Of seven books. Madison transformed the field more than anyone else. Its all constitutions everywhere. I thought, i was about to turn 40 and i thought i want something to really sink my teeth into federal spend my middle 40s on and win lose or draw, ive written something fat, and thats edited down considerably. The bottom line is, i wanted to do something i thought would be hard and long and maybe good and it was deathly hard and definitely long and now its up to you whether you think its good. I wanted to really dive in to the essential question of where did it all come from. Who were the key people behind it. Who made the world that we now live in. One of the fascinating things is that it turns out that although writing the constitution is the thing is most famous for, it was not the only thing of huge fundamental importance that he did and thats why called it the three lives of James Madison. The first life is the creation of the constitution and the other half to do with playing out the constitution. Tell us a little bit more about the three lives. What led you to choosing to divide his life up that way. When you write a biography, you struggle with the fact that the person actually lived a life and said stuff and wrote letters and had friendship and made enemies is not always the case that it will divide itself into acts or stories but in his case it did. In his first life, during which he was single, he was a very shy guy and had only one failed romance in his early 30s until he met dolly, and in that first life, he produced this incredible constitution and it was really a remarkable act of genius, creativity on par with einstein great moments of creativity, and he knew it. And he wanted other people to know it too. But then, having created this amazing constitution that among other things was designed to solve the problem of Political Parties forever so we would not have any more Political Parties, he discovered when he entered congress that that part of the constitution had worked and handed up founding the Republican Party alongside Thomas Jefferson to fight Alexander Hamiltons federalist party, and that became a completely different world for him. Having imagine that the constitution would let reasonable people sit around and debate at a high level, he discovered he needed a partisan newspaper. He needed to accuse the other side of vagueness. He needed to create a National Political organization of the kind he had claimed would preclude from ever coming into existence. He believed he was doing this in his second wife because the threat that his federalist meant to the United States was nothing less than the death of the republic and the death of the constitution. That was how serious the threat had to be for him to justify breaking from his deep belief that Political Parties were terrible and create a vertical party that would end all Political Parties. It sort of did. We can come back to that. And then, in his last life, he spent 16 years running u. S. Foreign policy. He was secretary of state under jefferson for eight years and he was president for eight years, and in not extraordinary 16 year period, he tried to do for foreignpolicy what he had done for the constitution, that is create a unique republican version of form policy based around the question, how do you make other countries do the stuff your country wants whether you believe as an absolute principle they cannot have a Standing Army and you cannot have a substantial navy. He thought he had solved that problem, originally because he thought economic sanctions were the magic answer, but he discovered in the runup of the war the 1812 that wasnt quite enough. You also needed some military threat to military force. That made him a wartime president. It was the war of 1812 and he found himself in a world he was completely unprepared for, fighting a war of the kind he believed the United States should never fight and that turned out to be a fascinating story in which we barely got out with our independence intact and he barely got out with his popularity intact and yet he ended his career as the most popular president of any of the first four or five. I dont think many of us think of him as a president. We think of him as a founding father and his role but that was definitely a significant aspect. Lets dive a little bit more deeply into his first life. You start off the book explaining a little bit about him as a College Student and tell us a little bit more about how his experience at princeton and some of his Early Experiences shaped his religious liberty views and whether or not they found their way into the constitution at all. Its a fascinating fact that the topic that brought him into public life and that he care the most about throughout the entire lung trajectory of his career was religious liberty. The rigid engine reason its so fascinating is that madison was not particularly pious in the ordinary sense of the word. He was a christian who almost never attended church, he wasnt a radical freethinker of the Franklin Jefferson type , but he wasnt very interested in substantial the theology or religion. Yet his very first act in public that made him a figure in virginia was a tweet to the virginia bill of rights, a guarantee of religious liberty that shifted liberty from toleration of minorities to equality for everybody regardless of religion. A major change and he was a only 25 and made him very well known. So why . Why was this young guy so interested in religious liberty. I think the answer lies in his experience at princeton. He was from virginia, from the piedmont and that young man did not go at the time to princeton. Later princeton became. [inaudible] there are several reasons but the main reason he went there was for the