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• Born: 16 March 1751
• Birthplace: Port Conway, Virginia
• Died: 28 June 1836
• Best Known As: "The Father of the Constitution"

James Madison is considered the most influential contributor to the United States Constitution, and he worked vigorously to see it ratified. He also contributed to The Federalist Papers to explain his advocacy for a strong federal government. He served as a member of Congress and as Jefferson's Secretary of State before winning the presidential election of 1808. Madison served two terms in office, losing much of his prestige over his leadership during the War of 1812. During the war, Madison was forced to flee Washington when the British army invaded. His wife, Dolley stayed behind and salvaged national treasures.

Madison was the smallest U.S. president, standing 5" 4" and weighing about 100 pounds... His first vice president, George Clinton, died in office in 1812; his second vice president, Elbridge Gerry, died in office in 1814... Madison was the last surviving signer of the Constitution... He was succeeded in office by James Monroe.

(1751–1836), statesman, fourth U.S. president

After growing up at his lifelong home, Montpelier, in Orange County, Virginia, and graduating from the College of New Jersey in 1771, Madison entered politics. As a Confederation congressman (1780–83 and 1787–89), he favored strengthening the national union but never endorsed Robert Morris's fiscal agenda. Service in the Virginia legislature (1784–86) convinced him that individual liberties needed protection from majority tyranny.

Having studied ancient and modern confederacies (thereby becoming the best‐prepared delegate at the 1787 Constitutional Convention), Madison concluded that republics would perish without strong central governments. To help achieve ratification, he penned twenty‐nine of the celebrated Federalist Papers. No. 10, his most famous essay, argued that large republics, if properly constructed, could endure best because conflicting factions would make majority tyranny unlikely. During the first Federal Congress, Madison drafted the Bill of Rights. In the 1790s, he resisted Federalist financial and diplomatic policies in favor of perpetuating an agricultural republic friendly to France. His opposition culminated in his authorship of the 1798 Virginia Resolutions, which called for repeal of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

As Thomas Jefferson's secretary of state (1801–09), Madison tried to force Great Britain to grant neutral rights through economic coercion. When this policy failed, Madison as president obtained a declaration of war in 1812. Blame for the military disasters that ensued—including botched invasions of Canada and the burning of Washington, D.C.—belong to Madison. He failed to prepare the country for hostilities, tolerated incompetent generals, and proved a weak commander in chief. These shortcomings resulted from his inveterate determination to allow neither war nor the threat of war to endanger republicanism or personal rights.

[See also Canada, U.S. Military Involvement in; Civil Liberties and War; Commander in Chief, President as; War of 1812.]

Bibliography

• Ralph Ketcham, James Madison, A Biography, 1971.
• John Stagg, Mr. Madison's War, 1983.
• Lance Banning, The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic, 1995

(b. Port Conway, Va., 16 Mar. 1751; d. Montpelier, Va., 28 June 1836), “father of the Constitution,” coauthor with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay of The Federalist, architect of the Bill of Rights, Secretary of State, 1801–1809, and president of the United States, 1809–1817.

Throughout his career Madison maintained a consistent philosophy regarding the role of the Supreme Court as a key institution able to check legislative excesses by either states or the federal government. As a proponent of constitutional reform in the 1780s, Madison analyzed the weaknesses of the Confederation in his “Vices of the Political Systems of the United States.” The key problem Madison identified was factious majorities in state legislatures. The solution: a national council of revision with the authority to “negative” both state and federal bills. Failing to establish such a council in the Constitutional Convention, Madison accepted in The Federalist, no. 39 the Supreme Court as the institution of the federal government best suited to enforce the limits of the Constitution and federal statutes on state legislative majorities, judicial officers, and executives.

Madison retained this view throughout his life. Following Chief Justice Marshall's decision in McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819, Republicans in Virginia, among them former President Thomas Jefferson and Judge Spencer Roane of the Virginia Court of Appeals, challenged the authority of the Supreme Court to determine the distribution of powers and responsibilities between the state and federal governments. In a letter to Jefferson, Madison responded that the framers intended the Supreme Court to be “the constitutional resort for” deciding which powers belonged to the states and which belonged to the federal government. In similar terms, Madison insisted to Judge Roane that the federal government could review and overrule state courts on constitutional questions.

Likewise Madison earlier supported the responsibility of the Supreme Court to check state executives. He refused, for example, in 1809, to support Pennsylvania Governor Simon Snyder's request for assistance in resisting the decision of the Supreme Court in United States. v. Peters, a decision he told the governor he was legally obligated to enforce.

Madison also, from the drafting of the Constitution, envisioned a role for the Supreme Court as one institution among many that could check the legislative excesses of the federal legislature. In the Virginia Plan introduced by Governor Edmund Randolph at the Constitutional Convention, Madison proposed that the Council of Revision possess the authority to review and “negative” federal as well as state legislation. In Federalist #39 too he articulated his view that in the event of federal legislation contrary to the Constitution, a variety of mechanisms existed to counter it, including, implicitly, federal judicial review.

Following the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 Madison turned not to the Supreme Court but to the state legislatures to protect the citizenry against what he believed to be a unconstitutional exercise of federal legislative authority. Ambiguously phrased in the Virginia Resolution of 1798, two years later Madison drafted clarifying ones. In those resolutions Madison emphasized that while the Supreme Court was one institution that could interpret the Constitution, the state legislatures could at minimum petition Congress to repeal what they deemed unjust or unconstitutional legislation, that those same states could cooperate in a united effort to petition Congress to introduce a constitutional amendment, and that the state legislatures could propose a constitutional amendment to Congress. These actions were, in Madison's view, alternatives to federal judicial review, not replacements of it.

Only once during Madison's lifetime did the Supreme Court strike down a federal statute. In contrast to President Jefferson who vigorously criticized the Court for its decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803), Madison said little. The decision in Marbury was consistent with the widely held view that each department of the federal government had responsibility to guard against encroachments from the other branches. Madison implicitly accepted a broader definition of judicial review and role for the Supreme Court by 1819. Although critical of Marshall's decision in McCulloch v. Maryland, the grounds for his disagreement emphasized Marshall's broad interpretation of federal legislative power. In criticizing the content of the decision, Madison nonetheless accepted the right of the Court to determine the extent of that legislative authority.

