JAMES MADISON
4th President, 1809–1817
Overall Rank: 17
Total Score: 610
James Madison has consistently ranked lower as president than the other Virginia co-founders (Washington, Jefferson, and Monroe). Like the others, his ranking in pursued equal justice for all is relatively low (18th in 2017). But unlike the others, historians give him “mid-range” rankings in several categories, including international relations (22nd) and crisis leadership (19th).
Party: Democratic-Republican
b. March 16, 1751, Port Conway, Virginia
d. June 28, 1836, Montpelier estate, Virginia
First Lady: Dolley Payne Todd Madison
Age entering office: 57
Historian: Noah Feldman
Harvard law professor and Bloomberg Opinion columnist Noah Feldman was interviewed for his book, The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President. The interview was recorded on December 19, 2017, for Q & A.
I wanted to write about James Madison because I write about constitutions, that’s my stock in trade, and ultimately for constitutionalists—Madison is our Einstein. There’s nobody more influential, more significant, or more formative to the field.
The three lives of James Madison are these: the first life is the one that’s most famous. That’s where he invented the Constitution as a true constitutional genius, not only the greatest in our country but probably the greatest constitutional genius in the world.
In his second life, he discovered that the Constitution wasn’t perfect. He thought he had provided against political parties, but he discovered that he actually had to found a political party, the Republican Party, in order to fight Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Party. He became a partisan, very much against his own wishes, but a very intense partisan nevertheless.
And then in his third life, he got to be secretary of state for eight years and president for eight more. He had to take on the kinds of decisions that you have to take on when you’re actually running the show, including fatefully taking us into our first declared war, the War of 1812, very much against his principles of a lifetime, which were against a standing army and against a navy.
Madison didn’t have his name on a single authored document in the way that the Declaration of Independence was essentially written by [Thomas] Jefferson. He didn’t have Jefferson’s love of the crowd, and he didn’t have Jefferson’s incredible gift for expression. Jefferson was a true genius of expression, utterly brilliant; he loved a pithy, sharp formulation, and the Declaration is an amazing monument to that. They were very close allies throughout their careers. A lot of the time, Madison was moderating Jefferson’s enthusiasms, and that was his own perception of what his job was. Madison never wanted to overshadow Jefferson. He loved Jefferson very much. Jefferson was probably the person, other than Dolley, that Madison was closest to in his entire life.
Madison was very different from most of the other founders. He was “all in his head” is how we would put it today. He was deeply committed to reason and logic. He hated public speaking. He hated arguing. He hated disagreement. He was much smaller than the others. He was maybe five feet, six inches, and he even may have been a little bit shorter according to some accounts. He was very cautious about his health. You could get very sick in those days, and he didn’t want to get sick. As a consequence, he never took a sea voyage anywhere. He repeatedly turned down offers to go to Europe, including offers from Jefferson to visit him in France. And last but not least, he was susceptible to serious attacks of what we probably today would call migraines, intense headaches that were almost physically paralyzing and debilitating. They only happened a few times in his life, but they happened at crucial stressful moments, and each time he powered through. He would be taken to bed for a few days, and he would get up, force himself back into the saddle, and go on with whatever he was doing.
One of the things that I could see up front, certainly, is that he was book smart in the traditional sense. He was usually the best prepared founder, which is a big reason for his success. His response to any deep policy problem was to dig down and try to learn as much as he could about it. One really good example of this is when he was first elected to Congress under the Articles of Confederation. The big problem facing the country was… a shrinking money supply. Instead of just mouthing off about it, he borrowed books and buried himself at Montpelier and tried very hard to read everything he could and to write notes for himself about this topic. You can see through his notes a mind… at work. The big challenge for Madison throughout his life was translating that book-smart learning into real-world political judgment, and there he proceeded like the rest of us, by trial and error. He would advocate a policy that was creative and made sense in light of what he knew; if it didn’t work, he would try to do it differently. And, he sometimes admitted his mistakes, which is also not very popular for politicians today.
James Madison’s estate, Montpelier, is [about ninety minutes south of Washington, DC. The staff there…] were especially helpful to me researching slavery in the Madison household, which is an important theme in Madison’s life. That’s a reality of Madison. He was essentially born into the arms of a slave, and a slave closed his eyes when he died. Slavery was a constant and ever-present aspect of his life, and one that has to be taken seriously and has to be encountered. The family had more than one hundred slaves when he was born; there were fewer than that when he died. Ultimately, Dolley Madison sold those slaves in an attempt to support herself financially, so by the end of her life she didn’t have any slaves left. But that was not because she was freeing them for moral reasons; it was because she needed the money.