weather. I use that as the opening line of my book pretty came to new jersey for the weather. I think anyone has ever written that sentence before. It was because he believed, as many people believe that the time that william and mary, which was in williamsburg in virginia was a place where you could get malaria or yellow fever, especially if you are not from a lowend place already, and he was from the piedmont. He thought it would be safer. He would get sick if you went to new jersey, but he discovered in new jersey this extraordinary institution of the time, the only really impressive university in north america in the 1760s and 1770s, and i say that with all due respect to harvard and yale but those were backwaters in that period. Princeton was a kind of wormhole into the european republic. While he was there, madison was also on some strange dimension kind of a minority for the only time in his life. He was a rich kid from virginia, most of the people there who were called middling sorts, they were the children of shopkeepers, artisans who were trying to turn themselves into gentlemen, and of course it was all men at the time, they were going to university. Thats why you went to university, to become a gentleman. They were also heavily presbyterian and he was just plain old ordinary church of england. The presbyterians were very focused on religious liberty because of the history in britain. He therefore was, at the center within this dissenting community and that seems to have spurred this way long concerns for religious freedom. While. So lets talk a little bit more about his specific role. Lets start with the National Vision for the United States. Where did that come from. How did that conflict with some of the other founders were more concerned with state sovereignty and compared to hamilton who even suggest we abolish the states altogether. Madison came to the idea of the need for National Constitution in 1784, 85, 86 which was a time of extraordinary crisis in the new United States. Its no exaggeration to say that the country, such as it was, was falling apart. The reason was, when independence was the great from britain, all the states became traders and rebels and they had to stick together to survive war. The wine, we should all hang together or we will hang separately, but as it ended, that created a tremendous danger and the danger was that the states which had never thought of themselves as a single country, in fact the word country met your state, it was very important thing to realize when you start to read h century documents, hes always talking about his state, never about the United States. So, danger was that these individual little republics, these 13 republics in a federation were going to have so little in common, so few overlapping interests and no central need to cooperate that they would fly off into Different Directions in each become their own little state. Now, that mightve been fine in theory but it was good to be a disaster practice. The main reason i was going to be a disaster practice was trade. The other thing i figured out while working on the book that i never thought of before, the way you have to think of the British Empire and the french empire is sort of like the eu. It was in large measure of free trade. If youre part of the British Empire you could trade free with any other part of the British Empire was global. But when the United States declared independence, it left that trade union for a version of brexit and suddenly the economy of the u. S. Which depended heavily on trade with British Ports was in serious jeopardy because you could no longer trade freely with all of the places where you had been doing all of your business. What the country needed was a trade policy to pressure britain to open its port to u. S. Shipping. You could create a unified trade policy if the people from rhode island, just use one example, which they used a lot, would always wait for the other states to declare they were going to act in concert, and then cheat. Rhode island cheated. People in the 18th century and every other colony, they really hated rhode island. It wasnt just rhode island didnt ratify, the reason they didnt ratify the constitution was that they were waiting to see if there would be some benefits from cheating. This was the kind of logical shipping maneuver. Everyone else is when i can do it then okay, will do it. Madisons first idea about why we needed a National Constitution was the Central Government had to be able to coerce the state, force them to all be on the same page for trade, and that is what began to make him a national. The fear of it falling apart menu needed to pull it to the center and became a gravitational metaphor. If you wanted something in the middle like the sun they would exert tremendous gravitational pull so they didnt fly off in Different Directions. Thats what he was thinking when he went into the Constitutional Convention. That was fundamentally defining his vision. He was a very strong nationalist. He may not have said like hamilton, but you know he was a guy who deserved a hiphop musical about him. He was enthusiastic, he left no good thought on said or unwritten again and again and again and if those on his mind he said it. He will plainly say we dont need the state spread he would say the british monarchy is the only form of government that will work not what we should do. Everyone looked at him. Madison would not have gone off our publicly that he was fully prepared to accept a National Government when he was in philadelphia that would have minimized the role of the states where they didnt matter all that much. Madison also have the idea of the national veto. How did that play into his vision. For him, that was the single most important