This year, the Graduate School is celebrating its centennial!  Click here for a chapter on James Madison, Princeton's first graduate student.

Graduate School History

The Spring Crisis of 1910. Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Western Association of Princeton Clubs in St. Louis

As background for the 2000 Graduate Centennial, here is an excerpt from an "Early History of the Princeton Club of St. Louis" (compiled by Jamie Spencer '66). It sheds some light on the often raucous, perpetually contentious, debate about the School's purpose and location that lasted throughout Wilson's Princeton presidency (1902 - 1910). A 1910 Session of the Western Alumni Association, meeting in St. Louis, came at a critical juncture of this debate.

By 1910, the spirit of festive harmony that had marked the St. Louis World's Fair convocation of the Western Association had long-since evaporated. After Wilson turned from the stunningly successful and widely accepted educational reforms (preceptorial system, departmentalized course offerings) of 1902 - 1905, to the proposed changes to undergraduates' social lives first unveiled in 1907, he began to meet strong resistance.

Background to the Crisis

One continuing sore spot was the snobbery and elitism that were the all-too-frequent by-products of the Eating Club system, and the recurring efforts by Wilson to replace it with his "quad" system. (Its spirit re-arose like a wounded and pale Phoenix in President William Bowen's College system finally implemented sixty-five years later). Wilson felt, according to a Board statement "that forces were at work which were inconsistent with that spirit of equality on which Princeton has always laid so much stress". His loyal brother-in-law Stockton Axson described Wilson's plan, his "third great college reform," as one that would "reorganize the college life into groups, in which there should be representatives from all four classes [and faculty] to live in commons together with their dining rooms, living rooms, etc, thus to form a living community of intellectual companionship."

Axson is convinced that Wilson's goals throughout the extended debate were educational, and that the president held no animus toward the club system itself. But when

Wilson recognized the character of the forces that were opposing him [...] what had been inaugurated as a purely educational reform suddenly transformed itself into a fight for democracy [...] He had always been a democrat, but now he became a fighting democrat.

While the Board had in fact voted in favor of the plan as first presented in the fall of 1907, the subsequent intense reaction of alumni turned the visionary proposal into an occasion for angry denunciations and vituperation. And throughout, it was the Western alumni who were Wilson's most ardent supporters. In fact, Axson felt that

There was never a time in the fight when Mr. Wilson could not have carried the vast majority of the alumni west of Pittsburgh, but the opposition to him in the east, especially in Philadelphia and New York was strong, quickly became violent, ultimately insane.

As his loyal Alumni supporter and continuing Chicago friend David Jones wrote him later, "Your progress threatened the only side of University life which appealed to the New York and Philadelphia contingent."

By 1910 a new issue re-ignited the passions first aroused three years earlier by the quad battle-the matter of the Graduate School, for whose expansion a considerable gift had been offered by William Cooper Procter of Cincinnati. Procter was a successful Mid-west industrialist who had, in his student days, been tutored by Dean West. The bond lasted, and so it was perhaps inevitable that he would take his former master's side in the new debate, especially considering it was his money that was making the new Graduate school possible. During the prolonged unpleasantness, Mr. Wilson would consistently refer to him as " the soap man." His offer served several trustees as a cats-paw by which they hoped to up-end Wilson's social reforms and even, push come to shove, his presidency.

The intensity of the conflict was further fed by the sensitive egos of University prima donnas (like Dean Andrew West, as well as Wilson himself). But its heart lay in a genuine conflict in ideals between Dean West'' more elitist and "gentlemanly" conception of Graduate school life and purposes, and Wilson's more scholarly ones. Wilson wanted the school located at the center of campus, the heart of the university's academic life, so that its students could serve as visible models of learning to Nassau's undergraduates. Such a conception is of a piece with his mission of the quad system, with its notion of an intellectual community. Common to the two was the preeminence of the life of the mind, not of club life and class advancement, as a university's raison d`etre.

Feelings between the two camps in the Board of Trustees grew increasingly personal. Dean West was held in low regard by Wilson's supporters. Jones later said of West that he

Of course, would be willing to wreck Princeton to gratify his hate, but a man so wanting in character and academic standing ... is powerless to harm when the Princeton social set ceases to be the constituency to which he must appeal.

Letters to Wilson from various Western alumni as the crisis intensified during the winter of 1910 confirm Axson's assessment of their loyalty. Isaac Lionberger of St. Louis, who would play a dramatic role at the St. Louis convocation, wrote the President a note of encouragement. It is clear that he is describing Procter when he affirms that "Men who make money, however great their benefactions, should not assume a prerogative which cannot safely be intrusted to them." He goes on to assure Wilson, "You can not know all the good you are doing[...] The dumb body of alumni are no less observant than the clamorous enthusiasts who talk of college spirit yet have not been touched by it." Their silence (dumb here means merely silent) betokens support, in a word.

These sentiments were echoed by a fellow St. Louisan, George Sibley Johns, editor of the (highly progressive) St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He been Wilson's immediate successor as editor of The Daily Princetonian in his senior year (1879 80) and remained a steady correspondent throughout Wilson's Princeton and Presidential life. "I only wish that the impersonal and detached view, taken by many Western men, could be communicated to the Eastern contingent." He considered the matter "A crisis for the college" and worried about public opinion were it to perceive that Wilson's mission had failed:

An adverse public judgement that the Democratic ideals for which you are believe to stand have been checked and tossed aside [would be] a damaging blow to the University throughout the West and South - everywhere, practically, except in the New York clubs.

Regional acrimony and distrust is manifest.

Another Western Wilson loyalist of many years' standing, Cyrus Hall McCormick, agreed. An 1879 classmate of Wilson's, whose family hand endowed a Chair of Jurisprudence during the 1896 Sesquicentennial, McCormick showed how deep he considered the crisis in a lengthy proposal to classmate Edward Wright Sheldon. In it, he reacts to warnings from John Davis, host of the St. Louis gathering. "Unless this meeting is well controlled beforehand, there are likely to be some fireworks of an unpleasant character." His chief worry is to avoid a potential blow-up at the next Board meeting in April "which will make the position of the President almost untenable."

McCormick lays out a plan of action to prevent such a conflagration: the choice of a non-controversial Graduate School site, and getting Wilson to table for the time being his Quad proposal. But what is most striking in these proposals is their focus on Wilson'' behavior. Wilson "should agree to act on all important matters only after consultation with a Special Committee of advisors [...] I fear he will make shipwreck if he tries to steer a lone hand in this troublous condition of things." If a friend was urging that Wilson rely on advisors for all major decisions, it is a frank admission that Wilson needs to adopt a low profile and be seen as a team player.

He suggests further "That WW be persuaded to use all the tact possible in dealing with students and faculty during the next few months." McCormick refers to "lamentable mistakes" Wilson had made in recent days in what is here perceived as Wilson's recent undiplomatic behavior and language, a judgement that will be echoed with equal candor by Lionberger, to Procter himself in St. Louis.

