Essays on the Founders: James Madison

Posted by Eric F. Langborgh on April 5, 2007

This essay was published in the March 2001 issue (Volume I, Issue 2) — and republished in revised form in the December 2001 issue (Volume II, Issue 4) — of the “Bill of Rights Institute eNewsletter” and at www.BillofRightsInstitute.org.  It is no longer available online, so is republished here by the author.

 

“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”
~James Madison, Speech before the Virginia State Constitutional Convention,
December 1, 1829 

Perhaps no other individual of the Founding generation had as much influence in crafting, ratifying, and interpreting the United States Constitution as James Madison. A superbly skilled political tactician, Madison proved as instrumental in determining and constructing the form of the early American Republic as George Washington was in holding together its many factions.

 

Background 

James Madison was born March 16, 1751 in Port Conway, Virginia, the oldest of ten children. As a youth he seemed most at ease with his books and disliked large social occasions. He received his early education from his mother before heading off to a private school located in King and Queen County, Virginia run by Presbyterian minister Donald Robertson. There he stayed from the age of eleven to sixteen, before returning to his family’s estate, Montpelier, in Orange County for two years under the tutelage of Thomas Martin.

In August 1769, Madison began his studies at the College of New Jersey (later named Princeton University). He excelled in a classical education of Latin and Greek studies, showing special interest in government and the law. A devout Christian, as evidenced by his writings at the time, he stayed on for a year following his graduation in 1771 to study theology under the prestigious Calvinist president of the college, John Witherspoon.

Madison seriously considered pursuing the ministry, but instead returned to Montpelier and embraced the rising patriot cause. Soon state and local politics absorbed most of his time. In December 1774, he was appointed to the Orange County Committee of Safety. The subsequent year (1776) he was elected to the Virginia convention that declared the colony’s independence form Britain and drafted a new state constitution. Terms in the House of Delegates (1776-77) and the Council of State (1778-80) followed.

Despite his patriotic passions, Madison’s poor health precluded him from serving in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. He suffered many serious illnesses growing up and a possible nervous disorder that would leave him exhausted following strenuous activity. His frequent illness repeatedly led him to great despair, causing him to “fear the worse.” Yet, he ultimately outlived all his peers from the Founding generation, escaping many of the terminal diseases that often cut lives short in the 18th and 19th centuries. He narrowly escaped death from serious illness during his Presidency in 1813.

Despite his small and frail stature, Madison’s vast knowledge and political skill earned him much respect and the ears of his peers. Virginia chose Madison to represent the state in the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation in 1780-83 and 1786-88 (he served in the Virginia House of Delegates during the intervening years). Though originally the youngest delegate, he played a major role in the body’s deliberations. Seeing many inherent weaknesses in the system of government under the Articles, he wrote extensively about the problems and possible solutions. He took the lead in calling for the Constitutional Convention of 1787, convincing the likes of Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Edmund Randolph of the need for a more powerful central government.

“Father of the Constitution”

Several years after the states ratified the U.S. Constitution, an admirer of James Madison’s pinned on him the label “Father of the Constitution.” Madison disavowed the moniker, but history shows the nickname has appropriately stuck with him.

Madison’s work leading up to, during, and after the Constitutional Convention is a monument to preparation and perseverance getting favorable results. In the spring and summer of 1786, Madison retired to his study in his beloved home Montpelier, armed with a number of books he had collected (many sent from Paris by his friend Thomas Jefferson) dealing with governments of the past. From these books on ancient republics, Madison hoped to learn what made governments work, or prevented them from working. As a result, he penned a document titled “Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies.”

In his “Notes…,” Madison made lists of all the features of government that worked and features that did not work in providing for an orderly peace while protecting the natural rights of citizens. He especially focused on what did not work, such as “disparity of size in Cantons (i.e., factions),” “intolerance of religion,” and “weakness of the Union.”