aspect of the constitution that he lost. The virginia plan that madison prepared, it ultimately became the basic blue print for the constitution and thats why we think of him as the most important draftsman. There were two major tweets. One was equal representation in the senate. Madison thought that was ridiculous. He didnt think delaware and rhode island should have the same number of delegates as virginia and he went to mention thinking that small states would be forced to accept the representation but he didnt think that they voted based on equal representation of all the states so when new jersey staged a walkout of the convention and said okay, were walking, madison realized we had to compromise. He didnt like it, but he did it. The other change was the loss of a central component of the blueprint and that was that congress would be able to veto any law passed by any state that it didnt like. Now watch, one reason is madison had also, in 1785, 86, begun to distrust state legislatures. He did not think you could trust the people who were running the states to do good job and he was very worried about what he came to call the maturity of the majority, and to be precise, the majority were ordinary people who were mostly debtors and the minority who is being tyrannized against the Property Holders who were mostly creditors so the idea that the majority which we like to think of in our modern purse host World War Two context as a phenomenon where were concerned about racial or religious or other minorities was originally about that poor unprotected minority of rich people. In order to protect those people from state legislature, they could issue paper money, devalue the currency, and then make people thats easily paid. Thats the reason you really like inflation only one time in your life, and thats when you have a mortgage. Thats when its good to have inflation. Under those same in the exact circumstances, he feared what state legislators would do and so he wanted congress to stop the states from doing that. That was crucial to a picture of why a National Government was better than the state government. He believed the National Government would be less likely to take the side of the creditors against the debtors. He had a whole theory of why and that theory goes under the heading of the bigger the country, the less likely he believed it would be that factions are parties or small groups of selfinterested people could capture the government. That was the grand theory. If i was going to work, it had to matter. For congress to be much preferable to the state legislator was a nice idea in theory but when he went to the convention he thought lets use this to solve the problem by letting congress veto whatever the state legislators are going to do. In philadelphia, at the convention, he raised it again and again and again. Seven times. I once again seven times but he was defeated every time pretty tried to water it down by saying maybe theyll only be able to veto unconstitutional actions taken by the state. Nope, no buyin. Thats because the other people in the room were not on board with the exception of maybe hamilton and one or two others. James wilson was not on board with the National Government that could dictate to the states and even ultimately control their actions. That is to say he was at the extreme nationalist wing of the convention, and, he never, he never fully gave up on this idea. When the bill of rights was being drafted, hes through in, most of the rights, most of them were built on ideas that the states had submitted to congress in the wake of ratification. A lot of the states during ratification said wed rather not ratify it and other side love you dont ratify now it will never get done so the compromise was listed some rights that you like and put them in a letter to congress. Madison used most of them but he made up one that no one proposed and that was the idea that in the bill of rights it should say that no state could violate certain very basic rights like the right to religious liberty and the right to freedom of the press. That had no relationship to what anyone else wanted. It was a reiteration of his idea from the convention, namely some way for the National Government to block the state legislators from doing nasty stuff. He really, really did not want to give up on that. Just add one last twist, he had a further reason for thinking congress should be in charge, and that is by the time the convention was over, it was clear they had treated a new hybrid form of government that had never existed before in which the states retain some sovereignty but congress and the federal government exercise over those same citizens. This is what Justice Kennedy who has a good ear for a phrase that will last, he said the framers split the atom of sovereignty. Im not sure all of the implications of that metaphor, but thats what Justice Kennedy said. So, when you break something that everyone believed was ungrateful because sovereignty is posterior root mean one guiding charge for one entity is in charge so how can you break it up, thats highrisk. Madison felt there had to be a last word and he wanted to the last word to be with congress, and that was to some degree oppression us because by the time the civil war came along there was dispute about where the last word lay. It took the 14th amendment and the civil war to lead us into a constitutional world where we all believe that somebody, we usually think its the Supreme Court actually does have the last word about what the constitution means. When wymore says well alabama doesnt have to follow what the federal constitution says according to the Supreme Court , we have a legal answer based on the 14th amendment that says no, Supreme Court gets to