It's perfectly obvious that Wilson had made enemies as a result both of his drastic proposed overhauls of the social system and his own willful manner. A letter to Dean West from Moses Taylor Pyne '77, a former Wilson chum who now effectually headed the opposition, confirms this. He writes of a recent "most satisfying and agreeable time with Procter. He is a corker." Pyne goes on to talk of Board opinions, and focuses especially on a potential new ally, Professor Capps, who

seems to be rising up against Wilson. If he gets real hot he may come over to our side. In that case, Wilson's side would have its back broken. So if pleasant treatment and cordial reception, without running after him[,] will lead him to forsake his false gods, let us not stand in the way of his getting right.

Clearly, machinations were afoot. Exacerbating further their intensity, was the even division of opinion on the Board, which lent greater importance to that spring's trustee elections between Adrian Hoffman Joline of New York and John Watson Barr of Louisville. Wilson answered an inquiry from Lionberger, affirming that Joline had "been put up distinctly as an anti-administration man, expected to do all he can to prevent the carrying out of the most important plans I have in mind." Indeed, a main purpose of Wilson's in the series of March speeches in Baltimore, Jersey City and Brooklyn which culminated in St. Louis was to educate alumni opinion about the Joline candidacy.

The Countdown to the Crisis

An emotionally erratic Wilson; inflamed alumni opinion; active Board division and hostility: truly a flammable mixture. Davis was himself taking considerable direct pains to spray the cool mist of reason and compromise. Ten days before the March 26 gathering, he wrote Wilson with word that Procter would attend the session as a Cincinnati delegate.

I write to inform you of this because I am all the more anxious to see whether, as a result of our meeting, both you and Mr. Procter can be brought into accord on the Graduate School site.[...]Is it not possible for us to make a fresh start upon the questions at issue and to endeavor to cooperate in our Princeton work?

Davis' second term as Trustee was to expire in June and he no doubt saw Wilson's visit as an opportunity to do Princeton one last service, as mediator. Thinking aloud, he adds a post script with the suggestion

that, if it meets with your entire approval, I will write Mr. Procter, whom I have never met, and invite him to be my guest with you while here. If we can get together at my house and in a friendly way go over the situation, might we not be able to bring about an understanding that will solve all our troubles, in a way that would be honorable to all and leave no sting?

Had the proposed colloquy occurred, it is possible that much might have been gained. In the event, however, Wilson replied that he would arrive too late to make such a tete-a-tete possible before the actual critical session on the 26th.

As the meeting day neared, other friendly strategists recommended other tactics. One of them was Melancthon William Jacobus, another Wilson confidant who, as Stockton Axson informs us, was the only minister on the Board who did not side with the West contingent. Just days before the meeting, he wrote Wilson to inform him that one plan would not fly: Jones had found himself unable to attend, to speak on Wilson's behalf. But Jacobus saw that as no drawback, for Wilson himself "is the best man to answer." His spirit of encouragement to the President is palpable: "I look upon [this] as a splendid opportunity - if you are willing to take it - to capture the West for Princeton's ideas."

The stage was set for the St. Louis encounter. Would there be fireworks? Would conflagration be averted. Could harmony be restored?

March 26, 1910

Things got off to an auspicious start during the luncheon prior to the day's main business. Lionberger, who had been sitting next to Wilson during the meal, came and sat by Procter, determined to present a fair and balanced portrait of the troubles. According to Procter's subsequent letter to Pyne, the St. Louisan said he was baffled by the recent misunderstandings about Graduate school ideals. He had, he said, come to the personal conclusion that "the entire trouble was due to jealousy upon Wilson's part and a desire to have his own way at whatever expense," a remarkably frank admission by a known Wilson adherent. He went on to remind Procter, however, of the remarkable advances in education that Wilson had initiated and overseen at Princeton, for which he deserved the applause of all alumni, observing "that jealousy and conceit were the necessary attributes of nearly all able and strong men."

Wilson himself then came and sat with Procter and assured him that his worries about the school arose from its being "a very serious experiment [...]and that if we did not make a success of it it would be a monument of failure to Princeton." Wilson was here taking the long-term view in an effort to explain to Procter he had been so slow to embrace Procter's munificence - had in fact persuaded the Board to reject the industrialist's gift the month before, precisely because it had come attached with conditions.

Following lunch came Wilson's speech, in which he tried to "capture the West" by providing the assembled alumni some historical as well as emotional perspective through a characteristically lucid and articulate survey of the changes Princeton had witnessed of late, and particularly on his watch. His words are worth quoting at some length, especially in the year of Princeton's bicenquinquagenary. They offer one visionary man's view of a major institutional transition:

Recent years at Princeton have witnessed changes of a very far-reaching sort. The alumni will some day look back upon these changes, no doubt, with a great deal of pride, but for some they are more apt to puzzle alumni that to please them. There is a sense in which the old Princeton which we have all known and loved is disappearing and a new Princeton is coming into existence which will not for some time be familiar to our thought. The old Princeton is the college, our college, the college of the days when we were boys and constituted the little family which lived at Princeton and felt the years of its life there with so much delight and so much rewarding companionship. That little college has now become Princeton University, not so much by reason of the change of name made in 1896 so much as by reason of the radical changes in the work and purposes of the place which more recent years have witnessed[...]

Nostalgia and sentiment yield to the didactic as Wilson then reminds his listeners of how vitally important it was to grasp firmly the nature of those changes. They, he insists,

have not altered the essential character of Princeton, but they have put her in the way of a career which will presently make it difficult to realize that in the new and various university there is still to be found the old beloved college. It is the more important to have the alumni recognize the character of these changes because if they do not study them with some attention, they will not see how legitimate and indeed inevitable they have been and will feel that something strange has happened.

The remained of his speech Wilson devoted to defining the nature of a graduate school. In dealing in earlier years with college of Princeton "We could afford...to be a little peculiar, to try experiments on our own." But

The American university is compounded of the college [at its heart] [...] and the schools of advanced learning which are the necessary modern means of supplying the nation with thoroughly equipped men for its various professions and enterprises.

In this larger education enterprise, "If its growth is to be successfully fostered we should permit it the sort of freedom which every organism demands for its proper development." It is here, Wilson argued, that "we must proceed along the lines of general academic experience in this country [for] that experience and not our private tastes must be our guide. Wilson was in effect arguing for a hands-off policy by interested alumni, and insisting that the ultimate scope and nature of the School should be intrusted to the University's faculty, "the only safe source of constructive policy in the matter."

This calm and wise counsel gave way to higher spirits when Lionberger arose and made a welcoming speech to the visiting alumni, remarks which Procter later termed "practically an appeal for Wilson." Then, according to an on-the-scene PAW account, the scene grew more boisterous. There were renewed calls for "Procter" from the floor. Although he had not, he says, intended to speak at all that day, he felt importuned, and seems to have made an obvious effort at conciliation. "After hearing President Wilson's remarks and Mr. Lionberger's, I cannot see any reason why there should be any misunderstanding." He considered the ideals which Wilson enunciated as "in no way different from what I have always understood the ideals to be. Accordingly, I hope and believe that out of all the discussion there may be a new enthusiasm for Princeton, and I hope we will have a new Graduate College when we are ready for it."

