"The Father of the Constitution"

James Madison is often referred to as the "Father of the Constitution" for his role in its drafting and ratification. However, he protested that this title was "a credit to which I have no claim... The Constitution was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands".

Madison was born on March 16, 1751. James' father had inherited some wealth and also acquired more when he married a tobacco heiress. James was a sickly boy from an early age and remained so till his death. Madison later described his illness as "epileptic fits" but it was probably what we would nowadays call "anxiety attacks." He was definitely a "worrier" and also seems to have been a bit of a "hypochondriac." He was a small man. At 5' 4" and weighing only 100 lbs, he was our smallest President.

Like many sickly kids, Madison was a bookworm from an early age and remained a scholar throughout his life. By the time he entered the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, Madison had mastered Greek and Latin. He completed his college studies in two years but stayed on at Princeton for another term to tackle Hebrew and philosophy. When he returned to his family estate, Montpelier, in 1772, he studied law but had no taste for it which is ironic because he eventually became known as the "Great Legislator."

In 1776, at the age of 24, he became a delegate to the revolutionary Virginia Convention where he began a life-long friendship with Thomas Jefferson when they worked together to enact statutes on religious freedom and the disestablishment of the Church of England. In 1778 Madison was appointed to the Virginia Council of State, the governmental body that directed state affairs during the Revolutionary War. Jefferson served as governor of Virginia during the war years and, from that time until Jefferson's death in 1826, Madison was Jefferson's closest adviser and most devoted friend.

At age twenty-nine, Madison became the youngest member of the Continental Congress where he was the leading proponent of legislation to strengthen the loose confederacy of former colonies, contending that military victory required vesting power in a central government. He also worked to oppose Patrick Henry's proposals to tax citizens in support of the Christian religion and to establish religious tests for public office and to criminalize heresy.

Because Madison believed that weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation made the new Republic vulnerable to foreign enemies, he called for a national convention in Philadelphia "to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union." Madison led the Virginia delegation to the Philadelphia meeting which began on May 14, 1787. He then proposed that General George Washington act as its chairman.

In 1788 Madison, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, began to publish a series of newspaper essays that became known collectively as the Federalist Papers. Madison wrote twenty-nine of the eighty-five essays under the pseudonym "Publius." He also drafted many basic laws and was responsible for the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and is therefore also known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights." Madison believed that the new Republic needed checks and balances to limit the powers of special interests, which he called "factions."

As leader in the House of Representatives, Madison worked closely with President George Washington to organize the new federal government but, in 1791, he broke with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and he and Jefferson organized what they called the Republican Party (which later became the Democratic-Republican Party) to oppose the Federalists. (For years I mistakenly thought that this was the beginning of the GOP - and I sure wish it were so because Madison's ideals to me embody the best of republican and Republican virtues.)

In 1794 Aaron Burr introduced Madison to Dolley Payne Todd. Madison surprised even his closest friends when he married the lovely widow, who already had an infant son. Madison was 43 and Dolley was only 26. Although Dolley did not bear Madison any children, they were devoted to each other for the rest of their lives and Dolley even gave up her Quaker religion.

When Jefferson became President, he chose Madison to be his Secretary of State. In this capacity Madison oversaw the Louisiana Purchase, the war against the "Barbary pirates" (our first war against Muslim terrorists) and the embargo against Britain and France in response to their constant harassment of American ships and "impressment" of American sailors.

In 1809 Madison became the fourth president of the United States when Jefferson, like Washington before him, declined to run for a third term and endorsed Madison. I won't go into detail about Madison's presidency - you could write a whole book just about the War of 1812 - but there is one interesting little snippet about Madison's run for his second term. From Wiki:

A rebellious group of New York Democratic-Republicans who had participated in the caucus boycott supported the mayor of New York City, DeWitt Clinton, the nephew of former Vice President George Clinton, who had died in office. Clinton supporters hoped to forge a winning coalition among Republicans opposed to the coming war, Democratic-Republicans angry with Madison for not moving more decisively toward war, northerners weary of the Virginia dynasty and southern control of the White House, and disgruntled New Englanders who wanted almost anyone over Madison. Dismayed about the prospects of beating Madison, a group of top Federalists met with Clinton's supporters to discuss a unification strategy. Difficult as it was for them to join forces, this assembly of notables nominated Clinton for President and Jared Ingersoll, a Philadelphia lawyer, for vice president.

The Clintonians, who had no official party name, tailored their message to the region and the audience. They said one thing to war Democratic-Republicans, another to peace Democratic-Republicans, and something else again to antiwar Federalists. Their tactics turned the honorable John Quincy Adams, son of the former Federalist President John Adams, against his former party colleagues. The elder Adams, in fact, not only endorsed Madison but also agreed to head Madison's electoral ticket in his home district of Quincy, Massachusetts.

[...]

The Federalists had seriously weakened, if not completely destroyed, their status as an established party by their fusionist strategy. To be fair, it is unlikely that any other strategy would have achieved victory against a seated President waging what many at the time called the Second American Revolution...No incumbent wartime President before or since Madison has ever lost his bid for reelection.

Don't the Clintonian "fusionists" sound a bit like our Clintonistas - pure opportunists without any core principles and willing to say whatever is needed to get elected?

Like Washington and Jefferson, Madison left the presidency a poorer man unlike the Clintons who claimed that their net worth was $600,000 when they moved into the White House and are now worth 60 million or more.

Also like his predecessors, Madison was troubled by slavery and supported the American Colonization Society's plan to transport blacks back to Africa. He spent his final years in Montpelier, almost obsessively rewriting his papers. Despite being in poor health most of his life, he was 85 when he died in 1836.