James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

by Lynne Cheney

  Arriving at Montgomery Court House only after the army had left, Madison traveled on in pursuit of it to Brookeville, where he spent the night of August 26 at the two-story brick home of Henrietta Bentley and her husband, Caleb, a silversmith and watchmaker who also served as Brookeville’s postmaster. By now the president, who was given Mrs. Bentley’s room, was traveling with a substantial entourage. “Beds were spread in the parlor,” a late arrival to the scene reported: “The house was filled and guards placed around the house during the night. A large troop of horse likewise arrived and encamped for the night… . The tents were scattered along the riverlet and the fires … kindled on the ground.” Villagers came out to catch a glimpse of the president, who was reported to be “tranquil as usual, and though much distressed by the dreadful event which had taken place, not dispirited.”16

  The president learned the next day that the British had left Washington. Knowing how important it was to reestablish the government as soon as possible, he sent messengers to tell cabinet members to return to the capital and wrote to Mrs. Madison that he was setting out immediately. “You will all of course take the same resolution,” he wrote. “I know not where we are in the first instance to hide our heads, but shall look for a place on my arrival.”17

  The president hadn’t been in Washington long when he heard a huge explosion coming from the direction of Fort Warburton. If the fort were lost, Washington would soon be subject to bombardment and invasion from the river. The citizens of Alexandria, farther down the Potomac, were already planning to capitulate, and that seemed a fine idea to some citizens of the capital as well. Madison wrote to his wife that she should stay where she was until she heard from him, but the very day he wrote, she appeared at the Cutts residence on F Street, where he was staying—the same house in which the Madisons had lived when he was secretary of state. When her friend Margaret Bayard Smith visited Mrs. Madison, she found her “much depressed. She could scarcely speak without tears.”18

  Madison, riding out with Monroe and Rush, inspected the devastated city. They started at Greenleaf’s Point, where British soldiers in the process of laying waste to what was left of the navy yard had accidentally set off an explosion, leaving some thirty of their soldiers dead and a forty-foot-wide crater in the ground. Madison and his party passed alongside the Potomac, and while Monroe picked out positions from which artillery could defend the capital, Madison tried to lift the spirits of Washingtonians. “Our good president is out animating and encouraging the troops and citizens not to despair,” wrote a local banker. Although he was trying to boost morale, the tour had to be a sad and solemn one for him. The president’s house, which some had begun calling the White House, now consisted of “cracked and blackened walls.” The Capitol was a scene of devastation, particularly the House of Representatives wing. The lovely domed roof had collapsed into the cellar, where it was still smoking. The Library of Congress, housed in the Capitol, was utterly destroyed. Dead horses lay around. Houses in the neighborhood had been burned.19

  While the president was on Capitol Hill, William Thornton, who had designed the Capitol, brought the message that certain citizens of the city wanted to send a deputation to the British to capitulate. Madison forbade them to do so, and Monroe, who was riding with the president, added that anyone trying to approach the enemy with surrender in mind would “be repelled by the bayonet.” Thornton returned home, got his sword, and went out into the town to rally citizens for its defense.20

  The next day, near the Cutts residence, the president was approached by a two-man delegation bringing word from the Washington and Georgetown militias. They blamed Secretary of War Armstrong for the town’s inadequate defenses and refused to take further orders from him. That evening the president visited Armstrong at his lodgings and relayed the message: “Every officer would tear off his epaulettes if General Armstrong was to have anything to do with them.” While Armstrong had been absent from Washington, Monroe had been giving the orders. The militia found him acceptable, Madison said, but now that the secretary of war had returned, the secretary of state could not continue to issue commands. Armstrong immediately offered to resign, a move the president discouraged. A temporary retirement from the scene until things settled was best, he said.21

  Armstrong then began to dwell upon how “groundless” were the charges of his having fallen short in defense of the capital, and the president agreed that some of them were. But he added that he “could not in candor say that all that ought to have been done had been done and in proper time.” He noted that Armstrong “had never appeared to enter into a just view … of the danger to the city” and that he had not put forward “a single precaution or arrangement for its safety.” He had not even carried out the preparations agreed upon in the July 1 cabinet meeting.

  The president reported that despite their frank exchange, he and the secretary “parted as usual in a friendly manner.” They had agreed that Armstrong would think about resigning while visiting his family in New York, but by the time he reached Baltimore, Armstrong had made up his mind. He sent his resignation to the president and would for years cast blame on others for it.22 James Monroe, whom the president put in charge of the War Department as well as the State Department, spent the rest of his life trying to refute the notion that he had pushed Armstrong out.

