James Madison

B

State Assemblyman

In the spring of 1784 Madison again ran for election to the Virginia assembly, and won. He served nearly three years there, pursuing the same objectives he had fought for in Congress. He advocated strengthening the federal government, which was an unpopular position in Virginia, as it was in most of the states. He consistently supported measures, at both state and national levels, that would best safeguard the rights of the individual. Madison also continued to oppose any connection between church and state. He wrote a brilliant objection against a proposed assessment for support of the Anglican Church in Virginia. He succeeded not only in defeating the assessment, but in winning passage of Jefferson’s bill for religious liberty, which had been rejected in 1779.

Madison was also greatly concerned about the problem of regulating commerce between the states. He was largely responsible for calling a conference between Maryland and Virginia to discuss navigation rules for the Potomac River, the border between the two states. The discussions failed because other states on the river were not represented. Madison and his supporters then proposed a resolution in the Virginia assembly inviting all the states to meet to discuss the question of uniform commercial regulations. The meeting was held in September 1786 in Annapolis, Maryland.

Madison saw a grave danger to national unity in the conflicting interests that dominated the different regions and states after the struggle against Britain. He believed that uniform rules should be established among the states to govern trade and commercial relations, and he felt that only the federal government could effectively enforce these rules. Madison and many others strongly believed that the Articles of Confederation, the legal framework under which the national government was operating, should be amended to expand the powers of Congress. But he was pessimistic about winning support for amending the Articles at the Annapolis Convention.

Madison attended the Annapolis Convention as a delegate from Virginia. Only four other states sent representatives. It was agreed to call another convention of all the states, this time to draw up a national constitution. The Virginia assembly unanimously approved the new convention, which was scheduled to be held in Philadelphia in May 1787, and Madison was named one of the delegates.

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In February 1787 Madison returned briefly to Congress, primarily, he said, to preserve American access to the Mississippi River. He did help to halt the negotiations with Spain, which had taken a direction that would have led to the cession of American navigational rights which the United States had on the Mississippi.

C

Father of the Constitution

C

1

Constitutional Convention

Madison was one of the first delegates to arrive in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention, three weeks before the convention opened. He came equipped with two papers he had written earlier that spring, a Study of Ancient and Modern Confederacies; and Vices of the Political System of the United States, drawn from his comprehensive reading and his eleven years of experience in government. When his fellow delegates from Virginia arrived, Madison was ready to outline for them his plan of government.

Madison proposed a government with strong central powers, including a national judiciary and an elected national executive, and with authority to veto legislation of individual states. Primarily he sought to provide the central government “with positive and complete authority in all cases which require uniformity” and to prevent abuse of this authority by making the government responsible to the people. He favored a two-chamber legislature and a system of representation that would give the larger states an influence in proportion to their size.

Madison’s ideas were presented to the convention by Virginia’s Governor Edmund Randolph, in the so-called Virginia Plan or Large-State Plan. The Small-State Plan, urging equal representation in Congress for all states regardless of population, was proposed by New Jersey. Madison became the leading spokesman for the Virginia Plan and, despite strong opposition, for the Virginia delegation also.

The convention compromised between the Virginia and New Jersey plans: the states would be represented according to size in the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, but would have equal voting power in the upper chamber, the Senate. This represented a defeat for Madison. He feared government by a minority and foresaw that the small states would be able to wield disproportionate power.

Madison kept a detailed journal of the convention’s proceedings. He had been in constant attendance, and this Journal of the Federal Convention, published in 1840, is the most complete record of the historic meeting. “It happened,” he remarked, “that I was not absent a single day, nor more than a fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech unless a very short one.” His purpose was to preserve “the history of a Constitution on which would be staked the happiness of a people great even in its infancy, and possibly the cause of liberty throughout the world.”

In the year following the Constitutional Convention, Madison worked to get the new Constitution accepted. In Congress his efforts helped defeat attempts to amend the Constitution and speeded its referral to the states for ratification. Also, while in New York with the Congress, Madison made plans with fellow constitutional supporters Alexander Hamilton and John Jay for a series of articles explaining and defending the Constitution. These were published in the newspapers with the aim of counteracting the attacks that had been launched against the Constitution in the nation’s press.

