Shining City Audio, a John Meacham and C-13 original studio.

March 16th, 1751. James Madison is born. I'm John Meacham and this is Reflections of History.

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Slight and soft spoken, James Madison, born in Virginia on this date in 1751, has been largely lost in the broad historical imagination of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Long obscured by the towering figures of George Washington and of Thomas Jefferson and by the popular rediscoveries of John Adams and of Alexander Hamilton.

The great little Madison, as his wife Dolly once called him, has seemed more little than great.

And if great, then great only in solemn and scholarly terms. He is the grind among the glamorous, the commitment among the dashing.

He is the founder one would trust with the details, not with the big picture, a man of process rather than a leader of men, a politician who governed in prose, not in poetry.

And yet, Madison was driven and passionate, devoted to his notions of duty in a country and ambitious for himself, first friends and for his ideas.

Far from a remote and intellectual most comfortable in the lofty realm of theory, he was in fact at home in the arena.

Drawing to the cut and thrust of conflict and of great events, he was determined to play a role on the largest possible stage, first elected to public office during the American Revolution, before his 25th birthday.

Madison would spend the ensuing six decades in the crucible of American politics, serving as a Virginia lawmaker, as a member of the Confederation Congress, as a delicate to the federal convention of 1787, and to Virginia's ratifying convention, as a chief author of the Federalist papers, as a leader of the first federal Congress under Washington, as a founder of one of the two great parties of the early republic, as Secretary of State, as President of the United States, and in the long twilight of his life.

As a reflective elder statesman and constitutional sage, he was impressive and engaging, a man to be trusted, respected, even loved.

His eyes were hazel, his voice soft, so soft that people often had to lean in and down to catch with the most powerful man in the new world, might be saying.

They always found the effort worth the trouble.

Madison's words had long proved illuminating, perceptive, and wise.

He is peculiarly interesting in conversation, the Harvard President, Jared Sparks wrote, cheerful, gay, and full of anecdote, sprightly varied, fertile in his topics, and felicitous in his descriptions and illustrations.

Abigail Adams believed Madison a very amiable character, a man of virtue, and probity. Thomas Jefferson thought his friend and fellow Virginian, the greatest man in the world.

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