When I was a kid, there were two basic facts I knew about James Madison, the fourth President of the United States: he was married to Dolley Madison, whose name graced the branding for popular snack cakes, and while he was President, the British burned the White House and the rest of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812.
As an adult, I learned that Madison was a very young man when he became involved in Revolutionary politics, and he became the chief advisor and close confidant to Thomas Jefferson while the Constitution was being written. After stints as a Constitutional Convention representative and later a member of the House, Madison served as Jefferson’s Secretary of State and succeeded him as President.
There aren’t a lot of people who peak before they become President. Madison was generally considered the brightest man in the room, if not the best speaker or the most commanding presence. He brought a keen understanding of how government could and should work, as well as what wouldn’t work. Madison did the reading, wrote the papers, and made the arguments; he is arguably the father of the Constitution, and to read his biography reveals much of the why behind how American government works.
When we talk about the Founding Fathers, we generally think of the men who fought and led the Revolution. Madison, born in 1751, was a young man not long out of school, and in the runup to the Revolution, was more of a fanboy following arguments made in publications about unfair treatment by the British government.
I read Ralph Ketcham’s 1971 biography of Madison. Like other American Political Biography Press publications, it was thick and rich with detail, with a great deal of background on both the man and his times.
As one might expect, it’s very difficult to talk about Antebellum Presidents without mentioning their attitude towards slavery. In Ketchum’s account of Madison’s young adulthood, he sought to stay away from the family farm and the responsibilities of running it, and even after returning, sought to find ways to be economically free from using slave labor. He writes of Madison’s childhood, when the slave population numbered about 118, “burdened with the preconceptions of superiority, and perhaps even the psychological hazards of unrestrained power and the latent sense of guilt often attending the system.”
Later as a young man Madison “saw the incongruity between slavery and the professed ideals of the revolution”, quoting Madison: “Would it not be as well to liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks themselves as to make them instruments for enlisting white soldiers?” Yet, when he prepared to move back to Virginia, Madison determined that his slave Billey “was too thoroughly tainted to be a fit companion for fellow slaves in Virginia”.
My first very uncomfortable thought was, how does one make such a determination? Then I read that Madison opted to not do the usual thing in these cases (ship the “uppity” slave to the West Indies), but rather sold him in Philadelphia, which would make him free in seven years. Madison wrote to his father, asking why should he punish Billey, “merely for coveting that liberty for which we have paid the price of so much blood, and have proclaimed so often to be right, and worthy the pursuit, of every human being?”
Basically, the argument here is that slaveowners were as bound to the system as enslaved people themselves, though with more of the good and much, much less of the bad, by most measures. Young Madison was in favor of human rights, of freeing slaves, and of allowing them to fight in the Revolution. However, like so many of the Founding Fathers, while Madison talked a good game in private, he was more demure in public. Like his contemporaries, he believed that nothing short of a civil war would demolish America’s “peculiar institution”.
Madison traveled the young United States quite a lot, sometimes for business and sometimes for pleasure. It was quite nice to read about a trip up the Hudson River to Albany, having made similar trips by car and kayak myself. He bought land, and tried setting himself up as a lawyer, but wound up following his parents to become the patriarch of his family, running the family plantation in Virginia.
Madison lived not far from Jefferson, and later James Monroe moved to a property not far from either of them. These three formed the core leadership of the post-Revolution Democrat-Republican party, an evolution of the Anti-Federalist party, which was effectively in power for the first third of the nineteenth century. While Washington, like these three men, was also a Virginia plantation owner, the triumvirate of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe set the tone for what America’s first major political party believed and practiced.
A brief aside: Madison attended the College of New Jersey, better known today as Princeton University, which was founded by Presbyterians to train ministers. One of the earliest cultural divides in America was between the New England Congregationalists, the primarily Anglican South, and the Presbyterians, who carried ideas from the Scottish Enlightenment hand-in-hand with their theology. I had never before considered the role regional religious preferences would have played in U.S. history, nor that any one place could serve as the font for ideas that would undergird the tenants of American democracy.
During the American Revolution, Madison worked in government, first in the Virginia legislature and later as a representative to the Continental Congress. He became a protégé and later advisor to Thomas Jefferson, essentially acting as Jefferson’s clerk: doing the reading and outlining the argument. Jefferson and Madison would work together closely for the rest of their lives, and it’s hard to overstate how influential they were in early American politics.
