Editing James Madison (section)

==Slavery==
{{Main|James Madison and slavery}}

Throughout his life, Madison's views on slavery were conflicted. He was born into a plantation society that relied on slave labor, and both sides of his family profited from tobacco farming.{{sfn|Spies-Gans, 2013}} While he viewed slavery as essential to the Southern economy, he was troubled by the instability of a society that depended on a large slave population.{{sfn|Burstein|Isenberg|2010|pages=26, 200–202}} Madison also believed slavery was incompatible with American Revolutionary principles, though he owned over one hundred [[African American]] slaves.{{sfn|Spies-Gans, 2013}} According to historian Paris Spies-Gans, Madison's anti-slavery thought was strongest "at the height of Revolutionary politics. But by the early 1800s, when in a position to truly impact policy, he failed to follow through on these views." Spies-Gans concluded, "[u]ltimately, Madison's personal dependence on slavery led him to question his own, once enlightened, definition of liberty itself."{{sfn|Spies-Gans, 2013}}

Madison grew up on Montpelier, which like other southern plantations depended on slave labor. When Madison left for college on August 10, 1769, he arrived at [[Princeton University|Princeton]] accompanied by Sawney, an enslaved man charged with handling Madison's expenses and with relaying messages to his family back home.{{sfn|Spies-Gans, 2013}} In 1783, fearing the possibility of a slave rebellion at Montpelier, Madison emancipated one slave, [[William Gardner (former slave)|Billey]], selling him into a seven-year apprentice contract. After his manumission, Billey changed his name to William Gardner{{sfn|Cost|2021|page=255}} and became a shipping agent, representing Madison in Philadelphia.{{sfnm|Watts|1990|1p=1289|Ketcham|1990|2pp=374-375|Taylor|2012|3p=27}}{{sfnm|Spies-Gans, 2013||French|2001||New York Review of Books, June 6, 2019}} Madison inherited Montpelier and its more than one hundred slaves after his father died in 1801.{{sfn|Burstein|Isenberg|2010|pages=4, 26}} That same year, Madison moved to Washington D.C., running Montpelier from afar making no effort to free his slaves. After his election to the presidency in 1808, Madison brought his slaves to the [[White House]].{{sfn|Spies-Gans, 2013}} During the 1820s and 1830s, Madison sold some of his land and slaves to repay debt. In 1836, at the time of Madison's death, he owned 36 taxable slaves.{{sfn|Broadwater|2012|p=188}} In his will, Madison gave his remaining slaves to his wife Dolley, and charged her not to sell the slaves without their permission. To pay off debts, Dolley later sold the slaves without their permission.{{sfn|Spies-Gans, 2013}}

Madison was known from his farm papers for advocating the humane treatment of his slaves. He instructed an overseer to "treat the Negroes with all the humanity and kindness consistent with their necessary subordination and work."{{sfn|Burstein|Isenberg|2010|p=201}} Madison also ensured that his slaves had milk cows and meals for their daily food.{{sfn|Ketcham|1990|pp=374-375}} By the 1790s, Sawney, while enslaved, was an overseer of part of the plantation. Some slaves at Montpelier could read.{{sfn|Ketcham|1990|pp=374-375}} [[Paul Jennings (abolitionist)|Paul Jennings]] was a slave of the Madisons for 48 years and worked as Madison's footman at the White House. In his memoir, ''A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison'', published in 1865, Jennings said that he "never knew [Madison] to strike a slave, although he had over one hundred; neither would he allow an overseer to do it." Jennings condemned slavery but called James Madison "one of the best men that ever lived", and Dolley Madison "a remarkably fine woman."{{sfn|National Park Service 2022}}{{sfn|Taylor|2012|p=22}} Historian Elizabeth Dowling Taylor said Madison was a "garden-variety slaveholder," who avoided excessive cruelty. Slaves worked six days a week, dawn to dusk, with Sundays off.{{sfn|Taylor|2012|pp=21-22}}

