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Taking the Measure of Madison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2013

Alan Gibson
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Extract

Jeff Broadwater, a Barton college history professor and the author of one of the three biographies reviewed in this essay, recently began a public lecture on James Madison's presidency with the following story. A decade ago, Garry Wills, Broadwater notes, wrote the biography of Madison for an American presidency series, edited by the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and published by Times Books. The Madison volume in this series contains only two illustrations: a portrait of Madison on the dust jacket and another adjacent to the title page. The portrait pictured next to the title page in the initial run of this book is of, well, James Monroe.

Type
Review Essay
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , Summer 2013 , pp. 433 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2013 

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References

1 Wills, Garry, James Madison (New York: Henry Holt, 2002)Google Scholar.

2 Jeff Broadwater, “James Madison” (lecture, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, MO, June 27, 2012), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw5XhIbITBA.

3 The publication of the last volume in Irving Brant's six-volume biography of Madison serves as a useful marker dating the beginning of modern scholarship on Madison (Brant, Irving, James Madison, 6 vols. [Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1941–1961]Google Scholar). During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, a series of studies helped heighten Madison's reputation and further establish his independence from Jefferson. These include Adair, Douglass, Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair, ed. Colbourn, Trevor (New York: Norton, 1974)Google Scholar; Banning, Lance, The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Diamond, Martin, As Far as Republican Principles Will Admit: Essays by Martin Diamond, ed. Schambra, William A (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Ketcham, Ralph, James Madison: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1971)Google Scholar; McCoy, Drew, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980)Google Scholar; McCoy, Drew, The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Rakove, Jack, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Knopf, 1996)Google Scholar; Stagg, J. G. A., Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

4 Burnstein, Andrew and Isenberg, Nancy, Madison and Jefferson (New York: Random House, 2010), xivGoogle Scholar.

5 See particularly Bailey, Jeremy, “Should We Venerate That Which We Cannot Love? James Madison on Constitutional Imperfection,” Political Research Quarterly 65 (2012): 732–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kasper, Eric, To Secure the Liberty of the People: James Madison's Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court's Interpretation (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Kramer, Larry, “‘The Interest of the Man’: James Madison, Popular Sovereignty, and the Theory of Deliberative Democracy,” Valparaiso University Law Review 41 (2006): 697–754Google Scholar; Labunski, Richard, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Robertson, David Brian, “Madison's Opponents and Constitutional Design,” American Political Science Review 99 (2005): 225–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weiner, Greg, Madison's Metronome: The Constitution, Majority Rule, and the Tempo of American Politics (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012)Google Scholar; Zuckert, Michael, “The Political Science of James Madison,” in History of American Political Thought, ed. Frost, Bryan-Paul and Skikkanga, Jeffrey (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), 149–66Google Scholar. See also the collection of essays in Leibiger, Stuart, ed., A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)Google Scholar.

6 Kester, Scott, The Haunted Philosophe: James Madison, Republicanism, and Slavery (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008)Google Scholar; Taylor, Elizabeth Dowling, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)Google Scholar.

7 Muñoz, Phillip, “James Madison's Principle of Religious Liberty,” American Political Science Review 97 (2003): 17–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Gibson, Alan, “Veneration and Vigilance: James Madison and Public Opinion, 1785–1800,” Review of Politics 67, no. 1 (2005): 5–35Google Scholar; Gibson, “Madison on Democracy, Property, and Civic Education,” Review of Politics 67, no. 1 (2005): 69–76Google Scholar; Sheehan, Colleen, James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Wills, James Madison; Howard, Hugh, Mr. and Mrs. Madison's War: America's First Couple and the Second War of Independence (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012)Google Scholar.

10 Hyland, Matthew, Montpelier and the Madisons: House, Home, and the American Heritage (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Ketcham, Ralph, The Madisons at Montpelier: Reflections on the Founding Couple (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

11 Gutzman, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2007)Google Scholar.

12 Madison's early and lasting reservations against a Hamiltonian form of broad construction are best established in Banning, Sacred Fire, 13–42.

13 An exemplary discussion of this issue can be found in Rosen, Gary, American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), esp. 169–78Google Scholar.

14 For the evolution of Madison's understanding of constitutional construction from The Federalist No. 44 to his discussion of the national bank in the First Congress see Zuckert, Michael, “James Madison in The Federalist: Elucidating ‘The Particular Structure of this Government,’” in A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe, esp. 99–101Google Scholar.

15 Madison uses the phrase “the evil of imperia in imperio” in Madison to Jefferson, October 24, 1787, in The Papers of James Madison, ed. William T. Hutchinson et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press and Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1962–), 10:209. Hereafter cited as PJM.

16 Madison to Jefferson, March 19, 1787, in PJM, 9:318; Madison to George Washington, April 16, 787, in PJM, 9:383–84.

17 Gutzman, Kevin, “A Troublesome Legacy: James Madison and ‘The Principles of 98,’” Journal of the Early Republic 15 (Winter 1995): 569–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Ibid., 584.

19 See McCoy, Elusive Republic, esp. 120–35; McCoy, “James Madison and Visions of American Nationality in the Confederation Period: A Regional Perspective,” in Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, ed. Beeman, Richard, Botein, Stephen, and Carter, Edward C. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 226–58Google Scholar.

20 These essays have rightly been a point of increasing focus by some of Madison's best students. See particularly Colleen Sheehan's James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government.

21 “Public Opinion,” in PJM, 14:170.

22 Madison to Jefferson, October 24, 1787, in PJM, 10:214.

23 See Gibson, Alan, “Impartial Representation and the Extended Republic: Towards a Comprehensive and Balanced Reading of the Tenth Federalist Paper,” History of Political Thought 12 (Summer 1991): 263–304Google Scholar; Gibson, “Madison's ‘Great Desideratum’: Impartial Administration and the Extended Republic,” American Political Thought 1 (Fall 2012): 181–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Banning, Sacred Fire, esp. 164–65.

25 Rakove, Original Meanings, 54–55.

26 See “Speech of June 30th,” in Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention Of 1787 Reported by James Madison, ed. Koch, Adrienne (New York: Norton, 1987), 223–25Google Scholar.

27 Amar, Akhil Reed, America's Constitution: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2005), esp. 156–59Google Scholar.