This paradox lies at the heart of The Three Lives of James Madison, by Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, who charts Madison’s life as the 'father of the Constitution,' a political partisan, and ultimately a statesman in his roles as secretary of state and president. Throughout his lengthy book, Feldman maps Madison’s evolution from a bookish and idealistic social theorist to a pragmatic political operative who fully recognized the immorality of slavery and the humanity of the enslaved but proceeded, out of the economic interests of his class, to stamp it into the nation’s DNA ...Feldman goes further than many other scholars to insert slaves into the narrative, at times providing their names, circumstances and movements as he assiduously traces Madison’s evolving ideas about the political system he created and the institution that forever stained its legacy ... The Three Lives of James Madison widens the window on the character and outsize vision of Madison and the men who founded America.
As the Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman demonstrates in his illuminating and absorbing political biography, The Three Lives of James Madison, Madison would remain in ongoing dialogue and conflict with himself for the rest of his life. Feldman explores Madison’s reactive and improvisational thinking as it played out in the three uniquely consequential roles, or 'lives,' he had — as constitutional architect and co-author with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay of the Federalist Papers, political partisan and wartime president ... Feldman does not discuss the elder statesman’s role in the fraught nullification crisis of the late 1820s and early 1830s, but it’s only a further example of Madison’s political flexibility ... Feldman’s deeply thoughtful study shows that the three identities of James Madison constituted one exceptional life, which effectively mirrored the evolving identity of the American republic in its most formative phase. In Feldman’s capable hands, Madison becomes the original embodiment of our 'living Constitution.'
That’s the kind of book one expects upon a first glance at The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President, by Noah Feldman. But Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, at Harvard Law School, has written something else: a palliative for the age of Trump that never names the current President, as told through the political evolution of an important weirdo whose constant recalibrations enabled him, with increasing success, to fight epic battles with his own, founding-era 'haters and losers' ... Feldman is at once subtle and candid about the aptness of his narrative ... But the timely message is actually evergreen: the extreme partisanship that leaves us in varying states of frustration, alarm, and paranoia has always been a condition of the American experiment ... In what Feldman characterizes as the future President’s first life — the 'Genius' part — Madison laid the theoretical groundwork for a constitution for a republic.
They [John Adams and Thomas Jefferson] were followed in office by slight, soft-spoken James Madison, the subject of Noah Feldman's big, groundbreaking new book The Three Lives of James Madison, which studies all the aspects of Madison's complicated public career, as both the main author of the Constitution to the country's first wartime president to the co-founder of the Democratic-Republican Party. Feldman is too lenient on Madison the slave-owner, but he's uniformly excellent on Madison the political creature, which can't help but resonate with the present day.
James Madison (1751–1836) was instrumental in framing the constitutional government that serves the American people today, with his efforts at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. Madison ended the 'Genius' phase of his political life, as Feldman labels it, by successfully persuading his fellow Virginians to ratify the new form of government at a critical point in the process ...he entered the second phase of his political life as a partisan, representing a Virginia district in the First Congress. Here, he became increasingly adept at practicing politics while becoming political enemies with Alexander Hamilton... In his third political life, as Jefferson’s secretary of state and later as president, Madison tried to remain faithful to his ideals ... Based on primary and secondary sources, this is an insightful examination on how theories and ideals are applied and changed by real-life circumstances.
Feldman's scholarly yet accessible account emphasizes the evolution of Madison's views on the Constitution and his hard-earned flexibility as well as the maturation of his viewpoints and skills as he learned to adapt pure theories of government to political realities and then to make public virtues of the practical necessities. The richly detailed narrative, while occasionally lacking fire, is suitable for general readers; Feldman's presentation of Madison's adventures when the British burned the capital in 1814 is particularly rousing. The author skates over some setbacks and controversial decisions, like the rejection of a British armistice offer early in the War of 1812, and makes a brave job of harmonizing Madison's lifelong devotion to personal liberty with his status as a slaveholder ... A timely biography presenting a valuable counterbalance to the current enthusiasm for Hamilton.
Richly detailed and propelled by clear, thoughtful analysis, this comprehensive biography by Harvard constitutional-law scholar Feldman traces the arc of Madison’s career from his early influence on the Constitution through his role as cofounder of the Democratic-Republican Party to his tenure as America’s fourth president ...Feldman situates his subject within a particular historical moment, while also attending to his complex relationships with Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and other key thinkers... In addition to his well-developed portrait of Madison, Feldman offers lucid readings of founding documents such as The Federalist Papers, reinterpreting these texts with a fresh perspective informed by close attention to language and the law. With its lively prose and political acumen, this biography will be of interest to general-history readers and scholars alike.
