Although the so-called Revolution of 1800 saw no revolutionary changes in the American political scene, it was the dawning of a new age. The willingness of the Federalists to peacefully hand over power and to accept political defeat was extraordinary in a world controlled by kings and military leaders. In most states, property qualifications still limited the vote to white males owning as least a fifty-acre plot of land. This voting limitation upheld Thomas Jefferson's commitment to a rural republicanism that rested on the widespread farm ownership of relatively independent adult males. It was this republican vision that had motivated Jefferson to make the Louisiana Purchase—even though its constitutionality was in question—and to oppose primogeniture. The first promised to open up thousands of acres to farmers, thus assuring the continuation of an agrarian republic, while the latter blocked the creation of landowning dynasties controlled by inheritance to the eldest son.
Important changes, however, were afoot that would transform America from an agrarian republic to a mass democracy over the next two decades. For one thing, new, more egalitarian states had been carved out of the backcountry given to America by the British after the American Revolution. By 1803, four new frontier states had entered the Union: Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1792), Tennessee (1796), and Ohio (1803). Louisiana would follow in 1812. Most of these new states eliminated the property and taxpaying qualifications for voting, and most eastern states soon followed suit. In all, there were sixteen states in the Union in 1800. According to census figures that year, the nation's population had increased from 3.9 million to 5.3 million—a jump of 35 percent—since the date of the first census in 1790.
At the same time, however, most of these new states and many old ones explicitly limited the franchise to white males. In New Jersey, for example, women and free blacks who owned property had voted until 1807, when the state abolished all property qualifications but limited suffrage to white men. The revolutionary constitutions of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, which had granted the vote to free blacks, soon joined with New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Tennessee, and North Carolina in denying suffrage to African Americans regardless of their education or property.
Thomas Jefferson's presidency initiated the quarter-century rule of the "Virginia Dynasty" (1801-1825), including the presidencies of loyal Jeffersonians James Madison (1809-1817) and James Monroe (1817-1825). As the center of political gravity shifted southward with the Republican ascendancy, the party gained new strength to the north, progressively marginalizing Federalists as an effective national opposition party. But the founders' fantasy of faction-free politics was not to be fulfilled. Emerging splits among Republicans themselves pitted orthodox, strict constructionist "Old Republicans" against "National Republicans" who favored a more positive and activist (according to critics, Hamiltonian) conception of federal power. Quarrels among Jeffersonian-Republicans foreshadowed the division between Jacksonian Democrats, self-proclaimed legatees of Jeffersonian orthodoxy, and Whigs who promoted a neo-Federalist, National Republican policy agenda while warning against "King Andrew's" dangerous consolidation of authority.
Executive Power
Jefferson's performance as President justified divergent conceptions of executive power. Known for his hostility to strong central government and the judicial overreach of the Supreme Court under John Marshall, Jefferson nonetheless jettisoned strict construction when the nation's vital interests were threatened. Self-preservation—the first law of nature and nations—took precedence over the constitutional limitations that he scrupulously observed in peacetime. Andrew Jackson embraced this robust conception of his presidential power, even as Whig opponents drew inspiration from Jefferson's anti-monarchical precepts.
The Private and Public
Jefferson has been a great democratic icon precisely because he so eloquently articulated fundamental tensions in Americans' understanding of the people's power. The United States had "the strongest Government on earth," Jefferson told his fellow Americans in his first Inaugural Address on March 4, 1801. Yet the people's great and irresistible power was a function of their devotion to a free government that guaranteed their rights: this was the only government "where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern." Where an enlightened people determined their own destiny, Jefferson promised, there was no necessary or inevitable conflict between private rights and public good.
Rights, Rhetoric, and Reality
Jefferson will always be celebrated for articulating the American national creed, the fundamental and universal principles of self-government that he set forth in the Declaration of Independence. At the same time, those very principles—most notably, that "all men are created equal"—have been turned against him, as successive generations of critics have condemned him as a hypocritical slave owner. Jefferson cannot escape criticism: he failed to emancipate his own slaves and he presided over the "peculiar institution's" rapid expansion to the South and West. Yet the conflicts that shaped the new nation's history—and Jefferson's career—defied easy solutions. Jefferson and his contemporaries struggled, often unsuccessfully, to reconcile the conflicting claims of nation-building and natural rights, of power and liberty, and of slavery and freedom. Their legacy to us is the history of the conflicts that engaged them—and should engage us—in fulfilling the American Revolution's promise, to the nation and the world.
James Madison understated his ancestry as being among Virginia’s “respectable though not the most opulent class.” By the time of his birth, he entered one of the most elite families in Virginia, their affluence marked by vast acreage and a large enslaved population at the family plantation of Montpelier. Though not opulent by the standards of the prominent families in the colony, the Madisons enjoyed wealth and influence attained by few. Their status as a first family of central Virginia helped propel Madison to educational pursuits in New Jersey, revolutionary leadership positions, a place of foremost influence in American constitutional thought, respected seats in state and national legislatures, and finally the height of national executive power.
Remembered less for his presidency than for his contributions to American constitutionalism, Madison lived the life of a scholar-politician, often wrestling to reconcile the competing interests of his ambitions. A prodigious student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), Madison spent late nights and early mornings immersed in theories of the Scottish Enlightenment under the tutelage of the college’s Scottish president, John Witherspoon. Unlike many college students who lost sleep to social carousing, Madison lost sleep to study Lord Kames, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Francis Hutcheson, as well as philosophers beyond the Scottish vein, such as Montesquieu. He learned French, Latin, Greek, some Spanish and Italian, and dabbled in Hebrew, possibly considering a career in the ministry before he decided to turn to politics.
Madison entered Virginia politics as a revolutionary, appointed to the Orange County Committee of Safety in 1774. By 1776, Madison had joined the Virginia Convention, the provincial legislature formed after the royal governor fled the colony. Though insecure among Virginia’s most famed politicians, the twenty-five-year-old helped shape the convention that pressed the Second Continental Congress to declare US independence. Inspired by the religious pluralism he had witnessed while at college, he helped the convention fashion a sweeping statement on religious liberty in the Virginia Declaration of Rights.
In 1780, Madison left the Virginia governor’s council to serve in Continental Congress, convinced that the body needed fundamental reforms to function. The situation did not improve with the ratification of the Articles of Confederation the next year. Under the charter, Congress possessed no independent taxing authority, functioning as a diplomatic assembly of the states, not a national legislature. In Congress, Madison proposed amendments to the Articles to give Congress coercive power to enforce its resolves and more efficiently raise revenue, but others blocked his efforts.
After the US victory in the American Revolution, Madison redoubled his efforts to turn the assembly of states into a nation. Like many, he feared that without a common military foe, the states would disassemble, different regions allying with different foreign powers that might eventually usurp their sovereignty. To repel that bleak fate, Madison teamed with other nationalist-minded politicians to propose a stronger union among the states. Their efforts led to the Federal Convention beginning in May 1787, now commonly called the Constitutional Convention.
Convinced that the convention must do more than amend the Articles of Confederation, Madison led a successful effort to scrap the Articles in favor of a constitution that instituted a national government. He formulated the Virginia Plan, which served as a basis for debate during the convention. His exertions and theories eventually earned him the title “Father of the Constitution.” Madison insisted that the charter was the result of “many heads & many hands.” His influence proved essential, however, as he called to discard the Articles, helped muster the states into a national government, promoted ratification, and advanced ideas that, in time, would make him the most relevant constitutional philosopher in US history.
In 1789, the new governing system commenced, now with an executive office comprised of a single president, national courts, and a bicameral legislature, where Madison began his service in the new government. Elected to the House of Representatives, Madison became the most significant member of Congress, acting as an early liaison between the legislature and the executive—a sort of prime minister to President George Washington. During the first Congress, Madison became the primary drafter and major proponent of numerous amendments to the Constitution, ten of which were adopted and became known as the Bill of Rights. Had Madison done nothing else in Congress, his efforts to secure the Bill of Rights would have made him one of the most significant legislators in US history.
Divided over domestic financial policies and international relations, Americans gravitated toward a two-party system during the 1790s. With his friend and close collaborator Thomas Jefferson, Madison led Republicans (sometimes called Democratic-Republicans or Jefferson Republicans to distinguish them from the unrelated modern Republican Party) against Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists. During that period, Madison married a vivacious widow named Dolley Payne Todd, who became a paramount political partner and set precedents that came to define the role of First Lady.
Retired from Congress by 1800, Madison helped orchestrate Jefferson’s victory over Federalist John Adams for the presidency, sweeping Republicans into executive and congressional power that year. With his appointment as Jefferson’s secretary of state, Madison became the nation’s top diplomat and the most important voice in Jefferson’s cabinet. He oversaw the wild success of the Louisiana Purchase and the abysmal failure of the Embargo Act of 1807. He helped the nation steer a course between the French and British during the Napoleonic Wars until his own election to the presidency in 1808.
