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Madison, James
James Madison (1751–1836) was a planter, constitutional theorist, legislator, and the fourth president of the United States. Madison’s home all his life was in Orange County, Virginia, on a plantation, Montpelier, worked by perhaps 100 slaves. Although he abhorred slavery, he remained a Virginia planter, working within the traditional family-based political system and unwilling to forgo the economic advantages that slavery offered to his family.
Madison received a thorough classical education in Greek and Latin, and he learned Christian precepts from his clergymen teachers at The College of New Jersey at Princeton. Madison also read Francis Bacon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Jonathan Swift, Richard Steele, David Hume, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and others who fashioned the Enlightenment view, which became his own, although his political thinking always rested ...
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