by Chris DeRose
Monroe readied himself for the biggest battle of his career. He wrote, “We have and shall throw every possible obstacle in the way of the measure. . . . This is one of the most extraordinary transactions I have ever known, a minister negotiating expressly for the purpose of defeating the object of his instructions, and by a long train of intrigue and management seducing the representatives of the states to concur in it. ”35
The debate over the Mississippi called into question, once again, the effectiveness of the Articles of Confederation. A supermajority of nine states was necessary for any treaty to be approved. But on August 29 seven Northern states voted in favor of repealing Jay’s instructions. And they argued that the vote of only seven states was sufficient to remove the restraints previously imposed by nine states. Monroe and his supporters forcefully disagreed.
On the authority of the seven votes, Jay wrote Gardoqui of his new powers to “make and receive propositions.”36 Thankfully, Gardoqui rejected the proposal that the United States would cede the Mississippi to Spain only temporarily, and the negotiations stalled.
Throughout the crisis, Monroe was in close contact with Madison, using him as a sounding board for his plans.37 Madison encouraged Monroe to maintain the high ground, and not to offer compromise: “If the temper and views of Congress be such as you apprehend, it is morally certain they would not enter into the accommodation. Nothing therefore would be gained and you would have to combat under the disadvantage of having forsaken your first ground.” Compromise would also be rejected by Spain, Madison argued, which would only use Monroe’s offer as a starting point for all future negotiations.38
Monroe was good to his word in throwing up every possible roadblock to Jay’s plans. But he did propose a compromise, allowing Jay to offer a 2.5 percent ad valorem tax to Spain on all American exports passing through New Orleans.39 Monroe also tried to change the location of negotiations from New York to Spain. By the change of venue Monroe hoped to transfer jurisdiction over the matter from Jay to someone like
Jefferson who was already serving in Europe.40 In addition, Monroe approached the French ambassador, who promised to forward to his government Monroe’s request that France recognize America’s right to navigate the Mississippi. Monroe also attempted to embarrass Jay and his allies by moving to publish the secret session journals—to no avail.41
In response to the seven-vote “repeal” of Jay’s instructions, Monroe introduced a resolution declaring that only nine states could actually remove them.42 In any case, it was beyond dispute that the approval of nine states would be necessary to approve a treaty. Since that number could not be had, the issue would be left at a standstill.
While Monroe defended the Mississippi, Madison was engaged in an even more desperate battle.
Chapter Eight
THE ANNAPOLIS DISASTER AND THE ROAD TO PHILADELPHIA
“The efforts for bringing about a correction through the medium of Congress have miscarried.
Let a convention be tried.” —JAMES MADISON
“That the present era is pregnant of great and strange events, none who will cast their eyes around them, can deny.”
—GEORGE WASHINGTON
Madison and Monroe looked past their recent disappointments to the upcoming convention in Annapolis, which flickered, if dimly, as a beacon of hope.
“What is thought of this measure where you are?” Madison wrote to Monroe in the spring of 1786.
I am far from entreating sanguine expectations from it, and am sensible that it may be viewed in one objectionable light. Yet on the whole I cannot disapprove of the experiment. Something it is agreed is necessary to be done, towards the commerce at least of the U.S., and if anything can be done, it seems as likely to result from the proposed convention, and more likely to result from the present crisis, than from any other mode or time. If nothing can be done we may at least expect a full discovery as to that matter from the experiment, and such piece of knowledge will be worth the trouble and expense of obtaining it.1
Were the convention at Annapolis to fail, it would not be for lack of preparation by Madison. His “Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies” are the fruit of an exhaustive study on the organization of governments throughout world history. Madison’s particular focus, not surprisingly, was on the attempts of diverse and distinct political units to join in functional confederations. Madison examined these governments from every possible angle—representation and suffrage, the raising of armies and the waging of war, the regulation of weights and measures, the collection of taxes. He gave Jefferson in Paris carte blanche to buy and send him any book in Europe that might be helpful in his research.2 Immersed in the history of confederacies from the Lycian League to the Helvetic Confederacies to the German Diet, Madison carefully considered what form was best suited to the challenges of the United States. As he read about the failed confederacies ancient and modern, Madison must have wondered whether America would soon be added to the list.
The weak Amphictyonic League had been undermined by Alexander the Great’s father, Philip of Macedon, who had used the Greek city-states’ jealousy of one another to conquer them. Britain was playing on the same weakness in America, punishing American exporters in the confidence that all thirteen states, behaving as separate actors, could not retaliate. Spain was also busy pitting Northern and Southern states against each other in its attempt to wrest the Mississippi from America.
One characteristic of the failed governments Madison studied, from the Achaean League to the Belgic Confederacy, was paralysis. They were unable to get things done. The Achaeans required the agreement of ten of twelve members, and the Belgic Confederacy required unanimous consent. The Belgic Confederacy consisted of fifty-two independent cities and seven provinces. Thus foreign powers and enemies needed to co-opt only one city or province out of fifty-nine to get their way.3 It was exactly what both Madison and Monroe had continually experienced in Congress. A minority of states, or even one single state, putting regional concerns above the common good, could prevent the government from acting.
