Word: madison
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Leaving the TV studio, Madison braced himself for the gauntlet of demonstrators and special pleaders. He strode quickly past the suffragists with their banner: THE RITES OF MAN ARE WRONGS FOR WOMEN. He shook off two business lobbyists, easily identifiable by their soft Venetian boots, who wanted the Constitution specifically to exempt the game of rounders from the interstate commerce clause. Shy, soft-spoken and constantly embarrassed by his own meager war record, Madison found a delegation of Revolutionary War veterans harder to ignore. Confronted with half a dozen strapping backwoodsmen with rum on their breath and Valley Forge...
Back at his boardinghouse, Madison slipped off his boots and scanned the papers. Most alarming was a headline in the Pennsylvania Gazette: VIRGINIA PLAN TO BE SCUTTLED AS SMALL STATES BALK. Madison recalled seeing George Washington in deep conversation with two reporters at Robert Morris' party last night. Was Garrulous George the "influential Virginian" who was "privately pressing for compromise"? Madison turned to the editorial page. There George Shrill, his favorite neoroyalist columnist, was quoting Thucydides in the original Greek to argue that the 13 states needed the firm hand of a minor German princeling as monarch to quell...
...Madison was reminded that his literary agent had come down from New York. Though he loathed the power lunch scene at Duke Zwilling's Tavern, Madison felt compelled to put on a good show. Speedy Lorenz had brought along a top editor from Rumpole House to discuss publication of Madison's proposed Essays on Federalism. The protocols of a proper business meal were followed scrupulously: aimless discussion of the New York theater season (all British imports), summer houses (expensive) and the servant problem (dire) until coffee was mercifully served. Only then did the editor, Michael Lordover, come to the point...
After that ego-deflating lunch, the tumult of the convention was a relief. As Madison took his front-row seat with the Virginia delegation, a page handed him a hastily scrawled note from Roger Sherman of Connecticut: "We need to talk." This could be the break in the deadlock that Madison was hoping for; Sherman was the last of the old-time New England bosses. But getting through the clogged aisles to the Connecticut delegation on the other side of Independence Hall was a nightmare. A live-TV crew dogged Madison's every step as Reporter Don Samuelson shouted questions...
...minutes and nine "no comments" later, Madison was literally closeted with Sherman in a custodial storage area behind the rostrum. At 66, the rugged, rough-hewn Sherman, who had never worn a wig in his life, was not a man to mince words. "James," he said, his foot resting on a slops bucket, "we can't write a Constitution in this bedlam. Hell, every time I belch, I discover I'm on live TV. Enough of this posturing and strutting, I'm going home to New Haven...