The room erupted in cheers. The magnate's words seemed to promise a dramatic and genuine resolution of the long-simmering conflict. There followed immediately "the singing of 'Old Nassau,' after which several alumni hoisted Procter on their shoulders and marched about the room." It was clearly a rambunctious Princeton moment.

Even the usually sober Johns took part. He wrote Wilson a day or two later in a highly optimistic mood, though he does show sufficient tact to account for his participation in the liveliness. "Of course you understood our whoop for Procter - we were trying to organize a movement to rush him over the line and from what he told me, I think his view was profoundly influenced for the better." The football metaphor confirms Johns' sense that a spontaneous but stge-managed "whoop" had contrived to strike pay-dirt - genuine reconciliation.

The Aftermath

Procter's letter from West confirms the above sketch of the day's proceedings. He admits that Lionberger's remarks "stated what was probably the underlying feeling of a considerable majority of the Alumni present. The effect of my remarks was to show that I was willing to work for a spirit of reconciliation."

These several appraisals of the day display a common spirit of rapprochement and reconciliation. The St. Louis meeting - though it was to be Wilson's last as president, and the last time he was to speak to a so large and representative a group of Western (alumni )- provided a glimmer of hope, the sort of hope shared by men like Davis, Jones, Johns and McCormick.. Wilson at first is sanguine as well. For one thing, he feels that his campaign for Barr has been successful: he "will poll as full a vote as it is possible for anyone to poll who is opposed by so thoroughly organized a body as the alumni in and about New York."

But history confirms that these fond hopes were not to be realized. Other parts of Procter's letter, for example, suggested that he was not fully convinced by the President's case, referring to several of the President's post-prandial arguments as "etc. etc.," as if he had heard them all before. He adds in a similarly ominous vein, that "I have not changed my opinion as to the question in the least, nor will I in any way change the terms of my offer."

Wilson's response to Johns three days later (April 1) was prescient, in the matters not just of the Quad system but of Wilson's very place as president.

I must admit that I am not altogether hopeful, because we are really here, as far as the Board of Trustees are concerned, largely in the hands of the New York and Philadelphia alumni, who have made up their minds to bring about a change of administration for fear a democratic organization of the University may be eventually effected which would strike a blow at club interests both here and in New York..

He was right. Within six months he had announced his intention to resign from the Presidency, once he had been nominated by New Jersey democrats as their gubernatorial candidate. Indeed, even that resignation came under pressure, for Pyne had laid the groundwork among Board members to demand Wilson's resignation if he failed to offer it voluntarily. On October 22, seven months after the St. Louis days of hope, Wilson learned for the first time how hostile to him had been Dean West's camp. It was a revelation he considered a "mortification" and from its emotional scars he never recovered.

*****

James Madison: Princeton’s First Graduate Student  

The following is an excerpt from Ralph Ketcham’s James Madison A Biography. It is printed here in honor both of the Princeton Graduate School Centennial Madison stayed an extra year to work under President Witherspoon and thus qualifies as our first grad student), and as a portrait of Princeton undergraduate life in the decade before the American Revolution.

  Ketcham’s book is available through the University of Virginia Press (http://www.upress.virginia.edu ), as is JAMES MADISON'S  "ADVICE TO MY COUNTRY," edited by David B. Mattern.

  [New section headings have been inserted into the Professor Ketcham’s text, for ease of reference.]

  James Madison’s 1769 Arrival

  Eager to get to Princeton, and traveling on the best and most heavily used road in the colonies, the Madison party probably hurried to make the forty-mile trip from Philadelphia in one day. The road went along the Delaware River through Frankford and Bristol to the ferry to Trenton, New Jersey, which in 1759 had contained "nothing remarkable"-. about one hundred houses, three churches, and a small barracks. Twelve miles farther on, the weary travelers reached Princeton, and Madison first saw Nassau Hall, the "convenient, airy, and spacious” three-story stone building that was to be his home for the next three years. He said good bye to tutor Martin and the slave Sawney, and since the summer term was half over, began immediately on his own to read Horace and otherwise prepare for examinations to permit him to enter the sophomore class in the fall. Madison wrote Martin on August 10, 1769(probably after about two weeks at Princeton), that "I am Perfectly pleased with my present situation; and the prospect be fore me of three years confinement, however terrible it may sound, has nothing in it, but what will be greatly alleviated by the advantages I hope to derive from it.... The near approach of examination occasions a surprising application to study on all sides. Madison was studying hard so he could take the exams with the fresh- man class, which were to be given shortly before commencement in late September. As a new statement of admissions rules made clear, he would be required as well to meet the usual college entrance standards: "render Virgil and Tully's orations into English and to turn English into true and grammatical Latin, and to be so well acquainted with the Greek, as to render any part of the Four Evangelists [Gospels] into Latin or English . . . be acquainted with vulgar arithmetic . . . [and master] reading English with Propriety, spelling the English language, -and writing it without grammatical errors." Madison not only passed the freshman examination, but compressed the work of the next three years into two, so that he graduated in September 1771.

  After observing commencement in September 1769, Madison wrote his father knowingly about college activities, and in response to a plea from home to be thrifty, since the drought had severely damaged crops in Virginia, remarked on an experience he shared with college youths of every generation: "I am under a necessity of spending much more than I was apprehensive, for the purchasing of every small trifle which I have occasion for consumes a much greater sum than one would suppose from a calculation of the necessary expenses.

The College Of New Jersey’s Progressive Curriculum and Mission

Two lively dissenting traditions nourished the College of New Jersey at the time of James Madison's matriculation in 1769. Founded by Presbyterians anxious to assure that educated ministers would fill the Pulpits of their rapidly increasing churches, it was strongly influenced by the "New Lights," who, following Jonathan Edwards, the Tennents, and Samuel Davies, sought to make Presbyterianism a vital, personally felt force in the lives of increasing numbers of laymen. Thus in the seventeen-sixties the leaders of the college at Princeton had little use for the established Congregationalism of New England, the moribund Anglicanism Of the College of William and Mary, or "Old Side" Presbyterianism, which forbade itinerant preachers to Upset complacent clergymen or congregations.

  An equally important wind Of change stirred at Princeton as a result of the close connection the college had had from its inception in 1746 with the English dissenting academies. The universities at Oxford and Cambridge were stagnant in the eighteenth century; all but orthodox Anglicans were rigidly excluded from the faculty. Creative, questing persons therefore went elsewhere and established often short-lived academies where new ideas could flourish and where curricular experiments were easily tried. When the authorities at the College of New Jersey sought advice and precedent from Great Britain they turned to these dissenting academies rather- than to Oxford or Cambridge. Two early leaders, Samuel Davies and Gilbert Tennent, toured the academies in 1754, and President Aaron Burr corresponded faithfully with the most influential of the academy masters, Philip Doddridge, on curriculum, textbooks, and methods of instruction. Though the staple ingredients of higher education everywhere in the Western world, Greek, Latin, and divinity, were sacrosanct at the College of New Jersey, the guise in which they appeared and the additions which might be made to them were negotiable. As a result, it seems certain that at Princeton Madison experienced relatively little of the dull, uninspired, rote-memory teaching of dead subjects that characterized so much "higher education" in the English-speaking world.

