Founding Rivals

by Chris DeRose

  In their home state of Virginia, support was more evenly split. One caucus in the Virginia legislature nominated Madison for the presidency—the other expressed a preference for Monroe.1

  “I have ever viewed Mr. Madison and yourself as two principal pillars of my happiness. Were either to be withdrawn, I should consider it as among the greatest calamities which could assail my future peace of mind,” wrote Thomas Jefferson.2

  Still Monroe, though without actively campaigning, permitted his name to be brought forward by his supporters.

  Monroe’s challenge to Madison’s presidential bid triggered a two-year rift, not just between Madison and Monroe, but between their respective supporters in the party. By 1811, however, Monroe had made conciliatory efforts, and Madison—reluctant not to have Monroe’s considerable talents at the disposal of his administration—offered him the post of Secretary of State. Together, they would conduct the War of 1812 against the British.

  In retirement, the two who had so often been separated by duty were free to indulge their friendship. “When he was with Madison,” one biographer writes, “Monroe seemed to recapture something of his youth, talking and laughing without restraint.”3

  The two were active in supporting the University of Virginia. And in 1828 Monroe and Madison were chosen as Presidential Electors on the ticket for John Quincy Adams.

  In the city of Richmond in the fall of 1829, Madison and Monroe gathered for their last public collaboration. The Virginia Constitutional Convention of that year sought to craft a new governing document for the Commonwealth. The western counties of Virginia were clamoring for more representation in the legislature. Counting slaves for the apportionment of representatives gave the eastern parts of Virginia a two-to-one advantage in allocating legislators. One count estimates that “Of the 450,000 slaves in the state in 1829, only 50,000 resided west of the Blue Ridge.”4

  Madison nominated Monroe for the chairmanship of the convention and he was unanimously selected.5 Monroe was escorted to the chair by another senior delegate, his boyhood friend John Marshall. The young delegates, most of whom had spent their lives lionizing Madison and Monroe, were awestruck by the chance to serve alongside them.

  Their prestige in this body, however, did not translate to anything approaching their desired results. Madison and Monroe worked tirelessly to fashion some compromise. They proposed allocating members of the House of Delegates by free population while keeping the current formula for members of the Senate. When this failed, they proposed the three-fifths compromise that had succeeded in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Their efforts only inspired anger from both sides—with both East and West threatening to secede from one another—and criticism of “putting old men in active life.”6

  But the hotheaded young politicians of Virginia, like their contemporaries throughout the country, took the union Madison and Monroe had been so critical in establishing for granted. They had never known a time when the political bonds of the United States hung in the balance. If they would but listen, the old men had some lessons to teach them yet.

  Monroe, though of modest means, had refused compensation for his service in the war and the pension that would have been his as a wounded warrior. He had advanced his own funds, time and again, while serving as a diplomat and thereafter. While in office, he had delayed seeking recompense lest he seem to be using his public office for personal gain. In his six years of retirement he was plagued by oppressive debt, while politics in Washington delayed consideration and repayment of the sums he had advanced the government. Monroe was forced to sell his lands in Virginia and repair to New York to live off the generosity of his daughter.

  The Monroe who wrote to Madison with this news was very different from the eager young congressman of 1784: “It is very distressing to me to sell my property in Loudon, for, besides parting with all I have in the state, I indulged a hope, if I could retain it, that I might be able occasionally to visit it, and meet my friends, or many of them, there. But ill health and advanced years prescribe a course which we must pursue.”

  Their friendship was stronger than ever. “I deeply regret,” Monroe wrote, “that there is no prospect of our ever meeting again, since so long have we been connected, and in the most friendly intercourse, in public and private life, that a final separation is among the most distressing incidents which could occur.... I beg you to assure Mrs. Madison that I never can forget the friendly relation which has existed between her and my family. It often reminds me of incidents of the most interesting character. My daughter, Mrs. Hay, will live with me, who, with the whole family here, unite in affectionate regards to both of you.” The letter was signed, “Very sincerely, your friend, James Monroe. New York. April 11, 1831.”

  It would be Monroe’s final letter to his friend.

  On April 21, Madison would write the final words of their correspondence, which was now in its fifth decade.

  I considered the advertisement of your estate in Loudon as an omen that your friends in Virginia were to lose you . . . …the effect of this in closing the prospect of our ever meeting again afflicts me deeply, certainly not less so, than it can you. The pain I feel at the idea, associated as it is with a recollection of the long, close, and uninterrupted friendship which united us, amounts to a pang which I cannot well express and which makes me seek for an alleviation in the possibility that you may be brought back to us in the wanted degree of intercourse. This is a happiness my feelings covet, notwithstanding the short period I could expect to enjoy it; being now, though in comfortable health, a decade beyond the canonical three score and ten, an epoch which you have but just passed. . . . Whatever may be the turn of things, be assured of the unchangeable interest felt by Mrs. M as well as myself, in your welfare, and in that of all who are dearest to you.

  The Fourth of July, 1831, was the last day in the life of James Monroe. As the country celebrated the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Independence of the United States, one of the bravest soldiers of the Revolutionary War breathed his last.