Madison's differences in degree with the judgments of Chief Justice Marshall before his retirement did not disrupt his personal friendship with his fellow Virginian. They did, however, influence his efforts to appoint to the Court men who would be more “Republican” and independent of the chief justice. In that Madison experienced only marginal success. Failing to secure the appointment of his first three choices to replace Associate Justice Cushing, who died in 1810, Madison nominated and the Senate confirmed as an associate justice Joseph Story of Massachusetts. Story, arguably the greatest associate justice of the nineteenth century, did not challenge Marshall on either of the two matters Madison desired. He supported Marshall's broad interpretation of federal legislative power and he concurred with Marshall in having only one opinion of the Court rather than the seriatim opinions Madison favored. In this Madison experienced like disappointment in his other Supreme Court appointment. Gabriel Duvall of Maryland likewise supported Marshall during his tenure on the Court.

Madison did, after his term as president, upon occasion, criticize privately the decisions of his fellow Virginian although he remained true to his defense of the Court as a final arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution. In particular, Madison disagreed with Marshall's broad interpretation of federal legislative power in McCulloch v. Maryland even as he affirmed the responsibility of the Court to act. As he stated it to Jefferson in 1823, “I have never yielded my original opinion as expressed in Federalist #39.”

Madison also stood firm in the 1830s in opposition to the nullifiers in his own state and throughout the South in insisting that neither nullification nor secession were constitutional under the system of law he helped establish nearly fifty years earlier.

Bibliography

• William T. Hutchinson et. al., eds. The Papers of James Madison (1962–).
• Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (1971).
• Jack N. Rakove, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic (1990).
• Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 2 vols. (1922)

— Robert A. Rutland

Madison, James (1751-1836) 4th president of the United States (1809-17), and a major framer of the Constitution born in King George County, Virginia. An outspoken proponent of civil and religious liberties, Madison was involved in the Revolution from its earliest days. As a Confederation congressman (1780-83; 1878-89) and member of the Virginia state legislature, he acquired a reputation for mastery of legislative business and defender of individual liberties against the tyranny of the majority. Madison believed firmly in the need for a strong central government. As a delegate to the Constitutional Convention (1787), he made crucial contributions to the writing of the Constitution and is generally acknowledged as the most important of its framers. To help achieve its ratification, he wrote, with Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, arguing in his most famous essay that the conflicting factions of large republics would lessen the likelihood of majority tyranny. During the First Federal Congress (1789), Madison drafted the Bill of Rights. In the 1790s Madison aligned himself with Thomas Jefferson in opposing the Federalist financial policies of Alexander Hamilton, advocating that the new nation establish itself as an agrarian society friendly to France, not Britain. In 1798, during the Quasi-War with France, he authored the Virginia Resolutions, which called for repeal of the Alien and Sedition Acts. As Jefferson's secretary of state (1801-09), Madison sought to pursue a policy of neutrality between Great Britain and France, but the trade embargo he adopted failed to achieve this desired end and was repealed. Once he became president, Madison was forced to obtain a declaration of war. The resulting War of 1812 , for which the still-fledgling nation was ill-prepared and which failed to resolve the issues that gave it rise, has since been called “Mr. Madison's War.” Its disasters—among them, the botched invasion of Canada and the burning of Washington, D.C.—forever tarnished his presidency. When his tenure of office ended, Madison retired to his home at Montpelier, Virginia.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

James Madison (1751-1836), the fourth president of the United States, was one of the principal founders of America's republican form of government.

James Madison lived all his life in the county of Orange, Va., on a 5,000-acre plantation that produced tobacco and grains and was worked by perhaps 100 slaves. Though Madison abhorred slavery and had no use for the aristocratic airs of Virginia society, he remained a Virginia planter, working within the traditional political system of family-based power and accepting the responsibility this entailed. Like his neighbors and friends Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, Madison worked creatively if not always consistently to make republican government a reality amid a social system and a slave economy often deeply at odds with principles of self-government and individual fulfillment.

After learning the fundamentals at home, Madison went to preparatory school and then to the College of New Jersey at Princeton. The bookish boy got a thorough classical education as he learned Latin and Greek. Since all of his teachers were clergymen, he was also continually exposed to Christian thought and precepts. He received his bachelor of arts degree in 1771 and remained for six months studying under President John Witherspoon, whose intellectual independence, Scottish practicality, and moral earnestness profoundly influenced him. Madison also had gained a wide acquaintance with the new thought of the 18th century and admired John Locke, Isaac Newton, Jonathan Swift, David Hume, Voltaire, and others who fashioned the Enlightenment world view, which became his own.

American Revolution

From his first consciousness of public affairs Madison opposed British colonial measures. He served on the Orange County Committee of Safety from 1774, and two years later he was elected to the Virginia convention that resolved for independence and drafted a new state constitution. His special contribution was in strengthening the clause on religious freedom to proclaim "liberty of conscience for all" - an exceptionally liberal view. Elected to the governor's council in 1777, he lived in Williamsburg for two years, dealing with the routine problems of the Revolutionary War. He also began a lifelong friendship with Governor Thomas Jefferson.

Madison's skill led to his 1780 election to the Continental Congress, where he served for nearly four years. During the first year he became one of the leaders of the so-called nationalist group, which saw fulfillment of the Revolution possible only under a strong central government. Madison thus supported the French alliance and Benjamin Franklin's policies in Europe. He also worked persistently to strengthen the powers of Congress. By the end of his service in 1783, after ratification of the peace treaty and demobilization of the army, Madison was among the half dozen leading promoters of stronger national government. He had also earned a reputation as an exceedingly well-informed and effective debater and legislator.

Constitution Making

After three years in Virginia helping enact Jefferson's bill for religious freedom and other reform measures, Madison worked toward the Constitutional Convention, which gathered in Philadelphia in May 1787. There, Madison spent the most fruitful months of his life. He advocated the Virginia plan for giving real power to the national government, guided George Washington and other Virginia delegates to support this plan, worked with James Wilson and other nationalists, accepted compromises, and - altogether - became the most constructive member of the convention.