As president, Madison found it increasingly difficult to safeguard American sovereignty and navigate a host of geopolitical challenges with Britain, France, Native American nations, and Spain. During his first term, the military engaged in several low-intensity conflicts in the Floridas (as the regions of Florida and the southeastern Gulf coast were known at the time) and the West. He continued to navigate the volatile situation in Europe, as France and Britain remained at war and each tried to destroy the commerce of the other, harming US trade and violating US neutrality in the process.
The situation culminated in June 1812, when Madison delivered a war message to Congress, prompting Congress to declare war on Britain. Though Madison intended the war to vindicate US neutrality, halt the British practice of stopping US vessels and pressing sailors into the Royal Navy, and annex Canada, Americans soon considered it a second war for US independence. The War of 1812 ended in a draw with no US objectives met, but Madison remained popular for the fact that the United States remained independent despite a British invasion.
Madison spent his retirement years engaged in a variety of forms of civic service. He helped Jefferson found and manage the University of Virginia, serving as the rector after Jefferson’s death in 1826. He also accepted a position as president of the controversial American Colonization Society, a movement to emancipate and expatriate the enslaved population, though it never surmounted the logistical and moral obstacles in its way. Instead, Madison lived to see slavery and other sectional issues start to polarize the United States. He passed away June 28, 1836, with a final plea that the “Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.”
Childhood
Land was the lifeblood of the Madison family wealth, and James would come to consider it the lifeblood of the nation. In 1722, James Taylor II (1674−1729) patented 13,500 acres in the Piedmont of central Virginia. He was one of twelve men to survey the region with Governor Alexander Spotswood, a group known as the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe, a mark of Taylor’s affluence. One year later, Taylor’s daughter Frances and her husband, Ambrose Madison, settled on almost 3,000 acres of the land. Like most affluent Virginians, they planted tobacco, a crop that wreaks havoc on the soil’s nutrients and necessitates continual expansion to new, fertile grounds.
In Virginia, owning vast acreage went hand-in-hand with enslaving men, women, and children to work the land and run the plantation. Ambrose and Frances’s son, James Madison Sr., and his wife Eleanor (Nelly) Conway grew the family land holdings, which expanded slavery on their plantation. As slaveholding became a mark of wealth in the colony, the Madisons’ dozens of enslaved laborers, who helped build the fine brick house called Montpelier, marked them among the most prominent families in Virginia and the most prominent of Orange County.
James Madison Jr. was born on March 16, 1751, in Port Conway, Virginia, and spent his early years at a farm house in Orange county, Virginia. Montpelier was completed when he was nine years old, one year after he inherited an enslaved infant held in trust by his father. For the young Madison, the social order of master and slave seemed as natural as parent and child.
Around the same time, Madison began to receive his education at a boarding school run by Scottish immigrant Donald Robertson. At the school, he was trained in mathematics, Latin, and Greek, preparing him for higher education in natural philosophy—a precursor to empirical sciences—and moral philosophy. In 1769, at age eighteen, Madison left Montpelier for college.
Until then, his life had followed a standard pattern of the Virginia gentry—become educated in running a plantation, receive an elite education from boarding schools or private tutors, learn to master a household, including the enslaved population. Madison diverged from the pattern, however, when he decided to attend the College of New Jersey, present-day Princeton University, rather than the College of William and Mary, where most of his Virginia peers headed. The decision proved essential to Madison’s later thought and theories.
At the College of New Jersey, Madison studied under its new president, John Witherspoon, the second Scottish immigrant who directed Madison’s education. Under Witherspoon’s direction, Madison became steeped in the European and Scottish Enlightenments, though Witherspoon rejected the philosophies of some of their notable thinkers who held dim views of religion, particularly David Hume. Rather than censor those thinkers, however, Witherspoon assigned their works and taught their philosophies, then sought to rebut them. Madison adopted Witherspoon’s openness to opposing ideas, becoming a resolute defender of religious liberty even for those whose beliefs he disliked, such as Virginia’s Baptists.
Perhaps more important to the trajectory of US history, despite Witherspoon’s opposition to Hume, Madison apparently left New Jersey with some very Humean views of society and politics. Most intellectuals subscribed to Montesquieu’s theory that a republic could only exist in a small, homogenous community, otherwise competing factions would rend it apart. Hume questioned Montesquieu and suggested that an extensive republic would balance competing interests. Those ideas had a major impact on how Madison ordered his constitutional theories. Madison eventually counted Hume among Europe’s “bungling lawgivers,” meant not as an insult but as an observation that his ideas needed to be refined into a practical system of government like the US Constitution.
Early Career
After graduating in 1771, Madison stayed at the college for an additional year of study. In 1772, imbued with an appreciation for viewpoint diversity, he returned to Montpelier and became disillusioned with Virginia society, especially its religious homogeneity. Upon his return to Virginia, he wrote some of the most morose letters of his life. They reveal a young man feeling not just ill but adrift, unsure of his next steps. With failing health and anticipating an early death, Madison planned more for eternity than for earthly accomplishments.
As Madison contemplated religion, he pondered things that he believed corrupted it, and he settled on state-supported churches as the chief culprit. Virginia enforced conformity to the Church of England with uncommon rigor compared to other colonies. Observing the persecution of Baptists in Virginia, Madison could hardly help contrasting their treatment with the religious pluralism and tolerance he had experienced up north. He personally found Baptist practices distasteful, but he detested their official persecution, and he “squabbled and scolded abused and ridiculed” what he called the “diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution” that he witnessed. Madison combined his own religiosity with Hume’s criticism of religious organization to envision a world in which religion flourished uncorrupted, due not to state support, but to liberty of conscience.
Likely surprised that he was still alive by the mid-1770s, Madison engaged in revolutionary politics and began to ponder the balance between government power and civil liberty. Like many colonists outside of New England, Madison felt threatened by the 1774 Coercive Acts, Britain’s punishment of Massachusetts following the Boston Tea Party. Madison viewed the heavy-handed acts as “Threats of Slavery and Oppression” to all the colonies.
To counter the threat, he believed, colonists needed to implement their own severe methods to protect their liberty. Unable due to health to serve in the militia, Madison joined the Orange County Committee of Safety, where he advocated harsh measures against those who failed to support the revolutionary cause. By 1776, Madison joined the Virginia Convention, the body responsible for governing revolutionary Virginia. He served on a committee responsible for punishing people deemed insufficiently friendly to Virginia’s liberty.
As Madison developed his devotion to civil liberty, he used his position in the convention to translate his advocacy of religious liberty into policy. Anticipating independence from Britain, the Virginia Convention began to draft a new constitution with a Declaration of Rights, written mainly by George Mason. Madison had said little during most of the convention, surrounded by older and more experienced politicians. He spoke up, however, to expand the Declaration of Rights’ protection for religious liberty. He sponsored amendments that broadened the principle from something the government would tolerate to a right of conscience that the government had no power to touch.
With a new government under a new state constitution, Madison took a seat in 1778 on the governor’s council, a small body meant to advise and restrain the governor. During his time on the governor’s council, he served first under a man who became one of his bitterest rivals and then another who became his closest friend—Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, respectively. Madison and Jefferson considered Henry the embodiment of an antiquated ideology in Virginia, especially given Henry’s sympathy for state-sponsored religion.
Madison’s time on the council introduced him to the complexities of fighting a continent-wide war and the exasperation of dealing with an impotent federal congress. He helped oversee the supply of money to Congress and men to the Continental Army. He lamented that Congress’s mismanagement of the resources threatened “the Existence of american Liberty.” The war compelled Madison to contemplate the delicate balance between power and liberty in a republic.
In 1780, Madison became the youngest member of the Continental Congress at age twenty-nine, and he brought to Congress his commitment to strengthening the institution. While there, he advocated amending the Articles of Confederation—the Continental Congress’s governing charter—to give Congress more effective powers to raise revenue and improve public credit. Each time, his support fell short of the steep requirement for unanimity among the states to amend the Articles. In 1783, Madison returned to Virginia unsure whether the union of states would last.
Madison’s focus turned to state politics when he became a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1784. During the mid-1780s, while Jefferson was in Paris as a diplomat, Madison defeated a Henry-backed bill to support Christian teachers with public money, and he ushered the Jefferson-authored Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom through the assembly. At the same time, Madison authored a treatise on religious liberty that evinced early versions of his most penetrating constitutional ideas—pluralism, controlling factions with competing interests, and protecting the civil liberties of minorities.
Failing Articles of Confederation
In 1784, Madison traveled north with the Marquis de Lafayette to observe negotiations with Native Americans at New York’s Fort Stanwix. During the trip, he learned that Spain had closed the Mississippi River to American navigation. Madison had expected the development following the war, but it nonetheless infuriated him. He pleaded with Lafayette and Jefferson to convince France to pressure its ally Spain to reopen the river to Americans.
