University of Virginia Library

JAMES MADISON,

Fourth President of the United States, was born March 16, 1751, and
died June 28, 1836, in his 85th year.

He was born at King George, King George county, Virginia, his
father an opulent planter of that province. The oldest of seven children,
he received the best education the times afforded. He was
prepared for college under the instructions of a private tutor, Rev.
Thomas Martin, and entered Princeton, from which university he
was graduated in 1771, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts.

The movement toward American Independence was thus well begun
when he stepped into the arena of public life. In 1775 he was a member
of the committee of safety of Orange county, and in 1776 represented that
county in the Virginia Convention. In 1777 the House of Delegates
elected him to the executive council of Virginia, and of that body he continued
a leading member until the close of 1779.

In 1779 he was chosen to represent Virginia in the Continental Congress,
where he took his seat March 20, 1780. He remained in Congress nearly
four years, or until the first Monday of November, 1783. He was thus a
member of that body during the last years of the Revolutionary war, and
a part of the first year following the peace. During this time he had an
opportunity to observe the inefficiency of the confederated form of government,
and was active in all the remedial measures that were proposed in
Congress.

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In 1784, Mr. Madison was elected to the State Legislature of Virginia,
and by annual re-elections continued a member of that body until
November, 1786, when, having become re-eligible as a candidate for
Congress, he was returned to the national legislature, and resumed official
position there February 12, 1787.

During his membership in the State legislature he became the champion
of religious liberty. In 1784 Thomas Jefferson had introduced in the
Virginia legislature a "Bill for the Establishment of Religious Freedom."
At that time all colonists were taxed for the support of the Church of
England and its clergy, although many were indifferent to that form of
worship, and others were earnestly opposed to it on the ground of
conscientious scruples. The bill failed to pass that year, and in 1785, Mr.
Jefferson being absent from the State legislature, James Madison took up
the bill, and urged and achieved its passage, against strong opposition.

In the same and the following year, as chairman of the judiciary committee,
he presided over and assisted in the revision of the statutes of
Virginia.

May 9, 1787, the committee which prepared the Federal Constitution
was convened at Philadelphia, and James Madison was a delegate from
Virginia. Four months of anxious deliberation and steady labor enabled
this committee to report, on the 17th of September, the articles which,
when amended and adopted, became the Constitution of the United
States.

In 1789, Madison was elected to the first House of Representatives
under the new Constitution. He served until the close of Washington's
administration, and then retired to private life.

In 1794, he was united in marriage with Mrs. Todd, nee Dolly Payne,
widow of a distinguished lawyer of Philadelphia. The lady was a Virginian
by birth, a member of the Payne family, and a sister of the wife of
George S. Washington. Her marriage with James Madison was consummated
in what is now Jefferson county, West Virginia, at a substantial
stone mansion which is still standing in an excellent state of preservation.
This house has many historical associations, having been built in 1752 by
Samuel Washington, eldest full brother of George Washington, who
occasionally visited here. Here, too, Louis Phillippe was entertained
during his visit to America, and in the sitting-room where Madison and
Mrs. Todd were married, is a mantle presented to the family by General
La Fayette.

During Jefferson's administrations, 1801-9, Madison was his most intimate
adviser outside of his cabinet, and the friendship between the two
men continued throughout Madison's administration, where the direction
of the statesmanship of Jefferson could be often seen.

March 4, 1809, James Madison assumed the duties of President of the
United States, to which office he had been elected by a majority of 122
out of 175 electoral votes.

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Madison's administration continued through eight years, its most important
event being the war of 1812. During this war the British obtained
possession of Washington, August 24, 1814, and plundered and destroyed
with fire a large portion of the city. Mrs. Madison, then presiding at the
White House, was obliged to seek safety in flight. Her carriage stood at
the door, and her friends were urging her immediate departure, when she
returned to her drawing-room and cut from its frame a full-length picture
of Washington. "Save it, or destroy it," she commanded the gentlemen
who were in attendance upon her; "but do not let it fall into the hands of
the British!" Then she entered the carriage which conveyed her, with
other ladies, to a place of refuge beyond the Potomac. The treasure she
took from the White House in her own hands, and held concealed in her
wrappings as she was driven away, was the precious parchment upon
which was engrossed the Declaration of Independence, with its fifty-two
signatures.

March 4, 1817, Madison's long and useful connection with national
affairs terminated, and he retired to his farm of Montpelier in Virginia,
where his life was peacefully ended. Nineteen years of private life preceded
his death, and the time was largely devoted by him to the production
of the voluminous writings which he left to posterity.

From his earliest years he had been a hard student, with tenacious
memory; he led a life of spotless virtue upon which the breath of calumny
never rested; his bearing was both modest and dignified; his speech
always clear and concise; his public career distinguished by honesty and
singleness of purpose.

Some time after his death Congress purchased from his widow, for
$30,000, all his MSS., and a portion of them have been published under
the title, "The Madison Papers."

Mrs. Madison survived her husband some years, dying in Washington,
July 12, 1849, and they left no children.