America's Greatest 19th Century Presidents by Charles River Editors Read Free Book Online

in New Jersey was the first time Madison had ever left Virginia, but he made the most of it.  While there, Madison continued his studies in the liberal arts, broadening his horizons by becoming fluent in Hebrew and Greek.  Madison graduated from Princeton in 1771 and returned to Virginia in 1772.  Although he had already graduated and had a posh family background with plenty of plantations, the ambitious Madison had no intentions of ever quitting his studying. Once he returned home, he continued to self-study the law in Virginia, with the intent of pursuing a position in colonial government.  Madison had time to spare: he finished a typically four-year degree at Princeton in only two years, during which he was very successful academically and even published a few books, including one called A Brief System of Logick . It’s likely that Madison’s intense focus on studying led his schoolmates to consider him somewhat aloof, but the young man eagerly participated in debates about government at a time when tension between the colonies and Great Britain were heating up. And Madison was not without humor, writing to one friend that he had seen ``no place so overstocked with Old-Maids as Princeton.''
     
    Despite his academic success, the speed with which the young and frail Madison completed his studies evidently wore on his health.  After 1772, he became ill, and remained so for some years. At Princeton, a popular legend still claims that Madison suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of studying so much, and that it caused him to miss his commencement ceremony, a fact recited in John MacLean’s 1877 History of the College of New Jersey . Whether that is true or not is still a subject of debate, but Madison himself linked his health problems to his intense studying while dictating an autobiographical manuscript, noting, “His very infirm health, had been occasioned not a little by a doubled labor, in which he was joined by fellow student Jos. Ross, in accomplishing the studies of two years within one.”
     
     

Chapter 2: The American Revolution, 1775-1783
     
    Virginia Politics before the Revolution
     
    In Revolutionary Virginia, the political body that the colony was best associated with was the House of Burgesses, which was the first governing body comprised of elected representatives among colonists in Britain’s American colonies. In the early 1770s, members like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson were members of the House, which became a place for fierce debate over the measures the British Empire was implementing against the American colonies. Parliament had adopted several types of taxes and measures to levy on the American colonies in order to pay for the victorious but costly Seven Years War in the 1750s. The British government felt that the colonies were the primary beneficiaries of the Seven Years War and should pay at least a portion of the expense.
     
    One of the first ways they did this was via the Stamp Act of 1765, which taxed stamps to raise revenue. The act required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp. These printed materials were legal documents, magazines, newspapers and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies. Like previous taxes, the stamp tax had to be paid in valid British currency, not in colonial paper money. Patrick Henry argued vociferously against the Stamp Act on the floor of the House of Burgesses.
     

     
    Patrick Henry went on to become Virginia’s 1 st Governor
     
    It was Jefferson’s turn to speak out against the Coercive or Intolerable Acts in the House in 1774. These were names used to describe a series of laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North America. Four of the acts were issued in direct response to the Boston Tea Party of December 1773; the British Parliament hoped these punitive measures would, by making an example of