Madison considered the Mississippi vital to American interests. If Americans in the West could not access the river, they could not export their agricultural goods to the world market. Without a guarantee of access to the river, Americans would stay east, overpopulate, and become an industrial society with major disparities between the monied interest and laboring poor—the very things that had corrupted British society, as Madison saw it. He envisioned a future that he considered more virtuous, where independent farmers moved west, acquired roughly equal parcels of land, grew crops, exported their goods to the world via the Mississippi, and maintained the agricultural character of the United States. If the Continental Congress could not secure access to the Mississippi, people living beyond the Appalachian Mountains might secede and become a client state of Spain or rejoin the British Empire. Madison saw access to the Mississippi River as a vital national security measure.
From a present-day perspective, it would be easy to accuse Madison of overreacting, but most Americans shared his fears, having no guarantees that their republic would survive its first few years after the end of the American Revolution. In the Southwest, Spain allied with Native American nations and armed them against Americans who considered Indian territory their territory with the end of the war. In the Northwest, a Native American−British confederacy kept land and forts that the British had nominally surrendered to the United States as part of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war.
The states’ sole ally, France, expected to be more of a puppet master than an ally, and the French court cared little about the fate of the United States so long as the territory remained out of British hands. Other foreign nations such as Portugal had rebuffed the efforts of US diplomats to secure advantageous commercial treaties. Americans had good reason to anticipate a bleak future in which foreign nations picked apart their confederacy or adopted different regions as client states.
The confederacy’s financial situation did nothing to invigorate US leverage. The war had left Congress and states deeply in debt, and Congress’s public credit faltered without an effective revenue stream. Congress depended on states to remit funds, but even states willing to bear their share of the burden struggled to collect revenue in a post-war depression that left many people buried in private debt. States levied disparate taxes on foreign imports and often taxed goods from other states, effectively waging trade wars on one another. To confront the economic challenges, some states inflated their currency with paper money, aiding the payment of private debt but further damaging public credit. When the Massachusetts government refused to pass debt relief, a rebellion erupted, lasting months in 1786 and 1787 before state militia quelled it. Like many others, Madison considered the situation unsustainable.
In September 1786, Madison traveled to Annapolis, where a small cohort of influential lawmakers planned to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation to buttress Congressional power. The convention disbanded without success due to insufficient attendance, but the delegates followed Alexander Hamilton’s lead to call for a national convention at Philadelphia the following May. Madison became a fierce advocate for the proposed Philadelphia meeting, personally imploring George Washington to attend and lend his credibility to the movement.
In the meantime, Madison returned to Congress and met with Diego de Gardoqui, the Spanish diplomat in New York. Since 1785, Gardoqui had been negotiating with John Jay, trying to settle land disputes and convince Americans to abandon their demands to navigate the Mississippi River. Gardoqui had promised Northeasterners enticing trade benefits, hoping to sway the region least concerned about the Mississippi River.
Madison believed that he was witnessing a scene that had replayed throughout history—foreign powers were exploiting the internal divisions of weak confederacies to steal their sovereignty. Madison had spent the previous year in a deep study of past confederacies and republics dating back to Greeks and Romans. They all seemed to end the same way, with a foreign kingdom picking apart the divided regions bit by bit until they usurped the whole.
Hoping the United States could avoid the same fate, Madison began to craft a constitution that he hoped would unite the states under a more powerful federal government, yet accommodate internal divisions inherent in a republic. By the time he left New York for Philadelphia, he had created succinct outlines of what he viewed as the major deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, and he proposed remedies.
The Constitutional Convention
The Philadelphia convention, known to history as the Constitutional Convention, was scheduled to begin May 14, 1787. An anxious Madison arrived in the city on May 5 and impatiently awaited delinquent delegates until May 25. In the meantime, he conferred with the Virginia delegates to turn his ideas into a formal proposal for a new government, known as the Virginia Plan, scrapping the Articles of Confederation. Instead of a diplomatic assembly of states, this new system would be a truly national government, with three branches of government—executive, judicial, and legislative. Madison even wanted the federal legislature to enjoy a “negative”—a veto—over all state laws.
On the first day of debate, the Virginia delegation convinced the convention to abandon the Articles in favor of a new framework for a national government. Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia made the speech, but the impetus came from Madison. Throughout the summer of 1787, the convention debated and reconfigured the initial Virginia proposal, but Madison’s ideas shaped the discussion. Madison hardly won every argument. In fact, he lost on two of the questions most important to him—Senate representation proportional to state population and the federal veto of state laws. He considered those points so vital that he was unsure whether the new nation could operate without them.
By mid-September 1787, however, the delegates had crafted a new government that largely reflected his theories. The government would enjoy many powers Congress lacked under the Articles, including independent taxing power, the power to raise an army, and control over interstate and foreign commerce. Madison hoped he had created a federal government with sufficient power to protect the nation’s sovereignty and sufficient safeguards to respect the people’s liberty.
Of course, like most other Americans of the time, Madison had a constricted view of what constituted “the people.” Women had only an indirect claim on the body politic through their husbands or fathers. Native Americans were seen as an odd composite of foreign nations and dependent peoples without the privileges of citizenship. Enslaved people of African descent were excluded from the body of the people, as were most free blacks. The new Constitution did not explicitly delineate those distinctions, but in important ways it protected them, especially the practice of enslavement. For example, the Constitution’s “Three-Fifths Clause” distinguished between “free persons” and “other Persons,” meaning slaves. It allowed slave states to count three-fifths of the enslaved population toward their representation in Congress without including that population in the body politic.
Conscious that he intended the Constitution to balance national security and civil liberty, Madison struggled to make sense of the protections the document afforded slavery. Explaining to convention delegates that the Constitution must protect minority rights, he lamented, “We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.” The reason? A majority favored the institution of slavery.
Hardly an abolitionist, Madison still enslaved others and was actively searching for an escaped slave named Anthony while at the Constitutional Convention. Still, like many Virginians, Madison felt uncomfortable with the institution as part of the new American order of liberty. With others, he agreed that the Constitution should not admit “the idea that there could be property in men.” The delegates drew a delicate balance between offering protections to slavery without condoning, or indeed ever explicitly mentioning, the institution. The result was a decades-long debate until the Civil War over whether the Constitution was fundamentally pro- or anti-slavery.
With the document signed, Madison plunged into the contest over ratification. He teamed with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to publish
In the centuries since, Madison’s essays have become classic pillars of US constitutional theory. Madison’s most penetrating works explained why—contrary to conventional wisdom—a republic could function over a vast territory rather than a small community, how ambition would check ambition to mitigate concentration of power, how to counterpoise majority will with minority rights, and how separation of powers would balance government strength and civil liberty.
In spring of 1788, Madison stopped writing the essays and returned to Virginia to attend the state’s ratifying convention. In Richmond, he faced his adversary Patrick Henry, who opposed ratification. On June 25, Virginia ratified the charter, days after New Hampshire had become the ninth state to do so, making the Constitution operative.
Madison prevailed with promises of amendments to the Constitution. In 1789, he won election to the House of Representatives in the First Congress, reiterating his promises to introduce constitutional amendments. Madison proposed a series of amendments guaranteeing civil liberties and checking the power of the federal government. By 1791, the nation had ratified ten of those amendments, known collectively as the Bill of Rights.
Within his lifetime, Madison came to be regarded as the Father of the Constitution. He felt uncomfortable with the title, insisting that the charter was “the work of many heads & many hands.” Madison was hardly omnipotent in the creation of the Constitution, losing significant battles in its framing and interpretation. The title is more useful in constructing a national narrative than explaining national history. But if Americans insist on assigning the title to somebody, he remains the obvious choice given his advocacy for the Constitutional Convention, his influence in persuading Washington to attend and lend it legitimacy, his foundational ideas that guided the debates, his writings and speeches that promoted ratification, and his authorship of the Bill of Rights.
House of Representatives
In February 1789, despite Patrick Henry’s best efforts to keep Madison out of the new federal government, Madison was elected to the House and became its most influential member. President Washington leaned on Madison as a key adviser in the legislature, making Madison something akin to a prime minister during Washington’s first term. Washington received Madison’s input on everything from his inaugural speech to foreign relations.
Unfortunately for Madison, Washington received advice from others as well, from people who Madison believed were trying to steer the nation toward a British-backed monarchy. Madison came to consider Alexander Hamilton as Washington’s most dangerous adviser. As treasury secretary, Hamilton proposed a financial plan that Madison feared would ruin his vision for a nation of virtuous, independent, land-holding farmers. Hamilton favored modeling the US economy after Britain’s, committed to industrialization, manufacturing, and commercial exchange, backed by powerful banking institutions such as a national bank. Hamilton also advocated a closer commercial partnership with Britain, convinced that revenue from trade with the former parent country would undergird the financial system. Madison united with Jefferson, by then Washington’s secretary of state, in a battle for the ear of the president.
