Overview: James Madison

I'm Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute i'm here with lynne cheney author of james madison a life reconsidered and we'll be talking about james madison and his role as would you call the most important person responsible for creating what America is today why do you call him that partly because of the many roles he played first of all in the constitutional convention where he you know wrote the agenda made sure Washington was there made some absolutely crucial interventions he was crucial to the ratification of the Constitution without him I think Virginia might have gone the other way and had Virginia gone the other way the Constitution would not have succeeded he was also the primary author of the bill of rights he was crucial to the founding of the first government his was the voice that echoed off all walls when the government was first beginning to get underway he led to Congress served eight years the Secretary of State this was a time of the Louisiana Purchase and then he became our first president to be commander-in-chief to take the nation into war under the Constitution let's start by doing a timeline when was he born he was born in 1751 and then he goes into public life when he had served on the Virginia Committee of Safety as the nation was heading toward revolution but his first post was at the Virginia convention of 1776 so he's in Virginia at the colonial convention then while other people from Virginia up in Philadelphia doing the Declaration of Independence that's right his soon to be most intimate friend Thomas Jefferson is in Philadelphia writing the Declaration of Independence as Madison is entering on the public stage let's continue with the timeline and then he's in Congress sort of after they do the declaration under the Articles of Confederation that's correct kind of a week Congress he goes in around 1781 right and he's absolutely appalled at how inefficient that Congress is and convinced at that point that the states are to blame and then in 1787 of course he becomes instrumental to the constitutional convention so we'll mark that on the timeline here exactly and then afterwards the Federalist Papers win with us Federalist Papers were written after the Constitution had been prom gated in order to get new york and virginia and Madison's mind to ratify the Constitution and then under George Washington's administration what is he doing Madison managed to get elected by a hair because Patrick Henry didn't like him very much but he managed to get elected to the House of Representatives and he instantly became the leader not only did his fellow Representatives depend upon him for guidance in this time in which there were no precedence but Washington did as well and then in 1800 that's when Jefferson gets elected and what happens to Madison well even more important before you get to Jefferson Madison inaugurates the first political party he takes the lead and establishing the idea of an opposition party and that concept leads to the election of Jefferson and 1800 Madison and Jefferson like to call that the revolution of 1800 because it was an effort to reclaim the government for the people in their view as opposed to the view of someone like Alexander Hamilton who saw the necessity he believed of a very strong even aggressive central government so in 1801 when Jefferson takes office he asked Madison his Virginia friend to become Secretary of State right correct yes and so he serves under that what happens during that period well it's an interesting period for many reasons partly because Washington DC was just getting started so Madison of course was a very detail-oriented Secretary of State and very important to Louisiana Purchase after Napoleon shocked everyone by saying that he wanted to renounce Louisiana he wanted to get rid of Louisiana Jefferson worried that it was unconstitutional for the United States to buy it at the bargain price that Napoleon offered Madison reassured him that he had the constitutional authority to do this he had the constitutional authority to make treaties and so therefore he had the constitutional authority to do this to admit new stage exactly so those of us from Louisiana quite appreciative of Madison's decision there and then basically after that Jefferson anoints him as a successor and he becomes president in 1808 yes and he's elected in eighteen and it was not a clear shot by this time as happens you know when a single political party becomes dominant as the Republican Democratic Party had become there was a schism and there were people who thought people who were in the Republican Democrat Party who thought that Madison wasn't conservative enough but he managed overcome that was elected with a good margin and then did serve as president for a then right at the end of his first term in 1812 right before he's really he takes the nation to war right that's correct and it had been something that had been building for a long time the effort of Great Britain to continue to impose your will upon the United States despite the fact that we had won our independence and Jefferson and Madison had taken extreme measures to try to keep from going to war including imposing embargo which meant that American commerce was virtually locked in the United States none of it works and Madison was faced with a choice at seesaw of either let in the United States return to being under the thumb of Great Britain or war and he chose war and then finally he serves two terms so it's in an 18-16 that his fellow Virginian and sometimes friend Monroe James Monroe is elected president and what happens to Madison he sort of becomes a sage right exactly he does what out of office politicians do he went home and we started working on his papers and in 1816 even started on a bit of a memoir but it never was finished well thank you now that we've laid down the timeline will drill down on each one of these subjects in our next lesson thank you