James Madison, fourth President of the United States, was born on this day in Virginia.
“The principles and modes of government are too important to be disregarded by an inquisitive mind, and I think are well worthy of a critical examination by all students that have health and leisure.” — James Madison, age 22, to his friend who was just beginning to study the law
Elected to the presidency in 1808 – and then again for a second term in 1812 – he didn’t really have a good time of it in office, what with, you know, the war of 1812 and all, and the Brits burning down our damn capital. Not a very successful President – but the story of his administration is a fascinating one – its failures, its successes, war again.
Henry Clay said about Madison, as President:
“Nature has cast him in too benevolent a mould. Admirably adapted to the tranquil scenes of peace, blending all the mild and amiable virtues, he is not fit for the rough and rude blasts which the conflicts of nations generate.”
Madison’s greatest accomplishment was his crafting of the US Constitution and also his commitment (second only to Alexander Hamilton’s) to getting it ratified. Madison wrote Federalist #10 – probably the most famous of all of the Federalist Papers (I babble about it here) – although, if you haven’t read them all in their entirety, all I can say is: do yourself a favor! (Excerpt here from # 15) It’s the best civics class you’ll ever get. Madison’s mind was sharp, probing, deep – and all of the great political figures (especially the Virginians at the time) looked to him for guidance. Federalist #10 warns about the dangers of factions. But Madison, in his cunning behind-the-scenes manner, was hardly a neutral party himself in the battles of the day – and he had famous fights and breaks with his compatriots over matters of policy.
In May of 1787, the delegates arrived in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention.
The articles of Confederation, which loosely held the states together, were proving far too inefficient as time went on, and people like Madison, Hamilton, John Jay, and certainly Washington – who had been raging about the slowness of Congress since the war began – thought that the articles needed to be revised. As Washington wrote,
“Thirteen sovereignties pulling against each other, and all tugging at the foederal head, will soon bring ruin on the whole.”
However, these were conservative men, despite their revolutionary fervor. They were land-owners, farmers, lawyers, not interested in tearing things down – but building upon foundations already there, so the delegates, for the most part, were not looking for a whole new form of government to be raised at their Convention. They were looking for a revision to the Articles, that was it. However, James Madison – and Alexander Hamilton – went in there with preconceived notions, definitely. They knew what they were going to try to push through.
The Articles could not stand. Earlier that year, the Shays Rebellion had taken place – which had freaked everyone out. What had happened to solidarity? Should military force be used to put down the rebellion? There couldn’t have been a better time for the Constitutional Convention.
Catherine Drinker-Bowen, in her WONDERFUL book Miracle At Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention May – September 1787, describes the beginning of the Convention – with a wonderful mini-portrait of James Madison:
On the twenty-fifth of May, when a quorum was obtained, Washington was unanimously elected president of the Convention and escorted to the chair. From his desk on the raised dais he made a little speech of acceptance, depreciating his ability to give satisfaction in a scene so novel. “When seated,” wrote a member, “he declared that as he never had been in such a situation he felt himself embarrassed, that he hoped his errors, as they would be unintended, would be excused. He lamented his want of qualifications.”…
In the front row near the desk, James Madison sat bowed over his tablet, writing steadily. His eyes were blue, his face ruddy; he did not have the scholar’s pallor. His figure was well-knit and muscular and he carried his clothes with style. Though he usually wore black, he has also been described as handsomely dressed in blue and buff, with ruffles at breast and wrist. Already he was growing bald and brushed his hair down to hide it; he wore a queue and powder. He walked with the quick bouncing step that sometimes characterizes men of remarkable energy.
As a reporter Madison was indefatigable, his notes comprehensive, set down without comment or aside. One marvels that he was able at the same time to take so large a part in the debates. It is true that in old age Madison made some emendations in the record to accord with various disparate notes which later came to light; he has been severely criticized for it. Other members took notes at the Convention: Hamilton, Yates and Lansing of New York, McHenry of Maryland, Paterson of New Jersey, Rufus King of Massachusetts, William Pierce of Georgia, George Mason of Virginia. But most of these memoranda were brief, incomplete; had it not been for Madison we should possess very scanty records of the Convention. His labors, he said later, nearly killed him. “I chose a seat,” he afterward wrote, “in front of the presiding member, with the other members on my right and left hand. In this favorable position for hearing all that passed, I noted in terms legible and in abbreviations and marks intelligble to myself what was read from the Chair or spoken by the members; and losing not a moment unnecessarily between the adjournment and reassembling of the Convention I was enabled to write out my daily notes during the session or within a few finishing days after its close in the extent and form preserved in my own hand on my files … I was not absent a single day, nor more than a casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech, unless a very short one.”