  As news of Monroe’s death circulated, the church bells of America rang in celebration of his life, and a procession exceeding that which had greeted Washington on his arrival for his inauguration was held in the city of New York.

  Dying on the Fourth of July was a distinction Monroe would share with his friend and mentor, Thomas Jefferson, who had preceded him in death by five years. Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, had died fifty years to the day from the adoption of his most famous work. His final words are believed to be, “Is this the Fourth of July?”

  John Adams, fulfilling a longtime pledge to see America’s fiftieth birthday, had died hours after his friend and erstwhile foe, in ignorance of Jefferson’s death. His last words were, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

  Tench Ringgold, who had served both Presidents Madison and Monroe and attended the latter in his final days, wrote to Madison with the news. Madison, no doubt himself in need of consolation, played the role of consoler to the young man:I received in due times your two favors of July 7 and 8, the first giving the earliest, the last the fullest account that reached me of the death of our excellent friend; and I cannot acknowledge these communications, without adding the thanks which I owe in common with those to whom he was most dear, for the devoted kindness on your part, during the lingering illness which he could not survive. I need not say to you who so well know, how highly I rated the comprehensiveness and character of his mind; the purity and nobleness of his principles; the importance of his patriotic services; and the many private virtues of which his whole life was a model, nor how deeply therefore I must sympathize, on his loss, with those who feel it most. A close friendship, continued through so long a period, and such diversified scenes, had grown into an affection imperfectly expressed by that term; and I value accordingly the manifestation in his last hours that the reciprocity never abated.

  Madison wrote also to Alexander Hamilton Jr., the son of his former friend wh
o had been killed in a duel in 1804. The younger Hamilton had served as a captain in the War of 1812 and, like his father, was a lawyer in New York.k “We may cherish the consolation,” Madison told Hamilton’s son, “nevertheless, that his memory, like that of the other heroic worthies of the Revolution gone before him, will be embalmed in the grateful affections of a posterity enjoying the blessings which he contributed to procure for it.”7

  In 1858, the body of James Monroe was returned to Virginia with much fanfare, where it remains in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery, in a simple stone coffin guarded by iron bars and displayed above the ground “[a]s an evidence of the affection of Virginia for her good and honored son.”l

  Madison, physically the weakest and sickliest of the Founding Fathers, outlasted them all. On June 28, 1836, at the age of eighty-five, Madison joined the others in death. He had rejected the pleas of some who wanted him to take certain medicines that might prolong his life (and his suffering) until the Fourth of July.

  Madison was buried beneath the earth at Montpelier, where he had first arrived in the arms of his mother in the weeks after his baptism, and where, when not away on the business of his country, he made his home all the days of his life.

  The epitaph of James Madison reads simply:Madison

  Born March 16th, 1751

  Died June 28th, 1836

  These unremarkable epitaphs and modest markers are all that testify, to the living, that great men lie here. For men whose monument is nothing less than the greatest, freest, and most prosperous nation in all the history of the world, perhaps nothing more is needed.

  Through the choices they made, the hardships they endured, and their tireless struggles, these men won an improbable Revolution, threw off the bonds of the weak and worthless Articles of Confederation, and established the most ingenious form of government ever devised, to which they added a promise of fundamental liberties that was and is the envy of the world.

  It falls to the living to protect this legacy—to strive for these principles as the first generation did. Even when circumstances appeared hopeless, when setbacks tried the fortitude of the most patient men, they saw it as their duty to persevere.

  And when we confront the challenges that test every generation, when we fight to expand the blessings of liberty and fulfill the best ideals of James Madison and James Monroe, we honor their memory more than any work of marble.

  Remember.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My name appears alone on the cover of this book, my first, but it is the work of many hands.

  I am so grateful to God, with whom all things are possible but without whom nothing is possible. “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the Lord” (Proverbs 21:31 NIV).

  I’m blessed with the constant support of my incredible family, my mother Anna to whom this book is dedicated and my sister Cathy, a Victorian scholar who will finally have to read something by a living author.

  I have incredible friends. Your enthusiasm made it impossible for me not to finish. This work is better for your efforts.

  James Slattery is simply the best friend a person can have. Nolan Davis’s mentorship changed the trajectory of my life.

  Some were there from the very beginning of this project, with unlimited encouragement and advice:

  Chris Ashby, Jeff Choudry, Danny and Bonnie Mazza, Maggie McPherson, Erin Montgomery, Tina Ramirez, I’m talking about you.

  Many others took the time to read as it grew into something resembling a book. Some took the time to offer their valuable suggestions: Danna Buchanon, Jeremy Duda, Eric Johnson, Ashley King, Rob Peck, Brooke Robinson, Jonathan Shuffield.

  My agent Jason Ashlock believed instantly in this project and in me, and was soon joined by the professionals at Regnery Publishing, especially Publisher Marji Ross and Associate Publisher Alex Novak. I’m thankful to them and to everyone on the editing and marketing teams who have worked hard to help me to tell this incredible story.

