Founding Rivals

by Chris DeRose

  In his June 10 speech, Monroe dismissed the arguments in which Madison had compared and contrasted the current and proposed American governments with those of other confederacies. Those other governments, Monroe argued, were too different from that of the United States to provide any sort of guidance. Unlike Henry, Monroe was no apologist for the current government under the Articles of Confederation. “Is the confederation a band of union sufficiently strong to bind the states together? Is it possessed of sufficient power to enable it to manage the affairs of the union? Is it well organized, safe, and proper? I confess that in all of these instances, I consider it as defective—I consider it to be void of energy, and badly organized.”

  Monroe still believed that a national government should control national affairs, with local interests entrusted to the states. He maintained his long-held position that the federal government should have absolute control over commerce. Monroe was also consistent in his view of the impost, agreeing that the national government should have the power to impose tariffs on trade. He believed the impost would be nearly sufficient to fund the operations of government. The impost, along with requisitions, sales of Western lands, and increased economic activity once the Federal government regulated trade, would be enough to fund the national government.

  But the new Constitution gave the new national government more power than it needed—and more power than was consistent with the liberty of the people, Monroe thought. To improve the Constitution, Monroe said, “I would take from it one power only,” the power to tax individuals directly. He believed that this taxing power was a threat to liberty. Monroe was also concerned about double taxation by the state and national governments, which he believed would lead to the annihilation of the states, as people sought to throw off the yoke of one master of the two.

  Monroe would have stripped from the Constitution the power to tax individuals, and he would have added a bill of rights. The lack of protections for individual rights was at the heart of Monroe’s opposition to the Constitution: “I am a decided and warm friend to a bill of rights,” to guard and check against the general powers of the government.

  Monroe remained unconvinced by the Federalist argument that it was unnecessary or even dangerous to enumerate rights. “Permit me,” he said, “to examine the reasoning . . . that all powers not given up are reserved.” Monroe believed there was ample scope within the government’s enumerated powers for it to infringe on the people’s rights. Congress had the power to lay direct taxes, he pointed out, and also the authority to make all laws “necessary and proper” for the execution of their enumerated powers. If Congress were to determine that eliminating trial by jury was necessary and proper to collect taxes, there would be nothing to stop them. “I conceive that such general powers are very dangerous,” he said. “Our great unalienable rights ought to be secured from being destroyed by such unlimited powers, either by a bill of rights, or by an express provision in the body of the Constitution.”

  Monroe agreed with Henry that the checks and balances in the proposed Constitution were too weak: “The branches will join together against the states, tighter by conflict.... I have never yet heard, or read in the history of mankind, of a concurrent exercise of power by two parties, without producing a struggle between them. Consult the human heart. Does it not prove that where two parties, or bodies, seek the same object, there must be a struggle?” Monroe also believed that, were the Constitution ratified, American rights to the Mississippi would rest on a less secure footing—though less than two years before, Monroe had led the fight to protect the river against an attempt to bargain it away by a bare majority in the Confederation Congress.

  Monroe also aired a scattering of other objections. He was concerned that members of Congress were not impeachable, and also that the president commanded the army during impeachment proceedings, which were conducted in part by the Senate. (Monroe, like others, thought that the Senate would function as the president’s council of advisors.) Monroe believed the Electoral College would be too easy to corrupt, and he was particularly concerned about foreign influence. He thought the president ought to depend directly on the people for his election and re-election and should be subject to term limits, lest he abuse the powers of his office to maintain control indefinitely. “Upon reviewing this government, I must say, under my present impression, I think it a dangerous government, and calculated to secure neither the interest, nor the rights of our countrymen. Under such a one, I shall be adverse to embark the best hopes and prospects of a free people. We have struggled long to bring about this revolution, by which we enjoy our present freedom and security. Why then this haste—this wild precipitation?”

  The political evolution of James Monroe—from leader of the nationalists in the Congress and longtime friend to the cause for energetic federal government, to a full-blown opponent of the Constitution—has been little considered by history.

  Monroe would become the only President of the United States who had once opposed the Constitution.

  The consequences of this shift are critical, both for the history of the country and for a proper understanding of the man. This change in Monroe’s position deserves a thorough examination.

  In August of 1786, as a member of the Confederation Congress, Monroe had written to Patrick Henry, “I am thoroughly persuaded the government [under the Articles] is practicable and with a few alterations, the best that can be devised.” At the time he wrote to Henry, Monroe had been in Congress a full three years. He had been able to observe the manifold weaknesses and failures of the Confederation government at close quarters. And yet Monroe did not support a wholesale rewrite of the Articles. The Constitution that was drafted in Philadelphia was a much more radical change than Monroe had ever supported. Amending the Articles of Confederation to allow an impost and federal power to regulate trade would likely have fully satisfied Monroe.

