Word: madison
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...trying to define, not always with impartial clarity, the document's conception and meaning. But for an authentic and authoritative version of what the Constitution is about and how it got that way, it is hard to beat two of the original works written on the subject: James Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 and The Federalist, by Alexander Hamilton, Madison and John Jay. Both are currently in print and widely available in paperback editions. Separately and together they tell the intertwined story of Constitution and framers with the clear voice of the times...
...pieces appeared at the rate of two to four a week. Hamilton, who hatched the idea, dashed off "Federalist No. 1" in October 1787 aboard a sloop on the Hudson and cranked out the 85th and last in May 1788, after Jay had fallen too sick to write and Madison had decamped for Virginia to fight the ratifying battle there. "Whilst the printer was putting into type parts of a number," Madison recalled, "the following parts were under...
...Taken in bulk, The Federalist can be heavy going for the lay reader, with its sometimes intricate marshaling of closely reasoned arguments. Madison rated it "admissible as a School book if any will be that goes so much into detail." But the brilliance of the best individual essays remains undiminished. Madison's own masterly "Federalist No. 10," for example, took issue with the received wisdom of his day that the Government would be threatened by the mutually hostile factions with which a sprawling America appeared dangerously overloaded. By their very number and variety, Madison argued, the factions would support...
...delight in noting that Jefferson allowed the Bible and a hymnal to be used to teach reading when he headed the District of Columbia school board, and that he signed a treaty in which the U.S. Government paid a Catholic missionary's salary and built churches for Indians. James Madison, who drafted the religion clauses of the Bill of Rights, issued prayer proclamations when he was President and sat on the committee that recommended chaplains for Congress. More recently, a meditation room was provided for Congress...
...right," he quoted John Dryden; Pope used precisely the same line in "An Essay on Man." Washington, whose presence hovered over the Constitutional Convention like a muse, also advocated moderation: "We ((Americans)) are apt to run from one extreme to another," he wrote John Jay in 1786. As for Madison, the Constitution's principal and most elegant-minded architect, his views were straight Enlightenment dogma. "Why has government been instituted at all?" he asked. "Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint." Again: "If men were angels, no government would...