James Madison

James Madison
4th President of the United States
Term of office March 4, 1809 - March 4, 1817
Political party	Democratic-Republican
Vice Presidents	George Clinton (1809-1812) None (1812-1813) Elbridge Gerry (1813-1814) None (1814-1817)
Preceded by	Thomas Jefferson
Succeeded by	James Monroe
Born	March 16, 1751 Port Conway, Virginia
Died	June 28, 1836 Montpelier, Virginia
Spouse	Dolly Todd Madison
Religion	Episcopalian

James Madison was the 4th President of the United States of America, serving from 1809-1817. He was the chief drafter of the Constitution of 178, advocating the Virginia Plan and many of the compromises that shaped the final document. Madison was the chief interpreter of the Constitution secretly coauthoring (with Alexander Hamilton) the Federalist Papers (1788) which remain the most influential commentary. As a leader in Congress in the 1790s created the national governmental structure, and wrote the Bill of Rights. Breaking with Hamilton and President George Washington, Madison worked with his close friend and ally (and Virginia neighbor) Thomas Jefferson to create an opposition party to Hamilton's Federalist Party. The opposition called itself the Republican Party; historians call it the Democratic-Republican Party. The opposition strongly favored France over Britain in the great wars that erupted in Europe. They also opposed Hamilton's fiscal policies, including his national bank. When Jefferson was elected in 1800, Madison became Secretary of State, although he never traveled abroad. The Administration deliberately cut off the friendly relations with Britain that Washington had promoted. Economic warfare against Britain failed, and Madison called for the War of 1812. His administration did a very poor job of preparing for war, and the first two years were filled with humiliations and defeats, culminating in the British raid that burned Washington in 1814 as Madison and his wife Dolley narrowly escaped. However after the British invasions of New York (1814) and New Orleans (1815) were smashed, the war ended on an upbeat note, and the peace treaty involved no major changes. With Napoleon defeated, there was no further need for war. Madison now realized that Hamilton had been right about the need for a national bank. Madison's Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin had tremendous difficulty financing the war without one, and Madison sponsored the Second Bank of the United States in 1816.

Family and career

Madison was born in March 16, 1751 on the estate of Blue Ridge in Virginia. Educated at Princeton--where he was the first graduate student, he became a lawyer and tobacco planter, operating a large plantation named "Montpelier" in Virginia based on slave labor. He died June 28, 1836 in Montpelier, Virginia at age 86.

Views on national government

Madison was the main drafter of the Constitution at the 1787 Philadelphia convention; his Notes remain the best source of the debates at this secret meeting. With Alexander Hamilton and one other he coauthored Federalist Papers of 1788, which helped convince New York to ratify the Constitution. The Federalist Papers remain to this day the most important commentary of the Constitution.

Like other nationalists Madison was disgusted with the weak national government of the 1780s--it was badly organized (with no president and no courts), and lacked the power to raise taxes. It would be unable to defend the new nation in a major war. Hamilton therefore was a strong proponent of powerful national government at this point. (He changed his mind in the 1790s.)

In the two greatest of all the Federalist Papers, numbers 10 and 51, Madison set forth his “republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.” Those diseases, in his diagnosis, were the diseases attendant on factions. He feared, above all else, factions that might mobilize a plebeian majority capable of invading the rights, especially the property rights, of rich minorities. Since he saw no way to remove the causes of such factions, he set about to control their effects. The crux of that control was his brilliant realization that a large republic would forestall overbearing majorities more effectively than the small republics beloved of all previous democratic theorists. But the precondition of that realization was his distinction between two types of factions.

the Right to Bear Arms

In the Federalist Papers #46, he described how essential the right to bear arms (later embodied in the Second Amendment) is to overall freedom from tyranny:

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.

The War of 1812

Madison is considered to have been an inadequate President. He failed to resole diplomatically the continuing British seizure of American ships. Instead, he pushed for an unnecessary war, and the U.S. eventually invaded Canada (then still a British colony), in what became known as the War of 1812. That war saw the seizing of Detroit by Canada, and the burning of Washington, D.C. by the British. Madison's wife, Dolly, is famously remembered for saving a portrait of George Washington just before the British burned the White House. In hindsight, the War of 1812 is viewed as a needless mistake, but at the time the Federalist Party's opposition to the war (and to Madison's Democratic-Republican Party) led to the Federalists being viewed as "unpatriotic" and "anti-American," and the party disbanded soon after the next election year.

Madison on Religion and Government

Madison, along with his fellow Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson, were less tolerant of religion in government than all the other Founding Fathers. George Washington, for instance, in his Farewell Address advocated the importance of having moral religious men in government.

In the 1780s, when the U.S. Constitution was drafted and ratified, Madison was a complete supporter of religion in government:

"Religion is the basis and Foundation of Government.... We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." June 20, 1785

Decades later, long after the Constitution was ratified and after Madison largely failed as a president, he wrote letters reflecting less of an embrace of religion. The letters may have been written with the opinions of the recipients in mind:

"The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of religious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity."

"Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In the strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation?"

"In the papal system, Government and Religion are in a manner consolidated, and that is found to be the worst of Government."

Sources

• White House biography