James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

by Lynne Cheney

  • • •

  WHEN JAMES MONROE returned home from England, he settled on a strategy of not promoting himself to be the Republican candidate in 1808 but not closing the door either. He would serve if elected, he said, and he stuck with this approach even as friend after friend, convinced he could not win, dropped away. He got only three votes in the Republican caucus to Madison’s eighty-three, a lopsided result that would have been a little better for him—though not much—if a number of Old Republicans hadn’t chosen to absent themselves. Many of the dissident Republicans were by now trying to avoid all association with Randolph, but it was nonetheless he who took up the cudgels, leading a group to protest Madison’s nomination. Besides the accusation that Madison was a Yazoo man, members of the group claimed that he suffered from “want of energy,” which might have been a coded way of talking about his health. And they charged him with writing The Federalist with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, “in which the most extravagant of their doctrines are maintained and propagated.”60 Madison was not a true Republican, in other words.

  Madison was fiercely defended by attorney William Wirt, who had been part of the prosecution team in the trial of Aaron Burr. Writing as “One of the People” in the pages of the Richmond Enquirer, he demanded to know just when Madison had lacked energy. Was it when he acted as one of “the first and most effective agents” in the creation of the Constitution? Was it when he triumphed over Patrick Henry in the Virginia ratifying convention? Or when “he watched the first movements of the federal Constitution” and resisted with boldness “what he deemed infractions of its spirit”? And what about the way he fought back when advocates of “the Alien and Sedition Laws waved their baleful scepters over the continent”? Those protesting Madison’s nomination had no evidence for their assertions, Wirt declared, regarding either Madison’s supposed want of energy or his association with The Federalist. “We know that it is a defense of the Constitution, which we are all sworn to support, and where is the crime of Mr. Madison’s having participated?”61

  The “want of energy” charge also received a strong check after Federalist senator Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts accused the administration of catering to the French and trying to provoke war with the British. In answer, Jefferson released some 100,000 words of diplomatic correspondence, much of it in Madison’s hand. Over several days it was read aloud in the House and Senate. Newspapers of both parties published the documents, and not even a hostile editor could find evidence of the bias that Pickering alleged. The documents showed how hard Madison had worked as secretary of state—and how well. An early Madison biographer, George Tucker, thought that it was by the labors of his pen that Madison’s “merits were most conspicuous and that he most recommended himself to the nation.” The diplomatic correspondence, wrote Tucker, “always showed a masterly acquaintance with the subject never expressed in harsh or uncourteous manner and exhibited in a form to carry conviction to every unprejudiced mind.” Tucker added an observation that will ring true with anyone acquainted with Madison’s State Department writings. It would be impossible, he wrote, to identify any part of them “in which he has omitted anything it was material to say.”62

  Samuel Harrison Smith, the editor of the National Intelligencer, noted Madison’s “irreproachable morals.”63 This was a point often made by Madison advocates but usually without much elaboration. To be too specific or go on too long might have invited unwelcome comparisons with President Jefferson.

  • • •

  GEORGE CLINTON, planning to run for president, had been chosen as the vice presidential candidate by the Republican caucus. When he received word of his vice presidential nomination, he decided to hedge his bets. Protesting loudly that no one had told him his name would be put forward, he claimed that he had certainly not approved it, but he didn’t withdraw, thus managing the neat—and never repeated—trick of running for vice president on a ticket with a man whom he was running against for president. Clinton was showing his years. As Senator Plumer described him, “He is old, feeble, and altogether incapable of the duty of presiding in the Senate. He has no mind—no intellect—no memory. He forgets the question—mistakes it—and not infrequently declares a vote before it’s taken—and often forgets to do it after it is taken.” Perhaps because of Clinton’s feebleness, his advocates tried at least once to make Madison’s health an issue. They might also have been inspired by Madison’s being ill for weeks earlier in the year. For a time he had been too sick to meet with a British emissary, too sick even to write a note. A Clinton advocate, whose work appeared in the Troy, New York, Farmers’ Register, noted that Madison was “a little younger than George Clinton—but unfortunately for his country, he is sickly, valetudinarian, and subject to spasmodic affections, which operate unfavorably on his nervous fluid, considered by philosophers as one of the most powerful agents of our intellectual faculties.” The phrase “spasmodic affections” was a clever choice, calling to the nineteenth-century reader’s mind not only epilepsy, with its dreaded associations, but hysteria, which, being regarded as a womanly affliction, suggested that Madison was not only weak but effeminate.64

