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Silence Dogood, the Busy-Body, and Early Writings by  Benjamin Franklin

by Richard B. Morris

Introduction

Throughout American history, historians have accredited James Madison with many subtitles.  Some are accurate, some not.  He is commonly referred to as the Father of the Constitution.  However, his record at the Constitutional Convention makes that point arguable at best.  Atheists commonly cite Madison as being in favor of total removal of religious belief and guidance in government.  That this fact is disputable is a gross understatement.  However, that James Madison was the leading American constitutionalist among the founding fathers is beyond dispute.

As with the study of any political thinker, the task of fully grasping Madison’s ideas must come only after considering the political concerns of which he acted, the discursive and rhetorical conventions in which he had to phrase and the sources from which they came. The context in which Madison developed his analysis of the problems federalism within a republican government faced in its formation must all be taken into account.

Early Life

On March 16, 1751, James Madison was born to James Madison, Sr. and Nellie Conway Madison at Port Conway, Virginia. His great-great-grandfather, who had been a ship carpenter, had emigrated from England in 1653.  He settled in the Virginia tidelands, where he became a tobacco farmer.  Later generations of Madison’s moved slowly west as the country began to open up to settlement.  James Madison’s father and grandfather would eventually settle in what is now Orange County, Virginia where they would assimilate a great farm of some 6,000 acres.  This farm became known as Montpelier and would be the home of James Madison until his death.

Early education was provided to James through his mother and grandmother.  At age eleven, James was sent to the boarding school of Donald Robertson in King and Queen County, Virginia.  Madison would attribute schoolmaster Robertson, “All I have been in life I owe largely to that man.” 

James was an exceptional student as illustrated by his college years, which were spent at the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University.  The young Madison completed the four year college education in just two years, but his rigorous habit of sleeping only four or five hours a night had severe health consequences, which would later restrict Madison from military duty during the Revolutionary War.

After graduating in 1771, Madison continued his education at home, studying government and law, while also teaching the younger members of the Madison family.  It was during these years that Madison witnessed religious persecution that would later form his opinions that religious persecution is the worst of all evils.

Madison and the Church

James Madison has long been a favorite source for atheists.  His views against government establishment of religion have been wrongly interpreted to mean he was totally against any mixture of church and state.  Quite the reverse is true, and this great misnomer is easily disputed by the many quotes and writings Madison has left us on the subject.  For example, in a letter to Frederick Beasley in 1825, Madison wrote; The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources not adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it.

So why was James Madison so opposed to state establishment of religion?  The answer lies in disseminating exactly what it was that Madison was against.  During Madison’s formative years, Virginia colony recognized the Church of England as the established religion. A license was required for any dissemination of religious doctrine.  This was particularly opposed by the Baptists, who refused to comply, holding that their right to preach came not from any state, but rather from the Word of God.

Though he had been raised as an Episcopalian and was a member of the Church of England, Madison vehemently opposed the persecution of the Baptists and Protestants and was morally opposed when members of his church indulged like “Imps of Satan” in the persecution of other believers.  Madison witnessed floggings of Baptist preachers and jailing of others.  He fought against the Dade Code, which was written by English Anglican bishops.  The code provided a list of prohibitions and punishments, up to, and including death.  Madison clearly was not driven by religious impartiality, but rather by sympathy for oppressed evangelicals.

Following his graduation from the College of New Jersey, Madison had stayed on an additional year to study Hebrew and Theology directly under the tutelage of John Witherspoon.  Witherspoon preached liberty both civil and religious: “The magistrates ought to defend the rights of conscience and tolerate all their religious sentiments that are not injurious to their neighbors.”

In 1776, just prior to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, though he was only twenty four years old, Madison helped to formulate the language of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which all but ended the days of Anglican Establishment in Virginia. He did so without hesitation, believing that a state establishment of religion injured consciences, both among its victims and among its enforcers. Madison’s conviction was that the establishment of a single religion rendered the minds of its advocates lazy and stagnant, and induced a kind of mental slavery unworthy of a free society.

