>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] >> Good afternoon, everyone. And thanks for coming to our Books and Beyond event today. I'm Guy Lamolinara, and I work here at the Library in the Center for the Book. And for those of you who don't know a lot about us, we're a small division of the Library. And our mission is to promote books, reading, libraries, and literacy. And we do this through the Center here in Washington, and also through the 52 State Centers for the Book that we have. We have one in every state, one in D.C., and one also in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And the Center for the Book also has two other smaller divisions. We have the Poetry and Literature Center, and the Young Readers Center. Both of those are in the Jefferson Building. Additionally, we administer what we call the Library of Congress Literacy Awards. And those-- this is the third year we'll be giving those out. And we'll be announcing the winners of those this fall. The deadline for that just closed in March of this year. We also have a partnership with about eighty like-minded literacy organizations. And we work with them, partner with them on various projects for promoting literacy and books. One of the other major things that we do is, we have an important role in the National Book Festival. Which this year will be September 5th again at the Washington Convention Center. And if you've never been to the Festival, I really urge you to come. It was actually more comfortable being at the Convention Center, we thought, than on the Mall. So it really is a good place for the book festival. And we have lots of wonderful authors coming this year. And if you go to our website at www.loc.gov/bookfest, you can see the lineup of authors for this year. Before we get started, I just ask that you please turn off all your electronic devices. And I need to tell you that we're recording today's event. So if you ask a question, you'll become a part of our webcast. Those webcasts, by the way, we have more than 200 of them available from authors who have spoken here in the past. And if you go to our website at www.read.gov, you can find an author on virtually any topic you're interested in-- fiction, nonfiction, biography, etcetera. Today's book will be for sale at the entrance to this room after the talk. And the author will also be signing his book. And this will be available at a 20% discount. So I urge you to pick one up today. We're often asked how we determine who gets to be in our books and be on program. And really our major criterion is that some research was done at the Library of Congress. And obviously Madison's Gift was researched in part at the Library of Congress. And we're in the building, of course, named after him. It's my pleasure to introduce our speaker today, who is David O. Stewart. David O. Stewart is the award-winning author of "The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution." He's also written "Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy," and "American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson," which he presented at the 2012 National Book Festival. He is also the President of the Washington Independent Review of Books. Today he will discuss his new book, "Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America. Please welcome David Stewart. >> Thank you, Guy. And thank you all for coming out here today. I do love being here at the Library. I have my little cubbyhole over in the Adams Building where I can hide, and best of all, they keep my books. And it is great to be in the Madison Building. Part of the talk will be about how Madison is not recognized to the extent he should be. But this is the major institution in Washington that has recognized Madison. So that's another virtue of the Library of Congress. I became fascinated with James Madison for two major reasons. If you heard the titles of my other books, I have written in this era before. But it really was that he was so central to the nation's founding. And I have become persuaded that he was really more central than any figure other than George Washington. He's second only to Washington. And if you look at the list of developments, events, advances that he was central to, it's quite staggering. In the 1780's after the Revolution, we make peace with Britain, the nation is really at risk of falling apart, there's an expectation we'll break up into three nations. Madison takes the lead in the effort to call a constitutional convention to change the government, that our government isn't working. Of course, he is a leader at the Convention itself. Often referred to as "the Father of the Constitution." He takes the notes of the debates there, which are an invaluable resource to us. The fight for ratification afterwards, which was no sure thing, led him to participate with Alexander Hamilton in writing the Federalist Papers. Really they began as propaganda to support ratification, but really ended up being the finest political writing by Americans ever. The fight for ratification was real, was a political struggle. And he led that fight as well, in one state after another. When the new government began, he was the leading member of the first Congress which established the new government. He wrote the legislation that created all of the departments. He also wrote the Bill of Rights. That's pretty cool. And he secured their adoption through Congress. He co-founded the first American political party. I always feel a little twinge when I say that, because I think he would not like to be remembered that way. He wasn't a big fan of political parties. But I will talk more about how he and Jefferson did that, and why. It was called the Republican Party. It's still with us today, it's called the Democratic Party now. And it has changed in some significant ways. In the pivotal election of 1800, he and Jefferson were co-architects of this key moment when the government changed hands. It's often said that in a democracy, the true test is whether there can be a peaceful transfer of power between two contending factions. If you've been following the coverage of the Nigerian election in the last couple of weeks, they seem