A Failed Nation - Vices of the Political System

While the Confederation staggered, a small, sickly, soft-spoken Virginian sat in his study and tried to think his way out of the crisis. This is the story of James Madison’s quiet revolution — the trunk of books Jefferson shipped him from Paris, the grim survey of every failed republic in history he titled “Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies,” and the blunt diagnosis he called “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” where he located the deepest danger not in a government ...