In his later collection of notes, “The Vices of the Political System of the United States,” Madison began to work out his ideas of how human nature affected government. He concluded that governments must accept the many different courses of action that humans will pursue, based on what they perceive to be their self-interest. “The great desideratum in Government,” wrote Madison, “is such a modification of the Sovereignty as will render it sufficiently neutral between the different interests and factions, to control one part of Society from invading the rights of another, and sufficiently controuled [sic] itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the whole Society.”

Madison was greatly influenced by Scottish philosophers Adam Smith and David Hume. From Smith he saw that self-interest was best protected and put to a favorable end through free trade. He came to echo Hume’s notion that it is harder for factions — or special-interest groups in today’s parlance — to join together into majorities that will oppress or tyrannize the minorities in a larger republic, as opposed to the “tyranny of the majority” Madison saw occur within the thirteen individual states under the Articles. In particular, Madison and others had been dismayed by the threat to property rights resulting from a majority of debtors whom would join forces and prevail upon their legislatures to pass laws protecting them from the debts they owed creditors.

Madison, then, went to Philadelphia and the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, armed with several convictions. First, that the Articles needed to be replaced, not amended; second, the nation needed a strong central authority to counterbalance the state governments; and third, that an extended republic lay as the key to arranging the institutions of government. Through this structure, he hoped to ameliorate the tyranny of the majority so prevalent within the states, and therefore protect private rights and promote the public good.

Before the rest of the delegates could gather their wits, Madison, as the lead delegate from Virginia, put forth his Virginia Plan, balancing the interests of individuals, states, and the national government into an “extended republic.” Consequently, Madison established the framework of discussion at the Convention on his own terms — what one historian has called his “political masterstroke.”

Madison’s preparation and extensive involvement in the debates at the Constitutional Convention appears evident as he spoke more than any other delegate and often came up with the compromises to brake factional gridlock. His careful note taking of the Convention’s proceedings proved indispensable in his efforts to gain ratification of the new government. (These notes were published posthumously, and offer the only full record of the Constitutional Convention.)

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Madison collaborated on the Federalist Papers, which, more than any other initiative, helped explain and defend the Constitution, thereby turning the public response from skepticism to support. Madison wrote twenty-nine of the eighty-five Federalist Papers, including the two most famous, Federalist 10 and Federalist 51. During his home state’s ratification debate, the anti-federalists made a grievous tactical error in proposing that it be debated clause-by-clause. This played right into the hands of the much better-prepared Madison. Even against the legendary oratorical skills of Patrick Henry and George Mason, Madison and the federalists prevailed.

Madison’s Political Theory

Madison’s Virginia Plan comprised many elements, including a national government with powers divided between the executive, the judiciary, and the legislative branches. The legislature, in turn, he divided into an upper house and a lower house of popularly elected representatives. He also favored term limits and frequent elections. Madison, nonetheless, was thwarted on a wide-range of particulars in his plan during the course of the Convention debates, notably his desire to see both houses of Congress with proportional representation, as well as a congressional “negative,” or veto, over certain state legislation. Still, he was able to enthusiastically support the final draft of the Constitution because his basic principled objectives were largely maintained.

Madison’s political theory rested on the idea of dual sovereignty, or federalism. In short, the national government would be made powerful in its limited scope of authority, given “few and defined” powers. Meanwhile, the states would retain their “numerous and indefinite” powers, except in the realm of Federal authority. The states would be prohibited from taking on powers set aside for the national government under the Constitution — such as printing money, making war and international treaties, and regulating interstate commerce. Nevertheless, they would retain a large deal of local sovereignty. Though a nationalist, Madison’s view did not fit into Alexander Hamilton’s notion of national greatness. He did not elevate the whole over its parts, the states, except in those areas established in and by the Constitution.

From French philosopher Montesquieu and from British tradition, Madison introduced an elaborate system of “checks and balances.” Madison hoped to induce competition between state governments in order to protect individual–and particularly minority opinion–rights. The multiple choices of governance would allow citizens to “vote with their feet.” From Hume, he held that a diversity of factions in a large republic would offset each other, allowing an overall public interest to emerge.