to be at that moment there. And it's a great moment. For us, that moment was in 1800. And Madison and Jefferson were the ones who made that happen. He was Secretary of State for eight years and oversaw the purchase of the Louisiana Territory, which doubled the size of the nation. He was our first wartime president, led the nation into and then ultimately through the War of 1812. And when he leaves office in 1817, the nation is prosperous, it's happy, it's bursting. Our migration to the west and our immigration from Europe is really quite explosive. And it struck me that Madison might be our only two-term President who had a better second term than his first term. If you think back to your own life, the second term is tough. And Madison actually finished better than he started. So you have this long, dazzling list of achievements. And for 30 years he's at the center of American history. But he's not noticed that much. I found myself telling the editor that he's sort of the zelig of American history. He's there, he's always there but nobody's paying much attention to him. And that's an interesting question. Why is that? There, of course, is a flip answer. He was short, he was skinny, he had a soft voice. He didn't stand out in a crowd. This is an artist's rendition of the signing of the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention. If you look at it for a while, you can pick out Madison. He's the fellow standing next to the big guy, Washington. And he's holding a quill pen, so we notice him there. But in large groups, he tended to disappear. When you had someone of immense stature, both physical and moral stature like Washington. Or you had someone with remarkable charisma like Thomas Jefferson, who was large and charming and would really take over. Or if you just had noisy people like John Adams or Alexander Hamilton. Madison was hard to notice. He was very short on charisma. But I think there's another answer which is a bit more interesting, in that Madison was really different from most great leaders. Leaders really tend to have a strong streak of narcissism. They want to be at the front of the parade, preferably on a white horse. They crave recognition and acclaim. Madison did not have those qualities. He disliked public events, never became comfortable at them. There's a wonderful moment when he is attending his own inaugural ball in 1809. He's at the pinnacle of his political career. He has just been elected president and sworn into office. And an old friend greets him and says, "Isn't this a wonderful occasion?" And Madison says, "I'd rather be home in bed." And it was true. He cared about results, not applause. About making the American experiment in self-government a success. About realizing the promise of the American Revolution, the promise of human liberty, of self-government. that was the work of his life. That's what he cared about. A long-term colleague offered a striking description that stuck with me. Under all circumstances, he was ever mindful of what was due from him to others. And cautious not to wound the feelings of anyone. Well, those are two interesting qualities for a leader. But the one that stuck with me was "ever mindful of what was due from him to others." I think many leaders are very mindful of what's due to them from us. When you look at his great achievements and his qualities, it does emerge-- or it did to me, anyway-- that he rarely operated alone. That his great achievements were most often the fruit of partnerships. And I found it helpful to sort of think of it in terms of the sort of modern personality assessment tests that organizations love to have their people take now, and you can answer a bunch of short answer questions and you discover if you're an introvert or an extrovert, or an ISBJ, or an ERGW. And he was able to determine, maybe even just by looking in the mirror, that he was in fact short. He was skinny. He had a soft voice. He was losing his hair, and he had zero personal magnetism. It was all true. But if he was really being honest, he would notice some powerful positives. He was smarter than just about everybody he met. He had a rare capacity for hard work. He had great political judgment and insight and foresight. And he had a gift for making connections with people at the retail level, one on one in small groups. So why not take those virtues and make common cause with people who had the ones he didn't have? And we don't know that he made such an assessment, but the idea provided a lens through which I could look at his extraordinary career as a man who understood the power of partnership. And I think there are important lessons from his style for any era in American politics. But maybe they have particular resonance in today's era. Partnership is a little scarce on the ground these days. I found myself looking at five central partnerships. So let me walk through the first four, and then linger a bit on the fifth. I would start with Alexander Hamilton. They met each other as very young men. They were the youngest members of the Confederation Congress. And right at the end of the Revolutionary War. Very different people. Hamilton was a flashy, charismatic figure. He was brilliant at everything he tried, as a soldier, as a lawyer, as a statesman. He came from nothing. He was in effect an orphan who had come to this country as a teenager with no resources, with no family connections, and made his own way on talent alone. Madison was a fortunate son. He was the inheritor of a great estate. His father was the largest landowner in Orange County, Virginia. He didn't have his own home until he was 43 years old when he got married. He would just rent rooms in boarding houses when he was traveling, and then go back to the family plantation at Montpelier. He lived with his mom until he was 78. Dolley was a very tolerant woman, obviously. Yet these two very different people, I think, saw in each other at that early age-- they're both in their early 30's-- two characteristics. One was extraordinary intelligence, the talent of each of them we can see in their achievements and also what they wrote and how they wrote it. But also their tremendous impatience and commitment to