What did james madison do as president

There are countless books on James Madison, and it comes with good reason, beyond being America’s fourth President (1809-1817), he made a major contribution to the ratification of the Constitution by writing The Federalist Papers, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives,” Madison contended. “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both”

Reading clearly played a profound role in molding James Madison as a person, and furthermore, this favorite educational activity of his must have had something to do with the spirited – and liberating for that matter – approach he took to life.

Therefore, in order to get to the bottom of what inspired one of America’s founding fathers to the height of societal contribution, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best books on James Madison.

James Madison: A Life Reconsidered by Lynne Cheney

James Madison was a true genius of the early republic, the leader who did more than any other to create the nation we know today. This more recent biography published in 2015 tells his story.

Outwardly reserved, Madison was the intellectual driving force behind the Constitution. His visionary political philosophy – eloquently presented in the Federalist Papers – was a crucial factor behind the Constitution’s ratification, and his political savvy was of major importance in getting the new government underway.

As secretary of state under Thomas Jefferson, he managed the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the United States. As president, Madison led the country in its first war under the Constitution, the War of 1812. Without precedent to guide him, he would demonstrate that a republic could defend its honor and independence while remaining true to its young constitution.

James Madison and the Making of America by Kevin R. C. Gutzman

Instead of an idealized portrait of Madison, Gutzman treats readers to the flesh-and-blood story of a man who often performed his founding deeds in spite of himself: Madison’s fame rests on his participation in the writing of The Federalist Papers and his role in drafting the Bill of Rights and Constitution. Today, his contribution to those documents is largely misunderstood. He thought that the Bill of Rights was unnecessary and insisted that it not be included in the Constitution, a document he found entirely inadequate and predicted would soon fail.

In so many ways, the contradictions both in Madison’s thinking and in the way he governed foreshadowed the conflicted state of our Union now. His greatest legacy – the disestablishment of Virginia’s state church and adoption of the libertarian Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom – is often omitted from discussion of his career. Yet, understanding the way in which Madison saw the relationship between the church and state is key to understanding the real man.

The Last of the Fathers by Drew R. McCoy

James Madison survived longer than any other member of the most remarkable generation of political leaders in American history. Born in the middle of the eighteenth century as a subject of King George II, the Father of the United States Constitution lived until 1836, when he died a citizen of Andrew Jackson’s republic. For over forty years he played a pivotal role in the creation and defense of a new political order.

He lived long enough to see even that Revolutionary world transformed, and the system of government he had nurtured threatened by the disruptive forces of a new era that would ultimately lead to civil war. In recounting the experience of Madison and several of his legatees who witnessed the violent test of whether his republic could endure, McCoy dramatizes the actual working out in human lives of critical cultural and political issues.

Becoming Madison by Michael Signer

This gem among books on James Madison takes a fresh look at the life of our fourth president before he turned thirty-six, the years in which he did his most enduring work: battling with Patrick Henry – the most charismatic politician in revolutionary America, whose political philosophy and ruthless tactics eerily foreshadowed those of today’s Tea Party – over religious freedom; becoming the intellectual godfather of the Constitution; and providing a crucial role at Virginia’s convention to ratify the Constitution in 1788, when the nation’s future hung in the balance.

Signer’s young James Madison is a role model for the leaders so badly needed today: a man who overcame daunting personal issues (including crippling anxiety attacks) to battle an entrenched and vicious status quo. Michael Signer’s brilliant analysis of “Madison’s Method,” the means by which Madison systematically destroyed dangerous ideas and left in their stead an enduring and positive vision for the United States, is wholly original and uniquely relevant today.

The Three Lives of James Madison by Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman offers an intriguing portrait of this elusive genius and the constitutional republic he created – and how both evolved to meet unforeseen challenges. Madison hoped to eradicate partisanship yet found himself giving voice to, and institutionalizing, the political divide. His lifelong loyalty to Thomas Jefferson led to an irrevocable break with George Washington, hero of the American Revolution. He closely collaborated with Alexander Hamilton on the Federalist papers – yet their different visions for the United States left them enemies.

Madison predicted that foreign threats would justify the curtailment of civil liberties. He feared economic inequality and the power of financial markets over politics, believing that government by the people demanded resistance to wealth. Finally, he was the first Founding Father to recognize the importance of public opinion, and the first to understand that the media could function as a safeguard to liberty.

