Levi Fox Page 1 02/24/00
James Madison: Misguided Prophet of Sectional Conflict:
During the era of the Constitutional Convention ”The great division of interests in the U. States…did not lie between the large and small states: it lay between the Northern and Southern” states (Meyers 84). Such an analysis of the United States could have come from the pen of any number of eminent historians who are blessed with the advantage of two hundred years of hindsight and a Civil War fought between states of differing regions rather than differing sizes. But it did not. In fact, James Madison himself wrote those lines in June of 1787, in the heat of a battle between the large and small states over the nature of congressional representation in the proposed Constitution. However, questions still persist over the extent to which he believed his own rhetoric, over whether he actually foresaw future sectional conflict or merely suggested its possibility as a means of turning attention away from the debate between large and small states. Careful analysis of his ideas and writings from the period of the late 1780s indicate that while he did seem to harbor a genuine concern about future sectional conflict, Madison’s conception of such future trends that might lead to conflict were far different from what actually occurred.
James Madison entered the Constitutional convention in May of 1787 with the firm belief that the old system of one state-one vote representation was one of the fundamental problems of the Confederation which needed to be corrected, and that a system of proportional representation in both of the proposed houses of Congress would instead function best. Above all Madison sought to transform a national legislature based upon the representation of the interests of the states into one based on direct representation of the interests of the people. *find a citation* Thusly, the Virginia Plan, introduced by Edmund Randolph but written by Madison proposed a system whereby “representation in the two houses of the legislature would be ‘proportioned’ either to the taxes each state paid…or to its free population” (Rakove 55). Fears of the part of the smaller states that their interests would be subordinated led to the so-called Conneticut Compromise, which would allow the small states an equal voice in the Senate, while the larger states would occupy a majority in the House due to their larger populations.