It was, actually, a tour de force, not to be published — and scarcely seen — until thirty years after the Convention. “Do you know,” wrote Jefferson to John Adams from Monticello in 1815, “that there exists in manuscript the ablest work of this kind ever yet executed, of the debates of the constitutional convention of Philadelphia …? The whole of everything said and done there was taken down by Mr. Madison, with a labor and exactness beyond comprehension.” …
As I mentioned before, these were all practical men – and many of them had gathered with practical concerns, about raising money, and internal improvements – and how the Articles would be able to handle such large projects. Madison and Hamilton kept their cards close to their chests, at first (this, of course, was long before their famous break. Hamilton broke with pretty much everyone). Hamilton was a practical man as well. He had a lot of problems with the Constitution as it was laid out in embryonic form by Madison. But he recognized the genius within, recognized the need for such a thing – and nobody – but NOBODY – worked harder for ratification than my dead boyfriend. It is amazing the amount of print he was able to devote to the Federalist Papers – it STILL boggles the mind.
But back to Madison. Poor man … his more glittery compatriots always have a way of stealing the spotlight, don’t they??
Catherine Drinker-Bowen goes on:
Time would pass before members realized how far the plans of such men as Madison and Hamilton reached, and what the Constitution promised to be. It would be misleading to name thus early the Constitution’s “enemies”, or to set down this name or that as “against” the Constitution. Five delegates in the end would refuse to sign — Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, Yates and Lansing of New York, George Mason and Edmund Randolph of Virginia — all men of decided views and each with a different reason for his action. More vociferous than any of these would be Luther Martin of Maryland, who, though out of town on private business at the moment of signing, later declared that had he been present he would have given the document his “solemn negative,” even had he “stood single and alone”.
It would be four months before the Constitution was finally ratified and signed.
Garry Wills has some very interesting thoughts on the famous Federalist 10 in his book on James Madison; it’s long, but worth quoting in full:
Madison’s debut contribution [to “The Federalist Papers”], would in time (a long time) become the most famous of them all. It crammed into a narrow space all the arguments Madison had been sifting and refining in his opposition to the Continental Congress’s weakness, in his preparation for the convention, in his crafting of the Virginia Plan, and in his debates at the convention. Madison goes behind specific weaknesses in the Articles to expose the fundamental error on which the Articles were based, the idea that the only worthy democracy is direct democracy.
Madison’s attack on that concept is so radical for its time that it is often downplayed, or even altogether missed. The most important passage in the Number is its claim that no man can be a judge in his own case. Not much is made of that in some treatments of the Number. We hear about the tyranny of majorities (though Madison treats that as just a symptom of direct democracy). We hear about the difference between a small republic and an extended republic (whereas Madison is talking about the difference between a direct democracy and a republic). We hear that Madison wanted to multiply factions (though he thought all factions bad things). We hear that Madison wanted to create a national elite, above the states, because he distrusted the people (though his system calls precisely for trust – direct democracy is built on distrust). We hear that he was trying to set up a mechanical system for producing correct decisions (though he said that no governmental machinery can produce good results without virtue in its operators).
It has puzzled people that Number 10 did not get much attention until the twentieth century. It was not a matter of great dispute in the ratification debates, though it would have clarified and focused those debates – they spent endless hours on the number of representatives, rather than on the nature of representation. The reason for this is that a dismissal of direct democracy was almost literally unthinkable to the men who debated the Constitution. Every constitution in America was based on that ideal, as a thing to be approximated even when it could not be literally enacted. If people could not directly make the government’s decisions, as in a New England town meeting or the Athenian Assembly, then they should tie down those making the decisions, making them (so far as possible) passive tools in their own hands. That is why short terms, rotation, instruction open proceedings (to see that instruction is followed), recall (to punish departures from instruction), and weak executives were adopted. These were the necessary melioratives for the necessary evil of any departure from direct democracy.
