James Madison Dies: Last Founding Father and Constitution's Author

James Madison was five feet four and weighed about a hundred pounds. He was the smallest president in American history and possibly the most intellectually consequential. Born on March 16, 1751, in Port Conway, Virginia, he attended the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, completing the four-year course in two years, a pace that reportedly damaged his health. He entered Virginia politics as a protégé of Thomas Jefferson and quickly established himself as the most thorough constitutional thinker in the new republic. His preparation for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was extraordinary. He arrived with a detailed plan for a new government, based on months of studying the constitutions of ancient and modern republics. He spoke over 200 times during the convention, more than any other delegate, and kept the most complete record of the proceedings. The Virginia Plan, largely his work, provided the framework for the Constitution. When opposition to ratification threatened to derail the project, he co-wrote the Federalist Papers with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, producing 85 essays in eight months that remain the most authoritative interpretation of constitutional intent. He authored the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, partly as a political necessity to secure ratification from reluctant states. As president from 1809 to 1817, he led the country through the War of 1812, a conflict that nearly destroyed the republic he had helped create. The British burned Washington, D.C., including the White House and the Capitol, in August 1814. His wife Dolley famously saved a portrait of George Washington from the flames. He died on June 28, 1836, at Montpelier, the last surviving member of the Constitutional Convention. The country his document created was still intact.