Madison's basic theoretical contribution was his argument that an enlarged, strengthened national government, far from being the path to despotism its opponents feared, was in fact the surest way to protect freedom and expand the principle of self-government. His concept of "factions" in a large republic counteracting each other, built into a constitution of checks and balances, became the vital, operative principle of the American government. In addition to taking part in the debates, Madison took notes on them; published posthumously, these afford the only full record of the convention.

Establishment of the New Government

Madison shared leadership in the ratification struggle with Alexander Hamilton. He formulated strategy for the supporters of the Constitution (Federalists), wrote portions of the Federalist Papers, and engaged Patrick Henry in dramatic and finally successful debate at the Virginia ratifying convention (June 1788). Then, as Washington's closest adviser and as a member of the first Federal House of Representatives, Madison led in establishing the new government. He drafted Washington's inaugural address and helped the President make the precedent-setting appointments of his first term.

In Congress, Madison proposed new revenue laws, ensured the President's control over the executive branch, and proposed the Bill of Rights. From the Annapolis Convention in 1786, when he had assumed leadership of the movement for a new constitution, through the end of the first session of Congress (October 1789), Madison was the guiding, creative force in establishing the new, republican government.

Growth of the Party System

However, Hamilton's financial program, presented in January 1790, and Madison's quick opposition to it marked the beginning of Madison's coleadership, with Jefferson, of what became the Democratic-Republican party. Madison opposed the privileged position Hamilton accorded to commerce and wealth, especially when it became apparent that this power could awe and sometimes control the organs of government.

Madison and Jefferson saw republican government as resting on the virtues of the people, sustained by the self-reliance of an agricultural economy and the benefits of public education, with government itself remaining "mild" and responsive to grass-roots impulses. This attitude became the foundation of their political party, which was fundamentally at odds with Hamilton's centralized concept of government, requiring strong leadership.

As Madison and Jefferson organized opposition to Hamilton, they seized on widespread public sympathy for France's expansive, revolutionary exploits to promote republican sentiment in the United States. The Federalists, on the other hand, cherished America's renewed commercial bonds with Britain and feared disruptive, entangling involvement with France. Madison opposed Jay's Treaty, feeling that it would align the United States with England in a way that was dependent and betrayed republican principles. Thus, the final ratification of Jay's Treaty (April 1796), over Madison's bitter opposition, marked his declining influence in Congress. A year later he retired to Virginia.

Madison viewed with alarm the bellicose attitude toward France of John Adams's administration. He felt that the "XYZ" hysteria, resulting in the Alien and Sedition Acts, severely threatened free government. With Jefferson, he executed the protest against these acts embodied in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. Madison's drafts of the milder Virginia Resolutions and the Report of 1800 defending them are his most complete expression of the rights of the states under the Constitution. He did not, however, advocate either nullification or secession, as some later claimed. The political frustrations of the years 1793-1800 were relieved by Madison's happy marriage in 1794 to the vivacious widow Dolley (or Dolly) Payne Todd, whose name became a symbol for effusive hospitality in Washington social life.

Secretary of State

Madison worked hard to secure Jefferson's election as president in 1800 and was appointed secretary of state. With the President and the new secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, he made up the Republican triumvirate that guided the nation for eight years. Madison skillfully took advantage of Napoleon's misfortune in the West Indies to purchase Louisiana in 1803 and supported suppression of the Barbary pirates by American naval squadrons (1803-1805). The renewed war between France and Britain, however, became a major crisis, as both powers inflicted heavy damage on American shipping. Britain also engaged in the outrageous impressment of American sailors. Finding appeals to international law useless, and lacking power to protect American trade, Madison promoted the 1807 embargo, which barred American ships from the high seas. However, an unexpected capacity by the belligerents to replace American trade, and substantial smuggling and other evasions by Americans, prevented the embargo from having real force. Madison therefore accepted its repeal at the end of Jefferson's administration.

The President

Elected president in 1808, Madison continued his struggle to find peace with honor amid world war. Republican doctrine, which he shared in part, precluded a heavy military buildup, so Madison's administration lurched from one ineffective commercial policy to another. At the same time, interparty squabbling, Cabinet shuffles, and powerful opposition in Congress undermined his authority. Finally, in November 1811, receiving only insults and deceit from Europe and most heavily injured by Britain, Madison asked Congress for war. "War Hawks," led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, spurred Congress to some inadequate defense measures, and, as final peace attempts failed, war with England was declared in June 1812. Bitter, active opposition to the war by virtually all New England preachers and politicians (near treasonable in Madison's eyes) severely hindered the war effort and added to the President's difficulties. He nonetheless was reelected easily in 1812.

War of 1812

Madison hoped that American zeal and the vulnerability of Canada would lead to a swift victory. However, the surrender of one American army at Detroit, the defeat of another on the Niagara frontier, and the disgraceful retreat of yet another before Montreal blasted these hopes. Then victories at sea, and the 1813 defeat of the British by Commodore O. H. Perry on Lake Erie and by Gen. W. H. Harrison on the Thames battlefield, buoyed American hopes. Yet the chaos in American finance, Napoleon's debacles in Europe, and another fruitless military campaign in New York State left Madison disheartened. His enemies gloated over his nearly fatal illness in June 1813. New England threatened secession, and the republican government seemed likely to fail the test of survival in war.

The summer of 1814 brought to the American battlefields thousands of battle-hardened British troops. They fought vastly improved American armies to a standstill on the Niagara frontier and appeared in Chesapeake Bay intent on capturing Washington. Madison unwisely entrusted defense of the city to a sulking secretary of war, John Armstrong, and to an inept general, William H. Winder. A small but well-disciplined British force defeated the disorganized Americans at Bladensburg as Madison watched from a nearby hillside. His humiliation was complete when he saw flames of the burning Capitol and White House while fleeing across the Potomac River. However, after he returned to Washington 3 days later, he was soon cheered by news of the British defeat in Baltimore Harbor. News also arrived that two American forces had driven back a powerful British force coming down Lake Champlain.

