James Madison Legacy Essay

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Within the context of a legacy, James Madison Jr. far exceeds many of us chasing down our ambitions of fame and dream. Born in 1751 in Virginia, James Madison Jr. was gifted by being born into the planter aristocracy that developed within Virginia. Growing up in some respects sickly and suffering episodes of seizures at time, he was taught by his mother, tutors, and even went to a private school. His father was a tobacco planter who had grown up in Virginia, and had inherited the very land he farms. Additionally, along with the long he inherited slaves, thus James Madison Jr. did grow up owning slaves as his family was one of the largest tobacco fields in Orange County, Virginia. Eventually, his studies would leave him to Princeton (At the …show more content…

showed great interest in politics and was extremely intelligent, and taking part in advocating revolution he came into the convention as one of the talks of the town as he was in truth one of the people that pushed for the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He was one of the ardent critics of the Articles of Confederation. While many of the colleagues at the convention favored an authoritarian central government while others wanted to have states stay sovereign; most of the positions were within the middle of the extremes. Madison had drafted one the draft known as the Virginia Plan which favored bicameral legislature and rotation in office (term limits) and having population determine the number of representatives. Virginia Plan also had fundamental ideas of checks and balances to prevent abuse of power along with descriptions of the three branches of government known as the judicial, executive, and legislative. Thus, from the aforementioned descriptions of his plan he supported a strong central government and while many of his initial proposals would be rejected his Virginia Plan would be incorporated within the constitution, or at least parts of it and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” and was one of the key players of the Bill of Rights later

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