First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

by Thomas E. Ricks

In his first inaugural address, delivered in New York City on April 30, 1789, Washington promised to be a good steward of “the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”5 Washington uttered the words, but they almost certainly were drafted by James Madison, America’s first great political insider. As Richard Brookhiser writes, “After Washington gave the speech in Federal Hall, Madison wrote the House’s response, and Washington’s answer to the House’s response.”6 In the same vein, the political philosopher Danielle Allen once remarked that a good part of early American history consists of such instances of Madison talking to himself,