making the United States a true nation and a great nation. They both were at the Constitutional Convention. And neither of them much liked the Constitution. Madison thought the Senate was an atrocity, to have not proportional representation bothered him terribly. He thought Congress should have the power to reverse state actions. He thought the states were the instruments of the devil, were doing terrible things. Hamilton's dissatisfaction was even greater. He proposed at the Constitution that the President should serve for life, rather like a king. and that the Senate should serve for life, rather like an aristocracy. Indeed, when the day came to sign the Constitution, Hamilton stood and said, "No man's ideas differ more from this document than mine. But this is the best we're going to get. So I will sign it and I will commit myself to it." And they both concluded that this was the best document they could get. This was our best chance to make it as a nation. And so they led the ratification fight. The Federalist Papers were Hamilton's ideas initially. He recruited-- tried to recruit-- three different New Yorkers to participate with him. And they fell away for different reasons. And finally Madison was his fourth choice. And a brilliant one, it turned out. They wrote their essays often with a printer at their elbow waiting for them. They ran three or four a week in the newspapers. These were 190,000 words of essays that were produced in six months. There is debate over how much it actually influenced the ratification, it's hard to tell. But we do know that it was brilliant. And we also know that Madison and Hamilton jointly coordinated the effort for ratification in each of the states. And then went to their respective home states, New York for Hamilton, Virginia for Madison. And led the ratification fight, very tough fights in their conventions. Now, the second partnership is with the ultimate leader, George Washington. No one in this era could be George Washington's peer. He had won the loyalty and the hearts of Americans through eight years of the Revolutionary War. And even more when at the end of the war he gave up power. When the war ended, he could have made himself dictator. He could have hung around the government and waited for somebody to make him the dictator. Anything he wanted, Americans would have agreed to at that moment. But instead, he went home. And he took over his farm. It is the most extraordinary act of self-denial. It's on one level extremely cagey. There is no better way to earn someone's trust than to walk away from power. Indeed, when King George III heard the story that George Washington had given up power and gone home to his farm, he didn't quite believe it. But he said if it's true, then he's the greatest man in the world. And that was the view of most Americans. So Washington was the indispensable man. And Madison figured out very quickly that the best way to get something done in this new republic was to be the indispensable man to the indispensable man. So if Washington wanted legislation through the Virginia Assembly, Madison made it happen. If Washington wanted legislation through Congress, Madison made it happen. For about a five year period, they were the closest of political confidants. Madison is 19 years younger. He is certainly the subordinate member of the partnership, but it is a real partnership. Washington had an eye for talent. He's the guy who picked out Hamilton, too. And he liked having smart men around him. He tended to mistrust his own intellect. He had not been through a very rigorous education at all. There was a remarkable moment when Washington becomes president, he's elected unanimously. He comes to New York to take the reins of power and there's, the entire government consists of a couple of hundred people. We've got a few soldiers out, supposedly watching the Indians. And a few clerks and Congress. That's it. So he has to produce an inaugural address. So he asks his partner James Madison to draft his inaugural address. Madison drafts a very fine one. When Congress received the address, and they are setting precedent and they think, we should respond to this. So they turned to Madison and asked him to write the response. And Washington gets the response and he's not quite sure what to do. And he decides, well, I should be gracious also. And he decides he should reply to it, so he asks Madison to write the reply. So you have this first year of the government which involves James Madison talking to himself. Their partnership not only created this wonderfully stable government that has survived, but also the Bill of Rights. The one thing that Madison wrote in that inaugural address for Washington was an endorsement. That's the only thing Washington asked for was an endorsement of a bill of rights. The Constitutional Convention had passed over that issue, had actually decided not to include one. It was a mistake. Madison realized that. And he used Washington's support to get it through Congress and then to win ratification. Now, the third partner is the one we think most of, I think, to the extent we do. Which is Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson and Madison really were soul mates. They came from the same worlds. They lived in the same worlds. Jefferson lived 30 miles away. They were both the eldest sons of the richest man in their respective counties. They lived on thousands of acres. They had-- the Madisons had about a hundred slaves. The Jeffersons had about 200 slaves. They were both also brilliant. Book-worms, they were interested in everything. They knew something about most things. And their correspondence is a wonder. They write about biology, and philosophy, and climate, and literature. And occasionally about politics. And clearly they enjoyed each other's minds. And dispositions so much. It is a rich correspondence, one that was a joy to read. They were different in a couple of ways. They didn't always agree on everything, but they mostly did. But their style was pretty different. Jefferson was a visionary. He was a wonderful wordsmith. The words of the Declaration of Independence still live with us. But his letters are a joy to read. Madison