Montpelier

Montpelier is where the Constitution was, in a sense, conceived. In this Virginia mansion James Madison — the 'Father of the Constitution' and fourth president — read deeply in history and political theory to prepare the plan of government he carried to Philadelphia in 1787. It is also the home of the more than three hundred enslaved men, women, and children whose labor sustained the estate, and today it tells both stories with unusual honesty. Few places hold the founding ideals and the founding contradictions of the republic so tightly together.

James Madison Sr. built the brick Georgian mansion around 1764, and his son James grew up here on a large tobacco plantation worked by enslaved people. In the 1780s Madison retreated to his Montpelier library to study the histories of ancient and modern confederacies, distilling his reading into the Virginia Plan — the framework that shaped the United States Constitution — and into his defense of ratification in The Federalist.

Madison enlarged the house around 1797 and again during his presidency, giving it the form and Tuscan portico it wears today, and he shared it with his celebrated wife, Dolley. He retired to Montpelier in 1817 and died in his bedroom on June 28, 1836, the last surviving framer of the Constitution. He and Dolley are buried in the family cemetery on the grounds, near the burial ground of the people they enslaved.

After passing out of the family, Montpelier was bought in 1901 by the du Pont family, who nearly doubled the mansion to 55 rooms behind pink stucco. Marion duPont Scott left the estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which took ownership in 1984. A meticulous five-year restoration completed in 2008 stripped away the du Pont additions to return the house to Madison's 22-room home, and the award-winning exhibition 'The Mere Distinction of Colour,' developed with descendants, now centers the lives of the enslaved community.