  In the same letter to Henry in which he praised the Articles, Monroe shared his belief that the deficiencies of the government had arisen from the election of certain people, not from flaws inherent in the structure of the government.14 If right-minded people were elected to the legislatures, he reasoned, requisitions would be complied with and revisions to the Articles would be made as necessary.

  Monroe had been an enthusiastic supporter of both the Annapolis and Philadelphia Conventions—because he believed those conventions would procure the remedies he believed necessary: the impost and authority for Congress to regulate trade. But naturally the Monroe who wrote to Henry in 1786, before Annapolis and Philadelphia, would have opposed a new Constitution.

  The real mystery about Monroe’s thinking is the change—or changes—in his position that occurred in the eight months between the revelation of the Constitution and the Richmond Convention.

  In his later years, Monroe wrote in his memoirs,From the time that the Constitution was reported from Philadelphia . . . the citizens throughout the country became much divided respecting its merits, those opposed to it contending that it would lead to consolidation and monarchy; those who supported it, that its adoption was indispensible to the preservation of the union and free government. By degrees the parties became violent, each imputing to the other selfish and improper motives. Those in favor of it were called Federalists; those against it, Anti-Federalists.

  Although Mr. Monroe was a member of the party called Anti-Federal, yet his conduct was moderate. He had been an advocate for an essential change of the system, and in the convention of the state, by whom the Constitution was adopted, he had declared that sentiment in decided terms.15

  This recollection is true on nearly every count. Monroe had been a leader in Congress on establishing an impost as an independent revenue source for the government. He had strongly favored an amendment to the Articles to allow Congress to regulate trade. He had chaired a committee on the nation’s finances and knew as well as anyone the ruinous condition they were in. Monroe had traveled to a number of recalcitrant legislatures to pl
ead on behalf of Congress for the powers necessary to do their job.

  It is questionable, however, whether Monroe can be considered a “moderate” Anti-Federalist. His first floor speech in Convention was not limited to one or two specific objections. Instead, he marshaled a host of attacks against the Constitution, some in regard to the most minute details of that document. As the Convention went on, his objections became more and more trifling, to the exasperation of attendees, including the usually unflappable Madison.

  One Convention delegate wrote to another that Monroe was “desirous of exciting alarms on every subject which might get them a few votes.” It is most accurately the case, then, that while Monroe’s objections hung on several key provisions of the Constitution, once he had resolved to kill it, or to stop it by conditional ratification, he fought against it fiercely. Late in coming to the Anti-Federalist cause as he was, and a reluctant partisan for rejection though he may have been, Monroe pulled no punches in his attempt to defeat the Constitution. In his memoirs, Monroe explained what his thinking on the Constitution had been during this crucial period:Its powers transcended the limit which he had contemplated, but still he entertained doubts whether it would contribute most to the interest of the union to adopt it, in the hope of amending any of its defects afterward, or to suspend a decision on it until those amendments should be previously obtained.

  We find that he was decidedly for a change and a very important one in the existing system, but that the Constitution reported had, in his opinion, defects which required amendment and which he thought had better be made before it was adopted. 16

  These recollections are mostly supported by the record. Monroe’s journey from October 1787 to June 1788 was long and not without complications.

  On May 23, 1787, he had written Madison at the Convention in Philadelphia with enthusiasm for the project on which he believed the rest of American history would turn. It is tempting to attribute Monroe’s opposition to the Constitution, once it emerged from the Philadelphia Convention, to that imagined nefarious conspiracy between Randolph and Madison excluding Monroe from Philadelphia. But Monroe was too patriotic and conscientious to decide a question of such national importance on the basis of a personal slight. Monroe would never have acted contrary to the best interests of his country as he saw them. In the same July 27 letter in which he complained to Jefferson of his exclusion, he was still solidly behind the Philadelphia Convention, writing that its failure “would complete our ruin.” He concluded that letter by saying, “I shall, I think, be strongly in favor of and inclined to vote for whatever they recommend.”

  In October, after Monroe had a chance to read the Constitution drafted at Philadelphia, he wrote to Madison and Cadwalader that his objections, while serious, “were overbalanced in favor” of maintaining the union and ending the current calamitous state of affairs. He explicitly called for the adoption of the Constitution. Monroe was still a supporter of the Constitution in his April 10, 1788, letter to Jefferson, in which he claimed he believed the Constitution would nowhere be rejected (its rejection in Rhode Island was unknown to him at the time) and would result in a “wise and happy” establishment.

  Monroe’s support for the Constitution from October 1787 to June 1788 seems to contradict the position he had held before, and the best arguments that can be made in his defense are that he recognized the defects of the Confederation and the exigencies of the time; that certain measures he had long championed were included in the Constitution; and that it was associated with people who had long been his political allies and heroes, such as Madison and especially Washington. Those considerations delayed but did not defeat Monroe’s joining the Anti-Federalist camp.

