James Madison was born on August 27, 1749, near Staunton, Virginia. He grew up at "Madison Hall, " purchased by his father in 1751, in Augusta (now Rockingham) County.
He was the son of John Madison and a cousin of President James Madison. His mother was Agatha, daughter of William Strother of King George County.
After early education at home and at a private school in Maryland, Madison entered the College of William and Mary, from which he graduated in 1771 with high honors.
He studied law under George Wythe and was admitted to the bar but did not enter upon practice. He received the degree of D. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1785.
In 1773, Madison was elected professor of natural philosophy and mathematics in the college, and in 1775 he went to England for further study and for ordination to the ministry of the Church of England. Returning to Williamsburg and his professorship, he was in 1777 elected president of William and Mary, though lacking two years of the statutory age. He held this office till his death, being relieved of the teaching of mathematics in 1784 and serving thereafter as professor of natural and moral philosophy.
Like the great majority of the clergy of the Established Church in Virginia, he supported the patriot cause in the Revolution, even going so far as to speak of Heaven as a republic rather than a kingdom. He served as chaplain of the House of Delegates in 1777; on August 18, he was commissioned captain of a company of militia organized from among the students of the college, and he saw active service on several occasions during the war.
Selected in 1779 as a member of the commission to define the boundaries between Virginia and Pennsylvania, he determined the line "with great astronomical precision". Later, he made the surveys from which A Map of Virginia Formed from Actual Surveys (1807) was engraved.
Commonly known as "Madison's Map, " this was the standard for many years. He was of note among the scientific men of his day and carried on an extensive correspondence with Jefferson, mostly on scientific subjects. He cooperated with Jefferson in effecting some changes in the organization of William and Mary during the latter's governorship of Virginia.
His own position as president of the college became exceedingly difficult toward the close of the Revolution. Classes were disbanded and the college buildings were in the hands, first of the British, and later of the French and American forces.
After the Revolution, both the income of the college and the attendance of students were seriously affected. Madison was the guiding, dominating spirit through the difficult years of reorganization and revival. In addition to the administration and discipline, he was compelled to hold the chairs of different departments to supply the lack of adequate faculty.
In 1784, he taught political economy, using Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations as a textbook (Tyler, post). Under his leadership, the college was brought to a high degree of efficiency and prosperity. He lived on terms of close intimacy with the students.
As the first bishop of Virginia, Madison undertook a superhuman task. The Established Church of the Colony had never been permitted to have its own bishop or to legislate for its own affairs. Supported by taxation, it had been the ward of the government which established new parishes as it formed new counties.
The Church emerged from the Revolution simply as a group of disestablished parishes with no training in corporate government and no experience of corporate life. It faced the changed conditions and a constantly growing hostility of elements in the population who sought to take away its glebe lands and endowments.
The history of the Episcopal Church in Virginia from 1785 to 1814 is a tragic story of the inability to solve the problems of the new day and of gradual weakening, almost to the point of death. Tied as Madison was to his duties at the college for ten months of the year, he could give only two months to a visitation of the parishes, but this he did year after year.
There are no existing records of his administration beyond casual references in the convention journals.
In his later years sufficient attendance of the few remaining clergy could not be secured to justify the holding of annual conventions and the history of the Church for these years is almost a blank.
Madison died March 6, 1812, and was buried in the college chapel.
Madison's scientific spirit and political opinions caused some persons to regard him as a deist, but his convention addresses are noteworthy for their earnestness and devotion to the cause of his Church.
Quotes from others about the person
One of his pupils, John Tyler, later president of the United States, said of him: "His manner to the inmates of the College was kind and parental, and his reproof was uttered in the gentlest tones; no one who attended the College during the time that he presided over it, hesitates to acknowledge him as a second father".
"Under his guidance and instruction, " writes a later biographer, "there was trained a body of alumni which included the flower of Virginia's youth, which moulded the destiny of the state and largely of the United States for half a century, and which for exalted character, distinguished statesmanship and commanding influence could hardly have been equaled in any institution of its day".
In 1779, Madison had married Sarah Tate.
