Founding Rivals

by Chris DeRose

  James Madison, future political colossus, was no rugged pioneer in the mold of his ancestor. By the time James was born in 1751, Virginia was a thriving colony. James Madison was born while his mother was visiting the home of her mother in the King George County, along the river Rappahannock. When mother and child were strong enough, they departed for Orange County and the estate that would one day be known as Montpelier. It would be Madison’s home for his entire life.

  Madison was a dedicated student. He began his formal studies in 1762 under Donald Robert, who had been educated at the University of Aberdeen. Then he became the pupil of Thomas Martin—a brief association that would change the course of Madison’s life. Martin had attended school at the College of New Jersey, located on the road between Philadelphia and New York at Princeton and today known as Princeton University. The college at Princeton had an excellent reputation, in contrast with the College of William and Mary, which at the time no longer had a well-regarded and rigorous program of study. Princeton had the additional benefit of geography; Madison’s parents felt that the climate farther north, as opposed to the hot and sticky weather in Williamsburg, would be better for the sickly Madison.

  Madison passed the College of New Jersey’s entrance exam, which required grammatical Latin, Greek translation, and “vulgar arithmetic.” The author of the First Amendment would be educated at a school with a remarkable degree of religious diversity for its time, founded as it was for “the equal and general advantage of every religious denomination of Protestants.”5 Madison had roughly 150 fellow students in the entire school. For perhaps the first time in his life, the curious and scholarly young man was in his element.

  Far from Orange County, Madison was meeting brilliant peers from places and backgrounds he previously had only read about. The school was a tight-knit community, as all the pupils and their tutors would eat together, sometimes joined by the college president. Madison wrote to his mentor Martin from school in August of 1769, “I am perfectly pleased with my present situation; and the prospect before me of three years confinement, however terrible it may sound, has nothing in it, but will be greatly alleviated by the advantages I hope to derive from it.”6

  Madison plunged into his academic work, studying to the point of physical exhaustion and illness. At Princeton he had access to a library exceeding twelve hundred volumes. Madison studied science, geography, rhetoric, logic, math, “natural and moral philosophy, metaphysics, chronology,” 7 read Latin and Greek, and pored over classical texts. The college day began with prayer and ended in the evening with another devotional service. Madison was a model student. College president John Witherspoon never knew him “to say or do an indiscreet thing.”8

  He joined a fraternal organization, the Whigs, who playfully jousted in public debates with their rivals, the Cliosophians.9 The College put an emphasis on oratory; students were required to engage one another in front of large audiences. For the quiet and introverted Madison, this aspect of his education was invaluable. Even as trouble was brewing back home in Virginia—political tensions were increasing between crown and colony—Madison was debating academic issues on a stage next to a giant portrait of King George III. After three years of study, Madison was examined by trustees, college officers, and “other gentlemen of learning” and received his degree. He had finished a four-year program in three. Madison returned to Orange County in 1772.

  In Orange, Madison was isolated. He kept himself busy tutoring his younger siblings in literature. Correspondence with his former classmate William Bradford in Philadelphia was his only connection to the outside world he had left behind—and also a source of news about the historic events brewing in the colonies. Bradford was concerned about his friend’s well-being. He believed that Madison had injured himself by excessive study, and he urged him to be attentive to his health. Even naturally sickly people can outlive healthy ones by working at it, Bradford wrote to the man who would live to be the “last of the Founders.”

  Prophetically, Bradford wrote to Madison that “you seem designed by Providence for extensive usefulness.” At the time the observation must have seemed like so much fluff to Madison. He was bored, lonely, doing nothing with his life, and without prospects for a change. Bradford kept Madison abreast of the lives of their friends and acquaintances, their career advancements, successes, and marriages. The world, it seemed, was passing Madison by. He was confined in the cash-poor agricultural economy of the Virginia colony, where his father was a planter just as his ancestors had been, back to the days of Isack.

  His time away from home had caused Madison to see Virginia in a new light. Madison was concerned about the lack of religious liberty in his home colony, and he asked Bradford to send him a copy of Pennsylvania’s religious tolerance laws. “Is an Ecclesiastical Establishment absolutely necessary to support civil society . . . ?” he asked. Madison was increasingly concerned with the treatment of religious dissenters in neighboring counties; some were in prison on account of their faith.

  Soon Bradford’s letters to Madison were full of dramatic events. In December of 1773 Bradford sent Madison an account “of the destruction of the tea at Boston.” To prop up the British East India Company, Parliament had licensed it to sell tea directly to the colonies. For the most part tea would be cheaper for colonists, even cheaper than in England. But the colonists maintained that Parliament had no right to levy the tax on the tea. The taxed tea was prevented from landing anywhere in the colonies. In New York and Philadelphia, it was sent back; in Charleston, it was placed in a cellar. Boston customs officials, however, refused to send the tea back and kept it in ships docked in the Harbor. On December 16, 1773, a group of fifty or sixty men dressed as Indians boarded the ships and dumped the tea in the harbor.10

  Madison congratulated Bradford on the “heroic proceedings” in Philadelphia. He approved of that city’s refusal to accept the tea. But the cautious Madison was ambivalent about the Boston Tea Party, as it later became known, wishing the patriots in Massachusetts would “conduct matters with as much discretion as they seem to do with boldness.”