In Madison’s famous “Remonstrance,” which he wrote in 1785, he clearly weaves his ideals together, believing that religion is the “duty to which we owe the Creator.”  The right belongs to the individual to determine in their own conscience how best to exercise their duty to the Creator.  He clearly stated that it is a false assumption to believe the “Civil Magistrate is a competent judge of Religious Truth.”  He goes on to say, if freedom of religion is abused, it is “an offense against God, not against man,” and to rely on government support is “a contradiction to the Christian Religion itself for every page of it disavows a dependence on the powers of the world.”  He concludes that to use governmental coercion to support the Christian clergy is to discourage conversion and to surround Christianity “with a wall of defense” characterized by “an ignoble and un-Christian timidity.”

Atheists and activists opposed to any inclusion of even the slightest mention of the name of God have wrongly twisted Madison’s intent.  Madison himself predicted that his “establishment clause” would allow for the flourishing of religion in America.  Inevitably, however, the “establishment clause” has had the reverse effect and has popularly led to the constitutional protection of the very atheism that the founders generally abhorred.

Early Politics

James Madison began his political career at age twenty-five, when he was elected to the Committee of Safety to Orange County, Virginia.  This position quickly led to his election as a delegate to the Virginia Revolutionary Convention. While in this position, he wrote the strong guarantee of religious freedom in the Virginia Declaration of Rights. He also helped pass a resolution asking the Constitutional Congress to draft the Declaration of Independence. After serving for one year in the Virginia legislature, Madison was appointed a member of the governor’s council. After two years in this position, he was sent as a delegate to the Continental Congress.

Madison was sent as a delegate to the Annapolis Convention of 1786 and to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787.  While at the Constitutional Convention, the young, boyish faced Madison convinced many of his older peers of the necessity of a more powerful central government.

Madison had arrived in Philadelphia, convinced that the inept Articles of Confederation needed to be replaced, not amended.  Before the other delegates could decide on a course of action, Madison, being the lead delegate from Virginia, put forth his Virginia Plan.  This action established the framework of the convention on Madison’s terms.

The Virginia Plan provided many elements, including a national government with powers divided between three separate branches, the executive, judiciary and legislative. The legislature he further divided into a bicameral system of upper and lower house, the upper (Senate), appointed by the state, with the lower (House of Representatives) elected by popular state vote. The legislature would make laws, while the judiciary branch would enforce them.  Madison saw the judiciary as the entity that would serve to limit government and protect rights by interpreting the specified powers within the Constitution.

Madison’s political theory rested on the idea of sovereign duality or federalism.  Specifically, the national government would be made potent in its limited scope of authority, given “few and defined” powers.  Meanwhile, the states would retain their “numerous and indefinite” powers, except in the realm of federal authority.

Due to the problems arising around the recent Shays Rebellion, Madison had success arguing for the regulation of a national militia.  Madison warned that “without such a power to suppress insurrections, our liberties might be destroyed by domestic faction.”  Little did he know that his insistence of a ‘well regulated militia,’ two hundred years later would still be cause for a distortion of the Second Amendment.

Though Madison is commonly known as the “Father of the Constitution,” this moniker may be a bit exaggerated.  Over the entirety of the Constitutional Convention, Madison had a total of seventy-one specific proposals, of which he either moved, seconded or spoke unambiguously in regard to.  Despite his arguments and testimony, Madison ended on the losing side on forty of those proposals.

In addition to being an active in the Constitutional Convention, Madison was also most active in the ratification process.  In a joint effort with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the trio collaborated on the Federalist Papers, which, more than any other initiative, helped explain and defend the Constitution, and turned public sentiment from skepticism to support.  Madison wrote twenty-nine of the eighty-five Federalist Papers, including the two most famous, Federalist 10 and 51.  The Federalist Papers were combined and published in book form under the title ‘The Federalist’ in 1788.

Following the formation of the new government and ratification of the Constitution, Madison went on to serve in the United States House of Representatives from 1789 -1797.  At President Washington’s insistence, Madison sponsored the Bill of Rights. Madison was opposed to the concept of itemized powers for government and itemized rights for individuals.  He feared that specified rights in the Constitution would imply that human rights are definite and numerable.  He would have certainly preferred to incorporate the principles behind the Bill of Rights into the body of the Constitution.  The anti-federalists, however, insisted upon a bill of rights as a condition of ratification.  This persuaded Madison into the necessity to write specific protections for individuals to protect them from government tyranny.  On September 25, 1791, Madison submitted twelve amendments, of which ten were ratified by the states.  ON 15 December 1791, the Bill of Rights became a part of the Constitution.