Thus, with Armstrong dismissed and a new secretary of the Treasury, Alexander J. Dallas, restoring American credit, Madison felt that his peace commission in Ghent could demand decent terms from Britain. On Christmas Eve, 1814, a peace treaty was signed restoring the prewar boundaries and ensuring American national self-respect. Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans achieved on the battlefield what the treaty makers recognized at Ghent: Britain had lost any remaining hope of dominating its former colonies or blocking United States expansion into the Mississippi Valley.

In his last two years as president, Madison urged a sweeping program of internal development. Madison's program, though only partially enacted by Congress, showed that republican principles were not incompatible with positive action by the Federal government. He retired from office in March 1817, enjoying a popularity unimaginable a few years earlier.

Years of Retirement

In happy retirement at Montpelier, Madison practiced scientific agriculture, helped Jefferson found the University of Virginia, advised Monroe on foreign policy, arranged his papers for posthumous publication, and maintained wide correspondence. He returned officially to public life only to take part in the Virginia constitutional convention of 1829. However, informally, he wrote influentially in support of a mildly protective tariff and the national bank, among other issues. Most important, he lent intellectual leadership and vast prestige to the fight against nullification, which in Madison's eyes betrayed the benefits of the union for which he had fought all his life. But his health slowly declined, forcing him more and more to be a silent observer. By the time of his death on June 28, 1836, he was the last of the great founders of the American Republic.

Further Reading

Madison's writings are collected in W.T. Hutchinson and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison (6 vols. to date, 1962-1969). The standard biography is Irving Brant, James Madison (6 vols., 1941-1961); a one volume abridgment of this is The Fourth President: The Life of James Madison (1970). Another account is Ralph Ketcham, James Madison (1971). Adrienne Koch, Jefferson and Madison: The Great Collaboration (1950), discusses Madison's views on selected topics. On the elections of 1808 and 1812 see Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 1 (1971).

(1751-1836) US politician and political theorist. Madison entered Virginia politics in 1776 and national politics in 1780. He was instrumental in setting up the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and played a large role both in writing the Constitution and in its defence in the Federalist Papers, written jointly with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In his successful campaign to persuade Virginia to ratify the Constitution, he promised to promote amendments to it protecting individual rights against the state: these became part of the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments, ratified in 1791). As the first party system developed, Madison joined Jefferson's agrarian and (relatively) democratic coalition; he was Jefferson's Secretary of State 1801-9, and succeeded him as President 1809-17. He was the shortest President of the United States to date (Lincoln was the tallest).

Madison's numbers of the Federalist Papers raise issues of enduring importance in political theory. Most opponents of ratification believed that the federal government would have excessive powers. In papers nos. 10 and 45-51, Madison argues that the horizontal division between states and the federal government, and the vertical division among legislature, executive, and judiciary, are the checks and balances which are necessary (and sufficient) to balance democracy and liberty. Madison believed that unchecked majority rule (as he perceived it in several of the state legislatures of the time) could lead to expropriation of the rich by the poor, or of creditors by debtors, for instance through ‘a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project’. Madison's is one of the clearest statements of the ‘tyranny of the majority’; but he was wrong to describe the US Constitution as either a necessary or a sufficient curb of it. In particular, it could do nothing for groups which were neither a local nor a national majority, such as black Americans.

For more information on James Madison, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Mar. 16, 1751, Port Conway, Va.
• Political party: Democratic-Republican
• Education: College of New Jersey (Princeton), B.A., 1771
• Military service: none
• Previous government service: Committee of Safety, 1774; Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1776; Virginia House of Delegates, 1777, 1784–86; Virginia Governor's Council, 1778–80; Continental Congress, 1780–83; Annapolis Convention, 1786; federal Constitutional Convention, 1787; Virginia constitutional ratifying convention, 1788; U.S. House of Representatives, 1789–97; U.S. secretary of state, 1801–9
• Elected President, 1808; served, 1809–17
• Subsequent public service: Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1829; rector, University of Virginia, 1826–36
• Died: June 28, 1836, Montpelier, Va.

James Madison is known as the “father of the Constitution” because he played a major role at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He drafted the Virginia Plan, with which the convention began its work, and he was instrumental in adding to the powers of Congress and the Presidency and in providing for a system of checks and balances among the branches of government. His own Presidency, however, was beset with difficulties, largely because of the workings of the checks and balances he had helped to create.

Madison grew up on his affluent family's plantation, Montpelier. Educated at the College of New Jersey, he then studied law and became a member of Orange County's Committee of Safety in 1774, at the start of the Revolution. At Virginia's constitutional convention of 1776 he fought for a clause protecting freedom of religion. He served in the Governor's Council for most of the remainder of the war. In the 1780s, as a member of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation, he advocated strengthening its powers (particularly the power of taxation) to provide more effective government. In 1785, in the Virginia House of Delegates, he fought successfully for separation of church and state. With Alexander Hamilton he helped to organize the Annapolis Convention of 1786, a meeting of five states that proposed stronger powers for the national government in interstate commerce, and the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.

At that convention Madison helped put together the key compromises that kept the convention going, though the delegates rejected a number of his proposals, including a council of state to share executive power, a congressional veto on state laws, a Senate share in the Presidential power to pardon, a Supreme Court power to impeach the President, and a Supreme Court share in the Presidential veto power. Madison also unsuccessfully opposed any extension of the slave trade, which the convention decided to protect until 1808. Madison later published his notes on the convention debates, which are today the primary source for historians studying the convention.

Madison teamed up with Hamilton and John Jay to write The Federalist Papers, a set of essays defending the Constitution against attack by its critics and calling for its ratification. Madison wrote under the pen name Publius. He led the pro-Constitution faction at the Virginia ratifying convention, opposing the Anti-Federalists led by Patrick Henry and James Monroe.

Madison was passed over by the Virginia legislature for election to the U.S. Senate because the state legislators doubted that he would “obey instructions” on how to vote in the Senate. In 1788, however, he defeated James Monroe in the first elections held for the House of Representatives. As a member of the first Congress, Madison fulfilled a campaign pledge by proposing a Bill of Rights to protect civil liberties from actions of the national government. He also drafted legislation that organized the Departments of Foreign Affairs, War, and the Treasury. Although he held no official title, Madison served as floor leader of the House for President George Washington's administration during the 1st Congress. However, he soon came to oppose the financial program of the first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, particularly the protective tariff (a tax on imported goods), as well as Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality, which kept the United States out of the war between Great Britain and France. Together with Thomas Jefferson, Madison organized an opposition faction that later became the Democratic-Republican party, and they attracted to it most of the Anti-Federalists of the 1780s.