  The British responded predictably, ratcheting up the pressure—this time past the point of no return. In 1774, Parliament adopted a series of “Coercive,” or “Intolerable” Acts. The Port of Boston was closed to commerce until the tossed tea should be paid for.11 Massachusetts public officials would henceforth be appointed at the discretion of the Crown.12 Public meetings were prohibited without prior permission. British soldiers sent to get Boston under control were lodged in private residences, against the will of their owners.13

  The “Sentiments of Virginia are strongly with Massachusetts,” Madison wrote to Bradford in July of 1774. An attack on one colony was perceived as falling upon them all.

  The two young men sensed the increasing consequence of the moment. Bradford wrote, “Indeed my friend the world wears a strange aspect at the present day; to use Shakespeare’s expression, ‘the times seem to be out of joint...’ our liberties invaded by a corrupt, ambitious, and determined ministry is bringing things to a crisis here in America and seems to foretell some great event.”

  Virginia would take the lead in resistance to the Intolerable Acts. A young member of the House of Burgesses named Thomas Jefferson successfully introduced resolutions to set aside “a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer; devoutly to implore the Divine interposition” to avoid war and to guide the Burgesses’ hands in opposing “every injury to American rights.”14

  On September 22, 1774, Madison bought two hundred acres of land from his parents at a cost of thirty pounds. He seemed resigned to the life of a country farmer. But that same month, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. The Virginia delegation included George Washington and Patrick Henry.15 Tremendous events were preparing on the political stage where Madison’s talents would one day shine so brightly.

  Madison was eager for information on the workings of Congress. Bradford had little to share about the secret proceedings
but obliged as best he could, sending copies of the numerous political pamphlets circulating through Philadelphia. Congress adjourned October 26, having resolved that all exports to Great Britain would cease.16 Colonies not represented at the meeting—Quebec, St. John’s, Nova Scotia, East and West Florida, and Georgia—were invited to join the next Congress, and a declaration of rights enumerating the British offenses against her American colonies was adopted.17

  To enforce the embargo with Britain, the Continental Congress created the grandly named Continental Association to boycott all British imports beginning December 1, 1774, and all exports to Britain and her territories on September 10 of the next year.18 A committee would be created in every county and in every town to publish in local newspapers the names of any who continued to trade with the British and to take other steps as necessary to enforce the trade ban.19 Congress concluded by agreeing to meet again in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, if Parliament or the king failed to respond.20 The actions of the colonies were greeted with silence on the other side of the Atlantic. The boycott’s most immediate effect on Madison was the delay of the arrival of a treatise on government that he had ordered from London. More significantly, he was caught up in the patriotic fervor sweeping the colonies. “A spirit of liberty and patriotism animates all degrees and denominations of men,” he wrote to Bradford. “Many publicly declare themselves ready to join the Bostonians as soon as violence is offered them or resistance thought expedient.” Madison noted that independent militias were forming in many counties, drilling, and preparing for what might come.

  As Virginians readied themselves for war, Madison considered the colony’s many vulnerabilities. In addition to deploying their armed forces, the British might successfully incite a slave revolt. (This possibility probably held more terror for the Madisons than for the average Virginia family. Ambrose Madison, James Madison’s grandfather, had been poisoned by his own slaves.) The British might also activate their alliances among the Indians as they had during the French and Indian war. Recent clashes between Indians and colonists along the frontier increased the fear of this danger.

  On December 22, 1774, the Orange County Committee of Safety was organized and chaired by Madison’s father, James Madison Sr.21 As a large landowner and one of the first men of Orange County, he was a logical choice for the role. Madison gave his father and the committee his assistance. “We are very busy at present in raising men and procuring the necessaries for defending ourselves and our friends in case of a sudden invasion,” he wrote to Bradford. Though Madison was still in Orange, the world had come to him. British actions, he warned, “require a preparation for extreme events.”

  In March of 1775, the leaders of Virginia met in St. John’s Church, Richmond. In attendance were Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. On March 23, Henry moved “that this colony be immediately put into a posture of defense,” calling for the recruitment and training of more militia.22 Reconciliation was impossible, Henry argued. “If we wish to be free, we must fight! I repeat it, Sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us.”23 Henry is said to have concluded his stirring call to arms with the most famous words attributed to him: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”24 The motion to mobilize passed.

  As the delegates to the Second Continental Congress prepared to convene in May of 1775, the situation in Massachusetts deteriorated. Eight hundred British troops were dispatched to Lexington, Massachusetts, to destroy a stockpile of weaponry belonging to the militia. Captain John Parker and sixty or seventy militiamen were waiting for them on the village green.25 The previous night Paul Revere and William Dawes had warned the militia of the troop movement.