C

2

The Federalist

The first of these articles, later known collectively as The Federalist, was published in October 1787. Over the next ten months, the first 77 of the 85 separate essays appeared in newspapers in New York and other localities over the signature “a Citizen of New York” and, later, “Publius.” Madison is usually credited with the authorship of at least 26 of them.

The tenth essay of the series is perhaps the best known of those written by Madison. In it he explains the proper relationship of government to the many varied and conflicting interests that characterize a democratic society, and he analyzes the origin of these differences. He believed that political differences grew primarily out of varying economic interests and that the basic cause of the friction among the American states was not the differences in size but the conflicts between slave and free states, between plantation and merchant states, between debtor and creditor states. This view of society made Madison a forerunner of the so-called economic-interpretation school of history that became dominant in the 20th century. However, he believed that a strong Constitution could help to reduce such conflicts and prevent economic exploitation.

C

3

Fight for Ratification in Virginia

Madison had not planned to participate in Virginia’s ratification convention. But opposition to the new Constitution had mounted in the state, and Madison’s friends urged him to assist in the fight for adoption. In the spring of 1788 Madison left New York for Virginia. He ran for delegate from Orange County and was elected to the June convention.

At the convention, Madison found some of the most powerful and most eloquent of Virginia’s statesmen opposed to the Constitution, including Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Monroe. But, as in Philadelphia, Madison had come well prepared. He knew every article of the proposed Constitution and was familiar with all the arguments used against it. When point-by-point examination of the Constitution began, Madison spoke constantly in its defense and offered full explanations.

Though ill, Madison took the floor 35 times in the first four days of this examination. His arguments were those of The Federalist. His manner of speaking was restrained, while that of Patrick Henry, his chief adversary, was flamboyant. Madison spoke always to the point, with the pertinent facts at hand.

It was Madison’s thorough acquaintance with the affairs of Congress that overwhelmed Henry’s final attempt to block ratification. When his opponent warned the convention that the treaty powers under the proposed Constitution would result in the loss of the Mississippi River to Spain, Madison replied that a majority of the states were already committed to retaining American navigation rights. By this disclosure, Madison reassured the delegates from the western territories of Virginia and obtained their support for the Constitution. In the final tally the convention approved ratification by a vote of 89 to 79.

After the convention adjourned, the Virginia assembly returned Madison to Congress, then in its final session under the Articles of Confederation. However, largely through the efforts of Patrick Henry, Madison failed to win a seat in the new U.S. Senate. He thereupon ran for election to the House of Representatives from his home district. He was opposed by James Monroe. However, in February 1789, Madison was easily elected to the first of the four consecutive terms that he served in the House.

D

United States Congressman

The eight years of Madison’s service in Congress saw the beginning of the two-party system in the United States. The chief causes of the split between the founding fathers were relations with Britain and differing views on the powers to be granted the federal government. Hamilton headed the Federalist group (later the Federalist Party), mostly Northerners, who favored accommodation with Britain and a strong central government. Jefferson was the chief spokesman for those who opposed friendship with Britain and sought to limit the power of the federal government. Madison began his career in Congress as leader for Hamilton’s administrative program. However, as Hamilton’s financial schemes became more obviously pro-Northern and pro-industrial, Madison opposed these plans. By the end of his congressional career, he was a leader of the anti-Federalists, or Democratic-Republican Party, in Congress.

Madison automatically assumed a role of leadership. In the first term of the new Congress, he introduced its first piece of business, a measure to raise revenues for paying off the national debt. He successfully defended the measure, which imposed a series of import taxes, against vigorous opposition by representatives who proposed changing the measure to benefit local interests. Madison emphasized that the import taxes were desirable as a means of raising money, not of regulating the flow of goods. He believed that “commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic.”

Soon after passage of the revenue bill, Madison advanced and fought for two other important measures in the House. The first proposed to set up executive departments of the government. The second, introduced on June 8, 1789, presented a series of nine amendments to strengthen the Constitution. These were largely designed to guarantee personal liberty, including religious freedom and freedom of the press. Madison led the debate for his amendments and saw most of them approved. They formed, with the Tenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.

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