James Madison's Montpelier We The People Fall 2013 | Page 7

By 1786 the American experiment with self-government
was on the verge of failure. The U.S. government
under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to
accomplish the most basic governing functions. The
state governments, increasingly in conflict with one
another, were incapable or unwilling to maintain internal
order and protect individual rights. A mere decade after
independence, the spirit of the American Revolution had
given way to fears of disintegration. America desperately
needed to be reunified under a common cause.
In this same year, a 35-year-old James Madison stole
away to Montpelier with hundreds of books collected
over many years of study. In the quiet recesses of his
family home, Madison took it upon himself to find a way
to save the young United States from ruin. In search of
a solution to his country’s problems, Madison grappled
with one of the most enigmatic questions of all time: how
can a nation sustain liberty without sacrificing order and
justice?

In the quiet recesses of his family home,
Madison took it upon himself to find a way
to save the young United States from ruin.
Towards this goal, Madison critically examined over
the course of just a few months more than 2,000 years
of political thought. With his mind filled with the history
of confederacies and the ideas of political geniuses from
Plato to Locke, Madison spent much of the next year
traveling and rallying support for the proposed Federal
Convention in Philadelphia, including an important
visit with George Washington at Mount Vernon where he
convinced the famous general to attend the convention.
Before Madison arrived in Philadelphia in May 1787, he
had a diagnosis for America’s ills.

t h e g r e at e s t c h a l l e n g e
t o d e m o c r a c y:
“ T h e p e o p l e t h e m s e Lv e s ”
In Vices of the Political System of the United States,
a memorandum he wrote in April 1787 as part of his
preparation and study, Madison concluded that the
root cause of America’s difficulties was “the people
themselves.” That is, Madison was concerned about the

tendency of people to form factions—special interest
groups opposed to the rights of others. Madison discovered
the source of the American Confederacy’s disorder in the
depths of human nature.
Madison discerned that the inherent flaw in all past
democracies was the constant threat of the tyranny of
the majority who would act out of “apparent interest or
common passion,” uniting against the rights and interests
of the minority or individuals. Ironically, Madison’s
solution to this problem was more factions—more
interests, more opinions competing with one another,
counteracting one another, and resisting the formation
of a tyrannical majority. He theorized that the immense
size of America would be a barrier to the formation
of a majority faction. In what he called an “extended
republic,” a central government would represent
the diverse interests of the people, thereby reducing
the likelihood of majority factions and keeping the
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