II.

Early Life

Madison was the eldest child of James and Eleanor Conway Madison. He later characterized his forebears in these terms: “In both the paternal and maternal line of ancestry [they were] planters and among the respectable though not the most opulent class.” He was born on March 16, 1751, in the home of his maternal grandmother and stepgrandfather, on the Rappahannock River near what is now Port Conway, Virginia. Shortly after the christening, his mother brought him to his father’s estate in nearby Orange County, Virginia, where he grew up. Madison later inherited his father’s estate, Montpelier, and lived there the rest of his life.

Like most plantation children of colonial times, young James received his earliest schooling at home, probably largely from his grandmother, Mrs. Frances Taylor Madison. When he was about 12, he was enrolled in the school of Donald Robertson in King and Queen County. After “three or four years” with Robertson, he studied for “a year or two” under the Reverend Thomas Martin and in 1769 enrolled in the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).

Already well prepared in the classics, Madison concentrated on the study of history, government, and public law. He found considerable revolutionary sentiment stirring at the college and became a leading member, although probably not a founder as is sometimes claimed, of the American Whig Society, a club greatly interested in discussing current public controversies. In 1771 he received his degree and, after some months of postgraduate study, returned home to Virginia.

From 1772 to 1775, Madison remained in his father’s home at Montpelier in poor health, convinced that he would not have a long life. It has been suggested that he suffered from hypochondria, a condition in which he experienced the symptoms of a disease but none was diagnosed. Uncertain about a career, he devoted his time to extensive reading in literature, theology, and law. Before long a growing interest in political and religious freedom led him into a serious study of public law and of the forms and principles of government. He wrote a friend early in 1774 of the change in his tastes. He used to have, he wrote, “too great a hankering after those amusing studies. Poetry, wit, and criticism, romances, plays, etc., captivated me much; but I begin to discover that they deserve but a small portion of a mortal’s time, and that something more substantial, more durable, more profitable, befits a riper age.”