erty, and to his broad and tolerant views, is due much, very much, of whatever is admirable in our institutions. In them we discern everywhere traces of his master spirit.

W

JAMES MADISON.

A

HEN Mr. Jefferson retired from the Presidency, the country was almost on the verge of war with Great Britain. Disputes had arisen in regard to certain restrictions laid by England upon our commerce. hot discussion also came up about the right claimed and exercised by the commanders of English war-vessels, of searching American ships and of taking from them such seamen as they might choose to consider natives of Great Britain. Many and terrible wrongs had been perpetrated in the exercise of this alleged right. Hundreds of American citizens had been ruthlessly forced into the British service.

It was when the public mind was agitated by such outrages, that James Madison, the fourth President of the United States, was inaugurated. When he took his seat, on the 4th of March, 1809, he lacked but a few days of being fifty-eight years of age, having been born on the 15th of March, 1751. His father was Colonel James Madison, his mother Nellie Conway. He gradu

ated at Princeton College, New Jersey, in 1771, after which he studied law.

In his twenty-sixth year he had been a member of the Convention which framed the Constitution of Virginia; in 1780 had been elected to the Continental Congress, in which he at once took a commanding position; had subsequently entered the Virginia Legislature, where he co-operated with his friend and neighbor, Jefferson, in the abrogation of entail and primogeniture, and in the establishment of religious freedom; had drawn up the call in answer to which the Convention to Draught a Constitution for the United States met at Philadelphia in 1787, and had been one of the most active members of that memorable assemblage in reconciling the discordant elements of which it was composed. He had also labored earnestly to secure the adoption of the new Constitution by his native State; had afterward entered Congress; and when Jefferson became President, in March, 1801, had been by him appointed Secretary of State, a post he had declined when it was vacated by Jefferson in December, 1793. In this important post for eight years, he won the highest esteem and confidence of the nation. Having been nominated by the Republicans, he was in 1808 elected to the Presidency, receiving one hundred and twenty-two electoral votes, while Charles C. Pinckney, the Federal candidate, received but forty-seven.

In 1794, he married Mrs. Dorothy Todd, a young widow lady, whose bright intelligence and fascinating manners were to gain her celebrity as one of the most remarkable women who ever presided over the domestic arrangements of the Presidential Mansion.

Of a weak and delicate constitution, and with the habits of a student, Mr. Madison would have preferred peace to war. But even he lost patience at the insults heaped upon the young Republic by it ancient mother; and when, at length, on the 18th of June, 1812, Congress declared war against Great Britain, he gave the declaration his official sanction, and took active steps to enforce it. Though disasters in the early part of the war greatly strengthened the Federal party, who were bitterly opposed to hostilities, the ensuing Presidential canvass resulted in the re-election of Mr. Madison by a large majority, his competitor, De Witt Clinton, receiving eighty-nine electoral votes to one hundred and twenty-eight for Madison. On the 12th of August, 1814, a British army took Washington, the President himself narrowly escaping capture. The Presidential Mansion, the Capitol, and all the public buildings were wantonly burned. The 14th of December following, a treaty of peace was signed at Ghent, in which, however, England did not relinquish her claim to the right of search. But as she has not since attempted to exercise it, the question may be regarded as having been finally settled by the contest.

On the 4th of March, 1817, Madison's second term having expired, he withdrew to private life at his paternal home of Montpelier, Orange County, Va. During his administration, two new States had been added to the Union, making the total number at this period nineteen. The first to claim admittance was Louisiana, in 1812. It was formed out of the Southern portion of the vast Territory, purchased, during the Presidency of Jefferson, from France. Indiana-the second State-was admitted in 1816.

After his retirement from office, Mr. Madison passed nearly a score of quiet years at Montpelier. With Jefferson, who was a not very distant neighbor, he co-operated in placing the Charlottesville University upon a substantial foundation. In 1829, he left his privacy to take part in the Convention which met at Richmond to revise the Constitution of the State. His death took place on the 28th of June, 1836, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

M

JAMES MONROE.

ADISON'S successor in the Presidential chair was James Monroe, whose Administration has been called "the Era of Good Feeling," from the temporary subsidence at that time of party strife. He was a son of Spence Monroe, a planter. He was born on his father's

plantation in Westmoreland County, Va., on the 28th of April, 1758. At the age of sixteen he entered William and Mary College; but when, two years later, the Declaration of Independence called the Colonies to arms, the young collegian, dropping his books, girded on his sword, and entered the service of his country. Commissioned a lieutenant, he took part in the battles of Harlem Heights and White Plains. In the attack on Trenton he was wounded in the shoulder, and for his bravery promoted to a captaincy. Subsequently he was attached to the staff of Lord Sterling with the rank of major, and fought by the side of Lafayette, when that officer was wounded at the battle of Brandywine, and also participated in the battles of Germantown and Monmouth. He was afterward given a colonel's commission, but, being unable to recruit a regiment, began the study of law in the office of Jefferson, then Governor of Virginia.

When only about twenty-three years old, he was elected to the Virginia Legislature. The next year he was sent to Congress. On the expiration of his term, having meanwhile married, in New York, Miss Kortright, a young lady of great intelligence and rare personal attractions, he returned to Fredericksburg, and commenced practice as a lawyer. He espoused the cause of the Anti-Federal or Republican party, being thoroughly democratic in his ideas, as was his eminent