4) James Madison - Father of the Constitution

It now feels like I've began my presidents project in earnest. Not only have I made it through four presidents, but James Madison is the first president who isn’t well known to modern Americans. Lynne Cheney’s book is subtitled ‘A Life Reconsidered’ and it sets out to “[explode] the myths that have burdened his reputation.” I wasn’t aware of said myths, but I was ready for fireworks.

James Madison was the driving force behind one of the two bedrock documents of the United States. While everyone remembers that Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, Americans rarely recall that James Madison is the “Father of the Constitution”. Additionally, while he didn’t believe them to be necessary and didn’t initially support them, Madison shaped the amendment process and shepherded the Bill of Rights through Congress.

Madison was like many presidents in that many of his great accomplishments occurred before assuming the nation’s highest office. Despite having won a war for independence from Great Britain, America in the mid-1780s was less a united country than a loose-affiliation of nation-states. Those nation-states were bound by the Articles of Confederation, a document that reflected 18^th century Americans’ deep mistrust of centralized government. In 1787 representatives from the different states gathered at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to revise the Articles. Representing Virginia, James Madison arrived in Philadelphia fearing the dissolution of the United States and planned not to amend, but to create a new, stronger government.

We owe much of what we know about the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention to the exhaustive notes that Madison took. Without Madison’s voluntary effort to record the conversations and arguments, an effort he later said “nearly killed him,” we would know little about what was said inside the Pennsylvania State House in the summer of 1787. I came away from Cheney’s book believing that this effort was Madison’s most underappreciated contribution to the United States.

After the Constitution was signed the hard work wasn’t over. The document had to be ratified by the states and there was deep suspicion about the newly proposed government. Because of these doubts, particularly in Virginia and New York, Alexander Hamilton began a campaign to convince New York to support ratification. Hamilton drafted Madison and John Jay for a campaign that, while lasting less than a year, yielded 85 essays. Though Hamilton later claimed to have written 63 of the essays, historians generally accept that fifty-one were written by Hamilton, twenty-nine by Madison, and five by Jay. Besides helping to encourage ratification, Madison’s work on the Federalist Papers is notable for two other reasons. First, these works, which have become a part of American canon, were authored anonymously. Second, Hamilton and Madison would become bitter rivals later in their political lives.

While Madison’s work toward ratification was remarkable, it is important not to trivialize Madison’s work on the creation of the Constitution. While difficult, it is important to study 18^th century American history without the assumption that the United States was inevitable. The states in the late-1700s were far less “united” than they are today. Madison had to shape a document sensitive to the differing desires, fears, and mistrusts of the states. The final product was a document that no one loved (something that may be surprising to us today), but those that fought for the Constitution believed it was superior to the Articles and was the only way to prevent disunion.

While Dolley Madison in many ways
helped to shape the modern first lady,
she is often remembered for saving the
above portrait of George Washington
from destruction during the War of 1812.

Health was a constant struggle for Madison. He battled epilepsy and it seems to have been a private battle due to the supernatural stigmas attached to the condition. The time at which Madison assumed the office of the president was a particularly stressful time. Jefferson’s embargo as well as war in Europe had created a tinderbox. A letter from Madison’s cousin after his election said in part, “You will indeed, I fear, have a stormy time to encounter, but that is the season in which the pilot discovers his superior skill.” The tinderbox ultimately ignited into the War of 1812 which saw the burning of Washington DC, likely in retaliation for the razing of Parliamentary offices in York (Toronto). The War of 1812 is remembered as a war that accomplished nothing. The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, brought relations between Great Britain and the United States back to their pre-war status quo. The Treaty failed to address the simmering issues between the two nations such as the impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy or the refusal of England to abandon their forts in the western United States. However, the world had changed during the War. Napoleon was exiled and England and France were no longer at war, therefore the impressment issue was largely moot. Ultimately, the War of 1812 was significant in that it improved Americans’ view of the strength of their country, the world’s view of American strength, and helped secure American control over northwestern territories thus encouraging westward expansion. And of course the Battle of Baltimore inspired the country’s national anthem.

Madison’s efforts to bind the nation with the Constitution were not able to prevent the Civil War that he and other founders feared. However, the Constitution remained after the war ended and the amendment process that Madison crafted ultimately ended American slavery and help stitch the nation back together.