WHITE HOUSE GALLERY VINTAGE PHOTOGRAVURE JAMES MADISON

 OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE GALLERY VINTAGE PHOTOGRAVURE OF PRESIDENT JAMES MADISON

WITH WRITTEN DEDICATION TO PRESIDENT MADISON BY ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE, V. S. Senator from Indiana.

Full Text of Dedication

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Madison

NOT all great men were poor boys. The child of wealth has a harder task than the son of poverty. He lacks the compelling incentive of necessity. All things are at his hand. It is a heart of rare determination and a mind of uncommon virtue that can put luxury aside in youth and young manhood and depend alone on merit and on native force. Such a man was Sumner. Such in a lesser measure of fortune was Washington. And such, more than either, was James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," as he was called. He was the child of wealth, and yet he used the leisure thus afforded in study, self-discipline and thought.

His early condition and subsequent

success are therefore an inspiration to all the heirs of fortune. And his method is a lesson to all who would achieve mightily in the day when learning and trained intellectual power is needed.

That method was to employ each hour in storing up knowledge, thought and therefore wisdom. And so his mind became an intellectual storage battery, charged with power and ready for the instant when Circumstance should call, as it always does, with startling suddenness, for the man of the hour. Life's opportunity sends no couriers ahead to prepare men for its coming. It appears on the instant without warning and cries aloud, " Here am I, where is the man!"

This is the sole secret of Madison's success. He never strove for place.

His character

was not masterful. He was a follower of mightier men. He was easily influenced by such lordly wills as Hamilton, easily seduced by such subtle minds as Jefferson. Thus his public service was a series of contradictions, compromises, doubts and fears. And yet he was one of the superior figures of that age of giants and of storm. He was this solely because he was equipped. His mind was an arsenal which all factions and all parties needed in their warfare, and which each great political leader sought to capture. He had made himself, by sheer preparedness, indispensable. And thus it is that in spite of variable will and neutral character, his is one of the revered names of American history.

Madison was a middle ground. Between those tremendous mountain peaks of power, Hamilton and Jefferson, standing over against each other, Madison was the valley. Under the influence of Hamilton he was a maker of the Constitution and the ablest aid of his great chief in forcing the idea of centralization on the Convention. Under the influence of Jefferson he was dissatisfied with his own immortal work, and advocated the amendments and the Bill of Rights.

Under Hamilton's compelling hand he urged the power of National coercion to make effective National taxation and the National laws. Under the insinuating suggestions of Jefferson he swung back to the extreme of the States Rights view and drew the resolutions of the Virginia Legislature, declaring the Alien and Seditions laws " utterly null and void and of no effect.

Thas, within a single decade, he secured the contradictory titles of " Father of the Constitution" and " Father of Nullification." Nothing so clearly shows the charitableness of Time than that to day the mass of Americans willingly forget the last and remember with loving pride the first. But this is history, and in the realms of history truth alone should reign. However, in all and through all he was a patriot. His motives were absolutely pure. His intentions were exalted. Loftier love of country no man had; and Americans love him who loves America.

All can be forgiven the patriot, and it should be so. This land of ours is the home of the master people of the world; our flag is sacred; our destiny is in the hand of God; and he who loves America and with a fervent faith serves this chosen people, shall be exalted in the chronicle of the Nation's great, and grow nobler, purer and dearer to American heart as generations come and go. Time with its erasing hand makes dim and finally obliterates all earthly fame save that of the patriot and saint. The lustre of these grows brighter against the background of universal blackness where the pitying and remorseless years have blotted out the deeds and the follies of the race. So lives the name of Madison, and so it shall continue to live, made immortal by the magic power of patriotism.

Marg remse