not so much. He was-- had a wonderfully analytical mind. And that meant that every sentence had to be qualified. He was always thinking about the thing that he had left out. Jefferson didn't worry about that. So Madison-- it becomes a forest of subordinate clauses. I have heard the comparison to Madison's prose to insurance contracts. They also approached problems a bit differently. Jefferson sometimes would be seized by a great idea. And just would be thrilled with it. And he developed a habit of writing it out and sending it to Madison and asking him what he thought about it. And Madison would sometimes say, that's a wonderful idea. And sometimes he would say, that's a great idea but you know, you might think about A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. At which point Jefferson would most often drop the idea. They became disenchanted, both of them, with the government as it was developing under President Washington. Particularly Hamilton's financial system. It created a stronger, more centralized government, I think, than Jefferson certainly wanted and than Madison thought could be done under the Constitution. They went into opposition. Madison was the leader of the opposition in Congress for six years. And they formed this political party. And it grew incrementally, as it would, first within Congress, then among political activists in the other states. They would recruit newspaper editors who were like-minded. Because they needed to change public opinion. What's sovereign in a republic is public opinion. And they knew they had to move that. And the only way you can really move that, you need a vehicle, a way to mobilize opinion, mobilize people. And a political party was what they found is the necessary way to go about it. Indeed, their party effectively controlled the government for the first six decades of the 19th Century. Now the fourth partner was James Monroe. He was not the intellect that the other two men were. I think some of his contemporaries liked to write that he was a bit dim. But I think that's harsh. He was what my father would have called smart enough for all practical purposes. He was politically shrewd. The letters he had with Madison over several decades are not feasts of philosophy and natural science. They are hard-nosed political exchanges. And some very warm personal feelings. They sort of were at the same stage in terms of having a family. Monroe was younger, but they both were having children, had children they were raising. Madison had only a step-son. And there was almost a palship between them. Their partnership is interesting because it hit two big bumps. In 1789, we had the first election for Congress. And Madison was going to run in his home district. And some people in Virginia put Monroe up to run against him. On the issue of ratification of the Constitution and whether there should be a Bill of Rights. And it was a real contest. It's the only time we've had two future Presidents who were opponents for a lower office. They went to different churches in the area and debated each other, sometimes in freezing cold. And Madison actually got frostbite on his nose one night. He described it as his wound in defense of his country. And Madison won handily. And interestingly, it did not seem to affect their friendship. They both said it wouldn't, and then it didn't seem to. Twenty years later, the situation turned out a bit differently. Madison was Secretary of State, and Monroe was our ambassador to Britain. We had a terrible problem in those days as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, which had started with the French Revolution. For 20 years, basically, Britain and France were in a duel to the death. And we were the collateral damage. Our ships were trying to trade with both countries and make money from both. What could be better? And both countries took a dim view of that. And tended to seize our ships. Or to take our sailors, which is what the British did. The impressment issue. And this was a continuing nightmare. Jefferson never wanted to have war. So he just absorbed it. And Monroe was asked to try to come to some sort of treaty with the British. The British were of no mind to give us any concessions. They were fighting Napoleon, after all. So he sent back a really bad treaty which gave us very little. Jefferson and Madison hated it and they stuck it in a bottom drawer and they never showed it to anybody. Monroe was mortified. He had spent three years negotiating this treaty. He thought it was the best that he could get. And that it would ensure peace. So he broke off relations. And for two years, neither Madison nor Monroe spoke with each other or corresponded with each other. Indeed, Monroe's name was entered as a candidate against Madison in the 1808 Presidential election. He was not a serious candidate. And in those days you didn't actually run for office, you just stood for office. It was a much better system, frankly. But it was a real difficult time. About two years into his presidency, Madison knew-- and this is an area where I depart from some of the classic learning on the War of 1812. Which is-- at least I was taught as a young boy that the war hawks in Congress led us into war. You know, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. And I just think that's silly. It was James Madison who led us into war. He decided that we could not absorb the indignity that was being meted out on the high seas day after day. And we had to fight to be a respectable nation. But he had a bad Secretary of State, who was not only incompetent but was also disloyal. He kept disclosing confidential cabinet conversations to the world. And he needed to replace him, and he needed somebody strong to replace him with. So he reached out to Monroe. And they patched up their quarrel. At that point, Monroe really wanted to get back in government. He was an ambitious fellow. And he came into Madison's administration as Secretary of State, was an important pillar of that administration. He had been a soldier as a very young man in the Revolutionary War. He always had a martial quality. He had this sort of personal vigor and vitality that Madison just did not. And he gave