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.

When the Democratic-Republicans came to power in 1800, the Jefferson administration effectively shut down and disbanded both the United States Army and Navy. As a result, when American merchant ships were illegally seized as contraband of war by both the British and the French during the Napoleonic wars, the United States was helpless to respond. Consequently, President Jefferson, who was philosophically opposed to war, decided to strike back economically rather than militarily.

In June 1807, several British sailors deserted from Royal Navy ships stationed near Norfolk, Virginia, and signed on with the USS Chesapeake, a 50-gun frigate commanded by Captain James Barron that was preparing to sail to the Mediterranean. Admiral George Berkeley, who commanded the British fleet in North American waters, was frustrated at the repeated desertions and sent word via the British frigate Leopard, commanded by Captain Salusbury Humphreys, to the British squadron to detain and search the Chesapeake for deserters. On the morning of June 22, Captain Humphreys had a message delivered declaring that there were deserters on board the Chesapeake and requesting permission to inspect the crew. Captain Barron denied the request, and the Leopard then fired two warning shots across the bow of the Chesapeake. Two minutes later, the Leopard poured a full broadside of solid shot and canister at point blank range into the helpless American frigate.

The War of 1812 has been called the “second American Revolution,” but the facts do not fully support that assertion. It is true that in both cases America’s enemy was Great Britain and the main catalyst that took us to war was American anger resulting from British transgressions, but the road to this second fight between these two countries was largely an unintended consequence of the almost continuous war that raged from 1793 to 1815 between England and France.