decide. That is a fundamental structure issue that he identified himself as a and his veto plan was supposed to fall that. He would be, today, he might have not have said but he would definitely see the logic of there being someone to have the final word. So he didnt get his national detail but at least he was validated in some way with the way the federal judiciary acts. I think thats exactly right. He himself was a little ambivalent about it being the relevant actor, but our current constitutional picture in which we believe the Supreme Court has the last word and is supreme over the meaning of the constitution is structurally madison. I want to go back to what you are saying about the idea of the enlargement of the republic and the structure of government is something that i think a lot of us think about what we think of madison and his role of the constitution. In the book you talk about hamiltons criticisms and how hamilton was saying if you expand the country and make it larger, theres creditors everywhere so how will that solve our problem. What you think of hamiltons criticism. I think theyre pretty clever and pretty smart. Remember, i was just saying, madison had this grand idea. He thought of this grand idea that by enlarging the republic you would reduce the probability of party infection. There are some notes of hamiltons which may have been written while madison was giving his speech on this. We have notes in his handwriting saying no, once you have a congress, everyone will be in the same room. If theres a faction of one side of creditors, they can coordinate their actions right there in congress. Hamilton was also worried about the possibility of the demigod coordinating at an interNational Level. These were legitimate reasonable concerns but in hamiltons mind they were blueprints to some degree at what he was planning to do once the constitution came into effect. Hamilton didnt do much at the convention. He wasnt there for a lot of it. He didnt have votes to win many issues within the new york delegation and he got bored and he laughed. He came back a little bit at the end. The minute the constitution was up for ratification, he swung his action and cowrote the federalist papers with madison. Then once he was elected, he became secretary of treasury and he set out to do for the financial structure of the country exactly what madison had done for the political structure. That was a national bank, a Permanent National debt which he called immortal and a pro manufacturing subsidy policy that would have the effect of hastening the movement of the United States and what he considered the inevitable direction of the industrial revolution. Turned out he was about 75 years early but that was his game plan. Now, in order to do this, he had to deal with the fact that he knew perfectly well that the vast majority of americans did not support any of these three elements. But, he had a Political Party that he organized that was in congress where he did have the votes with the backing of washington that managed pretty effectively to get each of these policies adopted in one form or another. That is where he realized that hamilton had been right and he had been wrong. Madison was forced to realize that despite the expansion of the government to the National Level, if someone were clever and organized they could use Political Party at the National Level to get through their policies. Thats why madison felt he had to create a Political Party to go back to the people and convince them that they should act together collectively and beat the federalist. Im giving you a madisons eye view. Hamilton wouldve said something different. Thats what the Republican Party was supposed to be. He had to break the idea that expanding was the solution and said going back to the states as part of the solution. Thank god we have the state because they can stand up over overreach by federal government thats been captured by the bad guy. Medicine backfire away from his strongly nationalist view toward much more state right developed to view. Madison was a genius and he could always reconcile these things in some formal way. If you had asked him, are you changing your views, he would say no, i was a centrist at the convention and im a centrist now. No. He was responding to radically changed and he became much more strongly for states in the 1790s while the republicans were being formed and out of power. That was part of his political judgment. But he moved from being an innocent there is to a realworld politician and you have to learn from your mistakes. I think you also write about the federalist papers and how madison became more like hamilton and hamilton became more like madison in the end but then they went on to form parties and madison second life you talk about his fight against the federalists. Whats interesting about it is madison drafted the bill of rights, the First Amendment. Tell us about what madisons thoughts on free speech were around the time he drafted the First Amendment and if it changed at all during his battle with the federalists. That the super question. Thank you for asking that. Its also appropriate for bill of rights day. As you know, madison was against the bill of rights before he was for it. [laughter] he thought there was no need for a bill of rights at the National Level and maybe it would even be a mistake. He was forced to change his view partly because he needed to get elected congress in virginia, in a special district that was gerrymandered against him by patrick henry. They were core investors and real estate in upstate new york. They were almost like brothers. Close to being brothers whichever said is the father figure. Henry convince munro who had opposed to run against him which included