James Madison in the United States

Madison, James (1751_1836)

James Madison: The Father of the Constitution

Of great modesty and short stature, James Madison (1751-1836) was easily overlooked. But his philosophical mind and practical political sense made him indispensable to the infant nation. Madison’s Virginia Plan, which he wisely asked Governor Edmund Randolph to introduce, became the foundation of the new Constitution devised at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Yet Madison avoided praise for his creation. He wrote a friend in 1834: “You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me ‘the writer of the Constitution of the U.S. This 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.”

Perhaps Madison’s greatest achievement was drafting the Bill of Rights and shepherding it through the First Congress, despite his belief that it was unnecessary. When Madison died in 1836, he was the last surviving delegate to the Constitutional Convention and, according to Madison’s wishes, his notes of the convention proceedings were only to be published posthumously.

James Madison served as the fourth U.S. president.

According to the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution, about its article titled MADISON, JAMES (1751_1836) James Madison, “the father of the Constitution,” matured with the american revolution. Educated at a boarding school and at patriotic Princeton, he returned to the family plantation in Virginia at age twenty-one, two years before the infamous Coercive Acts.

Election of 1808: James Madison

Election of 1812: James Madison

James Madison in the U.S. Legal History

Summary

The Father of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and a co-founder of the Jeffersonian Republican party, Madison served as president during the War of 1812.