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National Geographic : 1987 Sep
Contents
with the nationalists, events in New England pushed opinion over the edge. In 1786 Boston merchants had elected men to the Massachusetts assembly who supported their demands to raise taxes to pay off war debts. Farmers in the west couldn't afford the charges. Getting no redress, they turned to the grand tradi tion of earlier Boston patriots and attacked the courts with clubs. It was called Shays' Rebellion. Such lawlessness was shattering to leaders like Madison and George Washington. Was their beloved "government by the people" turning down the road to anarchy? Now states paid at tention to the call to Philadelphia; all except Rhode Island voted to send delegates. Madison wrote into Virginia's enabling law: "The crisis is arrived." One of the first delegates in Philadelphia, Madison rode in in conspicuously sometime during the first week of May 1787, settling at Mrs. House's. Typically, he had prepared himself by seeking lessons from the past. His library had been augmented by a "literary cargo," 200 volumes in English and French, pur chased for him by Jefferson in Paris. Madison had already ana lyzed ancient and modern confederations and penned a plan for a model republic. When Washington arrived on Sunday, May 13, he was met by the City Light Horse, saluting artillerymen, and chiming bells. The presence of the revered general lent legitimacy to the meeting. Host of the convention as governor of Pennsyl vania, 81-year-old Benjamin Franklin wrote Jefferson that the WONDERING THE PAST, ST. 0. Madden,Jr., gazes towardMontpelier, where, he recently learned, his great-great grandmotherwas an indentured servantof the Madisons. Sarah Madden was born to an impov erishedIrish woman who had to give up her mulatto child to in denture because she could not supporther. Madison'sfather acquiredSarah'spapers in pay ment for a debt. Free after 30 years of service, she moved with her own children to Culpeper, where a son establisheda trav elers tavern that thrived in the 19th century. Mr. Madden found an old trunk of papers in the attic of the tavern, now the family homestead, and hired a genealogistwho discovered the Madisonconnection. James Madison, Architect of the Constitution 355
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