The Constitutional Convention
It was during the Federal Convention that Madison really made a name for himself. In case you were unaware, after about seven years of war seeking independence from Britain, the “United States” was formed using the Articles of Confederation, which essentially was more like an alliance of the several states, with no executive branch, and a Federal government that was essentially just Congress. It didn’t work, and most of the Founding Fathers knew it didn’t work, and so a new convention was seated to create the Constitution.
There is a lot of detail I am going to gloss over. Madison, representing the large and powerful state of Virginia, presented the “Virginia Plan”, a series of proposed resolutions that essentially became the points of debate. After an initial point deciding that there should indeed be a national government, rather than a league of states, great debate ensued over how states would be represented; Madison supported popular election of the lower house, following the general argument that the broader the electorate, the more difficult it would be for any one faction to dominate over another.
More debates followed. What limits should the executive branch have? How would the executive, and the upper house, and the judiciary, be selected? Some supported election by a standing body, and others supported popular election. Madison made a speech that brought them back to an electoral college, an idea previously ruled out, and which persists today, for Presidents at least.
Madison supported a broad taxation ability by Congress, in part to support a large navy to protect trade. This is ironic given that under Jefferson, the military budget would be sharply curtailed and the United States barely able to defend itself against the shipping predations of Britain and France, leading to the War of 1812.
When the hard work of the convention was done, the next step was to get the states to ratify it. Madison traveled home to Virginia, where he faced stiff opposition to ratification. Some of this turned on a bill of rights, which the Constitution did not initially include, but which Madison and others agreed would have to be the next priority. In general, “…men of intelligence, patriotism, and property”, according to Madison, supported the Constitution as written.
Ketchum writes that while more wealthy men than poor men supported the Constitution, it does not necessarily follow that the Constitution was a document by the wealthy to support the wealthy. Rather, the divide was more between men who felt the nation could not be united if states could arbitrarily opt out, and those who felt their states had perfectly fine governments, and resented a Federal government that could overrule them. In particular, Patrick Henry took the position that Virginia was quite capable of handling its own affairs and needed no intrusion from the Federal government.
It is hard to overstate the dissent over how the United States government should work. Many of these early arguments get twisted around today, especially when new government programs are proposed, or states require disaster relief. For many modern Americans, a state is just a place you are from; you know its history, its geography, and the places that make it special to you. For early Americans, a state was sovereign, beholden to no other state or nation.
Once the Constitutional Convention settled on a national government, Madison made the arguments about why it should be ratified, flaws and all. If Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, Madison was the author of our government.
Interim
Madison served in the House of Representative in the newly elected Congress, establishing himself as a leader for what would become the anti-Federalist party. He maintained his relationship with Jefferson, whom he advised to take the position of Secretary of State when President Washington asked.
Madison’s first clash in Congress was with Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, over Hamilton’s plan for the Federal government to assume state debts. This is generally seen by historians as a good decision by the young United States, and Madison supported the part of the plan that paid off debts owed abroad. However, Madison opposed two other parts of the plan: making good on war bonds paid to Revolutionary soldiers, many of whom had sold their devalued bonds to speculators, and extending the debt assumption to all state debts, including those run up in the years since the Revolution.
Madison blocked these efforts in Congress, and eventually a deal was brokered between Hamilton and Madison at Jefferson’s dinner table, in the temporary national capital of New York. The two men did not have direct control of the voting, but Madison agreed to argue less vociferously against Hamilton if states who had been paying their debts were at least partially recompensed, and Hamilton agreed to lean on two Pennsylvania Congressmen to support a national capital on the Potomac – modern Washington, D.C.
Ben Franklin, near the end of his life, sponsored a petition to Congress to abolish slavery and the slave trade. Madison was willing to support a gradual removal of slavery, but in Ketchum’s wording, “foresaw correctly that petitions that Congress to take such action immediately would only serve to inflame Georgia and South Carolina Congressmen…threatening ‘to blow the trumpet of sedition.’”
Madison was also enlisted to argue against a peace treaty with the British, long negotiated by John Jay and generally not very favorable to the Americans. In particular, the House demanded correspondence from the Executive branch, which Washington and Hamilton refused to provide. This was a pivotal and complex moment in American political history, concluded by a rousing speech by elder statesman Fisher Ames saying, effectively, that not approving the Treaty would leave the United States vulnerable on its frontiers as well as against the major powers. The treaty was passed in the House, 51 to 49.
