James Madison: “Advice to My Country”

Madison left the presidency in 1817 and retired to his home in Orange County, Virginia, where he and his wife continued the entertaining for which they had become famous in Washington, D.C. As he aged, however, Madison was troubled by others' using his name and reputation for political causes that he detested. He was particularly troubled by the South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun's attempts to draw parallels between Madison's reference in the Virginia Resolutions to “interposition,” which he had used to defend civil liberties, and Calhoun's own doctrines of nullification (by which a single state could declare a federal law to be null and void) and secession (by which such a state, or group of states, could secede from the Union). Calhoun was using these doctrines in efforts to perpetuate slavery and state sovereignty.

Before Madison died at his Virginia home in 1836, he was the last surviving attendee of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Madison's final political words, believed to have been penned in October 1834, did not reach the public until they were published in the National Intelligencer in 1850. Madison had, in effect, left a political statement as a kind of last will and testament.

In the essay, titled “Advice to My Country,” Madison appeals to his own forty years of service to the nation and his commitment “to the cause of its liberty,” sharing sentiments “nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions.” These sentiments, clearly meant to appeal both to the head and the heart, were for the perpetuation of the “Union of the States.” Madison ends with a reference to classical thought and to the Bible. The enemies to union, most especially the unnamed Calhoun and other southern embodiments, were to be regarded “as a Pandora with her box opened” or “as the Serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise.”

Madison's posthumous appeals were inadequate to stem the rising tide of secessionist sentiment. The issue of slavery ultimately overshadowed the significance of the diversity of factions that Madison had identified in Federalist 10. With pro-slavery and antislavery forces so sharply divided, each feared domination by the other, and there were no groups to mediate between them.

In time, the victory of northern forces in the Civil War led to the adoption of the Thirteenth through Fifteenth Amendments. The Fourteenth Amendment recognized the citizenship of all persons born or naturalized within the United States. Later, through a process of selective incorporation, the Supreme Court interpreted this amendment as mandating the applicationg of most provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states as well as to the national government. As one who had initially advocated a congressional veto of state legislation and who later advocated an amendment to restrain state infringements on the rights to conscience, Madison was arguably vindicated.