However, Madison favored a “national” rather than a federal government, with Congress enjoying absolute power to veto state laws. He wanted the president to serve for life or be elected by Congress for a single long term. He proposed that the Senate be able to make treaties without the intervention of the president and that the Senate appoint judges. Although a slave holder, Madison favored immediate abolition of the slave trade and the gradual abolition of slavery itself.
None of these ideas made it into the final draft.
Personal Life
James Madison was born on March 5, 1751, in King George County, Virginia. He spent most of his life in Orange County at his estate at Montpelier (which is well worth visiting). His father, a planter, supported him financially in his early political endeavors.Madison was never robust. He suffered from epilepsy. He stood 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. Yet he overcame those disadvantages to achieve a successful political career that culminated in a two-term presidency. This is evidence of his talents, his determination, and the respect he inspired in others.
From long immersion in the Founding-era record, I can testify also that Madison was remarkably honest. He displayed no traces of the too-clever-by-half traits that marred some other Founders—notably Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. One indication of this is how, as president, he conducted the very difficult War of 1812. He was under extreme pressure to win by ignoring constitutional restrictions on his power. But he remained scrupulously within constitutional limits and still brought the war to an honorable conclusion.
Madison’s Contributions to the Constitution
Madison played central roles during every step in the Constitution’s formation: in laying the foundation, outlining initial plans, in the actual framing, in the ratification debates, and in adoption of the Bill of Rights.In September 1786, he served as one of Virginia’s commissioners (delegates) to a convention of states held in Annapolis, Maryland. He and the other commissioners recommended to the states sending them that they call another convention “to meet at Philadelphia on the second Monday in May next, to take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” This recommendation, of course, led to the Constitutional Convention.
Next, in conjunction with his friend and cousin, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph, Madison persuaded George Washington to attend the convention, thereby giving the cause of constitutional reform great respectability.
At the convention, the other framers rejected or modified Madison’s ideas time and again. Yet he remained a valuable and active participant. He represented Virginia on two “committees of the states” that fashioned compromises on trade and presidential elections. He was the principal drafter of the Constitution’s Article V, which prescribed the amendment process. He also was a member of the committee of style, which produced the Constitution’s near-final version. However, Madison did little, if any, of the actual drafting: He wisely deferred to Gouverneur Morris, who was a far better writer.
Throughout the convention, Madison documented the proceedings in a very comprehensive set of notes.
On Sept. 17, 1787, the framers finished their work and released the proposed Constitution to the public. It soon came under attack. Hamilton asked Madison to work with him and with John Jay and William Duer to produce a series of newspaper essays that would explain and support the Constitution. (Duer did not participate in the joint project, although he soon wrote some short op-eds on his own.) Madison penned 29 of the 85 essays, including some of the most important. They later were republished in a collection known as “The Federalist.”
The Federalist essays were too cerebral to be widely popular. But they served as a pro-Constitution “playbook” at several state ratifying conventions, particularly those in Virginia and New York.
Virginia’s ratifying convention met from June 2 to June 27, 1788. Madison was among the delegates. Anti-Constitution sentiment was strong in that conclave. Among the pro-Constitution team, Madison apparently served as second-in-command, next to Gov. Randolph, and they eked out a close victory.
Later Life
As a member of the new Federal Congress (1789–1797), Madison played a central role in the early congressional debates over constitutional interpretation. In 1798, he penned the famous Virginia Resolutions against what he saw as federal government overreaching. The Virginia Resolutions didn’t, as sometimes said, join Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions in endorsing the extra-constitutional doctrine of state “nullification.” Instead, Madison favored constitutional methods of state “push-back” that, following his terminology, came to be called “interposition”(pdf).When Jefferson became president in 1801, Madison became his Secretary of State. As Jefferson was completing his second term, Madison was elected to replace him. He served as president from March 1809 to March 1817.
By taking care of his fragile health, Madison enjoyed what was then an extraordinarily long life: 85 years. He died on June 28, 1836.