anti Federal District so, in the race between the two of them its astonishing that monro did this. It was hard fought in the winter and give these long speeches in the cold. Madison would say that he got frostbite on his nose riding back from one of these public outdoor. He like to purchase frostbitten nose. Monro supporters made the argument that madison believe the constitution he said the records had not yet been published. Madison did think that, it was a little miracle but he thought it. So he had to defend himself and oppose ratification. They he did that was promises constituents that he was deliver of those rights. Nobody else was then interested in the bill of rights included people who are antifederal. Madison was worried that he would be reenacted and that if there are no bill of rights it be used that as an excuse. He said conventions are ridiculous things. So he pushed through the bill of rights but i would say he would still not deeply exercised by the belief behind it. Because remember the constitutionally limited the federal government, and madison wasnt worried about what the federal government would do he was worried about the state legislators and the federal bill of rights said nothing about that. That changed in the adams administration. It changed to the act. It was enacted by a federalist without encouragement during the war the federalist fought against france. Was called that because it was an undeclared war. It was a lowlevel naval fight over shipping. It was a lowlevel war with france over shipping. Like every president with the exception of Madison Adams used war as an excuse to curtail civil liberty. They made it a federal crime essentially to criticize the government of the United States. Prosecutors use this to arrest, fine, and jailed republican newspaper editors across the country. I know it sounds shocking. A few years before they guarantee freedom of the press but they argued about white was fine. They said the phrase freedom of the press only met in the bill of rights. The thing it meant in britain no censorship before you publish. But if you publish something and you want to put in jail for saying it thats not covered. You laugh, but they convicted people using this theory and the had the most sophisticated federalist lawyer, people like James Iredell was a Supreme Court justice that was the standard view. Suddenly, medicine woke up to the fact that there is this thing, the First Amendment that we did. Since this is being targeted specifically in a partisan way a republicans in an election season madison developed the view that the freedom of speech and freedom of press were not limited to prior restraint that protected you against being prosecuted by the government. He articulated the view and he was back by republicans. Thats really the first moment when the bill of rights came to be used as a Political Tool to make an argument about government overreach. This is crucially important, the republicans won. Had they lost, the argument may have followed by the wayside. When they say the government is violating our constitutional right it might not of caught on that had been made or succeeded ultimately the right to free speech came to mean what it meant eventually in the United States in large part because it was deployed by madison as an argument against the federalist and thereby replaced with the proto version of what we think of as freedom of the press. So madison was president so the republicans win the election of 1800s and so as president , medicine is in the unique role to exercise the constitutional power. Im curious as president did madison face challenges that threatened his own constitutional views were executive power . He did. Its fascinating to see how he dealt with that. One example shows medicine compromising madison have founded the Republican Party because of the fight over the bank. The constitution doesnt say anything about giving congress right to charter a bank. For wasnt in the constitution it wasnt constitutional. He didnt just say that hamilton was wrong he said it violated the constitution itself. Sure enough congress enacted the president signed it into law. Was a 20 year term. Madison was president when the bank of the United States came out for reuptake. So he had fought a war in which you realize you really need a bank. Going to fight a war because you need an entity to run money to the government and so madison let it be known in congress that he would not oppose the rechartering of the bank. The formulation he used was to say that although he had not thought of this to begin with both parties were in office while the bank operated Congress Allowed her to remain in existence now it meant something different. I loved using this in debates because if youre an originalist you should in theory believe that what James Madison thought about original assumption matter but most original is a dull. They do have an answer. Someone say it doesnt matter what the person there believed the matters said the public meaning of the document was. Madison himself was not an originalist. He allowed the time, development and public consensus could change it also happened when he was president during the war of 1812 that was going badly that the new england state basically to investigate a separate peace with britain tie them off with another country. Everybody knew it. No other u. S. President wouldve allowed this to occur. With similar circumstances they arrested others who disagree its a fascinating debate whether thats right or wrong most president s wouldve done it to save the republic. He let the convention occur. He knew they could go different ways. But he believed fundamentally in the fundamental right and liberty that existed but i thought if he was going