Essay On How Did James Madison Shape The Drafting And Passage Of The Constitution

1. In what ways did James Madison shape the drafting and passage of the Constitution? James Madison, a “shy and bookish” man from Virginia (Oates 119), played a vital role in creating and ratifying America’s Constitution, because of the way he contributed significant ideas to the document, and defended it from antifederalists. When Madison arrived in Philadelphia for the convention, he came prepared. Madison was well studied in “the histories of ancient confederacies” and “constitutional theory and history” (Oates 120), and he even asked Thomas Jefferson to send him books on these subjects. Because of all this, it is no surprise that Madison came to the convention “with well-developed ideas about democratic processes and republican institutions” (Oates 119). During the convention, he paid close

By sharing his ideas about government, Madison played an important part in this group, and in the end he was the one “responsible for much of the substance of the document” (Oates 125). And Madison’s impact on the Constitution did not end when the document was signed. During the argument over whether or not to ratify the Constitution, Madison supported the Federalist side, which was for the Constitution’s ratification. When the Constitution was publicized, there was a significant group of people, including Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, who disliked it and believed it shouldn’t be ratified. As a response to these so-called antifederalists, Madison teamed up with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to write a series of eighty-five letters promoting the Constitution. Their work was made into a book titled The Federalist, which was “both a reasoned defense of the Constitution and a ringing call for its ratification” (Oates 185). Madison wrote twenty-nine of these letters, including the famous tenth one, which “brilliantly refuted the conventional wisdom of the day that it was