The Amazing True Story of the Election That Saved the Constitution In 1789, James Madison and James Monroe ran against each other for Congress—the only time that two future presidents have contested a congressional seat. But what was at stake, as author Chris DeRose reveals in Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election That Saved a Nation , was more than personal ambition. This was a race that determined the future of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the very definition of the United States of America. Friends and political allies for most of their lives, Madison was the Constitution’s principal author, Monroe one of its leading opponents. Monroe thought the Constitution gave the federal government too much power and failed to guarantee fundamental rights. Madison believed that without the Constitution, the United States would not survive. It was the most important congressional race in American history, more important than all but a few presidential elections, and yet it is one that historians have virtually ignored. In Founding Rivals , DeRose, himself a political strategist who has fought campaigns in Madison and Monroe’s district, relives the campaign, retraces the candidates’ footsteps, and offers the first insightful, comprehensive history of this high-stakes political battle. DeRose reveals: How Madison’s election ensured the passage of a Bill of Rights—and how Monroe’s election would have ensured its failure - How Madison came from behind to win a narrow victory (by a margin of only 336 votes) in a district gerrymandered against him - How the Bill of Rights emerged as a campaign promise to Virginia’s evangelical Christians - Why Madison’s defeat might have led to a new Constitutional Convention—and the breakup of the United States Founding Rivals tells the extraordinary, neglected story of two of America’s most important Founding Fathers. Brought to life by unparalleled research, it is one of the most provocative books of American political history you will read this year. Madison’s 1789 election to Congress embroiders histories of the establishment of the Constitution (James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights, by Richard Lebunski, 2006), but in DeRose’s account, it’s the main event. Perhaps drawn toward this campaign trail by his background as a contemporary political consultant, DeRose depicts what in retrospect was a critical contest, given Madison’s subsequent centrality to creating the Bill of Rights and the principal government departments. His opponent was none other than fellow future president James Monroe, then an opponent of the Constitution. Thrown together in a gerrymandered district whose anti-Federalist tincture favored Monroe, he and Madison campaigned through snowy northern Virginia in January 1789, expounding their views in courthouses and churches. Madison’s promise to codify religious freedom, DeRose suggests, might have gained him the Baptist and Lutheran vote; in any case, he squeaked past Monroe by 336 votes. Building up to this result with the duo’s political and personal relations in the 1780s, DeRose applies a dramatizing hand to a topic scholastically grounded in Ratification, by Pauline Maier (2010). --Gilbert Taylor Praise for Founding Rivals “Long before they fought the War of 1812 and planted the seeds of Manifest Destiny, James Madison and James Monroe fought each other over a seat in the First Congress. Their epic campaign—revolving around the size and scope of government, its taxing power, and a nation awash in debt—is America in microcosm. (It’s also frighteningly relevant to our twenty-first-century democracy.) It is a fascinating story, told here by a gifted young historian, as promising as his protagonists. Thoroughly researched and gracefully written, Founding Rivals is narrative history of the most readable kind.” —Richard Norton Smith, author of Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation and founding director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum “Compelling narrative throughout. . . . A lively, clear-cut study of the myriad hurdles and uncertainty that characterized the first attempts to form the U.S. government.” —Kirkus Reviews “An engaging account of the Republic’s contentious founding.” —Publishers Weekly “Is there anyone in America who wouldn’t want their next congressional election to feature a choice between James Madison and James Monroe? As Chris DeRose shows us in this fascinating new book, one lucky district, Virginia’s 5th (which happens to be my own), got this lucky pick in 1789. Few single contests have ever been more important for the nation’s future. Just like today, past elections were high-stakes affairs with enormous consequences. Unlike today, the big issues could once be argued on center stage between friends, in a spirit of unity and harmony.” —Professor Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Poli