James Madision

President No. 3 (1809-1817)
Montpelier The day after we toured Monticello, we were off to Montpelier, James Madison's estate in nearby Orange County. Now, Cathy is a graduate of James Madison University, in relatively nearby Harrisonburg, so she was particularly looking forward to this visit, since she never did a road trip during college.

Montpelier is in Orange, about 45 minutes outside Charlottesville, Va., on Route 20. Because the ground contains a horse race track as well as the mansion and visitor center, they collect the $16 entrance fee immediately upon entering the property.

We started off at the visitor’s center with a movie on the life of James Madison, our fourth president and also the father of the Bill of Rights.

Note: We highly recommend watching the visitor center films on your tours of the presidential estates. Tour guides have time to only tell you so much, and films are able to fill in many of the gaps.

Following the film, we walked over to the mansion about 5 minutes away and were met by Bob Davis, our tour guide, and two other visitors from South Carolina. (Note: A big advantage to visiting in the winter is that it is not crowded.)

The Mansion Montpelier has just undergone a five-year, $24 million renovation in which the mansion was brought back to its original size, and it now represents the house when the Madisons lived there, not when the DuPont family lived there and expanded upon it.

Currently, the house is devoid of furnishings — it looks like a house for sale where the owners have already moved out.

It seems Dolly Madison sold most of the house's contents as well as the house itself after the death of her husband to help drum in some quick cash. Archivists are now searching to find the original pieces or at the least to learn what types of furnishings were in the house so that they can purchase or build copies. They have had limited success, though, and the success they have had — red velvet wallpaper for the dining room, for example — has not come cheap.

One piece of furniture that historians are sure Madison used was a “campeachy chair.” This low-slung brown chair was a comfort to Madison, who suffered from severe rheumatism for most of his life. (It was a comfort to us as well: We found a replica of this surprisingly comfortable chair in a warm sunny room and Cathy used the opportunity to grab a quick nap. You'll notice a trend — we tend to sneak in a nap on most of our presidential visits. Don't even ask about art museums, but let's just say that any nice, dark film room in an art museum is visited early and often.)

Upstairs, gazing out on the Shenandoah Mountains from Madison's study, Bob pointed to dark spots on the wooden floor that he said were likely ink spots and might indicate where Madison’s desk had been. It was in this room that Madison reviewed the pros and cons of different governmental systems and developed the Virginia Plan prior to attending the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

In another upstairs room is a cutaway of one of the walls that showed the renovation nicely. When the archivists were working on the walls, they found mouse nests that contained pieces of paper from Madison's time — a most valuable finding, indeed.

His Life Montpelier already belonged to the Madison family when James was born in 1751. Like Jefferson, Madison was a bibliophile. He read all of his father’s books by the age of 11. Madison attended college at the far off College of New Jersey, now known as Princeton. (Unlike the other Virginian presidents, he did not go to nearby William and Mary.)

Constitutional Convention James Madison is considered the pivotal figure in the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787 to find a way to strengthen the confederation of states as outlined in the Articles of Confederation.

How did historians come to this conclusion?

--First, Madison was key in persuading George Washington to attend the convention. He (and others) believed that without Washington’s involvement, the public would not accept the results. --Second, prior to attending the Constitutional Convention, he spent the spring of 1787 studying world governments to learn what did and didn’t work. From his research, he developed the Virginia Plan.
--Third, Madison persuaded the Virginia delegation and eventually all of the delegates to throw out, and not merely amend, the Articles of Confederation.
--Fourth, Madison was the only delegate to attend every meeting of the Constitutional Convention.
--Fifth, Madison, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay wrote The Federalist, a series of 85 newspaper articles that explained to the public the reasons for the Constitution.
--And finally, Madison led Virginia to ratify the Constitution over the objections of the brilliant orator Patrick Henry.

Bill of Rights Madison eventually came to the view that the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government. In 1789, he penned a series of amendments to the Constitution, of which the first 10 became known as the Bill of Rights. These include the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, the freedom from self-incrimination, etc., that we know so well. In 1791, the amendments were ratified under the rules set forth in the Constitution.

Dolly Madison Madison did not marry until well after the Constitutional Convention in 1794 at the age of 43. He married a much younger Quaker widow, 26-year-old Dolly, having been introduced to her by — the not yet infamous — Aaron Burr. Dolly was taller than the 5-foot-4, 100 pound Madison.

