James Madison

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/ ' '. *■

'amencan ^tate^men

EDITED BT

JOHN T. MORSE, JR.

^Unimcmt ^tateicmm

JAMES MADISON

BY

SYDNEY HOWAKD GAY

BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street

1884

Mil e, ?.

*fci

OXFORD^

Copyright, 1884,
Bt SYDNEY HOWABD GAY.

AU rights reserved.

The Riverside Press^ Cambridge :
Electrotyped and Printed by II 0. Houghton & Co.

CONTENTS.

—^^ —

CHAPTER I.

Paoi
Thb Visoinia Madibons 1

CHAPTER II.
The Youko Statesman 16

CHAPTER ni.
In Conobess 29

CHAPTER IV.
In thb State Assembly 47

CHAPTER V.
In the Yiboinia Lboislatube 64

CHAPTER VI.
Public Distubbances and Anxieties .... 76

CHAPTER Vn.
The Constitutional Convention 88

CHAPTER Vm.
The Compbomiseb" 98

C(

CHAPTER IX.
Adoption op the Constitution . • • • -115

VI CONTENTS.

CHAPTER X
The First Congbebs 128

CHAPTER XL
National Finances. — Slayebt 151

CHAPTER XIL
Federalists and Rbfublioans 172

CHAPTER Xni.
Fbench Politics 193

CHAPTER XIV.
His Latest Yeabs in Conobess 21 6

CHAPTER XV. f

At Home. — *' Resolutions of '98 and '99 " . . . 234

CHAPTER XVL
Secbetabt of State 252

CHAPTER XVn.
The Embaboo 264

CHAPTER XVin. ^

Madison as Pbesident 283

\
CHAPTER XIX. It

Wab with England 301 tl

CHAPTER XX. |!

Conclusion 32t

INDEX 339 ^

128

151

JAMES MADISON.

172.

193 I

CHAPTER I.

THE VmGINIA MADISONS.

216 I James Madison was bom on March 16, 1761,
I at Port Conway, Virginia ; he died at Montpellier,
I in that State, on June 28, 1886. Mr. John

^^ I Quincy Adams, recalling, perhaps, the death of
I his own father and of Jefferson on the same

ggg ' Fourth of July, and that of Monroe on a subse-
quent anniversary of that day, may possibly have
seen a generous propriety in finding some equally

264 appropriate commemoration for the death of an-
other Virginian President. For it was quite pos-
sible that Virginia might think him capable of an
attempt to conceal, what to her mind would seem
to be an obvious intention of Providence : that all

301 the children of the " Mother of Presidents " should
be no less distinguished in their deaths than in
their lives — that the " other dynasty," which

^^^ John Randolph was wont to talk about, should
no longer pretend to an equality with them, not

2 JAMES MADISON.

merely in this world, but in the manner of going
out of it. At any rate, he notes the date of Mad-
ison's death, the twenty-eighth day of June, as
" the anniversary of the day on which the ratifi-
cation of the Convention of Virginia in 1788 had
affixed the seal of James Madison as the father
of the Constitution of the United States, when
his earthly part sank without a struggle into the
grave, and a spirit, bright as the seraphim that
surround the throne of Omnipotence, ascended to
the bosom of his God." There can be no doubt of
the deep sincerity of this tribute, whatever ques-
tion there may. be of its grammatical construction
and its rhetoric, and although the date is errone-
ous. The ratification of the Constitution of the
United States by the Virginia Convention was on
June 25, not on June 28. It is the misfortune of
our time that we have no living great men held in
such universal veneration that their dying on com-
mon days like common mortals seems quite impos-
sible. Half a century ago, however, the propriety
of such providential arrangements appears to have
been recognized almost as one of the "institu-
tions." It was the newspaper gossip of that time
that a " distinguished physician " declared that he
would have kept a fourth ex-President alive to
die on a Fourth of July, had the illustrious sick
man been under his treatment. The patient him-
self, had he been consulted, might, in that case,
possibly have declined to have a fatal illness pro-

THE VIRGINIA MADISONS. 8

longed a week to gratify the public fondness for
patriotic coincidence. But Mr. Adams's appropri-
ation of another anniversary answered all the pur-
pose, for that he made a mistake as to the date
does not seem to have been discovered.

It was accidental that Port Conway was the
birtiiplace of Madison. His maternal grandfather,
whose name v^as Conway, had a plantation at
that place, and young Mrs. Madison happened to
be th^re on a visit to her mother when her first
child, James, was bom. In the stately — not to
say, stilted — biography of him by William C.
Rives, the christened name of this lady is given as
Eleanor. Mr. Rives may have thought it not in
accordance with ancestral dignity that the mother
oi so distinguished a son should have been bur-
dened with so commonplace and homely a name
as Nelly. But we are afraid it is true that Nelly
was her name. No other biographer than Mr.
Rives, that we know of, calls her Eleanor. Even
Madison himself permits ^^ Nelly " to pass under
his eyes and from his hands as his mother's name.

In 1833-34 there was some correspondence be-
tween him and Lyman C. Draper, the historian,
which includes some notes upon the Madison
genealogy. These, the ex-President writes, were
•* made out by a member of the family," and they
may be considered, therefore, as having his sanc-
tion. The first record is that " James Madison
was the son of James Madison and Nelly Con-

TEE VIRGINIA MAVI80NS. 6

as much of a Northern or a Western fanner. Bat
they did not farm in Virginia ; they planted. Mr.
Kives says that the elder James was ^' a large
landed proprietor ; " and he adds, '^ a large landed
estate in Virginia . . . was a mimic common-
wealth, with its foreign and domestic relations,
and its regular administrative hierarchy." The
^^ foreign relations " were the shipping, once a
year, a few hogsheads of tobacco to a London fac-
tor ; the ^* mimic commonwealths " were clusters
of negro-huts, and the ^^ administrative hierarchy "
was the priest who was more at home at the tav-
ern or a horse-race than in the discharge of his
clerical duties.

As Mr. Madison had only to say of his immedi-
ate ancestors, — which seems to be all he knew
about them, — that they were in " independent
and comfortable circumstances," so he was, ap-

Taylor. His mother was the daughter of Francis Conway and
Bebeoca Catlett.

" His paternal grandfather was the son of John Madison and
Isabella Minor Todd. His paternal grandmother, the daughter
of James Taylor and Martha Thompson.

** His maternal grandfather was the son of Edwin Conway and
Elizabeth Thornton. His maternal grandmother, the daughter
of John Catlett and Gaines.

" His father was a planter, and dwelt on the estate now called
Moutpellier where he died February 27, 1801, in the 78th year of
his age. His mother died at the same place in 1829, February
11th, in the 98th year of her age.

" His grandfathers were also planters. It appears that his an-
cestors, on both sides, were not among the most wealthy of the
country, but in independent and comfortable circumstances."

6 JAMES MADI80N.

patently, as little inclined to talk about himself ;
even at that age \rhen it is supposed that men who
have enjoyed celebrity find their own lives the
most agreeable of subjects. In answer to Dr.
Draper's inquiries he wrote this modest letter,
now for the first time published: —

''MoNTPELLiER, August 9, 1833.

" Deab Sir, — Since your letter of the 3d of June
came to hand, my iDcreasiDg age and continued mala-
dies, with the many attentions due from me, had caused
a delay in acknowledging it, for which these circumr
stances must be an apology, in your case, as I have
been obliged to make them in others.

** You wish me to refer you to sources of printed in-
formation on my career in life, and it would afford me
pleasure to do so ; but my recollection on the suhject is
very defective. It occurs [to me] that there was a bio-
graphical volume in an enlarged edition compiled hy
General or Judge Rodgers, of Pennsylvania, and which
may perhaps have included my name, among others.
When or where it was published I cannot say. To this
reference I can only add generally the newspapers at
the seat of government and elsewhere during the elec-
tioneering periods, when I was one of the objects under
review. I need scarcely remark that a life, which has
been so much a public life, must of course be traced in
the public transactions in which it was involved, and
that the most important of them are to be found in doc-
uments already in print, or soon to be so.

" With friendly respects, James Madison.

" Ltman C. Dhafeb, Lockport, N. Y."

THE VIRGINIA MADI80NS. 7

The genealogical statement, it will be observed,
does not go farther back than Mr. Madison's
great-grandfather, John. Mr. Rives supposes that
this John was the son of another John who, as ^^the
pious researches of kindred have ascertained,"
took oat a patent for land about 1658, between the
North and York rivers on the shores of Chesa-
peake Bay. The same writer further assumes
that this John was descended from Captain Isaac
Madison, whose name appears ^'in a document
in the State Paper Office at London containing
a list of the Colonists in 1628." From Sains-
bury's Calendar ^ we learn something more of this
Captain Isaac than this mere mention. Under
date of January 24, 1628, there is this record :
" Captain Powell, gunner, of James City, is dead ;
Capt. Nuce (?), Capt. Maddison, Lieut. Craddock's
brother, and divers more of the chief men re-
ported dead." But either the report was not alto-
gether true, or there was another Isaac Maddison ;
for the name appears among the signatures to a
letter dated about a month later — February 20 —
from the Governor, Council, and Assembly of
Virginia to the King. It is of record, also, that
four months later still, on June 4, '^ Capt. Isaac
and Mary Maddison " were before the Governor

1 Calendar of State Papen, Colonial Series, 1574-1660, Pre-
serred in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Pablic
Record Office, edited bj W. Noel Sainsbury, Esq., etc London,

186a

8 JAME8 MADISON.

and Council as witnesses in the case of Greville
Pooley and Cicely Jordan^ between whom there
was a ** supposed contract of marriage/' made
** three or four days after her husband's death."
But the lively widow, it seems, afterward " con-
tracted herself to Will Ferrar before the Governor
and Council, and disavowed the former contract,"
and the case therefore became so complicated that
the court was ^^ not able to decide so nice a differ-
ence." What Captain Isaac and Mary Maddison
knew about the matter the record does not tell
us ; but the evidence is conclusive that if there
was but one Isaac Maddison in Virginia in 1623
he did not die in January of that year. Probably
there was but one, and he, as Rives assumes, was
the Captain Madyson of whose "achievement,"
as Rives calls it, there is a brief narrative in John
Smith's " General History of Virginia."

