March 25, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the President of Hillsdale College, Dr. Larry Arnn, tells the story of our fourth president, James Madison.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to all American stories. And one of
our favorite things to tell stories about is American history,
as always brought to us by the great folks at
Hillsdale College, where you can go to learn all the
things that are beautiful in life and all the things
that matter in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale,
Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific
online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu. That's Hillsdale dot edu.
(00:34):
In seventeen fifty one, our fourth President of the United States,
James Madison, was born in Port Conway, Virginia. Besides being President,
Madison was one of the three writers of the Federalist
Papers and a strong supporter of the Constitutional Convention. Here
to tell the story is Hillsdale College's president, doctor Larryana.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Thing to know about James Madison is he was a
little short guy. You know, he's probably five foot four.
You know, Washington was a foot taller than he was.
We have a great painting done by the longtime chairman
of our art department, Sam Connect of the signing of
the Constitution.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
It's six feet tall and eight feet wide.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
It's very beautiful and it's got Madison in Washington standing
side by side, and Sam is very artful, so he
doesn't make it look ridiculous. But Madison is much shorter.
Madison is you know, he's a Virginia legislator. He becomes
(01:43):
close to Thomas Jefferson. Doing that, he gets his mind
around revolution pretty early. He didn't do much war service
in the Colonial Army for Virginia. He was a state
legislator through most of the war, and then he was in.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
The member of the Continental Congress.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
And the point about him was he's so I happened
to have a big soft spot for him, because I
just you know, he wrote this passage what is government
but the profoundest of all commentaries on human nature? If
men were angels, no government would be needed. If angels
were to govern men, either internal nor external controls on
(02:24):
the government would be necessary. Now that's a piece of
beautiful logic that is, by the way, undeniable, and it
justifies the Constitution of the United States in two sentences.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It's more than one could say.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
To say that he was more important than Alexander Hamilton.
It's hard to think anybody was, but he probably was
because he and Jefferson invented the party that you know,
ruled the country, you know, until Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Pretty much the Whigs opposed.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Them, but they were really like them for the most part.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And you know, here's the service he performed.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
He was Thomas Jefferson's best friend in every sense of
that word. He was very good for Thomas Jefferson. Thomas
Jefferson was a theoretic politician a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know, he's principles.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You know, he was big on principles, and he could
state them flowingly. And so when the Constitutional Convention is meeting,
Jefferson writes a long letter of many long letter to Madison.
The main thing he did for Madison that time was
Madison said, send me books about constitutions, and he sent
him two hundred. Madison already read most of them, but
(03:44):
he read them all. He's a very determined individual. So
Jefferson writes Madison a long letter, and the letter is
the famous the earth belongs to the living letter. And
what he says is that every law, including a constitution,
and every private contract, deeds and everything, they should sunset
(04:08):
every thirty three years and we should start over. This
is his advice about how to write the constitution of
the United States to James Madison, and it's a perfect
microcosm of their relationship because once in a while Jefferson
would be a little wild and Madison writes it back,
and he says, yes, yes, those are brilliant points.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Take them very seriously.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
It is the fact that the particular purpose of a
constitution is to prejudice the next generation so they don't
have to start up. And Jefferson writes back, yeah, yeah,
I get it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
You know, he was like that.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And then with Jefferson, he created a political party that
was good for our country for a long time and
replaced the Federalist Party while serving its same aims. And
that's the kind of decent see in moderation.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
And you know, first of all, he.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Wasn't a wildly successful president. They burned the White House
while he was its occupant. The British did in the
War of eighteen twelve, and that was, you know, a
little embarrassing. And he did send a force up to
Canada with the word, you know, to take Canada. We're
gonna we're gonna go take Canada from the bridge. We
(05:23):
won't do it for a long time, and he said
it's only a matter of marching up there. So it's
you know, well it may have been, but it was
proved that they couldn't get there.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
They never found their way there. They just floundered around. Right.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
So he wasn't the greatest president. That would probably be
Lincoln and Washington. But he was a lawgiver, that's what
he was. He was like the great classical lawgiver. He
and you know, he wasn't alone in doing this, by
the way. He and Hamilton had a whole scheme, you know.
(06:01):
And he and Hamilton, by the way, would be party
opponents after seventeen ninety six when Washington retired, and they
were already picking each other a lot. When he was
Secretary of State under Washington, Thomas Jefferson paid a scurless
man named James Callender, who was a journalist, to write
(06:23):
dirty articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer about Alexander Hamilton, and
he used public money to do it. You know, America
has its partisan episodes like today, but you have to
think of Madison as possessed of the deepest understanding that
I know of the reasons for and the workings of
(06:45):
the Constitution, and it's most intelligent preserver through his careers.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Oh one more thing.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Madison, like the rest of the founders, feared the institution
of slavery and thought that a way had to be
found to get rid of it. And that's just almost
all of them thought that right, and they did get
rid of it very far.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
They got sixty percent of the Union.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And the most dramatic example is that the Northwest Territory
where I live, five states of the Upper Midwest. That's
our first expansion, and it's actually the first time a
free government ever grew.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
You got bigger, right, And it's a.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Different model because the Northwest Ordinance provides that when you
get a certain population, you can elect the state government.
