James Madison [1751–1836]

James Madison, junior, born March 5, 1751, was the oldest child of the leading family of Orange County, Virginia. James Madison, senior, was a justice of the peace and a vestryman in the Anglican church—offices held only by men of ranking social position; he owned more than a hundred slaves, and the cultivated portion of the Montpelier plantation alone amounted to nearly two thousand acres. Madison's failure to become conscious until he was nearly twelve of his own "taste" for mental improvement reveals the somewhat restricted intellectual opportunities available even to a member of the Virginia aristocracy in the eighteenth century. Madison was awarded his A.B. degree in the autumn of 1771. Princeton gave James Madison his first opportunity for intimacy with a congenial circle of friends. Madison's role in the famous Virginia Convention of 1776 provides a striking example of the part political theory plays in revolutions.