Really Cool Stuff about James Madison
1.) I consider James Madison our first full-time “politician.” While the other Founding Fathers had other occupations, Madison didn’t. He fell into the political life after college and never really left it, even when he tried to be a farmer. He never enlisted in the army; he was never admitted to the bar; he never traveled overseas. He was just…a politician.
2.) He was known as the Father of the Constitution. “In attending to every detail of this structure, and in being sensitive at every point to the effect of blending the various parts, Madison played his most crucial role, and earned the title later bestowed on him, Father of the Constitution” (p. 229).
3.) He singlehandedly wrote the Bill of Rights. “He sought both to give the widest possible scope to freedom of conscience and to demonstrate the diversity a republican government could safely accommodate” (p. 292).
4.) After the British burned Washington, they headed to Baltimore in an effort to destroy it as well. However, Baltimore was ready for them and this battle (the Battle of Fort McHenry) provided the backdrop for Francis Scott Key, a Washington lawyer, to write in amazement “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
5.) The United States has always been a sectionally-driven nation and yet the War of 1812 would provoke the first faint stirrings of the Civil War. As foreshadowing, the North, namely New England, threatened to cede from the union over Madison’s War of 1812 against the British. New England was extremely friendly to British trade and thought that war with England would damage their lucrative friendship. The New Englanders created the Hartford Convention that tried to call Madison to account and to warn about possible cession. The very positive end to the war destroyed the Convention and the Federalists all at once but the seeds had been sown.
6.) Fighting in the War of 1812 were many men who would later make a name for themselves. For example, Davy Crockett and Sam Houston were members of Andrew Jackson’s army in New Orleans.
Hmmm…would I recommend this book to others? It was not a bad book but I can’t say that I would. Here’s my biggest problem with this work—sheer superfluity. I understand the historian’s need to be as accurate and as detailed as possible but there is a limit that must be enforced once the author begins to move into generalizations and conjecture.
Ketcham uses these two evils immediately by filling empty holes in Madison’s childhood. In other words, the author plays god here by taking the information written by other people at the time and working it into the Madison biography. To be honest, Ketcham tells us exactly what he’s about to do. “Beyond a few old-age recollections, there is no documentation of particular events in James Madison’s youth. The story can be surmised, however, from farm records, from important events that would have affected a boy in Madison’s situation, and from what is know generally of Virginia family and plantation life in his day. Though the account thus obtained is necessarily conjectural in some of its details, something of an otherwise hidden boyhood assumes sketchy form” (p. 9).
With Ketcham’s own admission, then, I plowed through a tediously long and detailed account of someone’s youth, who may or may not be James Madison. That means I had to read a lot of “we may imagine”s or “we may suppose”s in regards to Madison’s early years. Now let me just say this, I would not have minded this tramp into the realms of unreality, but when the book is already 700 pages long and now I know why it’s 700 pages, well that makes me really upset. It feels like I’m just wasting my time here. And to make things worse, Ketcham then tries to get poetic on us. Instead of just telling us about Madison’s trip to New Jersey, he has to get descriptive. “Riding along the river [Potomac], Madison may have observed, as other travelers had, the sport of fishing hawks and bald eagles. A hawk would dive into the water and catch a fish in its talons, but then often lose its prey to an eagle that would soar down from above, frighten the hawk into dropping the fish, and then swoop below to catch the fish before it reached the water” (p. 26).
Following this narrative, Ketcham expounds on Madison’s college years, giving us a detailed account of books he might have read, the political influences swirling about the college town, and a small biography on Madison’s academic advisor, John Witherspoon. Later on, Madison becomes engaged (not to Dolley) and then consequently dumped. Ketcham has this to say on the matter. “We may imagine Madison spending anxious, lonely days of despair after hearing disturbing word from Kitty and during the absence of Congress from Princeton” (p. 110). After this book, I am heartily sick of the phrase “we may imagine.”
On the flip side, there were some aspects of the book that were great but the problem was wading through the superfluity to get to these good parts. Ketcham goes into great detail on the political side of the war, which was nice since this was a new facet of the war that I hadn’t read about yet. It was fascinating reading about all the different ways our country came together. In the end, though, the book was a highly analytic, deeply specific account of our fourth President.
I had mentioned earlier that it was difficult to find a bio on James Madison and I was curious as to what dour crime has prompted this treatment. I have come to realize that Madison’s greatest sin was simply that he was not a spectacular personage. He lacked the flair that Jefferson and later, Jackson would have. He did his job and that was that. He was not a very good judge of character so during his two terms as President, his biggest problems involved all the fighting amidst his cabinet. It was also due to his poor judgment that he would select General Armstrong to head the War department and we all know how that turned out. But Madison tried to be a good man for our country and a good President. One of his greatest successes was marrying the pretty, popular Dolley Todd who turned Washington DC and the White House into a fun place to be. Her expert hostessing helped her taciturn husband weather the political storms, and the actual battles, surrounding them.
In the end, I think it’s important to remember that we, today, are actively living out James Madison’s legacy—the United States Constitution. It was due to his ingenuity and brilliance that we have such a beautiful document. Combine that with the Bill of Rights and you have the essence that makes us citizens of one of the greatest countries on earth.
James Madison gave the best of himself to us and we should be proud that he was one of our Presidents.
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