On the national level, Madison’s strong but limited government would have powers strictly defined by the concept of enumeration. If Americans do not want government to reign too powerful, Madison reasoned, do not give it the power in the first place. Madison understood power in human hands to be ever liable to abuse, and therefore sought to limit the scope of the Federal government’s increased authority.

While the legislature would make laws and the executive would enforce laws, Madison saw the judiciary as the entity that would serve to limit government powers and protect rights by reading the enumeration within the Constitution.

Madison and the Bill of Rights

Madison’s stress on the concept of enumerated powers for government and innumerable rights for individuals — that is, that rights are indefinite and can not be numbered — led to his initial opposition to incorporating a bill of rights into the Constitution. He worried that by specifying rights, it would be implied that rights are definite and numerable. Yet the anti-federalists insisted upon a bill of rights as a condition of ratification, and Jefferson persuaded Madison of the utility of one in protecting individuals from a tyrannical government: the same judiciary that would read the enumeration of powers would also read certain core rights of individuals that could not be infringed upon by the Federal government.

Madison, elected to the House of Representatives in 1789, sponsored the Bill of Rights as the first action of the Congress under the new Constitution, and worked towards its ratification. Included in the Bill of Rights were what became the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, clarifying respectively that rights are innumerable and “retained by the people,” and that “powers not delegated” to the Federal government, or enumerated, are kept by the states and people.

Wary as Madison was of abuses of power by the states, he also hoped to pass another Amendment that failed to be included in the Bill of Rights. This amendment would have included First Amendment language after the introductory, “No State shall make a law….” This would-be incorporation of part of the Bill of Rights to the States seems to presage the court’s later incorporation of portions of the Bill of Rights through the Fourteenth Amendment. Madison was distrustful, however, of that power in the hands of the judiciary, given its unrepresentative nature. Perhaps ironically, he looked to an impartial Supreme Court as the place of appeal on assessing the constitutionality of Federal laws in his Virginia Resolutions of 1798.

Democratic-Republican

Madison spent the rest of his life in government at the national level, serving eight years each in the House of Representatives (1790-97), as Secretary of State under President Jefferson (1801-1809), and as the Fourth President of the United States (1809-1817). He married the widow, Dolley Payne Todd on September 15, 1794. Though they would have no children of his own, Madison raised the younger of Dolley’s two boys as his own son.

Madison helped President George Washington draft his first inaugural address and with his precedent-setting appointments during his first term.

As a congressman, Madison soon turned against the administration, however, opposing the First Bank of the United States in 1791, and many other measures in Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan. Ironically, Madison later chartered the Second Bank of the U.S. while president in 1816.

Madison believed unlimited federal spending to be inconsistent with true federalism, noting that under the Constitution the Federal government can only raise money for the national debt, national defense, and the general welfare. The last clause Madison had noted in the Federalist was modified by the particulars in the Constitution, being lifted from and held to the same limited purpose as that of the Articles of Confederation. Hamilton, though, demurred, claiming the Elastic Clause (”anything necessary and proper”) gave the Federal government unlimited and undefined powers. To Madison, this interpretation destroyed the purpose and intent of the concept of “enumeration of powers.”

As leaders of the opposition to Hamilton’s policies, he and Jefferson founded the Democratic-Republican Party. Working both overtly and covertly, the two friends and political allies labored to oppose the Federalist Party and Washington’s and John Adam’s Administrations. Madison drafted the Virginia Resolutions, alongside Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions, in protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts during the quasi-war with France. Seeing these acts as a severe threat to free government, Madison argued that a free press was responsible “for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.” Their opposition paid off with the election of Jefferson to the presidency in 1800.

