Answer:
James Madison (1751–1836), the chief author of the Bill of Rights and thus of the First Amendment, was the foremost champion of religious liberty, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press in the Founding Era. Madison played a central role in drafting, explaining, and ratifying the Constitution; after it was ratified he sought to reassure its critics by adding guarantees of fundamental liberties.
His life’s work, as statesman and as political theorist, was to secure the American revolutionary experiment by guarding against its own potential weaknesses and excesses. Republican government was endangered, he believed, if unrestrained majorities violated the rights of individuals or if elected officials were immune from the scrutiny of a free press.
Madison's helped prepare a Declaration of Rights for Virginia's constitution
Madison was born to a well-established Virginia planter family. In 1769 he enrolled at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) and came under the intellectual and political influence of the college’s new president, John Witherspoon, whose stated goal was to foster a spirit of liberty and free enquiry and who opened the curriculum to currents of religious and political dissent.
After returning to Virginia, Madison joined passionately in the political ferment of the impending revolution. In the spring of 1776 he served on a committee preparing a Declaration of Rights for Virginia’s new constitution. He amended draft language on religious liberty to remove the weaker word toleration and instead to declare “that all men are equally entitled to enjoy the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.”
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