Madison called slavery "the most oppressive dominion" that ever existed,{{Sfn|Feldman|2017|p=121}} and according to historian [[Ralph Ketcham]] he had a "lifelong abhorrence" for the institution.{{sfn|Ketcham|1990|p=149}} In 1785 Madison spoke in the [[Virginia Assembly]] favoring a bill that [[Thomas Jefferson]] had proposed for the [[Gradual emancipation (United States)|gradual abolition of slavery]], and he also helped defeat a bill designed to outlaw the [[manumission]] of individual slaves.{{sfn|Ketcham|1990|p=149}} As a slaveholder, Madison was aware that owning slaves was not consistent with revolutionary values,{{sfn|Feldman|2017|loc=p. 52: "Madison knew that the institution of slavery contradicted the humanitarian ideals of the Revolution. His livelihood, then and throughout his life, depended on slavery&nbsp;... He was not trying to introduce abolition by subtleties. Madison was attempting the doubtful, self-contradictory goal of being a humane slaveholder, one actuated by revolutionary principles"}} but, as a [[Pragmatism|pragmatist]], this sort of self-contradiction was a common feature in his political career.{{sfn|Feldman|2017|pages=16–17}} Historian [[Drew R. McCoy]] said that Madison's [[antislavery]] principles were indeed "impeccable."{{Sfn|McCoy|1989|p=260}}  Ketcham wrote, "[a]lthough Madison abhorred slavery, he nonetheless &nbsp;... depend[ed] all his life on a slave system that he could never square with his republican beliefs."{{sfn|Ketcham|2002|p=57}} There is no evidence Madison thought [[Scientific racism|black people were inherently inferior]].{{Sfn|Rutland|1987|p=241}}{{Sfn|Feldman|2017|p=121}} Madison believed [[Racial segregation in the United States|blacks and whites were unlikely to co-exist peacefully]] due to "the prejudices of the whites" as well as feelings on both sides "inspired by their former relation as oppressors and oppressed."{{Sfn|Feldman|2017|p=284}} As such, he became interested in the idea of [[Freedman|freedmen]] establishing colonies in [[Africa]] and later served as the president of the [[American Colonization Society]], which relocated former slaves to [[Liberia]].{{sfn|Burstein|Isenberg|2010|pages=200-201, 607–608}} Madison believed that this solution offered a gradual, long-term, but potentially feasible means of [[Abolitionism in the United States|eradicating slavery in the United States]],{{Sfn|McCoy|1989|p=5}} but that peaceful co-existence between the two racial groups could eventually be achieved in the long run.{{Sfn|Burstein|Isenberg|2010|p=201}}

Madison initially opposed the Constitution's 20-year protection of the foreign [[Atlantic slave trade|slave trade]], but he eventually accepted it as a necessary compromise to get the South to ratify the document.{{sfn|James Madison Memorial Foundation}} He also proposed that apportionment in the House of Representatives be according to each state's free and enslaved population, eventually leading to the adoption of the [[Three-fifths Compromise]].{{sfn|Burstein|Isenberg|2010|pages=156–157}} Madison supported the extension of slavery into the West during the [[Missouri Compromise|Missouri crisis of 1819–1821]],{{sfn|New York Review of Books, June 6, 2019 }} asserting that the spread of slavery would not lead to more slaves, but rather diminish their generative increase through dispersing them,{{Efn|According to [[Drew R. McCoy|McCoy]], through this reasoning, Madison implicitly rejected "the [[Malthusianism|Malthusian logic of restrictionists]], who contended that diffusion, by increasing the supply of available subsistence to the black population, would indeed increase their numbers by accelerating the rate of natural growth."{{sfn|McCoy|1989|p=268}}}} thus substantially improving their condition, accelerating [[emancipation]], easing [[Ethnic conflict|racial tensions]], and increasing "partial manumissions."{{Sfn|McCoy|1989|pages=268–269}} Madison thought of slaves as "wayward (but still educable) students in need of regular guidance."{{sfn|Burstein|Isenberg|2010|p=201}}