The US Constitution and James Madison

After the American Revolution, states started to fight against each other. They did not pay their debts and each state had different money. In Massachusets there was a group of farmers who couldn't pay their debts and they were scared their farms would be taken away. The farmers tried to take over the Massachusets government. This was called Shays's Rebelion. All of the states were falling into pieces, so 12 states sent people to Philadelphia to agree on something that would hold America together. James Madison was studying ancient democracies because he wanted to find out how America could stay together. He wrote, with all of the other delgates, the Constitution of the United States of America. Some of the delgates were afraid that the president would be too strong. Some of the other delegates were afraid that the president would not be strong enough. James Madison suggested three branches so no one branch would be stronger than the other. The legislative branch would make the laws, the executive branch carried them out, and the judicial branch would decide if the laws were OK. The delegates signed the new constitution. We call James Madison the father of the constitution because he had the ideas of the three branches.

(the picture on the left is James Madison and the picture on the right is Dolly Madison, his wife)