  Clinton’s advocates do not seem to have followed up on this line of attack, and one has to wonder why. Perhaps they worried it would underscore Clinton’s own bad health. Perhaps illness was so ever present in the nation’s beginnings that it was hard to make it into a political liability. Officeholders, just like those they represented, were expected to get sick. The great Washington, after all, had nearly died of pneumonia during his first term in office. John Adams was known to collapse and once lay in a coma for five days. Jefferson’s headaches could put him out of commission for weeks. Sickness was also the shadow of death, and few were the families that had not lost a spouse or child. Martha Washington had been a widow when she married George Washington, and her children, who became his beloved stepchildren, Patsy and Jack, both died before he took office. Adams had lost a little girl, Susanna, of whom he could barely speak. Jefferson had lost his wife, three daughters, and a son by the time he assumed office, and his adult daughter, Maria, died during his first term. In an era when everyone had death as a constant and tragic companion, even the most zealous politician might have had qualms about using illness as a political weapon.

  • • •

  THE MOST substantive issue of the campaign was the embargo, which had a serious economic impact at home, driving exports, which had been $108 million in 1807, down to $22 million in 1808. Believing they finally had an issue, the Federalists, who had been nearly moribund, became animated, once more nominating Charles Cotesworth Pinckney as their presidential candidate and launching an anti-embargo campaign that eventually had a mascot: a snapping turtle named Ograbme (“embargo” spelled backward), shown in one cartoon taking a chunk out of a merchant’s backside. The Federalist press never tired of attacking, and Madison grew bitter about the criticism, which he viewed as undercutting the effectiveness of the embargo by making it seem likely the United States wouldn’t stick to it. He wrote to Jefferson that only “some striking proof of the success of the embargo can arrest the successful perversion of it by its enemies, or rather the enemies of their country.”65

  There would be no striking proof. Napoleon ridiculed the embargo by offering to help the United States enforce it. He would capture any American ship on the high seas, he said, on the grounds that it must be there illegally. As for the British, occasional news articles indicated that the embargo was causing pain, but they were cold comfort to citizens in the northeast part of the United States, where both financial losses and unemployment were mounting rapidly. Gallatin had warned Jefferson that “governmental prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated; and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals as if he could do it better than themselves.”66 Neither the president nor the secretary of state, both committed to restraining government, heeded this advice, perhaps because th
ey could not allow themselves to. As they perceived it, the only alternatives to economic sanctions were even greater threats to the Republic: a return to being under the British thumb—or war.

  • • •

  MADISON WON HANDILY in 1808, receiving 122 electoral votes to Pinckney’s 47 and Clinton’s 6. Monroe received no votes at all. The embargo had taken a toll—Madison had lost most of New England—but he prevailed in other parts of the country to chalk up a substantial victory.

  There was little time to savor it. To Madison’s heavy official correspondence were now added pleas from job seekers, but perhaps that made thoughtful notes of congratulation all the more appreciated. “Blackguard” Charles Pinckney, the Republican in the Pinckney family, wrote, “I … congratulate you on your election to the most honorable station in your country’s gift.” Madison also heard from his cousin the Reverend James Madison, who had become a bishop of the Episcopal Church in 1790. “You will indeed, I fear, have a stormy time to encounter,” the clergyman wrote, “but that is the season in which the pilot discovers his superior skill.”67

