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MODULE/WEEK 4: THE STORY OF THE CONSTITUTION
Hello, my name is Carey Roberts, I am a Historian at Liberty University. I am standing here in
Orange, Virginia, in front of Montpelier, the home of James Madison. Madison is often
considered to be the father of the United States Constitution. I would like to take a moment to
determine whether or not that title is honorable, if it is accurate, or if Madison deserves some
other title to indicate his role in the founding of the United States.
First of all, it is important to understand that James Madison, along with Alexander Hamilton,
and Henry Knots, were close associates of Washington during the 1780’s. In his retirement of
commander in chief of the continental army, Washington organized an effort to not only change
the Articles of Confederation, but to replace them with a new national government and
constitution. Madison, at Washington’s request, drafted a new constitution for the country, and
when opportunity arose in the summer of 1787 at the Philadelphia Convention, Madison’s plan
went forward as the Virginia Plan.
The Virginia Delegation, which included Washington, Madison, George Mason, others, and
Virginia’s governor, Edmund Randolph, proposed a new constitution for the United States,
known as the Virginia plan. This draft, largely that of James Madison’s, called for a new
government where the national legislature would be elected by the people at large, then that
lower house of the legislature would elect an upper house. This bicameral legislature together
would elect a President of the United States, and a judiciary.
This was a bold step not only for Madison and the other Virginians, but also for the other
delegates at the Philadelphia Convention. Madison’s plan also included an important element,
which Madison championed throughout the summer of that convention. It included the ability for
that national legislature to exercise a negative on state legislation. I’ll mention why that is
important in just a few minutes. Because of Madison’s role in drafting the Virginia Plan, as well
as his championing the constitution, beginning in the fall of 1787, with the writing of a series of
newspaper articles, for New York’s papers entitled ‘The Federalists’ Madison is considered to be
the father of The Constitution. He also spoke quiet often at the convention, and took detailed
notes of the conventions proceedings.
But it is important to understand that Madison was not without his opposition. The Virginia Plan
was not uniformly accepted by delegates there. This is where the image of Madison being the
father of the Constitution begins to erode. Other delegates from states like New Jersey, New
England, even delegates from Virginia like George Mason, as well as delegates from southern
states, resisted Madison’s call for a stronger, centralized government. While they were concerned
that Madison’s plan would overturn the power of the states, they were also worried that
Madison’s plan would jeopardize the vital interest and diversity of the economy, of the country’s
religious development, diversity of its social development, that all of those things would be
jeopardized by a plan that consolidated power too much at the top. Those who resisted the plan,
rallied behind William Patterson of New Jersey to create The New Jersey Plan.
According to that plan of government, there would be an equality of states within the union, and
that the state governments themselves would have equal votes in the national legislature. When it
came time for delegates to decide between The Virginia or The New Jersey Plan, they decided to
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proceed forward with Madison’s Virginia Plan in June 1787. However, opposition did not cease.
As delegates continued to debate the kind of proposals that Madison and other Virginian’s put
forward, they began to realize that Madison’s plan would centralize power too much, so
gradually key aspects of The Virginia Plan were changed. When the delegates had reached a
stopping point, when they had reached a point when they could not agree on the role of the
states, and the role of the new national government, in the country as a whole proceedings ceased
as well.
Finally, a new committee was formed, and a comprised measure was brought forward. We call
this today, The Great Compromise. What it is based on is essentially the Constitution we have
today. There would be a bicameral Congress, where the lower house of that Congress was elected
by the people of the States. Each state receiving a certain number of congressional districts based
on their population. The white population would be counted in full, and the African American
population would be counted as three fifths. Most important in The Great Compromise was that
the States would have equal representation in the upper house of Congress, the United States
Senate. This was an important requirement for those who wished to reserve the diversity of
American life and make certain that the new national government would not have enough power
to affect those diverse interests. The States would be treated as equal. Another important element
of Madison’s plan was the legislative veto. Which is where the national government could,
pending a certain vote, overturn legislation in the States. Madison’s insistence on this shows that,
during the summer of 87, he was a staunch nationalist. But that position, was also defeated.
Madison lost on what he considered to be the most important thing that the new Constitution
needed.
This situation is what calls us to ponder whether Madison was in fact the true father of the
Constitution. It is also important for us to understand that those who resisted The Virginia Plan,
were trying to conserve the autonomy, and the customs of their unique area, localities, states,
towns, and villages. They were trying to protect those interests from a perceived threat from a
foreign centralized interest that might be created, should this new Constitution be adopted. Those
people successfully resisted Madison’s efforts. For this reason, the United States Constitution
created a federal government. It is based on the rule of law, that no member of that government,
no politician, and the government itself, would not be supreme in the sense that it could overturn
or not follow its own laws. Even the President of The United States would not be above the law.
