Ralph Ketcham (1927–2017)

An impressive feat of scholarship to write a biography of someone like James Madison whose life and career stretched from the American Revolution to the 1830s. He was the "architect" of the Constitution, congressman, secretary of state, fourth president of the United States, and elder statesman. According to Ketcham, the glue that holds Madison together is his Republican ideology. That is why he could be for a stronger federal government in the 1780s but against it in 1790s and why he was not a good war leader. Kethcam argues that Madison was not the dupe of Thomas Jefferson. There are parts I struggle with. For example, Ketcham describes Madison's Virginia Resolves of 1798 out to be more moderate than Jefferson's Kentucky Resolves, but I don't see it. Also, on political points Madison appears very much the Wilsonian practitioner of expediency. If so, that would undercut his Republican ideology. And he did things for purely political reasons, which is what you would expect from a professional politician, but where does that line end? Ketcham catches Madison changing some of his comments about Lafayette later in life, but doesn't delve any deeper into that theme. After having read Mary Sarah Bilder's Madison's Hand (2015) it makes me wonder how much Madison edited his papers. Finally, much scholarship has been produced since this biography was published around the Constitution, the 1790s, and the War of 1812.… (más)