The freshman studies at the College of New Jersey, which Madison bypassed by examination in the summer of 1769, consisted of "reading the Greek and Latin languages, especially Horace, Cicero's Orations, the Greek Testament, Lucian's Dialogues, and Xenophon's Cyropaedia." Sophomores applied themselves further to the ancient languages, especially Homer and the late Roman literary critic Longinus, and began to study "the sciences, geography, rhetoric, logic and mathematics." The next year, studies in mathematics and natural philosophy (science) continued, and moral philosophy (ethics and what we now call social studies), metaphysics, and chronology (history) were begun. Ministerial students also took Hebrew, though, since this was "unhappily unpopular," it was not required of all pupils. Seniors had their time "entirely employed in reviews and composition, improving parts of the Latin and Greek classics, parts of the Hebrew Bible, and all the arts and sciences." The emphasis in the last year seems to have been on written and oral expression, partly in Latin but primarily in English. "Promiscuous audiences" listened to syllogisms, forensic contests, debates, orations, and harangues in the chapel, and theses and compositions were "critically examined with respect to the language, orthography, pointing, capitalizing, with the other minutiae, as well as more material properties of accurate writing."

  From this description of the curriculum, and from the favorable comments of Madison and others who studied at Princeton before the American Revolution, it is apparent that the College of New Jersey was relatively progressive and stimulating. The ancient languages occupied less time than they did at many colleges, and students were introduced to modern science, living languages, and a study of contemporary society. Furthermore, though religious instruction was incessant, especially on Sunday, the college with pride guaranteed "free and equal Liberty and Advantage of Education [to] any Person of any religious Denomination whatsoever." Teaching methods, too, seem to have been less deadening than usual. Madison doubtless spent considerable time memorizing text-books, copying and recopying lecture notes, and preparing for class recitations, as students in his day were forced to do, but at the same time he did encounter new and exciting ideas and he had again and again to formulate his own-ax thoughts orally and in writing. In 1769 Princeton was a happy choice for a student with intellectual promise and curiosity.

  The College of New Jersey, the fruit of Presbyterian zeal and moral concern, did not conceive its mission to be merely or even principally intellectual however. Nassau Hall had been built in the rural village of Princeton in 1756 so that "the students might be boarded as well as taught, and live always under the inspection of the college officers, more sequestered from the various temptations, attending a promiscuous converse with the world, that theatre of folly and dissipation." The building accommodated 147 students if three lived in a chamber "2o feet square, having two large closets, with a window in each, for retirement." A first-floor hall forty feet square, contained an organ and portraits of King William III ("that great deliverer of Britain, and assertor of Protestant liberty") and former Governor Belcher of New Jersey. It was used for speeches, services, exhibitions, and assemblies. A second- floor library and a large dining hall on the "lower story" were the other public rooms.

  Madison lived in Nassau Hall for three years, subject to the rules of the college intended "to direct the conduct and studies of the youth; and to restrain them from such liberties and indulgencies as would tend to corrupt their morals, or alienate their minds from a steady application." The authorities sought, they said, to steer a middle course "between too great a licentiousness on the one hand, or an excessive precision on the other," and to mete out punishment "of the more humane kind." They shunned fines as penalties, because this afflicted parents (especially poor ones) more than students, but tried instead to reason with offenders and to impose public humiliation, restriction to quarters, and expulsion only on extreme and unrepentant lawbreakers. The goal, Professor Samuel Blair stated, was "to grant every innocent liberty, and, at the same time, to restrain every ensnaring indulgence: to habituate [pupils] to subjugation ... without insolence or servility. . . . In a word, to inspire them with such principles, and form them to such conduct, as will prepare for sustaining more extensive connections, with the grand community of mankind; and introduce them on the theatre of the world, as useful servants of their country.""

  The daily schedule of the college was itself a prime source of the discipline so earnestly sought. A bell at five o'clock in the morning awoke the students, and another, at six, summoned them to morning prayer, where the college president expounded a passage of Scripture. Pupils then studied for an hour (by candlelight in the winter) before breakfast, and at nine they had recitation, followed by study until dinner at one. The time until three was free, then recitation and study until five, when bells pealed for evening prayers, where the students took turns singing psalms. Supper was served at seven, and by nine a room check required all pupils to be in their rooms either studying or asleep. At the recitation periods each class sat together with its tutor, reciting for him, listening to his explanations, and responding to his questions.

  Though college education in the eighteenth century was everywhere prescribed and authoritarian by modern standards, the stated goal at Princeton was remarkably liberal. "In the instruction of the youth, care is taken to cherish a spirit of liberty, and free enquiry; and not only to permit, but even to encourage their right of private judgment, without presuming to dictate with an air of infallibility, or demanding an implicit assent to the decisions of the preceptor." Juniors and seniors "were allowed the free use of the college library, that they may make excursions beyond the limits of their stated studies, into the unbounded and variegated fields of knowledge; and, especially, to assist them in preparing their disputations, and other compositions." Examinations were held at the end of each year to determine which pupils might pass on to the next class. Quarterly exams permitted the instructors to "observe the gradual progress" of the students, apparently a somewhat unusual procedure, but one which Professor Blair thought encouraged "the assiduity and carefulness of the students in their daily preparations." Firm insistence on increase in knowledge and growth in self-discipline were the marks of education at Princeton during Madison's attendance there."

As one might expect in a school founded primarily to train ministers but also producing many lawyers and politicians, effective expression, especially in speaking, received constant attention. The three under- classes declaimed weekly on the stage, sometimes with their own com- positions and sometimes pronouncing "select pieces from Cicero, Demosthenes, Livy, and other ancient authors; and from Shakespeare, Milton, Addison, and such illustrious moderns, as are best adapted to display the various passions, and exemplify the graces of utterance and gesture." Seniors "disputed" regularly and discussed "two or three theses in a week; some in the syllogistic, and other in the forensic manner," the former in Latin and the latter in English. Religious debates on Sunday completed the exceedingly thorough training in public discussion at Princeton.

Madison seems to have been fortunate in his teachers at the College of New Jersey. Ebenezer Pemberton, only twenty-five years old in 1769, but one of the most renowned and beloved teachers in New England at his death at age ninety in 1835, helped Madison prepare for his freshman examinations. Madison remembered him as an expert classicist and as a teacher of the most admirable scholarly and personal qualities. His successor as freshman tutor, Tapping Reeve, later founded the famous Litchfield law school ..in Connecticut. Madison's teacher for his first year in college was James Thompson, a tutor at Princeton since his graduation in 176i, and characterized by Madison as "remarkable for his skill in the sophomore studies." He preached occasionally at the Presbyterian church in Trenton and left the college the year after Madison enjoyed his instruction. In the junior year Madison had William Churchill Houston, who remained on the Princeton faculty until 1783. He was also a member of various revolutionary bodies in New Jersey in 1776, of the Continental Congress (1779-1781 and 1784-1785), and of the Annapolis and Constitutional conventions. He must, therefore, have been far more able and aware of the real world than the proverbial dull, droning pedagogue of the eighteenth-century recitation room. . . .

