Madison: America’s Most Underrated President

 The life and legacy of America’s fourth president has been bared in a newly released book.

Exclusive To American Free Press

By F.C. Blahut

How could a man described as “the foremost architect of the U.S. Constitution,” be considered a failure as president? Prolific author and well-known historian Garry Wills, in his new book, James Madison*, tackles “the problem” of our fourth president (1809-17), in a straightforward manner, neither covering up his failings nor embellishing his triumphs.

Admittedly, George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were hard acts to follow, but Wills ex plains that Madison was not the intellectual inferior to them—or any of the Founding Fathers.

Even fans of Madison admit that the hand on the tiller of the Ship of State was shaky during the War of 1812, referred to derisively in New England as “Mr. Madison’s War.”

In Wills’s opinion, Madison, while brilliant, was not a natural leader as were his predecessors as chief executive of the fledgling nation.

While today most historians say he was correct, Madison lacked the people skills to rally the masses to his side. The modern reader could easily compare the presidency of the elder George Bush following Ronald Reagan to Madison following Jefferson.

Hence, one of the stalwarts of the first Constitutional Convention became a lackluster and hesitant president, only to go on to become a respected elder statesman

In James Madison, Wills takes a close look at our fourth president in the years before the Revolution, his two terms as president and his legacy.

It is here that Wills makes his point that our fourth president was no failure, but a brilliant man facing problems never seen before by a chief executive of a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

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 state 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. Madison became a leader of the so-called nationalist group following his election to the Continental Congress in December 1779. The nationalists advocated a strong central government.

By the time he retired from the Continental Congress in 1783—four years before the adoption of the federal Constitution—he was regarded as its best-informed and most effective legislator and debater.

At the Annapolis Convention in 1786 he took a lead in the call for the Constitutional Convention that met the following year in Philadelphia.

It was there that Madison established himself as a persuasive proponent of an independent federal court system, a strong executive, and a bicameral legislature with terms of differing length and representation ac cording to population.

He also 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.

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 in 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 Washington in inaugurating the new government.

In January 1790, Madison broke with the administration and his wealthy land-and-slave-owning colleagues to oppose the financial program of Hamilton, then 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.

Madison left Congress in disgust in 1797. As a private citizen he drafted the Virginia Resolutions in 1798 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 1801, Madison was appointed secretary of state by the new president, Jefferson, and became a key player in one of the most famous Supreme Court cases, Marbury v. Madison.

Madison was easily elected president in 1808, but his diplomacy and efforts at commercial retaliation against European powers made his first three years ineffective. Finally, under pressure from the newly elected “war hawks” in Congress, a group led by Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and Richard Johnson, Madison asked for and received a declaration of war on Britain in June 1812.

Although he was reelected president that year, discord within his own party and a determined—some say treasonous—opposition from the Federalists in New England plagued Madison throughout the War of 1812.

Following the war, 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.”

His greatest accomplishment, according to Wills, was his support—and indeed, craftsmanship—of the Constitution, for which he should be remembered.