Besides the record in Sainsbury's Calendar of
the rumor of the death of this Isaac in Virginia,
in January, 1623 ; his signature to a letter to the
King in February ; and his appearance as a wit-
ness before the Council in the case of the widow
Jordan, in June, it appears by Hotten's Lists of
colonists, taken from the Records in the English
State Paper Department, that Captain Isacke
Maddeson and Mary Maddeson were living in 1624
at West and Sherlow Hundred Island. The next
year, at the same place, he is on the list of dead ;
and there is given under the same date "The

THE VIRGINIA MADI80N8. 9

muster of Mrs. Mary Maddison, widow, aged 30
years." Her family consisted of " Katherin Lay-
den, child, aged 7 years," and two servants.
Katherine, it may be assumed, was the daughter
of the widow Mary and Captain Isaac, and their
only child. These ^^ musters," it should be said,
appear always to have been made with great care,
and there is therefore hardly a possibility that a
son, if there were one, was omitted in the numer-
ation of the widow's family, while the name and
age of the little girl, and the names and ages of
the two servants, the date of their arrival in Vir-
ginia, and the name of the ship that each came
in, are all carefully given. The conclusion is in-
evitable ; Isaac Maddison left no male descend-
ants, and President Madison's earliest ancestor in
Virginia, if it was not his great-grandfather John,
must be looked for somewhere else.

Mr. Rives knew nothing of these Records. His
first volume was published before either Sains-
bury's Calendar or Hotten's Lists; and the re-
searches, on which he relied, " conducted by a
distinguished member of the Historical Society of
Virginia" in the English State Paper Office,
were, so far as they related to the Madisons, in-
complete and worthless. The family was not,
apparently, "coeval with the foundation of the
Colony," and did not arrive " among the earliest
of the emigrants in the new world." That dis-
tinction cannot be claimed for James Madison,

10 JAMES MADISON,

nor is there any reason for supposing that he be-
lieved it could be. He seemed quite content with
the knowledge that so far back as his great-grand-
father his ancestors had been respectable people,
*^ in independent and comfortable circumstances."

Of his own generation there were seven chil-
dren, of whom James was the eldest, and alone
became of any note, except that the rest were
reputable and contented people in their stations of
life. A hundred years ago the Arcadian Vir-
ginia, for which Governor Berkeley had thanked
God so devoutly, — when there was not a free
school nor a press in the province, — had passed
away. The elder Madison resolved, so Mr. Rives
tells us, that his children should have advantages
of education which had not been within his own
reach, and that they should all enjoy them equally.
James was sent to a school where he could at
least begin the studies which should fit him to
enter college. Of the master of that school we
know nothing except that he was a Scotchman,
of the name of Donald Robertson, and that many
years afterward, when his son was an applicant
for office to Madison, then Secretary of State, the
pupil gratefully remembered his old master, and
indorsed upon the application that ** the writer is
son of Donald Robertson, the learned Teacher in
King and Queen County, Virginia."

The preparatory studies for college were finr
ished at home under the clergyman of the parish,

THE VIRGINIA MADISONS. 11

the Rev. Thomas Martin, who was a member of
Mr. Madison's family, perhaps as a private tutor,
perhaps as a boarder. It is quite likely that it
was by the advice of this gentleman — who was
from New Jersey — that the lad was sent to
Princeton, instead of to William and Mary Col-
lege in Virginia. At Princeton, at any rate, he
entered at the age of eighteen, in 1769; or, to
borrow Mr. Rives's eloquent statement of the
fact, "the young Virginian, invested with the
toga virUia of anticipated manhood, we now see
launched on that disciplinary career which is to
form him for the future struggles of life."

One of his biographers says that he shortened
his collegiate term by taking in one year the
studies of the junior and senior years ; but that
he remained another twelve-month at Princeton
for the sake of acquiring Hebrew. On his return
home he undertook the instruction of his younger
brothers and sisters, while pursuing his own stud-
ies. Still another biographer asserts that he be-
gan immediately to read law; but Rives gives
some evidence that he devoted himself to theol-
ogy. This and his giving himself to Hebrew for
a year point to the ministry as his chosen profes-
sion. But if we rightly interpret his own words,
he had little strength or spirit for a pursuit of any
sort. His first " struggle of life " was apparently
with ill health, and the career he looked forward
to was a speedy journey to another world. In a

12 JAME8 MADISON.

letter to a friend (November, 1772) he writes, " I
am too dull and infirm now to look out for ex-
traordinary things in this world, for I think my
sensations for many months have intimated to
me not to expect a long or healthy life ; though
it may be better with me after some time; but I
hardly dare expect it, and therefore have little
spirit or elasticity to set about anything that is
difficult in acquiring, and useless in possessing
after one has exchanged time for eternity." In
the same letter he assures his friend that he ap-
proves of his choice of history and morals as the
subjects of his winter studies ; but, he adds, ^^ I
doubt not but you design to season them with a
little divinity now and then, which, like the phi-
losopher's stone in the hands of a good man, will
turn them and every lawful acquirement into the
nature of itself, and make them more precious
than fine gold."

The bent of his mind at this time seems to
have been decidedly religious. He was a diligent
student of the Bible, and, Mr. Rives says, *' he
explored the whole history and evidences of
Christianity on every side, through clouds of wit-
nesses and champions for and against, from the
fathers and schoolmen down to the infidel philos-
ophers of the eighteenth century." So wide a
range of theological study is remarkable in a
youth of only two or three and twenty years of
age ; but, remembering that he was at this time

THE VIRGINIA MADIBONS. 18

living at home, it is even more remarkable that
in the bouse of an ordinary planter in Virginia
a hundred and twenty years ago could be found a
library so rich in theology as to admit of study so
exhaustive. But in Virginia history nothing is
impossible.

His studies on this subject, however, whether
wide or limited, bore good fruit. Religious intol-
erance was at that time common in his immediate
neighborhood, and it aroused him to earnest and
open opposition ; nor did that opposition cease till
years afterward, when freedom of conscience was
established by law in Vii^inia, largely by his la-
bors and influence. Even in 1774, when all the
colonies were girding themselves for the coming
revolutionary conflict, he turned aside from a dis-
cussion of the momentous question of the hour, in
a letter to his friend^ in Philadelphia, and ex-
claimed with unwonted heat : —

^' But away with politics ! . . . That diabolical, hell-
conceived principle of persecution rages among some ;
and, to their eternal infamy, the clergy can furnish
their quota of imps for such purposes. There are at
this time in the adjacent country not less than five or
six well-meaning men in close jail for publishing their
religious sentiments, which in the main are very ortho-
dox. I have neither patience to hear, talk, or think of

^ The letters to a friend , from which we have qnotedt were
written to William Bradford, Jr., of Philadelphia, afterward At-
torney-General in Washington's administration. They are given
in fuU in The Writings of James Madison, yoL L

14 JAMES MADISON.

anything relative to this matter ; for I have squabbled
and scolded, abused and ridiculed so long about it to lit-
tle purpose that I am without common patience."

These are stronger terms than the mild-tern*
pered Madison often indulged in. But he felt
strongly. Probably he, no more than many
other wiser and older men, understood what was
to b€» the end of the political struggle which was
getting so earnest ; but evidently in his mind it
was religious rather than civil liberty which was
to be guarded. '^ If the Church of England/' he
says in the same letter, '' had been the established
and general religion in all the Northern colonies,
as it has been among us here, and uninterrupted
harmony had prevailed throughout the continent,
it is clear to me that slavery and subjection might
and would have been gradually insinuated among
us;"

He congratulated his friend that they had not
permitted the tea-ships to break cargo in Philadel-
phia; and Boston, he hoped, would *^ conduct
matters with as much discretion as they seem to
do with boldness." These things were interest-
ing and important; but "away with politics!
Let me address you as s^tudent and philosopher,
and not as a patriot." Shut off from any contact
with the stirring incidents of that year in the
towns of the coast, he lost something of the sense
of proportion. To a young student, solitary, ill
in body, perhaps a triQe morbid in mind, a lit-

THE VIRGINIA MADI80N8. 15

tie discontented that all the learning gained at
Princeton could find no better use than to save
schooling for the six youngsters at home, — to him
it may have seemed that liberty was more seri-
ously threatened by that outrage, under his own
eyes, of "five or six well-meaning men in close
jail for publishing their religious sentiments,"
than by any tax which Parliament could contrive.
Not that lie overestimated the importance of this
"Wrong, but that he underestimated the importance
of that. He was not long, however, in getting
the true perspective.

CHAPTER 11.

THE YOUNG STATESMAN.

Madison's place, both from temperament and
from want of physical vigor, was in the council,
not in the field. One of his early biographers
says that he joined a military company, raised in
his own coanty, in preparation for war ; but this,
there can hardly be a doubt» is an error. He
speaks with enthusiasm of the '' high-spirited "
volunteers, who came forward to defend " the honor
and safety of their country ; " but there is no in-
timation that he chose for himself that way of
showing his patriotism. But of the Committee of
Safety, appointed in his county in 1774, he was
made a member — perhaps the youngest, for he
was then only twenty-three years old.

Eighteen months afterward he was elected a
delegate to the Virginia Convention of 1776, and
this he calls " my first entrance into public life."
It gave him ako an opportunity for some distinc-
tion, which, whatever may have been his earlier
plans, opened public life to him as a career. The
first work of the convention was to consider and
adopt a series of resolutions instructing the Yir-

THE YOUNG STATESMAN. 17

ginian delegates in the Continental Congress, then
in session at Philadelphia, to urge an immediate
declaration of independence. The next matter
was to frame a Bill of Rights and a Constitution of
goyemment for the province. Madison was made a
member of the committee to which this latter sub-
ject was referred. One question necessarily came
up for consideration which had for him a peculiar
interest, and in any discussion of which he, no
doubt, felt quite at ease. This was concerning re-
ligious freedom. An article in the proposed Dec-
laration of Rights provided that ^^ all men should
enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of re-
ligion, according to the dictates of conscience,
unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate,
tmless, under color of religion, any man disturb
the peace, happiness, or safety of society." It
does not appear - that Mr. Madison offered any
objection to the article in the committee ; but
when the report was made to the convention he
moved an amendment. He pointed out the dis-
tinction between the recognition of an absolute
right and the toleration of its exercise ; for toler-
ation implies the power of jurisdiction. He pro-
posed, therefore, instead of providing that "all
men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the ex-
ercise of religion," to declare that " all men are
equally entitled to the full and free exercise of it
according to the dictates of conscience ; " and that

*^no man or class of men ought, on account of re-

2

18 JAMES MADiaON.

ligion, to be invested with peculiar emoluments or
privileges, nor subjected to any penalties or disa-
bilities, unless, under color of religion, the preser-
vation of equal liberty and the existence of the
State be manifestly endangered." This distinction
between the assertion of a right and the promise
to grant a privilege only needed to be pointed out.
But Mr. Madison evidently meant more ; he meant
not only that religious freedom should be assured,
but that an Established Church, which, as we have
already seen, he believed to be dangerous to lib-
erty, should be prohibited. Possibly the conven-
tion was not quite ready for this latter step ; or
possibly its members thought that, as the greater
includes the less, should freedom of conscience be
established a state church would be impossible,
and the article might therefore be stripped of super-
erogation and verbiage. At any rate it was re-
duced one half, and finally adopted in this simpler
form : " That religion, or the duty we owe to our
Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be
directed only by reason and conviction, not by force
or violence ; and, therefore, all men are equally
entitled to the free exercise of religion according
to the dictates of conscience." Thus it stands to
this day in the Bill of Rights of Virginia, and of
other States which subsequently made it their own,
possessing for us the personal interest of being the
first public work of the coming statesman.

