Madison was born at Port Conway, Va., on Mar. 16, 1751, into a family that had been in Virginia since the mid-17th century. The family had settled (c.1730) on a plantation in Orange County that grew in Madison's lifetime to 2,000 ha (5,000 acres). The chief crops were grains and tobacco, produced by a work force of about 100 slaves. Madison thus depended all his life on a system of slavery that he was never able to reconcile with his republican ideals. At preparatory school and the College of New Jersey at Princeton, from which he graduated in 1771, Madison was greatly influenced by the works of such Enlightenment thinkers as Joseph Addison, David Hume, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Voltaire.

As the American Revolution approached, Madison served (from 1774) on the Orange County Committee of Safety. Two years later he was elected to the Virginia convention that voted for independence and that drafted a constitution for the new state. In the debates on the constitution he successfully changed a clause guaranteeing religious toleration into a general statement of "liberty of conscience for all." During 1778 and 1779 he served on the council of state under governors Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.

~ Nationalist-Federalist ~

Elected to the Continental Congress in December 1779, Madison became a leader of the so-called nationalist group, which advocated a strong central government. By the time he retired from Congress in 1783 he was regarded as its best-informed and most effective legislator and debater. Three years in the Virginia legislature (1784-86) convinced him that the Articles of Confederation were too weak to bind the states together in the face of domestic and foreign threats to the unity of the new nation. At the Annapolis Convention in 1786 he took a lead in the call for the Constitutional Convention that met the following year in Philadelphia. There Madison was a persuasive proponent of an independent federal court system, a strong executive, and a bicameral legislature with terms of differing length and representation according to population. He also articulated the premise that became an important base of American government: he argued that the wide variety of interests, or factions, in a large republic would tend to balance and counteract one another and that from this interaction the public interest would eventually emerge.

James Madison worked with Alexander Hamilton and other supporters of the Constitution (known as Federalists) to win its ratification. He contributed several papers in the Federalist series. At the Virginia ratifying convention (1788) he won a dramatic debate with Patrick Henry, one of the opponents of the proposed Constitution (known as the Anti-Federalists). Serving in the new House of Representatives from 1789, Madison sponsored the Bill of Rights and became one of the chief advisors of President George Washington in inaugurating the new government.

~ Democratic-Republican ~

In January 1790, Madison broke with the administration to oppose the financial program of Hamilton, now secretary of the treasury. Madison felt that Hamilton's policies favored commerce and wealth and allowed the executive department to dominate the other branches of government. He now began to work closely with Jefferson and his supporters. The opposition of the Jeffersonians deepened, and America's first political party system began to emerge as the Federalist Party sought stronger commercial bonds with Great Britain and withdrew support from revolutionary France. The Jeffersonians, known later as Democratic-Republicans, feared that a commercial faction, caring little for the nation's republican ideals, had temporarily gained control. During this period of political discouragement, however, Madison found private happiness by his marriage in 1794 to a lively widow, Dolley Payne Todd.

Madison left Congress in disgust in 1797. As a private citizen he drafted the Virginia Resolutions in protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts, sponsored by the administration of John Adams. Seeing these acts as a severe threat to free government, Madison subsequently argued that a free press was responsible "for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression." In 1799-1800, he served in the Virginia legislature.

In 1801, Madison was appointed secretary of state by the new president, Jefferson. These two and the new secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallitin, formed a Democratic-Republican triumvirate that led the nation for the next eight years. Madison adroitly guided the negotiations that resulted in the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and supported American suppression of the Barbary pirates in the Tripolitan(1803-05).

In the war between France and Britain, however, both were inflicting heavy damage on American shipping; Britain, moreover, was stopping American ships and impressing sailors on the high seas. Confronted by overwhelming British naval power, Madison supported the Embargo Act (1807), which forbade American ships to trade abroad. The unexpected capacity of the belligerents to replace American trade and substantial evasions of the law by American merchants made the embargo a failure, and Madison reluctantly accepted repeal of the act at the end of Jefferson's administration.

~ Presidency ~

Madison was easily elected president in 1808, although the Embargo Act cost him the electoral votes of commercial New England. Furthermore, the unity that the Democratic-Republican party had experienced under Jefferson was diminished under Madison's less charismatic leadership and in the face of the continuing dilemmas posed by the Napoleonic Wars. Despite Gallatin's skillful leadership of the Treasury Department and Madison's own prestige as an elder statesman, these weaknesses frequently thwarted the plans and policies of his administration. Since neither France nor Britain saw any need to respect a distant and disunited republic, Madison's diplomacy and efforts at commercial retaliation floundered ineffectively for three years. Finally, under pressure from the newly elected "war hawks" in Congress, a group led by Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Richard M. Johnson, Madison asked for and received a declaration of war on Britain in June 1812. Although he was reelected president that year, factious strife within his own party and a determined (some thought treasonous) opposition from the Federalists in New England plagued Madison throughout the War of 1812.

The president struggled without success to find able civilian and military leaders. Instead of the hoped-for conquest of Canada, one American army surrendered at Detroit, and another was defeated on the Niagara frontier. Naval victories raised morale for a time, but chaotic U.S. finances, French defeats in Europe, and further unsuccessful military campaigns in 1813 left Madison disheartened. He fell ill in June 1813.

Chester Harding (1792-1866) Oil on canvas, 1829-1830. National Portrait Gallery - Smithsonian Institution

In 1814, Napoleon's defeat released thousands of veteran British troops for service in North America. The greatly improved American armies successfully defended the Niagara frontier, but the city of Washington itself was captured by the British and burned. Madison watched the flames from the other side of the Potomac. Soon afterward, however, the British were defeated in Baltimore harbor and repulsed in their invasion of New York State via Lake Champlain.

These setbacks persuaded the British government to seek peace, but Madison did not know this fact in the fall and winter of 1814. In this gloomy period he faced the prospect of national bankruptcy; the apparent threat of secession in New England, where the Hartford Convention met in December 1814; and the menace of a powerful British force approaching New Orleans. Then, in February 1815, news of the victory by Andrew Jackson at New Orleans and the peace treaty signed at Ghent on Dec. 24, 1814, reached Washington. Joy replaced gloom, and the threat of disunion was ended. The peace treaty ensured the United States an equal and respected place in the post-Napoleonic world. At last free of foreign worries, Madison proposed wide-ranging domestic programs in December 1815: recharter of the Bank of the United States, a moderate tariff to protect young industries, creation of a national university, and federal support for roads and canals. Although Congress accepted only part of this program, the public acclaimed Madison upon his retirement, indicating its approval of his policies of "national republicanism."

~ Later Life ~

Handing over the presidency to yet another member of the so-called Virginia dynasty, James Monroe, Madison retired to his Virginia estate, "Montpelier," in 1817. He subsequently helped Jefferson found the University of Virginia and served Monroe as a foreign policy advisor. He strongly resisted the "Nullification" movement of 1830-33, denying that he and Jefferson had advocated nullification in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, and extolled instead the benefits of union for the United States. Bedridden in the last years of his life, Madison died on June 28, 1836.