a lot of strength to the administration. He served as Secretary of State and as Secretary of War. And for two periods he served simultaneously as Secretary of State and Secretary of War. I think he may be the only person in American history who has done that. The fifth partner is in many ways the most interesting one, Dolley Madison. She was originally Dolley Payne. And she grew up in a world very much like Madison's boyhood. Her father ran southern plantations with slaves. There was one big difference, though. Her family was Quaker. Indeed, you can see this in the earliest image we have of her, which is she's wearing a Quaker bonnet. And when she was a teenager, the Quaker meeting in Virginia decided that good Quakers could no longer own slaves. And they put out the word. So Mr. Payne freed his slaves and moved his family to Philadelphia, where his business crashed. He died very shortly thereafter. But Dolley flourished. She was tall for the era for a woman. She had an hourglass figure, a mischievous smile, black hair, creamy complexion, bright blue eyes. She almost always had this sort of-- I want to stress the smile is, I'll show a few more images-- it's almost always there. I think it was one of her great charms. And men liked her, men liked her a lot. And I do like to emphasize that, say what you will about Madison, that he's short and he's skinny, he's got a receding hairline and he's awkward at big events. Of all the framers, he had the hottest wife. Now, Dolley had a first husband. She married a Quaker lawyer in Philadelphia, and they had two sons. The first husband and one of her sons died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, which left her as a single mother at the age of 24. A very eligible match. And she did not want for suitors. But one of the most ardent was Madison, who was 17 years older than she. This is an image from that period. And it's the only image of Madison we have where he doesn't look like somebody just shot a pet of his. So I like it because it shows a little zip. You can see-- the story of their meeting is not crisply remembered. Madison saw her somewhere, either on the street or at a social event. And said something to the equivalent of, who is that woman? And learning about her, discovered that his old friend, Aaron Burr, rented a room in the boarding house run by Dolley's mother. So he prevailed upon Aaron Burr to set up an introduction. And the day they meet, there's a wonderful note from Dolley to a friend of hers saying that Mr. Burr is going to bring over for me to meet the great little Madison. And I love the phrase because it's true, he was little. But he was also great. He was rich. He was a national political figure. He was kind, he was intelligent. You could do a lot worse than James Madison. I think Dolley figured that out pretty easily. It was a lot of fun for me to look at their relationship. Their letters to each other are very warm long after the first infatuation had faded. They were most devoted to each other. It is interesting to read of James' flirtatiousness. This is not a trait we think of with James Madison. There's a period of several years when Dolley's sister Lucy lived in the White House with them, with her children. She had been widowed, and so she came to live with them at the White House. And frankly to find her next husband, which she did. She married a Supreme Court justice. The Payne girls were pretty good at that. And there are several accounts that James liked to kiss Dolley in front of her sister Lucy. And turn to her and say, "Does that make your mouth water?" I will admit, it's a little creepy. But this is not how you have ever thought about James Madison. Indeed, the Madisons are often portrayed as this sort of semi-sad childless couple. Which is really not-- very misleading. Their household was usually overrun with children. They had-- I lost count after 50-- nieces and nephews. And they would routinely come and spend a weekend, a week, a month, a few months-- particularly girl children of a marriageable age would be sent to be with the Madisons. Because Dolley would look after them and introduce them to an appropriate Army officer or Naval officer. It's often missed, too, that they were just a lot of fun. For all of his awkwardness in a large setting, James was very charming in a small setting. And there are many accounts of him keeping the dinner table awash in laughter with his anecdotes and his quips. Dolley was vivacious and engaging in small or large settings, it didn't matter to her. One of her nieces called her a foe to gomas [phonetic]. And she was completely unpretentious. She played cards, by all accounts she played cards badly, which is very charming. She took snuff, you know, at public events. There was just Dolley. She at one point was carrying a copy of "Don Quixote" around with her at a social event. And somebody said, "Why do you have that there?" And she said, "Well, if the conversation flags, it gives me something to talk about." And she would be very good at making sure that people were relaxed at a social event. She would always seek out the most awkward person and make them comfortable, put them at their ease. On the subject of fun, this is the house at Montpelier. If you haven't been there, they've restored it wonderfully. I hope you get a chance to get down there. You'll see the porch in the front, it's not a giant porch, but apparently in retirement they would run races against each other on the porch. And they wouldn't have been that grueling, but it does give you a sense of their spirit. And I think it's important not to make light of Dolley 's social contribution. This is an image of her sort of in her flowered womanhood, perhaps. And she understood the need to provide glamour and charisma to a presidency that otherwise had none. She was the center of attention at social events. James would always greet everybody and then would retire to some corner with a couple of other gentlemen and they would talk business. Dolley would stay in the center of the room, enjoying everybody there. There's a wonderful moment when Henry Clay says to her, "Everybody loves Mrs. Madison." And she says back, "That's because Mrs. Madison