From his place in Congress, Monroe had done what he could to ensure success at Annapolis. He wrote the president [the chief executive] of New Hampshire to encourage New Hampshire to send delegates. Monroe explained, “I have looked forward to that convention as the source of infinite blessings to this country. However expedient it may be to extend the powers of Congress, yet recommendations from that body are received with such suspicion by the states that their success, however proper, may be always doubted. . . . I therefore earnestly hope your state and all the eastern [northern] states will send representatives to the convention.” 4
On September 1, 1786, Monroe was part of a congressional committee sent to Pennsylvania to encourage that state to adopt the impost amendment. The issue of the Mississippi was in such a critical state at the time that Monroe extracted promises from other members of Congress not to act on it in his absence. In fact, the tension and distrust in Congress were so great that Monroe felt promises were not sufficient. He took Rufus King, Jay’s strongest supporter in Congress, with him to Philadelphia to ensure that Americans’ rights to the Mississippi were not dealt away by Congress in New York while he was negotiating in Philadelphia.5
Monroe wrote to Madison, who was heading for Annapolis and the convention, “I have always considered the regulation of trade in the hands of the US as necessary to preserve the Union,” he said. “Without it, it will infallibly tumble to pieces. . . I consider the convention of Annapolis as a most important area in our affairs . . . requiring your utmost exertions.”6
Madison arrived in Annapolis September 4, 1786, and lodged at George Mann’s tavern, which would also be the site of the convention. Four days later, he wrote to his brother that only two other commissioners were present.7 On September 11, Madison wrote Monroe that only Delaware, Virginia, and New Jersey were fully represented. Two commissioners from New York and one from Pennsylvania were also in attendance. “Unless the sudde
n attendance of a much more respectable number takes place,” he wrote, “it is proposed to break up the meeting, with a recommendation of another time and place, and an intimation of the expediency of extending the plan to other defects of the Confederation.”8
John Dickinson, formerly of Pennsylvania and now of Delaware, was unanimously chosen as chairman. In 1777, Dickinson had been the principal author of the Articles of Confederation. At fifty-three, he had served as the president of both Delaware and Pennsylvania, as well as in Congress. He could fairly be said to be the most senior statesman in the room.c
Once the chairman was chosen, each member presented his credentials, which were read aloud. The roll call was short, consisting of five states and twelve delegates. For Madison, Hamilton, and the other nationalists in the room, the sparse attendance at the conference must have been maddening. They had not had unreasonably high expectations of this convention. But Annapolis had offered a possible way out of the morass the states were in, and barely anyone had even bothered to attend.
A committee was appointed to draft a report, and the Annapolis Convention adjourned for two days. On September 13 the members reconvened and the report, drafted by Hamilton, was debated and revised. The Annapolis Report began by detailing what had happened there—or more precisely what had failed to happen. Yet, it succeeded in expressing a sentiment that is still remembered. It read, “Deeply impressed however with the magnitude and importance of the object confided to them on this occasion, your Commissioners cannot forbear to indulge an expression of their earnest and unanimous wish, that speedy measures may be taken, to effect a general meeting, of the States, in a future Convention, for the same, and such other purposes, as the situation of public affairs, may be found to require.”
Though the mandate of the Annapolis Convention had been limited to trade and commerce, the delegates called for “digesting a plan for supplying such defects as may be discovered to exist.…” The seriousness of those defects, they claimed, had reduced the United States to a situation “delicate and critical,” which called for “an exertion of the united virtue and wisdom of all members of the Confederacy.” The report was transmitted to the legislatures of those states which were represented, to Congress, and to the executives of those states not present.
To his last hour in Congress, Monroe was engaged in the cause of strengthening the union. On October 7 he wrote Madison of his attempts to get the Annapolis report considered by a committee.9 Monroe had proven himself as a leader in Congress on the critical issues of tax and trade, the national debt, developing the West, and protecting the territorial integrity of the United States. He had arrived in Congress a twenty-five-year-old bachelor, a novice in national politics. Three years later, he would be leaving with a significant record of achievement, in the company of his wife and best friend.
On October 13, James and Elizabeth Monroe headed south for Virginia. Whatever enthusiasm Monroe had ever felt for the law was already gone before he set foot in a courtroom. “I should be happy to keep clear of the bar if possible,” he wrote to Jefferson, “and at present I am wearied with the business in which I have been engaged. It has been a year of excessive labor and fatigue and unprofitably so.” 10
“You wish not to engage in the drudgery of the bar,” Jefferson wrote to Monroe. “You have two asylums from that. Either to accept a seat in the council, or in the judiciary department.” But Jefferson, to whom Monroe looked for an older, wiser perspective, also offered a piece of wisdom that the newlywed was surely beginning to realize for himself. Nothing compares “with the tranquil happiness of domestic life,” Jefferson wrote. Monroe did not come to the practice of law with enthusiasm, but it was necessary to support his domestic happiness, and he succeeded in it. Monroe began building a substantial law practice in the fall of 1786. “His success at the bar was gratifying to him, and the prospect of future profit very favorable,” Monroe would one day write of his younger self.
