James Madison Essay Research Paper JAMES MADISONJames

James Madison Essay, Research Paper

JAMES MADISON

James Madison was born in 1751 and died in 1836. He was the fourth president of the United States (1809-1817). Madison worked for American independence, helped to establish the government of the new nation, and went on to participate in that government as congressman, secretary of state, and president. Madison’s work on the Constitution of the United States gave him his best opportunity to exercise his great talents and is generally considered his most valuable contribution. More than any other person, Madison can be considered responsible for making the Bill of Rights part of the Constitution. His intense concern for religious and intellectual freedom led him to seek the strongest possible safeguards of individual liberty.

In 1776, Madison was elected a delegate to the Virginia constitutional convention. Madison wrote the article of the declaration of rights that asserted the right of all “to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.” In December 1779, Madison was elected to the Continental Congress. He took his seat with the Virginia delegation in March 1780 and after the first few months, he assumed a leading role in Congress. In the spring of 1784 Madison again ran for election to the Virginia assembly and won. He served nearly three years there, advocating the strengthening of the federal government.

Madison was one of the first delegates to arrive in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. Madison proposed a government with strong central powers, including a national judiciary and an elected national executive, and with authority to veto legislation of individual states. Primarily, Madison sought to provide the central government “with positive and complete authority in all cases which require uniformity” and to prevent abuse of this authority by making the government responsible to the people. He favored a two-chamber legislature and a system of representation that would give the larger states an influence in proportion to their size. The compromise reached was that the states would be represented according to size in the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, but would have equal voting power in the upper chamber, the Senate. Madison feared government by a minority and foresaw that the small states would be able to wield disproportionate power. After the convention adjourned, the Virginia assembly returned Madison to Congress, then in its final session under the Articles of Confederation. However, largely through the efforts of Patrick Henry, Madison failed to win a seat in the new U.S. Senate.

Madison ran for election to the House of Representatives and was elected in February 1789. In the first term of the new Congress, he introduced a measure to set up executive departments of the government. The second, introduced on June 8, 1789, presented a series of nine amendments to strengthen the Constitution. These were largely designed to guarantee personal liberty, including religious freedom and freedom of the press. Madison led the debate for his amendments and saw most of them approved. They formed, with the Tenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.

Beginning about 1790, Madison’s political career closely followed Jefferson’s. In their personalities and modes of thinking they were very different, but they complemented one another. Statesman Henry Clay said that he preferred Madison and thought him the nation’s most distinguished political writer and, after Washington, its greatest statesman. Clay regarded Jefferson as having greater genius; Madison, greater judgment and common sense. He considered Jefferson “a visionary and theorist, often betrayed by his enthusiasm into rash and imprudent and impractical measures,” while he viewed Madison as “cool, dispassionate—practical, safe.” Madison’s party named him to succeed Jefferson as President. He received 122 electoral votes to his oppositions, Pinckney’s, 47. George Clinton, vice president under Jefferson, had 6 votes. Clinton also became Madison’s vice president. Chief Justice John Marshall swore Madison into office on March 4, 1809.

The eight years of Madison’s presidency were dominated by continuing and growing tensions between the United States and the governments of France and Britain, and finally by open warfare with Britain. When Madison took office, the Embargo Act of 1807 had been replaced by the Non-Intercourse Act, which reopened trade with countries other than France and Great Britain. By 1810 it was apparent to Madison that the American trade boycott was having no effect. American ships were being seized at a greater rate, if anything, by both countries. In May 1810, therefore, the Non-Intercourse Act was repealed, and the United States resumed trade with both France and Great Britain. But if one of them dropped its restrictions on American shipping, Madison was authorized to again prohibit trade with the other.

U.S.-British relations deteriorated further when the president received what he was led to regard as complete assurance that France was renouncing its policy of intercepting American ships. Unaware that he was being tricked by France, Madison declared in November 1810 that trade with Britain was to be halted. Although negotiations with British ambassadors continued in hope of a peaceable settlement, they were now almost certainly doo