  • • •

  A FEW WEEKS LATER the British decided to try to repeat their Washington success at Baltimore, but the city was prepared. Madison’s Senate nemesis Samuel Smith of Maryland was in command of its defense, and he knew how to train and command militia. When some four thousand British regulars anchored at North Point, he sent out a militia brigade of about three thousand to meet them. Many of the men had broken ranks and fled at Bladensburg less than three weeks before, but now they successfully carried out their mission of delaying the British, and one of the American skirmishers dealt the enemy a severe blow. From his hiding place in a hollow, he shot and mortally wounded Major General Robert Ross, the British commander.23

  On the morning of September 13, the British fleet began bombarding Fort McHenry, trying to silence the guns protecting Baltimore’s harbor. All day and night they pounded the fort, firing cannon and Congreve rockets, but the next morning, the flag of the United States was still aloft. Francis Scott Key, a lawyer from Georgetown, had approached the British about freeing an American prisoner, Dr. William Beanes, and thus was aboard a British ship to witness “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,” and “by the dawn’s early light,” the American flag, “the star-spangled banner,” waving in triumph “o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Key’s inspired words would eventually become the lyrics of our national anthem.24

  The British withdrawal from Baltimore was heartening news, as was a report from Lake Champlain, where an American squadron under the command of thirty-year-old Thomas Macdonough had seized control—and in most dramatic fashion. The battle was largely carried out by the flagships of the opposing forces, Macdonough’s Saratoga and the British captain George Downie’s Confiance. Punishing fire eventually took out all the guns on one side of the Saratoga, whereupon Macdonough, who had strategically deployed his kedge anchors before the battle, wound his ship around 180 degrees and brought new guns to bear on the Confiance, delivering so many broadsides that its crew refused to go on with the battle.25

  Meanwhile, the British lieutenant general Sir George Prevost made a coordinated move into New York with what Henry Adams called the most “formidable” force ever sent by the British to America. Proceeding down the west side of Lake Champlain with ten thousand men, he intended to attack the only thing standing in his way: a force of some thirty-four hundred men under the command of Brigadier General Alexander Macomb at Plattsburgh, New York. Prevost had barely begun his assault, however, when he learned of the American victory on Lake Champlain. Worried about his supply lines being cut, or, indeed, his whole army being cut off, he hastily—and to the consternation of nearly everyone
on the British side—withdrew to Canada.26

  Congress gathered in emergency session in the Patent Office, one of the few public buildings that remained in Washington. Addressing members on September 20, 1814, the president spoke of recent American victories and observed that the British invasion, which had occurred within the month, had “interrupted for a moment only the ordinary public business at the seat of government.” He was putting a brave face on what was, in fact, a grim situation. It started with the nation’s having only five million dollars in the Treasury, an amount that would fall far short of covering expenditures Congress had already authorized and meeting the expenses of an expanding war. Madison urged members “to take up without delay” the subject of the nation’s financial needs, which there was only one way of meeting, and that was by imposing additional taxes. He also prepared the way for Monroe to approach Congress with plans for filling out the ranks of the regular army and reforming the militia.27

  In the weeks ahead, Congress failed to address these pressing matters, and the nation’s prospects grew increasingly dire. Madison learned that the peace negotiations taking place in Ghent were not going well. The British were making extravagant demands—that the United States cede part of Maine and give over military control of the great inland lakes, among other things—and Madison expected his negotiators to depart Ghent soon. He also learned that the British likely intended a massive attack on New Orleans. When attorney William Wirt visited in October, he wrote to his wife that the president “looks miserably shattered and woebegone. In short he looked heart-broken.” Madison might not have been well. The month before, he and Mrs. Madison had moved into the Octagon House, a striking brick structure designed by William Thornton, but it was, unfortunately, dark and damp. Mrs. Madison believed that it was making the president ill.28

  Bad as he might have felt, the president beat back an attempt, mostly by northern congressmen, to move the capital to Philadelphia permanently. It would be cheaper than rebuilding, they claimed. It would be safer for the people of Washington, because the British were unlikely to return if the government moved. Southerners argued that it would “exhibit a panic” to flee now “from that enemy who has so precipitously fled from us.” In a Saturday session that Wirt attended (“I was crowded and suffocated for about three hours,” he reported), members rejected the Philadelphia option by 83 to 74.29

  Still, the president was worried. “New England sedition” weighed on him, Wirt wrote: “He introduced the subject and continued to press it, painful as it obviously was to him. I … diverted the conversation to another topic, but he took the first opportunity to return to it and convinced me that his heart and mind were painfully full of the subject.” Within the week a call would go out from the Massachusetts legislature for a convention of New England states, the purpose being “to lay the foundation for a radical reform in the national compact.” Connecticut and Rhode Island both agreed to attend. Counties in New Hampshire and Vermont chose delegates.30

  To Republicans, the convention, to be held in Hartford, looked like a step on the road to secession. Vice President Elbridge Gerry urged Madison to issue a “spirited manifesto.” Philadelphia publisher Mathew Carey castigated him for inaction. As “conspirators openly and fearlessly avowed their projects, … you regarded the whole with [a] calm and philosophical tranquility.”31

