Following the surrender of Detroit, William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, was named as Hull’s replacement. Harrison consolidated his army at the Maumee Rapids and planned to move on Detroit in the spring. But in mid-January 1813, General James Winchester, one of Harrison’s officers, received word that Frenchtown, a small village thirty miles north on the River Raisin, was in danger of being attacked. Although Harrison had instructed Winchester not to advance beyond their base camp, Winchester felt compelled to respond. Winchester laid out his camp with Kentucky militiamen behind a split rail fence on the left but the regulars on the right were completely exposed with no cover to their front. Importantly, Winchester failed to send out scouts to keep an eye on the British. Undetected by the Americans, the British attacked at dawn on January 22.

President James Madison named William Hull, governor of the Michigan Territory, to command the western war effort in the War of 1812. Hull’s primary mission was to capture Fort Malden, the main British outpost in the region. Hull’s task was formidable for several reasons, but primarily because his supply line stretched for 200 trackless miles through hostile Indian country. Hull arrived at Detroit on July 5 and, one week later, crossed his army into Canada and moved south to capture Fort Malden. While waiting for his field guns to arrive to commence the assault, Hull received the disturbing news that Fort Mackinac had been captured by the British, meaning that several thousand Indians who had participated in that attack would soon be coming down from the north. On August 15, General Isaac Brock, governor of Ontario, appeared with 1,500 men on the opposite bank of the Detroit River and demanded Hull’s surrender.

In June of 1812, President James Madison asked Congress to declare war on Great Britain for refusing to honor American maritime rights. Madison’s hand was forced by the young firebrands who made up the Twelfth Congress. Support for the war was not unanimous, as New England, dominated by Federalists, strongly opposed the conflict. But to the Democratic-Republicans, Canada seemed an easy conquest, with Thomas Jefferson stating that “the acquisition of Canada…will be a mere matter of marching.” When the vote on Madison’s request was taken on June 18, 1812, it was the closest in our country’s history on a declaration of war. 

At the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British gained possession of all French lands in North America, including the Northwest Territory, which was then part of Canada. Unlike the French who allied themselves with the Indian nations, the British treated the natives as a conquered people and for the next fifty years there was continuous conflict between white settlers and Indians in this region. 

In February 1789, James Madison was elected to the House of Representatives for the first Congress under the Constitution. Besides leading the House, Madison helped shape the Washington administration, drafting President Washington’s inaugural address and recommending Alexander Hamilton for Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson for Secretary of State. But a break soon developed between the Madison-Jefferson faction, known as Democratic-Republicans, and Washington’s Federalist administration over Hamilton's plan for the national government to assume state debt incurred during the war.

In 1787, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton organized the Constitutional Convention not simply to fix flaws in the Articles of Confederation but rather to create a new vibrant national government under which the United States could flourish. The most critical issue to be resolved was how representation in Congress would be determined, for with more representatives came more power. Madison’s Virginia Plan comprised fifteen resolutions that became the basis for our constitution and called for representation according to population in both the House and the Senate. After the convention, Madison, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, drafted eighty-five essays known as The Federalist Papers, the greatest collection of writings ever on a federal constitutional government. No other Founding Father played such an outsized role in creating our nation’s Constitution.

In 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which effectively shut down the city of Boston and revoked the historic charter of Massachusetts, replacing it with royal authority. This affront to the liberties of American colonists greatly troubled Madison and pushed him into the camp of American separatists, and it was here that Madison found his true calling and to which he would devote the rest of his life. Madison was elected to the Confederation Congress, where his brilliant mind and extraordinary work ethic soon gained the young Virginian the admiration of his fellow congressmen and made him a leader in the national assembly.

James Madison was one of our nation’s most important founding fathers and played a critical role in the shaping United States. Known to history as the “Father of the Constitution,” Madison’s brilliant mind was among the finest the nation has ever produced and his grasp of the theories of republican government and his efforts to implement those theories were unparalleled.

It is important to understand the challenges faced by the Founders in creating our new federal system. As James Madison wrote, "the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”