Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, The Bill of Rights, and The Election that Saved a Nation

by Chris DeRose

Overview

Explores how the 1789 congressional election between two future presidents with differing views on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights influenced the destiny of the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781621570714
Publisher:	Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date:	05/20/2013
Series:	Early America Collection
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	782 KB

About the Author

The list of Regnery authors reads like a "who's who" of conservative thought, action, and history.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Opening Days ix

Chapter 1 The Last Days of the Colony of Virginia 1

Chapter 2 The Soldier and the Statesman 17

Chapter 3 The World Turned Upside Down 39

Chapter 4 The In-between Days 55

Chapter 5 The Tedious Sessions 71

Chapter 6 Madison and Monroe 89

Chapter 7 A Prayer for America 109

Chapter 8 The Annapolis Disaster and the Road to Philadelphia 121

Chapter 9 Great Expectations 135

Chapter 10 A Rising or a Setting Sun? 151

Chapter 11 The Battle of Shockhoe Hill 167

Chapter 12 The Race for Ninth 187

Chapter 13 The Terrible Session 203

Chapter 14 The First Election 219

Chapter 15 The Federalist Endgame 241

Chapter 16 The "First Man" of the House: Passing the Bill of Rights 251

Epilogue: The Fourth of July 265

Acknowledgments 273

Notes 275

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

A fresh, narrow, knowledgeable-of-minutiatake on a well-known friendship and rivalry during the early establishment of the U.S. Constitution.

Attorney and political strategist DeRose shifts his focus around James Madison's forced championing of a Bill of Rights to the Constitution, the contentious Congressional election campaign between fellow Virginians Madison and James Monroe of 1789 and the early influence of the Virginia Plan on thedrafting of the U.S. Constitution. His depiction of the evolving relationship between the two key Virginians proves a steady, compelling narrative throughout. Several years younger than Madison, the Revolutionary War hero Monroe became Madison's protégé and correspondent. Madison, a soft-spoken, eloquent landowner and delegate, became the architect of the Constitution. Both men, writes DeRose, proved in separate ways their heartfelt patriotism. At the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Madison helped hammer out a perfect-enough Constitution in order to present to the states, and then—along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay—tried to convince the public of its worth in a series of newspaper essays under the pen name Publius (i.e.,The Federalist Papers). Subsequently, Monroe, as a delegate to the Virginia Ratification Convention the next year, presented objections, namely to the lack of controls on the central government and need for preservation of basic rights. In just six months, Madison and Monroe would be battling over election to the first House of Representatives. Madison barely won, largely because of his campaign promise to introduce into the new Congress a Bill of Rights, which he duly did, preempting the anti-Federalists, and thus helping to gain passage for the first 10 amendments by 1791. DeRose maintains that unless Monroe opposed Madison early on, the lack of amendments would have quickly created division and rupture in the new government.

A lively, clear-cut study of the myriad hurdles and uncertainty that characterized the first attempts to form the U.S. government.

Kirkus Reviews