Trying to find a decent biography of James Madison was frustrating. My library was particularly deficient in this area but then, as I was scanning Amazon.com, I realized that there just aren’t that many great biographies, if any, of Madison. There are books about James Madison and the Bill of Rights or James Madison and the Constitution, even Dolley Madison and the United States but there just does not seem to be any definitive work on Madison. Hum. I really wondered about this circumstance.
Why didn’t anyone want to write about our fourth President? And then it got me excited—what on earth could he have done to warrant this treatment?? At the time, the only truly bad thing that I remembered about Madison was that he was the President during the burning of Washington DC. (Actually I only remembered this episode because Dolley saved the picture of George Washington.) Was this the reason that Madison wasn’t remembered fondly? Burning with curiosity, I actually bought a biography that seemed complete. I read Ralph Ketchum’s James Madison: A Biography (University of Virginia Press: Charlottesville, 1990) and even though it had 700 pages and was published in 1990, I deemed it necessary that I go to any lengths in order to get a total picture of this man. And, believe me, I’ve paid the price.
James Madison was born as one of a veritable horde of Madisons. His father was able to claim that he was a wealthy Virginian with property so that James was able to grow up in well-to-do circumstances along with many of his cousins and siblings. Later on in life, Madison’s prolific family would come in handy—it was such easy networking. Like Thomas Jefferson, Madison’s early years at Montpelier were extremely sketchy. (It makes me wonder why it takes the author 30 pages to get James to college!) Apparently James suffered from some sort of indisposition, like epileptic fits, throughout his life. He was never quite well and often sickly. We next find that Madison chose to attend the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) over the more popular William and Mary. Thus in 1768, he entered college and was exposed to greater ideas and concepts than the Virginian countryside could provide. “When Madison graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1771 he was a paragon of the well-educated scholar” (p. 45).
After moving back to Montpelier, Madison was then faced with an unpleasant fact—he had no job. He had the necessary qualities to become a lawyer but although he professed an interest, it never really excited him. What did excite him was the nascent war of independence. He was a passionate patriot and because of that he was elected to the Virginia State Legislature, to the Virginia Governor’s Council and finally to the Continental Congress. During his tenure on the governor’s council, Madison became lifelong friends with Thomas Jefferson, the Governor. When he arrived at the Continental Congress, he was found that the war was much worse than he had feared. “The revolution was much closer to defeat or collapse, apparently, than had seemed possible in Virginia, not yet a theater of war when Madison left home” (p. 101). Madison discovered that the United States was broke, that the Continental army was slowly eroding, and that their country had no credibility abroad to ask for loans or for help. “As Madison’s commitment to the revolution deepened, so too did his sense of its scope and meaning. It was not a mere matter of resisting unjust taxes, seeking religious liberty, or even avoiding debts to British merchants. At stake in one sense was the direction of future events in the Western world and the place the new United States would have in that world” (p. 101).
At the termination of the war, Madison again found himself jobless. Although he had left Congress with a reputation for being clearheaded and sound, he was unable to translate that into a gentleman farmer at Montpelier. Thankfully, politics stepped in again and he was elected this time to the Virginia Assembly. From there it was a mere stepping stone to the Federal Convention (or the Constitutional Convention) where men from all thirteen states were to convene as a backlash to the current government. Their mission? Revise the Articles of Confederation. What happened instead? They chucked the Articles and started from scratch. Almost from Day One of the Convention, they began to put together the Constitution that would be in effect today and James Madison really began to shine. He was not a flashy person or a spectacular speaker but he took meticulous notes on everything and was able to argue a point on sheer knowledge alone. His pro-central government approach is really what swung the Convention to his side and why we have such a lovely set of checks-and-balances between the branches.
His only failure, in his eyes, was the “The Great Compromise.” “The Great Compromise” is basically what we have going on today with our bicameral legislature. As good Americans, we know that the little states wanted equal representation in Congress and the big states wanted population to determine representation. The compromise, then, was that we have both. Madison, being from Virginia, thought the great compromise was completely awful and slowly his Federalist viewpoint began to change.
