The Last of the Fathers: James Madison & The Republican Legacy [Paperback]

Drew R. McCoy (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521407729 | ISBN-13: 978-0521407724 | Publication Date: June 28, 1991

James Madison survived longer than any other member of the most remarkable generation of political leaders in American history. Born in the middle of the eighteenth century as a subject of King George II, the Father of the United States Constitution lived until 1836, when he died a citizen of Andrew Jackson's republic. For over forty years he played a pivotal role in the creation and defense of a new political order. He lived long enough to see even that Revolutionary world transformed, and the system of government he had nurtured threatened by the disruptive forces of a new era that would ultimately lead to civil war. In recounting the experience of Madison and several of his legatees who witnessed the violent test of whether his republic could endure, McCoy dramatizes the actual working out in human lives of critical cultural and political issues.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Even though James Madison disliked and publicly condemned slavery, this slave-owning president and Virginia planter does not get high marks from most modern historians for his stance on that issue; indeed, his support for extending slavery into the Western territories has led some critics to call him a pro-slavery expansionist. To Harvard historian McCoy, "the Sage of Montpelier" was a prisoner of his republican idealism, tragically tied to the conventions of his native soil. This apologetic, revisionist biographical study will stir up controversy among scholars. For the general reader, its focus on Madison's years of retirement (from 1817 until his death in 1836) gives us a prescient sage leery of the "nullifiers" who touted states' inherent right to secede from the union. The mature Madison was haunted by the specter of an industrializing society faced with the prospect of mass unemployment and a poor, propertyless class--problems that plague us today. Illustrations.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

McCoy's excellent and richly detailed work picks up where others leave off, at Madison's retirement in 1817. The focus is on Madison (1751-1836), the exponent of an 18th-century "republican faith" and his "persistent effort to comprehend--and influence--the fate of the Revolutionary vision as he encountered both its failures and the shocks of the new era."Included are Madison's reactions to the Missouri Compromise, the Marshall Court, tariff laws, and the Nullification Crisis of the early 1830s. Though sympathetic, McCoy does not shrink from dealing with Madison's shortcomings. This is especially the case on the issue of slavery, which is exceptionally well handled. Highly recommended for large public and academic libraries.
- Roy H. Tyron, South Carolina Dept. of Archives and History, Columbia
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June 28, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521407729
• ISBN-13: 978-0521407724
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #583,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An examination of the Constitution's historical role, December 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book for those who wish to understand Madison's view of the purpose of the Constitution and his perception of how it should be used by posterity. Madison insisted that anyone who was responsible for making laws should have a full understanding of the Constitution's content. McCoy, in a straightforward and clear writing style, clearly presents Madison's perspective and his dilemmas'--the issues of a republic vs a democracy and an ideal of the natural rights of man vs the existence of slavery. McCoy examines the philosophical background from which Madison's beliefs evolved as well as how his ideas contrasted with his contemporaries. He also documents in great detail the 'students' of Madison and how they interpreted his legacy. But his discussion of Madison as slaveowner and believer in the natural right of man to liberty and the hardening attitude of the South during his lifetime makes this book excellent.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Last of the Fathers, January 31, 2002

By 

Joe Zika "Khemprof" (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Last of the Fathers: James Madison & The Republican Legacy (Paperback)

When reading the book you get the feeling that James Madison was thinking of how to preserve the actions and thoughts of the new republic founders. Madison lived longer than most of the founding fathers and saw the transition and change of the U.S. government.

The Father of the Constitution out lived both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by 10 years and saw the new government he had worked hard to preserve, now threatened. Slavery was only one of his worries...Madison sought to stabilize a fragile system of politics that threatened to crack the national unity.

Madison was a shy man, but when the time arose he was a most ardent supporter of the republican faith. People asked Madison on how to fashion their government... he inturn would espouse the need for the study of history. The history of the founding and the ideals that sprung forth to birth a great nation.

This approach moved him away from the mainstream of public attention, all along wanting the public attention to focus on the nation as a whole.

This book is a good study into Madison the man, from his early days as a young Revolutionary to his last years caught in the moral dilemma of abolitionism and proslavery arguments. Later in our history we shall see Madison's thoughts come to life.

We read a lot of Madison's letters on these subjects and others, thereby giving us a good look into Madison the man... character and temperament struggling to resolve these issues.

If one is into reading about the Founding Fathers and their times, thoughts and tribulations; this is a good book to read. I found this book to be interesting with good flowing narative, well documented and useful.

