James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

by Lynne Cheney

  Twice the British were repulsed, Jackson reported, “and twice they formed again and renewed the assault. At length, however, cut to pieces, they fled in confusion from the field, leaving it covered with their dead.” Jackson estimated that some twenty-six hundred British troops had been killed, wounded, or captured. On the American side seven were killed and six wounded.39

  On February 13, 1815, delegates from the Hartford Convention arrived in the capital to ensure that their dissatisfactions were known, but Jackson’s victory overshadowed them, particularly since news of it was followed by word that a peace treaty had been signed in Ghent—two weeks before the Battle of New Orleans. On February 14, Secretary Monroe appeared at the Octagon House with an official copy, and on February 15, 1815, it was laid before the Senate. “Americans, Rejoice!” proclaimed the National Intelligencer. “Republicans, rejoice!” “Federalists, rejoice!” But it was hard for the Hartford delegates to feel much joy. They were condemned to wandering the celebrations of Washington largely unnoticed—which was not how they had thought things would be. They had expected the president to invite them to dine, and when they had to settle for attending a reception, they were mightily miffed. “What a mean and contemptible little blackguard,” Harrison Gray Otis, the delegation leader, said of the president.40

  The peace treaty was an agreement to restore matters to the state they had been in before the war, which for critics then and since has been the main point: the War of 1812 accomplished nothing. The Treaty of Ghent, the argument goes, failed to address the main reasons that Madison had cited for going to war, namely, impressment and onerous Orders in Council, thus rendering the struggle futile. But the world had changed since Madison had invited Congress to declare war. Napoleon was on Elba. Britain was no longer at war with France, which meant it was no longer desperate to impress men into the Royal Navy and seize American ships. In these changed circumstances, the importance of assurances about these matters had lessened considerably.

  The War of 1812 had a most significant impact on the course of American expansion. The defeat of Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames led to consolidated American control over the Northwest Territory, thus encouraging further settlement there. Treaties following the victory of Andrew Jackson over the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend would open up large swaths of the South. But good fortune for those eager to settle new lands was a tragedy for Indians, who from time untold had lived on those lands. At the end of 1818, John C. Calhoun, who had become secretary of war, reported to Congress that tribes east of the Mississippi “have in a great measure ceased to be an object of terror and have become that of commiseration.”41

  In waging the War of 1812, Americans had almost immediately shown that despite the small size of their navy, they had the potential to be a great sea power. And though it took some time, the United States ultimately demonstrated the strength it could field in a land force. In late 1814, a British writer offered this perspective in the prestigious Edinburgh Review:

  We have been worsted in most of our naval encounters and baffled in most of our enterprises by land. With a naval force on their coast exceeding that of the enemy in the proportion of ten to one we have lost two out of three of all the sea fights in which we have been engaged and at least three times as many men as our opponent while their privateers swarm unchecked round all our settlements and even on the coast of Europe and have already made prize of more than seventeen hundred of our merchant vessels.

  The writer went on to note that British land forces, even when reinforced as they had been after Napoleon’s defeat, “gained no substantial or permanent advantages.” Meanwhile, the Americans were “increasing every hour in skill, confidence, and numbers.” Witness the result: “A long campaign has just been closed with a series of disasters.”42

  The writer of the Edinburgh Review article admitted that his view was unpopular, but it was not so dissimilar from the one offered to the British government by the Duke of Wellington. He had advised that given the state of the war in November 1814, British negotiators had no right “to demand any concession of territory from America.” He noted that the British had been unable to carry the war “into the enemy’s territory” and had not cleared their “territory on the point of attack.” Wellington’s opinion was of great influence in persuading the British ministry to back off the stringent demands it had been making and settle for the American offer of returning to the status quo ante.43 The Battle of New Orleans had not yet occurred when the Edinburgh reviewer and the Duke of Wellington wrote. Had they known of it, Jackson’s success would have underscored their opinions that the Americans had learned to fight quite well.

  In the middle of the conflict with Great Britain, John Adams had declared that “a more necessary war was never undertaken,” explaining that “it is necessary against England, necessary to convince France that we are something, and above all necessary to convince ourselves that we are not nothing.”44 Particularly after the dramatic Battle of New Orleans, Americans knew they were something.

  • • •

  THE SENATE RATIFIED the Treaty of Ghent, and on February 18, 1815, Madison laid it before Congress, noting that “peace, at all times a blessing,” was particularly gratifying “when the nation can review its conduct without regret and without reproach.” He closed his message by urging that members of the House and Senate “never cease to inculcate obedience to the laws and fidelity to the Union,” which might have been a mild reproach to those who had encouraged talk of secession, but most Federalists were so bitter that they probably did not care.45 Their party, tainted in the public mind for the ways in which some members of it had opposed the war, was about to go into the dustbin of history.

  During the celebrations, Senator William Barry of Kentucky observed that the president was “much elated.” Wrote Barry, “The glad tidings of peace procured by the glory of the American arms under his management has inspired him with new life and vigor.” Dolley was radiant with joy, but on the third week of happy crowds flocking to the Octagon, even she became exhausted. “In truth, ever since the peace my brain has been turned with noise and bustle,” she wrote to Hannah Gallatin. “Such overflowing rooms I never saw.”46 After arranging to move their Washington residence to a much sunnier place, Seven Buildings, the Madisons left for Montpelier, where they would stay for eleven weeks.

