ABSTRACT
In Madison's view, a good polity for Americans would necessarily be a government that derived its just powers from the consent of the governed, or a democracy. His role in the evolution of democratic ideas and institutions was extraordinary. Madison's most influential views were, those he expressed in the Federalist, notably in Federalist 10 and 51. In any case, Madison's famous distinction between the terms democracy and republic was somewhat arbitrary and ahistorical. Even some of his contemporaries, like James Wilson, referred to the new representative system as a democracy. This chapter illustrates Madison's change in views by noting very briefly some well-known historical developments bearing on each of the new propositions. Jefferson, Madison, and other like-minded opponents of the Federalists created the Republican Party, which soon came to be called the Democratic-Republican Party, and finally, with Andrew Jackson, simply the Democratic Party.