During the undeclared naval war with France in 1798 the Federalist Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to publish criticism of government war policies. In response, in 1798 Madison and Jefferson wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which stated that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional and which implied that the states need not enforce them. This was a reversal of Madison's strong “nationalist” position of the 1780s, when he wanted national law to be supreme over state laws.

After Jefferson was elected President in 1800, Madison became his secretary of state. He defended the Louisiana Purchase and supported Jefferson's decision to ask Congress to pass an Embargo Act, which would ban trade with European nations while they were at war. His negotiations with Spain to acquire Florida were unsuccessful.

In 1808 the Republican congressional caucus nominated Madison for the Presidency. He defeated his Federalist opponent, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, 122 electoral votes to 47.

Foreign policy preoccupied the Madison Presidency; the President acted as his own secretary of state until the appointment of James Monroe in 1811 to replace the incompetent Robert Smith. In 1809 Congress repealed Jefferson's Embargo Act, which forbade carrying foreign goods on American ships, and replaced it with the Non-Intercourse Act, which banned all trade with England and France until those countries ceased interfering with U.S. shipping. Madison declared that trade with Great Britain would be permitted but soon found that assurances that U.S. ships would be left alone were not honored by the British government. Madison issued a nonintercourse proclamation against Great Britain in November 1810. Congress then passed a bill that ended all restrictions on U.S. trade with Europe. It promised, however, that if the British would cease harassing American ships, the United States would bar trade with its enemy France, and if the French would cease harassment, the United States would bar trade with Great Britain. French emperor Napoleon promised freedom of the seas to U.S. ships, and Madison issued a nonintercourse proclamation against the British. Then Napoleon betrayed Madison by issuing new decrees against U.S. shipping, forcing the President to admit to Congress that his policy had failed.

The “war hawks” in Congress urged Madison to declare war against Great Britain, and they pressed for an invasion of Canada. Although the nation was unprepared for war and large parts of New England opposed it, on June 1, 1812, Madison bowed to the war hawks in his party and sent a secret message to Congress asking for a declaration of war. Not everyone approved of war, and the declaration carried in the House by 79 to 49 and in the Senate by only 19 to 13. Madison signed the declaration on June 18, 1812. He had already been unanimously renominated by the Republican caucus, and in the general election he defeated DeWin Clinton.

The War of 1812 was a disaster. A U.S. invasion of Canada failed, and much of the Northwest Territory, including the key outpost at Detroit, was retaken by the British. By 1813 the British navy had bottled up U.S. naval vessels and blockaded the American coast. After defeating Napoleon in Europe, the British were able to transfer 14 new regiments to the war effort in the United States. They marched into Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814, and burned the Capitol, the President's House, and other public buildings in retaliation for a U.S. raid on Toronto the year before. When Madison returned to the capital, he took up residence in the Octagon House, near the ruined President's House. Congress reassembled in the old patents and post office building next to the ruined Capitol Building. Disgruntled Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, in December 1814 to demand that Madison end the war. Republicans claimed that Federalists at the meeting, known as the Hartford Convention, were plotting to secede from the Union.

But the news was not all bad. Heroic resistance by the defenders of Fort McHenry prevented the British from capturing Baltimore and inspired Francis Scott Key, who was imprisoned on a British ship attacking the fort, to write “The Star Spangled Banner.” The British suffered major defeats in northern New York State and Mobile, Alabama. Then Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans. Even before that battle, the British and U.S. peace negotiators had signed the Treaty of Ghent (though news had not yet reached the United States), and Madison urged the Senate to consent to it. The United States failed to gain any of its war aims and was lucky to keep all its territory intact. But Americans had not conceded any rights to a greater power and had demonstrated their willingness to fight for freedom of the seas.

At the end of the war Madison turned to domestic matters. He called for a larger military, a protective tariff, a system of roads and canals, and a national university. Congress authorized a stronger military establishment and passed the first protective tariff in U.S. history but did not act on the bill for a university—something Madison had tried to put in the Constitution in 1787. He also won congressional approval to charter the Second Bank of the United States.

Madison retired to his plantation at Montpelier in 1817. He participated in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829, organized his notes of the federal convention of 1787 for publication, and was rector of the University of Virginia from 1826 until his death in 1836.

See also Creation of the Presidency; Jefferson, Thomas; Madison, Dolley; Monroe, James; Washington, George

Sources

• Irving Brant, James Madison (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961).
• Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1990).
• Jack N. Rakove, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1990).
• Robert A. Rutland, James Madison: The Founding Father (New York: Macmillan, 1987)

(1751-1836), fourth president of the United States and political theorist. One of the less colorful but most important of America's Founding Fathers, Madison may rightly be considered the principal architect of the political system defined by the U.S. Constitution. His extraordinary career in public life extended over forty years, intersecting every major phase of the history of the American Revolution and the early Republic. Although he served in a number of high offices, including secretary of state (1801-1809) and president (1809-1817), he is best remembered for his accomplishments as a political theorist and for his related role in launching the Constitution during the late 1780s and early 1790s.

Historians generally recognize the soft-spoken, diminutive, and scholarly Madison as the best prepared and most influential of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Drawing on his extensive study of past republics, as well as his recent experience as a delegate to both the Virginia legislature and the national Congress under the Articles of Confederation, Madison led the search at Philadelphia for what he later called "a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government." He hoped that by creating a new national government that rested directly on the people rather than on the states, the delegates could overcome the factional disorder, confusion, and injustice that prevailed during the postrevolutionary years without endangering liberty or compromising the American commitment to representative government.

Although the document that emerged from the convention disappointed Madison in some respects, he worked tirelessly for its ratification. He coauthored the brilliant collection of essays explaining and defending the Constitution, The Federalist, that is today still studied as a masterpiece of political theory. And in the Virginia ratifying convention he outdebated and outmaneuvered a formidable antagonist, Patrick Henry, to win narrow acceptance of the Constitution in that critical state.