When you get a certain larger population, you can petition
the Congress to be an.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Equal state with the rest.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
That law was passed by the Confederation Congress in seventeen
eighty seven, the same year as the Constitution. But it
also contains a provision that in this Northwest Territory there can.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Never be slavery.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
And that land came to the Union as a gift
from the state of Virginia. And it was Thomas Jefferson,
more than anybody else who will organized that gift and
organized that stipulation that to never be any slavery there.
So Madison, it turns out, lives a long time. He
lives till eighteen thirty six, if I remember right. But
you know in eighteen thirty two, with the Missouri Compromise
(08:17):
in eighteen twenty, that's a sign that slavery is becoming
a serious issue. And what made it a serious issue
is the opinion led by John C. Calhoun that slavery
was a positive good. That claim amounts to a complete
departure from the dictators of the decoraries of Independence.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And that's deliberate because Calhoun at Yale.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Was connected to students of a man named Francis Lieber,
who was a Hegelian and known to hegel And this
new doctrine of history that human beings and human societies
evolve was taken by Calhoun to justify slavery.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
And so.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
They get in when Andy Jackson was president in eighteen
thirty two, they get into a fight about the tariff
of eighteen thirty two, and the tariff was outrageous, and
the reason it was outrageous was the Southern delegates who
didn't want the tariff sye because that's a attax on
imports of manufactured goods to support American industry. But that
(09:27):
would but you know, that's what they were importing. They
were selling their raw materials, their conton and stuff abroad.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
So they didn't want it.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
And so what they did was they conspired in the
Congress to inflate the tariff to a huge rate, and
they thought that would be sufficient to defeat it.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
But darn if it didn't pass. And so now Calhoun comes.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Up with the idea from South Carolina that a state
by itself can nullify a law. Qualification crisis. In other words,
we just vote that law is no good here. Now,
you know, you can read the Constitution, all forty five
hundred words of it.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
You can read it in thirty minutes. You can read
it over and over. You not to find that power
in there, And darn.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
If it wasn't James Madison still alive, who raised the
main contest against those points, and he explained the nature
the federal nature of the Union in the most elaborate
terms in his life when he was a very old man,
during and immediately after the nullification.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Crisis, and a special thanks to doctor Larry Arne. James
Madison's story, the lawgiver, the main driver behind our constitution.
Here on our American story.
And we returned to all American stories. And one of
our favorite things to tell stories about is American history,
as always brought to us by the great folks at
Hillsdale College, where you can go to learn all the
things that are beautiful in life and all the things
that matter in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale,
Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific
online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu. That's Hillsdale dot edu.
(00:34):
In seventeen fifty one, our fourth President of the United States,
James Madison, was born in Port Conway, Virginia. Besides being President,
Madison was one of the three writers of the Federalist
Papers and a strong supporter of the Constitutional Convention. Here
to tell the story is Hillsdale College's president, doctor Larryana.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Thing to know about James Madison is he was a
little short guy. You know, he's probably five foot four.
You know, Washington was a foot taller than he was.
We have a great painting done by the longtime chairman
of our art department, Sam Connect of the signing of
the Constitution.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
It's six feet tall and eight feet wide.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
It's very beautiful and it's got Madison in Washington standing
side by side, and Sam is very artful, so he
doesn't make it look ridiculous. But Madison is much shorter.
Madison is you know, he's a Virginia legislator. He becomes
(01:43):
close to Thomas Jefferson. Doing that, he gets his mind
around revolution pretty early. He didn't do much war service
in the Colonial Army for Virginia. He was a state
legislator through most of the war, and then he was in.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
The member of the Continental Congress.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
And the point about him was he's so I happened
to have a big soft spot for him, because I
just you know, he wrote this passage what is government
but the profoundest of all commentaries on human nature? If
men were angels, no government would be needed. If angels
were to govern men, either internal nor external controls on
(02:24):
the government would be necessary. Now that's a piece of
beautiful logic that is, by the way, undeniable, and it
justifies the Constitution of the United States in two sentences.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It's more than one could say.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
To say that he was more important than Alexander Hamilton.
It's hard to think anybody was, but he probably was
because he and Jefferson invented the party that you know,
ruled the country, you know, until Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Pretty much the Whigs opposed.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Them, but they were really like them for the most part.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
And you know, here's the service he performed.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
He was Thomas Jefferson's best friend in every sense of
that word. He was very good for Thomas Jefferson. Thomas
Jefferson was a theoretic politician a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know, he's principles.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
You know, he was big on principles, and he could
state them flowingly. And so when the Constitutional Convention is meeting,
Jefferson writes a long letter of many long letter to Madison.