Madison was thenceforth for the next forty

THE YOUNG STATESMAN. 19

years a public man. Of the first Assembly under
the new Constitution, he was elected a member.
For the next session also he was a candidate, but
failed to be returned for a reason as creditable to
him as it was uncommon then, whatever it may
be now, in Virginia. " The sentiments and man-
ners of the parent nation," Mr. Rives says, still
prevailed in Virginia, ^' and the modes of canvass-
ing for popular votes in that country were gener-
ally practiced. The people not only tolerated,
but expected and even required, to be courted and
treated. No candidate who neglected those atten-
tions could be elected." But the times, Mr. Mad-
ison thought, seemed ^'to favor a more chaste
mode of conducting elections," and he ^^deter-
mined to attempt, by an example, to introduce it."
He failed signally ; ^^ the sentiments and manners
of the parent nation" were too much for him. He
solicited no votes ; nobody got drunk at his ex-
pense ; and he lost the election. An attempt was
made to contest the return of his opponent on the
ground of corrupt influence, but, adds Mr. Rives,
in his sesquipedalian measure, ^^for the want of
adequate proof to sustain the allegations of the
petition, which in such cases it is extremely diffi-
cult to obtain with the requisite precision, the pro-
ceeding was unavailing except as a perpetual pro-
test upon the legislative records of the country,
against a dangerous abuse, of which one of her
sons, so qualified to serve her, and destined to be

20 JAMES MADISON.

one of her chief ornaments, was the early though
temporary victim." Mr. Rives does not mean that
Mr. Madison was for a little while in early life
the victim of a vicious habit ; but that he lost
votes because he would do nothing to encourage it
in others.

The country lost a good representative, but
their loss was his gain. The Assembly immedi-
ately elected him a member of the governor's
council, and in this position he so grew in public
favor that, two years afterward (1780), he was
chosen as a delegate to the Continental Congress.
He was still under thirty, and had he been even
a more brilliant young man than he really was, it
would not have been to his discredit had he only
been seen for the next year or two, if seen at all,
in the background. He had taken his seat among
men, every one of whom, probably, was his senior,
and among whom were many of the wisest men in
the country, not " older " merely, but ** better sol-
diers."

If not the darkest, at least there was no darker
year in the Revolution than that of 1780. Within
a few days of his arrival at Philadelphia, Madison
wrote to Jefferson, — then governor of Virginia, —
his opinion of the state of the country. It was
gloomy but not exaggerated. The only bright
spot he could see was the chance that Clinton's
expedition to South Carolina might be a failure ;
but within little more than a month from the date

THE YOUNG STATESMAN. 21

of his letter, Lincoln was compelled to surrender
Charleston, and the whole country south of Vir-
ginia seemed about to fall into the hands of the
enemy. Could he have foreseen that calamity,
his apprehensions might have been changed to
despair ; for he writes : —

*' Our army threatened with an immediate alternative
of disbanding or living on free quarter ; the public treas-
ury empty ; public credit exhausted, nay, the private
credit of purchaslDg agents employed, I am told, as far
as it will bear ; Congress complaining of the extortion
of the people ; the people of the improvidence of Con-
gress ; and the army of both ; our affairs requiring the
most mature and systematic measures, and the urgency
of occasions admitting only of temporary expedients,
and these expedients generating new difficulties; Con-
gress recommending plans to the several States for
execution, and the States separately rejudging the expe-
diency of such plans, whereby the same distrust of con-
current exertions that had damped the ardor of patri-
otic individuals must produce the same effect among the
States themselves ; an old system of finance discarded as
incompetent to our necessities, an untried and precarious
one substituted, and a total stagnation in prospect be-
tween the end of the former and the operation of the
latter. These are the outlines of the picture of our
public situation. I leave it to your own imagination to
fill them up.*'

He saw more clearly, perhaps, after the ex-
perience of one session of Congress, the true cause
of all these troubles ; at any rate he was able, in

22 JAMES MADISON.

a letter written in November of that year (1780),
to state it tersely and explicitly. The want of
money, he wrote to a friend, " is the source of all
our public difficulties and misfortunes. One or
two millions of guineas properly applied would
diffuse vigor and satisfaction throughout the whole
military department, and would expel the enemy
from every part of the United States."

But nobody knew better than he the difficulty
of raising funds except by borrowing abroad, and
that this was a precarious reliance. There jnust
be some sort of substitute for money. In specific
taxation he, had no faith. Such taxes, if paid at
all, would be paid, virtually, in the paper currency
or certificates of the States, and these had already
fallen to the ratio of one hundred to one; they
kept on falling till they reached the rate of a
thousand to one, and then soon became alto-
gether worthless. When the estimate for th^
coming year was under consideration, he proposed
to Congress that the States should be advised to
abandon the issue of this paper currency. *^ It
met," he says, "with so cool a reception that I
did not much urge it." The sufficient answer to
the proposition was, that "the practice was man-
ifestly repugnant to the Acts of Congress," and as
these were disregarded and could not be enforced,
a mere remonstrance would be quite useless. The
Union was little more than a name under the
feeble bonds of the Confederation, and each

THE YOUNG STATESMAN. 28

State was a law unto itself. Not that in this
case there was much reasonable ground for com-
plaint ; for what else could the States do? Where
there was no money there must be something
to take its place ; a promise to pay must be ao*
cepted instead of payment. The paper answered
a temporary purpose, though it was plain that in
the end it would be good for nothing.

The evil, however, was manifestly so great that
there was only the more reason for trying to mit-
igate it, if it could not be cured. Madison, like
the rest, had his remedy. He proposed, in a let-
ter to one of his colleagues, that the demand for
army supplies should be duly apportioned among
the people, their collection rigorously enforced,
and payment made in interest-bearing certificates,
not transferable, but to be redeemed at a specified
time after the war was over. The plan would un-
doubtedly have put a stop to the circulation of a
vast volume of paper money if the producers
would have exchanged the products of their labor
for certificates, useless afc the time of exchange,
and having only a possible prospective value in
case of the successful termination of an uncertain
war. Patriotic as the people were, they neither
would nor could have submitted to such a law,
nor had Congress the power to enforce it. But
Mr. Madison did not venture apparently to urge
his plan beyond its suggestion to his colleague.

Why the Assembly of Virginia should have

24 JAME8 MADISON.

proposed to elect an extra delegate to Congress,
early in 1781, is not clear, unless it be that one
of the number, Joseph Jones, being also a mem-
ber of the Assembly, passed much of his time
in Richmond. It does not appear, however, that
the delegate extraordinary was ever sent, per-
haps because it was known to Mr. Madison's
friends that it would be a mortification to him.
There was certainly no good reason for any dis-
trust of either his ability or his industry. One
could hardly be otherwise than industrious who
had it in him — if the story be true — to take but
three hours out of the twenty-four for sleep during
the last year of his college course, that he might
crowd the studies of two years into one. He
seemed to love work for its own sake, and he was
a striking example of how much virtue there is in
steadiness of pursuit. Not that he had at this
time any special goal for his ambition. His aim
seemed to be simply to do the best he could where-
ever he might be placed ; to discharge faithfully,
and to the best of such ability as he had, whatever
duty was intrusted to him. His report of the
proceedings in the Congressional session of 1782-
83, and the letters written during those years and
the year before, show that he was not merely dil-
igent but absorbed in the duties of his office.

He was more faithful to his constituents than
his constituents sometimes were to him. Any-
thing that might happen at that period for want

THE YOUNG STATESMAN. 25

of money can hardly be a matter of snrprise ; but
Virginia, eyen then, should have been able, it
would seem, to find enough to enable its members
of Congress to pay their board-bills. He com-
plains gently in his Addisonian way of the incon-
venience to which he was put for want of funds.
" I cannot," he writes to Edmund Randolph, " in
any way make you more sensible of the importance
of your kind attention to pecuniary remittances for
me, than by informing you that I have for some
time past been a pensioner on the favor of Hayne
Solomon, a Jew broker." A month later he
writes, that to draw bills on Virginia has been
tried, " but in vain ; " nobody would buy them ;
and he adds, ^^ I am relapsing fast into distress.
The case of my brethren is equally alarming."
Within a week he again writes : '^ I am almost
ashamed to reiterate my wants so incessantly to
you, but they begin to be so urgent that it is im-
possible to suppress them." But the Good Sa-
maritan, Solomon, is still an unfailing reliance.
** The kindness of our little friend in Front Street,
near the coffee house, is a fund which will pre-
serve me from extremities ; but I never resort to
it without great mortification, as he obstinately
rejects all recompense. The price of money is so
usurious, that he thinks it ought to be extorted
from none but those who aim at profitable specu-
lations. To a necessitous delegate he gratuitously
spares a supply out of his private stock." It is a

26 JAME8 MADISON.

pretty picture of the simplicity of the early days
of the Republic. Between the average modem
member and the money-broker, under such cir-
cumstances, there would lurk, probably, a contract
for carrying the mails or for Indian supplies.