The rightness of all these measures was so self-evident to those who accepted them that the could not even imagine someone making the attack on them that Madison did. He did not say, as many did, that direct democracy would be wonderful if it were possible but, since it is not possible in large communities, some approximation to it must be cobbled up. He did not think direct democracy wonderful. He thought it fundamentally unjust.
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interests would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the right of single persons but concerning the right of large bodies of citizens; and what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine?
By calling legislation quasi-judicial, he instantly disqualifies all those who come to the task of legislating with nothing but their own interest in mind. They have come to be judges in their own case – and that is what proponents of direct democracy would justify. In doing so, they defend a system of majority tyranny. If naked interest is all that can be expressed, then only one thing will determine the outcome. The only question to be decided is: which interest has the greater number backing it.
I find Madison a very interesting fellow, although not as easy to get to know as John Adams, who was a passionate warm-blooded flawed and sensitive man … Madison is a bit more “close”, perhaps. (You won’t see an HBO miniseries about Madison any day soon!!) A wife of one of Madison’s friends referred to Madison as a “gloomy stiff creature” – and that is obviously not one of the qualities that leads to an endearing and well-liked president (although the office was still, obviously, in its infancy when Madison held it). He did marry Dolley Madison – who remains, to this day, at the top of the list of “favorite first ladies” – not that anyone remembers her personally now, of course – but by all accounts she was a vivacious social happy woman, and everyone liked her.
The two did not have children, but it appears the marriage was a happy one (she referred to him as her “great little Madison”). Unlike many other first ladies since, Dolley Madison didn’t have a problem with the social rigors of her position – she loved it. Men and women alike found her charming, easy-going.
Wills describes the burning of the capital and its aftermath:
During the night of the fires in Washington, Madison and Dolley were unable to find each other – she stayed at one friend’s home in Virginia, he in another. He met her the next day; then, assured of her safety, he went to consult with Winder, whose troops were on the road toward Baltimore … Madison wrote to Dolley suggesting she not return to Washington until he was sure the city was safe. But she was already on her way back to him.
It was suggested that Madison would summon Congress to a different, safer spot – Congress had, after all, been shifted about during the Revolution. But Madison knew the government must be seen to function, and he called Congress back for an early session. He had chambers prepared for the House and Senate in the Post Office and Patent Building, which had escaped the fires. He and Dolley moved into the house they had lived in when he was secretary of state – though the French minister, Louis Serurier, soon vacated his own residence, the current Octagon House, for their use. Dolley found these quarters too cramped, and she would end up in the former offices of the Treasury, where she could entertain on the scale she was used to. She, too, realized that it was important to return the city to its normal patterns. But the Madisons never returned to the blackened White House.
I think someone’s choice of a wife can be pretty illuminating. Madison was often seen as a dour brainiac, humorless and obsessive – but he chose as a counterpart Dolley, who was pretty, friendly, funny and resourceful: Perhaps her most famous moment is this: during the burning of the capital, Dolly was forced to flee by carriage – but she had the presence of mind to roll up Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington – (she had to break the frame in order to get the painting out) – and give it to some soldiers to keep safe. And of course, it was preserved, for all time, thanks to her foresight.
I mean, you gotta love a person like that. Imagine: you are under siege. Your house is burning down around your ears. And you have the presence of mind to take a moment and think: “You know what? Gotta save this portrait.” The image of her breaking the frame to get at the painting in the middle of that chaos … It’s one of my favorite White House anecdotes in Presidential history.
And so happy birthday, “great little Madison”. We are forever in your debt!
A long time ago my Bride and I did the Monticello/Ashlawn/Montpelier circuit. The Duponts had some…interesting ideas about how to redecorate, that’s for sure!
But I have to admit the one memory from Montpelier that stuck with me the clearest was the whole row of Sears Catalog houses they had ordered and constructed on the grounds; pretty neat.
I’m glad to see that they’re restoring the house to as it was during Madison’s time.
Very cool – I’d love to see that!