The men who created the U.S. Constitution are often called the country’s “founders” or “framers.” But only one framer is known as the father of the Constitution. He is James Madison.
Madison did not have the physical appearance of many politicians. He was a short man with a soft voice who had often been sick as a child and young adult.
He grew up in a wealthy family in Virginia and enjoyed reading and studying. He went to college at the school that later became Princeton. For a while, he did not know what kind of career he wanted. When the Revolutionary War started between the colonists and the British, Madison’s intelligence and knowledge helped him participate in debates about independence and a new American government. He eventually became a member of the Continental Congress.
After the Revolutionary War, he urged the Confederation Congress to call for a convention to strengthen the national government.
Tom Howard is an educator at Madison’s house in southern Virginia. “James Madison doesn’t enjoy a lot of press, he’s not somehow historically as well-known as other of our founding statesmen, but he’s certainly every bit as important We are not even sure there would be a Constitution had it not been for James Madison.”
Mr. Howard tells how James Madison used his library to prepare for the Constitutional Convention. “He went up there and studied for months, and that’s having just a light breakfast and then studying throughout the entire day before he finally took a break to rest up, to go back at it the next day.”
Madison studied other governments in history and governments operating in the world at the time. He studied the confederacies of Ancient Greece and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the Swiss Confederacy. Mr. Howard points out that Madison could read in seven different languages a helpful skill for his work.
Madison used what he learned to write a paper called “Ancient and Modern Confederacies.” One of the most important ideas he found was that a weak government could invite problems. Mr. Howard says Madison’s reading informed his thinking about the U.S. Constitution. And, in turn, Madison’s thinking informed the discussion at the Constitutional Convention. His recommendations for a strong central government became the basis for the delegates’ conversation.
“We consider the old library in the Madison house pretty much of a little cradle of our constitutional form of government, because of all of the time he spent.” Only 37 years old, Madison did not have the authority of many of the other delegates. But he was the most prepared.
