KF1034 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY Miss Sally Lavic hild Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by WILLIAM CABELL RIVES, In the Clerk's Office of the United-States Court for the Eastern District of PREFACE. THE second volume of the "History of the Life of Madison," prepared for the press more than four years ago, in the state in which it is here given, but prevented from publication by the inauspicious circumstances of the times, is now submitted to the judgment of the reader. It comprehends the most instructive, and, in a civil and political view, the most eventful period of American annals, from the close of the war of the Revolution, down to and including the formation and establishment of the Constitution of the United States. It was during this period that the embarrassments and disorders incident to the imperfect system of confederation by which the States were held together-kept in check, while the war was in progress, by the spirit of union and strenuous patriotism awakened by the crisis—at length broke out in all their nakedness and force. The distressing experience of the radical vices of the confed eration, thus "brought home to the business and bosoms of men" during the four or five years immediately succeeding the termination of the war, conducted the nation gradually, but certainly and logically, to the remedies provided in the Constitution of 1788. The history of this period, Mr. Madison was accustomed to say, is like the preamble of a statute, the key to a true conception and just interpretation of the Constitution, unlocking and revealing the practical evils it was framed to remedy, and which must ever be kept in mind in seeking its legitimate sense and operation. No portion of our annals, therefore, merits a fuller development, or presents a stronger claim to the attention of those, of whatever country, who may be interested in acquiring a correct knowledge of the political institutions of America, and especially of such of her own citizens as feel a patriotic solicitude for the preservation of these institutions in their original spirit and purity. From the leading agency of Mr. Madison in the initiation, conduct, and consummation of this great organic change, the history of his public life becomes necessarily a history of the Constitution of the United States, and under a form, which, combining a concrete narrative of individual exertions and individual opinions with the more abstract |