A fourth highly important factor in his life was half a century of close association with Thomas Jefferson.

Madison was bom in Virginia on March 16, 1751, die oldest of the ten children of wealthy Jxnes Madison and Nelly Conway.

As a child be was delicate, slight, and locked within himself. His education was obtained privately and at the College of New Jersey, later to become Princeton University.

Madison’s political experience began at twenty- three, when he became a member of his local Committee of Safety for defense of the Virginia cofany. In 1776, he took part in the Virginia Convention which met to make that former royal province a state. As a member of his state’s first Assembly, he tried to destroy the power of the Episcopal Church. He served on Governor Jefferson’s Council and was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. He was considered the ablest member of the Congress of the Confederation. In the years 1783-86, he returned to the Virginia Assembly where he took up Jefferson’s battle for separation of church and state.

The purpose of the 1787 Constitutional Convention was to build a Federal structure to take the place of the loose union of thirteen states under the Articles of Confederation. Madison wrote to Jefferson that, in order to make the new national government work, jealous state governments should not be allowed to block it.

Many leaders who favored sweeping revolution, such as Jefferson, were not able to attend the Convention in Philadelphia. The fifty-five men who produced the Constitution were, for the most part, lawyers and property owners. Most of them did not believe in pure democracy; they did not trust the people that much. Yet their long and bloody revolt against the king, their interest in protecting private property, and their love of individual freedom produced a remarkable gift to civilization. The British Prime Minister Gladstone once called the American Constitution “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

Madison kept a day-by-day record of the secret meetings of the Constitutional Convention, pub- fished after his death. In his observations of this historic gathering, the quiet, modest man revealed his deep understanding of the organization of political societies.

Jefferson, who hated violence and harsh treatment of men, worried because the new Constitution did not clearly state that personal rights must be protected. James Madison then offered for consideration the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known later as the Bill of Rights. Within two years, these were approved by three- fourths of the states to become the law of the hod.

With Hamilton and Jay, Madison wrote the mastasterful literary compositions called “The Federalist Papers” in support of the Convention’s work. Of the two groups that differed over the «de of the national government—the Federalists, wanting a strong central authority, and the Anti- Federalists—he belonged to the former. It is «range, therefore, that he ever grew so close to Jefferson. Yet for eight years he was Jefferson’s Secretary of State and in 1809 followed him in the White House.The stated reason for the War of 1812 was the British Orders-in-Council which again interrupted American ocean commerce during the struggle between England and France. The real reason for the war was the influence of the so-called “War Hawks”—younger men who had grown up as the Founding Fathers were dying out. To get some glory for themselves, they wanted to acquire Canada and the Floridas for the United States— even if they had to risk war to get them.

Before his first term was over, Madison could no longer resist the “War Hawks’ ” pressure and asked Congress for a Declaration of War against England. All of the New England states, the last strength of the Federalists, were against war, for their shipping would be sure to suffer. In 1814, they called the Hartford Convention to consider their grievances and even talked of leaving the Union. They would lend no money to the Government and resisted orders to help with national defense. Most people were so angered by this behavior that after the war the Federalist Party died, never to live again.

“Mr. Madison’s War,” as the Federalists called it, settled nothing. But it did unite the people and give birth to a new nationalism. America was growing up into an imperialist power, as Hamilton had expected it would. Her population had jumped from 3,900,000 in 1790 to 7,239,000 in 1810. New states were being added. Roads were opening up the West. Fulton’s steamboat appeared in 1807. Canals were being dug. The first protective tariff was passed in 1816. The only cloud in the sky was the black man’s slavery.

In middle life Madison married Dolly Payne Todd, a widow many years younger than he. Dolly Madison was one of the most popular First Ladies, and shone in Washington society even after her husband left office.

Madison’s closing years, like those of Jefferson and Monroe, were troubled by financial difficulties. He was refused a private loan by the very Bank of the United States he had supported while in office. On June 28, 1836, he died at Montpellier, his beautiful home.