Just grab any U.S. history book. The original drafts of the Declaration of Independence talked about the importance of property, because the founding fathers spent an enormous amount of time thinking through the implications of what would happen if citizens just voted to take all the property away from the wealthy. (Democracy was basically Bitcoin of the 1700s.) And they came to the conclusion that the only way to prevent that from happening was through ensuring that every citizen owned a stake in the means of production, and believed that only with welfare would it be possible to unlock the potential of both the individual and the government.

Also, in reference to your Madison quote, in The Federal Papers he expressed the fear that if the majority of Americans didn't own land then they would vote to take away the property rights of those who did. His solution was "extending the sphere", aka making the country large enough so that everyone could own land. That way the government could give away "free land", but that once individuals already owned personal land the government wouldn't have to take it away in redistribution programs or whatever. He was never able to come up with a longterm solution, but he recognized that it was a fundamental problem that could eventually destroy that republic.