Dolly was a popular extrovert and part of the reason for Madison’s political success. Our tour guide told us that one of Madison’s opponents said he could have beaten Madison alone but not the two together.

Political Life While Madison served in the House of Representative, he was an ally and confidant of President Washington. However, over time their political philosophies diverged as Madison aligned with Jefferson’s Republican views of limited central government. Later he served as President Jefferson’s Secretary of State for two terms, including during the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.

Madison, the Republican Madison's conversion to Republicanism is odd since he was a staunch Federalist at the time he wrote the Federalist with Hamilton. Author Joseph Ellis suggests that the reason that Madison and Jefferson became so opposed to the Federalists was because of slavery. They saw the power of the federal government after Hamilton set up a national bank (the Bank of the United States) to consolidate national finances and absorb state war debt. They feared that if the government could do set up a national bank, it also could also abolish slavery. And as planters and plantation owners, they could not see any way to run the Virginia economy without slavery.

Madison held dozens slaves at this plantation. Our guide, Bob, said that he treated his slaves well and that they attended Madison's funeral. However, we spied this rather telling sign at the mansion: “These last few days I saw a Negro ninety-five years old engaged in splitting wood. He belongs to President Madison.” — Baron de Montlezun, 1816.

We also read a sign describing how Madison had brought one of his slaves, Billey, to Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. Following the Convention, Madison declined to return Billey to the plantation because he was afraid that the Billey would advocate the idea of freedom to the other slaves. Madison said, “I am persuaded that his mind is too thoroughly tainted to be a fit companion for fellow slaves in Virginia.” He ended up selling Billey in Pennsylvania. Madison thought his action justifiable since he didn’t get as much money as he could have elsewhere and because in Pennsylvania a slave could be held only for seven years.

Presidency Madison was elected president in 1808 and served two terms. The War of 1812 occurred on Madison’s watch. The main issue was that Britain was stopping American ships and kidnapping what they claimed were British deserters and “impressing” them into service on British ships. (British sailors worked under notoriously harsh conditions.) The war went on until 1815 and featured naval engagements on the Great Lakes, the burning of the White House, the writing of the “Star Spangled Banner” during the bombardment of Ft. McHenry, and Andrew Jackson’s heroic defense of New Orleans (after the peace treaty had already been signed).

Later Life The “Sage of Montpelier” retired to his plantation in 1817. With the help of Dolly, he spent his time editing his notes from the Constitutional Convention. Since the meetings were held in secret, his Notes on the Debates of the Federal Constitution notes represent his version of the events of the time.

Madison died in 1836 at the age of 85, the last of the Founding Fathers to die. After Madison died, the much younger Dolly wore black mourning clothes for the rest of her life. She died deeply in debt and had to sell off much of Montpelier. Some of this was due to the profligacy of Payne Todd, her son from her first marriage.

We find it troubling that both Jefferson and Madison managed to become so deeply in debt. For all of their political acumen, they couldn’t seem to manage their household finances.

Place in History For his masterful accomplishments at the Constitutional Convention, Madison is relatively unheralded. We wonder how much of this is due to recent (say last 100 years) publicity and promotion. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation has been around since 1923 and has the advantage of funding from thousands of descendants. Montpelier was owned by the DuPonts until 1984 and was not fully transferred to the Montpelier Foundation until 2000. In addition, Madison and Dolly had no children — hence no descendants.

We should always remember that in the absence of irrefutable evidence, history is interpreted and shaped by those who were born after historical events. For example, the simple phrase “Founding Fathers” did not even exist until coined by Warren G. Harding in 1916. Somehow we always thought the term was used immediately after the Constitutional Convention.

It was interesting to also learn that some of the tour guides think that the Montpelier Foundation is not promoting the Constitution as well as it could at this important time in our history. In recent months, the Tea Party movement has been pushing the strict interpretation of the Constitution. In fact, the week before we visited Montpelier, the incoming House of Representatives read the entire Constitution on the chamber floor. (However, they left out some parts that have been amended, effectively removing any mention of slavery. This is disturbing since the reading becomes part of the Congressional Record.)

References
Ellis, J. 2000. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. Alfred A. Knopf. New York, New York.

Ellis, J. 2007. American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. Alfred A. Knopf. New York, New York.

Wills, G. 2002. James Madison. Henry Holt and Company. New York, New York.