  At the end of April, the president traveled from Montpelier to Monticello, where he found his friend Jefferson engaged in a task at once celebratory and sad: arranging and numbering some sixty-five hundred books from his library for transport to Washington. Needing money, Jefferson had sold his collection—the most extensive in the United States—to Congress to replace the library that the British had burned. The packing up was a sign of the nation moving forward, but the former president would miss his books and start ordering new ones almost before these were out the gate. “I cannot live without books,” he wrote to John Adams.47

  • • •

  BACK HOME at Montpelier, President Madison received stunning news. Napoleon had escaped from Elba and returned to France, and the French army was rallying to him—which could mean another war between the British and the French. Should the American army continue its return to peacetime strength? Should the mission to the Mediterranean to deal with the dey of Algiers, who was holding American prisoners, be allowed to sail? The president decided both matters in the affirmative, and some three months later his judgment about the army was proved correct. Instead of a prolonged European conflict that might once more require the United States to defend its rights, there was a stunning—and final—defeat for Napoleon at Waterloo.

  Payne Todd returned home in September, handsome as ever and a joy to his mother. He had acquired excellent French during his European sojourn, appeared knowledgeable on many topics in conversation, and seemed to have good judgment. “To these advantages,” a French visitor, the baron de Montlezun, noted, “he joins those of a fine physique, distinguished manners, and urbanity. It is easy to se
e that he has frequented the good society of our European capitals.” But there were reasons to worry. While in Europe, he had dropped out of Gallatin’s party, apparently preferring Paris to Ghent, and hadn’t bothered to tell his family what he was doing. And he had missed the ship on which he was originally to sail back to the United States, though somehow his baggage and paintings that he had bought for Montpelier had managed to make it on board. Behind his fine appearance and social graces, Payne Todd was fast becoming a ne’er-do-well who would eventually break his mother’s heart.48

  • • •

  IN MADISON’S MESSAGE to the Fourteenth Congress, which convened in December 1815, he was able to announce a new victory: within weeks of Commodore Stephen Decatur’s squadron appearing in the Mediterranean, the dey of Algiers had signed a treaty favorable to the United States. Madison also announced “the revival of the public credit” and tactfully urged Congress to take up consideration of a national bank. Having argued strenuously in 1791 that Congress did not have constitutional authority to charter a bank, Madison would, not surprisingly, find himself charged with inconsistency. He defended himself by citing “legislative precedents.” Paying due heed to what legislative bodies had previously sanctioned was a way of protecting “the established course of practice in the business of the community.” But having gone through such crises as the government default of November 1814, he had surely also concluded that a national bank was necessary.49

  In April 1816, Madison not only signed legislation creating the Second Bank of the United States; he also signed a bill creating an army general staff and expanding the navy. John Randolph of Roanoke, who was back in Congress again, declared that the president “out-Hamiltons Alexander Hamilton,” and as in many things Randolph said, there was a measure of truth.50 Over the course of a long public life, Madison had learned to learn. Although he had long regarded an army, in particular, as dangerous in a republic, he now realized that military strength was essential to the nation’s security. When experience proved that his opponents’ ideas had merit, he incorporated them into his own thinking—though like any good politician he didn’t go out of his way to advertise that he was doing so.

  After the congressional caucus nominated James Monroe for president in 1816, Mr. and Mrs. Madison took a long break from the nation’s capital. The Fourth of July 1816 brought cool and pleasant weather to Montpelier, making it the perfect day for a large gathering. “We had ninety persons to dine with us at one table, [which was] fixed on the lawn under a thick arbor,” Dolley wrote to her sister. When Richard Rush heard of the event, he cited it as an example of Madison’s “profuse hospitality,” noting that “not a week, scarcely a day, passes that he is not doing hospitality in a large way.” Rush had himself been a guest at Montpelier, and he noted that Madison appeared at “eminent advantage” in his Piedmont home: “He was never developed to me under so many interesting lights as during the very delightful week I spent under his roof. Perhaps I should add that French cookery and Madeira that he purchased in Philadelphia in ’96 made a part of every day’s fare!”51

  The baron de Montlezun, the visitor who had been so impressed with Payne Todd, repaid the Madisons’ hospitality at Montpelier with an idyllic portrait of their lives at that moment, when summer was coming to an end. Mrs. Madison was gracious in her bearing and gentle in her speech, and the president, according to the baron, was “hale and vigorous,” enjoying “perfect health.” Their house was unpretentious, as was the created landscape, with a green meadow interrupted by groves of trees here and there, leading the eye to the mountains, which “stood out boldly in a very blue tint against a pure sky.” Montlezun, who had several opportunities to converse with the president, wrote, “Mr. Madison has a quick and accurate mind, profound wisdom, and an excellent tone in discussion, never sharp (he is not a young man), appearing to impute more ability and education to the one with whom he is talking than to himself.” Like visitors before him, Montlezun noted the president’s reserve on first meeting and his pleasure at being among friends: “When he goes among company, his brow loses its furrows and his face becomes expansive. He enjoys a witticism, he talks brightly—with a simplicity which does him honor and which is all the more noticeable on account of the high position in which his talents have placed him. No one could be more courteous or have more attention and respect than he has for those whom he has received beneath his hospitable roof.” During these golden days, the president was still working hard. Montlezun reported that “he reads and writes nearly all day and often a part of the night.”52