Madison then served as Jefferson’s Secretary of State from 1801 – 1809. The mutual friendship and admiration between Madison and Jefferson would endure until their deaths. In what is thought to be the last bit of correspondence between the two aging friends and compatriots, Madison wrote these endearing words;  You cannot look back to the long period of our private friendship and political harmony with more affecting recollections than I do.  If they are a source of pleasure to you, what ought they not to be to me?  We cannot be deprived of the happy consciousness of the pure devotion to the public good with which we discharged the trust will find its way to another generation to insure, after we are gone, whatever justice may be withheld whilst we are here.

President Madison

Thomas Jefferson had been a very popular president and his endorsement of his former Secretary of State helped Madison easily win the election of 1809 to become the 4th President of the United States.  This was, perhaps the worst possible time in American history to be president.  Strained relations between the United States and Europe, chiefly England, France and Spain, occupied much of Madison’s time, making his presidency somewhat ineffective.

Why was Madison’s diplomacy so effective while Secretary of State, yet fail miserably as President?  By the time Madison assumed office, both France and England refused to respect America’s commercial rights in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars. Another contributing factor was that Madison’s administration simply lacked the talent of the Jefferson administration.  President Madison had mistakenly appointed Robert R. Smith as Secretary of State, who proved most ineffective.  In March of 1811, the President asked for Smith’s resignation.

Most importantly, Madison’s executive manner made him ineffective as president.  While in Congress, Madison had the luxury of making suggestions, but as president, he was forced to apply pressure to produce results, which was not his strong suit. His mild personality and temperament made him most ineffective for the position.

Madison’s first action after becoming president was to attempt to bluff France and England into ceasing interference of American commerce.  He informed England that if they would stop interfering with American commerce and if France continued, he would ask Congress to declare war against France.  He subsequently informed France, if they would cease interfering with American commerce and England continued, he would ask Congress to declare war against England.  Of course, both countries ignored the warnings and continued to seize American ships.  In 1810 Congress authorized the President to cut off trade with either country if the other agreed to stop its oppressions.  An agreement with the French, though false, would finally lead to a commercial break with Great Britain in 1811, and to war in 1812.

The War of 1812

Madison’s Congress proved much more willing to declare war than to provide the means in which to fight it.  Madison’s war department consisted of a secretary of war and eight clerks. The United States had virtually no army and a very small navy.  While the tiny navy performed brilliantly, winning incredible victories at sea, the army was most ineffective and suffered a string of defeats.  The low point of the war, and of Madison’s career, occurred when the British captured Washington, D.C.   Part of the city was burned, including the White House, forcing Madison to flee the capital city in shame.

As the war continued, however, young army officers and soldiers were gaining valuable experience.  American troops would eventually turn the tide and drive the Duke of Wellington’s veteran forces from the field in a string of successive battles.  This would finally lead to a satisfactory peace brought about by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814.

Though the Treaty brought about an end of the war, a look back shows how close it was to being a great diplomatic American blunder.  The British took a hard line stance in the negotiations, demanding an Indian buffer territory north of the Ohio River, abandonment of U.S. rights to the Atlantic fisheries off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and revision of the boundary line between British Canada and the United States that would give Canada access to the upper Mississippi.   The initial reasons for the war, the impressments of seamen, blockades and freedom of the sea for neutral ships were all completely ignored.

Fortunately, Madison had perhaps his best man, John Quincy Adams at the negotiations with the British.  Adams proved a worthy diplomat, preserving the prewar boundaries. Decisions on the fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi were postponed.  The Indian barrier was not allowed in the treaty, keeping the West open and making eventual expansion to the Pacific possible.

Throughout the duration of the war, the Federalist Party of New England doggedly ridiculed Madison in the press, billing the war as “Madison’s War.”  This would make Madison a much less popular president than his predecessor and friend, Thomas Jefferson.  However, upon the conclusion of the war, the Federalist Party would disintegrate.