Relief, however, came at last. An appeal was
made in a letter to the Governor of .Virginia,
which was so far public that anybody about the
executive office might read it. The answer to
this letter, says Mr. Madison, " seems to chide our
urgency." But there soon came a bill for two
hundred dollars, which, he adds, " very seasonably
enabled me to replace a loan by which I had an-
ticipated it. About three hundred and fifty more
(not less) would redeem me completely from the
class of debtors." It is to be hoped it came with-
out further chiding.^

The young member was not less attentive to
his congressional duties because of these little
difficulties in the personal ways and means. Mil-
itary movements seem, without altogether escap-
ing his attention, to have interested him the
least. In his letters to the public men at home,
which were meant in some degree to give such

1 The members of Congress were paid, at that time, by the
States they represented. Virginia allowed her delegates their
family expenses, including three servants and four horses, hooae
rent and fuel, two dollars a mile for travel, and twenty dollars a
day when in attendance on Congress. The members were re-
qaired to render an account, quarterly, of their household ex-
penses, and the State paid them when she had any money.

THE YOUNG STATESMAN. 27

infonnation as, in later times, the newspapers sup-
plied, questions relating to army affairs, even news
directly from the army, occupy the least space.
They are not always, for that reason, altogether
entertaining reading. One would be glad, occa-
sionally, to exchange their sonorous and rounded
periods for any expression of quick, impulsive
feeling* " I return you," he writes to Pendleton,
^^ my fervent congratulations on the glorious suc-
cess of the combined armies at York and Glouces-
ter. We have had from the Commander-in-Chief
an official report of the fact," — and so forth and
so forth ; and then for a page or more is a discus-
sion of the condition of British possessions in the
East Indies, that ^^ rich source of their commerce
and credit, severed from them, perhaps forever ; "
of ^' the predatory conquest of Eustatia," and of
the ^^ relief of Gibraltar, which was merely a neg-
ative advantage ; " — all to show that " it seems
scarcely possible for them much longer to shut
their ears against the voice of peace." There is
not a word in all this that is not quite true, perti-
nent, reflective, and becoming a statesman ; but
neither is there a word of sympathetic warmth
and patriotic fervor which at that moment made
the heart of a whole people beat quicker at the
news of a great victory, and in the hope that the
cause was gained at last.

All the letters have this preternatural solem-
nity, as if each was a study in style after the

28 JAMEa MADISON.

favorite Addisonian model. One wonders if he
did not, in the privacy of his own room, and with
the door locked, venture to throw his hat to the
ceiling and give one hurrah nnder his breath, at
the discomfiture of the vain and selfH3u£Eicient
Comwallis. But he seems never to have been
a young man. At one and twenty he gravely
warned his friend Bradford not ^' to suffer those
impertinent fops that abound in every city to
divert you from your business and philosophical
amusements. . • • Tou will make them respect
and admire you more by showing your indigna-
tion at their follies, and by keeping them at a
becoming distance." It was his loss, however,
and our gain. He was one of the men the times
demanded, and without whom they would have
been quite different times and followed by quite
different results. The sombre hue of his life was
due partly, no doubt, to natural temperament ;
partly to the want of health in his earlier man-
hood, which led him to believe that his days were
numbered; but quite as much, if not more than
either, to a keen sense of the responsibility resting
upon those to whom had fallen the conduct of
public affairs.

CHAPTER in.

IK CONGRESS.

Madison had grown steadily in the estimation
of his colleagues, as is shown, especially in 1783,
by the frequency of his appointment upon impor-
tant committees. He was a member of that one
to which was intrusted the question of national
finances, and it is plain, even in his own modest
report of the debates of that session, that he took
an important part in the long discussions of the
subject, and exercised a marked influence upon
the result. The position of the government was
one of extreme difficulty. To tide over an imme-
diate necessity, a further loan had been asked of
France in 1782, and bills were drawn against it
without waiting for acceptance. It was not very
likely, but it was not impossible, that the bills
might go to protest ; but even should they be hon-
ored, so irregular a proceeding was a humiliat-
ing acknowledgment of poverty and weakness, to
which some of the delegates, Mr. Madison among
them, were extremely sensitive.

The national debt altogether was not less than
forty million dollars. To provide for the interest

80 JAMBB MADISON,

on this debt, and a fond for expenses, it was neo-
essary to raise about three million dollars annu-
ally. But the sum actually contributed for the
support of the confederate government in 1782 was
only half a million dollars. This was not from
any absolute inability on the part of the people to
pay more ; for the taxes before the war were more
than double that sum, and for the first three or
four years of the war it was computed that, with
the depreciation of paper money, the people sub-
mitted to an annual tax of about twenty million
dollars. The real difficulty lay in the character of
the Confederation. Congress might contrive but
it could not command. The States might agree, or
they might disagree, or any two or more of them
might only agree to disagree ; and they were more
likely to do either of the last two than the first.
There was no power of coercion anywhere. All
that Congress could do was to try to frame laws
that would reconcile differences, and bring thir-
teen supreme governments upon some common
ground of agreement. To distract and perplex it
still more, it stood face to face with a well-disci-
plined and veteran army which might at any mo-
ment, could it find a leader to its mind, march
upon Philadelphia and deal with Congress as
Cromwell dealt with the Long Parliament. There
were some men, probably, in that body, who would
not have been sorry to see that precedent fol-
lowed. Washington might have done it if he

. IN CONGRESS, 81

would. Gates probably would have done it if he
could.

To ayert this threatened danger ; to contrive
taxation that should so far please the taxed that
they would refrain from using the power in their
hands to escape altogether any taxation for general
purposes, was the knotty problem this Congress
had to Bolye in order to save the Confederacy from
dissolution. There was no want of plans and ex*
pedients ; neither were there wanting men in that
body who clearly understood the conditions of the
problem, and how it might be solyed, and whose
aim was direct and unfaltering. Chief among
them were Hamilton, Wilson, Ellsworth, and
Madison. However wrong-headed, or weak, or in-
temperate others may have been, these men were
usually found together on important questions;
differii^ sometimes in details, but unmoved by
passion or prejudice, and strong from reserved
force, they overwhelmed their opponents at the
right moment with irresistible argument and by
weight of character.

In the discussion of the more important ques-
tions Mr. Madison is conspicuous — conspicuous
without being obtrusive. A reader of the debates
can hardly fail to be struck with his familiarity
with English constitutional law, and its applica-
tion to the necessities of this off-shoot of the Eng-
lish people in setting up a government for them-
selves. The stores of knowledge he drew upon

82 JAMES MADISON.

must needs have been laid up in the years of quiet
study at home before he entered upon public life.
For there was no congressional library then where
a member could ^^ cram " for debate ; and — though
Philadelphia already had a fair public library —
the member who was armed at all points must
have equipped himself before entering Congress.
In this respect Madison probably had no equal,
except Hamilton, and possibly Ellsworth. To
the need of such a library, however, he and others
were not insensible. As chairman of a commit-
tee he reported a list of books ^^ proper for the
use of Congress," and advised their purchase.
The report declared that certain authorities upon
international law, treaties, negotiations, and other
questions of legislation, were absolutely indispen-
sable, and that the want of them ^^ was manifest
in several Acts of Congress." But the Congress
was not to be moved by a little thing of that sort.
The attitude of his own State sometimes em-
barrassed him in the satisfactory discharge of his
duty as a legislator. The earliest distinction he
won after entering Congress was as chairman of a
committee to enforce upon Mr. Jay, then minister
to Spain, the instructions to adhere tenaciously to
the right of navigation on the Mississippi, in his
negotiations for an alliance with that power. Mr.
Madison, in his dispatch, maintained the American
side of the question with a force and clearness to
which no subsequent discussion of the subject ever

IN CONGRESS. 88

added anything. He left nothing unsaid that could
be said to sustain the right either on the ground of
expediency, of national comity, or of international
law ; and his arguments were not only in accord-
ance with his own convictions, but with the in-
structions of the Assembly of his own State. It
was a question of deep interest to Virginia, whose
western boundary at that time was the Mississippi.
But Virginia soon afterward shifted her position.
The course of the war in the Southern States in
the winter of 1780-81 aroused in Georgia and
the Carolinas renewed anxiety for an alliance with
Spain. The fear of their people was, that, in case
of the necessity for a sudden peace while the
British troops were in possession of those States
or parts of them, they might be compelled to re-
main as British territory under the application of
the rule of uti possidetis. It was urged, therefore,
that the right to the Mississippi should be surren-
dered to Spain, if it were made the condition of
an alliance. In deference to her neighbors Vir-
ginia proposed that Mr. Jay should be reinstructed
accordingly.

Mr. Madison was not in the least shaken in his
conviction. With him, the question was one of
right rather than of expediency. But not many
at that time ventured to doubt that representa-
tives must implicitly obey the instructions of their
constituents. He yielded; but not till he had ap-
pealed to the Assembly to reconsider their deci-

3

84 JAME8 MADISON.

sion. The scale was turned ; in deference to the
wishes of the Southern States new orders were
sent to Mr. Jay. Mr. Madison, however, had not
long to wait for his justification. When the im-»
mediate danger, which had so alarmed the South,
had passed away, Virginia returned to her original
position. New instructions were again sent to
her representatives, and Mr. Jay was once more
advised by Congress, that on the Mississippi ques-
tion his government would yield nothing.

On another question, two years afterward, Mr.
Madison refused to accept a position of inconsist-
ency in obedience to instructions which his State
attempted to force upon him. No one saw more
clearly than he how absolutely necessary to the
preservation of the Confederacy was the settle-
ment of its financial affairs on some sound and
just basis ; and no one labored more earnestly and
more intelligently than he to bring about such a
settlement. Congress had proposed in 1781 a tax
upon imports, each State to appoint its own col-
lectors but the revenue to be paid over to the
federal government to meet the expenses of the
war. Rhode Island alone, at first, refused her
assent to this scheme. An impost law of five per
cent, upon certain imports and a specific duty
upon others for twenty-five years were an essential
part of the plan of 1783, to provide a revenue to
meet the interest on the public debt and for other
general purposes. That Rhode Island would con-

IN CONGRESS. 85

tinue obstinate on this point was more than prob-
able ; and the only hope of moving her was that
she should be shamed or persuaded into compli-
ance by the combined influence of all the other
States.

