The Great Divide

by Thomas Fleming

  Early in March, Madison left New York and made Mount Vernon his first stop in Virginia. He and Washington spent a full day (March 19, 1788) discussing the political situation in their home state. They apparently agreed that the Massachusetts strategy of tolerating future amendments might work well in Virginia.

  At home in Montpelier, Madison learned that in Maryland and South Carolina, anti-federalists had come up with a new strategy. They planned to persuade their ratifying conventions to adjourn without a vote. Madison rushed a letter to one of Maryland’s leaders, warning him that such a move could have fatal consequences. He did not know the man’s address, and he sent the letter to Washington, leaving it open, inviting him to read it before forwarding it. The general sent it along with a letter of his own, warning that the idea was “tantamount to rejection of the Constitution.” At the convention, the Marylander circulated Washington’s letter, and ratification won by a comfortable majority.

  The Virginia convention was a challenge that could not be solved so easily. George Washington had made a point of sending Patrick Henry a copy of the Constitution as soon as he returned to Mount Vernon. Washington said he wished it “had been made more perfect,” but “sincerely believed” it was the best agreement that could be obtained at this time. Perhaps the chief reason to accept it, he added, was his sense that “the political concerns of this country are, in a manner, suspended by a thread.”

  These sincere and serious words had made no impression on the headstrong orator. He became even more determined to destroy a document that he considered a threat to Virginia’s welfare—and his power in the nation’s largest state. It was no accident that Henry and George Clinton of New York had similar attitudes. New York was not yet a large state from a population point of view, but its empty northern acres left no doubt that it would eventually join this exclusive club.15

  By this time, Madison realized he and Washington had another opponent in this looming clash: Thomas Jefferson. The ex-governor’s friendly tone in his letter to his former councillor was very different from the note of anger and even contempt that he struck in letters to other men. He told one correspondent that he doubted if Madison could “bear the weight” of contending with Patrick Henry and his eloquent allies in the Virginia ratifying convention. He informed Alexander Donald, a tobacco broker and old friend, that he wished “with all my soul” nine states would endorse the Constitution and the remaining four would reject it until it had a bill of rights.

  Such a tactic would have led inevitably to a call for a second convention. Madison—and Washington—knew this was tantamount to a death sentence for the government they had worked so hard and long to create. The anti-federalists would go all out to pack this second convention with their adherents.

  Jefferson had written equally critical letters to friends in Maryland as their convention approached, knowing his name had influence there. A federalist delegate saw one of these letters and wrote to Madison, asking: “Can this possibly be Jefferson?” But Washington’s name had trumped the man from Monticello there. The Maryland ratification vote had been an anti-federalist rout.16

  The Virginia convention was a terrific ordeal for Madison. The conclave lasted twenty-three long, hot June days and Patrick Henry orated almost continuously. Several of his speeches lasted an entire day. His assault was as shrewd as it was savage. His goal was to arouse fear of the Constitution in every listener. He portrayed it as a conspiracy of the rich against the poor. He warned people who owed money to British merchants that federal marshals would drag them before federal judges and bankrupt them. He told slaveholders the new federal government would have the power to free their slaves by taxing them out of existence. Above all, the new government would eventually destroy everyone’s liberty. Henry dwelt on this threat so graphically, one listener later recalled feeling his wrists to make sure fetters were not already pressing his flesh.17

  George Mason seconded Henry’s arguments with his own less eloquent brand of righteousness. He could testify that he had sat in the Philadelphia convention and listened to the arguments, and came away unconvinced. He joined Henry in preaching fear and suspicion of the North because of their hostility to slavery. He agreed with Henry that it was folly to entrust Virginia’s safety and prosperity to such self-righteous neighbors.

  Madison tried to deploy a strategy of his own. He called on the delegates to debate the Constitution clause by clause. No one could match the arguments he planned to muster with this approach. But Henry and Mason paid no attention to this proposal. Day after day, they assaulted the document from all points of the rhetorical compass, forcing Madison to deal with their slanders and exaggeration. The strain brought on an attack of “bilious fever”—an ailment that had troubled Madison since his college days, when he had often studied to the limits of his physical strength. He missed three days of debate, and when he returned, his voice was so weak, oratory was out of the question.

  The gap was temporarily filled by Virginia’s current governor, Edmund Randolph, probably the only speaker in the chamber who could match Henry’s bravura style. Although Randolph had refused to sign the constitution in Philadelphia, he now declared himself in favor of full ratification with no demands for amendments or a second convention. Without Virginia, there would be no union. Raising his right arm, Randolph said he would “assent to lopping off this limb before I assent to the dissolution of the union.” Henry, the self-styled people’s spokesman, had no ready reply to these vivid words.

  Randolph also performed another crucial service. As governor, he had received a letter from George Clinton, proposing that Virginia form an alliance with New York to force a second convention. Instead of reporting it to the ratifying convention, Randolph sent this explosive missive to the Virginia legislature, where it lay untouched and unread, while all its members were absent, listening to the arguments at the ratifying convention.

