Madison: An Early Environmentalist and Agricultural Innovator

James Madison is easily one of the most revered and respected Founding Fathers of the United States. Known for wearing black and a “cold” personality, he resembled more of a scientist than a politician. Like Jefferson and Washington, Madison’s personality and happiness returned to a more light hearted and playful state when he moved back to Virginia home at Montpelier.

One of the most intriguing parts of Andrea Wulf’s biographical account of Madison’s retirement work at Monteplier was his innovative and radical views and theories of farming in the United States. Way before the trascendentalist authors such as Emerson and Thoreau, Madison believed Americans needed to take cautious environmental approaches to farming. I though it was fascinating that he delivered a speech in 1819 addressing these issues. In this speech Madison combined theories of population growth, ecology, chemistry, plant physiology, and even political ideology into his propositions for Americans to “safeguard their environment”(Wulf 205-206).

     Madison’s vision for the future of American Agriculture was radical and progressive. He dedicated the years of his retirement to reading agricultural books as he did early in his career reading political philosophy. He believed Americans needed to farm in soil preserving ways to keep our soil healthy and farmable. He saw the need for crops and agricultural prosperity in the United States in order to support America’s population in the 19^th century’s exponential population growth.  

Despite all of Madison’s innovative agricultural work and his vital role as one of the most intellectually valuable contributors in the Constitutional Convention, he will forever be remembered as a slave master. In many ways, John Adams was far more of a true farmer than Jefferson, Washington, and Madison ever were. He wasn’t a slave owner and did all of his farming himself. Jefferson, Washington, and Madison are famous for their beautiful homes and plantations. Of course, they never would have even existed if it were not for the slave labor that built them. Many people, including myself, cannot understand how men so famous for their intellectual philosophies on freedom, liberty, and equality for all mankind could hypocritically own slaves.

Madison seemed to be fairly convicted of his ownership and status as a slave master as he built a beautiful slave village in the middle of his estate. By making pleasant, and even nice slave quarters visitors saw him in a different way compared to other Virginia slave owners. Madison believed slaves should be freed, but only if they were relocated in Africa due to the prejudices of the white population in America. Madison never freed his slaves, despite his former secretary’s actions of freeing his slaves, giving them land, and moving to Illinois. Ironically, Madison owned over a hundred slaves when he retired to Montpelier. Additionally, the majority of these slaves lived outside of the new idyllic slave village in old slave cabins in far worse condition. While history will remember his radical slave quarters innovations and attempts to “ethicize” his practice of owning slaves, Madison work as an intellectual, Founding Father, President, and early American Environmentalist will forever outshine his ownership of slaves.