Madison’s Campus Life and Contemporaries

The students, tutors, and sometimes the president at Princeton ate together in the dining hall, which was managed by a steward who supervised the living quarters as well. The students drank tea and coffee at breakfast, and at dinner it almost all the variety of fish and flesh the country here affords, and sometimes pyes were served." "Small-beer and cyder" were the usual table drinks, though milk was provided at supper. Variety and wholesome nourishment were promised, but prospective students were warned not to expect "luxurious dainties, or costly delicacies," and private meals were not permitted in student chambers. Some "young gentlemen," however, were allowed "to make a dish of tea in their apartments, provided it be done after evening prayer [and does]  not interfere with hours of study."

Most likely to have interfered with study were the demands and pleasures of undergraduate "foibles" listed by Philip Fithian: "giving each other names and characters; Meeting and Shoving in the dark entries; Knocking at Doors and going off without entering; Strowing the entries in the night with greasy Feathers; freezing the Bell; Ringing it at late Hours of the Night; Picking from the neighborhood now and then a plump fat Hen or Turkey for the private entertainment of the Club; Parading bad Women; Burning Curse-John; Darting Sun-Beams upon the Town-People; Reconnoitering Houses in the Town, and ogling Women with the Telescope-Making Squibs, and other frightful com- positions with Gun-Powder and lighting them in the Rooms of timorous Boys, and new comers." One comes to see Madison as a more serious student than average, but nevertheless one who enjoyed the informal and convivial aspects of college life. He always remembered his student friends with affection and thought well of the College of New jersey and its faculty."

  Of Madison's close friends at Princeton, one, Philip Freneau, became the leading American poet of his generation, while another, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, was the first American novelist of note. Both were in Madison's class (1771), may have been his roommates, and were in the same student literary-social club, the American Whig Society. They were fervent revolutionists in 1776 and continued to share Madison's liberal political views as long as each lived. Another member of Madison's class, Gunning Bedford, Jr., of Delaware, served at the Federal Convention in 1787 and otherwise had a distinguished public career, but there is no evidence that he and Madison were friends except that both were American Whigs. Two other classmates, Charles McKnight and Samuel Spring, served valiantly in the Revolution and had notable professional careers. McKnight as a surgeon in -New York, and Spring as a Congregational minister in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Madison’s most intimate study companion, died a year after he graduated. Two close friends in the class of 1770, Caleb Wallace and Nathaniel Irwin, entered the Presbyterian ministry after graduation; later though, Wallace moved to Kentucky, where he became an important lawyer and judge. Samuel Stanhope Smith of the class of 1769 remained at Princeton as a tutor and spent hours in philosophic discussion with Madison. In the seventeen-seventies the two young savants saw each other in Virginia, where Smith founded Hampden-Sydney Academy before re- turning to Princeton to serve for over thirty years as professor and president.

  In the classes of 1772, 1773, and 1774, Madison's closest friend, perhaps his favorite of all Princeton associates, was William Bradford of the famous Philadelphia printing family. Bradford had a distinguished career as a lawyer and became Attorney General of the United States shortly before his untimely death in 1795. Madison must have known as well the remarkable number of men in those classes who later gained fame as public officials (Aaron Burr, Henry Lee, Morgan Lewis, Henry Brock- Livingston. and Aaron OLyden), and as preacher-educators (James Francis Armstrong, Thaddeus Dod, James Dunlap, John McKnight, John Blair Smith, John McMillan, Samuel E. McCorkle, William Linn, Andrew Hunter, Joseph Eckley and Moses Allen). In the decade before the American Revolution the College of New Jersey attracted many exceptionally able students who must have contributed substantially to Madison's intellectual growth.

  To understand Madison's place in this talented circle, one must contend with President Witherspoon's oft-repeated remark that "during the whole time [Madison) was under [my] tuition, I never knew him to do, or to say, an improper thing." In the seventeen-eighties Witherspoon apparently said this to Jefferson, who subsequently delighted to embarrass Madison with it at every opportunity. Benjamin Rush made it part of an admonition to his son at Princeton in 1802, adding, in urging the lad to shun plays and idle amusement, that "the celebrated Mr. Madison when a student at the Jersey College, never took any part in them. His only relaxation from study consisted in walking and conversation." Luckily for Madison's standing as a "normal" college student, a notebook survives proving conclusively that he took part enthusiastically in "idle amusements" and student ribaldry.

  When collegiate exuberance reached the brim in Madison's day it spilled over in rivalry between the American Whig Society and the Cliosophian Society. Though no deep ideological differences divided them, Southerners and Pennsylvanians predominated among the Whigs; New Englanders among the Cliosophians. Furthermore, the Whigs generally assumed a condescending attitude toward what they conceived was the social inferiority of the Clios, and the Clios seem to have been rather more pious than the Whigs. The societies met separately for discussion and camaraderie, and directed their self-generated enthusiasm 'at each other in a "Paper war" whenever the college authorities could be tricked or talked into permitting one.

The Emerging Revolutionary Spirit

The political atmosphere at Princeton and Madison's growth in it, however, are more important than the good-natured, rather typical social life. He had not been at Princeton a month before he sent his tutor in Virginia a pamphlet championing the English radical John Wilkes. After attending his first Princeton commencement in September 1769, he wrote his father that he saw honorary degrees awarded to John Han- cock, John Dickinson, and Joseph Galloway, all at that time popular leaders in the resistance to British measures in America. The next year, after New York merchants had repudiated non-importation agreements, Madison wrote approvingly of Princeton indignation: "We have no publick news but the base conduct of the Merchants in N. York in breaking through their spirited resolutions not to import. . . . Their Letter to the Merchants in Philadelphia requesting their concurrence was lately burnt by the Students of this place in the college Yard, all of them appearing in their black gowns and the bell Tolling." Furthermore, Madison reported, the seniors were to appear at commencement dressed only in "American cloth."

  Exercises at the September 1770 commencement, all surely approved or at least permitted by the faculty, showed how much politics filled the minds of the students. James Witherspoon, the president's son, defended in Latin the thesis that the law of nature obliged subjects to resist tyrannical kings. John Ogden upheld the non-importation agreement as "a noble Exertion of Self-denial and public Spirit," and Mathias Williamson supported the proposition that "Every religious Profession, which does not by its Principles disturb the public Peace, ought to be tolerated by a wise State." Frederick Frelinghuysen "pronounced an Oration on the Utility of American Manufactures," doubtless a brief favoring American economic independence from Great Britain. Thomas McPherrin argued "Omnes Homines, Jura Naturae, liberti sunt," and John Blydenburgh asserted that freedom of religion served the state by acting as "a Censor Morem." Finally the valedictorian, Robert Stewart, orated on "Public Spirit," probably an appeal to patriotism. Though one of the speakers addressed complimentary remarks to Governor William Franklin, who sat on the platform, that staunch loyalist could not have been wholly pleased with the tenor of the exercises.