Mr. Madison was as bitter as he could ever be
in his reflections upon that State, whose course,
he thought, showed a want of any sense of honor
or of patriotism. Virginia, he argued, should re-
buke her by making her own compliance with the
law the more emphatic, as an example for all the
rest. But Virginia did exactly the other thing.
At the moment when debate upon the revenue
law was the most earnest, and the prospect of
carrying it the most hopeful ; when a committee
appointed by Congress had already started on
their journey northward to expostulate with, and,
if possible, conciliate Rhode Island ; — at that
critical moment came news from Virginia that she
had revoked her assent of a previous session to
the impost law. This was equivalent to instruct-
ing her delegates in Congress to oppose any such
measure. The situation was an awkward one for
a representative who had put himself among the
foremost of those who were pushing this policy,
and who had been making invidious reflections
upon a State which opposed it. The rule that the
will of the constituents should govern the repre-
sentative, he now declared, had its exceptions, and
here was a case in point. He continued to en-

86 JAME8 MADISON.

force the necessity of a general law to provide a
revenue, though his arguments were no longer
pointed with the selfishness and want of patriot-
ism shown by the people of Rhode Island. In the
end his firmness was justified by Virginia, who
again shifted her position when the new act was
submitted to her.

The operation of the law was limited to five
and twenty years. This Hamilton opposed, and
Madison supported; and in this difference some
of the biographers of both see the foreshadowing
of future parties. But it is more likely that
neither of those statesmen thought of their di£Eer-
ence of opinion as difference of principle. The
question was, whether anything could be gained
by a deference to that party which, both felt at
that time, threatened to throw away, in adhering
to the state-rights doctrine, all that was gained
by the Revolution. They were agreed upon the
necessity of a general law, supreme in all the
States, to meet the obligation of a debt contracted
for the general good. Unless — wrote Madison in
February — ^^ unless some amicable and adequate
arrangements be speedily taken for adjusting all
the subsisting accounts and discharging the public
engagements, a dissolution of the Union will be
inevitable." He was willing, therefore, to tem-
porize, that the necessary assent of the State to
such a law might be gained. Nobody hoped that
the public debt would be paid o£E in twenty-fi.vQ

IN CONGRESS. 87

years ; but to assame to levy a federal tax in the
States for a longer period, or till the debt should
be discharged, might so arouse state jealousy that
it would be impossible to get an assent to the law
anywhere. If the law for twenty-five years should
be accepted, the threatened destruction of the
government would be escaped for the present, and
it might, at the end of a quarter of a century,
be easy to reenact the law. At any rate the evil
day would be put ofiE. This was Madison's rea-
soning.

But Hamilton did not believe in putting off a
crisis. He had no faith in the permanency of the
government as then organized. If he were right,
what was the use or the wisdom of postponing
a catastrophe till to-morrow ? A possible escape
from it might be even more difficult to-morrow
than to-day. The essential difference between
the two men was, that Madison only feared what
Hamilton positively knew, or thought he knew.
It was a difference of faith. Madison hoped some-
thing would turn up in the course of twenty-five
years. Hamilton did not believe that anything
good could turn up under the feeble rule of the
Confederation. He would have presented to the
States, then and there, the question — would they
surrender to the Confederate Government the right
of taxation so long as that goverment thought it
necessary ? If not, then the Confederation was a
rope of sand, and the States had resolved them-

88 JAMEB MADISON.

selves into thirteen separate and independent gov-
ernments. Therefore he opposed the condition of
twenty-five years, and voted against the bill.

Nevertheless, when it became the law, he gave it
his heartiest support, and was appointed one of a
committee of three to prepare an address, which
Madison wrote, to commend it to the acceptance
of the States. Indeed, the last serious effort made
on behalf of the measure was made by Hamilton,
who used all his eloquence and influence to in-
duce the legislature of his own State to ratify it.
It was the law against his better judgment ; but
being the law he did his best to secure its recogni-
tion. But it failed of hearty support in most of
the States, while in New York and Pennsylvania
compliance with it was absolutely refused. Noth-
ing, therefore, would have been lost had Hamil-
ton's firmness prevailed in Congress ; and nothing
was gained by Madison's deference to the doc-
trine of state-rights, unless it was that the ques-
tion of a " more perfect Union " was put off to
a more propitious time, when a reconstruction of
the government under a new Federal Constitution
was possible. Meanwhile Congress borrowed the
money to pay the interest on money already bor-
rowed ; the Confederate Government floundered
deeper and deeper into inextricable difficulties;
the thirteen ships of state drifted farther and far-
ther apart, with a fair promise of a general wreck.

But the bill contained another compromise

IN CONGRESa, 89

which was not temporary, and once made could
not be easily unmade. Agreed to now, it became
a condition of the adoption of the Federal Con-
stitution four years later; and there, as nobody
now is so blind as not to see, it was the source of
infinite mischief for nearly a century, till a third
reconstruction of the Union was brought about by
the war of 1861-65. The Articles of Confedera-
tion required that ^^all charges of war and all
other expenses that shall be incurred for the com-
mon defense or general welfare " should be borne
by the States in proportion to the value of their
lands. It was proposed to amend this provision
of the Constitution, and for lands substitute popu-
lation, exclusive of Indians not taxed, as the basis
for taxation. But here arose at once a new and
perplexing question. There were, chiefly in one
portion of the country, about 760,000 '* persons
held to service or labor " — the euphuism for ne-
gro slaves which, evolved from some tender and
sentimental conscience, came into use at this pe-
riod. Should these, recognized only as property
by state law, be counted as 760,000 persons by
the laws of the United States ? ^ Or should they,
in the enumeration of population, be reckoned, in
accordance with the civil law, as pro nuilis^ pro
mortuia^ pro quadrupedibtia ; and therefore not to
be counted at all? Or should they, as those who

1 In some of the States slaves were reckoned as " chattels per-
sonal ; ** in others as " real estate."

40 JAMES MADISON.

owned them insisted, be counted, if included in
the basis of taxation, as fractions of persons only ?

The South contended that black slaves were
not equal to white men aa producers of wealth,
and that, by counting them as such, taxation
would be unequal and unjust. But whether
counted as units, or as fittctions of units, the
slaveholders insisted that representation should
be according to that enumeration. The Northern
reply was that, if representation was to be accord-
ing to population, the slaves being included, then
the slave States would have a representation of
property, for which there would be no equivalent
in States where there were no slaves; but, if
slaves were enumerated as a basis of representa-
tion, then that enumeration should also be taken
to fix the rate of taxation.

Here, at any rate, was a basis for an interesting
dead-lock. One simple way out of it would have
been to insist upon the doctrine of the civil law ;
to count the slaves only as pro quadrupedibuB^ to
be left out of the enumeration of population as
being no part of the State, as horses and cattle
were left out. But the bonds of union hung
loosely upon the sisters a hundred years ago;
there was not one of them who did not think she
was able to set up for herself and take her place
among the nations as an independent sovereign;
and it is more than likely that half of them would
have refused to wear those bonds any longer on

IN CONGRESS. 41

such a condition. There was no apprehension
then that slavery was to become a power for evil
in the State ; but there was intense anxiety lest
the States should fly asunder, form partial and
local anions among neighbors, or become entan-
gled in alliances with foreign nations, at the sacri-
fice of all, or much, that was gained by the Revo-
lution. To make any concession, therefore, to
slavery for the sake of the Union was hardly held
to be a concession.

The curious student of history^ however, who
loves to study those problems of what might have
happened, if events that did not happen had come
to pass, will find ample room for speculation in
the possibilities of this one. Had there been no
compromise, it is as easy to see now, as it was
easy to foresee then, how quickly the feeble bond
of union would have snapped asunder. But never-
theless, if the North had insisted that the slaves
should neither be counted nor represented at all,
or else should be reckoned in full and taxes levied
aciM>rdiDgly, the consequent dissolution of the Con-
federacy might have had consequences which then
nobody dreamed of. For it is not impossible, it
is not even improbable, that, in that event, the
year 1800 would have seen slavery in the process
of rapid extinction everywhere except in South
Carolina and Greorgia. Had the event been post-
poned in those States to a later period, it would
only have been because they had already found in

42 JAMEa MADISON.

the cultivation of indigo and rice a profitable use
for slave-labor, which did not exist in the other
slave States, where the supply of slaves was rap-
idly exceeding the demand. There can hardly be
a doubt that in case of the dissolution of the Con-
federacy, the Northern free-labor States would
soon have consolidated into a strong union of their
own. There was every reason for hastening it,
and none so strong for hindering it as those which
were overborne in the union which was actually
formed soon afterward between the free-labor and
slave-labor States. To such a Northern union
the border States, as they sloughed off the old
system, would have been naturally attracted ; nor
can there be a doubt that a federal union so
formed would ultimately have proved quite as
strong, quite as prosperous, quite as happy, and
quite as respectable among the nations, as one
purchased by compromises with slavery, followed,
as those compromises were, by three quarters of a
century of bitter political strife ending in a civil
war.

But the Northern members were no less ready to
make compromises than Southern members were
to insist upon them, these no more understanding
what they conceded than those understood what
they gained; for the future was equally concealed
from both. A committee reported that two blacks
should be rated as one free man. This was un-
satisfactory. To some it seemed too large, to

IN CONGRESS. 43

others too small. Other ratios, therefore, were
proposed — three to one, three to two, four to
one, and four to three. Mr. Madison at last, ^ in
order," as he said, " to give a proof of the sincer-
ity of his professions of liberality," — and doubt-
less he meant to be liberal, — proposed ^'that
slaves should be rated as five to three/' His mo-
tion was adopted, bat afterward reconsidered.
Four days later — April 1st — Mr. Hamilton re-
newed the proposition, and it was carried, Mad-
ison says, " without opposition.*' ^ The law on
this point was the precedent for the mischievoos
three fifths rule of the Constitution adopted four
years later.

Youth finally overtook the young man during
the last winter of his term in Congress, for he fell
in love. But it was an unfortunate experience,
and the outcome of it doubtless gave a more sombre
hue than ever to his life. His choice was not a
wise one. Probably Mr. Madison seemed a much
older man than he really was at that period of his
life, and to a young girl may have appeared really
advanced in years. At any rate it was his un-
happy fate to be attached to a young lady of more
than usual beauty and of irrepressible vivacity,

1 J. C. Hamilton says, in his History of the SepubUe, that " the
motion prevailed by a vote of aQ the States excepting Massacha*
setts and Rhode Island." But his understanding of the question
is in other respects incorrect — misunderstood, one may hope,
rather than misstated lest he should give credit, for what he con-
sidered a meritorious action, to Madison.

