Character to fame generous charc bequeathed it his immortal name. Some lines later, the fourth , president s name was joined to that of the first. The the honored place of washington was filled by madison in diplomacy skilled. Dipl a seat far more exalted than a throne, or ever yet too hauty monarchs known. The patriotic consensus went like this. The office of the presidency all by itself was a testament to thy nobility of the american political experiment. And madison had already proved himself by 1814 as both as great and as a appropriately humble as the first of men, George Washington. So the unfortunate tendency is to make history simple. The whole idea of a political la faith is that it is supposed to eliminate confusion by suggesting pictures to the mindt that are frozen in time, somehow pure, cleaner, than they really were. The world had known many a hauty monarch, americas distinctive e characteristics was its nonhereditary system of governance. The presidencys republican character, that was our national morality. Many people have a picture in mind of Washington Crossing thed delaware in 1776, in december. A romantic figure, stern, standing erect, looking forward into the future. Di the whole world sat on his patriarchal shoulders. Well, we dont have to know whao actually happened on that icy river in 1776 to know it didnt look like the painting. It is for similar reasons of refashioned memory that ioned americans nowadays only think on James Madison as the father of the constitution. Ye cons intellect to be sure, but in other respects, lacking the charisma of those whose names are associated with the designation age of, age of washington, age of jefferson, je age of jackson, actually nancy and i will tell you that the wl early 19th century was really the age of Albert Galatin. Youll see. Madison should not be seen as one dimensional. He was a complex politician, and as nancy and i demonstrate in our book madison and jefferson and see whose name comes first t in the title, the 24 year long g virginia dynasty from jefferson through monroe underscores the fact of politics that subsequent generations in their embellishment of a prophetic, progressive narrative of American History dont want to consider. Ive and thats the real fragility ol the union. From 1789 to at least 1814, thes more Perfect Union of the preamble of the constitution was understood for what it was. Wishful thinking. Virginians were always fighting for virginia. Everyone identified with his or her state, much more strongly s than they do today. Save perhaps for texas. State identification outpaced the nationalist impulse. Madison knew this. He got beyond it. Which made him exceptional for a southerner. He lived many years in philadelphia, and as president n cultivated the competent pennsylvanians and made them him closest advisers, where as his political alter ego, Thomas Jefferson was more comfortable surrounding himself and fferson communicating with fellow virginians. Of course, both the third and d fourth president s treated their new york Vice President as window dressing, handing out crumbs of muted power to the Vice President. So as to affect an imaginary balance between the sections. Sec yet despite whatever largess he was capable of, madison too kept his pulse on Virginia State politics, wary about departing from that world view. How will this play in virginia, he was repeatedly obliged to ask himself. The virginians almost obsessive defensiveness and refusing to share the presidency with any others speaks to the certain selfconsciousness of the ia tha bigness of virginia that dates back to the 1609 charter when o king james i gave the colony ank expansive backyard extending to the Mississippi River and to such promising lands as kentucky and ohio and indiana. As a virginian, madison was perfectly part of the ploy in 1812 by which the u. S. Would. S. Annex canada and cuba and nancyc will speak more to this point. Madison was in no way reticent, never mind he was 54 and built on a narrow frame and unmarshall in his bearing. N he was in no way reticent when it came to warmaking. In he was secretary of state in tht drivers seat during the negotiations over with france, over the louisiana purchase. The constitution may not have stipulated precisely how lands might be acquired from european colonial powers. But in the face of reality, it was done. Okay, madison was not outwardly heroic. Y no commissioned painting of him presents vigorous forward sharps eyed talent. En his wife doted on him because he invited it. He thought of himself as a man of infirmitiesi. Little madison, as he was widely known and little gemmy as his a detractors often called him wasd a small narrowly formed man, buh careful examination of all he did over decades brings out abundant evidence that er dec contradicts the Standard Measure of the man. Adntradict madison, we have discovered, was a man for all seasons and those who knew him best knew that theh greatly enjoyed his raunchy sense of humor. He never practiced law. He no one ever thinks about that. To his mind, the philadelphia i convention of 1787 from which his modern fame springs, was not what he argued for. It wasnt the miracle that asnt everyone claims because he wasnt satisfied. Wa his preference had been for a sd Bicameral Legislature where virginia was accorded as the ao largest and most popular state was accorded the greatest numbet of representatives in both est u houses of congress. Mb so the senate we have today was not actually subverted madisons design. As but fortunately for his. Presidency, he did get a Central Government that could urgently t command the economy, and the un military in war time. Tl as i suggested at the outset, nl National Symbols rarely reflects the flow of historical reality. Mostly they reflect the comfortable reading of a fixed point in time. E who madison was in 1787 as a centralizer was not precisely who he was just five years later in 1792 when he led