Has. Batson was nice. Says almost enough to make you want to run for office. [laughter] almost. We are delighted to be back here tonight we have the opportunity to visit the Nixon Library on a number of locations in to serve the Nixon Administration during the first term and i am always pleased to come back to visit this part of the world to be reminded of the important time in our history. But i was happy to be a part of the administration. We should explain why we are here together. I was born in lincoln nebraska and she was born in casper wyoming. 1954 when i was 13 years old my dad moved the family to caspar wyoming. He had a choice between there or montana. We grew up together and i took her out when she was 16 and we will celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. [applause] butted dad picked montana instead of wyoming of course, i never would have mary lynn she would have married someone else and she said then he would have been Vice President of the United States. [laughter] [applause] i dont recall that was one of the jokes. Now i am freelancing. We are here to talk specifically about a magnificent book she has written about James Madison with great reviews and we are on the book to our high has been to the nixon even before when i had other books to publish. But now it is an opportunity for her to present her as. It is superb about the nations fourth president and the plan is devil ask her questions and she will respond at the end of the period we will open to questions from the audience. But why madison . Before you get there i want to say i am so grateful for dick to join me on this book tour. I am referring to him as my arm candy. [laughter] i was interested in madison for a long time i had that privilege to serve on the bicentennial commission in 1987 and then they first begin to understand how significant his accomplishments were but yet how the recognized he was for what he has accomplished in his political life but a few years ago i finally became serious and it is a labor of love. I hope you will enjoy the book as much as i enjoyed writing and. He was the architect of the constitution, bill of rights the establishment of the first government under the constitution and under the first or and he performs if not magnificently in all those jobs at least very well. And john adams who is a sour figured on prone to taking compliments easily he wrote the James Madison administration had covered itself with more glory than any predecessors. That is the great compliment. And it has been so much fun. Five years does not sound like fun but discovering things to put it into a form that i hope would reach a ride a wide audience. But to reconfigure his life. Was the most important contribution . If you had to pick just one . It would have to be the constitution. I think he was a genius because the kind of genius he had with conventional thinking everyone was thinking one way of madison did not accept it. He and he did that in the case of establishing a Great Republic which is what we are. The conventional wisdom was you could not have a representative government. That it would be too loose over a long and vast extent of land and fall apart unless you had monarch power, a king at the center. Madison thought that wasnt true. He thought the danger was one fraction would dominate everyone else. And he thought if you had many factions than no single one was likely to become oppressive and that was the rational for the constitution produced in philadelphia. It was his genius to see what work works what everyone else was talking about. How about about his relationship with the other founders. George washington for example. We think of the founders sitting around and having a polp polite conversation and having the greater good in mind at all times. It is better to believe them for the who they were and that is people that believed in their point of view and were willing to fight to see it succeed. Madison was washingtons chief lieutenant. When the first government under the constitution began and this is familiar to anyone in politics, washington had an aid write his inaugural address and she produced a 72page disaster and washington wrote to madison and asked please come to mount v vernon and he did and wrote the address and did a good job. After washington who delivered the address, madison who was the leader of congress, wrote the Congress Response to the inaugural address. And washington thought madison was so good at this he asked him to write the replay back. It is hard to imagine how his voice was echoing off every wall. I am not sure there has been another time in history when one man has been so influential at the beginning of the Administration Like he was with washington. When you talk about the Constitutional Convention there were battles over provisions and we ended up with article 1, 2, and 3 and it took a long time with many hours and days of work to put it together. Can you sight the specific comp compromise and were able to resolve . It was the thing we learn about the big state and the small states. The big states wanted them to be represented according to their population. The small states wanted them to be representative states. We know the compromise represented states in the senate and half in the house. And madison was appalled by that. He went into the Constitution Convention thinking the great threat was the state and he called them the evil states because they were so irresponsible under the articles of confederation oppressing freedoms and turning out money. Rhode island was especially bad. They called it rogue island. And they made it acceptable for merchants to take the money for the debt that occurred so you might be getting paid off at a penny on a dollar. They were conducting their own Foreign Policy and madison thought the states needed to be controlled and when it turned out it was turned out the solution was to have states represent states. And it took him a few days to get used to that. What made him think they needed a