  The embargo, which New Englanders continued to violate, was the most pressing problem, particularly when President Jefferson decided after Election Day to let matters drift until his successor was inaugurated. He said that he wanted “to leave to those who are to act on them the decisions they prefer.” With Madison’s blessing, Gallatin wrote to the president, urging him to decide between “enforcing the embargo or war … so that we may point out a decisive course either way to our friends.” Jefferson decided on enforcement, signing a bill on January 9, 1809, that would become known as the Force Bill by those who despised its strict measures.68

  There was concern that New Englanders might themselves resort to force, so furious were they about the new law. The Massachusetts legislature resolved that enforcing the embargo should be a state crime. Connecticut’s governor refused to assign militia officers to assist in enforcement, and its legislature, echoing the language of the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, declared it to be the duty of states “to interpose their protecting shield between the rights and liberties of the people and the assumed power of the general government.” In petitions and memorials, irate citizens poured out their anger and offered more than a few threats to secede. “I felt the foundations of the government shaken under my feet by the New England townships,” Jefferson later recalled.69

  And so did Congress. As New England Republicans reacted to their constituents’ rage, party discipline began to crumble—and then collapsed. By early February, President-elect Madison, apparently deciding that he could no longer stand aside, began to work with Virginia congressman Wilson Cary Nicholas on a plan that would allow the United States to maintain at least some commercial pressure on France and Great Britain. The plan he recommended was to lift the embargo except for those two countries and further provide that should either of them withdraw its hostile edicts, the president had authority to open trade with that country.70

  Congress passed such legislation, calling it the Nonintercourse Act, and Jefferson signed it on March 1, 1809. Three days later, with his party splintered, the nation divided, and both of the world’s great powers threatening, James Madison was sworn in as the fourth president of the United States.

  Chapter 15

  MR. PRESIDENT

  JAMES MADISON TOOK THE OATH of office in the new chamber of the House of Representatives, a large, gracefully shaped room with fluted columns, crimson curtains, and a painted ceiling. He was pale and trembling with emotion as he contemplated the great honor and vast responsibility that were about to be his, and when he delivered his inaugural address, he could not at first be heard. But his voice strengthened as he spoke about peace, which, he said, had “been the true glory of the United States to cultivate.” Following the path of right and justice had not protected the United States from “belligerent powers,” which “in their rage against each other” had issued the “arbitrary edicts” responsible for the nation’s present troubles, and the new president said he could not predict how long the country would be caught up in this conflict. He could be sure, however, of the principles he would follow in leading the nation through difficult times. He would always prefer peaceful accommodations to war, he would support the Constitution, and he would be strengthened in these tasks by “the well-tried intelligence and virtue of my fellow citizens.” In them he would place his confidence, “next to that which we have all been encouraged to feel in the guardianship and guidance of that Almighty Being whose power regulates the destiny of nations.”1

  After passing by troops in review, Madison rode back to F Street in a coach and four. Jefferson had still not moved out of the president’s house, and the Madisons invited guests into the home they had lived in for more than six years, receiving their company just outside the drawing room. Margaret Bayard Smith, wife of the publisher of the National Intelligencer, observed that Mrs. Madison “looked extremely beautiful … dressed in a plain cambric dress with a very long train, plain round the neck without any handkerchief [covering her bosom], and beautiful bonnet of purple velvet and white satin, with white plumes.” So striking was Mrs. Madison’s outfit, the latest in French fashion, that Mrs. Smith seems not to have noticed the president’s suit, which was not only made in the United States but cut from cloth woven from the wool of American-raised merino sheep.2

  A ball was held that evening at Long’s Hotel on Capitol Hill. Thomas Jefferson, a former president now, was among the first to arrive. Relaxed, even ebullient with the weight of office lifted from his shoulders, he jokingly noted that he was unprepared for the social life of the new administration. “You must tell me how to behave,” he said to a friend, “for it is more than forty years since I have been to a ball.”3