  As happens to those at the end of distinguished careers, Madison found that people wanted to know the details of his life. One was a Philadelphia publisher named Joseph Delaplaine, who wrote to him repeatedly for a biographical sketch—“birth, parentage, education, offices, profession … and other things.” Madison dutifully set out the details and also wrote about his health, describing his “constitutional liability to sudden attacks, somewhat resembling epilepsy, and suspending the intellectual functions.” Lest anyone think they had been simply an affliction of his youth, he specified, “These continued thro’ his life, with prolonged intervals.”53

  Perhaps he thought his frankness would help others. He had long ago read that “great men are like looking glasses” in providing models that people look to. Those who suffered with epilepsy might take comfort in his experience—as he had long ago found comfort in knowing that John Locke had endured repeated illnesses. But in the end Madison excised the reference to his sudden attacks. In his youth he had also written, “Secrets that are discovered make a noise, but these that are kept are silent.”54 The public furor that writing about his sudden attacks would have caused was likely more than he wanted to deal with.

  President and Mrs. Madison returned to Washington for the last time in October, and they basked in acclaim. The United States felt very good about itself, and its citizens celebrated the man who had led them through perilous times to peace and prosperity and the woman who had already created a legend all her own.

  Despite the adulation, the president was modest when he spoke to Congress for the last time in December. He spoke of his pride “that the American people have reached in safety and success their fortieth year as an independent nation” and “that for nearly an entire generation they have had experience of their present Constitution.” He did not mention his role in creating that Constitution, instead attributing it to the citizens of the United States. It was, he said, “the offspring of their undisturbed deliberations and of their free choice.”55

  Monroe had been elected to be the fifth president, and the attention of the country began to turn to him. But the day before he was to put his hand on the Bible to take the oath of office, the fourth president stepped back onstage. He had encouraged Congress to consider internal improvements, urging members to consider “the prescribed mode of enlarging” their powers “in order to effectuate a comprehensive system of roads and canals.” The members of Congress had, however, passed a bill without heeding his words about amending the Constitution so they had the authority to do so. Thus, on his last full day in office, James Madison vetoed the improvements bill, arguing as he had since the days of The Federalist that the general government did not have general powers. It had specified powers, and recognizing its limits was essential to “the permanent success of the Constitution.” It was a statesmanlike way of saying what he had once opined to Harry Lee, that if the limits the Constitution imposed on government were unrecognized, “the parchment had better be thrown into the fire at once.”56

  A few days after Monroe was sworn in, the mayor of Washington, Dr. James Blake, paid tribute to Madison for respecting liberty during war as well as peace:

  Power and national glory, sir, have often before been acquired by the sword; but rarely without the sacrifice of civil or political liberty… . When we reflect that this sword was drawn under your guidance, we cannot resist offering you our own as well as a nation’s thanks for t
he vigilance with which you have restrained it within its proper limits, the energy with which you have directed it to its proper objects, and the safety with which you have wielded an armed force … without infringing a political, civil, or religious right.

  Mayor Blake had not always been a favorite among Washingtonians. William Thornton’s wife, Anna, claimed he had run away “in the hour of danger.”57 But he might well have improved his reputation with this nearly perfect acknowledgment of one of Madison’s key achievements: he had proved that a republic could defend itself and remain a republic still.

  When everything had been packed and sent to Montpelier, the Madisons set out themselves, boarding a steamboat for the first leg of their journey. Thirty years earlier a boat driven by steam had been tested in the Delaware River during the Constitutional Convention. Now it was revolutionizing transportation, carrying the Madisons south on the Potomac to Aquia Creek, where a carriage awaited that would take them the rest of the way. A passenger on the steamboat described the president as completely relieved of his cares: he “talked and jested with everybody on board, and reminded me of a schoolboy on a long vacation.”58

  Chapter 18

  THE SAGE OF MONTPELIER

  DURING HIS PUBLIC CAREER, Madison had watched the nation he helped found double in size and grow from thirteen states on or near the Eastern Seaboard to a continental power. There had been a change in the character of the United States as well, which a group called Republican Citizens of Baltimore attributed to the War of 1812: “That struggle has revived with added luster the renown which brightened the morning of our independence; it has called forth and organized the dormant resources of the empire; it has tried and vindicated our republican institutions; it has given us that moral strength which consists in the well-earned respect of the world and in a just respect for ourselves. It has raised up and consolidated a national character, dear to the hearts of the people, as an object of honest pride and a pledge of future union, tranquility, and greatness.”1 Madison had a legacy to be proud of, and he left it secure in the hands of a Republican president and Congress. Indeed, across the nation, the Republican Party that he had helped found was almost entirely dominant.