Portrait by Charles Willson Peale
After returning to Montpelier in 1774, Madison took a seat on the local Committee of Safety, a pro-revolution group that oversaw the local Patriot militia.[32] In October 1775, he was commissioned as the colonel of the Orange County militia, serving as his father's second-in-command until he was elected as a delegate to the Fifth Virginia Convention, which was charged with producing Virginia's first constitution.[5] Although Madison never saw battle in the Revolutionary War, he did rise to prominence in Virginia politics as a wartime leader.[33] At the Virginia constitutional convention, he convinced delegates to alter the Virginia Declaration of Rights originally drafted on May 20, 1776 to provide for "equal entitlement", rather than mere "tolerance", in the exercise of religion.[34] With the enactment of the Virginia constitution, Madison became part of the Virginia House of Delegates, and he was subsequently elected to the Virginia governor's Council of State,[35] where he became a close ally of Governor Thomas Jefferson.[36] On July 4, 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was formally printed, declaring the 13 American states an independent nation.