He worked best not merely in committee but in secret

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 88.

James Madison was an easy man to underestimate. At five foot four, the fourth president of the United States stood a foot shorter than Washington or Jefferson and weighed little over a hundred pounds. He habitually dressed in sober black, which made more than one observer think of “a schoolteacher dressed up for a funeral.”30 More comfortable in his own company than in society, given to hypochondriac anxieties about his nerves and health, he was forty-four before he again summoned his courage to approach a woman after having been jilted twelve years earlier on his very first attempt. Even on this second try he had sent Aaron Burr to act as an intermediary, to inquire if the twenty-seven-year-old widow Dolley Payne Todd might be interested in him. To his infinite relief she was, and they made a devoted if odd couple, she enthusiastically fulfilling the social duties that he always dreaded.

Madison had a thorough and logical mind; he was able to master the most complex subjects, develop ideas, invest countless hours writing and rewriting; but as the historian Garry Wills observed, he always preferred to let others get the attention: “He worked best not merely in committee but in secret.” He was the anonymous voice of the most persuasive papers of The Federalist that rallied public opinion in favor of the Constitution, the unnamed author of pamphlets that bolstered Jefferson’s presidency; he had even ghostwritten George Washington’s first inaugural address, the House’s reply to Washington’s address, and then Washington’s thank-you reply to the House. He had, said political friends and enemies alike, the naivety of a man who, unacquainted with the world, works out the perfect solution at his desk and is baffled when the world does not agree.