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CHAPTER V.

JAMES MADISON.

O rich was the character and so valuable is the example of James Madison that the opening sentence of this sketch of his career must express the regret that so little can be given of him for want of space. The fineness and finish of his character, the harmony, intelligence and elevated moral tone of the man were such as put him among the choice spirits who have so lived as to bless their kind in simply living. Simply to be such a man as he is to leave a benediction behind as a legacy for after years.

He was the fourth president; he had been much associated with the three who had gone before him; had affiliated more or less with them all; was the personal friend of all, yet was a new character in the exalted position of chief magistrate of a great nation, and brought a new personality and spirit to adorn and honor the dignified place. No human position can give honor to such a man. He is himself honorable above all offices or places. He honors the highest place more than it honors him.

ANCESTRY, YOUTH AND EDUCATION.

Like the other great Virginians of his time, James Madison was of good English stock. He was a descendant of John Madison, an Englishman, who settled in Virginia in 1635, twentysix years after the settlement of Jamestown, and fifteen years

after the landing on Plymouth Rock. His father was James Madison, of Orange, a planter of a large estate and ample fortune. His mother's maiden name was Eleanor Conway.

James Madison, the president, was born March 16, 1751, at King George, Virginia. He was the eldest of seven children. His boyhood was spent on his father's estate, in the midst of the cares, duties, joys and business of such a family so environed. He was born into good educational surroundings for such a boy. Being sensitive, impressible, quick of mind, tender of heart, conscientious, he was quick to take the lessons of such a home and its affairs. It was a school to him from the beginning.

His father's home was at Montpelier, in Orange county, which became his in due time, and his permanent home. The school education of the boy was such as he could get in the rude schools of his time, till he began to be specially prepared for college at a school in Kings and Queens county, taught by a Scotchman by the name of Robertson. A portion of the time he had a private tutor in his home.

In 1769, his eighteenth year, he entered Princeton college, New Jersey, presided over by Doctor Witherspoon, for whom young Madison conceived a strong interest, and by whom he was much quickened and benefited. He always retained many of the wise sayings and fine thoughts of his college president. It is one of those cases in which the student absorbs from the teacher much of his mental and moral life, to be improved upon and reflected through another life. He never tired of quoting Doctor Witherspoon. He graduated in 1772, taking the degree of A. B. in his twenty-first year. He was but two years at college, indicating that he was so thoroughly fitted as to have entered an advanced class, or that the course of study was not so thorough as in all good colleges now. His biographers all speak, however, of the intensity of his devotion to his studies while in college, for he allowed himself only three hours sleep out of every twenty-four, at least for a portion of the time. This heavy work and little rest, even in two years, so impaired his health that for the most of his after life he suffered from the strain and over-taxation. It doubtless did much to subdue and restrain his native powers,

and give him a more placid and submissive temperament than he otherwise would have had. His force of character was abated, his will enfeebled by this over-taxation in college. More time, and more consistent use of it, might have given the country quite a different fourth president.

After his graduation, he remained at Princton till the next spring to pursue a course of reading under the direction of Doctor Witherspoon. This gave him the best part of another year, in connection with the college and its president and their stimulating associations. Take it all in all, his college life gave a commanding direction to his career. It put his thoughts into the line of scholarship, philosophy and religion. It made him a thinker, a peer of the great minds who think the way for the world to pursue.

In the spring of 1773 young Madison returned to his home in Virginia and began a course of legal reading to fit himself for the bar. During the time of his legal study, he did a large amount of general reading. He read works on philosophy, on bellesletters, and general literature. He made a special study of the subject of religion, and satisfied himself upon the evidences of the christian religion. His nature would almost of necessity lead him into sympathy with christianity, his soul was such easy soil for its doctrines to plant themselves in; especially after his course at college had so quickened his mind to such studies and meditations. The study of christian evidences and doctrines, was a part of his education, and by that study he was not only established in the christian faith, but in that judicial way of thinking which fitted him for the stirring times in which his manhood was spent and the noble and helpful part which he took in them. Just such careful, passionless, clear-seeing thinkers, are the men who open the way for the on-moving march of great events, and who smooth that way also for the feet of the coming generations of men. Endowed with a mind singularly free from passion and prejudice, naturally religious and liberty loving, sincere and hearty in every emotion and thought, he came to every subject to be honest and faithful with it and with himself. Quiet, meditative, refined and peaceful in

nature, he was unconsciously fitting himself for a place and work which providence was preparing for him.

Later in life, and after much of his fine and discriminating work was done for the help and admiration of men, Mr. Jefferson gave a classic pen-picture of him which may well be hung in this porch of his early manhood, that all who enter may be able to see beforehand something of the fineness and power of the man whose life they are about to become acquainted with.

"Trained in these successive schools, he acquired a habit of self-possession which placed, at ready command, the rich resources of his luminous and discriminating mind and of his extensive information, and rendered him the first of every assembly afterward of which he became a member. Never wandering from his subject into vain declamation, but pursuing it closely in language pure, classic and copious; soothing always the feelings of his adversaries by civilities, and softness of expression, he rose to the eminent station which he held in the great national convention of 1787; and in Virginia, which followed, he sustained the new constitution in all its parts, bearing off the palm against the logic of George Mason and the fervid declamation of Patrick Henry. With these consummate powers were united a pure and spotless virtue, which no calumny has ever attempted to sully. Of the power and polish of his pen, and of the wisdom of his administration in the highest office of the nation, I need say nothing. They have spoken and will forever speak for themselves."

ENTRANCE UPON PUBLIC LIFE.

Mr. Madison did not complete his legal studies, partly because his tastes led him to such a wide range of reading in other directions, and partly because an opportunity to serve an oppressed party awakened his sympathies.

At that time the church of England held as absolute sway in Virginia as ever it did in England. It was the established church, sustained by a tax upon property which was collected by the officers of the law, the same as other taxes. Its ministers were legal officers and drew their support alike from church

members and non-church members, alike from Episcopalians and believers in other creeds and churches.

After a while, believers in other churches began to increase in Virginia, among them Baptists, who supported their own churches by voluntary contributions and then were forced to pay taxes for the support of the Episcopalian church, in which they did not believe. The Baptists claimed that they ought to be relieved from this forced Episcopalian tax, that it was an intolerant oppression unworthy of free America. In due time this Baptist claim raised a warm debate. It was sometimes fierce, and the Baptists had to learn by experience the full meaning of religious intolerance. Young Madison took the side of the Baptists in the debate, not from sympathy with them in religious opinions, but because he regarded religion as a matter of conscience in which every man should be free. His honest and zealous advocacy of a cause in which his family and class associates were against him, attracted much notice and put him conspicuously before the public as a young man who had voluntarily adopted an unpopular cause in his first public act. Of course he won friends among the persecuted Baptists at once, and among all right thinking people at last.

In the spring of 1776, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, he was elected to serve in the convention to form a constitution for the state of Virginia. This was the year of the declaration of independence, just when the principles of civil liberty, national life, and local and general law were being discussed. With his training in study and observation, he was fitted to get the greatest possible personal benefit from this practical application of all he had learned to the actual business of forming the fundamental law of a state. It brought him into daily association with the best minds of Virginia and to a daily discussion of the principles of statecraft, a school of itself of magnificent instructive power. He was timid and retiring; said but little, but studied and thought much.

The next year, 1777, he was a candidate to the state assembly. He refused to treat the whisky-drinking voters, and some said he was not a public speaker, because he had kept so