America at 250 Series
James Madison was born in 1751 in the Virginia Piedmont, the eldest son of a wealthy planter. He was small — barely over five feet — soft-spoken, and sickly, and he was the most prepared man in any room he entered.
In the summer of 1787, he came to Philadelphia with a trunk full of books and a plan for a new government. He spoke little, but he took notes on everything, and when the Constitution emerged, much of it was his. To win its ratification, he wrote, with Hamilton and Jay, the essays we now call the Federalist. To answer its critics, he drafted the Bill of Rights.
He served as Jefferson’s secretary of state, then as the fourth president. He led the country into a war with Britain that burned the Capitol and nearly cost him everything — and somehow, he came out the other side.
He died in 1836, the last of the founders.