loves everyone." It's not, strictly speaking, true, actually. She could be more caustic about people than James could. But people thought it was true, it seemed to be true. And as we know about politics, it's far more important what seems to be true than what is true. Indeed, as lady Presidentess-- we didn't have the term "First Lady" then. They called her "Lady Presidentess." She started wearing white turbans. Either velvet or satin. And she would put a feather in the top of the turban. And sometimes a piece of fruit. And she was a largish woman anyway. So you just always knew where Dolley Madison was, you just looked for the fruit. Office seekers learned that if they wanted a position, they could do far worse than to approach the Lady Presidentess. And we know that many did. And some of them got jobs. We have no record of how Mr. and Mrs. Madison dealt with those matters. But there's not really much doubt that they did. Dolley was in fact a political partner, always a loyal and surefooted one. But she really helped forge a new Republican style for the nation. The Federalist candidate for President in 1808 said that he had lost the election to Mr. and Mrs. Madison. And then added, "I might have had a better chance had I faced Mr. Madison alone. Now, Dollies' shining moment came on the worst day of Madison's public career. Which was the day the British marched into Washington and burned our public buildings, including the White House. This left a great black mark on his Presidency. I think it's why he doesn't make the list of the five best presidents. And it was humiliating. And people around the country denounced him, called him a coward for leaving Washington in the hands of the British. Now, not sure he singlehandedly was going to be able to fend them off. And it was better not to fall into their hands as a captive, but it was a terribly disappointing moment. But this artist rendition is of a moment that Americans loved, which is right before the British were expected, Dolley had packed up the silver and the public papers and was going to hustle them off to Virginia. And she noticed the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington. Now, we don't have crown jewels, we're not a monarchy, we don't have the scepter. But for a republic, we do revere and certainly then revered the memory and the tradition of George Washington. This was even then the great symbol of George Washington. And she directed that it be cut down. They couldn't get it off the wall fast enough. And spirited out of Washington and hidden. That act of spirit and presence of mind cheered many Americans. And gave them a reason to celebrate Dolley other than her ice cream and cakes. Now, the Madisons enjoyed a mostly happy retirement at Montpelier. But there was an increasingly dark shadow in their life which I want to talk about for a minute. And that's slavery. He lived in the heart of a slave culture. I was stunned to discover that Madison's grandfather had died of poisoning by one of his slaves. This was of course not unheard of in slave times. But nobody talks about it. Certainly Madison never spoke about it that we have any record. But you know that the 90 and 100 slaves at Montpelier all knew that story. As did the five or six Madisons who were living there. And for me it captures the violence, the oppression, the rage that is at the heart of slavery. And Madison appreciated that from a very early age. As a young man, he struggled with the contradictions between slavery and his professed dedication to American liberty. He bought land in upstate New York and told a friend he wanted to move up there and never live on the labor of slaves. And then he dedicated his life to human freedom, but he never moved, and he lived on the labor of human slaves his whole life. The contradiction was excruciating. He feared through his years of statesmanship, slavery above all might destroy this American nation. He said it repeatedly, he said it at the Constitutional Convention, he said it in correspondence. In his rich public career when he had so many responsibilities, it seems to me he was able to compartmentalize this a bit and get it out of his mind. Most of the time. But with retirement, it came back at him. He was living in Montpelier. The slaves were still there. He mostly didn't leave Montpelier. And he owned these people. He became obsessed with coming up with a solution. He had dealt with the country's biggest problems. When it seemed to be falling apart in the 1780's, he had led the fight for a new government. And for the ratification of the Constitution. When we were being pilloried across the oceans, he led the nation into the War of 1812 and won respect for the nation. And this was the third-grade challenge. And he came up with crazy ideas. We would sell off all our public lands in the west. And would use the money to buy slaves out of bondage and send them somewhere else. He couldn't imagine an integrated society. They just had to be taken someplace else. Africa, South America, out west. It was a pipe dream. There were two million slaves in the country when he's doing this. And it's becoming bitter. The abolitionists are now beginning to agitate. He lived to 1836. He saw real anger over slavery break out in the nation. He lived long enough for the Nat Turner Rebellion in southeastern Virginia, where slaves rose and slaughtered 60 white people and then themselves were slaughtered. And this scared him. But ultimately it was the problem he could never solve. And most disappointingly, he never himself freed a single slave. I think the contradiction in his life, the hypocrisy at the center of his life tortured him. But he was never able to solve it. One of the fascinating questions that we also are not able to answer is what Dolley thought. Because she had been raised a Quaker. Her father had freed his slaves. Yet we have not one word about her on the subject. Other than an occasional peek that a slave is being irresponsible. Now in his final years, James became increasingly decrepit. Oh, I'm sorry. This is an image, let me just tell you quickly. At Montpelier when he went there in retirement, he got tired of northerners and Europeans coming to see