The political divisions deepened as a republican revolution unfolded in France and war erupted between France and Britain. The tumult pitted Hamilton’s faction, who sympathized with Britain and condemned the violence of the French Revolution, against Madison and Jefferson’s adherents, who favored France and its revolution. The divisions gave rise to an informal, fluid, but increasingly rigid, party system between Hamilton’s Federalists and Madison’s Republicans (different from today’s Republican Party, which originated in the 1850s). In 1795, the party system took deeper root when the Senate approved and Washington ratified the Jay Treaty, a treaty with Britain to resolve outstanding issues from the American Revolution that Madison believed would ruin US economic independence. The political battle over the treaty ended Madison and Washington’s partnership.
During those tumultuous political years, forty-three-year-old Madison made a personal move that surprised many of those closest to him, marrying a vibrant, twenty-six-year-old widow with a toddler son. Aaron Burr introduced Madison to Dolley Payne Todd in 1794. Madison had not had a serious romantic relationship for a decade, since a young Kitty Floyd broke his heart by choosing another man. Combining Quaker roots and an energetic personality, Dolley mixed simplicity, verve, and intellect in a way that appealed to James. They married on September 15, 1794. Dolley’s vitality, social grace, and political instincts made her an important partner to Madison as well as a fixture in US politics and society for the rest of her life.
After backing Jefferson’s unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1796, Madison retired from Congress as John Adams and his Federalists swept into the presidency and the legislature. With Federalists firmly in control of foreign policy, relations with France began to deteriorate, leading to a limited, undeclared war in 1798. Fearful that Republican attacks on the president and Congress emboldened America’s enemies and undermined the government, Federalists passed the imperious Alien and Sedition Acts.
Among other things, the Sedition Act made it a crime to criticize the president or the government, violating freedom of speech and freedom of the press that were enshrined in the US Constitution. Infuriated by the acts, Madison drafted the Virginia Resolution, attacking the acts as unconstitutional. The Virginia Assembly adopted his resolution in 1798. Jefferson wrote a similar, though fierier, response for Kentucky, which made even Madison flinch with discomfort as it argued that states could nullify laws that they considered unconstitutional. Future generations of Southerners used the resolutions to support their theories that states could nullify laws passed by the federal government. Unwilling to abandon his earlier nationalist leanings, Madison insisted for the rest of his life that his Virginia Resolution meant no such thing.
Secretary of State
In 1800, Madison supported Jefferson in his rematch against John Adams. Having returned to a seat in the Virginia Assembly, he worked to change how the state allotted its electoral votes to ensure that the entirety went to a single candidate. One Virginia elector had given his vote to Adams in 1796, and Madison wanted to ensure that such a thing would not happen again in another election sure to be close.
Due to complexities of the electoral college system—a system even more complicated at the time than it is today—Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied for the electoral college vote. The tie threw the decision to the House of Representatives, where, after thirty-six ballots, Jefferson was voted as president, and Aaron Burr became vice president. With executive power and his party now in control of Congress, Jefferson planned to revolutionize US policy.
Jefferson appointed Madison secretary of state, making him the nation’s chief diplomat. Though Madison had never held an official diplomatic position, having turned down several offers over the years, he had pondered foreign relations for two decades. With Jefferson, Madison imagined a foreign policy marked by republican simplicity. Supported by a free people, the government would not need an army or overbearing state complex to obtain its international objectives.
Secretary of State Madison presided over one of the most significant diplomatic negotiations in US history—the Louisiana Purchase. The French dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte, had recently acquired the territory from Spain, and Madison feared that the powerful French would make dangerous neighbors. Soon after the acquisition, however, Napoleon abandoned his hope of recreating a French empire in the Americas. He sold the territory to the United States for $15 million in 1803. Having doubled the size of the United States through diplomacy rather than war, Madison and Jefferson believed that the purchase vindicated their governing philosophy.
The war in Europe made Madison’s position precarious. France and Britain tried to destroy each other’s economy, harming the trade of neutral nations such as the United States. Madison complained about both nations but considered Britain the greater offender due to impressment—the practice of stopping US ships to conscript British sailors into the Royal Navy. Madison considered the practice a violation of US sovereignty, especially because press gangs often conscripted US citizens based on thin evidence that they were British subjects.
To force the European powers to respect US neutrality and sovereignty, Madison championed the Embargo Act of 1807, a blanket prohibition on foreign trade. Madison believed the measure would harm the European economy and compel the belligerents to honor US neutrality. Roundly considered one of the worst policy blunders in US history, the Embargo hurt the US economy far more than economies in Europe and only succeeded in infuriating Madison’s Federalist critics during the election of 1808. Indeed, some British agents hoped the embargo would continue long enough to keep Madison out of the presidency and favor the more British-friendly Federalists. Though such hopes went unfulfilled, the unpopular policy did complicate Madison’s presidential aspirations in 1808.
Campaign and Election of 1808
Thomas Jefferson followed the precedent of George Washington and retired from the presidency after two terms, though not constitutionally obliged to do so at the time. Political observers knew that Jefferson intended his close friend and political partner James Madison to succeed him into the office. Other Republicans hesitated to accept Madison as the heir-apparent.
At the time, the parties remained so underdeveloped that they had no nationwide primary system for nominating candidates. Rather, party leaders—usually congressmen—held caucuses to determine who would carry their party standard. At the Republican caucus, Madison met opposition from New Yorkers, who promoted the candidacy of Vice President George Clinton, and from some Virginians who preferred James Monroe. Despite strenuous objections from those camps, the Republican caucus overwhelmingly selected Madison, and Clinton had to settle for another term as vice president.
Federalists nominated Charles C. Pinckney of South Carolina and Rufus King of New York. Their strategy consisted of riling up Americans against the Embargo Act. The embargo hit the Federalist stronghold of the Northeast particularly hard given the region’s reliance on overseas trade. Federalists accused Madison of imposing the embargo to punish them for their political views. Because the embargo had a lopsided effect against Britain, given America’s greater volume of trade with that nation, Federalists depicted Madison as Napoleon’s patsy, implementing the embargo at the emperor’s orders. Though most Americans hardly believed such claims, most Americans did know that the embargo had devastated the US economy.
Despite internal divisions in his party, the vitriol of Federalists, and the deadweight of the unpopular embargo, Madison raced to victory in the Electoral College. When Congress counted the votes on February 8, 1809, Madison claimed 122 votes to second-place Pinckney’s 47. Six New York electors bucked their party nominee and voted for Clinton. With Madison’s victory, a Virginian had won the presidency for the fifth time in six presidential election cycles.
Campaign and Election of 1812
War and politics were inextricably linked in 1812. Madison had spent most of his first term trying various modes of forcing Britain and France to cease their violations of US neutrality and sovereignty. Problems with Britain continued to fester, exacerbated by the rebirth of a British-Native American confederacy in the Ohio Valley. As the nation crept closer to war in the early months of 1812, Republicans began the process of renominating Madison. In mid-May, 83 congressional Republicans met in the Senate chamber and unanimously voted for Madison’s renomination.
The unanimity belied divisions within the party. Fifty Republican Congressmen had not attended the nominating caucus. Some Republicans thought Madison too hesitant to call for war, while others considered him too hawkish. Just two weeks after the nomination, Madison sent Congress a message detailing British abuses, implying they should declare war. On June 17, the US Senate heeded the call, and the next day, President Madison signed the war declaration, making the 1812 election the nation’s first amid a declared war.
As the election heated up, Madison came under fire for using public money to purchase documents he thought would prove a conspiracy between inveterate Federalists and Britain. In 1809, a British spy named John Henry had traveled to New England with instructions to probe Federalists loyalties and determine whether New Englanders might secede and ally with Britain. By 1812, a French con artist had persuaded Henry to sell his documents to the Madison administration. Madison purchased the documents for the enormous sum of $50,000, convinced that they would prove collusion between Federalists and Britain. The papers failed to show criminal conduct on the part of Federalists, and Madison’s critics accused him of misusing public funds to try and embarrass Federalists and boost his reelection chances. Madison insisted that the documents at least showed British intrigue, and he added Henry’s mission to his list of grievances against Britain in his war message to Congress.
The mayor of New York City and George Clinton’s nephew, DeWitt Clinton, took up New York’s Clintonian, anti-war, anti-Madison mantle. Federalists decided that they stood better chances of beating Madison by backing Clinton than nominating their own candidate. Clinton faced a messaging crisis, trying to collect support from a variety of anti-Madison elements including Federalists, pro-war but anti-Madison Republicans, anti-war and anti-Madison Republicans, Northerners tired of Virginia presidents, and Southerners suspicious of Madison’s nationalist impulses. The disparate elements failed to coalesce, and Madison won reelection with 128 electoral votes to Clinton’s 89.
