John Angel James Creswell

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Madison, James (1751–1836), “Father of the Constitution” and fourth president of the United States.Born in King George County, Virginia, James Madison spent his childhood at Montpelier in Orange County, Virginia. After attending local schools, he entered the College of New Jersey at Princeton in 1769 and graduated in 1771.

Poor health and small stature prevented Madison from participating in the Revolutionary War, but in the Summer of 1776, as a delegate to the Virginia Convention, he played a decisive role in altering George Mason's draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Mason had proposed to grant religious dissenters toleration under the law, but Madison persuaded the Convention to make religious freedom a matter of right rather than a mere concession.

Between 1777 and 1779, while advising the governors of Virginia as a member of the Council of State, Madison commenced his friendship with Thomas Jefferson. During the 1780s Madison served in the Continental Congress (1780–1783 and 1786–1788) and the Virginia House of Delegates (1783–1786). In the latter body, he further advanced the goal of religious liberty by ensuring the passage in 1786 of Jefferson's Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom. In the Continental Congress, Madison joined the effort to replace the Articles of Confederation with a new constitutional structure. Madison drafted the “Virginia Plan,” which defined the agenda for the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and ultimately became, with modifications, the blueprint for the federal Constitution. Playing an equally prominent role in the ratification process, Madison collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay on the Federalist Papers, writing twenty‐nine of the eighty‐five essays; led the Federalist forces in the Virginia ratifying convention; and in 1789 headed the campaign to add the first amendments to the Constitution in the form of the Bill of Rights.

Madison served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1789–1797). At first, he cooperated with George Washington's administration, but differences over economic policy and foreign affairs drove Madison into leading the political opposition that coalesced into the Jeffersonian Republican party. In 1797 Madison and his wife Dolley Payne Todd (whom he had married in 1794) retired to Montpelier. He continued to act as an opposition leader, however, by drafting the 1798 Virginia Resolutions protesting the violations of civil liberties and states' rights embodied in the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts.

In 1801 Madison became President Thomas Jefferson's secretary of state. In this capacity he served as Jefferson's closest advisor and contributed to both the successes of his administration (such as the 1803 Louisiana Purchase) and its failures (such as the Embargo Acts of 1807–1809). His tenure in the State Department after 1803 was dominated by efforts to protect American neutral trade during the Napoleonic wars (1803–1815). Madison tried, without success, to implement policies of commercial restriction against France and Great Britain as an alternative to armed force and war, an approach he also pursued during his own presidency.

Madison's two terms as president (1809–1817) were troubled ones. He was beset by trade quarrels with France and Great Britain and by a territorial dispute with Spain. By 1810, France had repealed its anti–neutral trade policies, and in the same year Madison seized West Florida from Spain, thereby consolidating U.S. control of the Gulf Coast. With Great Britain, however, his efforts proved unavailing. Madison became the first president to act as commander‐in‐chief when Congress declared war on Great Britain on 18 June 1812. Madison's purpose in the War of 1812 was to conquer Canada, thereby compelling Great Britain to sign a treaty that guaranteed the neutral rights of U.S. vessels, but the war effort—hobbled by inadequate preparation, bad generalship, untrained troops, and logistical difficulties—was largely ineffective. For Madison the nadir of the conflict came in August 1814 when British forces captured and burned Washington, D.C., forcing Madison and his wife into ignominious flight. Peace with Great Britain was restored under the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, after which Madison enjoyed the final years of his second administration in tranquility and prosperity. Vivacious and outgoing Dolley Madison, seventeen years her husband's junior, presided as White House hostess during Madison's presidency.

In retirement at Montpelier, Madison assumed the role of elder statesman. He prepared his records of the 1787 Federal Convention for publication, worked to establish the University of Virginia, and made an appearance at the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention. Of all the Founding Fathers, none was more important than Madison in conceiving of the possibilities of a national republic. In his protests against the excesses of Federalism in the 1790s, however, Madison also contributed ideas that were instrumental in dissolving the Union after his death. Had Madison himself lived until 1861, he probably would not have been altogether surprised at this development.
See also Church and State, Separation of; Early Republic, Era of the; Federal Government, Executive Branch: Department of State; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: House of Representatives; Federalist Party; Political Parties; Revolution and Constitution, Era of.

Bibliography

Ralph Ketcham , James Madison: A Biography, 1971.
J.C.A. Stagg , Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830, 1983.
Drew McCoy , The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy, 1989.
Jack N. Rakove , James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic, 1990.
Lance Banning , The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic, 1995.
Richard Matthews , If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason, 1995.

J.C.A. Stagg

John Angel James Creswell 1828–91, U.S. Postmaster General (1869–74), b. Port Deposit, Md. He was a lawyer, U.S. Representative (1863–65), and U.S. Senator (1865–67), but his important work was done later as Postmaster General. He reorganized the Post Office Dept. to meet the expanding needs of the United States. One-cent post cards were introduced, postal treaties were revised, postal laws were recodified, money-order business was facilitated, free delivery was extended, methods of contracting with railways were improved, and the franking privilege was limited. Some reforms that Creswell advocated, such as a postal savings bank and postal telegraph, were adopted later.