James madison who is he

House of Representatives, where he served four terms and fought to secure the passage of the Bill of Rights. Three years later, he left Congress and returned to Montpelier with his wife. Click here to learn more about the enslaved households of President James Madison.

After the election of , President Thomas Jefferson named Madison secretary of state. In this position, Madison supported the expansion of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase, opposed the seizure of American ships as Great Britain and France warred with one another, and backed the widely unpopular Embargo Act, which restricted trade with other nations. In , Madison was elected as the fourth President of the United States. He brought several enslaved individuals to the White House from Montpelier and hired out additional enslaved people to help run the presidential household.

Her Wednesday Drawing Rooms were lively occasions, and they brought together members of different political parties at the White House. British forces continued to harass American ships, as well as seize cargo and impress American sailors into the Royal Navy. Four months later a peace agreement was brokered, and the war officially came to an end with the ratification of the Treaty of Ghent in February After serving two terms, Madison retired to Montpelier in In his final years, Madison continued to rely upon enslaved labor to run his plantation.

He also became an active member of the American Colonization Society, an organization that advocated for removing African Americans from the United States and sending them to a settlement colony in Africa. He is most remembered as the father of the U. Dolley Madison. Next The Presidents and the Theatre. Their votes send a message to representatives at all One year, Genevieve's father asked her to No sport created more excitement, enthusiasm and interest in the colonial period and the early republic than horse racing.

Before the twentieth century, the presidents' vehicles were not armored-plated or specially built. Over time, the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation , the governing national document at the time, were exposed, and Madison believed the document lacked structure to adequately serve the new democracy. Madison also grew increasingly displeased with state legislatures and perceived that they too often pandered to the whims of their constituents at an unsustainable rate.

Madison was the main author of the Virginia Plan , a radical departure from the Articles of Confederation. The heart of the proposed national government was a bicameral legislature, with the lower house apportioned according to some combination of wealth and population and elected by the people, and an upper chamber elected by the lower house from a list of candidates nominated by the states.

While much of the Virginia Plan was accepted by the Committee of the Whole at the Constitutional Convention, many compromises were also made to reach consensus such as questions on representation of states in Congress and to fill in details such as the power and configuration of the executive. With regards to representation, one of the key questions revolved around the issue of slavery.

It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands. Not only did Madison help shape the Constitution, he was also the first historian of the Constitutional Convention.

Once the Constitution was drafted and awaiting ratification by the states, Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton wrote The Federalist Papers urging citizens, especially in New York, to ratify the new Constitution and explaining how the government would function under it.

The Federalist papers are still considered some of the most innovative and impactful tenets of American political philosophy to date. Madison authored 29 of the 85 essays. In The Federalist No. Madison had argued in The Federalist Papers that the size of the United States and complexity of the federal system would uphold liberty and make it difficult for factions to seize power.

However, after ratification, Madison came to believe that in addition to the structural arrangements in the Constitution, another guarantee was necessary. In , he argued that enlightened public opinion would thwart threats to liberty. Madison also regularly penned articles to analyze and deconstruct issues and to attack political personalities with whom he and Jefferson disagreed.

Madison served in Congress during the presidency of George Washington and was the chief supporter of his policies and agenda. Ratified in , the Bill of Rights codified constitutional protections for what Jefferson and Madison viewed as fundamental human and civil rights, including religious liberty, freedom of speech, and due process, and rights against unreasonable, unsupported, or impulsive governmental authority.

Madison also led the fight in Congress against the Alien and Sedition Acts , which attempted to suppress opposition to a Federalist foreign policy that favored England over France, and were viewed by Democratic-Republicans as fundamental violations of the Bill of Rights. Perhaps most notably in this position, Madison helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase , which doubled the size of U.

Madison was elected president of the United States in On June 1, , Madison urged Congress to declare war against Great Britain, the first war message by an American president, somewhat an irony given that Madison feared and wrote about war as the enemy of liberty and preferred trade war as his policy instrument of choice see the Pacificus-Helvidius Debates. At issue in was evidence that the British were supplying arms to American Indians, who were angered by settlers encroaching on tribal lands in the Michigan and Indiana territories; by British seizures of American ships; and by the British seeking to acquire additional territory in Canada and Spanish Florida.

The Democratic-Republicans had allowed the first bank to expire in and with no national bank during the War of , the federal government lacked a source of currency that exacerbated a financial crisis. He criticized Washington's support of Alexander Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, who sought to create a strong central government that promoted commercial and financial interests over agrarian interests. He also found fault with the administration's handling of commercial relations with Great Britain and its seeming favoritism of Britain over France in the French Revolution.

Madison's displeasure with the direction of national policy led him to join with Jefferson—who resigned as secretary of state in —to form an opposition party known as the Democratic-Republicans. To the surprise of most of his friends, on September 15, , Madison married twenty-six-year-old Dolley Payne Todd, a lively Philadelphia widow with one infant son.

The mature Madison, age forty-three at the time, had not noticed women much since a decade earlier, when the young Kitty Floyd had broken his heart to marry another suitor. Dolley had been introduced to Madison by their mutual friend Aaron Burr at a Philadelphia party.

She immediately knew that he was a man whom she could love because of his gentle ways and high regard for women. She abandoned her Quaker religion, though not her Quaker family, to marry Madison.

The two developed a bond of love and affection that lasted their entire lives. These laws, which attempted to suppress opposition to a Federalist foreign policy that favored England over France, were viewed by Democratic-Republicans as fundamental violations of the Bill of Rights.

Madison authored the Virginia Resolution, adopted by the state legislature in , which declared the laws unconstitutional—Jefferson authored a similar Kentucky Resolution. When Jefferson won, Madison became secretary of state, a position which he retained until his own election to the presidency in As secretary of state, Madison supported the Louisiana Purchase, the war against the Barbary pirates, and the embargo against Britain and France in response to their constant harassment of American ships and impressment of American sailors.

Although it is difficult to know with certainty, due to Madison's tendency to avoid the spotlight, most historians agree with the French foreign minister at the time who said that Madison "governed the President" in foreign affairs. Rather than suggesting a weak President, Madison's domination of foreign policy actually rested upon the President's confidence in Madison and their mutual agreement on all matters of diplomacy.

By , the man behind-the-scenes stood poised to succeed Jefferson as the fourth President of the United States. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W.

Help inform the discussion Support the Miller Center. University of Virginia Miller Center. James Madison: Life Before the Presidency. Breadcrumb U. Friendship with Jefferson Events then moved quickly for the young man. Earning Political Respect and Clout At age twenty-nine, Madison became the youngest member of the Continental Congress, and within a year, the small, soft-spoken, shy young man had emerged as a respected leader of the body.