Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution

This well-written book provides an analysis of the political and constitutional opinions of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison that date from the Declaration of Independence through the nullification crisis of the late 1820s. Broadwater provides snapshots of a variety of issues upon which the opinions of Jefferson and Madison are superimposed. General readers will find this book an easy read, but the book offers no fresh insights for scholars already familiar with the well-investigated relationship. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is Jeff Broadwater's extensive bibliographic citations, which include a wealth of monographic studies and especially the relevant documentary editions, particularly the papers of Jefferson and Madison and most prominently James Morton Smith's three-volume compilation The Republic of Letters (1995), which collects correspondence between the two men. Broadwater's book profits much from the scholarly annotation found in these documentary editions. Unfortunately the book suffers from the same myopic problem that plagues most biographies—few subjects are examined beyond the role played by the central character(s) as if no one else seriously addressed the issues under consideration. A good example of this tunnel vision is found in Broadwater's account of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in which Madison's Virginia Plan is discussed and contrasted with the New Jersey Plan. No reference, however, is made to the Hamilton Plan, which transformed the delegates’ perception of the Virginia Plan as radical to a moderate blueprint for their consideration. This narrow-tunnel perspective persists and thereby leads general readers to inaccurate conclusions

Character (mathematics · Constitution · Convention · Declaration · Declaration of independence · Nullification · Plan (archaeology · Political science · Politics · Variety (cybernetics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Classics · Computer Science · History · Law