[James was forty-three and Dolley was twenty-six when they got married.] Extraordinarily, they were introduced by Aaron Burr, the same person who went down in American history, in infamy, both for attempting a rebellion of the western states and also for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Burr was a very sociable guy, and especially in Philadelphia, which is where they met; Burr was famous among the young women of the city. It was a Quaker city, and Quakerism was very socially conservative. Young women of Quaker background weren’t supposed to learn to draw; they weren’t supposed to play instruments; they weren’t supposed to learn to read music. Burr, a little bit mischievously, liked to help them overcome these strictures. Dolley Madison wrote about this later in her life, that many young women in Philadelphia had Aaron Burr to thank for their learning these accomplishments.
Madison was walking with a congressman called Isaac Coles, who was a distant cousin of Dolley’s. He saw her on the street and was immediately smitten and deeply interested in her and wanted to meet her. He went to Aaron Burr because Burr knew everybody. Burr, in fact, told Dolley, “The great little Madison,” as he referred to him, “wants to meet you.” She wrote to a friend about it, which is how we know that this happened.… And then, within a matter of weeks, Madison wrote her letters and then asked her to marry him. And she said yes.
She had an enormous impact on him and, indeed, an enormous impact on the country. A reasonable argument could be made that Dolley Madison was the most important first lady that we’ve ever had.… She got sixteen years to be first lady, essentially, because from 1800 to 1808 when Madison was secretary of state, Jefferson was the president, and Jefferson was not married; his wife had died.… Consequently, most of the time Dolley functioned as the de facto first lady. She sometimes hosted events at the White House. She also hosted a lot of events at her house and Madison’s house, which functioned as though they were White House events.
This is also the time, starting in 1800–1801, when Washington, DC, became the capital.… This was the moment when all Washington protocol was being set and where the manners and social style of a republican foreign policy were being created. Dolley was the person who set that. Jefferson had no interest in socializing, wasn’t very graceful at it. Madison didn’t like to socialize because he was shy. So, Dolley really ran the show.
She had an enormous impact on the nature of our national debate and our national way of expressing ourselves publicly. She also really influenced Madison because she was able to express concern, opinion, and emotions that he was not.… You see her expressing his opinions on his behalf, as it were. I think that really mattered for them interpersonally; it was the cement of a really wonderful and rich relationship. Madison and Dolley Madison preferred always to be together. In almost a half century of marriage, they were only apart for a couple of months, and then only because Dolley was sick and had to be taken care of by a doctor in Philadelphia. And in that period, they wrote to each other three times a day. You can see their incredible closeness. They were a deeply close and loving couple. It’s a shame we don’t have a written record to fully bear that out.
Madison was not especially close with his actual brothers and sisters, which is really fascinating because Madison was very, very close with a succession of men his own age. Edmund Randolph, who was also a protégé of Jefferson’s, James Monroe, who was also a protégé, and, of course, went on to be president after Madison—those were crucial relationships in his life. They were like sibling relationships, and they apparently substituted in some way for actual sibling relationships.
Personal relationships are… the whole story for someone like Madison, precisely because Madison wasn’t a guy who liked to be out there on the front lines waving the flag. He liked to be the person making things happen from the back room. The way he did that was through these very intense, very close, personal relationships, these friendships. Occasionally, his friendships became relationships of enemies.
In the case of George Washington, Madison went from being a very close ally of Washington’s—helping to convince him to come, for example, to the Constitutional Convention. Washington was originally very skeptical about coming to [these sessions] because he was worried that it might not go anywhere, and he wasn’t sure he should lend his reputation to something like that. Eventually Madison and Edmund Randolph brought Washington around and got him to come.
When Washington became president, Madison was his man in Congress. In fact, in the very first exchange between Washington and the Congress, Madison ghostwrote Washington’s address to Congress, then he ghostwrote Congress’s reply to the president, then he ghostwrote President Washington’s reply to Congress. So, Madison was literally talking to himself and producing these state documents that he knew were of long-term historical value. That shows you how close he and Washington really were. They eventually fell out over Washington’s policy of favoring England over France in a period of deep tension between those two countries [1792–1802]. Madison believed, in a fundamental way, that the United States had signed a treaty of friendship with France and owed it to France to stay with it in France’s war with England, especially because the United States had previously fought a war with England.
Washington was more pro-British, and ultimately he declared neutrality in the war, which… was perceived by Madison and by others as a pro-British position rather than pure neutrality; this was neutrality that served the interests of the British. Madison criticized President Washington and went further than criticizing the policy. He ultimately made the argument that Washington was overstepping his constitutional bounds by declaring neutrality. Madison wanted to argue that in the same way that only Congress could declare war, only Congress could declare neutrality. Washington cared a lot about his reputation. He was deeply committed to the Constitution, and he deeply resented the idea that Madison was suggesting that he might have overstepped his constitutional bounds.