The Cabinet
As President Madison began to form his cabinet, he found that political divisions and a dearth of talent constrained his choices. Powerful political brokers in New York constrained him to accept George Clinton as his vice president during the first term, though Clinton had run simultaneously as president against Madison, picking up a few electoral votes in New York. Jefferson’s Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin, was Madison’s strongest and most competent ally in the cabinet. Madison wanted to nominate him as secretary of state, but a contingent of Senate Republicans and Federalists opposed the idea. To placate powerful forces in his divided party, Madison had to settle for Robert Smith, Jefferson’s less than stellar secretary of the navy. Gallatin would remain in the Treasury Department. The oft-inebriated Paul Hamilton took Smith’s position in the Navy Department. Caesar Rodney stayed on as attorney general. With personal connections more extensive than military experience, William Eustis became secretary of war. Perhaps a president more adept at managing competing egos could have assembled a more competent cabinet, but Madison was stuck with subpar subordinates.
The deficiencies continued into his second term. Republicans had nominated Elbridge Gerry as vice president. Though capable enough, Gerry was hardly known for steadfastness. As a Republican in New England, he had little inclination or political motive to take a hard stance on Republican priorities. Indeed, he may be seen as the first vice presidential pick meant to balance the ticket. In any event, vice presidents had even less involvement in administration affairs during the early republic than they do now, so Gerry’s long experience in public life contributed little to the cabinet.
Madison did find a reason to dismiss Smith and replace him with James Monroe, who would succeed Madison to the presidency. Even so, Monroe spent much of his time quarreling with Secretary of War John Armstrong, an influential but controversial figure, dating to when he had encouraged mutiny in US ranks during the Revolutionary War. Few of the other replacements improved the cabinet much, as several competent but hardly towering figures slipped in and out of the treasury, war, and navy departments.
Change and Continuity
During Madison’s first presidential term, foreign and domestic affairs overlapped in ways that they rarely have since. Indeed, since the outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1793, foreign relations had consumed the national conversation and driven domestic politics in ways scarcely imaginable now. Other wartime periods have drawn the nation’s attention across the seas, but none in such an intense manner for such a sustained period of time as the early national era.
Not even slavery would arise as a major domestic wedge until the Missouri Crisis, several years after Madison’s presidency. When Madison had to deal with the issue, it was usually in an international context, such as conducting hostilities against Spanish Florida as a haven for runaway slaves or enforcing the government’s recent prohibition on the transatlantic slave trade. Madison certainly had a domestic vision of an agrarian United States that contrasted with the industrializing and commercial ideals of Federalists. But at each turn, that vision clashed headlong with international politics, making his domestic and foreign agendas difficult to distinguish.
Even the Second Bank of the United States, Madison’s signature domestic attainment, was the product of the War of 1812. The bank’s charter had expired in 1812. Its proponents had attempted to renew it, but an anti-bank coalition moved against it and defeated its renewal. Madison had opposed the bank since his nemesis Hamilton had proposed it during the First Congress. As president, though, Madison found it difficult to wage war without a viable source of loans or credit, which the bank had provided while it existed. In 1816, recognizing the bank’s utility, Madison supported its recharter and signed it into law. He conceded that the bank had become so ingrained into US finances and so long accepted as constitutional by successive Congresses and the citizenry that it had in effect become constitutional by precedent.
Despite signing the bank’s recharter into law, Madison remained wary of sweeping implied powers in the US Constitution. During his presidency, a growing number of congressmen from both parties advocated federal funding for internal improvements, what today would be called infrastructure. Madison advocated their vision of federal money spent on canals, bridges, and national roads that would link the various parts of the union, but he insisted that such funding required an amendment to the Constitution. When Congress passed an internal improvements bill without a constitutional amendment, Madison vetoed it just before he left office. Madison was practical enough to recognize when he needed to bend to events but principled enough to stem change when in his power.
War Looms
Foreign affairs dominated Madison’s presidency. Days before he took office in March 1809, Congress had repealed the Embargo Act and replaced it with the milder Non-Intercourse Act. The act dropped the general embargo on foreign exports but continued trade prohibitions against France and Britain. The act empowered the president to drop the trade restrictions if either of the nations removed their constraints on US trade.
When the act failed to compel either nation to change course, Congress passed Macon’s Bill No. 2. The new law removed all prohibitions on US trade but empowered the president to reimpose restrictions on one of the belligerent powers if the other removed its hindrances to US commerce. The US government hoped the move would entice Britain or France to win an upper hand by complying with US demands, thereby triggering American trade restrictions against its enemy.
Napoleon responded first, making flimsy promises to repeal his anti-neutral policies. Napoleon convinced Madison but not the British, who assumed that the French emperor had no intention of following through on his commitment. Madison threatened the British that Napoleon’s response would prompt US action against them. Unmoved, British leaders insisted they would continue to seize US ships until Napoleon ceased his commercial warfare against Britain. That policy essentially guaranteed continued hostilities against US commerce until Napoleon’s defeat.
While Madison wrestled with Britain over its policies eastward in the Atlantic, he felt growing pressure from the empire’s actions in the West. Determined to resist US expansion westward, a large coalition of Native American nations had begun to reconstruct an ominous British-Native American confederacy, led by the prophet Tenskwatawa and his diplomat brother Tecumseh. The British supplied their Native American allies with arms but cautioned moderation. They would depend on Native Americans to defend British Canada if war erupted with the United States, but they wanted to avoid hasty hostilities.
Hostilities came when Madison allowed Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory to recruit a patrol to reconnoiter a Native American encampment along the Tippecanoe River. Despite Madison’s warning against “needless hostilities,” battle broke out, and Harrison’s troops burned Tenskwatawa’s city of gathered Native Americans. The fight was more of a debacle than a victory, but Madison cast it as a triumph in the face of criticism that his administration had bungled the mission. A battle with Native Americans allied with Britain and armed by the British military invited louder calls for war.
While the administration was accusing British officials of sparking the violence at Tippecanoe, it learned that Britain had sent the spy John Henry to New England several years earlier. Henry and his French con artist partner, Paul Émile Soubiran, sold Henry’s official correspondence to the administration, convincing Madison and Monroe that it would prove a conspiracy between the British and Federalists. The papers caused more headaches for Madison than they were worth, leading to accusations that he had misused public funds to embarrass Federalists and aid his reelection. Still, Madison added Henry’s mission to his growing list of complaints against the British.
In April 1812, Congress approved military preparations and a ninety-day embargo against the British. Though Napoleon showed no sign of abating his restrictions on neutral trade, Madison and Republicans considered Britain the more imminent threat. Madison made a list of British transgressions for Congress—impressment (the most paramount in Madison’s mind), the arming of Native Americans, the Henry mission, and a host of Orders in Council that Britain used to restrict neutral trade.
On June 1, 1812, Madison turned his complaints into an address, which he sent to Congress. Careful not to cross what he viewed as a clear line of presidential authority, he did not ask Congress to declare war, but he left no doubt of his preference for it. The House of Representatives voted for war on June 4. A divided Senate debated for two weeks before following suit on June 17, and President Madison signed the declaration of war the next day. The United States was at war with Britain for the second time in just over a quarter century, and Madison became the nation’s first wartime president (at least of a declared war).
The War of 1812
Many Americans viewed the war as a second war of independence—not for political independence but for economic and maritime independence. As with the first War of American Independence, the Madison administration made Canada a prime target, not just to defeat the British but to annex and further expand across North America. Also, as with the first War of American Independence, the invasion of Canada failed. By the fall of 1812, several waves of American troops had surrendered from Detroit to Niagara. The defeats hardened Federalist anger, and some New England states refused to supply militia afterward, making it more difficult to prosecute the war.
Despite the promising start to the war for Britain, the British cabinet offered an armistice. In June 1812, they had rescinded the offending Orders in Council, but Madison and Congress did not receive that news until after they had declared war. British authorities hoped that Madison would accept the armistice so they could avoid an unwelcome distraction from their war against Napoleon. Madison considered it but then rejected it, not wanting to show weakness and insisting that impressment must stop as well, a stipulation the British would not entertain.
Intent on seeing the war through, Madison needed good military news, which came the following year. In 1813, US forces took York, present-day Toronto, and Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s sailors defeated the British fleet on Lake Erie. William Henry Harrison led troops again against Tecumseh’s Native American forces and British allies and defeated them at the Battle of Thames River. The next year, US forces followed the victory with another route of Native American forces at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend near the Gulf Coast, fracturing the alliance between the British and Native Americans.
Throughout 1814, the British and Americans fought to a stalemate. The British went on the offensive after defeating Napoleon and won a major victory when they attacked Washington, DC. The seat of American government fell, with British troops torching the White House and most other federal buildings, sending Madison and most of his cabinet in flight. Dolley Madison and Madison’s enslaved valet Paul Jennings are remembered in history for their role in securing Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington from the White House before they fled. The burning failed to turn the course of the war, however, as US forces repelled the British advance at Fort McHenry, near Baltimore, inspiring Francis Scott Key’s penning of what would become the national anthem.
