Madison, James

Madison, James (1751–1836), statesman, fourth U.S. president.After growing up at his lifelong home, Montpelier, in Orange County, Virginia, and graduating from the College of New Jersey in 1771, Madison entered politics. As a Confederation congressman (1780–83 and 1787–89), he favored strengthening the national union but never endorsed Robert Morris's fiscal agenda. Service in the Virginia legislature (1784–86) convinced him that individual liberties needed protection from majority tyranny.

Having studied ancient and modern confederacies (thereby becoming the best‐prepared delegate at the 1787 Constitutional Convention), Madison concluded that republics would perish without strong central governments. To help achieve ratification, he penned twenty‐nine of the celebrated Federalist Papers. No. 10, his most famous essay, argued that large republics, if properly constructed, could endure best because conflicting factions would make majority tyranny unlikely. During the first Federal Congress, Madison drafted the Bill of Rights. In the 1790s, he resisted Federalist financial and diplomatic policies in favor of perpetuating an agricultural republic friendly to France. His opposition culminated in his authorship of the 1798 Virginia Resolutions, which called for repeal of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

As Thomas Jefferson's secretary of state (1801–09), Madison tried to force Great Britain to grant neutral rights through economic coercion. When this policy failed, Madison as president obtained a declaration of war in 1812. Blame for the military disasters that ensued—including botched invasions of Canada and the burning of Washington, D.C.—belong to Madison. He failed to prepare the country for hostilities, tolerated incompetent generals, and proved a weak commander in chief. These shortcomings resulted from his inveterate determination to allow neither war nor the threat of war to endanger republicanism or personal rights.
[See also Canada, U.S. Military Involvement in; Civil Liberties and War; Commander in Chief, President as; War of 1812.]

Bibliography

Ralph Ketcham , James Madison, A Biography, 1971.
John Stagg , Mr. Madison's War, 1983.
Lance Banning , The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic, 1995.

Stuart Leibiger