That Constitution is also based on separation of powers. That no one branch of this government
would be all powerful. That no one branch would be able to constantly, or consistently overrule
the power of the other two branches. Finally, that document is based on federalism, an insistence
that American society was diverse, that there would be no single institution, no single person, no
single religious institution, no single community that would be more important than all of the
rest.
It is for that reason that we can argue that the Constitution was produced by America, rather than
the Constitution producing America. In that regard for James Madison, whether he was father of
the Constitution or not, stood as a great American first, as a Virginian, as someone who stood for
and helped create a federal government.
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In the fall of 87 and into 88 James Madison worked tirelessly to seek the Constitution’s
ratification. He worked in the state of New York to make sure of the New York ratifying
convention, which supported ratifying the Constitution. He wrote a series of newspaper articles
under the pseudonym Federalist, which he shared with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton.
Madison’s articles in the Federalists emphasized the decentralized nature of the government, and
the need for a decentralized government and decentralized society like the United States.
Madison wrote in Federalist 10, “Factions were to liberty, what air is to fire” meaning that if we
don’t somehow maintain these different factions and differences in our society, we would lose
our liberty. Madison went on to be in the United States Congress. He served as the first real
majority leader, it is here where Madison is most responsible for the Bill of Rights. Madison
quickly realized that some of his nationalist friends were wanting to go too far with the new
Constitution. He realized while though he previously hesitated the support of a Bill of Rights,
that one was desperately needed. So Madison proposed 12 Amendments. Eleven of which were
passed by the States over the course of the next 200 years, ten of which were passed over the
next two years. It is Madison, perhaps over any other figure that should be called the father of the
Bill of Rights. It is according to that Bill of Rights that the national government would be strictly
limited to specific things, and that the states would be free to pursue those matters and issues in
politics which were best suited to their localities and the people who live within those States.
James Madison was a decentralist. He always feared concentrations of power, and was willing to
champion whichever side of political issues that were most threatened by those concentrations of
power. For that reason alone, James Madison should be considered one of the forbearers of the
United States, and one of the most important men of his generation.
MODULE/WEEK 4: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IN AMERICA
Hello! We are here today on this beautiful sunny day at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, his
retreat for his retirement years. I’m Dr. Christopher Smith, and today we are going to be talking
about something very important concerning Jefferson. That is the reaction of the United States to
the French Revolution, which became a central issue in both Jefferson’s tenure as Secretary of
State and later when he was President of the United States.
In 1789, after years of turmoil, bankruptcy, social upheaval and so forth, France exploded in
revolution in July of that year. Within four years, King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie
Antoinette, had been deposed and executed. More importantly for the United States, France
found itself at war with practically every country in Europe, especially with its old archrival,
Great Britain. The Franco-British rivalry was renewed with evermore intensity. And both sides
were fighting each other on land and sea.
In the middle of this conflict was the infant United States in a very fragile position as George
Washington was continuing his presidency. Now, American opinion was quite divided over the
French Revolution. The Federalist faction, or party as we would now call it, was very much
opposed to the French Revolution and especially its excesses regarding the Reign of Terror and
social upheaval and so forth. Also, the Federalists were more focused on cultivating good trade
and political relationships with Great Britain. Now, the Jeffersonian Republicans, while they did
not approve of the excesses of the French Revolution, generally agreed with its broader aim of
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ending monarchy and establishing a republic. Thomas Jefferson was minister to France in 1789
when the Bastille was stormed in July of that year, and it was in this context that he made his
comments about a little revolution being a good thing and that the tree of liberty needed to be
watered by the blood of tyrants and patriots, and remarks of that nature. However, as the French
Revolutionary wars dragged throughout the 1790s, the issues regarding the French Revolution
came closer to home for the United States.
In April of 1793, the French republic dispatched Edmond Genêt or Citizen Genêt, as he was
called. The French Revolutionaries referred to each other as “citizen.” Genêt came to the United
States as the ambassador of the French republic. Specifically, he wanted to get the United States
to assist France in its war with Britain and its allies. Genêt was referring back to the treaty of
1778, in February of that year, when the French entered the war of the American Revolution and
thus did quite a bit to help the United States win its independence. Genêt, as you might expect,
expected the Americans to return the favor; however, President Washington was determined to
keep the United States out of this very destructive conflict. From his perspective, certainly one of
the worst things that could have happened to the young and fragile republic was to be sucked
into what was, for all intents and purposes, a world war. So, Washington, when hostilities had
commenced earlier, he had issued a proclamation of neutrality, and he reaffirmed that with
Genêt, stating that the treaty of 1778 had been made with King Louis XVI, who of course had
long since departed the scene. And there was no similar understanding between the government
of the United States and the government of the French Republic. Genêt took this very, very
personally. He was quite insulted by this. So, what he did was he went around the country trying
to surreptitiously raise support for France. Raising money, trying to hire privateers, even trying
to outfit an expedition against Spanish-Florida. Spain and France were at war at the time. Also,
Genêt tried to insight the republican newspapers to attack the federalists and President
Washington. There was already a newspaper war going on between the federalists and republican
factions, and Genêt entered the lists, so to speak.
