James Madison
America's First Politician
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
An intellectual biography of James Madison, arguing that he invented American politics as we know it
How do you solve a problem like James Madison? The fourth president is one of the most confounding figures in early American history; his political trajectory seems almost intentionally inconsistent. He was both for and against a strong federal government. He wrote about the dangers of political parties in the Federalist Papers and then helped to found the Republican Party just a few years later. This so-called Madison problem has occupied scholars for ages.
As Jay Cost shows in this incisive new biography, the underlying logic of Madison’s seemingly mixed record comes into focus only when we understand him primarily as a working politician. Whereas other founders split their time between politics and other vocations, Madison dedicated himself singularly to the work of politics and ultimately developed it into a distinctly American idiom. He was, in short, the first American politician.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cost (The Price of Greatness), a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, takes an in-depth look at James Madison's political theories. Cost sheds light on Madison's education at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) under Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon; writings such as the 1785 essay "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments," which called for the "complete disestablishment of the Church of Virginia and unconditional toleration of all sects"; and his push for a "massive increase in federal power" at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Elected to Congress in 1789, Madison advocated for the Bill of Rights, helped create the Republican Party (later known as the Democrat-Republican Party), and opposed Alexander Hamilton's plan for the Bank of the United States. Detailing Madison's handling of the War of 1812 as president and his rebuttal of claims that states had the power to annul federal laws during the 1832 Nullification Crisis, Cost contends that Madison viewed republican politics as the answer to the essential problems of government. Though he treads familiar ground and occasionally overstuffs the account, Cost effectively reconciles Madison's well-documented contradictions under the banner of his commitment to "fair play" and "the search for common ground among factions." The result is a solid intellectual biography of one of America's most consequential founders.
