JAMES MADISON: A BIOGRAPHY
by Ralph Ketcham
ISBN 978-0-945707-33-2 $37.50
753 pages plus illustrations
Drawing upon the immense amount of original source material
that has become available during the past thirty years, Ralph Ketcham has
written a historical work of major importance - a complete, thoroughly researched,
and enlightening study of the life of the father of the Constitution and
fourth President of the United States. "From a scantily known major figure
in American history, Madison has become one about whom information is now
almost oppressively abundant," says Professor Ketcham. "Furthermore, he
lived eighty-five years and played a part in virtually every major public
event from the Stamp Act protests to the nullification crisis... Nonetheless,
I have tried to use the new resources and at the same time present Madison's
long and full life within the covers of one volume."
Following Madison's life chronologically, Professor Ketcham covers his
Virginia background and vast network of relatives; his boyhood, early education
and years at the College of New Jersey at Princeton in which his studious
labors nearly destroyed his health; his role as a youthful Virginia revolutionist;
his part in the Continental Congress and his emergence as a national leader;
his large role in the forming of the Constitution and its ratification; his
assistance to the Washington administration; his marriage to the widowed
Dolley Payne Todd who "looked a queen" and displayed such manners as "would
disarm envy itself"; his service as Secretary of State under his intimate
friend Thomas Jefferson; his eight turbulent years as President and the War
of 1812; his twenty busy years of retirement and his death in 1836, which,
as John Quincy Adams pointed out, removed the last of the nation builders
who had drafted and signed the great founding documents of the Union.
Throughout this biography James Madison emerges as a man of foresight,
profundity, and integrity, whose thinking and actions clearly shaped the
course of American history. Says Professor Ketcham, "Madison's life reveals
that he cherished the Union because only the cooperative power it released
could bring the social justice necessary to fulfill the legal and moral equality
of man. He furthermore cherished liberty because only it could open to
man the opportunities due his limitless potential. His life has meaning,
therefore, as long as these equations themselves are cherished and as long
as men conceive government as legitimate only in pursuit of these ends."