Read it and enjoy... I did

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Madison, his followers, the constitution, nullification and slavery., August 6, 2006

By 

greg taylor (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (Hardcover)

This book seems to me to have two main purposes. The first is to present Madison's ideas about constitutional interpretation. The second is to show how Madison applied those ideas to the related issues of nullification and slavery. In order to serve these purposes McCoy choose to focus on the final and private portion of Madison's life and on the subsequent careers of three proteges of Madison's: Nicholas P. Trist, William Cabell Rives and Edward Coles.
The result is an altogether magnificent accomplishment-extremely well written, deeply researched and ultimately quite convincing.
There are many reasons why issues of constitutional interpretation came to the fore after Madison retired from public life. Madison, in his last major act as President vetoed an internal improvements bill on constitutional grounds (pp. 92-95). In the following years, there were many debates about the constitutionality of the Bank of the U.S., Georgia's policies toward the Cherokees, the tariff and the idea of nullification.
Certain principles of Madison's approach emerge from McCoy's exposition of this history.
The Constitution had been ratified by the people of the several states in state conventions. Thus the national government had the same origins and authority as the state constitutions. The people of the several states by that ratification had delegated to the Federal Government certain specified areas of sovereignity. Within those limited areas the national government was supreme(p.135-6). The Supreme Court is the proper
authority for determining the dividing line between the authority of the states and the federal government (p.70 and see Federalist 39).
Madison throughout his life was a strict constructionist or a textualist. He had been so during his early 1780's stint in the Continental Congress and was still so in the 1830s. He strongly disapproved of loose construction of the general welfare clause (pp.77-8). He felt the same way in re the necessary and proper clause. Madison felt that the Marshall Court had opened a Pandora's box with its reasoning in McCulloch vs. Maryland (pp99-102).
He was equally faithful to the idea of majority rule when it came to interpretation. He thought that if measures "reflecting a particular understanding of the Constitution were uniformly sustained by successive legislatures, and their constitutionality openly debated and acceded to, especially by other divisions and levels of government, such legislation constituted binding precedent" (p.80). The question, of course, is what length of time was required. McCoy sees this tendency as part of Madison's desire for stability (p.128) as well as for majority rule.
On the other hand, Madison was always alert to the dangers of majorities being uncontrolled. He felt that "perhaps the greatest danger" to strict interpretation of the Constitution was the "the usefullness and popularity of measures". Measures that were popular and useful were inevitably seen as constitutional by politicians (p.102).
A state does not have the right to "act within its borders against federal laws that it judged unconstitutional"(p.145). This is the way he saw it at the end of his life and that is the way he claimed he wrote it in the Virginia Resolution of 1798 and the Report of 1800. These papers had only attempted to rally and organize public opinion. Madison felt that they had been successful in light of the results of the 1800 election.
It should be clear how different Madison's theory is from that of Calhoun. Calhoun fully espoused the compact theory of the Constitution. This theory sees the Constitution as being the creation of the States. The individual states retain their full sovereignity within their borders and within their respective governmental areas. South Carolina regarded the tariffs as both unconstitutional and vicious. They saw themselves and the South as a whole bearing the majority burdern of the expense of running the federal government while being a minority of the population.
Calhoun's solution was nullification. It works like this:
1. A state nullifies a federal law as unconstitutional.
2. ¼ of the other states support it thus forcing the federal government to
3. Seek a constitutional amendment approving of the disputed authority and
4. If ¾ of the states approve the amendment, that authority belongs to the federal
government but
5. The dissenting states can either acquiesce to that decision or secede.
To Madison, this was a madness ignorant of history. He felt it would return us to the state of the nation circa the 1780s when the power and willfulness of the states had all but destroyed the Union (pp.132-3). He also reminded Calhoun that that same history had taught majority abuses within a state were often as tyrannical and abusive as majority abuses within the nation (p.138). Ironically enough the nullifiers with South Carolina imposed a test oath on all government officials (except the legislature) within the state and determined that anyone who refused the oath would lose their office.
McCoy's delineation of Madison's position on the Missouri Compromise, the Bank Bill, the nullification controvery, the tariff, internal improvements and so on are exemplery. He is lucid and very readable.
However, on the issue of slavery, Madison's thinking was much more muddled. He was not comfortable with the issue and never really resolved it in his mind. He was a proponent of the voluntary exportation of freed slaves back to Africa even though few had any desire to go back to someplace they had never known (the vast majority of the slaves at this period had been born in the US). As for his own slaves, it appears he was more concerned about the financial security of Dolly Madison then their freedom. In fairness to Madison, it should be noted that many of his slaves were elderly at the time of his death and freeing them might actually have been a worse fate (and what does that statement say about our country?)
McCoy traces out the slavery issue through the careers of Madison three disciples. Coles, who became one of the early governors of Illinois, actually freed his slaves when he left Virginia (although he too was for the exportation scheme). Rives was perhaps the most Madisonian of the disciples. After actually voting for Jackson's Force Bill as a Virginia senator he was exposed to all sorts of verbal and even physical abuse (p.337). Rives was to live until the late 1860s. His life and thinking are the subject of McCoy's final chapter. This is arguably the richest part of this book although it defies (for me) easy exposition.
McCoy brings out much of the tensions that existed toward slavery in Madison's variant of republicanism. It was never admitted but in many ways the slaves served as the underclass that was needed to do the lowest tasks of society. They were also easy to justify excluding from the governance of the "democratic republic" (p.349-350). Madison never ceased to deny this. In this sense (alone), Calhoun was more honest.
I know I have gone on too long but this is a very rich book. To be honest, I wish McCoy would consider expanding it into a multi-volume biography of Madison. We need a new standard biography that reflects the scholarly endeavors of recent decades.
But for anyone who wants to understand the rich complex imperfect thought of the greatest theoretical politician America has ever produced, this book is a necessary read.