James Madison

On March 16, 1751, at Port Conway in the Colony of Virginia, James Madison was born into a planter family whose political reach centered on Orange County. He studied at the College of New Jersey, where intensive reading in history and moral philosophy shaped his interest in republics and confederacies. By the 1770s he was serving on Virginia's revolutionary committees and legislature.

Madison arrived at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 with the Virginia Plan and months of preparation that made him the most systematic constitutional thinker in the room. During ratification he joined Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in The Federalist and then led the First Congress in framing the amendments that became the Bill of Rights in 1791. His later partnership and rupture with Jefferson and Hamilton carried those constitutional arguments into party government.

Madison's architecture of separated powers and extended republic remains embedded in the daily operation of Congress, the presidency, and the federal courts. His work on the Bill of Rights also gave enduring constitutional form to the First Amendment and the rest of the opening ten amendments.