For nearly a score of years
thereafter, they lived a happy and tranquil life on their estate,
Montpelier.
It is somewhat difficult to estimate Madison. He stood on a sort of
middle ground between Jefferson and Hamilton. Earlier in his career,
Hamilton influenced him deeply in regard to the adoption of the
Constitution, of which he has been called the father. But, at a later
date, Jefferson's influence became uppermost, and Madison
swung over to the extreme of the state rights view, and drew the
resolutions of the Virginia legislature declaring the Alien and Sedition
laws "utterly null and void and of no effect," so that he has also been
called the "Father of Nullification." However unstable his opinions may
have been, there is no questioning his patriotism or the purity of his
motives.
Again the presidential tradition was to remain unbroken, for Madison's
successor was James Monroe, his secretary of state, a Virginian and a
Democrat. The preponderance of the Democratic party was never more in
evidence, for while he received 183 electoral votes, Rufus King, the
Federalist candidate, received only 34. This, however, was as nothing to
the great personal triumph he achieved four years later, when, as a
candidate for re-election, only one vote was cast against him, and that
by a man who voted as he did because he did not wish to see a second
President chosen with the unanimity which had honored Washington.
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