James and Dolley Madison

by Bruce Chadwick

  Madison's shuffling of the cabinet pleased Congress. So did an extraordinarily tough annual message, delivered in the winter of 1812. Rush told Madison that he was no longer a peace president but a war president. He needed to send Congress a hard, strident message from a wartime chief that told each member, and the nation and the world, that the United States would never back down and would win its war. He told the president what was needed in the message was “a blast of war against England” and a message that would “thwack…these gentlemen patriots among us who are perpetually aiding and abetting the enemy.” Madison put together a furious message, one from the heart, one so full of Armageddon language, though, that it startled Rush. He helped Madison tone down the message, against the president's better instincts.7

  The message called for more recruitment, a larger navy, and higher pay for soldiers. It also included a note that the country could do this because a recent $6 million loan had balanced the budget, knowing full well, from Gallatin, that the coming year would probably show a substantial deficit, not a balance.

  The president solved the problem of getting men to volunteer for the general army or militia by increasing the pay of privates from $5 a month to $8 and added substantial bounty fees to make the army a satisfying occupation.

  The very first War Hawk Congress promptly approved President Madison's wide-ranging budget requests. Soldier pay was increased by 60 percent, “imprisonment for debt” army recruits released from confinement and signed up, recruiting budgets increased, and funds provided for a doubling of the size of the navy, something that had never been done before in American history. Later, Congress gave Madison the power to appoint officers for twenty new regiments, created twelve new generalships, and gave the president the right to name them (some of his choices were poor, but others, such as Zebulon Pike, Lewis Cass, George Izard and Duncan MacArthur, were quite good), and completely overhauled the quartermaster corps.

  Back in Washington, Madison took it upon himself to make regular calls on the different men who worked in the War Department, just to show his interest. He listened to their complaints that they were overworked and needed help and asked Congress for two more assistant secretaries of war to handle the work (he was at first turned down).

  Then the United States received a totally unexpected victory in the war. The frigate Constitution had defeated the much larger and faster British warship Guerriere, burned it, and sunk it to the bottom of the Atlantic. The Americans had ravaged one of the star warships of the huge British Navy and its nearly one thousand ships and made it look easy. Militarily, it was a small victory, just one single ship, but from a public-relations standpoint, it was a mammoth accomplishment. The triumph was reported enthusiastically in most of America's newspapers and started a firestorm of pride in the people. It was one of several public-relations victories in the war that, in the end, meant more than military success itself.

  There was other joy in the White House, too; Payne Todd moved back in. The gadfly, the irresponsible son, still spending far more money than he had and traveling the world as if he was a roving ambassador of goodwill, returned to his family in the spring of 1812, just as the war was starting, and remained for six months. Dolley was thrilled. She was glad to have him home where she could keep an eye on him and where, she thought, he would be so pleased with the White House social world that he would stay. She suggested that he help her work as the president's private secretary and he agreed. She invited him to all the parties and he went. She introduced him to all of her friends and many young, unattached women and he was pleasant to them all. She crossed her fingers and hoped that he would marry one of them and she would help him settle down. She felt a new chapter in his life, in her life, had started.

  There was joy of another kind too. By the end of 1812, Napoleon had become so involved in his lengthy campaign to invade and defeat Russia that he had practically forgotten about the United States. French searching of ships and seizing of seamen had dropped off considerably over the last year; the French minister was quiet; and the president was relieved. He knew that he could not fight two wars at once.

  And there was help from the private sector. The old Congress was getting ready to go home and the new Congress would not be sworn in until March 1813. Madison had told Congress he had enough money to fight the war, but he did not. He was $16 million short. Antiwar New England bankers ridiculed his early efforts to borrow money from them, but three other bankers, people who believed in Madison and some who owed him favors, stepped in to help. The irony was that the three bankers were not patriotic, homegrown Americans whose families went back to the seventeenth century but three foreign-born bankers who had made America their new home—David Parish and John Jacob Astor, from Germany, and Stephen Girard, from France. Astor was happy to help the president because, with Dolley's intervention, Madison had permitted Astor's ships access and egress from any American port they visited, saving Astor an enormous amount of money. Now he had repaid the favor. The men knew the American government was in serious financial trouble and had nowhere else to turn, but they did not raise their interest rates to make an easy profit. They kept them about the same and a relieved government borrowed $16 million. Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin knew where to spend every penny of the loan, too, and assured Madison that they could now pay their military bills through the end of 1813.8