Madison, in Richmond for the October session of the House of Delegates, wrote Washington that the Annapolis report would soon be considered by the Virginia legislature.11 Washington, for his part, could not conceal his disappointment with what had transpired in Annapolis. He hoped the national government “may be considered with that calm and deliberate attention which the magnitude of it so loudly calls for at this critical moment: let prejudices, unreasonable jealousies, and local interest yield to reason and liberality. Let us look to our national character, and to things beyond the present period. No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did—and no day was ever more clouded than the present.”
Washington hoped that Virginia would take the lead: “Without some alteration in our political creed, the superstructure we have been seven years raising at the expense of much blood and treasure, must fall.”12
The Constitution that ultimately emerged from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia would produce the most severe split among the leaders of Virginia, separating families and friends and dissolving close and long-standing alliances. The friendship between Madison and Monroe would not be immune from this division. In light of what was to come, it is worth noting that the bill to appoint delegates to the Convention of 1787 passed the Virginia House of Delegates unanimously.
The legislature resolved that “[it] can no longer doubt that the crisis is arrived at which the good people of America are to decide the solemn question, whether they will by wise and magnanimous efforts reap the just fruits of that independence which they have so gloriously acquired... or whether by giving way to unmanly jealousies and prejudices, or to partial and transitory interests they will renounce the . . . blessings prepared for them by the Revolution, and to furnish its enemies an eventual triumph over those by whose virtue and valor it has been accomplished.” 13
Seven commissioners would be elected by a joint ballot of the House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate, “to assemble in convention in Philadelphia: and to join with them in devising and discussing all such alterations and further provisions as may be necessary to render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of the union.”14
Madison would make one of his most significant contributions to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia before he ever arrived there. The dearth of preeminent characters had been a great failing of the Annapolis Convention, and Madison was absolutely determined to secure Washington’s presence in Philadelphia. As a universally respected and beloved figure, Washington in attendance would guarantee the meeting legitimacy and encourage other statesmen of high caliber from every state to participate.15
Washington understood the significance of his presence at the Convention and indicated his interest. “Although I have bid a public adieu to the public walks of life, and had resolved never more to tread that theatre,” on such a critical matter, if his presence was thought useful, he would oblige. But Washington pointed to a serious problem that might prevent his attendance. An unforeseen obstacle had put the decision “out of my power.”16
Washington had initially been expected to speak at the Society of the Cincinnati convention. As chance would have it, the Society was meeting in Philadelphia at the same time as the planned Constitutional Convention. The Society of the Cincinnati, founded in 1783 to promote the ideals of the Revolution, was named for the great Roman general who had returned to private life on his farm at the end of his service to Rome. Membership was restricted to French and American military officers who had served in the war for a certain number of years or were serving at the close of the conflict. (Men who had been killed in combat were awarded posthumous membership.) Family of deceased Society of the Cincinnati members inherited membership by primogeniture. The Society was the subject of enormous controversy on account of its exclusivity. For that reason, Washington had come up with a pretense for declining the invitation to speak at their convention and serve as their president. If he attended the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention after telling the Society of the Cincinnati that he was unavaila
ble, he would insult the officers of his army.
Madison understood Washington’s dilemma. But, Madison urged, “it was the opinion of every judicious friend whom I consulted that your name could not be spared from the deputation to the meeting in May in Philadelphia.” Washington’s attendance would signal that Virginia was in earnest about the project while also serving as “an invitation to the most select characters from every part of the Confederacy” to attend.17
On December 4, the Virginia legislature began naming commissioners to the Philadelphia convention.18 The issues with the Society of the Cincinnati, Madison conceded, could “as little be denied, as they can fail to be regretted.” But the convention was so important that nobody would criticize Washington for his attendance. Madison closed with a “wish that at least a door could be kept open for your acceptance hereafter, in case the gathering clouds should become so dark and menacing as to supersede every consideration, but that of our national existence or safety.” He cautioned Washington against bowing out prematurely. After all, with only three of Virginia’s seven openings filled, the governor could name Washington to a vacancy at any time.19
Madison had been absent from national politics for three years. Edward Carrington, then serving in Congress, attempted to give his friend a summary of what was going on there: “I cannot learn that Mr. Jay is proceeding in the business of the Mississippi. He probably will wait to see the countenance of the new Congress. If he can assure himself the cover of a bare majority, I believe he will make the treaty, and rely upon the timidity of some of the dissenting states for the ratification.”20