After all the changes to the Constitution occurred, the delegates’ job was still not done. Nine out of thirteen states then needed to ratify the Constitution to put it into effect. So Madison and the other delegates fanned out around the country to promote their work and to make sure that it garnered the majority of votes. To aid this process, Madison teamed up with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton to write The Federalist Papers. “Thus in late October 1787, Hamilton, Jay, and Madison undertook what became the authoritative commentary on the Constitution and the best-known work of political theory ever written in the United States” (p. 239). The Federalist Papers were a direct rebuttal of the arguments that were being used against the Constitution and yet the means for every man to understand what the new constitution entailed. Through mainly James Madison’s hard work, the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1788 which led to the first elections to Congress where Madison beat out James Monroe to a seat in the House of Representatives.
After six years as a Representative, James Madison married Dolley Payne Todd, a lovely Quaker widow from Philadelphia, and decided to retire from Congress to try gentleman farming at Montpelier once more. Sadly, being a farmer was just not meant for him. With the accession of his good friend, Thomas Jefferson, to the presidency, James was called upon to lead the nation, instead, as Secretary of State. As Secretary, Madison faced a number of obstacles. He had to revamp the entire administrative network because the State Department, during this time, handled a lot of domestic issues as well. He also had to be every inch a diplomat confronting the war in Europe, the uprising in Santo Domingo, rumors that Napoleon would invade the US, Spain threatening to invade the US, the British impressing US sailors, the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase, political infighting and the privations of the Embargo Act.
Even though Jefferson’s second term as president was little short of a disaster, it was still widely known in Republican circles that James Madison was the heir apparent. Accordingly, James Madison became the fourth President of the United States on March, 4, 1809, with George Clinton from New York as the Vice President. Almost immediately, Madison was faced with dire information; both France and England had stepped up violations against American shipping. These instances and many others would continue long into Madison’s second term as President as well. “Overshadowing the social season, the frustrations of preparing for war, and presidential politics, however, was the steady deterioration of relations with both belligerents” (p. 523). By June 1, 1812, Madison, soon to be elected to a second term, had sent his Declaration of War to Congress naming Great Britain the primary belligerent in the coming conflict.
The War of 1812 began on a high note with some victories in the Northwest Territory (Michigan/New York) but soon, the British regained the momentum. The United States Army was losing every encounter and the nation itself slid slowly into gloom. And for good reason—the “army” was a skeleton crew, headed by generals from the Revolutionary War, the navy was even smaller, there was no money in the Treasury and since Jefferson had let the charter on the Bank of the United States lapse, there was no money to borrow. Not to mention, the war was extremely unpopular, leading New England to grumble about ceding from the union. On top of all that, Madison simply could not find anyone to be Secretary of War, finally stumbling on General Armstrong. The only light at the end of the tunnel was some hefty victories by, unaccountably, the tiny US Navy.
In 1813, the British, under General Cockburn, started harassing Americans increasingly close to Washington DC. Unfortunately, Armstrong declared that the Baltimore, not Washington, was the destination of the British and, going against Madison’s request, positioned his troops accordingly. It was then too late to defend the capitol once it was apparent that the British were heading there directly. On August 24, 1814, James Madison had to watch from the Virginia side of the Potomac as his house, the White House, and the Capitol Buildings burned to the ground. A few days later he was back in Washington and with the help of Secretary of State, James Monroe, and Attorney General, Richard Rush, Madison was able to get a semblance of the government back into working order once more. Peace negotiations were already in progress in Ghent, Belguim and though the war was officially over by the end of 1814, the Battle of New Orleans and the victory of General Andrew Jackson put the seal of success on the American’s side.
“The return of peace, the collapse of domestic defiance of the government, and the revived popularity of the administration, enabled the presidential family to look forward to the end of nearly four years of being chained to duty” (p. 599) Due to their constant condemnation of the President and the war in general, the Federal Party disappeared almost entirely after the Treaty of Ghent was signed and this meant an almost unimpeded victory for James Monroe, as the fifth President of the United States.
James Madison and his family moved back to Montpelier for his final retirement. “The need to make a living, as well as Madison’s agrarian convictions about the good life, require him to remain an active farmer” (p. 621). He was elected President of the Agricultural Society of Albemarle (County), was on the Board of Visitors to the University of Virginia, and was elected as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention. He died on June 28, 1836 at Montpelier in Virginia.
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