  Madison soon told Washington the good news about Randolph. He kept his silent partner in touch with the drama in terse letters every three or four days, even when his illness left him “extremely feeble.” Washington’s hopes and fears rose and fell with every message. The thought that his home state might sabotage the Constitution was almost enough to give him an attack of bilious fever. But his nerves had been conditioned to deal with suspense by eight years of wartime uncertainty.18

  In the last week of the convention, Madison regained his strength and style. Speaking from a bevy of notes he held in his hat, he answered Henry’s attacks with steady, irrefutable facts. Another tactic did even more damage to Henry’s case. Madison reminded the convention that General Washington had severely criticized the Articles of Confederation in the circular letter he had sent to the governors of the states shortly before he resigned his commission in 1783.

  Henry had an answer that momentarily flustered Madison. The orator wondered why Madison was disagreeing with his good friend, Thomas Jefferson, who had advised numerous men, including Henry, to “reject this government till it be amended” at a second convention. Madison regained his equilibrium and met Henry with a semi-denial that had some—but not much—basis in fact. He declared Mr. Jefferson’s generally positive view of the Constitution was being misrepresented by these words.

  Finally came Madison’s climactic appeal to the relative handful of delegates who were still making up their minds. He urged them to help the United States excite the astonishment and admiration of the world by “peacefully, freely and satisfactorily” establishing a government capable of ruling a large and complex continental nation. Was there a better way to fulfill the promise of the American Revolution?19

  Henry replied in his florid style, and he was joined by younger anti-federalists, notably Jefferson’s new disciple, James Monroe. Future Supreme Court Justice John Marshall and several other speakers answered them. When Henry launched into a disquisition about slavery, George Wythe, the distinguished professor of law at the College of William and Mary, and one of Thomas Jefferson’s early me
ntors, interrupted him and proposed a vote.

  First came a tally on Henry’s call for amendments. Back and forth the counties seesawed, with the anti-federalists seeming to pull ahead when nine out of twelve votes went their way. But the Tidewater region (which included Washington’s Fairfax County) ended the suspense with six straight votes for ratification. The final total was 89-79. A shift of six votes would have condemned the Constitution to oblivion.

  Madison’s first thought as he contemplated this hard-won victory was George Washington. He joined other federalists in rushing the news to Mount Vernon. Meanwhile, a disappointed James Monroe was telling his mentor, Thomas Jefferson: “Be assured his [Washington’s] influence carried this government.”20

  As word of the ratification spread along the Potomac, dozens of Washington’s neighbors piled into boats and swarmed to Mount Vernon to congratulate him. They invited him to a celebration the next day at nearby Alexandria. A delighted Washington was soon telling Madison and other veterans of the struggle in Philadelphia how much pleasure it gave him to be a member of the first “public company” to drink a toast to the new federal government.

  On June 3, Madison stopped at Mount Vernon on his way to New York to resume his seat in Congress. Washington saw at a glance how exhausted he was. For the first and only time, he showed his paternal feelings for this gifted young man. He urged Madison to “take a little respite from business” and relax at Mount Vernon for a few days. He advised a routine of “moderate exercise” and books only occasionally—books he should read for pleasure, “with the mind unbent.” Madison must have been touched by this concern. He spent the next four days at Mount Vernon.

  A similar drama was on stage in Poughkeepsie, New York, where that state’s delegates had convened with the prospects for ratification looking dire. Anti-federalists outnumbered the federalists 46-19, and the antis gleefully flourished Governor Clinton’s letter to Governor Randolph, confident that it would produce an alliance that would demand a second convention and doom the Constitution. Day after day, with Alexander Hamilton as the eloquent floor leader, the federalists argued for the Philadelphia document, clause by clause—and got nowhere. “Our arguments confound but do not convince,” a discouraged Hamilton said.

  On July 2, the Clintonites were flabbergasted to learn that Virginia had ratified without so much as a mention of a second convention. Frantically scrambling for a new tactic, Clinton turned to the by now tired demand for a bill of rights. Hamilton asked, Why this sudden passion? The New York State Constitution did not have one, and Governor Clinton never stopped praising it. The rattled antis began splitting into moderate and intransigent factions.

  Armed with the arguments from The Federalist, Hamilton began annihilating anti-speaker after anti-speaker. For a clincher, he issued a threat that pushed the Clintonites to the edge of panic. If the convention failed to ratify, New York City would secede and form a separate state, and ratify the compact without them. The city had sent an overwhelmingly federalist delegation to Poughkeepsie. “Where will the Empire State be without its crown jewel?” Hamilton mockingly asked.

  Desperate now, the Clintonites proposed that New York’s ratification should be “conditional.” They would reserve the right to secede from the union unless all the amendments they proposed were added to the Constitution. The governor and his friends had concocted no less than fifty-five of these changes and additions. Hamilton had anticipated this maneuver, and he had ready a letter from James Madison, who had returned to New York and resumed his seat in the soon-to-expire Congress.

