America's Greatest 19th Century Presidents (8 page)

The Founding Fathers of the United States hailed from an array of different backgrounds, with men like Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin coming from modest beginnings to become self-made men, while George Washington rose through society via land surveying and the military. Among the Founding Fathers, James Madison is inextricably intertwined with Thomas Jefferson, so it is not surprising to learn that the two Virginians had similar upbringings.

James Madison was born in his grandparents' home in Port Conway, Virginia, on March 16
^th
, 1751.  He was the oldest of twelve children, only about half of whom survived to adulthood, and he was named after his father, James Sr. Although Madison lived a long life, while growing up “Jemmy” had plenty of health problems, and his health remained notoriously fickle until he was an adult.

Young James Jr. lived a life of luxury from the beginning, because the Madisons were a leading family in Orange County, Virginia.  James Madison Sr. was the county's largest landowner and was a prosperous tobacco planter, and his wife Nelly was the daughter of a wealthy planter, ensuring that the Madison family was not short on wealth.  Through this union, the Madisons owned significant amounts of property throughout Virginia, chief among them a property known as Montpelier which James Sr. had inherited from his father, and which James Jr. would inherit himself. 

Montpelier

Given his family's wealth, James Jr. was naturally afforded a comfortable childhood.  He grew up in an increasingly slave-based society, and was surrounded by servants, inheriting an estimated 100 slaves at Montpelier alone when his father died.  Much like his future political partner, Thomas Jefferson, Madison was never worried by finances, and growing up he was offered the very best that the wealthy Virginian society had to offer.

Education

Like Jefferson’s family provided for young Thomas, Madison's family provided their eldest son with an education worthy of the very best, whether in the Americas or Europe.  As a child, Madison studied under private tutors, most notably the Scottish instructor Donald Robertson and the Anglican Minister Thomas Martin.  As was typical for an aristocrat, Madison studied a broad liberal arts curriculum, including the ancient languages, eventually becoming especially proficient in Latin. Naturally, Madison used this knowledge later in life when he conducted extensive research to design a blueprint for the U.S. Constitution.

In an age when most wealthy Virginians headed to the College of William and Mary to study, Madison instead attended the College of New Jersey, now popularly known as Princeton. This would seem like an unusual choice, and it was the same school that his future ideological colleague and political opponent, Alexander Hamilton, attended. But Madison had several reasons for picking Princeton, including the fact his tutor Thomas Martin was an alumnus of the school, and the climate of the College of William and Mary may have compromised Madison’s frail health.

Attending college in New Jersey was the first time Madison had ever left Virginia, but he made the most of it.  While there, Madison continued his studies in the liberal arts, broadening his horizons by becoming fluent in Hebrew and Greek.  Madison graduated from Princeton in 1771 and returned to Virginia in 1772.  Although he had already graduated and had a posh family background with plenty of plantations, the ambitious Madison had no intentions of ever quitting his studying. Once he returned home, he continued to self-study the law in Virginia, with the intent of pursuing a position in colonial government.  Madison had time to spare: he finished a typically four-year degree at Princeton in only two years, during which he was very successful academically and even published a few books, including one called
A Brief System of Logick
. It’s likely that Madison’s intense focus on studying led his schoolmates to consider him somewhat aloof, but the young man eagerly participated in debates about government at a time when tension between the colonies and Great Britain were heating up. And Madison was not without humor, writing to one friend that he had seen ``no place so overstocked with Old-Maids as Princeton.''

Despite his academic success, the speed with which the young and frail Madison completed his studies evidently wore on his health.  After 1772, he became ill, and remained so for some years. At Princeton, a popular legend still claims that Madison suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of studying so much, and that it caused him to miss his commencement ceremony, a fact recited in John MacLean’s 1877
History of the College of New Jersey
. Whether that is true or not is still a subject of debate, but Madison himself linked his health problems to his intense studying while dictating an autobiographical manuscript, noting, “His very infirm health, had been occasioned not a little by a doubled labor, in which he was joined by fellow student Jos. Ross, in accomplishing the studies of two years within one.”