Founding Friendship by Stuart Leibiger

Although the friendship between George Washington and James Madison was eclipsed in the early 1790s by the alliances of Madison with Jefferson and Washington with Hamilton, their collaboration remains central to the constitutional revolution that launched the American experiment in republican government. Washington relied heavily on Madison’s advice, pen, and legislative skill, while Madison found Washington’s prestige indispensable for achieving his goals for the new nation.

Observing Washington and Madison in light of their special relationship, Leibiger argues against a series of misconceptions about the two men. Madison emerges as neither a strong nationalist of the Hamiltonian variety nor a political consolidationist; he did not retreat from nationalism to states’ rights in the 1790s, as other historians have charged. Washington, far from being a majestic figurehead, exhibits a strong constitutional vision and firm control of his administration.

Madison’s Gift by David O. Stewart

Short, plain, balding, neither soldier nor orator, low on charisma and high on intelligence, James Madison cared more about achieving results than taking the credit. Forming key partnerships with Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, and his wife Dolley, Madison achieved his lifelong goal of a self-governing constitutional republic.

But it was his final partnership that allowed Madison to escape his natural shyness and reach the greatest heights. Dolley was the woman he married in middle age and who presided over both him and an enlivened White House. This partnership was a love story, a unique one that sustained Madison through his political rise, his presidency, and a fruitful retirement.

In Madison’s Gift, David O. Stewart’s “insights are illuminating…He weaves vivid, sometimes poignant details throughout the grand sweep of historical events. He brings early history alive in a way that offers today’s readers perspective” (Christian Science Monitor).

James Madison: America’s First Politician by Jay Cost

How do you solve a problem like James Madison? The fourth president is one of the most confounding figures in early American history; his political trajectory seems almost intentionally inconsistent. He was both for and against a strong federal government. He wrote about the dangers of political parties in the Federalist Papers and then helped to found the Republican Party just a few years later. This so-called Madison problem has occupied scholars for ages.

As Jay Cost shows in this incisive new biography published in 2021, the underlying logic of Madison’s seemingly mixed record comes into focus only when we understand him primarily as a working politician. Whereas other founders split their time between politics and other vocations, Madison dedicated himself singularly to the work of politics and ultimately developed it into a distinctly American idiom. He was, in short, the first American politician.

American Compact by Gary Rosen

In a study that combines penetrating textual analysis with deep historical awareness, Gary Rosen stakes out important ground by showing the philosophical consistency in Madison’s long and controversial public life. The key, he argues, is Madison’s profound originality as a student of the social compact, the venerable liberal idea into which he introduced several novel, and seemingly illiberal, principles.

Foremost among these was the need for founding to be the work of an elite few. For Madison, prior accounts of the social compact, in their eagerness to establish the proper ends of government, provided a hopelessly naive account of its origin. As he saw it, the Federal Convention of 1787 was an opportunity for those of outstanding prudence (understood in its fullest Aristotelian sense) to do for the people what they could not do for themselves.

This troublesome reliance on the few was balanced, Rosen contends, by Madison’s commitment to republicanism as an end in itself, a conclusion that he likewise drew from the social compact, accommodating the proud political claims that his philosophical predecessors had failed to recognize.

Madison and Jefferson by Andrew Burstein

The third and fourth presidents have long been considered proper gentlemen, with Thomas Jefferson’s genius overshadowing James Madison’s judgment and common sense. But in this revelatory book about their crucial partnership, both are seen as men of their times, hardboiled operatives in a gritty world of primal politics where they struggled for supremacy for more than fifty years.

With a thrilling and unprecedented account of early America as its backdrop, Madison and Jefferson reveals these founding fathers as privileged young men in a land marked by tribal identities rather than a united national personality. Esteemed historians Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg capture Madison’s hidden role – he acted in effect as a campaign manager – in Jefferson’s career. In riveting detail, the authors chart the courses of two very different presidencies: Jefferson’s driven by force of personality, Madison’s sustained by a militancy that history has been reluctant to ascribe to him.

If you enjoyed this guide to the best books on James Madison, be sure to check out our list of 10 Books on President Franklin D. Roosevelt!