James Madison `

Historian Richard B. Morris in 1973 identified the following seven figures as the key Founding Fathers: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.[1]

The first three of the Founding Fathers – Washington, Adams and Jefferson – went on to become United States presidents, as did James Madison. The remaining three were never president, but had a profound impact on the birth or a young nation.

I thought that today I would talk a little bit about James Madison, the fourth President of the United States and his many roles in the founding of this nation.

Shortly after the Revolutionary War, a convention was held to draft what came to me known as the Articles of Confederation.  This plan had a weak central government and was – in a word – a failure. James Madison was one of the first to recognize the inadequacy of the Articles.  He spoke and wrote for several years and was one of the key movers in setting up a Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.  At the outside, this convention was called to review and edit the Articles of Confederation, but inside the hearts of many, including Madison, was the firm conviction that the Articles would have to be axed and a Constitution drafted and ratified.

It looked like that idea would be doomed from the start because so many states rights advocates didn’t even want to discuss and strong central government.  It was Madison who convinced George Washington to come out of retirement and sit in the Convention.  It wasn’t an easy sell and it was persuasion that stressed Washington’s love of his county that finally got the revered Revolutionary War hero to leave his peaceful farm at Mt. Vernon.

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Madison was the key author of what was then known as the Virginia Plan.  This was the model for the Constitution.  It called for an executive branch – President and Vice-President – a legislative branch – Congress – and a judiciary branch or Supreme Court.  After much debate between the large states and the small states, it was determined that the Congress would have two houses: a Senate made up of two representatives of each state no matter its size and a House of Representatives with representation allotted to states according to the population of the state.  Although it created a much stronger central government, it put in a set of checks and balances that would keep any one branch of government for becoming too powerful.  The Congress drafted the bills and passed them in both houses.  The President could then sign the bill into law or he could veto it and send it back to the Congress.  The Congress could overturn the President’s veto by a 2/3 majority vote.  The Supreme Court interpreted the laws according to the Constitution itself. 

Following its passage, the Constitution as sent to the states for ratification. Madison was approached by another Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, to contribute to a collection of essays explaining the

Constitution and the necessity of ratification.  This collection of 85 essays, written under the pseudonym of Publius, was written over the course of six months by Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay.  To quote Wikipedia, “Historian Clinton Rossiter called The Federalist Papers ‘the most important work in political science that ever has been written, or is likely ever to be written, in the United States.’” [2]

Madison has since become known as the Father of the Constitution.  I believe the Constitution to be a divinely inspired document, although Madison himself made no such claims.  He was born and educated as a Presbyterian, but as an adult did a lot of reading of Diest theology.  There is no consensus as to his religious affiliations as an adult, but according to one source, “Madison accepted Christian tenets and formed his outlook on life with a Christian world view.”[3]

President James Madison sat at the helm during the War of 1812, a decisive win that established the United States as a real and viable nation at last.  Many historians have found Madison to have been a very effective president. 

 I don't know how well James Madison knew God, but I suspect it was more than we know, and most certainly God knew and inspired James Madison.

[1] www.google.com

[2] Rossiter, Clinton, ed. (1961). The Federalist Papers. Penguin Putnam, Inc. pp. ix, xiii. via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison#cite_note-170

[3] Ketchem 1990, pg. 47 via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison#cite_note-44

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