him. And they would come to see him all the time. This was something you were allowed to do, you would just go see a President. You just drive up and say, "Here I am." And he would give you dinner. And they would lecture him about slavery. So he decided to sort of create this object lesson on how slavery wasn't so bad. Usually slave quarters would be sort of on the other side of the hill, or hidden away because they were pretty crummy. So he built nice slave quarters for his house slaves. They had glass windows and doors. And they're rebuilding them at Montpelier to show what he had done. It's sort of a Potemkin village, even. And I find it almost more heartbreaking. Because instead of freeing any slaves, he does this. He was just not able to come up with a sensible response. In retirement, we do have this image of him just two years before he died. He spent his last two years essentially in two rooms in Montpelier. He would shuffle from one to the other, the last six months he had to be carried. But his mind remained sharp. Dolley would write his letters for him. She wrote a friend, "His hands and fingers are still so swelled and sore as to be nearly useless, but I lend him mine." After he died in 1836, Dolley tried to hang onto Montpelier. She was not a woman of business, days were bad times, economic times in Virginia. And ultimately she lost the plantation. She moved to Washington. And the one great virtue of that is, she lived long enough to have her photograph taken. So of this generation, she's the only one we have a photograph of. And again you have that hint of a smile on her lips. And I think you also can see her strength of character. Her final few years were spent in sort of genteel poverty, though. Now, having held forth on all of Madison's productive partnerships, I want to finish with a note about Madison himself. Because I think he was able to form these partnerships because of who he was. We often think of him as this disembodied intellect. One of his contemporaries said of him, "I've never seen so much mind in so little matter." But I think his greatest qualities actually were his genuineness, his integrity, his modesty, his openheartedness. That's what these five big personalities appreciated about James Madison. And I find these qualities captured in an episode when he receives the news of the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812. As I said, I think Madison pushed the nation into war, he thought it was essential. But it was not a happy war. Much of the nation opposed it. New England refused to send militia. They stopped paying their taxes, to some extent. But this is now on February 13 of 1815, two hundred years and two months ago. He's no longer in the White House, of course, the British had burned it down. He's at the octagon house, which is over on 17th Street. It's still standing. And a rumor arrives that there is a treaty with Britain. And a Pennsylvania senator rushes to octagon house to ask Madison about this. Let me read a couple of sentences from the book. "The senator found the house dark, the President sitting solitary in his parlor. In perfect tranquility, not even a servant in waiting. The senator asked if the rumor was true. Madison bade him sit down. I will tell you all I know." Then he confirmed that he thought there was peace but he had no official confirmation. The senator recalled with some wonder what he called the President's self-command on the occasion, and greatness of mind. The War of 1812 truly had been Mr. Madison's War, as his opponents called it. It was about principles, not gain. It was fought with a quiet tenacity, sometimes ineptly. And with endless tolerance of those who opposed it. As a friend of Madison's wrote years later, the war had been conducted in perfect keeping with the character of the President. And when peace came, Madison welcomed it in a darkened house, along with his thoughts. Thank you. [ Applause ] I'd be happy to respond to questions if anybody is intrigued. Yes, sir? >> You mentioned that at the Constitutional Convention, Madison opposed the Bill of Rights, then he realized that was a mistake and it was probably the only condition he would have ratified. Would you explain why he opposed it? I mean, I've heard he thought if you started enumerating rights, that would mean the others wouldn't be recognized, which is sort of reflected in the Tenth Amendment. >> Yes. The question is, when the Constitutional Convention did not adopt a Bill of Rights, what was Madison's rationale for opposing including a Bill of Rights? And as the questioner suggested, one of the reasons he gave was that once you start listing rights, if you leave any out, you have by implication said there is no such right. There also was the view stated at the Convention-- and the proposal for the Bill of Rights came in the last week. And it was made by people, two men who it was kno-- Elbridge Gerry and George Mason, who were known to be opposing the Constitution, and they didn't sign it. So everybody sort of thought this was a delaying tactic. And they'd been there for four months and they wanted to get home. They were sick of being in Philadelphia. And they didn't want to take the time. And, you know, they also said that-- and said some things that are a little hard to credit in hindsight. That the Federal Government could never threaten anybody's rights, how could that happen? Madison quickly learned when he got out of the Convention that this was something that bothered a great many people. Now, we had state constitutions at the time. And some had bills of rights and some didn't. So it wasn't a universal experience. But there was mistrust of this new stronger central government. And Madison decided that it was a political blunder not to include a bill of rights. And his reason for including it was to reconcile the people to the government. He actually thought a bill of rights was likely not to be terribly important. When he introduces it in Congress, he says, "I think you will find this not inappropriate and not altogether useless." Sort of setting the bar low. He thought that in times of crisis, the government would ignore rights. I think our experiences probably bear that