  At Madison's own graduation, a year later, the atmosphere was less heated, but the audience nevertheless heard an oration by Samuel Spring on "The idea of a Patriot-King," and listened to the fervently patriotic poem "The rising glory of America" written by Brackenridge and Freneau. In 1772 Madison's close friend William Bradford delivered 4 valedictory address on "The Disadvantages of an Unequal Distribution of Property in a State," and other orators discussed the virtues (or lack thereof) of a mixed monarchy, independence of spirit, obedience, and resistance, and the advantages of political liberty. Such radicalism was too much for one member of the audience, who wrote a public letter protesting the "improprieties" he had observed; college students should stick to Greek and Latin and not concern themselves with public issues which required "an eminence of knowledge which the unfledged wings of youth cannot soar to." He warned colleges against nurturing "the dogmas of any political party," and questioned the soundness of any institution whose commencement exercises consisted of the "exotic productions" he had just witnessed. The distinguished revolutionary careers of so many College of New Jersey graduates of Madison's day are clear evidence that doctrines of resistance and freedom were taught exceedingly well there from 1769 to 1776.

  In defending the college against charges of radicalism, President Witherspoon proclaimed his pride in "the spirit of liberty [which breaths] high and strong" among students and faculty and declared himself "an opposer of lordly domination and sacerdotal tyranny." Witherspoon's habits of mind are, in fact, the keys to the climate of opinion which so impressed Madison during his years at Princeton. Madison stayed there for six months following his graduation to read with Witherspoon, and always admired and respected "the old Doctor," as he called Witherspoon.

  Witherspoon arrived in America in 1768 to be president of the College of New Jersey with a reputation for learning and eloquence, but more particularly for hostility to ecclesiastical hierarchy. For years in Scotland Witherspoon fought the power of the synods of the Presbyterian Kirk over individual congregations. He developed habits and doctrines of resistance to authority which, as many New England clergymen also demonstrated, needed little translation to be used against political authority. Thus when Witherspoon found American Calvinists such as William Livingston (author of The Independent Reflector and The American Whig, both greatly admired by Madison) protesting ecclesiastical control, and saw many Americans deeply alarmed at efforts to plant an Anglican bishop in the colonies, he understood the threat and responded vigorously. Though Witherspoon was orthodox enough in his theology and in his sense of family and social authority, his instinctive suspicion of "lordly domination and sacerdotal tyranny," his spirit of self-righteous defiance of evil, and his sturdy conviction that temporal power must bow to conscience and God's law were bound to help create a climate-in which, as the breach between Great Britain and the colonies widened, the seeds of revolution and independence would spawn and grow.

The Spirit of Learning and The Dissenting Tradition

  In a way, when Madison went to the middle colonies and to the Presbyterian stronghold at Princeton, he placed himself at the center of English dissenting tradition in America.  He found there that enlightened men took for granted the pattern of thought which from Cromwell's day had opposed religious establishment, ecclesiastical hierarchy, courtly influence, and every other manifestation of privileged and therefore easily and inevitably corruptible power. The heroes of this tradition were Milton, Algernon Sidney, Locke, and, most widely read of all in the American colonies, the authors of Cato's Letters, first published in London in the seventeen-twenties, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Obsessed with an almost paranoid suspicion that all power in human hands would be abused, and on guard against exaggerated pre- tensions to authority, those who read the dissenting writers were ready to enlist, as Witherspoon had done in Scotland and would do again when he signed the Declaration of Independence, in any campaign to resist "domination and tyranny." In the presence of this eternal vigilance James Madison undertook his college studies.

  We have seen already that Madison knew the ancient authors well, and had probably read such currently fashionable writers as Swift, Addison, and Steele, before he reached Princeton. It is likely, too, that he had begun early his lifelong addiction to newspapers, so he was familiar with the public issues that agitated the colonies. During his youthful reading, he kept, as diligent students in his day normally did, a commonplace Book, wherein he copied quotations from what he read and occasionally made paraphrases of or reflected on his reading. The twenty-four surviving pages of this book (undoubtedly only a small portion of what he must originally have compiled) contain selections from five works, probably for the most part read at Princeton: Memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz (1723), The Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne (i595), a poem printed in The American Magazine (Philadelphia, July 1758), Critical Reflections . . . by the Abbe Du Bos (1748), and The Spectator, Number 551 (1712)- Madison read the three French authors in English translation, though presumably he could have read the originals by the time he reached Princeton.

  Most of the commonplace book reflects a careful reading of the Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, telling of the swirling riots and political maneuvers of the Frondist era in France 1648 -1652, before Cardinal Mazarin and then Louis XIV gave firm direction to the French state. De Retz played a complicated role in these events, ambitious, obviously, to wield the power once exercised by Cardinal Richelieu. He acted sometimes as an agitator of the populace of Paris, and sometimes as a Machiavellian behind-the-scenes manager. In fact, de Retz admired Machiavelli and reflected his views more than those of any other political philosopher. Madison paid particular attention to the comments de Retz made on the nature of man and society as he described his role in the power struggles. Madison copied down such statements as "Irresolute minds waver most when they are upon the point of Action," "I have all my Life time esteem'd Men more for what they forebore to do than for what they did"; and "The Talent for insinuating is more useful than that of persuading. The former is often successful, the latter very seldom." At times Madison fashioned his own epigrams about human conduct from events de Retz related. At one critical juncture, for example, de Retz observed that timid counselors advised doing nothing about a popular riot while rash ones advised severe repression, both acting from the premise that the disturbances were not serious. In each case the result was to encourage the rebellious mood rather than to dampen it. On this circumstance Madison observed, "A Blind Rashness and an excessive timorousness cause the same Effects when the Danger is not known. For both endeavour to persuade themselves that the Danger is not real." Throughout, de Retz urged prudence, a shrewd calculation of consequences, a willingness to admit mistakes, and the ability to use power, or the appearance of power, effectively. In fact, there is an uncanny similarity between Madison's aphorisms and quotations from de Retz and the precepts that often guided Madison's long public career.

  Like Benjamin Franklin, Madison highly approved Addison's intention "to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality." He admired as well The Spectator's desire to retain Puritan moral zeal without its fanaticism and to enjoy Restoration urbanity while shunning its degeneracy. Thus in a very direct and self-conscious way Madison absorbed concepts of public life in vogue among enlightened Englishmen in the age of Addison, Swift, and Pope.

President John Witherspoon as Educator and Mentor

  Though there is no direct evidence of what Madison read or learned as a college student beyond what has been suggested above, we do know something of what he must have heard in John Witherspoon's lectures and what he might have read in the college library. Notes taken by William Bradford, Andrew Hunter, and John E. Calhoun, all students at Princeton in Madison's day, survive and suggest what went on in Witherspoon's classes. He presided over most of the work of the senior year, reviewing earlier lessons, and under the broad title "Moral Philosophy," commenting on what now might be called ethics, economics, political science, history, and current events. He usually raised a general question-about the utility of religious toleration, for example, or the extent of paternal authority in the family, or the sufficiency of a merely utilitarian ethic-explained the views of various authorities on the question, criticized these views, and then left no doubt of his own conclusions on the subject.