44 JAME8 MADISON.

— Miss Catherine Floyd, a daughter of General
William Floyd of Long Island, N. Y., who was one
of the signers of the Declaration of Independence,
and who was a delegate to Congress from 1774 to
1783. Miss Catherine's sixteenth birthday was in
April of the latter year ; Madison was double her
age, as his thirty-second birthday was a month
earlier. His suit, however, was accepted, and they
became engaged. But it was the father rather
than the daughter who admired the suitor ; for
the older statesman better understood the char-
acter, and better appreciated the abilities, of his
young colleague, and predicted a brilliant career
for him. The girl's wisdom was of another kind.
The future career which she foresaw and wanted
to share belonged to a young clergyman, who —
according to the reminiscences of an aged relative
of hers — " hung round her at the harpsichord,"
and made love in quite another fashion than that
of the solemn statesman, whom the old general
so approved of. It is altogether a pretty love
story, and one's sympathy goes out to the lively
young beauty, who was thinking of love and not
of ambition, as she turned from the old young
gentleman, discussing, with her wise father, the
public debt and the necessity of an impost, to that
really young young gentleman who knew how to
hang over the harpsichord, and talked more to
the purpose with his eyes than ever the other
could with his lips. There is a tradition that she

m CONGRESS. 45

was encouraged to be thus on with the new lore
before she was off with the old, by a faiend some^
what older than herself; and possibly this mar
turer lady may have thought that Madison would
be better mated with one nearer his own age. At
any rate the engagement was broken off before
long by the dismissal of the older lover, much to
the father's disappointment, and in due time the
young lady married the other suitor. There is no
reason that I know of for suppodng that she CTer
regretted that her more humble home was in a
rectory, when it might have been, in dae time,
had she chosen differently, in the White House at
Washington, and that afterward she might have
lived, the remaining sixteen years of her life, the
honored wife of a revered ex-President. Perhaps,
however, she smiled in those later years at the
recollection of having laughed in her gay and
thoughtless youth at her solemn lover, and that
when at last she dismissed him, she sealed her
letter — conveying to him alone, it may be, some
merry but mischievous meaning — with a bit of
rye-dough.^

Mr. Rives gives a letter from Jefferson to Mad-
ison at this time, which shows that he stood in
need of consolation from his friends. *^I sincerely

^ For the detaOfl, so far as tbej can naw be recalled, of tUa
single romantic incident in Mr. Madiflon's life, I am indebted
to Niooll Floyd, Esq., of Morichee, Long Island, a great-grandson
of General William Flojd.

46 JAMES MADISON.

lament," Mr. Jefferson wrote in his philosophical
way, " the misadventure which has happened, from
whatever cause it may have happened. Should it
be final, however, the world presents the same and
many other resources of happiness, and you pos-
sess many within yourself. Firnmess of mind and
unintermitting occupation will not long leave you
in pain. No event has been more contraiy to my
expectations, and these were founded on what I
thought a good knowledge of the ground. But of
all machines ours is the most complicated and
mexplicable." It was Solomon who said, ^^ there
be three things which are too wonderful for me,
yea four which I know not." This fourth was,
«a»e way of a man with a maid." He might
have added a fifth — the way of a maid with a
man — which, evidently, is what Jefferson meant.

CHAPTER IV.

IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY.

As the election of the same delegate to Con-
gress for consecutive sessions was then forbidden
by the law of Virginia, Mr. Madison was not re-
turned to that body in 1784. For a brief inter-
val of three mouths he made good use of his time,
we are told, by continuing his law studies, till in
the spring of that year he was chosen to repre-
sent his county in the Virginia Assembly. It may
be that ^^ the sentiments and manners of the pa-
rent nation," which he lamented seven years be-
fore, had passed away, and nobody now insisted
upon the privilege of getting drunk at the candi-
date's expense before voting for him. But it is
more likely that the electors had not changed.
The difference was in the candidate ; they did not
need to be allured to give their votes to a man
whom they were proud to call upon to represent
the county. Mr. Madison's reputation was already
made by his three years in Congress, and he now
easily took a place among the political leaders of
his own State.

The position was hardly less conspicuous or less

48 JAMES MADISON.

influential than that which he had held in the na-
tional Congress. What each State might do was of
quite as much importance as anything the Federal
Government might or could do. Congress could
neither open nor close a single port in Virginia to
commerce, whether domestic or foreign, without
the consent of the State ; it could not levy a tax
of a penny on anything, whether goods coming in
or products going out, if the State objected. As
a member of Congress, Mr. Madison might pro-
pose or oppose any of these things ; as a member
of the Virginia House of Delegates, he might, if
his influence was strong enough, carry or forbid
any or all of them, whatever might be the wishes
of Congress. It was in the power of Virginia to
influence largely the welfare of her neighbors, so
far as it depended upon commerce, and indirectly
that of every State in the Union.

In the Assembly, as in Congress, Mr. Madison's
aim was to increase the powers of the Federal
Government, for want of which it was rapidly sink-
ing into imbecility and contempt. " I acceded,'*
he says, "to the desire of my fellow-citizens of
the county that I should be one of its representa-
tives in the legislature," to bring about " a rescue
of the Union and the blessings of liberty staked
on it from an impending catastrophe." Early in
the session the Assembly assented to the amend-
ment to the Articles of Confederation proposed at
the late session of Congress, which substituted

IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY. 49

population for a land-valuation as the basis of rep-
resentation and of taxation. The Assembly also
asserted that all requisitions upon the States for
the support of the general government and to pro*
vide for the public debt should be complied with,
and payment of balances on old accounts should
be enforced ; and it assented to the recommenda-
tion of Congress that that body should have power
for a limited period to control the trade with for-
eign nations having no treaty with the United
States, in order that it might retaliate upon Great
Britain for excluding American ships from her
West India colonies. All these measures were de-
signed for " the rescue of the Union," and they
had, of course, Madison's hearty support. For it
was absolutely essential, as he believed, that some-
thing should be done if the Union was to be saved,
or to be made worth saving. But there were ob-
stacles on all sides. The commercial States were
reluctant to surrender the control over trade to Con-
gress ; in the planting States there was hardly any
trade that could be surrendered. In Virginia the
tobacco planter still clung to the old ways. He
liked to have the English ship take his tobacco
from the river bank of his own plantation, and to
receive from the same vessel such coarse goods as
were needed to clothe his slaves, with the more ex-
pensive luxuries for his own family, — dry goods
for his wife and daughter ; the pipe of madeira, the

coats and breeches, the hats, boots, and saddles for

4

50 JAMES MADiaON.

himself and his sons. He knew that this year's
crop went to pay — if it did pay — for last year's
goods, and that he was always in debt. But the
debt was on running account, and did not matter.
The London factor was skillful in charges for in-
terest and commissions, and the account for this
year was always a lien on next year's crop. He
knew, and the planter knew, that the tobacco could
be sold at a higher price in New York or Phila-
delphia than the factor got, or seemed to get, for
it in London ; that the goods sent out in exchange
were charged at a higher price than they could be
bought for in the Northern towns. Nevertheless,
the planter liked to see his own hogsheads rolled
on board ship by his own negroes at his own
wharf, and receive in return his own boxes and
bales shipped direct from London at his own order,
let it cost what it might. It was a shiftless and
ruinous system ; but the average Virginia planter
was not over-quick at figures, nor even at reading
and writing. He was proud of being lord of a
thousand or two acres, and one or two hundred
negroes, and fancied that this was to rule over, as
Mr. Rives called it, ^^a mimic commonwealth,
with its foreign and domestic relations, and its reg*
ular administrative hierarchy." He did not com-
prehend that the isolated life of a slave plantation
was ordinarily only a kind of perpetual barbecue,
with its rough sports and vacuous leisure, where
the roasted ox was largely wasted and not always

IN TEE STATE ASSEMBLY. 51

pleasant to look at. There was a rude hospitality,
where food, provided by unpaid labor, was cheap
and abundant, and where the host was always glad
to welcome any guest who would relieve him of his
own tediousness ; but there was little luxury and
no refinement where there was almost no culture.
Of course there were a few homes and families of
another order, where the women were refined and
the men educated ; but these were the exceptions.
Society generally, with its bluff, loud, self-con-
fident but ignorant planters, its numerous poor
whites, destitute of lands and of slaves, and its
mass of slaves whose aim in life was to avoid work
and escape the whip, was necessarily only one re-
move from semi-civilization.

It was not easy to indoctrinate such a people,
more arrogant than intelUgent, with new ideas.
By the same token it might be possible to lead
• them into new ways before they would find out
whither they were going. Mr. Madison hoped to
change the wretched system of plantation-com-
merce by a port bill, which he brought into the
Assembly. Imposts require custom-houses, and
obviously there could not be custom-houses nor
even custom-officers on every plantation in the
State. The bill proposed to leave open two ports
of entry for all foreign ships. It would greatly
simplify matters if all the foreign trade of the
State could be limited to these two ports only. It
would then be easy enough to enforce imposts,

52 JAME8 MADISON.

and the State would have something to surrender
to the Federal Gk)vernment to help it to a revenue,
if, happily, the time should ever come when all
the States should assent to that measure of salva-
tion for the Union. Not that this was the pri-
mary object of those who favored this port law ;
but the question of commerce was the question on
which everything hinged, and its regulation in
each State must needs have an influence, one way
or the other, upon the possibility of strengthening,
even of preserving, the Union. Everything de-
pended upon reconciling these state interests by
mutual concessions. The South was jealous of
the North, because trade flourished at the North
and did not flourish at the South. It seemed as
if this was at the expense of the South, and so,
in a certain sense, it was. The problem was to
find where the difficulty lay, and to apply the
remedy.

If commerce flourished at the North where each
of the States had one or two ports of entry only,
why should it not flourish in Virginia, if regulated
in the same way ? If those centres of trade bred
a race of merchants, who built their own ships,
bought and sold, did their own carrying, competed
with and stimulated each other, and encroached
upon the trade of the South, why should not
similar results follow in Virginia if she should
confine her trade to two or three ports ? If the
buyer and the seller, the importer and the con-

IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY. 68

samer, went to a common place of exchange in
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and pros-
perity followed as a consequence, why should they
not do the same thing at Norfolk? This was
what Madison aimed to bring about by the port
bill. But it was impossible to get it through the
legislature till three more ports were added to
the two which the bill at first proposed. When
the planters came to understand that such a law
would take away their cherished privilege of trade
along the banks of the riyers, wherever anybody
chose to run out a little jetty, the opposition was
persistent. At every succeeding session, till the
new Federal Constitution was adopted, an attempt
was made to repeal the act ; and though that was
not successful, each year new ports of entry were
added. It did not, indeed, matter much whether
the open ports of Virginia were two or whether
they were twenty. There was a factor in the
problem which neither Mr. Madison nor anybody
else would take into the account. It was possible,
of course, if force enough were used, to break up
the traffic with English ships on the banks of the
rivers ; but when that was done, commerce would
follow its own laws, in spite of the acts of the
legislature, and flow into channels of its own choos-
ing. It was not possible to transmute a planting
State, where labor was enslaved, into a commercial
State, where labor must be free.