the fight against what he saw as alexandee hamiltons crony capitalist National Bank. St yet that madison of 1792 bears faint resemblance to president n madison in 1814 when he found f himself leaning on bankers to avoid running out of money needed to continue the war. As nancy and i argue in the boot and as john stag has spelled out here, madisons war time presidency was not as undistinguished as the general understanding would have it. H there are good reasons why he ended his second term more popular than ever before in his political life. S when i first heard about thii symposium, ill admit i was s worried. The burning of washington, scary. Wo better not give the tea party any ideas. On but as andy emphasized, it is d time to amend the commonly held views about James Madison. Real when we think about the will ofw the people, we have to realize that they knew that was rhetorical at the time it was w drafted. It was not as if it was the embodiment of everything they stood for. Af it sounded good on paper. Madison told his peers at the Constitutional Convention he would not countenance not laws made by the brightest people in the land and he was thinking ofh his local representatives in virginia. To give needed guidance to those less talented who sat in the state legislatures, and occasionally made in his word mischief, he thought of them as kind of undisciplined children that needed to be reprimanded. He had wanted the u. S. Senate te be compromised of elite men who would wield their absolute negative or veto over not just congressional legislation, but state legislation when it was deemed improper or ill conceived. Egis he had also hoped for a for coalition of Southern States an large northern states which never materialized. Rn this is one of the things we have to realize. Madison was actually really reai upset at the end of the actu Constitutional Convention. Of he felt that he had lost cant hear you. He felt he lost most of the major issues. He kind of readjusted, but he was not a happy man at the end. M and we have to remember that and understand that. Confident in the selection of his friend and confident georgem washington as the first ad president , madison remained in the forefront of political debate and Ardent Supporter of a strong federal system. As leader of the house of olitdr representatives in 1799, he spoke as an enlightened member of the elite on behalf of the e people as he construed them. Ha that is he was a representative acting in the interests of the less politically aware. Y when it came to what he knew to affected them most, public and c private debt management, and tht potential injustices attending s legislation that sacrificed thet welfare of the minority to the majority. He this is one of the key points j. Where jefferson and madison never agreed. Ke jefferson believed in the will of the majority. Eed. Madison did not. And this is also where he differed from hamilton. This is sort of ironic. This hamilton was much more i comfortable with inherited power, where madison wanted to create a system that could n restrain excessive passions among people. And what is ironic about that is that madison came from a well l established genealogy and pedigree, established family in virginia, which as we know hamilton did not, who was illegitimate by birth. In our book, what we try to looo at are the personal motives andv not just the abstract thinking o when it comes to madisont. And you can begin to see this if you pay close attention to what he says and dont just relate it to political thinkers from europe. He had very specific individualy in mind when he conceived the political principle. Ceived and the best example of that is that when he raised the specter of a dangerous demagogue, he actually wasnt thinking of ly hamilton, he was thinking of virginias effusive Patrick Henry in mind because he had watched him manipulate the house of representatives with his rhetorical skill. When he thought of firm and yett reasonable leadership, he had washington in mind. N and when he reached for symbolic embodiment of the republican style, it would have not been one of the democratic republican clubs that sprang up in the p mid1790s even though hamiltonian federalists saw them as having been inspired by ough madison. Havin they went so far to nickname g club members the mads. Basically implying that theyre not quite stable upstairs. No, madison would have found a more appealing symbol of the moe republican style and the national gazette. Na the newspaper that madison helped found in 1791. That was for madison a prime a source of educated Public Opinion. Not what we get today. Not polls. Get educated Public Opinion. He wrote Public Opinion sets ss bounds to every government. Here we get this theme that is weetty consistent with madison, setting boundaries. G this is a fundamental principle. It meant restraining, ries. Disciplining excesses. This is what madison was committed to. Str unlike his friend Thomas Jefferson, madison never had complete faith in majority rule or anything close to it. Ero in a mob, ordinarily decent individuals were capable of abandoning their own reason and joining in the groups enthusiasm. Ning this is what madison wrote to wt jefferson, which was the operative term for radical he sentiment or religious ecstasy that implied a loss of individual conscience. This was central to madisons thinking, protecting the individual conscience. E. So government had to serve not n only to protect minorities but another key idea for him was that governor had government had to serve as a neutral arbiter between competing interests. Let me repeat that, because it is another key theme to madison. Government had to be a neutral arbiter between competing interests so he knew there was going to be tension. G he knew there would be conflicto and this is central to the ict. American experience, not union t or unity, conflict. It was the new institution instt proposed by hamilton, the natiol