4681From James Madison to Reverend Thomas Martin, 10 August 1769 (Madison Papers)
I am not a little affected at hearing of your misfortune, but cannot but hope the cure may be so far accomplished as to render your journey not inconvenient. Your kind Advice & friendly cautions are a favour that shall be always gratefully remembered, & I must beg leave to assure you that my happiness, which you and your brother so ardently wish for, will be greatly augmented by both your...
4682Record of Birth and Baptism of James Madison, Jr., [16 March] 1751 (Madison Papers)
James Madison junr. was born on Tuesday Night at 12 o’Clock it being the last of the 5th. & begining of the 6th. day of March 1750–1 & was Baptized by the Revd. Mr. Wm. Davis, Mar. 31. 1751 and had for God-Fathers Mr. John Moore & Mr. Jonatn. Gibson & for God-Mothers Mrs. Rebecca Moore, Miss Judith Catlett and Miss Elizabeth Catlett. The 1759 publication date of the Bible indicates that this...
4683Editorial Note (Madison Papers)
When JM returned to Virginia in 1772, after three years at the College of New Jersey, the colony was in the throes of a religious revival. Baptist preachers, usually zealous but unlettered, itinerated through the province paying little heed to the statutes regulating the holding of religious services. This disregard of law was compounded by derogatory attacks on the Established Church. As...
4684Notes (Madison Papers)
For many years everyone interested in the Declaration of Rights, including JM, believed that Mason’s first draft of it was a paper in his hand, bearing the caption, “Copy of the first Daught [ sic ] by GM.” This paper has been reproduced in facsimile at least twice—once between p. 240 and p. 241 of Vol. I of Kate M. Rowland, Life of George Mason , and again in Virginia Cavalcade , I [1951],...
4685The General Assembly Session of May 1784 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
The sword had been sheathed, so the problems faced by the Commonwealth of Virginia and her sister states in 1784 were no longer a life-and-death matter. As James Madison rode down to Richmond in May his thoughts must have been on the still-unsolved dilemma that had confronted Congress from almost the outset: finance. The cost of running the small bureaucracy that kept the Confederation...
4686Editorial Note: Resolutions on Private Debts Owed to British Merchants (Madison Papers)
Among the leading public men of revolutionary Virginia JM’s rising eminence is the more noticeable because of his youth and the advantages attending it. As a man in his mid-twenties when the war began, unmarried and under no obligation to provide for a family, he had not been upon the scene long enough to become encumbered with the prewar debts that were the constant fret of almost all...
4687Editorial Note: Madison’s Notes for Debates on the General Assessment Bill (Madison Papers)
Once the Revolution began, most Virginians accepted all fundamental breaks with the past save one—the established church. Clearly it was preservation of the old, comforting traditions of the Anglican church and not the institution of established religion per se that interested many men who ordinarily had the most advanced ideas about individual rights. Thus the maintenance of even the most...
4688The General Assembly Session of October 1785 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
The Virginia legislative session of 1785 was a complicated interplay of power politics and constitutional issues. Even before the delegates and senators met in Richmond, the people were excited by the issues which would be discussed. Petitions concerning slavery and emancipation raised tempers on a subject which would long occupy the General Assembly. The attempt to gain state funds to support...
4689Madison’s Authorship of The Federalist, 22 November 1787–1 March 1788 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
After the adjournment of the Federal Convention and his return to Congress in New York, JM did not expect to participate actively in the campaign to ratify the proposed Constitution. Privately disappointed with the outcome of the convention, he nevertheless wished the new plan well and was an interested observer of its reception in the various states. Although the initial reaction was almost...
4690The Virginia Convention, 2–27 June 1788 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
In contrast to the absolutism of eighteenth-century Europe, the nation forming in America between 1775 and 1789 took a popular course and thereby introduced republicanism on a large scale along with all the uncertainty that attends an appeal to the people. JM’s career as a political theorist was climaxed at the Federal Convention, but his ability to meet the opposition on the hustings and in...
4691Madison’s Election to the First Federal Congress, October 1788–February 1789 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
The first federal election in Virginia took place in an atmosphere of bitterness that carried over from the preceding June, when the Federalists had scored a narrow victory for unconditional ratification of the Constitution. At the autumn meeting of the General Assembly, Patrick Henry and his Anti-federalist followers were firmly in control and eagerly seized the opportunity presented by the...
4692Madison at the First Session of the First Federal Congress, 8 April–29 September 1789 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
The United States officially began its existence as a federal republic with the meeting of the First Congress in March 1789. During the preceding fourteen years the Continental Congress had been the American central government. Now there was a three-branched federal mechanism, designed at Philadelphia in 1787 to cure the chronic ailments of its predecessor. The demands placed on the First...
4693A Note on the Sources of Madison’s Speeches in the Second and Third Sessions of the First Congress, 25 January 1790–8 … (Madison Papers)
As explained in the preceding volume, the editors have followed contemporary sources rather than the Annals of Congress Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, 1789–1824 (42 vols.; Washington, 1834–56). in presenting the texts of JM’s speeches in Congress ( PJM William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison (vols. 1–10, Chicago, 1962–77; vols. 11—,...
4694Madison in the Third Congress, 2 December 1793–3 March 1795 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
During the last days of the Second Congress, JM made his longest speech of the session in support of William Branch Giles’s resolutions censuring Alexander Hamilton’s official conduct as secretary of the treasury ( PJM Robert A. Rutland et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series (1 vol. to date; Charlottesville, Va., 1984—). , 14:456–68 and nn.). The result was predictable....
4695Madison in the Fourth Congress, 7 December 1795–3 March 1797 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
More than a month after the ending of the second session of the Third Congress, JM left Philadelphia to return to Montpelier, where he arrived on or about 21 April 1795. At the same time, John Beckley, clerk of the House of Representatives and JM’s political associate, departed from Philadelphia for New York, where he arranged for the publication of a pamphlet written by JM at the request of...
4696The Case of Robert Randall and Charles Whitney, 28 December 1795–13 January 1796 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
In September 1795 John Askin and six other British merchants in Detroit formed a partnership with three Americans, Robert Randall of Philadelphia and Ebenezer Allen and Charles Whitney of Vermont. Their intention was to extinguish the Indian title and obtain preemption rights to some twenty million acres of land in an area that included the Michigan peninsula as well as the northern regions of...
4697Madison’s Aurora General Advertiser Essays, 23 January–23 February 1799 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
In his 12 January 1799 letter to Jefferson , JM enclosed “a few observations,” which the editors believe were published under the title of “Foreign Influence” in the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser on 23 January 1799. Similarly, on 8 February, JM forwarded to Jefferson “a few more observations,” and the editors have concluded that these appeared in the same newspaper on 23 February...
4698The Election of 1800, October 1800–February 1801 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
In 1834 JM recalled the “Crisis” in government during the Adams administration and the part he had played in Jefferson’s “election to the Chief Magistracy” in 1800. His role in those events, he declared, was well known, but since the letters received at Montpelier that survive far outnumber those sent during this period, it is more difficult now to determine just how involved JM was in the...
4699The Recently Rediscovered Letters of Edmund Pendleton, 25 March 1782–30 January 1795 (Editorial Note) (Madison Papers)
The following is the first of 37 letters from Edmund Pendleton to JM that either have never been previously published or have been published only in the form of a partial extract. Twenty-five of the letters fall into the former category and 12 into the latter. These letters are part of a larger collection of 155 letters and other documents that Pendleton wrote to JM and to his father, James...