By 1814, British and US representatives began peace negotiations, and the British wanted a major piece of US real estate as leverage, so they planned an attack on New Orleans. British commanders sent 6,000 men to take the vital city. On January 8, 1815, a motley crew of US regular forces, militia, free black and enslaved fighters, and even French pirates, repulsed the British attack. The US forces killed one-third of the British troops in just minutes, suffering only seventy deaths on the American side.
The victory is habitually dismissed as meaningless since it came two weeks after the belligerents signed a peace treaty in Ghent, Belgium. However, it inspired patriotic morale in the postwar United States and, along with the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, signaled US power in the Gulf region. Until the war, Native American nations, the Spanish, French, and British had all jockeyed for power in the area. In 1810, as Spanish dominions in the Americas fractured, Madison took advantage of the chaos to annex West Florida based on tepid claims to the region from the Louisiana Purchase. Still, the US grasp on the Gulf Coast remained vulnerable. The Battle of New Orleans concluded the War of 1812, but it also secured US strength in a prolonged military and diplomatic contest over the southern coast.
Effects of the War
The United States ratified the Treaty of Ghent in February 1815. Historians have had difficulty making sense of a war that seems to have resolved nothing. The treaty returned US-British relations to the status quo antebellum, all as it was before the war. By then, however, the British had defeated Napoleon, obviating the need to interrupt US commerce and send press gangs aboard US ships. Of all the belligerents, Canadians may have the strongest claims to victory, having repulsed successive waves of US invasions and ultimately annexation. British-allied Native Americans lost the most in the war. Their confederacy shattered and they lost British support, they faced an uncertain future with their American enemies now the unqualified masters of the middle of the continent.
Madison’s reputation fluctuated with US fortunes during the war, so the Battle of New Orleans landed it on a high mark. A surge of patriotism flooded the nation after the war as Americans cast their draw with Britain as a victory, considering they remained independent and lost no territory. The war also secured the political prospects of many other Americans who distinguished themselves in combat, especially Andrew Jackson, who commanded US forces at the Battle of New Orleans.
However dubious, American successes left Federalists who opposed the war on the wrong side of the question. They had suffered national setbacks since 1800, and the war left the party shattered. In 1814, leading New England Federalists attended the Hartford Convention, where they considered secession from the union. Though they stopped short of that drastic measure, their complaints sounded sufficiently disloyal to a jubilant postwar nation to ensure their demise as a viable party.
In March 1817, at sixty-six years old, Madison left Washington and public politics, honoring the two-term precedent established by Washington and Jefferson. He returned to Montpelier with Dolley. His mother, Nelly, lived in her own wing of the house, his father having passed away just before Madison became secretary of state. He began to manage his plantation and its enslaved community full time for essentially the first time in his life.
Never content with the life of only running his plantation, Madison plunged into other activities to engage with public life. Almost immediately after his presidency, he was elected president of the Agricultural Society of Albemarle. In that position, he advocated progressive farming techniques that would halt the clearing of and replenish Virginia’s exhausted forested areas.
In what modern viewers may consider a tragic paradox, Madison spent more time in retirement thinking about emancipation than he had ever spent as a politician when he was able to effect change. Of course, the political reality was that if Madison had espoused such views during his political years, his political years would likely have been cut abruptly short.
For the rest of his retirement, Madison tried to make sense of the contradictions of liberty and slavery in the new nation and in his private life. He was a founding member and, near the end of his life, president of the American Colonization Society (ACS), an organization dedicated to expatriating free blacks to Africa. Madison thought carefully about an ultimately impractical scheme of selling public lands in the West to raise money to compensate enslavers, free slaves, and fund their expatriation.
Madison advocated the process not so much because he desired to rid the nation of its black population, as some members of the ACS undoubtedly wanted. Rather, Madison was convinced that life would be better for black people in Africa than among a white population that he believed would never allow them full rights and would live in constant fear of retribution for the wrongs they had committed. Madison saw firsthand the impracticability of the plan when he failed to convince some enslaved workers on his own plantation to accept freedom in exchange for leaving the land of their birth and risking an unknown, precarious life an ocean away.
However high-minded his views compared to a large swath of Southern enslavers, Madison refused to stake his reputation on emancipation, even in retirement. Madison was part of a former generation that still considered slavery evil, as opposed to many of the new generation of enslavers that considered it a positive good. Undesirous to stir a hornet nest, Madison spoke circumspectly about slavery in public. He insisted that enslavers be compensated for emancipation (even if just as a practical matter to gain support) even as he pled that Southerners recognize the humanity of the enslaved.
In 1829, Madison was invited to a convention to revise the Virginia Constitution. At the convention, Madison recognized that the enslaved community was a part, however marginalized, of the national family. He advocated for political protections for enslavers against the non-slaveholding community, advancing Madison’s complex legacy as an anti-slavery enslaver.
The Constitution never far from his mind, Madison spent his retirement years organizing the notes he had taken at the Constitutional Convention from 1787, with Dolley’s help. Like many Virginia planters, Madison found farming in Virginia a precarious business, and Montpelier rarely turned much of a profit. He intended posthumous publication of the
Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia demanded most of Madison’s attention in retirement. Like Jefferson, Madison insisted that republics depended on a citizenry educated in the virtues of liberty and republicanism. Even before he had retired from the presidency, he had accepted an appointment as a trustee of the university. Upon Jefferson’s death in 1826 until 1834, he served as its rector.
Madison died two years later on June 28, 1836. His estate, including the enslaved population, passed to Dolley. He had hoped that Dolley would not sell slaves, which would wrench them from friends and family, except upon a slave’s request or for misbehavior. Facing a financial crisis from Montpelier’s indebtedness, however, Dolley sold Montpelier and its enslaved community and moved to Washington, DC.
Dolley was the heartbeat of the White House during the Madison administration. Visitors remarked on her vivacity, social grace, and charm. The more reserved James happily let Dolley take the lead at important social events, which she frequently hosted. Her elegant weekly “drawing rooms” found a tactful place between the cold formality of Martha Washington’s “levees” and the widowed Thomas Jefferson’s heedless informality. As political as they were social, the events facilitated political and diplomatic connections and reduced temperatures in the overwrought city.
When James and Dolley married, her son from her first marriage, John Payne “Payne” Todd, was still a toddler. Still in school when Madison became president, Payne spent little time in the White House. Although the Madisons had no children or grandchildren living permanently with them, the White House hosted many from their extended family. Dolley’s sister, Anna Payne Cutts and her husband Richard, with their three children, initially lived with the Madisons in 1809. Even after they moved out, the family made a frequent presence at the White House, given the closeness of Dolley and Anna. Madison’s nephew, Robert, the son of his brother William, lived in the White House for about six months part way through Madison’s presidency. Edward Coles, the president’s private secretary and Dolley’s cousin, occupied a room.
The White House bustled with free and enslaved staff. John Sioussat worked as the White House steward. Like the two preceding Virginia presidents, the Madisons kept probably at least a dozen enslaved workers at the executive mansion at any given time, including footman/valet Paul Jennings, maid Susan or “Sukey”, and coachman Joseph Bolden. Bolden’s wife, Milley, owned by Dolley’s cousin Francis Scott Key, and their child joined the presidential household after the Boldens purchased freedom for their entire family. John Freeman and his free wife Melinda also worked there.
Madison hired other enslaved workers from around the city from time to time. Dolley also borrowed the labor of slaves from friends and associates when she needed additional workers for special occasions. Jennings was among other unnamed staff who famously helped save George Washington’s life-size portrait from flames when the British burned the White House. Surrounded by enslaved staff in the nation’s nerve center of freedom, Edward Coles often lectured Madison about the contradictions of republicanism and slavery. We can only imagine Madison’s sympathetic but ultimately dismissive responses.
Americans and scholars will likely always regard Madison as a better convention and congressional leader than president. Those roles played to Madison’s strengths, where deep thought and intimate persuasion are more prized than charisma and magnetism. Indeed, given Madison’s affinity for congressional over presidential power, that legacy would probably suit him fine. His small frame, soft voice, and dislike of attention hardly made him a natural in the office of president. For those reasons, Dolley was an indispensable partner in the White House, recognizing that the nation craved presidential splendor that Madison hesitated to supply. That hesitance stemmed partly from his personality and partly from his deep-rooted desire that the presidential office maintain a republican simplicity, even as the nation grew and developed.