out a bit. But he hoped that it ultimately would change our political culture so that we became a culture that valued individual rights. That was the greatest promise he saw in including a Bill of Rights. But he did not think it was terribly important. Yes, sir? >> When the Constitutional Convention was over and the debates and so forth, the committee on style turned to Gouverneur Morris to write the-- to put it in final form. And he also apparently crafted that eloquent Preamble to the Constitution. So-- but he's virtually unknown. Madison may be under-appreciated. Gouverneur Morris is almost unknown by most people. Should he be receiving more credit for the language of the Constitution that we have today? >> The question is, after all, Gouverneur Morris wrote the final draft of the Constitution. Why doesn't he get any love? And I couldn't agree more. I think it was a brilliant job he did producing the final draft. He reduced it by 40%. He took 23 Articles, he made them 7 Articles. He created the Preamble, which is a wonderful preamble. It was a brilliant job. And Madison gave him full credit. And he said Morris produced the final draft, and no better choice could have been made for the job. And it always sort of frustrates me that we have forgotten Morris and we celebrate Jefferson for the Declaration of Independence. And the Declaration's great. But you know it's a rant. You know, it's basically saying, you know, we're fed up, we're not going to take it anymore. The Constitution is hard intellectual work. You know, you've got to make sure that Article 3 Section 4 doesn't contradict anything. I mean, it has to work. And Morris could not only write clearly most of the time, but also was able to make it coherent. So I couldn't agree more that that achievement should be recognized. What you find with the founders-- or some of them anyway-- is if their later careers were somewhat notorious, they got forgotten. And Morris' later career was somewhat notorious. He became-- he was a very aristocratic fellow. He became quite pronounced in his aristocratic views. He married a somewhat-- he made a somewhat scandalous marriage. And I think that probably was a contributing factor in the act of forgetting him. Yes, sir-- yes, ma'am, excuse me. >> I have a comment about Madison and slavery. I'm sorry, I came a little late, so you might have mentioned it at the very beginning. But Arthur Coles-- sorry, Edward Coles. >> Edward Coles. >> Was Madison's private secretary. And he thought that he had convinced Madison to free his slaves. But in fact Madison didn't because he was concerned about Dolley's financial security as well as that of her somewhat profligate son. So I just wanted to mention that as well. >> Let me just sort of add that the question relates to Edward Coles, who was private secretary to Madison. Also, Dolley's cousin. Who wrote after Madison's death that he thought Madison had agreed to free his slaves. He actually was almost vengeful about that. And pursued the notion, which he published, that Madison made Dolley agree that she would free the slaves after her death, or upon her death. That was always a little tricky. You know, Washington had done that with his slaves, that they would die, upon his wife's death. And then Martha discovered that that meant there were a lot of people in Mount Vernon who wanted her to die. And it made her very uncomfortable, so she just freed them. And Coles had tried very hard to persuade Madison to do something about his slaves. Coles freed his own slaves. He had a dozen or so that he had inherited. He bought them land in the Illinois Territory. He took them out there and set them up on farms. And he hammered at Madison to do something. I think Madison was afraid. You can't get past something, to be honest, it was change, it was going to be less comfortable, and it was going to pauperize him. And so he didn't do it. And he was worried, as you suggest, that it would leave Dolley without resources. She was not a business person. She had many talents, but that was not one of them. And so he never followed through. And I think it's unfair to blame Dolley for that, actually. James knew her talents and her weaknesses. And if he was going to do something, he should have done something. And it's a disappointment for those of us who want to admire Madison, and do admire him for many things. It's a disappointment. Last question here? >> In your research, you've had to wade through tons of primary sources. How did the Library help you? How do you get through or know what you need to read, or what to find? >> Well, I'm going to-- they may cut off my mike when I say this. The question was, how did this Library help me in the research here? And it is a tremendous library, I love it. But for the largest piece of research I had to do, I was lucky that the National Archives has put online all of the correspondence of six founders, including Madison. And all of his papers. Now, only the ones that have been published, so there were some gaps. But to be honest, I was able to sit at my desk in my bathrobe and go through them at home. And it was delirious. I mean, I first started writing history in 2005. And you couldn't do any of that. And this was an amazing advance. And it's a wonderfully democratizing thing. If you're in Montana you can do it too. So that is a great advance. For this Library, for this project I did use the newspaper collection some. Because I was covering 40 years of history, you just can't sit there and read the newspapers for the whole time. So I would find a period I particularly cared about and looked at some newspapers then. I personally find newspaper research the worst-- the microfilm makes my eyes hurt. And of course there are the manuscript collections. I think I see the Manuscript Room person here. Jeff? And those were a help. And the secondary sources were great. As an independent scholar, they do give me a place to hide over in the Adams Building. Where I can keep a few books on hand, and it is a great convenience to be able to go and just have them there. So those were the principal sources for me. Thank you very much. [applause] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.