  And, too, in that winter, there was an offer from the czar in Russia to negotiate an end to the war. His forces had just beaten back Napoleon, which enhanced his stature in world politics, and he thought that having a role in an end to the conflict between Great Britain and America would make him a world leader. Madison sent John Quincy Adams, already in Russia, Senator William Crawford, and Gallatin to Moscow. His selection of Gallatin surprised all. Gallatin insisted on the position. He was tired of political opposition to him, was fed up with press criticism, and yearned for another post. Now, he thought, he might help win the war. Madison wished him well but knew he would miss him. One thing Gallatin did, though, was to leave a treasury with lots of money, skilled middle-level administrators, efficient and easy-to-follow books, and a department on very good relations with the military. Gallatin also agreed to take Madison's stepson, Payne, with him to give the boy a chance to travel and broaden his horizons. Dolley was happy at this chance for her son. Britain refused to attend any talks in Russia, so the peace conference was moved to Belgium.9

  Madison, ever the loyal friend and political ally, kept Thomas Jefferson appraised of his actions throughout the War of 1812. For example, after he shook up his cabinet by firing William Eustis as secretary of war and Paul Hamilton as secretary of the navy, he wrote the third president that “I have not time to explain the late changes in the Executive Department, if I were disposed to trouble you with them.” Jefferson just wrote back that “I think you could not have made better appointments.”10

  Madison was always thankful for Jefferson's ideas and suggestions, but he knew, too, that his predecessor had never been the commander in chief in wartime, had limited military command in the Barbary War, three thousand miles away, and had a detestable love of out-of-date ideas. One of the biggest was war by gunboat. Jefferson had authorized the building of gunboats during his presidency. He loved them. He wrote Madison that the answer to all his problems with the British Navy was the gunboat. The trusty gunboat, small but deadly, could slip in and out of inlets and coves on the East Coast and sink enemy shipping. No one in the navy agreed with him. Madison wrote him back and gently told him that it was a wonderful idea, but the navy said it would be difficult to put the gunboat into the war just now.

  The one comfort of the letters from Jefferson was his unshakable faith in Madison. Jefferson told his successor again and again that he had to dismiss losses, military disasters, and press criticism; stick to his plans; and forge on. In the end, he would win. Jefferson wrote him in the winter of 1813, “the public mind [is] not discouraged, and it does not associate its government with these
unfortunate agents [Generals]. These experiments will at least have the good effect of bringing forward those whom nature has qualified for military trust; and whenever we have good commanders, we shall have good soldiers and good successes. God bless you and give you that success which wisdom and integrity ought to ensure to you.”11

  The Madison White House was overcrowded throughout the war, and that was fine with the president. He loved having relatives from his family and his wife's clan living around him. It not only gave him a full social life that he never had in all of his long years of living alone as a bachelor but also helped to relieve the stress of the presidency and the war. He could not walk down a hallway without bumping into a houseguest or relative. It was a much different home than when Jefferson lived in it, often with just himself and an aide as the sole tenants. Madison's relatives on both sides often sought help from the president, from short-term to long-term loans, jobs, introductions, and connections. He never turned them down. He saw it as his responsibility as a member of two families and as a way in which he could help people and spread some joy within the family. Sometimes this turned out to be a good idea, and sometimes it did not. Throughout his second term, Madison came under considerable criticism for nepotism, with critics charging that one had to be related to the president to get a federal job. The first guests to move in after the war started were, naturally, Dolley's sister Anna and her husband, Richard Cutts. Anna was and always would be Dolley's closest relation. Cutts was well liked by the president. In 1812, the Massachusetts congressman was defeated for re-election in an area of the country where most Republicans lost in the antiwar vote tide. Cutts was finishing out his term in the White House. In order to keep him there, Madison appointed him as superintendent of military supplies. Eight Madison relatives would work for the federal government throughout the war. The Cutts family, with four children, lived in the White House for nearly two years. They became as visible as the First Family itself.

  Joining the Cutts family was young Edward Coles Dolley's cousin and the president's personal secretary since 1810. The well-educated Coles (College of William and Mary) was from a wealthy Virginia family from a large plantation near Monticello. He was a good letter writer and an efficient administrator. He worked for the president and, whenever Madison was out of town or ill, he worked with Dolley to help run the White House. He was a permanent fixture on the White House and Washington social scene, even though he annoyed many capital residents with his strong antislavery views. He frequently badgered the president about slavery too, and repeatedly asked him to free his nearly one hundred slaves at Montpelier. Coles socialized frequently with Payne Todd, who was twenty-one years old when the war started and was back at the White House for six months.

  Coles and Payne were joined as residents of the White House by another young man, nineteen-year-old Robert Madison, the president's nephew. He had been sent to the White House to prepare for college under the wisdom and tutelage of the president. Madison provided instruction for him under a local Episcopal minister, the Reverend James Laurie, and then sent him off to Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1813. Young Robert sent dozens of letters to Madison while he was at Dickinson, complaining about just about everything. A year later, he quit school and joined a local militia company that fought the British after they invaded the area.

