History of James Madison

In this, the last of our articles on the Founding Fathers, we look at James Madison. He has correctly been called “the Father of the Constitution,” and one might think that the Constitution became active on July 5, 1776, but this is not how it happened.

The American Constitution didn’t go into effect until almost a decade and a half after the Declaration of Independence. How did this philosopher, diplomat, and Founding Father influence this?

James Madison’s Youth

James Madison was born on March 16, 1751, into a distinguished planter family in Virginia, as had George Washington and Thomas Jefferson before him. As a boy, his secondary education was conducted by a popular local Scottish tutor who taught him geography and mathematics, and languages, both modern and ancient. He was very good at Latin. A local Presbyterian reverend did his college preparatory work. In contrast to other Virginian young men, like Thomas Jefferson, he did not attend college at William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. His health was somewhat fragile, and the lowlands of that area would, it was believed, be harmful to his health.

Instead, the shy, quiet, and diminutive Madison — he was 5’4″ to Washington’s 6’4″ — attended Princeton, then called the College of New Jersey, where he came under the influence of the President of the college, a…