Chapter 2: The American Revolution, 1775-1783

Virginia Politics before the Revolution

In Revolutionary Virginia, the political body that the colony was best associated with was the House of Burgesses, which was the first governing body comprised of elected representatives among colonists in Britain’s American colonies. In the early 1770s, members like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson were members of the House, which became a place for fierce debate over the measures the British Empire was implementing against the American colonies. Parliament had adopted several types of taxes and measures to levy on the American colonies in order to pay for the victorious but costly Seven Years War in the 1750s. The British government felt that the colonies were the primary beneficiaries of the Seven Years War and should pay at least a portion of the expense.

One of the first ways they did this was via the Stamp Act of 1765, which taxed stamps to raise revenue. The act required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp. These printed materials were legal documents, magazines, newspapers and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies. Like previous taxes, the stamp tax had to be paid in valid British currency, not in colonial paper money. Patrick Henry argued vociferously against the Stamp Act on the floor of the House of Burgesses.

Patrick Henry went on to become Virginia’s 1
^st
Governor

It was Jefferson’s turn to speak out against the Coercive or Intolerable Acts in the House in 1774. These were names used to describe a series of laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North America. Four of the acts were issued in direct response to the Boston Tea Party of December 1773; the British Parliament hoped these punitive measures would, by making an example of Massachusetts, reverse the trend of colonial resistance to parliamentary authority that had begun with the 1765 Stamp Act. Naturally, the Coercive Acts only triggered more outrage in the colonies..

By 1774, revolution was clearly in the air in Virginia, and while Madison was still far too young to be involved in the politics, he was extremely interested in them. Madison was quickly swept up by this tide of colonial politics and became a loyal Patriot before the war started. Madison's first political office also came in 1774 with his appointment to the Orange County Committee of Safety, an appointment that was likely made due to his position as the son of a prominent citizen.  The Committee of Safety served Orange County by forming militias and ensuring that, in the event of Revolution, the county would be able to self-govern.  By the end of 1774, Madison was heavily involved with building up a local militia to defend his county.

First Continental Congress

In response to the Coercive Acts, delegates from 12 colonies met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1774. The 56 men, who had been chosen by their colonial legislatures, met to craft a united response to what they called the Intolerable Acts. At the First Continental Congress, the delegates debated the merits of a boycott of British trade, while also declaring their rights and demanding redress. The First Continental Congress eventually petitioned the British government to end the Intolerable Acts, while also determining to convene again the following summer. Little did they know that the Revolutionary War would start by then. 

Lexington and Concord

While Virginians like Jefferson and Henry hotly debated British oppression, it was Massachusetts that had been the biggest thorn in Britain’s side during the first half of the 1770s, dating all the way back to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. The Boston Massacre had been indirectly caused by a chain of events that had involved the quartering of British regulars in order to quell unrest in Boston as a result of the unpopular acts of Parliament in the previous decade. After the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, the British took a series of steps to impose order, including establishing military command over Boston.

In early 1775, General Thomas Gage, the military commander in charge of Boston, heard that colonists were keeping a store of weapons near Concord, Massachusetts. Gage made plans to send out a force of about 700 British soldiers to seize the weapons on the morning of April 19, 1775. However, patriot leaders in Boston got news of the planned raid the day before, and Paul Revere and other riders alerted the militias of Lexington and Concord during the night before, hours in advance of the marching British.

Portrait of General Gage

By the time the British regulars reached Lexington, a small part of the local militia met the British regulars on the village green. It’s unclear who fired first, but either way, shots were exchanged. While a handful of militia men lay wounded or dying, the British continued on toward Concord, where they encountered far more organized resistance. As militia men swarmed toward the action from neighboring towns and villages, the British forces began the march back to Boston, coming under fire alongside the road. By the time the British made it back to the safety of Boston, thousands of militia men had surrounded the city, beginning what would become a nearly year long siege.

The American Revolution had officially begun.

The Battle of Bunker Hill

Immediately after the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the militia men who had poured in from across the countryside converged on Boston, which at the time was a peninsula with a small neck attaching it to the rest of Massachusetts. With the Charles River surrounding it on three sides, Boston was an ideal city to lay siege to. The militias blocked off the land approaches to Boston, but when 4,500 more British soldiers arrived by sea, the American forces fell back to adjacent hills on the Charlestown Peninsula, Breed's Hill and Bunker Hill. At this time, the colonists and colonial forces were still unclear of their ultimate goals; the Second Continental Congress would not formally declare independence for another year.