LIFE AND TIMES OF JAMES MADISON. CHAPTER I. Connection of History and Biography-Birth and Family of Madison - Pioneers of Virginia - Education - Princeton College. Excitements produced by early Disputes between the Colonies and Mother Country-Dr. Witherspoon - Distinguished College Associates. ALTHOUGH the Life of a Statesman derives a large portion of its interest from the public events with which it is associated, yet it would be a narrow and mistaken view of the welfare of society, and of the philosophy of human affairs, which should limit our curiosity and inquiries to the mere exterior, and, as it were, professional, history of public men. The laws by which the Divine Ruler of the universe has decreed an indissoluble connection between public happiness and private virtue, whatever apparent exceptions may sometimes delude our short-sighted judgments, never fail in the end to vindicate their supremacy and immutability. The great interests of States, of Republics especially, are conducted by the instrumentality of numerous individual agents; and as these are virtuous, competent, and wise, or vicious, faithless, or incapable, the commonwealth prospers, or sooner or later falls into ruin and decay. The personal character and history, then, of public men, their moral principles, their intellectual qualities and attainments, the circumstances which have contributed to form and discipline them in either respect, become a most important branch of historical inquiry, and, by a natural and just relation, go hand in hand with the great public questions in which they have borne a distinguished part. Of the statesmen of America, few have had a more important agency in the great scenes of our national story, both foreign and domestic, than James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, and none, it is believed, so leading a part in the formation and establishment of the great constitutional compact of government and union which crowned the labors of our revolutionary fathers, and forms the vital bond of our present national existence. An attempt to trace his career, with reference both to its public results and the principles and influences which guided and controlled it, will, it is hoped, meet with an indulgence from the patriotic sympathies of the BIRTH AND FAMILY. 3 country, none the less on account of the extraordinary modesty of the illustrious actor, which ever prevented him from speaking of himself, or avowing his own just and indisputable claims. James Madison was born on the 16th day of March, 1751, at the house of his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Conway, on the northern bank of the Rappahannock river, in the county of King George, Virginia. The residence of his parents was in the county of Orange, fifty or sixty miles distant; but his birth took place during a visit of his mother to her ancestral home in the "Northern Neck" of Virginia -a designation which was originally,' and is still popularly, confined to the narrow peninsular region lying on tide-water between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, and hallowed as the birthplace of a long line of illustrious worthies, the Washingtons, the Lees, the Masons, the Monroes, the Jones', and others, whom it has given, from its fruitful bosom, to the service of the country. He was thus, from the moment and by the accident of his nativity, brought into close proximity and fellowship with many of those with whom he was destined to be afterwards associated in some of the most eventful passages of his future life and of the public history. His father, bearing the same name with himself, was a large landed proprietor, occupied 1 See Hening's Statutes at Large, vol. 1. p. 352, and vol. III. pp. 26 and 27. mainly with the care and management of his extensive rural concerns. A large landed estate in Virginia, consisting of distinct and sometimes distant plantations, with the general supervision of the agents and laborers employed on each, and the negotiations incident to the periodical sale of their produce and purchase of their supplies in remote markets, was a mimic commonwealth, with its foreign and domestic relations, and its regular administrative hierarchy. It called for the constant exercise of vigilance, activity, humanity, sound judgment, and wise economy; and was thus a school, both of virtue and intelligence, in which many of the patriots of that day were trained for public usefulness. It does not appear, however, that the father of Mr. Madison was ever engaged in political pursuits. He was a leading man in the affairs of his county, and held, during the period of the revolutionary war, the ancient traditional office of County Lieutenant, derived from the institutions of the mother country, the duties of which he performed with patriotic zeal and diligence. The name and family of Madison are coeval with the foundation of the Colony. The pious researches of kindred have ascertained that a patent was taken out for land "between the North and York rivers," on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, as early as 1653, by John Madison, who was the father of John, and he the father of Ambrose, the paternal grandfather of |