While the Right likes to look at Madison as a constitutional purist who always favored tightly constrained federal powers, a more useful prism for seeing the historical Madison is that he shifted from the patronage of Washington, who despised the idea of state "sovereignty" after experiencing its inefficiency while commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, to the tutelage of the brilliant but mercurial Jefferson, who was wedded to the interests of Virginia.
Whereas Washington -- working with his proteges Madison and Hamilton -- had a national vision of a fast-developing country with states subordinate to the federal government, Jefferson could not move beyond his more parochial concept of Virginia and Southern states maintaining substantial freedom from a federal government that might seek to abolish slavery.
Under Washington's wing in the years immediately after independence -- while Jefferson was serving as the U.S. representative to France -- Madison recognized the disaster of the Articles of Confederation, which set the rules for U.S. governance from 1777 to 1787. The Articles made the 13 states "sovereign" and "independent" and deemed the federal government simply a "league of friendship." For instance, Madison shared Washington's interest in placing the development of national commerce under the control of the federal government, but Madison's initial Commerce Clause failed to win the support of the Virginia legislature.
The United States was also flailing in regards to maintaining domestic security with the Shays' Rebellion rocking western Massachusetts in 1786-87 and the federal government too weak to help restore order. Washington feared that Great Britain would exploit the regional and social divisions of the new country and thus threaten its hard-won independence.
"Thirteen sovereignties," Washington wrote, "pulling against each other, and all tugging at the federal head, will soon bring ruin to the whole." [See Catherine Drinker Bowen's Miracle at Philadelphia.]
Madison's Federalism
Madison was of a similar mind. In 1781, as a member of the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, he introduced a radical amendment that "would have required states that ignored their federal responsibilities or refused to be bound by decisions of Congress to be compelled to do so by use of the army or navy or by the seizure of exported goods," noted Chris DeRose in Founding Rivals. However, Madison's plan -- opposed by the powerful states -- went nowhere.
Similarly, Madison lamented how the variety of currencies issued by the 13 states and the lack of uniform standards on weights and measures impeded trade. Again, he looked futilely toward finding federal solutions to these state problems.
So, after a decade of growing frustration and mounting crises under the Articles, a convention was called in Philadelphia in 1787 to modify them. Washington and Madison, however, had a bigger idea. They pressed instead to scrap the Articles altogether in favor of a new constitutional structure that would invest broad powers in the central government and remove language on state sovereignty and independence.
Madison told Washington that the states had to be made "subordinately useful," a sentiment that Washington shared after seeing how states had failed to meet their financial obligations to his troops during the Revolution.
As Washington presided over the convention, it fell to Madison to supply the framework for the new system. Madison's plan called for a strong central government with clear dominance over the states. Madison's original plan even contained a provision to give Congress veto power over state decisions.
The broader point of the Constitutional Convention was that the United States must act as one nation, not a squabbling collection of states and regions. James Wilson from Pennsylvania reminded the delegates that "we must remember the language with which we began the Revolution: "Virginia is no more, Massachusetts is no more, Pennsylvania is no more. We are now one nation of brethren, we must bury all local interests and distinctions.'"
However, as the contentious convention wore on over the summer, Madison retreated from some of his more extreme positions. "Madison wanted the federal assembly to have a veto over the state assemblies," wrote David Wootton, author of The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers. "Vetoes, however, are bad politics, and again and again they had to be abandoned in the course of turning drafts into agreed texts."
But Madison still pushed through a governing structure that bestowed important powers on the central government -- including the ability to tax, to print money, to control foreign policy, to conduct wars and to regulate interstate commerce.
Madison also came up with a plan for approving the Constitution that bypassed the state assemblies and instead called for special state conventions for ratification. He knew that if the Constitution went before the existing assemblies -- with the obvious diminution of their powers -- it wouldn't stand a chance to win the approval of the necessary nine states.
Resistance to the Constitution
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