Today In History: March 16, 1751: Father of the Constitution is born. On this day in 1751, James Madison, drafter of the Constitution, recorder of the Constitutional Convention, author of the Federalist Papers and fourth president of the United States, is born on a plantation in Virginia. Madison first distinguished himself as a student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he successfully completed a four-year course of study in two years and, in 1769, helped found the American Whig Society, the second literary and debate society at Princeton (and the world), to rival the previously established Cliosophic Society. Madison is best remembered for his critical role in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where he presented the Virginia Plan to the assembled delegates in Philadelphia and oversaw the difficult process of negotiation and compromise that led to the drafting of the final Constitution. Madisons published Notes on the Convention are considered the most detailed and accurate account of what occurred in the closed-session debates. (Madison forbade the publishing of his notes until all the participants were deceased.) After the Constitution was submitted to the people for ratification, Madison collaborated with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton on The Federalist Papers, a series of pamphlets that argued for the acceptance of the new government. Madison penned the most famous of the pamphlets, Federalist No. 10, which made an incisive argument for the ability of a large federation to preserve individual rights.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 06:27:33 +0000
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