Assessments of Madison’s presidency usually hinge on assessments of the War of 1812. The causes and aims of the war today still seem undefined, and the outcome of the war seems equally murky. Such ambiguity raises doubts about the wisdom of prosecuting the war in the first place. The war was highly popular in most parts of the nation but hardly universally so. A nation whose senate takes two weeks to debate a declaration of war is a nation unsure of its commitment to the cause. The war also invited the only successful invasion and sacking of Washington, DC, hardly a glowing distinction. Many historians still see wartime Madison much like the British and Federalists did at the time, a panicky figure fleeing from the flames set by the British.
Despite the negative perception that persists, some historians have recently rethought Madison’s wartime accomplishments, even drawing comparisons to Abraham Lincoln. Bereft of effective generals, Madison took a direct interest in the prosecution of the war. He refused to relinquish the details to Secretary of War John Armstrong. Though it can be tempting to dismiss the caliber of US fighting, the United States did withstand a British invasion at a time when the British would gladly have at least retaken some territory in North America.
Unlike during the Revolutionary War, the United States fought Britain without the aid of foreign allies. Napoleon distracted the British during the first part of the war, but Napoleon’s defeat in early 1814 freed British forces to concentrate on America. A crucial US naval victory that threatened British supply lines forced the retreat of a formidable British force that could have otherwise inflicted serious damage. In the most sympathetic reading of events, Madison prosecuted a respectable war that vindicated US sovereignty and international rights. The war introduced the nation onto the world stage as a respected power for the first time in its short history.
Like other enslavers among the Founding Fathers, Madison’s legacy will always grapple with slavery because of his enslavement of others and because of the protections the Constitution afforded the institution. Like others of his generation, he considered slavery evil but spent little time or political capital laboring to extricate it from his own life or from the United States. Madison’s complicity with slavery is less visible than Jefferson’s, who made equality a founding ideal in the Declaration of Independence, but it is knottier than Washington’s, who labored to keep his estate solvent so he could free the enslaved people at Mount Vernon in his will (though Washington died at a time when that process was easier legally, politically, and financially).
Madison’s legacy remains intrinsically linked with US constitutionalism. By the time delegates at the Constitutional Convention signed the document on September 17, 1787, it looked rather different from Madison’s original proposals. Those changes have caused some to question whether Americans should remember him as the Father of the Constitution. Some have wondered if that title might even belong to George Washington, given his eminence at the convention and the legitimacy that his presence lent the charter. However Americans choose to remember the Founders with such titles of doubtful historical usefulness, it is difficult to overstate Madison’s contributions to the US Constitution. He tirelessly advocated the convention, helped convince Washington to attend, provided an initial blueprint for the government, spoke frequently and persuasively in debates, kept invaluable notes of the proceedings, fought for ratification, and authored the Bill of Rights. In the process, he produced abiding constitutional theory for generations of political theorists, Supreme Court opinions, and common Americans.
Most people know that James Madison left a legacy of constitutionalism to the United States, but he did more than that. Madison insisted that thirteen sovereign, independent states scrap their diplomatic assembly and unite into a nation. Certainly, he was one among many who advocated such a path, but he combined his advocacy with uniquely laborious thought, planning, and action to bring it to fruition. Madison was instrumental in creating not just a constitution for a nation, but the nation itself. George Washington was the gravitational pull that kept a centrifugal nation together, but Madison may have done more actually to sire that nation out of individual states. At a time when some are wondering if George Washington is the real Father of the Constitution, it is worth wondering if James Madison is the real Father of the Nation.
James Monroe was the last American President of the “Virginia Dynasty”—of the first five men who held that position, four hailed from Virginia. Monroe also had a long and distinguished public career as a soldier, diplomat, governor, senator, and cabinet official. His presidency, which began in 1817 and lasted until 1825, encompassed what came to be called the "Era of Good Feelings." One of his lasting achievements was the Monroe Doctrine, which became a major tenet of U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.
Early Revolutionary
James Monroe was born in 1758 to prosperous Virginia planters. His parents died when he was a teenager, leaving him part of the family farm. He enrolled at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg in 1774, and almost immediately began participating in revolutionary activities. With a group of classmates, he raided the arsenal at the British Governor's Palace, escaping with 200 muskets and 300 swords, which the students presented to the Virginia militia. He became an officer in the Continental Army in early 1776 and, shortly thereafter, joined General George Washington's army at New York. He was severely wounded at the Battle of Trenton.
Monroe was promoted to captain and then major, and was assigned to the staff of General William Alexander, where he served for more than a year. After resigning his commission in the Continental Army in 1779, he was appointed colonel in the Virginia service. In 1780, Governor Thomas Jefferson sent Monroe to North Carolina to report on the advance of the British.
After the war, Monroe studied law with Jefferson and was elected to the Continental Congress in 1783. While a delegate to the Congress, then meeting in New York, he met Elizabeth Kortright, the daughter of a New York City merchant. A year later they were married; he was twenty-seven and she was seventeen. The newlyweds moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Monroe practiced law.
High Political Office
In 1787, Monroe began serving in the Virginia assembly and was chosen the following year as a delegate to the Virginia convention considering ratification of the new U.S. Constitution. He voted against ratification, holding out for the direct election of presidents and senators, and for the inclusion of a bill of rights. Partly due to politicians, such as Monroe, who brought attention to the omission of such constitutional guarantees, the Bill of Rights became the first ten amendments of the Constitution upon ratification in 1791. Although Monroe narrowly lost a congressional election to James Madison in 1790, the Virginia state legislature appointed him to the U.S. Senate. As a member of that body, he allied himself with Madison and Thomas Jefferson, his close personal friends, against the Federalist faction led by Vice President John Adams and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. In 1794, President Washington sent Monroe to Paris as U.S. minister to France. Monroe's actions as minister angered the Federalists, however, and Washington recalled him in 1797. In 1799, he was elected governor of Virginia, where he served three one-year terms. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent him back to France to help negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. Monroe continued to serve his government in Europe, representing the United States as U.S. minister to Britain from 1803 to 1807, with a brief stint as special envoy to Spain in 1805. After he returned home, dissident Republicans nominated him to oppose James Madison for the Democratic-Republican presidential nomination in 1808. Monroe, however, never considered the challenge serious, and Madison won the election easily. Monroe was once again elected governor of Virginia in January 1811, but headed back to Washington, D.C., that April, when President Madison named him secretary of state. Monroe served in that capacity, and also for a time as secretary of war, until 1817.
Easy Race to the White House
When President Madison announced his decision to continue the custom of serving only two terms, Monroe became the logical candidate for the Democratic-Republicans. After some maneuvering within the party, Monroe prevailed to win the nomination. He had little opposition during the general election campaign. The Federalists were so out of favor with the public that a majority had abandoned the party name altogether. They ultimately nominated New York's Rufus King, but the result was a foregone conclusion. In the Electoral College, Monroe carried sixteen states to King's three. Monroe began his presidency by embarking on a presidential tour, a practice initiated by George Washington. His trip through the northern states took fifteen weeks, by which time more Americans had seen him than they had any other sitting President. A newspaper in Boston described Monroe's reception there as the beginning of a new "Era of Good Feelings" for the nation. The President later made two similar tours, one of the Chesapeake Bay area in 1818 and one of the South and West in 1819.
Era of Good Feelings
At the beginning of Monroe's presidency, the nation had much to feel good about. It had declared victory in the War of 1812 and its economy was booming, allowing the administration to turn its attention toward domestic issues. The economy was booming. The organized opposition, in the form of the Federalists, had faded largely from sight, although the government had adopted many Federalist programs, including protective tariffs and a national bank. The President, moreover, was personable, extremely popular, and interested in reaching out to all the regions of the country. Monroe faced his first crisis as President with the Panic of 1819, which resulted in high unemployment as well as increased foreclosures and bankruptcies. Some critics derided Monroe for not responding more forcefully to the depression. Although he believed that such troubles were natural for a maturing economy and that the situation would soon turn around, he could do little to alleviate their short-term effects. Monroe's second crisis came the same year, when the entrance of Missouri to the Union as a slave state threatened to disrupt the legislative balance between North and South. Congress preserved that equilibrium, negotiating a compromise in which Massachusetts allowed its northernmost counties to apply for admission to the Union as the new free state of Maine. The Missouri Compromise also called for the prohibition of slavery in the western territories of the Louisiana Purchase above the 36/30' north latitude line. Monroe worked in support of the compromise and, after ascertaining that the provisions were constitutional, signed the bill. In trying to sustain the "Era of Good Feelings," Monroe had hoped to preside over the decline of political parties. However, his administration offered only a brief respite from divisive partisan politics. The rancor surrounding the 1824 presidential election was a reminder that strong feelings still animated American political life even without the existence of two distinct parties. In fact, the Monroe presidency stood at the forefront of a transition from the first party system of the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists to the second party system of the Democrats and the Whigs.