Vice President . That is an eternal question, isnt it . It had to do with the Electoral College where they would go when they could not agree on anything else and the congress would chose the president. And just imagine how different the president s would be if the congress was choosing. You would not have had a Ronald Reagan and i dont think about a nixon either. Everybody gets two votes. And again the big states and small states. The small states are worried that the big states will always elect the president. So to sway their concern the deal was made that you could only cast one vote and one of those two votes was for someone from your own state and the other had to be cast for somebody from another state. Then they started worrying, and you have all played this kind of game, you want that one vote for your own guy in your own state to be important, you throw away the second vote. You know you expend it on jim who doesnt have a chance. To prevent that we are getting to the answer they invented the vice presidency. The idea was the person who got the second highest number of votes would become Vice President. And that seemed like a pretty good idea. Then they started worrying what was he going to do . And you know, it is so interesting to see how it builds up. They decided he needed a job and they would make him president of the senate. By the end of the Constitutional Convention there were two delegates who were so worried about the Vice President , a creature of the executive branch, being president of the senate part of the legislative branch, about his just violating the separation of powers. Two delegates al bert gary and randolph of virginia or now george mason of virginia sighted that the Vice President was the reason they would not sign the constitutional. They called it the dangerous office. During the course of his career, in terms of implementing the constitution would be the best way to describe it, Alexander Hamilton was an important player in all of that. Can you talk about what it was that led to their major d disagreeme disagreements and confrontation . It is important to note they were not friend but they did write the federalist papers. And the story of writing that and if you dont mind i will divert here. It was so interesting because it was done with speed and haste. And i was explaining to a College University that what madison did during one period of time during 40 days was the equivalent of writing a tenpage paper every other day. You could do that. It doesnt seem impossible but the papers became immortal so writing politics and an effort to convince people to support the constitution at the break neck speed and the printer was putting the beginning parts of essay into print often before they were finished. So madison and hamilton respected one another until hamilton was secretary and made his financial plans clear. When establishing a nation bank came up he was concerned. He didnt think a bank was a bad idea but at the Constitutional Convention actually he said at the convention he proposed giving congress the ability to have powers which is what you need to start a bank. Congress didnt have that power and that was madisons problem. Hamilton was running rough shops over the strict numbers congress was given. Madison thought you should not establish a bank. He lost the fight. But went on to win the war, i guess you would say, he established the first opposition political party. Parties didnt have better reputation then than they do now. It was counter intuitive and against the wisdom that said parties were divisive and noisy and we didnt want them in the republic. He said a government without opposition is a little more than a monarchy. So he organized the party in a way to try to change the way that hamilton was trying to run the government to make it so strong madison thought it was something the constitutional didnt think about. He managed to get jefferson elected and he was a small government guy like madison. One of the most important functions is the roll of commander and chief and who is going to run the wars and be in charge of the military. And of course, madison as you mentioned in the opening was the first president to have to conduct a war under the constitution. And the way that power was vested into the presidency strikes me as a great story because that is not how they started out. Can you talk about that . The proposal of the Constitutional Convention that was about to go through was that the congress among their delegated powers was the power to make war. And madison his mind was so quick, you know . His intelect grasped what would be the result of the proposals. He changed the word make to declare. Congress would have the power to declare war. He did this in part because he had seen what a mess congress made of things when they were in charge of war. He had seen he had been a member of the Confederation Congress where there was no executive and the congress would decide, you know, they would write George Washington and send white horse harry lee south and they would realize there was trouble in the north and they would say send light horse harry north. It wasnt a way to run a war. Madison left to his feet and said congress has the power to declare war and that made the president commander and chief once the war was started. How did he do as commander and chief . The british marched on washington and burned down the capital and whitehouse. Was he a good commander and chief . He was patient. Like lincoln, he had trouble with generals. In the war of 1812 the generals were people that served in the revolution and they were getting long in the tooth. And they were not as brave maybe as they might have been in their younger years. One general who was supposed to invade canada to go over the border near detroit became so alarmed at the rumors that turned out to be true actually that the british had formed a Strong Alliance with the indians who were great warriors that the americans might have to face this and he turned around