A James Madison, Founding Father

by John O. Sutter, President WFA/NCa

The 250th Anniversary of the birth of James Madison has been celebrated in various ways, including presentations at Princeton University.

It can truthfully be said that if it weren't for the quiet, modest James Madison there would be no USA with the positive attributes we take for granted today. How many Americans today know that if Madison and Alexander hadn't been prime movers, there would have been no Constitutional Convention in 1787? However, unlike Hamilton, who was a minority in a largely anti-federal New York delegation and was away during much of the convention, Madison was there and made a more complete record than even the Convention Secretary's.

Since New York State was governed by powerful anti-Federalists, Madison joined with Hamilton to write the newspaper "op-ed" pieces that finally convinced a majority of New Yorkers at the state ratifying convention to join other states in the new federation. These articles were later collected into The Federalist.

As a Virginian, Madison with George Washington's backing, also led the state convention against the opposition of perennial Governor Patrick Henry to vote to ratify and join the Union.

Long before he became Secretary of State and U.S. President, Madison distinguished himself in many ways:

- Like other Framers, he rejected the world-wide system of countries being ruled by monarchs and aristocrats, and helped assure that not only the first 13 American states, but also all thereafter and the country itself, would have republican governments.
- As early as 1776 in George Mason's draft of Virginia's Declaration of Rights, he was instrumental in ending the privileged position held by the "established" (Anglican) Church and the right of the official clergy to interfere in civil affairs, starting the trend which led to the USA becoming the first modern secular state.
- He worked hardest to assure that the USA would be neither a league of nations (as it had been under the Articles of Confederation) nor a highly centralized unitary state, but the first modern federation of states.
- Throughout the Convention (at times along with Mason and James Wilson) he worked to make sure that the USA would become a democracy. He insisted not only that the House of Representatives be directly elected by the People, but also that the Constitution itself be ratified -- not by politicians in the State legislatures -- but by the People through popularly-elected conventions set up for that purpose.

Madison's concept of democracy emphasized First Principles, the sovereign authority of the People to create and alter governments, constitutions, charters, and laws (cf. www.p2dd.org/firstprinciples). When a delegate from Maryland said he saw no way that his state constitution could be amended other than through its own provisions, Madison responded, "The People were in fact the fountain of all power...They could alter constitutions as they pleased. It was a principle in the Bills of rights, that first principles might be resorted to."

In 1789 as Representative in the 1st Congress, when drafting the first amendments to the Constitution, Madison urged that wording be adopted from the Virginia Declaration of Rights and "that there be prefixed to the Constitution a declaration, that all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from the people. [and] That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform of change their Government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution."

A conservative Senate deleted this from the original amendments. Let's endeavor that the American People, as well as the People of the World, will appreciate their authority under First Principles and act to reform existing governments and create a democratic federation for the People of the World.