  NOTES

  PROLOGUE

  1 Gordon R. Denboer, The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788-1790 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990) 4:228 (hereafter cited as First Federal Elections).

  2 Ibid.

  3 First Federal Elections, 388.

  4 Ibid., 263.

  5 Ibid., 228.

  6 The Papers of James Madison (Chicago, Charlottesville: University of Chicago Press and University of Virginia Press 1962–1991), 12:141 (hereafter cited as Madison).

  7 First Federal Elections, 264.

  8 Ibid., 210.

  9 Robert Licht, Framers and Fundamental Rights (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1992), 30.

  10 Madison 12:37–38.

  CHAPTER 1

  1 Church of England 1662 The Book of Common Prayer, http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1662/baptism.pdf (accessed August 8, 2011).

  2 George Elliot Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution, 1763–1775, 19 (hereafter cited as Preliminaries).

  3 Martha W. McCartney, Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607–1635 (Genealogical Publishing Co., 2007), 472.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Samuel Blair, An Account of the College of New Jersey (James Parker, 1764).

  6 Madison 1:66.

  7 Blair, An Account of the College of New Jersey.

  8 James Banner, Essay for Princeton University, http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/madison_james.html (accessed June 8, 2011).

  9 Madison 1:66, editorial notes.

  10 Cody Burnet, The Continental Congress (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941), 17 (hereafter cited as Burnet).

  11 Preliminaries, 274.

  12 Burnet, 18.

  13 Ibid.

  14 Marion Mills Miller, ed., Great Debates in American History (New York: Current Literature Publishing Company, 1913) 1:84.

  15 Burnet, 30.

  16 Ibid., 47.

  17 Ibid., 51.

  18 Ibid.

  19 Preliminaries, 294.

  20 Burnet, 58.

  21 Madison 1:147, editorial note.

  22 Henry Mayer, A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 243 (hereafter cited as Son of Thunder).

  23 Ibid., 244.

  24 Ibid., 245.

  25 Preliminaries, 305–6.

  26 Son of Thunder, 243.

  27 James Monroe, The Autobiography of James Monroe, ed. Stuart Gerry Brown (Syracuse University Press 1959), 21 (hereafter cited as Monroe, Autobiography).

  28 Ibid., 22.

  29 Ibid., 22–23.

  30 Preliminaries, 287.

  31 Son of Thunder, 62.

  32 Burnet, 68.

  33 Ibid., 76.

  34 Ibid., 82.

  35 Ibid.

  36 Kenneth C. Davis, America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 2008), 210.

  37 Burnet, 87.

  38 James Morton Smith, ed., A Republic of Letters (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 47.

  39 John Fiske, The American Revolution (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1897), 212.

  40 Ibid.

  CHAPTER 2

  1 Son of Thunder, 292.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Thomas Edward Watson, Thomas Jefferson (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1900), 46.

  4 Hugh Blair Grigsby, The Virginia Convention of 1776, 19.

  5 Virginia Constitution of 1776.

  6 Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, found in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, November 1884, 297.

  7 Burnet, 90.

  8 Ibid., 213.

  9 Ibid., 219.

  10 Ibid., 345.

  11 Monroe, Autobiography, 23.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Ibid., 24.

  14 Ibid., 25.

  15 Ibid., 26.

  16 Debbie Levy, James Monroe (Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company, 2005), 19 (hereafter c
ited as Levy).

  17 Ibid.

  18 Ibid., 26.

  19 Daniel Preston, ed., The Papers of James Monroe (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003) 2:4 (hereafter cited as Papers of James Monroe).

  20 Monroe, Autobiography, 26.

  21 Journal of the Virginia House of Delegates, 77–81 (hereafter cited as JHVD).

  22 Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography, 277 (University of Virginia Press, 1971) (hereafter cited as Ketcham).

  23 Papers of James Monroe 2:4.

  24 Monroe, Autobiography, 6.

  25 Ibid., 29.

  26 Papers of James Monroe 5:2.

  27 Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1990), 19 (hereafter cited as Ammon).

  28 Robert Middlekauf, The Glorious Cause (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 387 (hereafter cited as Glorious Cause).

  29 Glorious Cause, 396.

  30 Ibid.

  31 Ibid., 397.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Ammon, 19.

  34 Glorious Cause, 391.

  35 Burnet, 249–50.

  36 Ibid., 250–51

  37 Ibid., 255.

  38 Ibid.

  39 Ibid.

  40 Madison 1:216.

  41 Ibid., 223.

  42 President’s House, Colonial Williamsburg, http://www.history.org/almanack/places/hb/hbpres.cfm (accessed June 8, 2011).

  43 Glorious Cause, 411.

  44 Papers of James Monroe 2:7.

  45 Glorious Cause, 412.

  46 Papers of James Monroe 2:8.

  47 Madison 1:241.

  48 Ibid., 240.

  49 Ibid.

  50 Ibid., editorial notes.

  51 Ibid., 300, editorial notes.

  52 Ibid.

  53 Papers of James Monroe 2:10.

  54 Ibid., 11–12.

  55 Madison 1:318.

  56 Papers of James Monroe 2:14.