VOA · As It Is
Intermediate · B1–B2learner speed4:322025-02-26public domain
As It Is is VOA Learning English's daily news magazine. Each report covers a current story in clear, learner-speed English with a controlled vocabulary — the closest thing to real news broadcasts that intermediate learners can fully digest, and ideal raw material for dictation.
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01The men who created America's Constitution are often called the nation's founders.
02But only one of those men, James Madison, is widely considered the father of the Constitution.
03Madison was elected President of the United States in 1808.
04He served for two terms.
05But many Americans remember Madison more for the work he did to strengthen the national government before he served as president.
06Madison was one of the writers of the state constitution in his home state of Virginia in 1776.
07Later, he proposed a more structured national government after the Revolutionary War.
08That conflict resulted in the American colonists separating from Britain.
09Madison imagined a three-part American government, one with an executive, a legislature, and an independent Supreme Court.
10His ideas became the basis for the U.S.
11Constitution.
12Tom Howard has served as an educator at Madison's home in Southern Virginia.
13He said Madison did not receive as much attention as some of America's other founding members.
14He's not somehow historically as well-known as other founding statesmen, Howard said.
15But he's certainly every bit as important.
16We are not even sure there would be a Constitution had it not been for James Madison, he added.
17Howard noted how James Madison used his own library to prepare for the nation's Constitutional Convention.
18He went up there and studied for months, and that's having just a light breakfast and then studying throughout the entire day, before he finally took a break to rest up to go back at it the next day.
19Historians say Madison took very detailed notes during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
20He sat behind George Washington taking notes and trying to determine how the debates were going in discussions that he could prepare for the next day, and how he would influence that.
21Madison understood his notes were important not only for him.
22He knew they would also be interesting for historians and other people who wanted to know what happened at the meeting.
23He included information on speeches and ideas expressed by other delegates.
24After a new Constitution was created at the Convention, the legislatures of each state had to ratify or vote to approve the document.
25Madison and other supporters of the proposed government eventually succeeded in persuading the states to ratify the Constitution.
26He was then elected to the House of Representatives in the first Congress under the new government.
27But it was his actions in support of a strong national government and federal laws that earned Madison a place in history as father of the Constitution.
28I'm Brian Lynn.
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