  Witherspoon sought especially to leave his students well instructed on the major concern of eighteenth-century moral philosophers: the proper relation between religion and ethics, between faith and being a good person. As the Earl of Shaftesbury, Witherspoon's favorite whipping boy, put it, the basic inquiry was "what Honesty or virtue is, considered by itself; and in what manner it is influenc'd by Religion: How far Religion necessarily implies Virtue; and whether it be a true Saying, that it is impossible for an Atheist to be Virtuous, or share any real degree of Honesty, or Merit." In this inquiry Witherspoon was unequivocally on the side of religion. He told his classes that "the whole Scripture is agree- able to sound philosophy," meaning that he rejected rationalist insinuations that the Bible contained passages absurd to reasonable men and therefore best denied or at least passed over. He persistently held Shaftesbury up for criticism and ridicule, often opposing to him the more orthodox doctrines of Francis Hutcheson, an early exponent of the Scottish "common-sense" philosophy.

  The "old Doctor" saved his sharpest barbs, however, for David Hume. This "infidel writer," as Witherspoon called him, had "a system of morals that is peculiar to himself. He makes everything that is agreeable and useful virtue and vice-versa by which he entirely annihilates the distinction between moral and natural qualities." Witherspoon insisted that sonic essentials of morality, revealed by Christian doctrine, were difficult and even disagreeable, and that therefore the easy world of Hume and the rationalists was a fool's paradise that earnest, faithful young men would shun. Witherspoon also blasted Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees for its ridicule of "industry, sobriety, and public spirit," and repudiated Plato and Sir Thomas More for their implication that perfection and utopia might be achieved on earth. Throughout, Witherspoon insisted on the orthodox Christian view that life was real and earnest and hat the only salvation for sinful men was a devout Biblical faith.

  In commenting on government and society Witherspoon followed very closely the analysis in Aristotle's Politics, though the Princeton students recorded almost no explicit references to that vastly influential work. Witherspoon outlined the three forms of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and constitutional polity, and the perversions of, each, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy, and he distinguished between the noble and perverted forms, just as Aristotle did, according to their attention to the common good or to selfish, factional ends. Thus Madison had at the foundation of his political education a supreme  emphasis on the ends, not the means, of government. Rule by one or by a few could be conducted justly, while rule by the many could be bad if not so conducted. Democracy, in the Aristotelian sense of government by the multitude where the will of demagogues, not the law, is supreme, was, when Madison first heard it, a term of disdain and reproach. Witherspoon drove home again and again that the purpose of government was to encourage and nourish not life alone, but the good life, the life of virtue. As Madison came to accept as well the Lockean concepts of representation and government by consent, he added them to his earlier education in the politics of virtue. A great gulf therefore, separates the thought of Madison (and the other Founding  Fathers in such later concepts as Benthamite utilitarianism and simple majoritarian democracy who denied that principles of  justice and virtue can be identified and made the foundation of government, and therefore have a higher sanction than the will of the majority. He exhorted each student, in writing and speaking, to discover the style best suited to him, to use his special talents to best advantage, and to be modest because "nothing more certainly makes a man ridiculous than an over-forwardness to display his excellencies.”

  The impression is inescapable that Madison had in Witherspoon a remarkably able, learned, and eloquent teacher. He was thoroughly acquainted with ancient and modern learning, had no hesitation in exposing his students to its full range, and made his lectures to them a stimulating confrontation of ideas. When set beside the usual drillmaster, Witherspoon seems a lively pedagogue indeed. Little wonder, either, that he himself took a leading role in the American Revolution and that his students were intensely alert to current political issues, entered the disputes eagerly, and made important contributions to them. The College of New Jersey in Madison's day was the seedbed of sedition and nursery of rebels Tory critics charged it with being, but that is not all: it was as ''Well a school for statesmen trained to seek freedom and ordered government through the pursuit of virtue.

The College’s Library

  The library of the College of New Jersey in 1769 contained perhaps two thousand books, twelve hundred of which had been presented by Governor Jonathan Belcher in 1755. Though Belcher prided himself on his orthodoxy and stocked his library with sermons and theological tracts, his bequest nevertheless gave Princeton students access to a wide world of learning. The  library grew slowly until Witherspoon arrived in 1768, bringing with him perhaps five hundred volumes, including the latest works by the Scottish writers then flourishing. We know from Witherspoon's reading lists that Robertson, Smollett, Hume, Hutcheson, Kames, Adam Smith, Ferguson, and others were familiar to him, and that he brought their books to America. Though he had firm convictions of his own about which authors were "right" and which were "wrong," and was perfectly willing to argue down those inclined toward the "wrong" ones, there is no evidence that he believed "wrong" ideas had to be suppressed; rather, they had to be combated. In Witherspoon's day, orthodox Presbyterianism was vigorous and self-confident, unneedful of proscription to maintain its doctrines. Through Witherspoon's lectures and library we may assume that Madison came to know fully and freely of the issues agitating the world of Franklin, Hume, and Voltaire.

  When Madison graduated from the College of New Jersey in 177i he was a paragon of the well-educated scholar. He had learned an enormous amount, but more than that, he had acquired a great thirst for knowledge, so great, in fact, that he injured his health by studying almost to the exclusion of sleep; for weeks at a time as an undergraduate he slept only four or five hours a night. For the rest of his life Madison had a reputation as a scholar: his college friends came eagerly to him for philosophic discussions; Jefferson turned to him repeatedly for help in research and in compiling bibliographies; and even his political foes admitted that on nearly every question before any legislative body in which he sat he was likely to be the best-informed member.

Madison’s Learning: A Classical Education …

Madison's learning, like that of nearly all formally educated men in the Western world between the Renaissance and the beginning of the twentieth century, had its foundation in the lore and history and wisdom of Greece and Rome. Madison mastered Latin well enough to correct English translations of Grotius, and he knew enough Greek to read Aristotle and Thucydides and Plutarch in their native tongue. He must have known Cicero and Virgil by heart. Moreover his mind had been saturated with them before he paid much attention to serious works in English. His first visions of virtuous government, for example, probably came from Livy's idealized account of the Roman republic. After reading, translating, and very likely declaiming from memory Cicero's Orations, Madison would have known very well the dangers posed by popular military heroes such as Caesar, and the poison injected into the body politic by intriguers like Catiline. Demosthenes' Philippics would have roused his patriotic zeal to resist an alien tyrant, and from Thucydides he could have learned how disunion and fratricidal strife corroded morality and brought great states to ruin. Plutarch may have been Madison's first preceptor in the virtues necessary for statesmanship and in the qualities of responsible citizenship. Furthermore, any reader of Tacitus knew very well the absurdities sometimes caused by hereditary monarchies and the abuses attendant on absolute and arbitrary power.

