Section I The Legacy of the Declaration When American schoolchildren first discover that they have a place in the world they sometimes give their addresses a wonderful form. Transformed for our case, it would be: “Proper Name, St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland, the United States of America, the North American continent, the Earth, the Solar System.” [...]
I will state my reasons why I think it proper to propose amendments. It is to provide those securities for liberty, which are required by a part of the community. The first of these amendments relates to what may be called a bill of rights. I am sorry to be an accessory to the loss of a [...]
The total absence of a distinct executive branch under the Articles of Confederation produced a government severely handicapped in the day-to-day management of its affairs. It was the founding generation’s own experience that persuaded it that instilling “energy in the executive” was critical to any constitutional design that aimed to promote sound government. The following [...]
National Gazette, January 23, 1792 In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase [...]
It has been said that every religious heresy proceeds from a misunderstanding of the nature of God. Something similar could be said about constitutional heresies. They proceed from a misunderstanding of the nature of the Union. From the time the conservative intellectual movement emerged in the United States in the early 1950s, for example, its [...]
Historian Jack Rakove talks about James Madison’s role in the creation of the Constitution and his arguments in support of the new frame of government in the Federalist papers. St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, hosted this event as part of its “Great Issues Forum.” Mr. Rakove is introduced by the President of St. John’s College, Christopher [...]
Scholarship on the political thought and career of James Madison is still dominated by a prevailing “Hamiltonian” interpretation.[1] Set forth by such prominent scholars as Irving Brant, Martin Diamond, and George Carey, the “Hamiltonian” interpretation views the years surrounding the formation of the Constitution as the most productive years of Madison’s career and argues that [...]
It is “dearest to my heart and dearest in my convictions,” the dying James Madison said, “that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.” It was this Union, conceived, framed, ratified, explained, implemented, defended, and cherished by Madison, that Kevin Gutzman cogently and rightly sees as the essential “making of America.” James Madison [...]
Studies of the Constitutional Convention, both “empirical” and more “impressionistic,” almost always emphasize its multiplex divisions: small states vs. large, “pure” federalists against proponents of a large republic, planting states against commercial interests, south against north. There is no denying the necessity of close attention to these conflicts. The Convention was a battleground for disagreeing [...]
James Madison, Jr. entered the world at midnight of the night of March 16-17, 1751.[1] By chance, he was an American prince. James Madison, Sr., the master of Montpellier in Piedmont Virginia’s semi-frontier Orange County, was the wealthiest man in the county. His lands were extensive, his slaveholdings were notable, and his family connections were [...]
Kevin Gutzman’s James Madison and the Making of America takes what we thought was a familiar story and gives it a fresh and important interpretation that challenges old orthodoxies and helps us better understand important episodes in American history. For instance, proper credit for the world-historic Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom is at last granted [...]
James Madison “If we were to look, therefore, for the meaning of the instrument beyond the face of the instrument, we must look for it, not in the general Convention, which proposed, but in the State Conventions, which accepted and ratified the Constitution.” —James Madison Books on James Madison may be found in The [...]
The first question that offers itself is, whether the general form and aspect of the government be strictly republican. It is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, [...]
James Madison is widely known as the “Father of the Constitution,” author of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In his old age, the prevailing account goes, he stood up to a heretical off-shoot of Southern constitutionalism, and it was fortunate that he, the “last of the Fathers,” was still around to gainsay those [...]