  Both British and Americans who stood on the Lexington green swore to their final days that their side was not the first to fire what ended up being the first shot of the American Revolution. But who fired first scarcely mattered to the men standing on that little patch of green. Great events—events that would soon engulf the entire continent—had led these men to this moment. Eight militiamen were killed and ten more were injured. The Revolutionary War had begun. From Lexington, the British marched to Concord, where they again engaged the militia in armed combat. By now, the militia had gathered in sufficient strength to drive the British back toward Boston.

  The day after Lexington and Concord, Governor Dunmore of Virginia ordered British troops to seize powder and ammunition from a local militia storehouse. No one believed his stated purpose—to prevent a slave revolt. Patrick Henry, as the head of the Hanover County militia, marched on Williamsburg with three hundred men to demand retribution. A Lexington-style shoot-out was avoided only because the governor made a financial arrangement to pay 330 pounds for the lost munitions.26

  In response to the governor’s weapons-grab, college students at William and Mary began daily drills on the Williamsburg village green, antagonizing British redcoats by openly preparing for combat. Latin and history could not hold the attention of these young men who were unwittingly stationed at the front lines of a rapidly escalating conflict. Among the students preparing for war was the young James Monroe, who had turned seventeen just five days after Lexington and Concord.

  Madison and Monroe’s college years were thus excellent preparation for their respective roles in the Revolution: Madison, the statesman, and Monroe, the soldier.

  Two turning points in the lives of the Monroes had involved rebellion against the King of England. The loyalty of Andrew Monroe, a cavalier in service to King Charles I, had led him to sever ties with England when Oliver Cromwell severed the head of his sovereign. But Andrew’s most famous descendant, James Monroe, born on April 28, 1758, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on the same land that Andrew had first farmed in the new world, would join a Revolution against the British monarch.

  Monroe remembered his own father, Spence Monroe, as “a very worthy and respectable citizen of good landed and other property.” He described his mother, the former Elizabeth Jones, as “a very amiable and respectable woman, possessing the best domestic qualities, a good wife and good parent.”27 When James Monroe was eleven years old, his father joined one hundred other Westmoreland planters in a boycott of British goods, consistent with the Continental Association.

  Giving up British goods to advance a matter of principle was a critical early lesson in Monroe’s political education, shaping his character and adult reputation for putting duty before his self-interest. That same year he began his formal studies under Archibald Campbell. The eponymous Campbelltown Academy was renowned throughout Virginia; in Monroe’s words, “so high was its character that youths were sent to it from the more distant parts of the colony.”28 Monroe lived within walking distance, but those who came from farther away boarded with Campbell during the twelve-week school year between fall harvest and spring planting. Among Monroe’s two dozen classmates was John Marshall, future Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, with whom he would form a life-long friendship. The early years of these Campbelltown Academy boys, who would grow up to fight in a war for colonial independence, were colored by the hostility between colony and crown as Vergennes’ prophecy began to play itself out almost immediately.

  Even setting aside the brewing American Revolution, James Monroe’s teenage years were hard ones that saw him lose both of his parents. Monroe, now the head of his family, was forced to leave his studies. With little education, a modest inheritance, and responsibilities to fulfill, Monroe seemed headed for an unremarkable life. But the intervention of his mother’s brother, Joseph Jones, would send the boy in a direction he never imagined.

  Monroe would describe his uncle as “a distinguished revolutionary patriot, honored by his country with the highest offices and at the most difficult period.… Few men possessed in higher degree the confidence and esteem of his
fellow citizens, or merited it more, for soundness of intellect, perfect integrity, and devotion to his country.”29 Jones, educated as an attorney at London’s Inns of Court, was a deputy king’s attorney representing the Crown in court and an important member of the House of Burgesses from King George’s County.

  Joseph Jones had no heirs, but he served as executor of Monroe’s father’s estate. It seems that he and his nephew James each found in the other what they were searching for. Monroe was an impressionable sixteen-year-old orphan in need of a strong adult interested in him, dedicated to his success, and possessed of the resources to make it possible. Jones was a wealthy man of the world looking for a protégé and a legacy, and for the kind of familial relationship that outshines all the honors the world can give. Jones enrolled his nephew in the College of William and Mary, which had revived its reputation since the time Madison was choosing schools. William and Mary, founded in 1693 by the king and queen the college is named for, was the second institution of higher learning in the New World. Monroe’s classmates included the sons of the most elite Virginia families. Spence Monroe, if he had lived, probably could not have afforded to provide such an education for his son, and it is an open question whether he would have permitted his brother-in-law to foot the bill.

  James Monroe arrived in Williamsburg to begin his classes at William and Mary in the run-up to the Revolution. Two weeks before Monroe arrived, the royal governor had dissolved the House of Burgesses after their public stand in support of the people of Boston. After the dissolution in May of 1774, the burgesses met unofficially at the Raleigh Tavern on Duke of Gloucester Street. They had called for a meeting of representatives from every colony—it would become the First Continental Congress—and for a convention in Virginia with representatives from every county.30 This “Virginia Convention” would become the successor to the House of Burgesses and would itself eventually be superseded by the House of Delegates of the independent state of Virginia.