Alexander Hamilton was in the background egging on Washington at the same time.… Washington could not forgive what he took as a stain on his reputation created by Madison, and they just stopped speaking. After Washington died, Madison introduced in the Virginia legislature special legislation in honor of Washington and helped to put money aside for a monument. Yet,… he and Jefferson believed that Washington had become a partisan Federalist at the end of his career. They did not look on Washington’s last years in a good light. In fact, they thought that Washington’s famous farewell address, that we all love so well, was a totally partisan performance and not something that should be valued for the ages.
[Madison and our longest serving chief justice, John Marshall, had]… a very complicated ongoing relationship. For one thing, Madison succeeded Marshall in the position of secretary of state. Marshall was secretary of state under Adams before he was chief justice of the United States. And, in fact, it was the succession that led to the famous case of Marbury v. Madison [1803] because when Marshall was still secretary of state, he was supposed to deliver a commission to Marbury, which he never quite managed to deliver in the closing days of the administration. And then Marbury sued Madison demanding that he, as secretary of state, deliver the commission. Madison refuses, and that led to the case. Remarkably, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the opinion in the case; he did not recuse himself, even though the case arose because of his failure to deliver. So, that shows you how things were a little different in those days.
Marshall was an unusual person. He was a Virginia Federalist. He was from Virginia just like Madison was, and most of the Virginia gentlemen strongly supported the cause of the Republican Party, that is, they were a little bit skeptical of too much central, or federal, power. They believed to a moderate degree in states’ rights. That was not the position that Marshall took. Marshall was a maximalist on federal power to a very great degree and a loyal Federalist. So, in that sense, he and Madison were political opponents. From the bench when he was chief justice, Marshall kept up a steady stream of indirect critique of the Republican administration as best as he could. Looking back across a couple of hundred years, Marshall and Madison probably agreed on more than they disagreed about. They ultimately both took a central middle ground on the question of federal and congressional power. In what is probably his most important case, McCulloch v. Maryland [1819], Chief Justice Marshall stood for the idea that the powers Congress needed to… fulfill basic tasks laid down in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, it had. It’s the so-called Necessary and Proper Clause, which had the effect of allowing Congress to do things. That is basically what Madison also believed, but… [both] said there are still some limits to what Congress can do.
… The federal Constitution had been ratified [by Virginia] at the dramatic Virginia Ratifying Convention [the final vote, 89 to 79, was June 26, 1788], where Madison had gone head-to-head with the great Patrick Henry. In Patrick Henry’s last big public performance, Madison won and Henry had lost because Henry opposed ratification.… In the end, Governor Henry still controlled the Virginia State Legislature… and so [when Madison declared his intent to run in the first-ever congressional elections in 1789], Henry gerrymandered the districts in Madison’s home area of Virginia to produce a district that was full of anti-Federalists, people like him, who had opposed ratification. Then he convinced James Monroe, who was one of Madison’s best friends in the world and his business partner—they had invested in some land in upstate New York together—[to run against him]. Henry just seduced Monroe, probably by telling him, you’ll defeat Madison and you will be greater than Madison. This is right after Madison had essentially drafted the Constitution. Monroe made a serious run for it. I find it extraordinary that he would have done this against his close friend. They had this very dramatic race against each other. It was the heart of winter, and they went town to town and participated in public, and usually outdoor meetings, where they would debate questions of the ratification of the Constitution and the policies of the era.
James Madison pulled it off, but just barely [final tally: 1,308 to 972]. In an incredible letter, Madison wrote to Jefferson saying, “You will be sorry to hear that I had a misfortune of running against another close friend of ours, Monroe. But it’s over now, and our friendship is unaffected, at least on my side.” Jefferson believed him; even more amazingly, Madison actually meant it. He was able to forgive Monroe. Of course, had Monroe won, Madison’s whole career would have been over.
Extraordinarily, thirty-odd years later, the whole process was repeated again. Monroe, who had been serving as ambassador to Britain and then to France, was convinced this time by other Virginians in the United States that he should come back and run for president against Madison. Madison was supposed to essentially inherit the presidency from Jefferson in 1808. And again, a second time, Monroe went and ran against his close friend. Again, he lost. And, again, Madison forgave him. A little later, at the beginning of his second term in the presidency, Madison actually asked Monroe to become his secretary of state. It was probably because he badly needed a good secretary of state. I also think he genuinely missed Monroe. Once again, he genuinely forgave him for trying to upstage him and put him off course. That’s a remarkable sign of Madison’s character. It’s a true sign of his capacity, to be seeking after friendship and to be forgiving.
