James Madison
By
Richard Brookhiser
(Basic Books, 287 pages,
$26.99)
Over the last half century Americans have sought a more
enlightened, often politically correct, evaluation of their
founders. Not for us, for example, are Parson Weems’ tales about
George Washington or Washington Irving’s affectionate treatment of
the father of our country.
But modern appraisals of America’s earliest statesmen,
which too often dwell on their failings, of which they had many,
rather than their virtues, of which they had many more, shed light
on our own times and mores rather than those of the founding
generation.
It is a challenging and important task to recognize and
understand the founder’s faults without losing sight of their
greatness while illuminating their enduring significance along the
way. No historian does this better than Richard
Brookhiser.
For nearly two decades, he has produced brief but
profound, clear but challenging, explorations of America’s early
history. His latest effort,
James Madison, is a small, unvarnished monument to its
diminutive namesake.
Drawing from and explicating Madison’s own public and
personal writings, Brookhiser, employing equal doses of his
customary acumen and wit, walks readers through the man’s eight
decades in little more than 200 pages. It is an honest and at times
unflattering rendering, but one that reaffirms Madison’s genius,
and proves authoritatively that his fingerprints remain all over
our institutions.
Though he is most celebrated for creating America’s
Constitution, here, however, he is less its father than its
“midwife.” Madison was the great multitasker and collaborator of
the Founding. He could, in Brookhiser’s words, “execute double
plays by himself” — laying the groundwork for the Constitutional
Convention in Annapolis, then returning home to Virginia to secure
the participation of his own commonwealth; producing the blueprint
of the Constitution, bringing it to fruition through compromise and
then to parchment with the help of Gouverneur Morris, all while
recording the proceedings for posterity. He then huddled with
Alexander Hamilton to seal the deal through the Federalist Papers.
And finally he assumed the role of, in Brookhiser’s words, an
“American Moses,” by crafting the first ten amendments to the
document.
This is the legacy we are most likely to recognize and
honor. But as Brookhiser points out, we might be a bit more
hesitant to celebrate Madison’s other progeny: When he and Thomas
Jefferson (his mentor and dear friend) clashed with Alexander
Hamilton, they constructed the country’s first organized political
faction — the Republican Party (today’s Democrats.) To accomplish
this, Madison cultivated strategic regional alliances, recruited
sympathetic minds and pens, and then through a series of, by
Brookhiser’s estimation, crudely written and realized essays in the
National Gazette (a freshly launched Republican
instrument) laid out an ideology extolling the value of an agrarian
economy and the wickedness of cities and
manufacturing.
Madison was also one of the first American leaders to
understand the importance of public opinion. Consultation with
constituents was instrumental; “Public opinion was a loop,
sustaining leaders even as they shaped it,” Brookhiser writes. And
though it is less pleasant to contemplate, he, along with
Jefferson, coolly participated in what modern parlance describes as
“the politics of personal destruction.” Though they would not dirty
their own hands, they had no objections to letting the likes of
scandalmonger James T. Callender raze their rivals. An examination
of this period will dispel any notions of a long-past era of
civility in American politics. It has been cutthroat since the
start; Madison’s imprint can be found here
too.
He not only facilitated America’s birth, but also brought
it from infancy to adolescence. First in Congress, then after
helping Jefferson find his way to the White House, as Secretary of
State, and then as president himself, Madison played his part,
either behind the scenes or on the dais, in guiding the country
into the 19th century and opening its western
territories.
As a leader, Madison’s weaknesses surfaced. His blinding
love of France, paranoid detestation of England, and misguided
faith in trade embargos and other forms of commercial warfare
(Hamilton once remarked that he was “a clever man, but very little
acquainted with the world”) riled the popular opinion he so valued
and led America into a second war with England. Brookhiser gives
Madison’s record as an executive mixed reviews. His management
style was “timid and snide.” Lackluster appointments crippled the
country in the War of 1812, and left the young capital smoldering.
But he corrected course, made the necessary changes, and ultimately
guided the country to victory in what the author describes as “a
war of national self-assertion.”
Of course there were inconsistencies. Madison and the
Republicans accused John Adams of lusting after an American
monarchy. But by electing Jefferson, succeeding him, and then
paving a path to the presidency for fellow Virginian James Monroe,
Madison created an Old Dominion dynasty of his own. He was also
prone to jettison his own ideas and arguments when they obstructed
his ambitions and purposes. The greatest blemish, though, was
slavery. Madison, like many of the founders, owned slaves but also
understood the institution was a direct affront to the principles
he helped build a country upon. But he did nothing, neither in
rhetoric or deed. His extraordinary mind could only conjure foolish
schemes to send blacks to Africa, or diffuse slavery by expanding
it westward.
These offenses, viewed with understanding of the time and
the nature of man, do not diminish Madison. He was flawed, but
great. The two qualities can reside in the same host. Brookhiser’s
portrait presents both.
Fittingly, the book ends at Montpelier, Madison’s
scenically-positioned home in sight of Virginia’s Blue Ridge
Mountains. The founder rests under an unremarkable obelisk, not far
from the estate. The grave gives little indication of its
occupant’s accomplishments. It need not. His legacy — our
Constitution, our freedoms, our political system — are far too
vast to capture in stone. But in James Madison, Richard
Brookhiser’s words bring them brilliantly to life.