to suppress that it wasnt worth it. Thats extraordinary legacy, the depth of his commitment to Civil Liberties came out and thats an example of being deeply challenged. That brings to mind your discussion of when he gave the final message to congress. Talk about his final message being one of constitutional freedom. Madison did want to leave office with the message that the constitution still matter. By the end of his career madison had come to a middle position between the strong nationalism of his days at the convention and the strong states rights of his late 1790 years. The federal government should be able to do some of the things that they had not been able to do by capping a small Standing Army the world of 1812 was a simple game plan which was to invade canada. Militia stood on the river and refuse to cross. Hard to invade without an army. So thats part of the reason why it went so badly. But, he still believed it was a government of limited power and so he actually vetoed as his last official act in office above that have been passed by the republicans to call for money to be spent on national infrastructure. Roads, bridges, and he seemed popular, right the last act to veto a law by his own party he did this in order to close his presidency on the message that article one section eight that boosted the limited powers of congress was a thing that congress could not do what it wanted. Congress could do whatever it wants so madisons legacy was of a constitution that is in the middle. Limit power and protect liberties but also allow the National Government to act. That was and remains extremely popular. Theres a great letter from adams to jefferson written the week it ended where one former president called the other and despite the mistakes madisons product presidency had greater glory in the three others combined. There is a judgment of the age. It was a high point, naive in retrospect but a high point for nonpartisan rational government at least in madisons view. Thats interesting. You recently gave a ted talk where you mentioned partisanship and compared it to the founding and suggested that even though much is made of partisan politics there were not so different that brings me to some of the audience questions i wanted to ask you to do is to channel madison a little bit or at least help us think through them through a different lens. One talks about calling a convention. The questions that jefferson recommend we revise the constitution every 20 years. To madison consider the . Today theres been calls for in Article Five Convention what are your thoughts on that . How might they think about whether now is a good time for that . Generally trying to channel that is a dangerous thing to do. You have to decide who your channeling . I channeling an updated version . But this one question about convention is the one its possible to say what madison thought. He was profoundly opposed to any new Constitutional Convention ever. The minute it was over he thought thank god, we never want to do that again. The reason is that he understood the convention had experienced near unanimity. And then they went to a ratification process where it was split down the middle. The lesson he learned had public sentiment and unrepresented in the convention. They would have failed on day one. Fascinating side question why was there huge disparity between the views of the people in Independence Hall and people in the rest of the country . The short answer is that nobody really knew if it was going to be the Constitutional Convention. If you that the articles of confederate didnt mean much reforming you want to showed up. The people who showed up with those who wanted to change toward greater Central Government. So no wonder they were able to agree. The public said we never heard of it in huge parts of the public strongly oppose. Madison understood if you had a convention where people were divided into be impossible to reach a consensus. If you think about what a convention would look like today, heaven help us. Its hard enough to hold ourselves together as a single country without putting everything on the table. And thats by when jefferson explained in a letter his theory about how the dead hand of the past cannot control the future and we should understand the earth we dont really on our society and culture we just hold it in trust and therefore you have to revise the constitution every 19 years. To brilliant idea. Never be able to do it in practice. You never want to concede have to put everything up for grabs every 14 years. Youd have no way of knowing their stability tenny aspects of your society if you knew every 19 years it would be a for grabs. What were the founders thinking when they included article five . Was there ever an occasion when some founders thought it would be appropriate . I think they understood the fact that they were right there in the convention but it would look a little weird they said the only way you can change it is by change you are doing now. Madison thought producing the bill of rights in congress with set the right mechanism the other thing is its hard to ratify amendments even if theyre produced in a conventional form under article five. The difficulty would cause people what would happen is you would think it out and then go to the public and couldnt get it ratified. How does the fact that madison was asleep holder affect . It ive written about this quite a lot. To say that madison was born into the arms of the slave and a slave closed his eyes when he died. He was born onto a plantation with well over a hundred slaves and healed slaves that every point. Is in the grip of a profound contradiction. He also believed that slavery was morally wrong and should be abolished. He wrote a letter