Elected to the First Congress under the new regime, Madison, who initially enjoyed the trust and respect of President George Washington, immediately became the pivotal figure in drafting laws and establishing precedents that gave tangible shape and force to the new Constitution. Most important, following the advice of his close friend Thomas Jefferson, he guided the process that would produce the first ten amendments, now known as the Bill of Rights. Then, fearful that the new government might be corrupted by aggressive nationalists--principally his collaborator on The Federalist Alexander Hamilton--Madison joined Jefferson in opposing the Federalist administrations of both Washington and his successor John Adams. Most modern historians see significant discontinuity in his career, but Madison defended this apparent retreat from his earlier nationalism as necessary to preserve the Constitution as it had been understood during the ratification process.

After 1800, when the Jeffersonians defeated the Federalists in a watershed election, Madison served eight years as Jefferson's secretary of state. His two terms as president followed. Most historians consider Madison to have been a weak chief executive, citing his leadership during the War of 1812 as particularly inept. Nevertheless, the young nation emerged from that "Second War for Independence" with a new measure of unity and self-confidence. Madison thus enjoyed tremendous popularity during his last years as president and his nineteen years in retirement, when he was widely revered for his role both in founding and in securing the first great modern republic.

Bibliography:

Drew R. McCoy, The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (1989); Robert A. Rutland, James Madison: The Founding Father (1987).

Author:

Drew R. McCoy

See also Bill of Rights; Conservatism; Constitution; Elections: 1808 , 1812; Federalist Papers; Philadelphia Convention; Ratification of the Constitution; Revolution. For events during Madison's administration, see Fletcher v. Peck ;Impressment Controversy; Tecumseh; War Hawks; War of 1812.

1751–1836, 4th President of the United States (1809–17), b. Port Conway, Va.

Early Career

A member of the Virginia planter class, he attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton Univ.), graduating in 1771. Like George Washington and others, he opposed the colonial measures of the British. His distinctive contribution to the colonial cause was a deep knowledge and understanding of government and political philosophy—resources that first proved their value in 1776 when Madison helped to draft a constitution for the new state of Virginia.

He served in the Continental Congress (1780–83, 1787) and represented his county in the Virginia legislature (1784–86), where he played a prominent part in disestablishing the Anglican Church. During this time he watched the ineffectual floundering of Congress under the Articles of Confederation with apprehension and became convinced of the necessity for a strong national authority.

Master Builder of the Constitution

Madison played important role in bringing about the conference between Maryland and Virginia concerning navigation of the Potomac. The meetings at Alexandria and Mt. Vernon in 1785 led to the Annapolis Convention in 1786, and at that conference he endorsed New Jersey's motion to call a Constitutional Convention for May, 1787. With Alexander Hamilton he became the leading spokesman for a thorough reorganization of the existing government, and his influence on the Virginia plan, which advocated a strong central government, is evident.

At the convention his skills in political science and his persuasive logic made him the chief architect of the new governmental structure and earned him the title “master builder of the Constitution.” His journals are the principal source of later knowledge of the convention. He fought to get the Constitution adopted. He contributed with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to the brilliantly polemical papers of The Federalist, and in Virginia he led the forces for the Constitution against the opposition of Patrick Henry and George Mason.

Congressman

As a Representative from Virginia (1789–97), he had a hand in getting the new government established and was a strong advocate of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution (the Bill of Rights). Yet, although modern historians have demonstrated the conservative nature of the Constitution and its founders, Madison was an opponent of the policies of the conservative wing in the Washington administration, a steadfast enemy of Alexander Hamilton and his financial measures, and a supporter of Thomas Jefferson. He especially deplored Hamilton's frank Anglophilia. After the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, Madison attacked these measures and prepared the protesting Virginia resolutions (see Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions).

Presidency

When Jefferson triumphed in the election of 1800, Madison became (1801) his Secretary of State. He served through both of Jefferson's terms, and he was Jefferson's choice as presidential candidate. As President, Madison had to deal with the results of the foreign policy that, as Secretary of State, he had helped to shape. The Embargo Act of 1807 was in effect dissolved by Macon's Bill No. 2. The bill provided, however, that if either Great Britain or France should remove restrictions on American trade, the President was empowered to reimpose the trade embargo on the other.

Madison, accepting an ambiguous French statement as a bona fide revocation of the Napoleonic decrees on trade, reinstated the trade embargo with Great Britain, an act that helped bring on the War of 1812. This move alone, however, did not bring about the war with Great Britain; equally significant were the activities of the “war hawks,” led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, who, hungry for the conquest of Canada and for free expansion, clamored for action. They helped to bring about the declaration of war against Great Britain on June 18, 1812.

The War of 1812 was the chief event of Madison's administration. New England merchants and industrialists were already disaffected by the various embargoes, and their discontent grew until at the Hartford Convention they talked of sedition rather than continuing “Mr. Madison's War.” Even the friends of the President and the promoters of the war grew discouraged as the fighting went badly. Victories in late 1813 and in the autumn of 1814 lifted the gloom somewhat, but disaster came in Sept., 1814, when the British took Washington and burned the White House. Nevertheless the war ended in stalemate with the Treaty of Ghent.

Madison's remaining years in office witnessed the beginning of postwar national expansion. He encouraged the new nationalism, which hastened the split in the Democratic party, evident in the rise of Jacksonian democracy. Through these later upheavals Madison lived quietly with his wife, Dolley Madison, after his retirement in 1817 to Montpelier.

Bibliography

Madison's writings were edited by G. Hunt (9 vol., 1900–1910). See biography in his own words, ed. by M. D. Peterson (1974); biographies by I. Brant (6 vol., 1941–61; abr. ed. 1970), N. Riemer (1968), R. Ketcham (1971), R. A. Rutland (1981), and G. Wills (2002); studies by D. R. McCoy (1989) and L. Banning (1995).

