BIOGRAPHY
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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 Before he took office the Embargo Act was repealed.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."
Biography from www.whitehouse.gov
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