At the convention, Madison was drawn into the debate over nullification. Southerners supporting the right of a state to declare a federal law null and void within their respective states cited as precedents the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, written by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Madison publicly repudiated the Nullification movement, stating that it had never been his intention to grant the states the power to nullify a law or dissolve the Union. He denounced the doctrines of Nullification and Secession as “twin heresies.”
Believing that slavery was undermining the Union, Madison favored a gradual abolition of slaves and resettlement of freed blacks in Africa. In 1819, he helped organize the American Colonization Society, which founded the nation of Liberia as a colony for former American slaves.
Madison helped Thomas Jefferson create the University of Virginia, and served on the Board of Regents. In 1826, he succeeded Jefferson as Rector of the University. He, in turn, was succeeded by James Monroe.
James Monroe retired to his estate, Oak Hill, near Leesburg, Virginia. At the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1829, he represented the Loudoun-Fairfax region and was elected president of the convention. After the death of his wife the next year, Monroe sold Oak Hill and moved to New York City to live with one of his daughters and her husband. Monroe died there on July 4, 1831, the third President to die on that date.
Probably the greatest ex-President of all times was John Quincy Adams. After his resounding defeat for re-election to the White House, he returned to his home in Quincy, Massachusetts. The next year, the people of Quincy asked him to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Adams agreed to run on two conditions: 1) that he never be expected to promote himself as a candidate and ask for votes and 2) that it be understood he would pursue a course in Congress independent of any party and the people who elected him. Under those terms, he was elected and held his seat in the House until he died in 1848, on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. After his first election to the House, he wrote in his diary, “I am a member-elect of the Twenty-Second Congress. No election or appointment conferred upon me ever gave me so much pleasure. My election as President of the United States was not half so gratifying to my inmost soul.” Having been during his long career a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican and National Republican parties, he was elected to the House as an Anti-Mason and later as a Whig.
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