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8 books match the query 'Madison, James'

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Filibusters and Expansionists

Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800-1821

Frank L. Owsley

University of Alabama Press, 2004

Uncover the untold story of America’s 19th-century adventurers and their quest for empire.

The first two decades of the 19th century found many Americans eager to move away from the crowded eastern seaboard and into new areas where their goals of landownership might be realized. Such movement was encouraged by Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe—collectively known as the Jeffersonians—who believed that the country's destiny was to have total control over the entire North American continent. Migration patterns during this time changed the country considerably and included the roots of the slavery controversy that ultimately led to the Civil War. By the end of the period, although expansionists had not succeeded in moving into British Canada, they had obtained command of large areas from the Spanish South and Southwest, including acreage previously controlled by Native Americans.

Utilizing memoirs, diaries, biographies, newspapers, and vast amounts of both foreign and domestic correspondence, Frank Lawrence Owsley Jr. and Gene A. Smith reveal an insider’s view of the filibusters and expansionists, the colorful—if not sometimes nefarious—characters on the front line of the United States’s land grab. Owsley and Smith describe in detail the actions and characters involving both the successful and the unsuccessful efforts to expand the United States during this period—as well as the outspoken opposition to expansion, found primarily among the Federalists in the Northeast.

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James Madison

Liberty's Advocate

John P. Kaminski

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018

A Word Portrait of an American Founder.

America has had few political thinkers who have rivalled James Madison. The son of a wealthy planter, Madison was an unhealthy child and was beset by physical infirmities throughout his long life, and grew into a cerebral man. Madison left Virginia to attend the College of New Jersey, but returned to his native state after completing his studies. Though he aspired to be a college professor, Madison instead went into public service and became one of the most influential, guiding voices of the Founding Era. Madison’s Virginia Plan would be used as a blueprint for the Constitutional Convention, where the Articles of Confederation would be replaced with a new Constitution that bore traces of Madison’s influence throughout.

Editor John Kaminski has gathered a remarkable collection of quotations by and about James Madison for the third installment of his Word Portraits of America’s Founders series. Through these words by and about Madison, we learn more about one of the country’s most influential Founding Fathers, who held a lifelong commitment to liberty and opposed oppression.

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James Madison

Philosopher, Founder, and Statesman

John R. Vile

Ohio University Press, 2008

James Madison: Philosopher, Founder, and Statesman presents fresh scholarship on the nation’s fourth president, who is often called both the father of the U.S. Constitution and the father of the Bill of Rights. These essays by historians and political scientists from the United States and abroad focus on six distinct aspects of Madison’s life and work: his personality and development as a statesman; his work at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and contributions to larger constitutional design; his advocacy for the adoption of the Bill of Rights; his controversial role as a party leader; his presidency; and his life after leaving office.

James Madison continues to be regarded as one of America’s great political theorists, a man who devoted his life to, and who found fulfillment in, public service. His philosophical contributions remain vital to any understanding of the modern American polity. This book will be of great interest to political scientists and theorists, as well as to historians of early American history and politics.

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James Madison

The Founding Father

Robert Allen Rutland

University of Missouri Press, 1997

Available for the first time in paperback, James Madison: The Founding Father is a lively portrait of the man who essentially fathered our constitutional guarantees of civil and religious liberty. Focusing on the role Madison played at the Continental Congress and in each stage of the formation of the American Republic, Robert Allen Rutland also covers Madison's relationship with his beloved wife, Dolley, his fifty-year friendship with Thomas Jefferson, and his years as a respected elder statesman after serving as secretary of state and fourth president of the United States.

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Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787

James Madison

Ohio University Press, 1987

James Madison’s record of the Constitutional Convention traces day by day the debates held from May to September 1787 and presents the only complete picture we have of the strategy, interests, and ideas of the Founders at the convention itself.

In this indispensable primary document, Madison not only provides detailed insights into one of the great events of US history, but clearly sets forth his own position on such issues as the balance of powers, the separation of functions, and the general role of the federal government. More than in Federalist, which shows the carefully formalized conclusions of his political thought, we see in Debates his philosophy in action, evolving in daily tension with the viewpoints of the other delegates. It is for this reason that Debates is invaluable for placing in perspective the incomplete records of such well-known figures as Rufus King and Alexander Hamilton, and the constitutional plans of such men as Edmund Randolph and Charles Pinckney.

Madison’s contemporaries regarded him as the chief statesmen at the Philadelphia convention; in addition to this, his record outranks in importance all the other writings of the founders of the American republic. He is thus identified, as no other man is, with the making of the Constitution and the correct interpretation of the intentions of its drafters.

New to this edition of Debates is a thorough, scholarly index of some two thousand entries.

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