Madison was born at the home of his maternal grandmother. The son and namesake of a leading Orange county landowner and squire, he maintained his lifelong home in Virginia at Montpelier, near the Blue Ridge Mountains. In 1769 he rode horseback to the College of New Jersey (Princeton University), selected for its hostility to episcopacy.He completed the four-year course in two years, finding time also to demonstrate against England and to lampoon members of a rival literary society in ribald verse. Overwork produced several years of epileptoid hysteria and premonitions of early death, which thwarted military training but did not prevent home study of public law, mixed with early advocacy of independence (1774) and furious denunciation of the imprisonment of nearby dissenters from the established Anglican Church. Madison never became a church member, but in maturity he expressed a preference for Unitarianism.
His health improved, and he was elected to Virginia's 1776 Revolutionary convention, where he drafted the state's guarantee of religious freedom. In the convention-turned-legislature he helped Thomas Jefferson disestablish the church but lost reelection by refusing to furnish the electors with free whiskey. After two years on the governor's council, he was sent to the Continental Congress in March 1780.
Madison wrote most of the US Constitution at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Even though he would later write the Virginia Resolutions which were hailed by anti-federalists, his Constitution created a strong federal government. Once the Convention ended, he along with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton wrote the Federalist Papers, essays that were intended to sway public opinion to ratifying the new Constitution.
Jefferson supported Madison's nomination to run in 1808. George Clinton was chosen to be his Vice President. He ran against Charles Pinckney who opposed Jefferson in 1804. The campaign centered around Madison's role with the embargo that had been enacted during Jefferson's presidency. Madison had been the Secretary of State and had argued for the unpopular embargo. However, Madison was able to win with 122 of the 175 electoral votes.
Madison easily won the renomination for the Democratic-Republicans. He was opposed by DeWitt Clinton. The campaign's main issue was the War of 1812. Clinton tried to appeal to both those for and against the war. Madison won with 128 out of 146 votes.
Madison's most famous decision came with the War of 1812, when the White House was burned to the ground. However, by December of 1813, the Americans had won the war.