National Bank, which led madison more in the direction of a d mai strict construction of the constitution. N th under the banks aegis, emerging industrial concerns could receive loans, currency would circulate more easily. And funds could be made available to the government nata the problem here was that a government had so powerful a h t system ofem funding and think o this today combined with english practices of increasing government debt, the United States would be imitating the british and become a large scale military machine. This is an idea that jefferson and madison both got from pang. Madison argued that the u. S. Congress was granted a institutional power to charter corporations such as a National Bank. Thats what he argued in 1791 but it wasnt true. Madison was not being entirely forthcoming but advancing this argument in the closed debates at the Constitutional Convention he had favored chartering a National University but he had change bd by 1791. He didnt get what he wanted t hamilton got his bank. St madisons part isson credentials onlycomi enlarged as the tryinge decade of the 1790s war on. Parts one of the things we discoveredf is that t the party was first identified more with madison than jefferson because he was the active player in congress and was much more out in the open. The first two st organized Political Partiesajn3t federalists andie democratic republican and as they took shape, this is also a period po where wed see some of the most e interesting writings by madison as a legislature. He developed strong positions and wrote pieces such as a candidate state of parties who e were the best keepers of the peoples liberty. Erson while jefferson had to confine his complaints to private correspondences, madison went g public, opposing hamilton in newsprint. Madisons embrace of partisan newspapers helped lay a org foundation foran organized litia Political Parties yet hle never put his metaphorical eggs in ona basket. Concentrating power in any one institution, officer or even a private body. As you guessed he deeply distrusted speculators which was a very wise position to be now and then. It was a bad thing. Parties therefore also had to be restrained. If we look closely at his at response to the alien and sedition act of 1798 in which the federalists were tried to t squelch decent, madison did notd follow, jefferson down the roads of nullification. They both responded. In madisons version in jeffersons version he held out the prospect of a state nullifying the law of congress it objected to. Madison now madison very consciously and carefully avoided that word choosing interpose instead. A word that ment to meditate to act between two parties. He did not want to annul a power of the federal government. He fed heer wanted to bring the issue before the public and broaden o the range of debate by includint politicaicl voices from the stae government. Now if we fast forward tono w, madisons presidency, we see the political environment is very different. The federalistdi party by that a time and laex andalexander hamir no longer there only had a minority status in the government. As president jeffersons secretary of state, madison had strongly supported an embargo of oversees trade, commercial tal retaliation on the high seas. Americans lost honor was part of the diplomatic stale mate that madison inherited. Now if we look at kcanada and or of the things that we argue is the war of 1812 is two wars if not more in terms of the agendas that it takes on but the projecj of taking canada really is a fail buster masquerading as a national war. To what we tend to forget about ous history was filibusterering as the National Past time in the 19th century. Tempts there were numerous attempts to engage in either sparking revol revolution inut canada, in lati america, this was not a sort off one time event. It defined america because america in the 19th century wase about getting their hands on land as much land as possible. Aa its the most important t principle of the 19th century. Think about texas. Texas independence. Ce, it was not a revolution of tion independence. It had prutside americans as private armies thativ went into texas to help facilitate what happened there. In the war of 1812, before the war begins, jefferson and jamesg monroe are dreaming of this potential war as leading to the annexation of cuba and canada. This is kind of fantasy of the ever expanding continent. Without thinking about the real realities of what it takes to t deal with taking this land or conquering this land. But this was what they were very much invested in. Unfortunately for mr. Madison, he wasnt going to get canada or cuba. He had to settle for baton rouge where i happen to live right now so its a good thing. Th this is baton rouge if you dot know came into the united state because it was based on the fail buster undertaken by virginians as opposed to the new yorker air inn aaron burr and his attempt to establish the republic of 1810. The lone star flag of the west florida republic later morphed into the better known texas an flag. Adiso madison was completely onboard with this. He wasnt opposed to it. T. He was like well take advantage of this. Now while historyor has priviled the role of the younger war st haur hawks in congress. Fia, they are part of one story. Madisons long time secretary of the treasury, wrote the ollowi following on the eve of madisons assumption of the presidency. Mr. Mad madison is as i always e him slow when taking his ground but firm when the storm arises. In his first inaugural address, march 1809, madison made sure everyone knew that he considered his election to have come at a critical historical o moment. He was the first u. S. President to use the inaugural address fof this purpose the first to move beyond generalities. S. He was absent of political bromides, absent of platitudes. , he was strong and direct. America faced, he said, global f challenges without a pair