Though modern historians have shown that the actualities of ancient history were different from the picture left by the great classical authors, in Madison's day the towering figures of Greece and Rome and the priceless books of the ancient sages and historians were very nearly sanctified as an incomparable source of insight into human affairs. To understand Madison's mind, it is necessary to sense in some way the broad and primordial impact upon it of the Greek and Latin authors. Though, like most of his contemporaries, he did not often "footnote" the ideas he took from his classical studies, it is apparent that again and again he accepted many of them as axiomatic when he considered public problems in Williamsburg, Philadelphia, and Washington. For Madison's generation the wisdom of Greece and Rome furnished, so to speak, the folklore, the "morality plays," and the schoolboy texts on fundamental concepts of human nature and society.

  The other foundation stone of learning in Madison's day, and of his education, was the Christian tradition. Down through his graduation from college every one of Madison's teachers, as far as we know, was either a clergyman or a devoutly orthodox Christian layman. In fact, so pervasive was Christian influence, especially in rearing children, that an education under other than Christian auspices was--virtually unknown.  Even the technically nonsectarian  College of Philadelphia founded by Franklin gave its students the usual training in Christian morality and was presided over by a zealous Anglican minister. Though much of the Christian aspect of Madison's schooling was relatively perfunctory and he seems never to have been an ardent believer himself, he nonetheless year after year undertook his studies from a Christian viewpoint.  Furthermore, he never took an anti-religious or even an anti-Christian stance, and he retained the respect and admiration of the devoutly orthodox young men with whom he studied at Princeton. It seems clear he neither embraced fervently nor rejected utterly the Christian base of his education. He accepted its tenets generally and formed his outlook on life within its world view.

… With Strong Christian Underpinnings

Though the substance and significance of this Christian orientation for a rather passive believer such as Madison defy precise formulation, certain elements of Christian thought had almost universal acceptance in colonial America and are important to an understanding of Madison's intellectual growth. The Christian affirmation, for example, that each human soul has infinite worth, and the emphasis in the Protestant tradition that the essence of this worth is the relationship of each individual to the Almighty, were of vast significance. There were, therefore, limits to the claim the state could make upon the individual. Whatever Christians disagreed about and however their conduct might fall short, they all affirmed that in any ultimate confrontation between mere human dictates and the law of God, the former must give way. In accepting this view', Madison acknowledged that there is a non-temporal source of values, he insisted that the state live up to them, and he affirmed that individuals in a society were bound by more-than-earthly obligations. Such doctrines pervaded Witherspoon's sermons and chapel talks.

  Furthermore, as practiced and expounded in colonial America, Christianity came to have an exceedingly individualistic tone. Witherspoon's evangelical Presbyterianism proclaimed that the supreme good for each person was to find a faith that would give him victory over death. All the essential requirements for traveling this road had a personal definition: proper (personal) beliefs, correct (personal) day-to-day habits, charitable (personal) relationships, and all the rest. An individual moral accountability filled every waking moment, making each Christian conscious that every step he took might be right or wrong. Akin to this concern for eternal salvation and moral awareness was an insistence that life be made to count for something, that a wasted life was a sinful life.

  At the community level, the compulsion to make life count for good expressed itself in numerous humanitarian enterprises, of which the Quakers furnish the most notable examples. Significantly, Benjamin Franklin's career in Philadelphia, the best individual expression of this impulse, had its origin, he tells us in his autobiography, in the clubs organized in Boston by Cotton Mather to encourage a brotherly concern among Christians. Though this outreach could and did have its less commendable watch-and-ward aspects, a citizenry conditioned to attitudes of concern for fellow citizens and experienced in the methods of humanitarianism nevertheless would have priceless habits and skills for the tasks of revolution and nation building. The last step in the path marked out by moral awareness, taken often in New England pulpits and elsewhere in America, was to insist that nations likewise will be held accountable in the final judgment. The American colonies especially, in a common figure of speech, were conceived as a city set upon a hill to shine for all the world to see. An incalculable dynamism and sense of purpose is imparted to a people which so sees itself.

  Entirely apart from theology or personal fidelity to any church ritual, then, Madison's Christian education gave him an extremely important overview of man and society, within which his more self-conscious political philosophy grew. Moreover, it united him with nearly all the leaders in revolution and nation building, including the heterodox Franklin and Jefferson, in commitment to certain moral standards. To them all, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the twelfth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans were canonical. As Madison studied under Donald Robertson, Thomas Martin, and John Witherspoon, all clergymen, he learned the essentials of Christian morality and social theory. Though he did not long continue to express them in the same way as his teachers, it is not Possible to understand the purpose and earnestness of Madison's public life without-sensing its connection with the Christian atmosphere in which he was raised.

  The large place polite, "popular" literature had in Madison's reading and education has already been described. Its cultivated style, ease of expression, and emphasis on manners and morals had a continuing and profound effect on Madison. He absorbed this outlook so thoroughly that even though he lived far into the age of Wordsworth and Coleridge, he showed not the slightest sign of abandoning the world view of The Spectator. In the correspondence among Madison, Bradford, and Freneau immediately after they left Princeton, the works of Fielding, Hume, Pope, Kames, Swift, and Samuel Butler are referred to with that easy familiarity that assumes writer and reader have a thorough knowledge of the authors mentioned. Madison's intense training in the classics, of course, reinforced his partiality for English neoclassical learning and culture. In his conventional religious views, in his sense of political obligation, in his manners, in his literary and aesthetic tastes, and in his habit of prudence and moderation in all things, he was the model Augustan gentleman. In fact, except in certain realms of political theory where the events of his public career required creativity, Madison was very little inclined to break away from the conventional climate of opinion in basic matters. Thus the thorough education he had in the writers who created that climate appears persistently throughout his life.

  Madison took the Newton-Locke worldview at face value: the universe was marvelously harmonious; the discovery of facts about man and society would lead to progress and enlightenment; empiricism and dependence on laws of cause and effect were not incompatible; and moral and social, as well as physical, understandings would benefit from the application of human study and reason. Madison saw at Princeton David Rittenhouse's intricate orrery, demonstrating the clock-like precision of the heavenly bodies as they moved in their perfectly predictable orbits. Its patterned motion was always the metaphor for Madison's concept of the way his world operated. Though classical realism, Scottish "common-sense" dependence on intuition, and Presbyterian soberness all had their impact on Madison, at bottom he responded to the optimism about reason and progress generated in the Western world by the discoveries of Newton and the speculations of Locke.

  In summary, Madison's education at Princeton furnished him, from the wisdom of Greece and Rome, a lifelong realism about human nature, a comprehensive concept of political obligation, and an instinctive admiration of patience, prudence, and moderation. From the Christian tradition, he inherited a sense of the prime importance of conscience, a strict personal morality, an understanding of human dignity as well as depravity and a conviction that vital religion could contribute importantly to the general welfare. From Locke, he learned that to be fully human, men had to be free, and that to be free, they had in some way to take part in their government. From Addison and other polite writers, he absorbed a sense of manners, a life style, a mode of expression, and an impression of what civilized society should be like. These elements of his thought were, of course, not wholly compatible. For one not a systematic philosopher, this proved not to be a serious handicap. Madison stood upon whatever aspect of his basic learning seemed to him relevant for the intellectual problem or political necessity at hand. His thought was eclectic, sensible, and reasonable, if not always wholly consistent, and directed toward effective encouragement of the large goals of freedom and government by consent.