James Madison by Paul Raymond Audibert, Paris.

Additional information on Audibert pending.

James Madison, Fourth President of the United States, (1809-1817) Born Port Conway, Va., 1751; died Montpelier, Va., June 28, 1836. The following is excerpted from the coverleaf of the engraving:

"Affairs were drawing slowly towards some kind of crisis when at the expiration of Jefferson's second term, Mr. Madison was elected president of the United States.*** The growing desire for war was shown in the choice of Henry Clay for Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Mr. Madison was nominated for a second term on condition of adopting a war policy. On June 18, 1812, war was declared, and before the autumn elections a series of remarkable naval victories had made it popular. Mr. Madison was re-elected.*** The one absorbing event, which filled the greater part of his second term, was the war with Great Britain, which was marked by some brilliant victories and some grave disasters.*** Whatever opinion may be held as to the character of the war and its results, there is a general agreement that its management, on the part of the United States, was feeble. Mr. Madison was essentially a man of peace, and as a manager of a great war he was conspicuously out of his element. The victories of that war play a great part in the biographies of the military and naval heroes that figured in it; it is a cardinal event in the career of Andrew Jackson or Isaac Hull; in the biography of Madison it is an episode that may be passed over briefly. The greater part of his career was finished before he held the highest offices; his renown will rest chiefly or entirely upon what he did before the beginning of the nineteenth century.

"After the close of his second term in 1817, Mr. Madison retired to his estate at Montpelier, where he spent nearly twenty years with books and friends. This sweet and tranquil old age he had well earned by services to his fellow creatures such as it is given to but few men to render. Among the founders of their nation, his place is beside that of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Marshall; but his part was peculiar. He was pre-eminently the scholar, the profound constructive thinker, and his limitations were such as belong to that character. He was modest, quiet and reserved in manner, small in stature, neat and refined, courteous and amiable. In rough party strife there were many who could for the moment outshine him. He was not the sort of hero for whom people throw off their caps and shout themselves hoarse, like Andrew Jackson, for example, but his work was of a kind that will be powerful for good in the world long after the work of the men of Jackson's type shall have been forgotten."--JOHN FISKE (1842-1901), in The Presidents of the United States (1883), D. Appleton & Co., Effective copyright ©MIckey Cox 2002, All rights reserved.