Well, things came to a head later in 1793 when Philip Freneau’s National Gazette, the primary
mouthpiece of the Republican Party, penned a scathing news article called, “The Death of
George Washington,” which was a very personal attack on the hero of the revolution, first in war,
first in peace, father of this country, so on and so forth. This was really beyond the bounds of the
accepted political discourse of the period, and this boomeranged very badly on both Genêt and
Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, as Secretary of State, had continued to support the broader goals of
the French Revolution while condemning its excesses. But of course, he was associated with the
republican faction. He was its unofficial leader and the newspaper war that had been ongoing.
While Jefferson probably had no direct involvement, he was associated with this. So, Thomas
Jefferson, by 1794, could no longer continue as secretary of state, and he was thus forced to
resign. He retired to Monticello and continued to lead the republican faction from behind the
scenes. Eventually, the wars of the French Revolution ended in 1802 with the signing of the
Treaty of Amiens, largely due to the efforts of the emergence on the scene of Napoleon
Bonaparte. The Corsican born French revolutionary general who seized control of the
government in 1779 hammered out a victory against Austria and forced Britain into a very
disadvantaged stage of peace. Everybody knew that this peace of Amiens was simply a truce.
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War broke out the following year. By December of 1804, Napoleon had made himself emperor of
France, thus seriously destabilizing the situation in Europe. The nations of Russia and Austria
joined Britain in a new coalition against France. By this time, Thomas Jefferson was president of
the United States. Following Washington’s precedent, he declared the United States to be neutral;
however, the United States would be sucked into the threat of war once again. As the British had
done in the earlier war, they did in this new conflict as they launched a naval blockade of its
enemy—France, cutting off all of its foreign trade and so forth. The United States maintained
neutrality. However, American merchants insisted on the right to trade with whichever nations
they wanted to trade with. This, of course, brought American merchant shipping into harm’s way.
They ran afoul of British warships. The British navy, acting under the orders and council passed
in January of 1807, began seizing American cargos, and sometimes ships. Worst of all for
Americans, they begin to impress or kidnap sailors off of American merchant ships. The British
royal navy had a high desertion rate. Many of those deserters often fled to American merchant
marine, where the conditions and pay were much better. British naval captains began not only
seizing American merchant ships but sailors as well.
This incensed American opinion; however, by 1807/1808 as the Jefferson presidency was
coming to an end, there was very little Jefferson could do about it. When he first became
president, as part of his policies of cutting the size of the government and cutting the budget and
so forth, he had drastically reduced the size of both the army and the navy. The navy had been
virtually mothballed or sold off to pay for costs and so forth. So, there was very little the
Jefferson administration could do militarily or on the high seas against the British.
So, Jefferson decided to retaliate to try to defend American rights through economic warfare of
his own. In December of 1807, Congress passed and Jefferson signed off on an embargo act,
which cut all trade with Britain, France, and all of the other European powers. Unfortunately for
Jefferson and the United States, this measure backfired very badly on the United States because
America was far more dependent on trade with Europe than Europe was dependent on American
trade. The United States economy slid into a very serious recession, especially in the coastal
areas. Charleston, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia—all of those were very reliant on
overseas trade, commerce, and other maritime activities. And as a result of the embargo, sailors
were laid off, as were dock workers, those merchants who primarily dealt in overseas business
lost quite a bit of capital and money. Some of them had to shut their doors. Thus, the recession
backfired very badly economically on the United States.
There was also a very serious fallout for Jefferson politically. Because federalists- dominated
New England flouted the embargo. They opposed Jefferson politically to begin with. Certainly
with New England economy based on maritime activity, they were not going to cut their throats
economically to support a political measure they did not support to begin with. At least, that was
the situation from their perspective. So, federalist New England flouted the law and continued to
trade with Great Britain. So, this is one of the reasons why during Jefferson’s second term, he
struggled with these issues. The Jefferson presidency definitely struggled through its second term
after major triumphs of the things like the Louisiana Purchase, the defeat of the barberry pirates
in 1804, and so forth.
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Obviously, the French Revolution and the resulting Napoleonic wars had a significant effect on
Jefferson both as Secretary of State and as President of the United States. When Jefferson left
office in March of 1809, handing over the reins to his successor, his Secretary of State, James
Madison, Madison inherited these various problems. Of course, they did not go away. By 1812,
the tensions between Britain and the United States were such that war broke out between the two
nations. That war lasted for two and a half years ending in a negotiated peace that was
punctuated by Andrew Jackson’s dramatic victory in the battle of New Orleans. Obviously, the
French Revolution and the resulting French revolutionary wars and the wars of Napoleon had a
significant effect on both the course and history of the United States and the presidency of
Thomas Jefferson. I thank you very much for your attention.
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