At his inauguration, James Madison, a small, wizened man, appeared old and worn;
Washington Irving described him as "but a withered little apple-John." But
whatever his deficiencies in charm, Madison's buxom wife Dolley compensated for
them with her warmth and gaiety. She was the toast of Washington.
Born in 1751, Madison was brought up in Orange County, Virginia, and attended
Princeton (then called the College of New Jersey). A student of history and
government, well-read in law, he participated in the framing of the Virginia
Constitution in 1776, served in the Continental Congress, and was a leader in
the Virginia Assembly.
When delegates to the Constitutional Convention assembled at Philadelphia, the
36-year-old Madison took frequent and emphatic part in the debates.
Madison made a major contribution to the ratification of the Constitution by
writing, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the Federalist essays. In later
years, when he was referred to as the "Father of the Constitution," Madison
protested that the document was not "the off-spring of a single brain," but "the
work of many heads and many hands."
In Congress, he helped frame the Bill of Rights and enact the first revenue
legislation. Out of his leadership in opposition to Hamilton's financial
proposals, which he felt would unduly bestow wealth and power upon northern
financiers, came the development of the Republican, or Jeffersonian, Party.
As President Jefferson's Secretary of State, Madison protested to warring France
and Britain that their seizure of American ships was contrary to international
law. The protests, John Randolph acidly commented, had the effect of "a shilling
pamphlet hurled against eight hundred ships of war."
Despite the unpopular Embargo Act of 1807, which did not make the belligerent
nations change their ways but did cause a depression in the United States,
Madison was elected President in 1808. Before he took office the Embargo Act was
repealed.
During the first year of Madison's Administration, the United States prohibited
trade with both Britain and France; then in May, 1810, Congress authorized trade
with both, directing the President, if either would accept America's view of
neutral rights, to forbid trade with the other nation.
Napoleon pretended to comply. Late in 1810, Madison proclaimed non-intercourse
with Great Britain. In Congress a young group including Henry Clay and John C.
Calhoun, the "War Hawks," pressed the President for a more militant policy.
The British impressment of American seamen and the seizure of cargoes impelled
Madison to give in to the pressure. On June 1, 1812, he asked Congress to
declare war.
The young Nation was not prepared to fight; its forces took a severe trouncing.
The British entered Washington and set fire to the White House and the Capitol.
But a few notable naval and military victories, climaxed by Gen. Andrew
Jackson's triumph at New Orleans, convinced Americans that the War of 1812 had
been gloriously successful. An upsurge of nationalism resulted. The New England
Federalists who had opposed the war--and who had even talked secession--were so
thoroughly repudiated that Federalism disappeared as a national party.
In retirement at Montpelier, his estate in Orange County, Virginia, Madison
spoke out against the disruptive states' rights influences that by the 1830's
threatened to shatter the Federal Union. In a note opened after his death in
1836, he stated, "The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions
is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated."