James Madison (March 16, 1751[b] – June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison was popularly acclaimed the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.
Madison was born into a prominent slave-owning planter family in Virginia. He was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and the Continental Congress during and after the American Revolutionary War. Dissatisfied with the weak national government established by the Articles of Confederation, he helped organize the Constitutional Convention, which produced a new constitution designed to strengthen republican government against democratic assembly. Madison's Virginia Plan was the basis for the convention's deliberations. He became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify the Constitution and joined Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in writing The Federalist Papers, a series of pro-ratification essays that remains prominent among works of political science in American history. Madison emerged as an important leader in the House of Representatives and was a close adviser to President George Washington. During the early 1790s, Madison opposed the economic program and the accompanying centralization of power favored by Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton. Alongside Thomas Jefferson, he organized the Democratic–Republican Party in opposition to Hamilton's Federalist Party. Madison served as Jefferson's Secretary of State from 1801 to 1809, during which time Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase.
Madison was elected president in 1808. Motivated by desire to acquire land held by Britain, Spain, and Native Americans, and after diplomatic protests with a trade embargo failed to end British seizures of American shipped goods, Madison led the United States into the War of 1812. Although the war ended inconclusively, many Americans viewed it as a successful "second war of independence" against Britain. Madison was re-elected in 1812. The war convinced Madison of the necessity of a stronger federal government. He presided over the creation of the Second Bank of the United States and the enactment of the protective Tariff of 1816. By treaty or through war, Native American tribes ceded 26,000,000 acres (11,000,000 ha) of land to the United States under Madison's presidency.
Retiring from public office at the end of his presidency in 1817, Madison returned to his plantation, Montpelier, and died there in 1836. Madison was a slave owner; he freed one slave in 1783 to prevent a slave rebellion at Montpelier, but did not free any in his will. Among historians, Madison is considered one of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States. Leading historians have generally ranked him as an above-average president, although they are critical of his endorsement of slavery and his leadership during the War of 1812. Madison's name is commemorated in many landmarks across the nation, with prominent examples including Madison Square Garden, James Madison University, the James Madison Memorial Building, and the USS James Madison.
James Madison Jr. was born on March 16, 1751 (March 5, 1750, Old Style), at Belle Grove Plantation near Port Conway in the Colony of Virginia, to James Madison Sr. and Eleanor Madison. His family had lived in Virginia since the mid-17th century.[9] Madison's maternal grandfather, Francis Conway, was a prominent planter and tobacco merchant.[10] His father was a tobacco planter who grew up on a plantation, then called Mount Pleasant, which he inherited upon reaching adulthood. With an estimated 100 slaves[9] and a 5,000-acre (2,000 ha) plantation, Madison's father was among the largest landowners in Virginia's Piedmont.[11]
In the early 1760s, the Madison family moved into a newly built house that they named Montpelier.[12] Madison was the oldest of twelve children,[13] with seven brothers and four sisters, though only six lived to adulthood:[12] brothers Francis, Ambrose, and William, and sisters Nelly, Sarah, and Frances. Ambrose helped to manage Montpelier for his father and older brother until his own death in 1793.[14]
From age 11 to 16, Madison studied under Donald Robertson, a tutor for several prominent Southern families. Madison learned mathematics, geography, and modern and classical languages, becoming exceptionally proficient in Latin.[15][12] At age 16, Madison returned to Montpelier, where he studied under the Reverend Thomas Martin to prepare for college. Unlike most college-bound Virginians of his day, Madison did not attend the College of William and Mary, as the lowland Williamsburg climate—thought to be more likely to harbor infectious disease—might have impacted his health.[16] Instead, in 1769, he enrolled at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University).[17]
His college studies included Latin, Greek, theology, and the works of the Enlightenment,[18] and emphasized speech and debate. Madison was a leading member of the American Whig–Cliosophic Society, which competed on campus with a political counterpart, the Cliosophic Society.[19] During his time at Princeton, Madison's closest friend was future Attorney General William Bradford.[20] Along with classmate Aaron Burr, Madison completed the college's three-year Bachelor of Arts degree in two years, graduating in 1771.[21] Madison had contemplated either entering the clergy or practicing law after graduation but instead remained at Princeton to study Hebrew and political philosophy under the college's president, John Witherspoon.[9] He returned home to Montpelier in early 1772.[22]
Madison's ideas on philosophy and morality were strongly shaped by Witherspoon, who converted him to the philosophy, values, and modes of thinking of the Age of Enlightenment. Biographer Terence Ball wrote that at Princeton, Madison
was immersed in the liberalism of the Enlightenment, and converted to eighteenth-century political radicalism. From then on James Madison's theories would advance the rights of happiness of man, and his most active efforts would serve devotedly the cause of civil and political liberty.[23]
