James Madison, then James Madison, Jr., was born March 16, 1751, the first of ten children born to a slave owning family in Orange County, Virginia. He was born at the home of his mother's parents in Port Conway, Virginia, but was raised on the family estate, later to be named Montpelier, in Orange.

In a remarkable coincidence, Montpelier was only about 30 miles, or a day's travel, from Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's estate. (Today we would drive it in less than one hour.) James Monroe was to move to the area to be closer to Jefferson, his mentor, and thus the third, fourth and fifth Presidents lived within a thirty-mile radius (see Madison Family Tree).

Zachary Taylor, Madison's much younger second cousin, was also born in Orange County, but his family moved west while he was still an infant. Taylor went on to become a hero of the War with Mexico and the twelfth President of the United States.

Madison was baptized and raised in the Anglican faith, the established religion of the colony of Virginia. His family attended the nearby Brick Church and his father served as a vestryman. Madison, however, grew up to be an impassioned opponent of established religion and advocate of what was then called freedom of conscience.

James Madison was frail and sickly, but an excellent student. He attended a well-regarded school headed by Donald Robertson in King and Queen County, Virginia, from 1762 to 1767. He returned home to be tutored by Thomas Martin, a recent graduate of College of New Jersey (later to become Princeton University).

Madison's Diploma from the College of New Jersey (from a James Madison Center photographic slide).

Young Virginia men who went to college typically attended William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Nonetheless Madison chose the College of New Jersey (Princeton), a college of excellent reputation and the first college to attract significant numbers from outside its own state. He may have been influenced by Martin; he may have feared the unhealthy environment of Williamsburg; and he may have been repelled by William and Mary's reputation for dissolution. He began his studies at the College of New Jersey in 1769 and graduated only two years later in 1771.

Philip Freneau, "poet of the Revolution," was also a student at the College of New Jersey as was Hugh Henry Brackenridge who went on to be a distinguished jurist and author. The gifted Aaron Burr graduated in 1772 at 16 years of age. Philip Vickers Fithian, who was to be tutor to the prominent and wealthy Carter family of Virginia, enrolled in 1770. In his letter to his father he approvingly described a very structured, even regimented, environment at Princeton:

"The Rules by which the Students & Scholars are directed, are, in my Opinion, exceedingly well formed to check & restrain the vicious, & to assist the studious, & to countenance & encourage the virtuous."

William Patterson, who presented the rival New Jersey Plan at the Constitutional Convention, had graduated in 1763. Nine Princeton graduates were to be at the Constitutional Convention: the most of any college. Princeton may be justifiably proud: it is perhaps no accident that the first national college produced so many of the nation's founders.

Nonetheless, it was not all serious scholarship for these early undergraduates. These were young men away from parental supervision. Freneau, Brackenridge and Madison were close friends and collaborated on literary projects. Surviving works are humorous and surprisingly ribald.

Madison stayed for a half year of postgraduate study considering a career in the ministry. Returning home to the family estate, Madison was uncertain about his profession, sickly, and despondent. In November of 1772 he wrote William Bradford, Jr., one of his friends from Princeton:

"As for myself, I am too dull and infirm now to look out for any extraordinary things in this world, for I think my sensations for many months past have intimated to me not to expect a long and healthy life; though it may be better with me after some time, [but] I hardly dare expect it, and therefore have little spirit and to set about anything that is difficult in acquiring and useless in possessing after one has exchanged time for eternity." (Madison, 1865, I, page 6.)

Ten months later in September of 1773, he wrote Bradford that he might "visit Philadelphia or Princeton in the spring, should I be alive, and should have health sufficient." (Madison, 1865, I, page 6.)

It is intriguing to speculate what would have become of Madison were it not for the American Revolution. A sickly depressed young man, not attracted to either the law or the ministry and unfit for the military, he might have ended his days as the obscure master of a Virginia plantation no more famous than his father, James Madison, Sr.

This is only speculation, of course. The American Revolution drew James Madison into politics: he had found the vocation that was to dominate his life.