  Wilson Cary Nicholas, who was about to become governor of Virginia, wanted the president to send in troops. “I think it most likely there will be an explosion in the east,” Nicholas wrote. “I take the liberty to recommend to you to take such measures as will prevent the rebels (if there is to be a rebellion) from gaining the start of the movement.” In his response, the president sidestepped Nicholas’s recommendation, writing that the outcome of New England’s “profligate … experiment” remained to be seen, but “in the meantime the course to be taken by the government is full of delicacy and perplexity.” What Madison couldn’t tell Nicholas was that he was making plans to send two infantry divisions into Connecticut, ostensibly for recruiting purposes, but Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Jesup, commander of one of the divisions, would carry secret orders. His mission was to gather information, and should there be any threatening action, such as a British attack coinciding with the convention’s gathering, Jesup was to coordinate a military response.32

  As word began to come in from November congressional elections, it was clear that Federalist strength in New England was growing. When the results were final, New Englanders would have thirty-nine Federalists representing them and just two Republicans. On November 23, the cascade of bad news continued with the sudden death of Vice President Elbridge Gerry, whom Madison had known for nearly thirty years and genuinely liked. Federalists began plotting almost immediately to make Rufus King, a Federalist from New York, president pro tem of the Senate and thus next in line of succession, but the effort failed, which only made Federalists angrier. Newspaper publisher Alexander Hanson, a congressman from Maryland now, stood on the floor of the House to call the president the “cool, remorseless, perverse plotter of our afflictions and perils.” He declared that only if Madison stepped aside could the country truly be saved. As if to make the sentiment appear widespread, Hanson’s newspaper, the Federal Republican, reprinted an article from Virginia claiming that many of Madison’s friends were calling on him to retire less than halfway through his term. Some even wished “he was quietly asleep with the late vice president.”33

  • • •

  ON NOVEMBER 29, 1814, a congressional committee that had been investigating the burning of Washington issued a report that frustrated the president’s enemies as much as it probably relieved him. The committee found that “the plan of force” that Madison had laid out in the cabinet meeting of July 1, 1814, authorized means that “were ample and sufficient as to the extent of the force and seasonable as to the time when the measures were authorized”; however, the force was not collected, and the committee cited three “unfortunate circumstances” that had produced “a great and manifest failure.” The first was Maryland’s not fulfilling its militia call; the second was the delay in calling up Pennsylvania militia caused by Secretary Armstrong’s authorizing letter having taken three weeks to reach General Winder; and the third was the failure to provide arms to General Minor’s militia in a timely manner.34 Minor and his seven hundred men had, in fact, missed the main battle entirely.

  • • •

  DECEMBER WAS a month of waiting for news from the Gulf Coast, where thousands of British troops were gathering for an attack. Madison’s enemies increasingly tied his fate to that of Major General Andrew Jackson, on whose shoulders the defense of New Orleans rested. Should there be a loss, they were ready to declare that the president had failed to provide Jackson with the necessities of victory. Through late summer and early fall, however, Madison and Monroe had been ordering militia to New Orleans from surrounding states. They also sent Treasury notes valued at some $200,000.35

  As 1814 drew to an end, Congress had done nothing to shore up the nation’s finances. Not even a notice going out from the Treasury in November declaring that the United States could no longer pay the interest on its loans motivated members to seek tax revenue. Nor had they provided for filling up the ranks of the army and reforming the militia. “Alass, alass,” Dolley Madison wrote to her friend Hannah Gallatin, “we are not making ready as we ought to do. Congress trifle away the most precious of their days, days that ought to be devoted to the defense of their divided country.”36

  In early January the president learned the results of the Hartford Convention. There had been no insistence on immediate secession, as many had feared, but the demands that were made, as Patrick Henry might have said, “squinted” toward secession. The convention insisted that the U.S. government “consent to some arrangement whereby the [New England] states may separately or in concert be empowered to assume upon themselves the defense of their territory”—and allow the states to pay for this by withholding federal tax
money. If the U.S. government resisted this demand, as it surely would, then, said the report of the Hartford Convention, “it will … be expedient for the legislatures of the several states to appoint delegates to another convention to meet at Boston … with such powers and instructions as the exigency of a crisis so momentous may require.”37

  On January 14, Mrs. Madison wrote to Hannah Gallatin that “the fate of New Orleans” would be known at any minute. But one week passed, then another, and it was not until Saturday, February 4, that the glorious news of a great victory arrived. Jackson and his brave men had dealt the British heavy losses while incurring few of their own. That night the citizens of Washington lit candles in their windows to celebrate, and, one imagines, the illumination at the Octagon House was as bright as any.38

  On the following Monday, the National Intelligencer printed letters from Jackson to Monroe that provided details of the victory:

  Early on the morning of the 8th, the enemy, after throwing a heavy shower of bombs and Congreve rockets, advanced their columns… . I cannot speak sufficiently in praise of the firmness and deliberation with which my whole line received their approach—more could not have been expected from veterans inured to war. For an hour the fire of the small arms was as incessant and severe as can be imagined. The artillery, too, directed by officers who displayed equal skill and courage did great execution. Yet the columns of the enemy continued to advance.