After returning to Montpelier, without a chosen career, Madison tutored his younger siblings.[24] He began to study law books in 1773, asking his friend Bradford, a law apprentice, to send him a plan of study. Madison had acquired an understanding of legal publications by 1783. He saw himself as a law student but not a lawyer. Madison did not apprentice himself to a lawyer and never joined the bar.[25] Following the Revolutionary War, he spent time at Montpelier studying ancient democracies in preparation for the Constitutional Convention.[12][26] Madison suffered from episodes of mental exhaustion and illness with associated nervousness, which often caused short-term incapacity after periods of stress. However, he enjoyed good physical health until his final years.[27]
In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which caused strong opposition by the colonists and began a conflict that would culminate in the American Revolution.[28][29] The American Revolutionary War broke out on April 19, 1775.[28][30][31] The colonists formed three prominent factions: Loyalists, who continued to back King George III of the United Kingdom; a significant neutral faction without firm commitments to either Loyalists or Patriots; and the Patriots, whom Madison joined, under the leadership of the Continental Congress.[32][33] Madison believed that Parliament had overstepped its bounds by attempting to tax the American colonies, and he sympathized with those who resisted British rule.[34] Historically, debate about the consecration of bishops was ongoing and eventual legislation was passed in the British Parliament (subsequently called the Consecration of Bishops Abroad Act 1786) to allow bishops to be consecrated for an American church outside of allegiance to the British Crown.[35] The new Anglican churches began incorporating more active forms of polity in their own self-government, collective decision-making, and self-supported financing; these measures would be consistent with separation of religious and secular identities.[36] Madison believed these measures to be insufficient, and favored disestablishing the Anglican Church in Virginia; Madison believed that tolerance of an established religion was detrimental not only to freedom of religion but also because it encouraged excessive deference to any authority which might be asserted by an established church.[37]
After returning to Montpelier in 1774, Madison took a seat on the local Committee of Safety, a pro-revolution group that oversaw the local Patriot militia.[38] In October 1775, he was commissioned as the colonel of the Orange County militia, serving as his father's second-in-command until he was elected as a delegate to the Fifth Virginia Convention, which was charged with producing Virginia's first constitution.[5] Although Madison never battled in the Revolutionary War, he rose to prominence in Virginia politics as a wartime leader.[39] At the Virginia constitutional convention, he convinced delegates to alter the Virginia Declaration of Rights originally drafted on May 20, 1776, to provide for "equal entitlement", rather than mere "tolerance", in the exercise of religion.[40] With the enactment of the Virginia constitution, Madison became part of the Virginia House of Delegates, and he was subsequently elected to the Virginia governor's Council of State,[41] where he became a close ally of Governor Thomas Jefferson.[42] On July 4, 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was formally printed.[43][44]
Madison participated in the debates concerning the Articles of Confederation[45] in November 1777, contributing to the discussion of religious freedom affecting the drafting of the Articles, though his signature was not required for adopting the Articles of Confederation. Madison had proposed liberalizing the article on religious freedom, but the larger Virginia Convention stripped the proposed constitution of the more radical language of "free expression" of faith to the less controversial mention of highlighting "tolerance" within religion.[46] Madison again served on the Council of State, from 1777 to 1779, when he was elected to the Second Continental Congress, the governing body of the United States.[c]
During Madison's term in Congress from 1780 to 1783, the U.S. faced a difficult war against Great Britain, as well as runaway inflation, financial troubles, and a lack of cooperation between the different levels of government. According to historian J. C. A. Stagg, Madison worked to become an expert on financial issues, becoming a legislative workhorse and a master of parliamentary coalition building.[48] Frustrated by the failure of the states to supply needed requisitions, Madison proposed to amend the Articles of Confederation to grant Congress the power to independently raise revenue through tariffs on imports.[49] Though General George Washington, Congressman Alexander Hamilton, and other leaders also favored the tariff amendment, it failed to win the ratification of all thirteen states.[50] While a member of Congress, Madison was an ardent supporter of a close alliance between the United States and France. As an advocate of westward expansion, he insisted that the new nation had to ensure its right to navigation on the Mississippi River and control of all lands east of it in the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War.[51] Following his term in Congress, Madison won election to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1784.[52]
As a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Madison continued to advocate for religious freedom, and, along with Jefferson, drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. That amendment, which guaranteed freedom of religion and disestablished the Church of England, was passed in 1786.[53] Madison also became a land speculator, purchasing land along the Mohawk River in partnership with another Jefferson protégé, James Monroe.[54] Throughout the 1780s, Madison became increasingly worried about the disunity of the states and the weakness of the central government.[55] He believed that direct democracy caused social decay and that a Republican government would be effective against partisanship and factionalism.[56][57]