Dolley Madison was a young woman raised in a Quaker household, and was distantly related to Patrick Henry. When Virginia voted to make manumission of slaves legal in 1782 (let that sink in – it was illegal to free slaves prior to that), her family freed their slaves and moved to Philadelphia. As a young woman, Dolley married a Quaker lawyer, John Todd, but both he and her baby succumbed to the yellow fever pandemic that swept the city in 1793. A little while later, Dolley had taken up residence in Philadelphia with her teenage sister and was sought after as a rather eligible widow.
Aaron Burr introduced her to James Madison, who was in his early forties, and who had basically been a confirmed bachelor since having his heart broken by Kitty Floyd, a woman he’d been engaged to in his twenties. Their mutual acquaintances would talk them up, and in short order they were married. Dolley made a name for herself as an excellent hostess, and the couple lived in Philadelphia until Madison retired from Congress in 1797. Afterwards, he lived the life of a Virginia plantation family patriarch until returning to national office as Jefferson’s Secretary of State in 1801.
Secretary of State
Madison’s seating as Secretary of State, along with Jefferson’s election to President, brought a marked change in American politics. Washington and Adams had been aligned more-or-less with the Federalist party, while Jefferson and Madison had developed the anti-Federalist, or Democrat-Republican (“Republican”) party. Jefferson made sweeping changes in policy and administration, while Madison found himself preoccupied with negotiating the United States’ role in the Napoleonic wars.
When U.S. history is taught, there isn’t often a lot of context about the rest of the world. By this point in history, France was well past being the kingdom that had aided the United States in the American Revolution, and further beyond the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and the variety of governments that followed. The France of this period transitioned from a power-sharing arrangement known as the Consulate, to Napoleon Bonaparte being Emperor of France.
The Republicans had been friendly to France, whereas the Northern states had been partial to Great Britain; this was part of the larger split between the parties and the objections to the Jay Treaty, which favored Great Britain at the expense of France. However, as its war against France ground on, Britain would impress (kidnap) American sailors into their navy, and the United States had few options to counter this activity. It was also in this period that Jefferson authorized the Louisiana Purchase, when Napoleon decided he needed the cash more than he needed land so far away.
As Great Britain continued to join and lead various coalitions against France, both nations levied actions against attempts at neutral shipping; both would intercept American merchants, the British would impress (kidnap) American sailors into their navy, and in 1807 both countries issued decrees basically disallowing neutral shipping to the other.
President
The prospect of war loomed over Madison’s inauguration as President. Additionally, the Republican party was beginning to fracture between centrists such as Jefferson and Madison, and the “Old Republicans” led by John Randolph in Virginia, who felt that Jefferson and Madison had drifted into Federalism. Madison inherited a country divided internally and threatened by war externally.
Madison’s first term was lackluster, and his initial cabinet considered weak. Madison undermined his own Secretary of State by effectively carrying on his own correspondence, straining his own time and effectively carving out one of his own appointees.
Madison negotiated for a relaxation of British hostility, while at the same time somewhat passively asking Congress to maybe, possibly, consider the prospect of war. There was a sense of national honor being tarnished, and at the same time, the United States was caught in the increasingly hardnosed diplomacy of Napoleonic France and its bitter enemies, among which the British were always counted.
The war went terribly for the Americans initially. Both the army and navy had been underfunded during the Jefferson administration, partly due to idealistic notions that a democratic republic had no need for a military. On top of that, Madison’s cabinet was lackluster, as was military leadership. A few former Revolutionary War officers came back into service, but they were older, and there weren’t enough of them. The British routinely beat the Americans, culminating in the burning of a poorly defended Washington, D.C.
The British did not take and hold Washington; they burned it, then withdrew because they were not in a good position to hold it. Madison and other cabinet officers were able to escape and set up a temporary government, and in short order good news came in. Prior changes in leadership led to American victories in the North and Northwest, leading into Canada, and Andrew Jackson took the port city of New Orleans. There’s even a song about that. https://youtu.be/50_iRIcxsz0
Supposedly, by this point the British had brought of the Duke of Wellington and his troops, fresh from victory against Napoleon, but by the time they were arrayed against the Americans, the United States had its act together, and Wellington stated that this was not a war that the British could win. In the end, the United States did not gain much tangibly from the war but did establish itself as a bona fide power capable of defending itself capably.