  The Virginia Anti-Federalists, well organized and led by great Virginians such as Patrick Henry and George Mason, gave Monroe cover to do what he increasingly thought was right. Without such a well-developed faction in opposition, it is unlikely that Monroe would have stood alone. But he could draw strength knowing that he was in good company.

  Not the least of the party opposed to ratifying the Constitution was Joseph Jones, whose heroic efforts in the national interest made him another unlikely Anti-Federalist. Jones, like his nephew and surrogate son Monroe, opposed ratifying the Constitution without a bill of rights.

  Monroe can be taken at his word; his serious concern about the need for a guarantee of rights was genuine. And history has demonstrated that he clearly had the better argument than Madison and the Federalists on this issue substantively if not procedurally. Even after the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the federal government has continually violated fundamental liberties. Less than ten years after the adoption of the First Amendment, for example, the Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made criticism of the government punishable as a crime. How much more would the Congress have tread on free speech rights were they not explicitly protected in the Constitution?

  The Constitution had polarized Virginia’s leaders, creating allies of enemies and enemies of old friends. For now, the political partnership of James Monroe and James Madison was at an end.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE RACE FOR NINTH

  “Loving his country as he does, he would not surely wish to trust its happiness to an experiment, from which much harm, but no good may result.”

  —PATRICK HENRY

  The question of the Mississippi had the power to swing the entire Constitutional debate. The undecideds at the Virginia Ratification Convention largely hailed from the Kentucky district, which was bordered on the west by the great river. If they could be convinced that the new government posed a threat to American rights to the Mississippi, they would vote against the Constitution.

  On June 11, Madison argued in Convention that the weakness of the current government posed the greatest threat to the Mississippi. The new government, he claimed, with power to bring the combined resources of the union together for common defense, was its best protection. The constitutional power to implement a direct tax would guarantee the United States the revenue it needed for the common defense and ensure that “none would be willing to add us to the number of their enemies.”

  Next, Madison addressed Monroe’s arguments against direct taxation head on. In a time of war, Madison claimed, trade would be hurt, and imposts would decrease. “I hope we are considering government for a perpetual duration,” he said, and “we ought to provide for every future contingency.” Madison saw very little difference between the direct tax and requisitions—except that the direct tax could actually be collected in an emergency, whereas the requisitions never were. Instead of the national government taxing states, which passed the expense on to the people, it could more effectively and efficiently tax the people directly. Madison also pointed out the opportunity cost of requisitions, considering how much of every legislative session was spent debating how or whether to pay them, with as many as twenty-five hundred state legislators unable to discuss other important business.

  Madison pointed to the unsettled national debt as a danger to the nation’s liberty. Direct taxation would free America from onerous obligations to creditors. In one of the most lively and entertaining speeches of the Ratification Convention, William Grayson argued that the national debt was not a serious concern. “I believe that the money which the Dutch borrowed of Henry IV is not yet paid,” he said. A loan involving Queen Elizabeth was repaid “at a very considerable discount.” Loans between nations, Grayson argued, were not like loans from private individuals. Nations lend money and assistance to one another in the furtherance of their national interest. France did no more for us, he argued, than “pluck the fairest feather from the British crown.”1

  Grayson also ridiculed Governor Randolph’s alarmism about the current state of affairs in America under the Articles of Confederation:… we shall have wars and rumors of wars; that every calamity is to attend us, and that we shall be ruined and disunited forever, unless we adopt the Constitution. Pennsylvania and Maryland are to fa
ll upon us from the north, like the Goths and Vandals of old—the Algerines, whose flat sided vessels never came further than Madeira, are to fill the Chesapeake with mighty fleets, and to attack us on our front. The Indians are to invade us with numerous armies on our rear, in order to convert our cleared lands into hunting grounds—and the Carolinas from the south, mounted on alligators I presume, are to come and destroy our corn fields and eat up our little children!

  Henry Lee, thinking that argument absurd, asked whether Grayson imagined “that he that can raise the loudest laugh is the soundest reasoner?” Henry Lee and the Federalists did not find Grayson’s speech funny at the time, but this would not always be the case. When the volumes of the debates of the Virginia Convention were finally published, Madison and Grayson, as members of the new Congress, would share a laugh over this comedic diatribe.

  By June 12, Pendleton had obtained the letter from Thomas Jefferson that Henry had used two days earlier in support of his contention that Thomas Jefferson “advises you to reject this government, till it be amended.” Pendleton read the letter aloud to the delegates, making it clear that Jefferson had wanted the first nine states to ratify, and only four to hold out until certain amendments were passed. Jefferson’s letter was actually a strong argument for the position taken by Randolph and other delegates who supported ratification on the grounds of unity despite their reservations about the Constitution: “We must take care, however,” Pendleton read, “that neither this, nor any other objection to the form, produce a schism in our union. That would be an incurable evil; because friends falling out never cordially re-unite.”