Spanish Florida and the Monroe Doctrine
In 1818, President Monroe sent General Andrew Jackson to Spanish Florida to subdue the Seminole Indians, who were raiding American settlements. Liberally interpreting his vague instructions, Jackson led his troops deep into areas of Florida under the control of Spain and captured two Spanish forts. In addition to securing greater protection for American settlements, the mission pointed out the vulnerability of Spanish rule in Florida. Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, used that vulnerability to pressure Spain into selling Florida to the United States. As Spain's dominion in the America's continued to disintegrate, revolutions throughout its colonies brought independence to Argentina, Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. When European powers threatened to form an alliance to help Spain regain its lost domains, Monroe, with the prodding of Secretary of State Adams, declared that America would resist European intervention in the Western Hemisphere. Announced in the President's message to Congress on December 2, 1823, the Monroe Doctrine thus became a cornerstone of American foreign policy. Leaving Washington after a lifetime of public service, Monroe and his wife retired to their estate in Loudoun County, Virginia. Monroe returned to private life deeply in debt and spent many of his later years trying to resolve his financial problems. He petitioned the government to repay him for past services, with the government eventually providing a portion of the amount he sought. After his wife died in 1830, Monroe moved to New York City to live with his daughter. He died there on July 4, 1831.
Born on April 28, 1758, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, James Monroe enjoyed all the advantages accruing to the son of a prosperous planter. His father, Spence Monroe, traced his ancestry back to relative who had fought at the side of Charles I in the English civil wars before being captured and exiled to Virginia in 1649. His mother, Elizabeth Jones Monroe, was of Welsh heritage but little is known about her. Beginning at the age of 11, Monroe attended a school run by Reverend Archibald Campbell. His time at this school overlapped with that of John Marshall, who later became the chief justice of the United States.
Eager Patriot
Monroe's parents died when he was in his mid-teens, his father having passed away in 1774 and his mother likely doing so some time earlier (though her actual date of death is unknown). James and his siblings shared an inheritance of land and some slaves, and he and his two brothers—his sister had already married—became wards of their uncle, Joseph Jones. Jones became a mentor and friend to James, often offering him advice and support.
In 1774, Monroe entered the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. His education took place not only in the classroom but also throughout the town, which was the capital of colonial Virginia. It was an exciting time to be in Williamsburg. Royal Governor Dunmore had fled the capital, fearing that the colonists were a danger to him and his family; after he left, Monroe and some of his fellow classmates helped loot the arsenal at the Governor's Palace. They escaped with 200 muskets and 300 swords, which they donated to the Virginia militia. By the winter of 1776, in the wake of Lexington and Concord, Monroe had joined the Virginia infantry. He became an officer in the Continental Army and joined General George Washington's army in New York.
During the Revolution, Monroe fought with distinction in several important battles, including Trenton, Monmouth, Brandywine, and Germantown. He was severely hurt at the Battle of Trenton, suffering a near fatal wound to his shoulder as he led a charge against enemy cannon. After recuperating, he became a staff officer for General William Alexander. By the end of his service with the Continental Army, he had gained the rank of major; however, because of an excess of officers, he had little possibility of commanding soldiers in the field. He thus resigned his commission in the Continental Army in 1779 and was appointed colonel in the Virginia service. In 1780, Governor Thomas Jefferson sent Monroe to North Carolina to report on the advance of the British.
Quick Jump into Politics
After the war, Monroe studied law, taking Thomas Jefferson as his mentor. He was elected to the Virginia Assembly in 1782 and then served on the Council of State, which advised the governor. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1783, Monroe worked for expanding the power of Congress, organizing government for the western country, and protecting American navigation on the Mississippi River.
While in New York as a member of the Continental Congress, Monroe met Elizabeth Kortright, the daughter of Lawrence Kortright, a prominent local merchant who had lost much of his wealth during the Revolution. She was sixteen at the time, and Monroe was twenty-six; they married the following year, on February 16, 1786. Having passed the Virginia bar in 1782, Monroe and his new bride moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he practiced law.
Among the leading political figures in Virginia, Monroe exhibited an independent streak when he voted against ratifying the U.S. Constitution as a delegate to the state's ratification convention. He wanted a Constitution that allowed for the direct election of senators as well as the President, and the inclusion of a strong bill of rights. After the ratification of the new Constitution, Monroe unsuccessfully challenged James Madison for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Monroe lost by 300 votes, yet the state legislature appointed him to the U.S. Senate in 1790. He thereafter joined with Madison and Jefferson, with whom he had become friendly in the mid-1780s, to oppose the Federalist policies championed by Vice President John Adams and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. The three Virginians would remain lifelong friends and allies.
Minister to France and Britain
In 1794, President George Washington sent Monroe to Paris as U.S. minister to France. It was an eventful appointment that lasted two years. When Thomas Paine, the British pamphleteer and supporter of the American Revolution, was imprisoned for having spoken against the execution of King Louis XVI, Monroe won his release and allowed Paine to live for a time with his family at the American minister's residence in Paris.
Monroe's tenure in France was far from easy. Revolutionary France was an unstable place and the new minister had to tread carefully. His mission was to uphold President Washington's policy of strict neutrality toward Britain and France while still assuring the French that America was not favoring Britain. This task became harder when France learned that the United States had signed a new accord— the Jay Treaty—with Great Britain. When France asked Monroe to spell out its details, the President found himself unable to comply: Jay had refused to send him a copy of the document. Although Monroe told the French that the treaty did not alter their agreements, the French were convinced that the United States now favored Britain. In the end, U.S. domestic politics doomed Monroe's tenure in Paris. The Federalists blamed Monroe for deteriorating relations with France, and Washington recalled him.
Out of power momentarily, Monroe returned to Virginia to practice law and attend to his plantations. He was elected governor in 1799 and worked vigorously in support of public education and the election of Thomas Jefferson as President in 1800. In 1803, the victorious Jefferson sent Monroe to France as a special envoy to help negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. Monroe then served as the U.S. minister to Britain from 1803 to 1807 with a brief stint as a special envoy to Spain in 1805. In Spain, Monroe tried to negotiate a treaty to cede the Spanish territory along the Gulf of Mexico to the United States. However, he soon realized that Spain had no intention of signing such a treaty and so returned to Britain.
During his tenure in Britain, he tried to negotiate an end to impressments—the British practice of seizing U.S. sailors and forcing them to serve in the British Navy. Although Monroe signed a treaty with Britain in 1806 resolving some outstanding issues, the treaty did not include a ban on impressments, and President Jefferson did not even submit the treaty to the U.S. Senate for consideration. Monroe was upset that Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison did not see the treaty as he did—as a first step toward better relations with Britain. But Jefferson and Madison knew that current political attitudes would never support a treaty without a ban on impressments. Although this episode caused a brief rift between the three friends, Monroe recognized that the President had to take domestic politics into account when considering his foreign policy options. Following his return home in 1808, Monroe was tapped by dissident Republicans to oppose Madison for the Democratic-Republican presidential nomination. Although Monroe allowed himself to be nominated, he never considered his challenge to Madison seriously and stressed that he differed with Madison only with respect to foreign affairs; in all other areas, the two saw eye-to-eye. Madison easily won the 1808 presidential election. Three years later, in January 1811, Monroe was once again elected governor of Virginia, though he did not serve for long; that April, Madison named him secretary of state.
Secretary of State and Secretary of War
As the nation's chief diplomat, Monroe focused on relations with Britain and France. The two European countries were at war with one another and their fighting infringed upon U.S. shipping and trade. The United States wanted France and Britain to respect American commercial interests as befitted those of a neutral country. Although both nations targeted American trade, the Madison administration concentrated primarily on Britain because of its frequent practice of seizing U.S. sailors and forcing them to serve in the British navy. The United States declared war on Britain in June 1812, but the war was far from popular. Many New Englanders found that it disrupted their access to European markets. Additional numbers thought that neutrality rights were not a sufficient reason to go to war. However, Madison and Monroe both believed that the United States needed to resist British depredations by force of arms.
From the beginning, the war was a disaster for the United States. The army was unequipped and unprepared, and the initial military actions resulted in defeat. When Madison's secretary of war resigned, Monroe took over the office on a temporary basis, from December 1812 to February 1813; he would do so again from August 1814 until March 1815. Monroe was well suited to the demands of the post because of his understanding of the military and his strong organizational skills. He helped reorganize the army and brought new energy to the war effort.
In August 1814, when British troops appeared at the mouth of the Potomac River, Monroe led a scouting party to report on their advance. He sent word to Madison warning that the British were marching toward Washington, D.C. As British troops headed toward the capital, Monroe stayed in the city to help with its evacuation. After the British attacked Washington and burned most of the government buildings, Monroe returned to the city. Madison then placed him in charge of its defenses.
Monroe's popularity rose after the war, due to his tireless service in Madison's cabinet. A new generation of war veterans would remember his leadership with fondness and respect, leaving him well-positioned to receive the Democratic-Republican nomination for President in the 1816 election.