  After the diplomatic corps had arrived, the musicians struck up “Madison’s March,” and the president and Mrs. Madison entered the ballroom. She looked gorgeous, wearing a light buff-colored velvet dress and matching turban decorated with two superb bird-of-paradise plumes. Margaret Bayard Smith reported this and also observed the absolute propriety of her behavior. Asked to take the floor for the first dance, Mrs. Madison declined, saying she did not dance. Asked to choose someone else for the honor, she declined again, lest her choice looked like “partiality.” Having recounted this story of Mrs. Madison’s “unassuming dignity, sweetness, grace,” Mrs. Smith, in a letter to her daughter, asked a curious question: “Ah, why does she not in all things act with the same propriety?” Mrs. Smith was one of Mrs. Madison’s most ardent admirers, and one can only guess at what was bothering her. Perhaps the low-cut dresses, perhaps Mrs. Madison’s taking snuff, a habit she had been unable to break, or perhaps it was that Mrs. Madison was open and uninhibited with men as well as women. Not long before her husband became president, Mrs. Madison had kissed an old bachelor full on the lips to prove she was not a prude.4

  By most, Dolley was admired uncritically. “She loved life and people and her world loved her,” an early biographer wrote. At the inaugural ball, guests crowded toward her, “those behind pressing on those before and peeping over their shoulders to have a peep of her,” Mrs. Smith reported. The president managed to escape the crush by standing on a bench with Mrs. Smith. When the managers of the ball came to ask him to stay for supper, he agreed, but as soon as they were out of earshot, he turned to Mrs. Smith and said, “But I would much rather be in bed.”5

  One can hardly blame him. The ballroom was not only crowded but hot. The upper windows had to be broken out for ventilation. Moreover, from his bench, Madison could survey the hall and see the characters who were already making his political life difficult. Representative John Randolph of Roanoke was there, less powerful than he had once been, but with a tongue sharp as ever. George Clinton was in attendance, not only Madison’s vice president but his recent rival for the presidency and thereby thoroughly untrustworthy. Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith was at the ball and probably quite a cheerful presence. He would so
on become secretary of state, though that was not how Madison had wanted it. His plan had been to elevate Albert Gallatin to that office, but William Branch Giles of Virginia, now a senator and apparently miffed that he hadn’t been offered the position, had formed an alliance with Senator Samuel Smith of Maryland, Secretary Robert Smith’s brother. The two had enough votes to sink Gallatin’s nomination and to make life very unpleasant should Robert Smith be kicked out of the cabinet. Madison knew he needed the wise and straight-talking Gallatin, and his first thought had been to get Senator Smith behind Gallatin’s nomination by putting Robert Smith in at Treasury. But Gallatin knew that Smith, whose joviality was his greatest asset, wasn’t up to the Treasury job. Realizing that he was going to end up doing all the work of Treasury in addition to the work of the State Department, Gallatin refused to go along. He would stay at Treasury, and Smith was moving to State—which meant that Madison was going to be doing not only the work of the presidency but the work of the secretary of state.6 Small wonder that he wanted to go home and go to bed.

  In his first weeks in office, Madison used the foreign policy weapon that Congress had provided him to try to deal with hostile edicts and actions from both England and France. He wrote instructions, which Secretary Smith signed, to American ministers in those countries, not only emphasizing the willingness of the United States to begin trade with whichever government withdrew its hostile orders, but also stating the likelihood of Congress’s authorizing “acts of hostility” against the other country unless it too should respect American rights. Hardly was the ink dry on the instructions when David Erskine, Great Britain’s minister to the United States, came forward with an amazing offer: the king would withdraw the vexatious Orders in Council in exchange for repeal of the Nonintercourse Act as it pertained to Great Britain. At Erskine’s suggestion, Madison agreed on June 10, 1809, as the day that the Orders in Council would be vacated and U.S. trade with Britain resumed, and on April 19, Madison issued a statement to the nation to that effect: “Whereas the honorable David Montague Erskine, His Britannic Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, has by the order and in the name of his sovereign declared to this government that the British orders in council of January and November 1807 will have been withdrawn as respects the United States on the 10th day of June next, now therefore I, James Madison, president of the United States, do hereby proclaim that … after [that] day the trade of the United States with Great Britain … may be renewed.”7