  Finally, there were two vivacious young women from Richmond, Dolley's cousin Betsy Coles and her friend Maria Mayo. Dolley thought the two helped to enliven the social scene at the White House. Residence there also gave both a break from their much quieter existence in Richmond. The pair was quite popular in Washington.

  As the war droned on, New Englanders continued to balk, relations with foreign powers tottered, press criticism increased, and congressional displeasure grew. President Madison would need the support of every single person in the White House, and elsewhere, and need it soon.

  The war began badly and became worse.

  General William Hull was in charge of United States troops in the Midwest and planned an invasion of Canada to begin the war. Madison had met Hull several months earlier when he arrived in Washington with Dearborn. Hull had not impressed him. In the summer, Madison ordered Hull to move into Canada opposite Detroit, defeat the British at Fort Malden, defeat any hostile Native American tribes, and then get ready to march through the country.

  The invasion was a debacle. Hull waited two weeks to attack Fort Malden and then became fearful that he himself would be attacked by Native Americans after the fall of an American fort at Mackinac, in the upper part of Michigan. He did not attack Malden, then he turned around and marched back to the American fort at Detroit. He was surrounded there by an army led by British general Isaac Brock, who demanded that he surrender. Hull, to the surprise of all, did. Brock made prisoners of his two thousand men. Madison had not only lost the first battle of Canada but lost his entire army, too. Worse news followed. Brock marched his army, with his prisoners, to Niagara, where he set up camp and taunted the Americans nearby that he had taken their entire army at Detroit.

  Hull was roundly criticized in Washington. Mrs. Madison asked a friend, “do you not tremble with resentment at this treacherous act?” Richard Rush called him “a gasconading booby” and “horrid coward.” Rush, incredibly skilled at reading political barometers, reminded Madison that Hull's debacle was not just a military loss but a public-relations setback as well. He said that Americans were now “exposed to the sneers of Federalists, the exultations of Tories, the contempt, the deserved contempt, of the British here and in Europe, of the very Indians! It is sorrow indeed.”12

  Madison was now intent on storming into Canada. He dismissed Hull's failure and sent another army, with eight thousand men, to Detroit to prepare for a second assault.

  At the same time that Hull failed in his efforts to invade Canada, General Dearborn, senior leader of all American forces, arrived at Albany, New York, to discover he only had 1,200 men, most of them untrained militia. He was not about to attack Ontario, Canada, across from Niagara, with such a small force. He had also made no arrangements with Hull or anybody else for a coordinated attack on Canada in a move to split in half British defensive forces there. He even wrote Madison to ask whether he or Hull was in charge of the army.

  The fearful Dearborn sat in Albany when he received a note from the British offering an armistice. Dearborn was now relieved and, without consulting the president, agreed. Madison ignored the armistice and ordered Dearborn to attack Canada three months late.

  In addition to the defeats and reluctance to attack, the Americans failed to rally any Canadian citizens to their cause. They fumed, too, that many Canadians even acted as spies for the British. Albert Gallatin said of Canada that “the series of misfortunes exceeds anticipations made even by those who had least confidence in our inexperienced officers and undisciplined men.”13

  Madison swiftly changed his overall strategy. Britain now controlled Canada and the Great Lakes, especially Erie and Ontario, with its navy. The president decided to dramatically build up the American navy in order to defeat the British on the Great Lakes. Control of the Great Lakes would enable the Americans to attack Canada again, unimpeded by warships and the troops they carried. He told his cabinet that a larger navy should have been built in 1783, when the revolution ended, or in 1789, when the new government took over. He appointed tall, lean Commodore Isaac Chauncey naval commander of the Great Lakes and ordered the building of new ships. He was so angry at the meeting, Richard Rush said, that he told the cabinet that if the British had thirty ships, the Americans had to build forty. Former president John Adams, often his critic, slowly turning, as were others, to Madison's side, praised him.14

  There were many differences between the War of 1812 and the last American conflict against the British in the revolution. First, in the revolution the Americans had a superb commander in chief in George Washington, who had significant military previous experience in the French and Indian War. Madison h
ad no military experience. Second, Washington lived with his army and made his decisions in camp; Madison lived a thousand miles away from his army and made decisions in the White House. Third, Washington developed a system of spies that let him know what the British troops, and his own, were doing within twenty-four hours. Madison worked with a pathetic communications system in which news took days to travel; his spies learned little. Fourth, after his 1776 crossing of the Delaware, Washington had the support of almost all Americans and the press in the war; Madison did not. Fifth, Washington had the complete support of the Continental Congress, but Madison had both the Federalists and many of his own Republicans against him.

  The president always had to worry about political opposition to the war, especially in New England. “The Federalists in Congress are to put all the strength of their talents into a protest against the war and that the party at large are to be brought out in all their force,” Madison wrote Jefferson. Richard Rush added more bluntly that “Massachusetts and half New England I fear is rotten.”15