The War of 1812 [fought between June 1812 and February 1815] was almost an incredible disaster. It began because the United States was excluded from trading with European ports, both British and French-controlled ports. In this period of time, the French and the British empires functioned like the European Union or NAFTA. They were free trade zones. When the United States seceded from Great Britain, the thirteen colonies, when they became states, lost access to British ports. That was a huge ongoing challenge for our trade. The United States needed to use leverage to try to pressure Britain and France to allow us to trade. Not only did Britain and France resist this, they begin to use their navies to seize American ships once the British-French wars really got heated up.… So, the War of 1812 was fought as an effort by Madison to coerce the British and the French, although primarily the British because they were the immediate target, to change their policy and stop seizing US shipping.
The strategy to do this was to invade Canada. The idea was by invading Canada, the United States would put pressure on Britain because it wouldn’t be able to support its own colonies in the West Indies, especially Jamaica. That might conceivably have worked had we successfully invaded Canada. But unfortunately, Madison relied on militia because our Constitution was designed not to have a standing army. And militia, as it turns out, are very bad at invading. In a crucial moment of the first invasion of Canada, three thousand New York troops stood on the Niagara River, ready to cross into Canada, and refused to go. Maybe it was cowardice, maybe it was a constitutional principle that they expressed, namely that the president couldn’t order them to cross and invade.… Madison thought that was constitutionally wrong.… So, we failed to invade Canada.
And then we failed to invade Canada again. Britain, which had been very occupied in fighting Napoleon, got a lucky break because Napoleon marched into Russia with six hundred thousand troops. The winter came. They froze. And he marched out with less than twenty thousand troops. Now, Britain had matériel, time, and effort to turn to the United States, and boy, did they turn with a vengeance. It was in that period [August 1814] where the city of Washington, DC, was burned to [the] ground by an invading British force. Suddenly, the United States was very vulnerable, and all Americans could feel it.
What saved Madison, what saved the United States, from total destruction and indeed the possibility that we would lose the war outright, was that the British were stopped in Baltimore. They tried a sea landing, and militia blocked the troops from entering Fort McHenry. That’s the famous bombardment that Francis Scott Key captured in his poem that became our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. That battle was actually a turning point in US history. We tend to forget this.… We forget that if the flag of the United States on Fort McHenry had been brought down, that could have meant the end of the republic as we knew it. By withstanding that, the Americans convinced the British that it wasn’t worth continuing their efforts to conquer the United States. The British pulled back. They agreed to a treaty.
Nobody won, nobody lost. And that was perceived as a win, precisely because things had gotten so bad. Madison ended the war as a hero because he had survived. He had fought the second war of independence. We had stood up to Great Britain, the greatest naval power, in the world, and we hadn’t lost. So, not losing was winning in that period of time. By the time Madison left office [in 1817], he was wildly popular, and his presidency inaugurated what was called the Era of Good Feelings, which was a period of essentially one-party government that lasted through several presidential terms after that.
[Madison died on June 28, 1836, at the age of eighty-five.] He wasn’t profoundly sickly. He was just sickly enough to be worried about his health, and it turns out that’s actually a pretty good strategy, especially in a world where they didn’t understand anything about infection. They just knew that it was out there. Several really important decisions in Madison’s life were based on avoiding places where he thought there would be yellow fever, and he was usually correct.…
… James Madison did have an influence on… all constitutions in the world in a couple of different ways. One, crucially, was the idea of federalism, which we today think of as a normal aspect of many different countries but was pretty innovative in the US Constitution. That’s the idea that you have a central government that does have direct legal authority over citizens, but then you have state governments that themselves simultaneously enjoy power over individuals. That’s a complex compromise that came out of our Philadelphia Convention in 1787.… So, there is one direct form of Madison’s influence. Another is a basic commitment to freedom of speech and religious liberty, which is… an example of a provision that goes right back to the US Constitution, which is very important to Madison.
If Madison were here right now, I would definitely want to ask him what we should do about our own descent into partisanship in this particular historical moment. His own view was that you should only be a partisan in order to put an end to partisanship. His Republican Party was supposed to be the party to end all parties, and it wasn’t, of course. It did briefly put an end to partisan division because the Federalists, more or less, shrunk to nothingness in response to his onslaught. But he didn’t clearly understand exactly how to sustain a long-run, deeply divided republic, and I would want to hear his thoughts about that because it’s a very great challenge that we’re facing today.
The Constitution is Madison’s monument. In that way, the Constitution is all around you when you come to Washington, DC. The whole three-part structure of government, the way that the government interacts, the way people speak to each other, the exercise of free speech, all of that is Madison’s monument.… If you seek Madison’s monument in Washington, DC, look around you, and you’ll see it everywhere.