Retirement
Upon his retirement, Madison returned to private life. He had succeeded Jefferson, and was followed by James Monroe; together, these three men, all from the same region of Virginia, shaped Federal policy and the Presidency for over twenty years. Madison had two projects through his retirement: leading the American Colonization Society, and acting as a “Visitor”, or board member for the new University of Virginia, founded through the efforts of Thomas Jefferson.
The Colonization Society was an effort to essentially free slaves by giving them land. Early ideas included sending them to live in frontier land to the west, but this faded away as Society members realized that eventually, the United States might want to expand in that direction, and white people might want that land. Eventually the Society settled on a small area on the west coast of Africa, called Liberia, with a capital later named Monrovia, for fellow Society member James Monroe.
There were a lot of problems with the Society. Starting with the practical, there was funding – they needed to secure passage for freed people, and they also needed to navigate the patchwork of laws and prejudices of the time just to get enough “colonists” together. Additionally, the idea of sending formerly enslaved people, who were Americans, to colonize another country was inherently racist and condescending. Finally, those former slaves practiced bigotry in their new country, leading to friction between them and the locals.
What were the issues of Madison’s day? I will set aside the Constitution portion of his career, as that deserves its own writeup. Like the other Founding Fathers who went on to become President, the concerns they faced once in the executive branch were different than what they faced prior. For Madison, international affairs were his chief concern in his post-legislative career.
Above all other foreign affairs, the increasing pressure on the United States from both Great Britain and France bedeviled the country for years. Great Britain joined and led various coalitions against Napoleonic France, and both nations exerted pressure through trade and military action against the United States.
Meanwhile, the French sale of Louisiana set new boundaries for the fledgling nation, notably with Spain. While Spain held tremendous holdings in the Americas, they were tenuous and would soon be tested by their own revolutions. Furthermore, Spain had been subjugated by France, and so American relations with one were intertwined with the other.
The British continued to impress, or kidnap, Americans on the high seas, accusing them of being deserters from the British Navy. There was little the U.S. could do, as Republican ideology under Jefferson made army and navy funding a low priority. Madison pushed an embargo, which proved unpopular domestically, as it curtailed the market for American goods, especially in the north.
All of this eventually led to the War of 1812, a war that Madison all but directly asked Congress for, a war that went badly, resulted in the burning of our young nation’s capital, and even in peace simply restored status quo ante bellum, including the continued practice of impressment.
The other major issue of the time was slavery. Madison, like Washington and Jefferson, and Monroe and Jackson, and so many others, was a slaveowner. Yet, for his time, he was somewhat progressive, if tepid, in support for freedom. Slavery was systemic; it was endemic to the American economy and culture. Things like the American Colonization Society were progressive for their time, despite their flaws. Debates over slavery did raise the question of secession, and Madison’s Presidency ended before the Missouri Compromise, which essentially guaranteed the expansion of slavery on a one-to-one basis, slave states to non-slave states.
Could Madison be elected today? I seem to say this many times, but the anti-intellectual trend in the modern United States leads me to believe no. Perhaps this is especially true with Madison, who was a deep thinker on politics, and moreover was not known for being a great public speaker. Madison would have to contend with louder voices, magnified on modern media, just to get his ideas heard.
James Madison was one of the most erudite political leaders of his day. Long before becoming President, his arguments about how our government should work proved lasting and consequential. There are many modern criticisms of the American political system, but it compares well with, say, Revolutionary France, or any number of other democratic revolutions that quickly faded into autocracy or military rule. Madison further influenced other Presidents, and together with them shaped much of the first political era of the United States. He was a Founding Father.
Yet, for all this, Madison is overlooked in popular American history. He’s the guy after Jefferson, or the guy who let the British burn Washington. His wife’s name graces mass-produced snack cakes and pies. His influence is not tangible – no great battles, or great declarations. He had ideas, and he could back them up, but he was not a great man on a stage.
Madison should be remembered by all Americans, whether or not they agree with his ideas. I learned a lot reading about Madison; I hope others do too. To know Madison is to know our country, and the very foundations it was built on.