(1751-1836)

1785	Memorial and Remonstrance, Presented to the General Assembly, of the State of Virginia, at Their Session in 1785, in consequence of a Bill Brought into that Assembly for the Establishment of Religion by Law. A successful attack to thwart Patrick Henry's attempt to establish a state-supported church in Virginia. Madison would write to Thomas Jefferson in 1786, "I flatter myself I have in this Country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind."
1787	The Federalist Papers. Madison contributes twenty-six of the eighty-five essays that comprise this famous attempt to rally support for the Constitution. His important Number 10 argues that the framework of the new government will not allow any single faction in America to overpower another. Madison's essays, Numbers 37 through 58, clearly define the separation of powers within the several branches of government.
1789	Bill of Rights. Patrick Henry leads an opposition to the ratification of the Constitution in Virginia, claiming that it endangers the principle of democratic self-government. Madison and his supporters defeat Henry by promising to add the Bill of Rights. The promise is delivered when Madison, in Congress, writes the first ten amendments to the Constitution. They would be ratified by the states in 1791.

A political leader of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; one of the Founding Fathers. Madison was a member of the Continental Congress. A leader in the drafting of the Constitution, he worked tirelessly for its adoption by the states, contributing several essays to The Federalist Papers. He served as president from 1809 to 1817, after Thomas Jefferson. The United States fought the War of 1812 during his presidency. He was married to one of the most celebrated of presidents' wives, Dolley Madison.

James Madison was the fourth president of the United States, serving from 1809 to 1817. Before achieving the nation's highest office, he participated in the Virginia Constitutional Convention; was a delegate to the Continental Congress; drafted a proposal for the U.S. Constitution; supported ratification of the Constitution, through The Federalist Papers, written with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay; served in the House of Representatives; helped write the Bill of Rights; and was Thomas Jefferson's secretary of state.

Born March 16, 1751, in Port Conway, Virginia, Madison was the first of eleven children in his family. His father, James Madison, Sr., was the wealthiest landowner in Orange County, Virginia, and provided Madison with a stable and comfortable upbringing. Eleanor Conway Madison, his mother, was an affectionate woman who gave the family emotional support throughout her ninety-eight years of life.

Madison grew up on an isolated plantation in Montpelier, Virginia. As a teenager he attended school in King and Queen County, studying logic, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and French, among other subjects. Although Madison suffered from ill health during much of his youth, he developed a reputation as an intense and ambitious student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), which he attended from 1769 to 1772.

By 1774 it was becoming clear to many observers that the differences between the colonists and the British government could not be resolved peacefully. During that year Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which closed the Boston Port, restricted town assemblies, and authorized British authorities to house their troops in private colonial residences. In September 1774 the First Continental Congress convened to discuss the emerging crisis with Great Britain. Unlike many colonists, who were reluctant to take any radical measures before Parliament could respond to the petition of grievances drafted by Congress, Madison favored immediate military preparations.

As Madison became more politically vocal, he became more politically active. In December 1774 he was elected to the Orange County Committee of Safety, one of many colonial bodies formed to carry out congressional mandates such as the American boycott of English goods. In October 1775, six months after the Revolution began in Lexington and Concord, Madison was commissioned a colonel in the county militia. In 1776, at age twenty-five, he was elected as a delegate to the Virginia Provincial Convention, where he helped draft Virginia's constitution.

In May 1776 the Virginia Provincial Convention, later known as the New House of Delegates, instructed its representatives at the Second Continental Congress to draft a declaration of independence, negotiate foreign alliances, and complete the U.S. Articles ofConfederation. The Articles of Confederation empowered Congress to govern certain areas of national concern, including foreign policy. The several states retained power to govern most other issues within their own borders.

In the New House of Delegates, Madison forged a friendship with Jefferson that would leave an indelible imprint on U.S. law and U.S. history. Jefferson and Madison shared a love for books, ideas, and solitude. Jefferson had authored the Declaration ofIndependence, and Madison would be considered the architect of the U.S. Constitution. But whereas Jefferson was idealistic and impetuous, Madison was more realistic and rational. Although Madison was eight years younger than Jefferson, his thoughtful temperament often helped palliate the mercurial Jefferson. From 1777 to 1779, Madison served as a cabinet member for Jefferson, who was the governor of Virginia.

In December 1779 Virginia chose Madison as one of its five delegates to the Continental Congress. Earning respect for his sober and methodical approach to lawmaking as well as his intellectual prowess, Madison helped Congress pass a revenue measure that rescued the fledgling nation from bankruptcy. Over the next three years, Madison learned how to shape an agenda and to achieve results through compromise.

On April 15, 1783, Congress ratified a peace treaty with Great Britain that concluded the Revolutionary War, and won U.S. independence. This year also marked the end of Madison's tenure with the Continental Congress. After returning home to Virginia, Madison was elected by the voters of Orange County to the state legislature in 1784.

During the 1784 fall session, the Virginia assembly approved an act to incorporate the Episcopal Church, and postponed action on another bill that sought to subsidize Christianity by levying a tax on behalf of teachers who taught this religion. In response to this proposed bill, Madison anonymously published a short leaflet entitled Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments. This leaflet called for a separation of church and state, denounced government aid to religion, declared the equality of all religions, and articulated a general liberty to worship according to the dictates of one's conscience without fear of persecution. Many copies of the leaflet were distributed to the state assembly in October 1785, along with supporting signatures, which helped influence enough legislators to defeat the Christian subsidy.

The following year Madison joined Hamilton in urging Congress to summon a national convention at Philadelphia to draft a federal constitution that would replace the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had no power to regulate commerce. As a result the thirteen states engaged in a series of trade wars with each other. Many states imposed discriminatory taxes and regulations on goods imported from other states, and some states refused to import any goods from neighboring states.

Also under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had no power to tax. When Congress requested money to pay for the public debt and the Continental Army, the states often failed to respond. Consequently, the national debt grew and the Continental Army suffered a rash of desertions. Congressional ability to obtain credit dwindled. Madison observed that the thirteen states would be in a precarious and vulnerable position if the country were required to defend its borders against foreign invasion.

Congress was the country's only federal government body; the Articles of Confederation did not provide for an executivebranch to enforce congressional will, or a judicial branch to resolve disputes. This single body was virtually powerless to do anything about outbreaks of rebellion that were becoming more frequent in the states. For example, it offered no reasonable resolution for Shays's Rebellion of 1786, an insurrection of nearly two thousand farmers who were protesting Massachusetts's land foreclosure laws.

