Member of Congress
Madison had been a delegate to the Confederation Congress, and wanted to be elected senator in the new government. A vengeful Patrick Henry wanted to deny Madison a seat in the new congress, so he ensured that Madison remained in the lame duck Confederation Congress to prevent him as long as possible from campaigning. Henry used his power to keep the Virginia legislature from appointing Madison as one of the state’s senators. When Madison decided to run for election to the house instead, Henry gerrymandered Madison’s home district, filling it with anti-federalists in an attempt to prevent Madison's election. Madison could have run in another district, so to prevent this, Henry forced through a law requiring congressmen to live in the district they represent. Later this was recognized as unconstitutional but, at the time, the law made it increasingly unlikely that Madison would be elected to congress. He ran against James Monroe, a future president, and traveled with Monroe while campaigning. Later as president, Madison was told by some of his former constituents that, had it not been for unusually bad weather on election day, Monroe likely would have won. Madison defeated Monroe and became an important leader in Congress.
Read more about this topic: James Madison
Famous quotes containing the words member of, member and/or congress:
“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 18:15.
“It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit of paying compliments kept a man’s tongue oiled without any expense; and that, as that useful member ought never to grow rusty or creak in turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner of the law, in whom it should be always glib and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving himself by the utterance of handsome speeches and eulogistic expressions”
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“What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years?... All their speeches put together and boiled down ... do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown on the floor of the Harper’s Ferry engine-house,—that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)