As Jefferson’s Secretary of State, Madison helped steer through the negotiations to purchase Louisiana in 1803, taking advantage of Napoleon’s setback in the West Indies. He also supported naval action against the Barbary Pirates (1803-1805) and opposed British impressment of sailors on American ships. “That an officer from a foreign ship should pronounce any person he pleased,” Madison declared, “on board an American ship on the high seas, not to be an American citizen, but a British subject, and carry his interested decision on the most important of all questions to a free-man into execution on the spot, is … anomalous in principle, … grievous in practice, and … abominable in abuse.” The disastrous Embargo Act the Jefferson Administration pursued in response, however, served only to plunge New England into an economic depression and plant the seeds of war Madison would have to deal with in 1812.

America’s Fourth President

As Jefferson’s successor, Madison won the 1808 presidential election handily, despite a challenge from his estranged friend and disaffected Republican, James Monroe. Throughout his first term, disputes with France, Great Britain, and Spain preoccupied his time. Madison seized the province of West Florida from Spain in 1810, consolidating American control of the Gulf Coast. Napoleon’s navy continued to blockade American shipping in his ongoing war with Britain, despite Madison’s diplomatic efforts. Efforts to deal with ongoing tensions with Britain were even less successful, leading the president to ask for a congressional declaration of war in 1812. With Napoleon’s eventual defeat, the British were able to turn their attention to the American “nuisance” and send over naval ship and armies.

Elected president for a second time in 1812, Madison launched a series of invasions on British North America (Canada) as the most vulnerable British target. Poor generalship, untrained and ill-equipped troops, quarrels with the state governments, and logistical difficulties, however, hampered the war effort.

The Canadian campaigns failed, and in 1814 the British burnt Washington, D.C. Nevertheless, an increasingly effective American army and navy made it more difficult to justify the expense of the war. Both sides accepted peace at the Treaty of Ghent in December 1814, reestablishing pre-war boundaries. A post-war victory by General Andrew Jackson in New Orleans, however, gave the nation the sense that the United States had won the war, raising Madison’s approval ratings to an all-time high and New England’s threats of secession.

Madison’s final years in office allowed him, for the first time in fifteen years, to turn his attention to domestic affairs. Ironically, he proposed several measures that he had earlier strongly opposed — the national bank, a limited protective tariff, and a constitutional amendment to allow the federal government to undertake internal improvements. In one of his last official acts, though, he vetoed as unconstitutional a Bonus Bill that provided for federal support of roads and canals.

Retirement

Retired to his Montpelier home, Madison stayed involved with public life by helping President Monroe with foreign policy and assisting Virginia with its constitutional convention of 1829. He actively opposed John Calhoun’s embrace of state nullification of Federal laws, supporting instead the Union within its proper constitutional limits. Madison spoke out against the merging sectionalism that threatened the Union.

Despite being a slaveholder his whole life, and at one time supporting the expansion of slavery into the Louisiana territory, Madison in 1819 joined the American Colonization Society. Their mission was to free slaves and resettle them in Africa.

Always interested in education, Madison helped Jefferson found the University of Virginia and served as rector of the school from 1826-36 following his friend’s death.

James Madison died at his home on June 28, 1836 at the age of 85, surpassing in longevity, and perhaps in impact, the rest of the Founding generation. He asked to be judged not be his fealty to one side or the other in the early debates of the American Republic, but by his allegiance to the Constitution. “There were few, if any, of my contemporaries, through the long period and varied scenes of my political life,” Madison reminisced, “to whom a mutability of opinion was less applicable, on the great constitutional questions which have agitated the public mind.”

 

Principal Sources:

Goldwin, Robert A. From Parchment to Power: How James Madison Used the Bill of Rights to Save the Constitution. Washington, DC: The American Enterprise Institute Press, 1997

“James Madison…. A Short Biography.” The Past at Montpelier. 3/13/01
< http://www.montpelier.org/history.htm>

Kauffman, Bruce G.. “James Madison: Godfather of the Constitution.” The Early America Review, Summer 1997. 3/15/01

Ketchum, Ralph. “James Madison Biography.” Grolier Presents: The American Presidency. 3/13/01

Levy, Leonard W. Origins of the Bill of Rights. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1999

Olasky, Marvin. Fighting for Liberty and Virtue: Political and Cultural Wars in Eighteenth-Century America. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1995