However desirous Mr. Madison might be to

54 JAMES MADIBON.

transfer the power over commerce to the Federal
Goyemment, he was compelled, as a member of
the Virginia legislature, to care first for the trade
of his own State. No State could afford to neglect
its own commercial interests so long as the thirteen
States remained thirteen commercial rivals. It
was becoming plamer and plainer every day, that
while that relation continued, the less chance there
was that thirteen petty, independent States could
unite into one great nation. No foreign power
would make a treaty with a government which
could not enforce that treaty among its own peo-
ple. Neither could any separate portion of that
people make a treaty, as any other portion, the
other side of an imaginary line, need not hold it
in respect. What good was there in revenue laws,
or, indeed, in any other laws in Massachusetts
which Connecticut and Rhode Island disregarded ?
or in New York, if New Jersey and Pennsyl-
vania laughed at them ? or in Virginia, if Mary-
land held them in contempt ?

But Mr. Madison felt that, if he could bring
about a healthful state of things in the trade of
his own State, there was at least so much done
towards bringing about a healthful state of things
in the commerce of the whole country. There
came up a practical, local question which, when
the time came, he was quick to see had a logical
bearing upon the general question. The Poto-
mac was die boundary line between Virginia and

IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY. 65

Maryland ; bat Lord Baltimore's charter gave to
Maryland jurisdiction over the river to the Vir-
ginia bank ; and this right Virginia had recog-
nized, claiming only for herself the free navigation
of the Potomac and the Pocomoke. Of coarse
the laws of neither State were regarded when it
was worth while to evade them : and nothing was
easier than to evade them, since to the average
human mind there is no privilege so precious as
a facility for smuggling. Nobody, at any rate,
seems to have thought anything about the matter
till it came under Madison's observation after his
return home from Congress. To him it meant
something more than mere evasion of state laws
and frauds on the state revenue. The subject fell
into line with his reflections upon the looseness of
the bonds that held the States together, and how
unlikely it was that they would ever grow into a
respectable or prosperous nation while their pres-
ent relations continued. Virtually there was no
maritime law on the Potomac, and hardly even
the pretense of any. What could be more absurd
than to provide ports of entry on one bank of a
river, while on the other bank, from the source to
the sea, the whole country was free to all comers ?
If the laws of either State were to be regarded
on the opposite bank, a treaty was as necessary
between them as between any two contiguous
States in Europe.
Madison wrote to Jefferson, who was now a del-

66 JAMEB MADISON.

egate in Congress, pointing out this anomalous
condition of things on the Potomac, and suggest-
ing that he should confer with the Maryland del-
egates upon the subject. The proposal met with
Jefferson's approbation ; he sought an interview
with Mr. Stone, a delegate from Maryland, and,
as he wrote to Madison, ^^ finding him of the same
opinion, [I] have told him I would, by letters,
bring the subject forward on our part. They will
consider it, therefore, as originated by this con-
versation.** Why " they " should not have been
permitted to ^^ consider it as originated" from
Madison's suggestion that Jefferson should have
such a conversation is not quite plain ; for it was
Madison, not Jefferson, who had discovered that
here was a wrong that ought to be righted, and
who had proposed that each State should appoint
commissioners to look into the matter and apply a
remedy. So, also, so far as subsequent negotia-
tion on this subject had any influence in bringing
about the Constitutional Convention of 1787, it
was only because Mr. Madison, having suggested
the first practical step in the one case, seized an
opportune moment in that negotiation to suggest
a similar practical step in the other case. As it is
so often said that the Annapolis Convention of
1786 was the direct result of the discussion of the
Potomac question, it is worth while to explain
what they really had to do with each other.
The Virginia commissioners were appointed

IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY. 57

early in the session on Mr. Madison's motion.
Maryland moved more slowly, and it was not till
the spring of 1785 that the commissioners met.
They soon found that any efficient jurisdiction
over the Potomac involved more interests than
they, or those who appointed them, had consid-
ered. Eating difficulties might be disposed of by
agreeing upon uniform duties in the two States,
and this the commissioners recommended. But
when the subject came before the Maryland leg-
islature it took a wider range.

The Potomac Company, of which Washington
was president, had been chartered only a few
months before. The work it proposed to do was
to make the upper Potomac navigable, and to con-
nect it by a good road with the Ohio River. This
was to encourage the settlement of Western lands.
Another company was chartered about the same
time to connect the Potomac and Delaware by a
canal, where inter-state traffic would be more im-
mediate. Pennsylvania and Delaware must nec-
essarily have a deep interest in both these proj-
ects, and the Maryland legislature proposed that
those States be invited to appoint commissioners
to act with those whom Maryland and Virginia
had already appointed to settle the conflict be-
tween them upon the question of jurisdiction on
the Potomac. Then it occurred to somebody : if
four States can confer, why should not thirteen ?
The Maryland legislature thereupon suggested

58 JAMEB MAB180N,

that all the States be invited to send delegates to
a convention to take up the whole question of
American commerce.

While this was going on in Maryland, the Vir-
ginia legislature was considering petitions from
the principal ports of the State praying that some
remedy might be devised for the commercial evils
from which they were all suffering. The port
bill had manifestly proved a failure. It was only
a few weeks before that Madison had complained,
in a letter to a friend, that *^ the trade of the coun-
try is in a most deplorable condition ; " that the
most ^^ shameful frauds " were committed by the
English merchants upon those in Virginia, as well
as upon the planters who shipped their own to-
bacco ; that the difference in the price of tobacco
at Philadelphia and in Vii^nia was from eleven
shillings to fourteen shillings in favor of the
Northern ports ; and that " the price of merchan-
dise here is, at least, as much above, as that of to-
bacco is below, the Northern standard." He was
only the more confirmed in his opinion that there
was no cure for these radical evils except to sur-
render to the Confederate Government complete
control over commerce. The debate upon these
petitions was hot and long. It brought out the
strongest men on both sides, Madison leading
those who wished to give to Congress the power
to regulate trade with foreign countries when no
treaty existed ; to make uniform commercial laws

IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY. 69

for all the States ; and to leyy an impost of five
per cent, on imported merchandise, as a provision
for the public debt and for the support of the
Federal Government generally. A committee, of
which he was a member, at length reported in-
structions to the delegates of the State m Con-
gress to labor for the consent of all the States to
these propositions. But in Committee of the
Whole the resolutions were so changed and quali-
fied — especially in limiting to thirteen years the
period for which Congress was to be intrusted
with a power so essential to the existence of the
govemment — that the measure was given up by
its friends as hopeless.

But before the report was disposed of Mr. Mad-
ison prepared a resolution, to be offered as a sub-
stitute, with the hope of reaching the same end in
another way. This resolution provided for the
appointment of five commissioners, — Madison to
be one of them, — " who, or any three of whom,
shall meet such commissioners as may be ap-
pointed in the other States of the Union, at a
time and place to be agreed on, to take into con-
sideration the trade of the United States ; to ex-
amine the relative situations and trade of said
States; to consider how far a uniform system in
their commercial regulations may be necessary to
their common interest and their permanent har-
mony ; and to report to the several States such an
act, relative to this great object, as, when unani-

60 JAMES MADIBON.

mously ratified by them, will enable the United
States, in Congress, effectually to provide for the
same." This he was careful not to offer himself,
but, as he says, it was " introduced by Mr. Tyler,
an influential member, — who, having never served
in Congress, had more the ear of the House than
those whose services there exposed them to an im-
putable bias." He adds that ^^ it was so little ac*
ceptable, that it was not then persisted in."

About the same time the action of the Mary-
land legislature on the Potomac question, and
the report of the Potomac commissioners, came
up for consideration. Mr. Madison said afterward
that, as Maryland thought the concurrence of
Pennsylvania and Delaware were necessary to the
regulation of trade on that river, so those States
would, probably, wish to ask for the concurrence
of their neighbors in any proposed arrangement.
*^So apt and forcible an illustration," he adds,
" of the necessity of an uniformity throughout all
the States could not but favor the passage of a
resolution which proposed a convention having
that for its object."

As one of the Potomac commissioners, he knew,
of course, what was coming from Maryland, and
"how apt and forcible an illustration" it would
seem, when it did come, of that resolution which
he had written and had induced Mr. Tyler to
offer. It did not matter that the resolution had
been at the moment "so little acceptable," and

IN THE STATE ABSEMBLT. 61

therefore ^' not then persisted in." It was where
it was snre, in the political slang of our day, to
do the most good. And so it came about. All
that Maryland had proposed, growing out of the
consideration of the Potomac question, the Vir-
ginia legislature acceded to. Then, on the last
day of the session, the Madison-Tyler resolution
was taken from the table, where it had lain quietly
for nearly two months, and passed. If some, who
had been contending all winter against any action
which should lead to a possibility of strengthening
the Federal Govemment, failed to see how impor-
tant a step they had taken to that very end ; if
any, who were fearful of Federal usurpation and
tenacious of state-rights, were bUnd to the fact
that the resolution had pushed aside the Potomac
question and put the Union question in its place,
Mr. Madison, we may be sure, was not one of that
number. He had gained that for which he had
been striving for years.

The commissioners appointed by the resolution
soon came together. They appointed Annapolis
as the place, and the second Monday of the fol-
lowing September (1786) as the time of the pro-
posed national convention ; and they sent to all
the other States an invitation to send delegates to
that convention.

On September 11 commissioners from Virginia,
Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New
York assembled at Annapolis. Others had been

62 JAME8 MADISON.

appointed by North Carolina, Rhode Island, Mas-
sachusetts, and New Hampshire, but they were
not present. Georgia, South Carolina, Maryland,
and Connecticut had taken no action upon the
subject. As five States only were represented,
the commissioners ^^ did not conceive it advisable
to proceed on the business of their mission," but
they adopted an address, written by Alexander
Hamilton, to be sent to all the States.