  Madison’s letter, which Hamilton proceeded to read aloud, could not have been more explicit: the Constitution “requires an adoption in toto and for ever … any condition whatever must vitiate ratification.” New York’s anti-federalists collapsed. Seven Clintonites abstained and the moderates joined the Hamiltonians to ratify 30-27. Seldom has a legislative body changed its collective mind so completely in less than a month. Madison promptly rushed the good news to Mount Vernon.

  It was now only a matter of time before two holdout states, Rhode Island and North Carolina, would have second thoughts and join the union. At Mount Vernon, the prospect of a united nation prompted more thoughts about the narrow margin between victory and defeat. “We may, with a kind of grateful and pious exultation, trace the finger of Providence through these dark and misterious events,” Washington wrote to a friend.21

  In spite of Patrick Henry, George Clinton and other obstructionists, including Thomas Jefferson, the Constitution created by George Washington and James Madison had become the cornerstone of a resurgent American republic.

  CHAPTER 4

  The President and His Partner Begin Making History

  AFTER THE CONSTITUTION WAS ratified, James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson, telling him how Patrick Henry had used his letter to portray him as an anti-federalist. He also reported the way Jefferson’s influence had nearly derailed ratification in Maryland. Although Madison’s language was diplomatic, the letter remained a reprimand that might have triggered a negative response in the sensitive envoy. But the gap in time and distance softened the exchange. Jefferson had learned from other sources that nine states had ratified, and he wrote cheerfully to Madison: “I sincerely rejoice [in] the acceptance of our new Constitution. It is a good canvas, on which only some broad strokes want retouching.”1

  This retouching was anything but pleasant for Madison and Washington. It soon became apparent that a lot of powerful people were unreconciled to the ratified Constitution. A letter from Governor George Clinton began circulating through the ranks of the anti-federalists. When the new Congress was elected, Clinton argued, their first order of business should be a call for a second constitutional convention. Then they should adjourn and see what transpired in this conclave, which the antis devoutly hoped would be a death sentence for the Philadelphia charter.

  An alarmed Madison informed Washington of this threat. Both men knew that Patrick Henry was almost certain to endorse it. Madison described it as electing a Congress “that will commit suicide on their own authority.” Washington decided it was of “unspeakable importance” to have Congressman Madison return to the Virginia assembly. But his young partner demurred. He had barely recovered from the bilious attack that his recent confrontation with Patrick Henry had triggered.2

  Washington fell back to urging Madison to become one of the two senators who would be chosen by the Virginia assembly. Madison, again seeing no hope of victory against Patrick Henry, was inclined to run for the House of Representatives instead. But Washington virtually insisted he become a candidate, to prevent two anti-federalist senators from representing the nation’s largest state.

  Henry campaigned ferociously against Madison, declaring that he was “unworthy of the confidence of the people.” Anyone who wanted to see the Constitution amended should not vote for him. Although everyone knew Madison had Washington’s backing, he came in third, with seventy-seven votes in the legislature. He professed surprise that he got that many, but Washington was unreconciled. He growled that “the Edicts of Mr. H” were obeyed with less opposition than “those of the Grand Monarch are in the Parliament of France.” He was trying to say he was sorry that he had exposed Madison to this public humiliation.3

  Delighted with his victory, Henry now tried to prevent Madison from winning a seat in Congress. He persuaded Jefferson’s disciple, James Monroe, who was an outspoken anti-federalist, to run against him. Few people were inclined to worry about the probability that Madison would lose again. If he did, they were sure that Washington would become president and give him an important post in his administration. But the general did not want to see his partner suffer another humiliation at Patrick Henry’s hands. He strenuously informed his numerous correspondents that he wanted Madison in Congress.

  Madison headed south to campaign, and stopped at Mount Vernon from December 19 to Christmas Day. Martha Washington and other members of the family were soon fond of him and vi
ce versa. Politically, this hospitality was news that travelled around Virginia. Madison confided to the ex-general that he had decided to announce that he was in favor of amending the constitution with a bill of rights. Washington had no objections to the idea. He saw that it would be far better for Madison to push this in Congress, rather than entrust it to a potentially disastrous second constitutional convention.

  Madison trounced Monroe in the election, and a pleased Washington congratulated him for winning with such a “respectable majority.” Monroe, fearful that he might have offended Jefferson by running against his far more intimate friend, rushed to buy an eight hundred-acre farm within sight of Monticello—something Jefferson had urged both him and Madison to do. It was a glimpse of the personal power Jefferson could exercise over a younger man.

  Madison’s attention—along with the rest of the country’s—now shifted to another large question: Would Washington agree to be the nation’s first president? In light of what has already transpired, it may seem hard to believe that anyone, especially the ex-general himself, could entertain any doubts. Close friends and former advisors like Alexander Hamilton had been urging him to accept the nomination almost from the moment the document was ratified.