to his father from philadelphia he had been serving in congress and was on his way home he wrote about a slave he wrote lunch on personally and he brought him to be his servant. And he said i cannot being billy home because hes been living in philadelphia where people understand freedom. But, he said i also cant sell them because under the laws of pennsylvania you werent allowed to sell a slave. Pennsylvania was involved in a very complicated process you could on a slave if youre a member of congress if you brought your sleep with you. The children of slaves were already being freed but you couldnt sell them so madison says i could sell him off to some other Southern State but sending him away he only wants the right that we declared ourselves to exist try to your mind around that. Its astonishing. One slaveholder telling another, his father that his slave it would be monstrous to sell his slave into slavery because hes entitled to a universal human right just like we are. So madison compromised for good and for bad and he sold them into servitude which he was allowed to do bully stayed here and became free and made a life for himself he knew slavery was wrong when you really want to ask yourself, which is more immoral . To believe that africanamericans are people of african descent are inherently inferior and to hold them as slaves . Thats a Jefferson View or believe that they are equal in capacity and value to white people and hold them as slaves . Neither is good. But its a departed question task which is more immoral . That immorality follows him throughout his life. He became very focused on a plan he believed in namely repatriation of africans and resettlement of people of african descent he became the chairman of the Colonization Society and never seem to convince madison so worried was he about the difficulties so, deep contradiction in my view the medicines life the three fifths compromise, the slaves law of the clause. Multiple features of the constitution which he justified were necessary. To questions that look to compare the skills how did the skills and abilities of madison compared to his skills as president and how are they demonstrators chief executive . In both cases his strength was trying to convince people rationally of things and his weakness is that people dont always to whats in their best interest. At the convention he tried rational arguments in the small medium state said no. But you admit its not fair and at that point he had nothing to say. He wasnt good at dealing with other people. The same is true when he kept trying to convince the british and french that it was rational to open their ports to u. S. Trade. For the longest time their reaction was, i think its up to us to decide that. In the nt had to turn to the use of force which he knew was that reasonable. Took that to get the british to change their view. On the bright side he learned they cannot always rely on everyone else to be reasonable just because you are. But the cost of that recognition was the war. But the high cost. Is there anything that struck you as something you never realized about medicine before was a misconception that you wanted to clear up . Probably the greatest misconception most people have nice or had was that after producing this constitution he was done. He made a global contribution and would be famous were forever. He could go home and live out the rest of his life without changing his views. Youd be thrilled by a National Convention center. He liked the idea of institutions that stiffer values of liberty, values of federalism and the value of rational thought in defense of these. He also wanted a little extra Something Special where we worship it. Its easy to fall into the mistake of thinking was the constitution was done all he wanted to do was say gay, constitution. Thats not how it happened. He discovered it was flawed and he needed to fight hard in both of his next to it right the ship of state that it was because the constitution was not perfect and he knew it. Thats an extraordinary lesson. Even accomplishment like the constitution is not permanent. We have to earn Something Like the constitution. The lesson for our current age i cant get any better than that. Each generation has to rear in the constitution. Jefferson was right to say the constitution at any given moment belongs to us and not the people 20 generations ago. If we dont do a good job of holding our constitution and trust, nurturing, protecting and taking care of it having tender care for constitution which he thought of as his child, then he it wont be there to pass on. But it wont matter. Constitution has to be rethought reengaged every defendant in every generation. This most profound lesson. Even the person who made it had to spend the rest of his life fighting a hard with every ounce of energy to defend the constitution. Thats a good way to live ones own life. Everyone is thrilled to hear that were still the embodiment of medicines for legacy. The last question, do you think we will see madison on broadway anytime soon . My grandmother from philadelphia would say from your mouth to gods ears. I think madison had a different character from hamilton. I dont know the hiphop music was right jonathan frost. There might be other ways from television and through other media for us to hit on some of the drama of madisons life in the real excitement that it contains. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible] has a special project were featured best selling fiction writers for monthly program. Notebook tvs monthly in Depth Program close and might have. His 2016 not full, the underground railroad nominated the Pulitzer Prize in the National Book award. This is part of our 2018 special fiction edition. Welcome tok