When Madison vacated the office of President in 1817, the citizens of Washington held a mass meeting at which he was congratulated on “the untarnished glory” of his administration.  They declared, during the war, Madison had held military authority within its proper limits, directed it with energy and “won power and glory without infringing upon a political, civil or religious right of the citizenry.”

Retirement

Following Madison’s presidency, he retired to his home at Montpelier, only a partial day’s ride from his closest friend’s home at Monticello.  The road between the homes of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson is today, fittingly known as Constitution Way. Madison would live another 19 years after leaving office and would be the last of the American founders.

Together, the two great friends, now retired from political service, would found the University of Virginia.  Jefferson would serve as the University’s rector (president) until his death in 1826.  Madison would once again succeed his old friend in yet another presidential position.

Madison’s last great service to the United States would come about in 1828.  Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina had attempted to defend his secessionist theories with the political thought and writings of Jefferson and Madison.  Madison clarified his position that the union of the states was justly founded on the consent of the people of the several states, and as such can only be altered through the prescribed constitutional processes.  He argues, there is no constitutional basis for the right of secession in the compact of a free people.  Madison’s last public writing, the “advice to my country nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the American union be cherished and perpetuated.”

Having no children of their own, James and Dolly Madison would welcome visitors to their Montpelier home. James Madison died at his home on June 28, 1836, at the age of 85.

Conclusion

If I may paraphrase from a wonderful essay on Madison written in 1981 by George F. Will, Will noted: “If we really believe the pen is mightier, or even more dignified than the sword, the nation’s capital would be named not for the soldier who wielded the revolutionary sword, but for the thinker that was ablest with a pen.  It would be Madison, D.C.  Yet until recently there was not even a government building named after him.  And what has now been named for him? A library, for Pete’s sake.  What a put-down in a city with the world’s highest ratio of action to reflection.”

Whether friend or foe of Madison, admirer or detractor, one must admit, he was surely the most prepared of all delegates. James Madison may never be viewed as a great leader in American history, due in large part to his inadequacy as our nation's Fourth President.  The case may also be made, that same inadequacy is directly attributable to many of the problems we face today.  For example, had Madison been more decisive and more clearly stated his objectives and opinions, would we have the endless disputes surrounding the First and Second Amendments of the Constitution?  Would there be American citizens using the name of James Madison to protest the issue of school prayer?  Would there be a question as to whether or not the Second Amendment is in reference to the rights of individuals or state militias?

James Madison was unquestionably the most prepared of all the founding legislators, but we often bestow godlike qualities upon the founders.  It is here, Madison falls well short in the area of clarity. We owe much to James Madison.  Some good, some not so good.

Bibliography

Jeffrey B. Morris and Richard B. Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, 7th Ed., Harper Collins, 1996.
Jack Shepherd, The Adams Chronicles: Four Generations of Greatness, Little, Brown and Co., 1975.
Drew McCoy, The Last of the Founders: James Madison and the Republican Legacy, Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Jack Rakove, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic, Scott, Foreman, 1990.
Ralph Louis Ketchum, James Madison: A Biography, The MacMillan Company, 1971.
Matthew Spalding, The Founders’ Almanac, The Heritage Foundation, 2002.
Michael Novak, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding, Encounter Books, 2002.
Garrett Ward Sheldon, The Political Philosophy of James Madison, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Merrill Jensen, The New Nation: A History of the United States During the Confederation, 1781- 1789, Alfred A. Knopf Publishing, 1950.
Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781 – 1789, Harper and Row, 1987.
Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, Vintage Books, 2000.
Jeff Shaara, Rise to Rebellion: A Novel of the American Revolution, Ballintine Publishing, 2001.
John T. Noonan, The Lustre of Our Country, University of California Press, 1998.
http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/  James Madison’s Political and Constitutional Thought Reconsidered, Stuart Leibiger.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/john_murphy/jamesmadison.html  James Madison (1999), by John Patrick Michael Murphy.
http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/  James Madison in Intellectual Context, by Jack Rakove.
http://www.historycooperative.org/cgi-bin/  Madison and the French Enlightnement: The Authority of Public Opinion, by Colleen Sheehan.
http://earlyamerica.com/review/summer97/madison.html  James Madison: Godfather of the Constitution, by Bruce G. Kauffmann.
http://www.billofrightsinstitute.org/print.php?sid=321  James Madison (Dec. 2001)