and defeated detroit. He didnt just invade canada he gave the british detroit. So generals were a problem as they were with lincoln. Not so with admirals. The navy then started under john adams with six spigots and they have 89 by the end of the war. The british had more than a hundred frigates. But the navy trained all of the time and brought newer and younger brood to man the ships. The navy kept going all that time and has a result there were magnificant victories in the war of 1812. And people like john hall were fleeing from their allies, isaac hall was commanding the constitution and the uss constitution most famously encountered a british frigate and just wiped her out. Part of the reason was that our frigates, though they were fewer, were better build and the cannon balls bounced off the side of the constitution and that is why she gained the name of old iron side. There were splended naval victories and toward the end of the war we were developing a new class of generals. So madison was patient and he served through the first generals. I dont know what choice the commander in chief has in that. And absolutely helped celebrate the glories of the navy. He also changed his mind and he wasnt afraid to do that when circumstances changed. He had long regarded armies and navies as too expensive and as a threat to the republic, too easily used against the citizens. By the end of the war of 1812 he was suggesting to the congress they expand the navy and provide for a standing army. How would you evaluate him overall . How was he looked upon . How was he viewed by the public in the day of his command as someone who was successful or not successful . Madison was one of the fews who left the president highly regarded by his countrymen. We dont pay much attention to the war of 1812 but it was regarded by americans as evidence we should be recognized on the world stage and we deserve to be recognized on the word stage and the rest of the world began to do that especially after Andrew Jackson beat the heck out of the british at the battle of new orleans. One of the research that same up had to do with madison health. I think it is major contribution from the standpoint of history. He had an affliction with him his entire life and was able to achieve these phenomenal objectives under extraordinary circumstances and he was one of the most important founders. Can you tell us what his problem was and how he dealt with it. It was one of the puzzles to me in the beginning. People called madison shy which he wasnt he was reserved. And they said he was sickly. And you could see he was sick from time to time but between the episodes of whatever it was he was enormiously energetic and taking trips by horses and travelling in days when travel wasnt easy between his home and wherever the capital was undertaking the routine trips i have often thought none of the scholars who called him sickly could manage. And during the war of 1812 he was on horse back for 60 hours when washington was burned. So he was sick a lot but between sickness he was quite well. There is a letter he wrote at the end of the presidency and it hasnt been published. It is at fire Stone Library at princeton. It is draft of an autobiography he wrote in which he says he was and this is the quote sudden attacks somewhat resembling epilepsy and suspending function. No one took him serious and i think people want to shy away from it because it is difficult to figure out health in the 18th centu century. You can see the periods where he had these episodes. This description of his sudden attacks fit quite well with what neurologist call complex seizures which is a mild form of epilepsy. He had long Febrile Seizures as a child and that is often part of a syndrome that involves epileptic seizures as an adult. So he fits into all of that. He suffered the first at princeton when he was at college. And you could see it. He fell into this period of deep despondancy and worried about his soul and he would not live long and worried he wasnt good enough. And he was lucky. His doctors urged him to exercise and that being fit would help. It didnt end the seizures but he was remarkablely fit and that doesnt fit with the sickly image. I think once he took his physical health in hand he took his soul in hand and he wasnt going to believe the things people said about epilepsy. People would say if you had epilepsy you were evil and full of sin and posessesed by the delve. And madison decided he didnt have to believe that. I think this fed into his support of freedom of religion. People can believe in whatever religion or no religion if they want into his strong support of freedom of conscious and no body should have to believe anything that he or she thinks to himself is wrong. He led the way for freedom of conscious and religious freedom more than any other founder even more than jefferson. What had to the autobiography . He didnt finish it . He didnt. It just a draft. After you have been in political life people write and say tell me things about yourself and this fellow wanted to publish whatever madison sent him so he started the autobiography but didnt finish it. He decided not to talk about the epilepsy because it was so demonized and he decided it was more trouble than worth. Than it was worth to pull that down on his head. Host he still had the amazing ability to perform as he did year after year. To see can as having complex partial seizures explains how he could be sick sick sick but full of energy in perfectly well in between the energy expended at the Constitutional Convention was waterfall. Host dolly. Guest dont you love her . She was beautiful. Men stopped in the street of philadelphia when she walked past because she was so beautiful. She had dark hair, blue eyes red lips pale skin, the [lahterackage. Madison was smitten when you saw her on the street. He asked his good friend and this will be a surprise to you, his good friend aaron burr. [laughter] they had gone to princeton together and he asked ehrenberg before he got i