Fifty-five delegates representing twelve states attended the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787. Reaching Philadelphia on May 14, Madison was the first delegate to arrive from any state other than Pennsylvania. Business would not begin until May 25, when a quorum of seven states would first be present. Madison seized the intervening eleven days to draft a fifteen-point proposal that formed the underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution.

Known as the Virginia Plan, this proposal presented a radical departure from the Articles of Confederation. In it, with help from the other Virginia delegates, Madison suggested a constitutional system comprising a strong centralized federal government with three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. The sovereignty granted to each branch would be limited by the sovereignty granted to the other two branches and by the concurrent sovereignty retained by the states. This system of checks and balances had no predecessor in history.

The Virginia Plan provided the blueprint for a bicameral (two-chamber) legislature, with an upper chamber known as the Senate and a lower chamber known as the House of Representatives. As originally conceived, the plan gave Congress the indefinite power to legislate in all "cases to which the states are not competent." State governments would retain authority to legislate local concerns, and to create constitutional systems of their own. However, Madison made clear that the federal government would be supreme, and that any state law in contravention of the U.S. Constitution, a congressional enactment, or a federal treaty would be void.

At the same time, Madison's proposal for a broad grant of undefined congressional power was jettisoned. Madison argued that Congress should be given more legislative authority than state legislatures because state laws had been largely responsible for the recent trade wars and farmer rebellions. However, Madison was unable to explain why the federal government, made up of representatives from the several states, should be trusted to exercise its lawmaking powers any more prudently than had the state governments. Thus, the delegates persuaded Madison that the powers of the executive and legislative branches must be limited to those expressly enumerated in the Constitution. However, one of those enumerated powers, Congress's power to make all laws "necessary and proper" in the performance of its legislative function, has provided a broad constitutional basis for federal lawmaking similar to that originally envisioned by Madison.

The Necessary and Proper Clause was only one of the constitutional provisions vigorously defended in The Federalist Papers, a series of essays written by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay that explained and promoted the system of government created by the Philadelphia convention. Called The Federalist Papers because proponents of the federal Constitution were known as Federalists, this collection of essays was circulated among the delegates to the state ratifying conventions, in an effort to win their support. Opponents of the federal Constitution, known as Anti-Federalists, published and circulated essays and leaflets of their own.

Some Anti-Federalists eventually lent their support to the ratification movement when Madison and other Federalists promised to draft a bill of rights that would protect individual liberty and state sovereignty from encroachment by the federal government. In 1788 the Constitution was adopted by the states. The next year Madison was elected to the House of Representatives, where he subsequently represented Virginia for eight years. During the First Congress, in 1789, Madison drafted twelve amendments to the U.S. Constitution, ten of which were ultimately adopted by the states, with some subtle changes in language, and now stand as the Bill of Rights.

Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights expressly mentions the power of judicial review, which is the prerogative of state and federal courts to invalidate laws that violate a constitutional provision or principle. Article VI declares that the federal Constitution "shall be the supreme Law of the Land." Yet it does not state whether the executive, legislative, and judicial branches possess the power to nullify laws that are unconstitutional. Although the Framers of the Constitution recognized that courts had traditionally exercised the authority to interpret and apply the law, the power of judicial review had never been a clearly established practice in Anglo-American legal history.

In the landmark case Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L. Ed. 60 (1803), the U.S. Supreme Court established the power of judicial review in the United States. While serving as secretary of state to President Jefferson (1801-1809), Madison was sued by William Marbury, a judge who had been appointed to the federal bench during the waning hours of President John Adams's administration. Marbury argued that Madison had violated his duties as secretary of state by failing to deliver to Marbury a commission that he needed to complete his appointment to the federal judiciary.

Although the Supreme Court agreed that Madison had wrongfully withheld the commission, it denied Marbury's claim because it had been brought pursuant to an unconstitutional provision of a federal statute. By invalidating that provision, the Supreme Court established the power of judicial review. When Madison learned of the Supreme Court's decision, he criticized the judicial branch for attempting to usurp congressional lawmaking power.

Madison said that to allow unelected federal judges to overturn legislation enacted by the popularly elected branches of government makes "the judicial department paramount in fact to the legislature, which was never intended, and can never be proper." Madison changed his mind on this issue near the end of his life. As an elder statesman attending the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1829, and as a director for the University of Virginia from 1826 to 1834, he assailed the nullification theories of southern legislators who proclaimed the prerogative to ignore federal laws in certain circumstances. Only the judiciary, Madison concluded, had the power to declare federal laws unconstitutional.

Serving as the fourth president of the United States (1809-17), Madison revealed the same propensity to reevaluate strongly held beliefs in light of experience. Earlier in his career, he had opposed the creation of a congressionally chartered national bank. He had initially believed that under no faithful interpretation of the Constitution was Congress authorized to establish a national bank. Yet, in 1816 Madison signed a bill that established the Second Bank of the United States, agreeing that it represented a constitutional exercise of congressional power. Popular acceptance of the First Bank of the United States had altered Madison's perception.

The War of 1812 provided some of the best and worst moments of Madison's presidency. During the low point of the war with Great Britain, English troops occupied Washington, D.C., and burned down the White House. Despite other such humiliating moments for the U.S. military, Madison's troops rebounded in 1815 and soundly defeated the British in the final battle of the war at New Orleans. Although Americans gained nothing tangible from the war, they had successfully defended their soil.

The perseverance and resolve demonstrated by Madison and his troops during the war proved to be an important step in the maturation process of the young republic. By winning the War of 1812 and defeating British troops for a second time in less than half a century, John Adams remarked, Madison brought more glory to the United States than any of his three predecessors in office. Madison also unified the country like never before in its short history, allowing his successors to build upon the emerging national identity.

After the close of his second term, Madison retired from public office and returned home to Montpelier, Virginia, where he devoted long hours to farming and became president of the local agricultural society. Madison welcomed retirement, seeing it as an opportunity to renew his passion for reading and resume his correspondence with Thomas Jefferson.

He died on June 28, 1836.

Quotes:

"The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government."

"Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty."

"What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

"We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties."

"Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power."

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights."

See more famous quotes by James Madison