{"product_id":"james-madison-1805-1815","title":"James Madison, 1805-1815","description":"\u003cp\u003eMadison wrote the Bill of Rights after arguing that it would not work. His credentials for the job were unmatched — with Edmund Randolph and George Mason he had drafted the Virginia Plan, the outline the Constitutional Convention actually worked from, and he wrote a share of the eighty-five Federalist essays, including the tenth and the fifty-first. So when the states demanded a list of guaranteed rights as the price of ratification, his opinion carried weight, and his opinion was that it was pointless. He set it out to Jefferson on 17 October 1788: he had \"never thought the omission a material defect,\" because \"repeated violations of these parchment barriers have been committed by overbearing majorities in every State.\" Virginia had its own declaration of rights and it had been \"violated in every instance where it has been opposed to a popular current.\" Written guarantees, on his reading, were words, and \"the real power lies in the majority of the Community.\" Jefferson wrote back on 15 March 1789 with the reply that has outlasted the argument: \"Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.\" Madison had also won ratification in the Virginia convention by promising to pursue amendments in the First Congress, and he was a man who kept that kind of promise. He read through more than two hundred amendments proposed by the state conventions, boiled them down, and introduced the result in the House on 8 June 1789. Ten of them were ratified on 15 December 1791. He never stopped thinking a parchment barrier was a weak thing. He built the best one anyone has managed anyway, and the argument he lost is the reason the First Amendment exists.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe figure is Madison in black — coat, waistcoat and breeches, white stockings, buckled shoes, one hand tucked into his coat front — and he was a small man, five feet four. He is also the only president in this collection who watched a foreign army burn the capital. On 24 August 1814 he rode out to Bladensburg and inspected Winder's army before it broke, and then escaped capture by crossing into Virginia. What happened in the house he left behind is on \u003ca href=\"\/products\/dolly-madison\"\u003eDolley Madison\u003c\/a\u003e's page, told by the enslaved footman who set the table that the British ate. The man whose secretary he had been, and whose administration he continued, is \u003ca href=\"\/products\/thomas-jefferson-no-2\"\u003eThomas Jefferson\u003c\/a\u003e. And the war everyone called Mr. Madison's War was fought by men like the \u003ca href=\"\/products\/u-s-infantryman\"\u003eU.S. Infantryman\u003c\/a\u003e, on five to eight dollars a month that arrived, by the end, a year late.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eModel: 10225 \/ W. Britain \/ 1\/30 scale \/ matte finish \/ 1 piece set\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"W. Britain","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49859740631268,"sku":"10225","price":52.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0655\/7024\/2788\/files\/20225_grey_9A511A6E175B0.webp?v=1789409137","url":"https:\/\/breagans.com\/products\/james-madison-1805-1815","provider":"Breagans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}