James Madison survived longer than any other member of the most remarkable generation of political leaders in American history. Born in the middle of the eighteenth century as a subject of King George II, the Father of the United States Constitution lived until 1836, when he died a citizen of Andrew Jackson's republic. For over forty years he played a pivotal role in the creation and defense of a new political order. He lived long enough to see even that Revolutionary world transformed, and the system of government he had nurtured threatened by the disruptive forces of a new era that would ultimately lead to civil war. In recounting the experience of Madison and several of his legatees who witnessed the violent test of whether his republic could endure, McCoy dramatizes the actual working out in human lives of critical cultural and political issues. The Last of the Fathers: James Madison & The Republican Legacy was the winner of two major awards: the Dunning Prize by the American Historical Association and the New England Historical Association Book Prize.

Dr. Drew R. McCoy received an A.B. from Cornell University in 1971, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1973 and 1976, respectively. He has been at Clark since 1990. A specialist in American political and intellectual history, Professor McCoy teaches courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in early American history, with emphasis on the period from the Revolution through the Civil War. Before coming to Clark he taught at the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University. His current project, which is biographical, focusing on the early life of Abraham Lincoln in relation to the transformative developments of the early nineteenth century. He is the author of The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America and The Last of the Fathers: James Madison & The Republican Legacy.
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Dr. Aaron N. Coleman is Associate Professor of History and the History Department Chair at the University of the Cumberlands. He is interested in Anglo-American constitutional and ideological development of the 17th and 18th Centuries, especially the era of the American Founding. Dr. Coleman also specializes in contemporary leadership theory and application. He has published two books both dealing with the conception and political debates over federalism. He is currently working on two projects, one a short biography of Thomas Burke and another on the competing languages of Nationalism and State Sovereignty in 18th and 19th Century United States. Dr. Coleman is a die-hard Elvis fan and spends his free time listening to Elvis or reading Lord of the Rings. He is the author of The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800 and the co-editor of Debating Federalism: From the Founding to Today with Christopher S. Leskiw. You can follow him on Twitter, @Big_Liberty.
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Support for the Age of Jackson Podcast was provided by Isabelle Laskari, Jared Riddick, John Muller, Julianne Johnson, Laura Lochner, Mark Etherton, Marshall Steinbaum, Martha S. Jones, Michael Gorodiloff, Mitchell Oxford, Richard D. Brown, Rod, Rosa, Stephen Campbell, and Victoria Johnson, as well as Andrew Jackson's Hermitage​ in Nashville, TN.