The main thing he did for Madison that time was
Madison said, send me books about constitutions, and he sent
him two hundred. Madison already read most of them, but
(03:44):
he read them all. He's a very determined individual. So
Jefferson writes Madison a long letter, and the letter is
the famous the earth belongs to the living letter. And
what he says is that every law, including a constitution,
and every private contract, deeds and everything, they should sunset
(04:08):
every thirty three years and we should start over. This
is his advice about how to write the constitution of
the United States to James Madison, and it's a perfect
microcosm of their relationship because once in a while Jefferson
would be a little wild and Madison writes it back,
and he says, yes, yes, those are brilliant points.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Take them very seriously.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
It is the fact that the particular purpose of a
constitution is to prejudice the next generation so they don't
have to start up. And Jefferson writes back, yeah, yeah,
I get it.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
You know, he was like that.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And then with Jefferson, he created a political party that
was good for our country for a long time and
replaced the Federalist Party while serving its same aims. And
that's the kind of decent see in moderation.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
And you know, first of all, he.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Wasn't a wildly successful president. They burned the White House
while he was its occupant. The British did in the
War of eighteen twelve, and that was, you know, a
little embarrassing. And he did send a force up to
Canada with the word, you know, to take Canada. We're
gonna we're gonna go take Canada from the bridge. We
(05:23):
won't do it for a long time, and he said
it's only a matter of marching up there. So it's
you know, well it may have been, but it was
proved that they couldn't get there.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
They never found their way there. They just floundered around. Right.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
So he wasn't the greatest president. That would probably be
Lincoln and Washington. But he was a lawgiver, that's what
he was. He was like the great classical lawgiver. He
and you know, he wasn't alone in doing this, by
the way. He and Hamilton had a whole scheme, you know.
(06:01):
And he and Hamilton, by the way, would be party
opponents after seventeen ninety six when Washington retired, and they
were already picking each other a lot. When he was
Secretary of State under Washington, Thomas Jefferson paid a scurless
man named James Callender, who was a journalist, to write
(06:23):
dirty articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer about Alexander Hamilton, and
he used public money to do it. You know, America
has its partisan episodes like today, but you have to
think of Madison as possessed of the deepest understanding that
I know of the reasons for and the workings of
(06:45):
the Constitution, and it's most intelligent preserver through his careers.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Oh one more thing.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Madison, like the rest of the founders, feared the institution
of slavery and thought that a way had to be
found to get rid of it. And that's just almost
all of them thought that right, and they did get
rid of it very far.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
They got sixty percent of the Union.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
And the most dramatic example is that the Northwest Territory
where I live, five states of the Upper Midwest. That's
our first expansion, and it's actually the first time a
free government ever grew.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
You got bigger, right, And it's a.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Different model because the Northwest Ordinance provides that when you
get a certain population, you can elect the state government.
When you get a certain larger population, you can petition
the Congress to be an.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Equal state with the rest.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
That law was passed by the Confederation Congress in seventeen
eighty seven, the same year as the Constitution. But it
also contains a provision that in this Northwest Territory there can.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Never be slavery.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
And that land came to the Union as a gift
from the state of Virginia. And it was Thomas Jefferson,
more than anybody else who will organized that gift and
organized that stipulation that to never be any slavery there.
So Madison, it turns out, lives a long time. He
lives till eighteen thirty six, if I remember right. But
you know in eighteen thirty two, with the Missouri Compromise
(08:17):
in eighteen twenty, that's a sign that slavery is becoming
a serious issue. And what made it a serious issue
is the opinion led by John C. Calhoun that slavery
was a positive good. That claim amounts to a complete
departure from the dictators of the decoraries of Independence.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And that's deliberate because Calhoun at Yale.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Was connected to students of a man named Francis Lieber,
who was a Hegelian and known to hegel And this
new doctrine of history that human beings and human societies
evolve was taken by Calhoun to justify slavery.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
And so.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
They get in when Andy Jackson was president in eighteen
thirty two, they get into a fight about the tariff
of eighteen thirty two, and the tariff was outrageous, and
the reason it was outrageous was the Southern delegates who
didn't want the tariff sye because that's a attax on
imports of manufactured goods to support American industry. But that
(09:27):
would but you know, that's what they were importing. They
were selling their raw materials, their conton and stuff abroad.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
So they didn't want it.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
And so what they did was they conspired in the
Congress to inflate the tariff to a huge rate, and
they thought that would be sufficient to defeat it.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
But darn if it didn't pass. And so now Calhoun comes.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Up with the idea from South Carolina that a state
by itself can nullify a law. Qualification crisis. In other words,
we just vote that law is no good here. Now,
you know, you can read the Constitution, all forty five
hundred words of it.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
You can read it in thirty minutes. You can read
it over and over. You not to find that power
in there, And darn.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
If it wasn't James Madison still alive, who raised the
main contest against those points, and he explained the nature
the federal nature of the Union in the most elaborate
terms in his life when he was a very old man,
during and immediately after the nullification.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Crisis, and a special thanks to doctor Larry Arne. James
Madison's story, the lawgiver, the main driver behind our constitution.
Here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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