All the represented States, the address said, had
authorized their commissioners ^^ to take into con-
sideration the trade and commerce of the United
States; to consider how far an uniform system
in their commercial intercourse and regulations
might be necessary to their common interest and
permanent harmony." But New Jersey had gone
farther than this; her delegates were instructed
" to consider how far an uniform system in their
commercial regulations and other important mat-
terSy might be necessary to the common interest
and permanent harmony of the several States."
This, the commissioners present thought, ^^ was an
improvement on the original plan, and wiU d^
serve to be incorporated into that of a future con-
vention." They gave their reasons at length for
this opinion, and, in conclusion, urged that com-
missioners from all the States be appointed to
meet in convention at Philadelphia on the second
Monday of the following May (1787), "to devise
such further provisions as shall appear to them

IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY. 68

necessary to render the Constitution of the Fed-
eral Government adequate to the exigencies of the
Union."

In the course of the winter delegates to this
convention were chosen by the several States.
Yii^nia was the first to choose her delegates;
Madison was among them, and at their head was
George Washington.

CHAPTER V.

m THE VTBGINIA LEGISLATUEB.

That the Annapolis Convention ever met to
make smooth the way for the more important one
which came together eight months afterward and
framed a permanent Constitution for the United
States, was unquestionably due to the persistence
and the political adroitness of Mr. Madison. But
it was not exceptional work. The same diligence
and devotion to public duty mark the whole of
this period of three years through which he con-
tinued a member of the state legislature. As
chairman of the judiciary committee he reduced
with much labor the old colonial statutes to a
body of laws befitting the condition of free citi-
zens in an independent State. From his first to
his last session he contended, though without suc-
cess, for the faith of treaties and the honest pay-
ment of debts. The treaty with England pro-
vided that there should be " no lawful impediment
on either side to the recovery of debts heretofore
contracted." The legislature notified Congress
that it should disregard this provision, on the plea
that in relation to "slaves and other property " it

IN THE VIRGINIA LEOIBLATURE. 65

had not been observed by Great Britain. Mr.
Madison did not then know {hat — as he said
three years later — " the infractions [of the
treaty] on the part of the United Stajtes preceded
even the violation on the other side in the in-
stance of the negroes." He maintained, neverthe-
less, that the settlement of the difficulty, if it had
any real foundation, belonged to Congress, the
party to the treaty, and not to a State which had
surrendered the treaty-making power; and that
in common honesty one planter was not relieved
from his obligation to pay a London merchant for
goods and merchandise received before the war,
because other planters had not been paid for the
negroes and horses they had lost when the British
troops invaded Virginia. At each of the three
sessions of the legislature, while he was a member,
he tried to bring that body to adopt some line of
conduct which should not — to use his own words
— "extremely dishonor us and embarrass Con-
gross." It was useless; the repudiators were
quite deaf to any appeals either to their honor or
their patriotism.

On another question both he and his State were
more fortunate. Religious freedom had to be
once more foaght for, and he was quick to come
to the defense of a right which had first called
forth his youthful enthusiasm. Two measures
were brought forward from session to session to
secure for the church the support of the state.

5

66 JAMEB MADiaON.

The first was a bill for the incorporation of relig-
ious societies ; but when it was pushed to its final
passage it provided for the incorporation of Epis-
copal churckes only. For this Mr. Madison con-
sented to vote, though with reluctance, in the
hope that the church party would be so far satis-
fied with this measure as to abstain from pushing
another which was still more objectionable.

He was disappointed. Naturally those who
had carried their first point were the more, not
the less, anxious for further success. Now it was
insisted that there should be a universal tax ^' for
the support of teachers of the Christian religion."
The tax-payer was to be permitted to name the
religious society for the support of which he pre-
ferred to contribute. If he declined this volun-
tary acquiescence in the law, the money would be
used in aid of a school ; but from the tax itself
none were to be exempt on any pretext. Madi-
son was quick to see in such a law the possibility
of religious intolerance, of compulsory uniformity
enforced by the civil power, and of the suppres-
sion of any freedom of conscience or opinion.
The act did not define who were and who were
not *^ teachers of the Christian religion," and that
necessarily would be left to the courts to decide.
A state church would be the inevitable conse-
quence ; for it was not to be supposed that any
dominant sect would rest till it secured the recog-
nition by law of its own denomination as the sole

IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE, 67

representative of the Christian religion. To ex*
pect anything else was to ignore the teachings of
all history.

The burden of opposition and debate fell, at
first, almost solely upon Madison. Some of the
wisest and best men of the State were slow to see,
as he saw, that religious freedom was in danger
from such legislation. There was, it was said, a
sad f alling-o£E in public morality as indifference to
religion increased. There was no cure, it was de»
Glared, for prevalent and growing corruption ex-
cept in the culture of the religious sentiment, and
the teachers of religion, therefore, must be upheld
and supported. But granting all this, Madison
saw that the proposed remedy would be to give
not bread but a stone, and a stone that would be
used in return as a weapon. It was impossible to
regulate religious belief by act of the Assembly,
and therefore it was worse than foolish to try.

It was due to him that the question was post-
poned from one session to the next. A copy of
the bill was sent, meanwhile, into every county of
the State for the consideration of the people, and
that was aided by a *^ Memorial and Remon-
strance," written by Madison, which was circu-
lated everywhere for signature, in readiness for
presentation to the next legislature. The bill,
the memorial said, would be ^' a dangerous abuse
of power," and the signers protested against it
with unanswerable arguments, taking for a start-

68 JAMES MADISON.

ing-point the assertion of the Bill of Rights, '^ that
religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and
the manner of discharging it, can be directed only
by reason and conviction, not by force or violence."
It is not at all improbable that many signed this
remonstrance, not so much because they believed
it to be true, as because it was a protest against a
tax ; that others were more moved by jealousy of
the power of the Episcopal Church than they were
by anxiety to protect religious liberty outside of
their own sects. But whatever the motives, the
movement was too formidable to be disregarded.
It was made a test question in the election of
members for the legislature of 1785-86 ; at that
session the bill for the support of religious teach-
ers was rejected, and in place of it was passed ^^an
act for establishing religious freedom," written by
Jefferson seven years before. This provided " that
no man shall be compelled to frequent or support
any religious worship, place, or ministry whatso-
ever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested,
or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall other-
wise snfEer on account of his religious opinions or
belief ; but that all men shall be free to profess,
and by argument maintain, their opinions in mat-
ters of religion, and that the same shall in no
wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capac
ities." 1

^ With bow much interest Jeffereon watched the progress of this
controversy he showed in his letters from Paris. In Febrnaij,

IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE. 69

In the memorial and remonstrance Madison
had said : ^^ If this freedom be abused, it is an
offense against God, not against man. To God,
therefore, not to man, mast an account of it be ren-
dered.'* If the people of Virginia did not clearly
comprehend this doetrine in all its length and
brea.dth a hundred years ago, it is not quite easy
to say who were then, or who are now at Uberty
to throw stones at them. The assertion of the
broadest religious freedom was no more new then
than it Is true that persecution for opinion's sake
is now only an ancient evil. It was not till fifty

1786, he wrote to Madison, "I thank you for the communication
of the remonstrance against the assessment. Mazzei, who is now
in Holland, promised me to have it published in the Leyden Ckt'
zette. It will do us great honor. I wish it maj be as much ap-
proved by our Assembly, as by the wisest part of Europe."
Again, in December of the same year, he says, '* The Virginia Act
for religions freedom has been received with infinite approbation in
Europe, and propagated with enthusiasm. I do not mean by the
govemments, but by the individuals who compose them. It has
been translated into French and Italian, has been sent to most of
the courts of Europe, and has been the best evidence of the false-
hood of those reports, which stated Us to be in anarchy. It is in-
serted in the Encyclop^die, and is appearing in most of the publica-
tions respecting America. In fact, it is comfortable to see the stand-
ard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which
the human mind had been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and
nobles ; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legis-
lature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man
may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions 1 *' This
latter passage is characteristic, and many who do not like Jeffer-
son will read between the lines the exultation of a man who was
not always careful to draw the line between religious liberty and
irreligious license.

70 JAME8 MADISON.

years after Virginia had refused to tax her citi-
zens for the support of religious teachers, that
Massachusetts repealed the law that had long im-
posed a similar burden upon her people.

It was in 1786, the last year of Madison's ser-
vice in the Virginia Assembly before he returned
to Congress, that the craze of paper money broke
out again through all the States. The measure
was carried in most of them, followed in the end
by the usual disastrous consequences. Madison^s
anxiety was great lest his own State should be
carried away by this delusion, and he led the op-
position against some petitions sent to the Assem-
bly praying for an issue of currency. The vote
against it was too large to be due altogether to
his influence ; but he gave great strength and
concentration to the opposition. In Virginia to-
bacco certificates supplied in some measure the
want of a circulating medium, and it was, there-
fore, easier there than in some of the other States
to resist the clamor for a paper substitute for real
money. A tobacco certificate at least represented
something worth money. Madison assented to
a bill which authorized the use of such certifi-
cates. But his "acquiescence," he wrote to Wash-
ington, " was extorted by a fear that some greater
evil, under the name of relief to the people, would
be substituted." He was " far from being sure,"
he added, that he " did right." But no evils with
which he had to reproach himself followed that
measure.

IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE. 71

These three years of his life were prohahly
among the happiest, if they were not altogether
the happiest, in his long public career. There
was little disappointment or anxiety, and evi-
dently much genuine satisfaction as he saw how
certainly he was gaining a high place in the esti-
mation of his fellow-citizens for his devotion to the
best interests of his native State. In the recesses
of the legislature he had leisure for studies in
which he evidently found great contentment. He
traveled a good deal at intervals, especially at the
North ; learned much of the resources and char-
acter of the people outside of Virginia, and be-
came acquainted with the leading men among
them. Jefferson ui^ed him to pass a summer
with him in Paris ; and some foreign diplomatic
service was open to him, had he expressed a will-
ingness to accept it. But he preferred to know
something more of his own country while he had
the leisure ; and if his life was to be passed in
public service, as now seemed probable to him, he
chose, at least for the present, to serve his country
at home, where he thought he was more needed,
rather than abroad. In his orders for books sent
to Jefferson the direction of his studies is evident.
He sought largely for those which treated of the
science of government ; but they were not con-
fined to that subject. Natural history had great
charms for him. He was a diligent student of
Baffon, and was anxious to find, if possible, the

72 JAMEa MADISON.

plates of bis thirty-one volumes, in colors, that he
might adorn the walls of his room with them. He
made careful comparisons between the animals of
other continents, as described and portrayed by
the naturalist, and similar orders in America. All
new inventions interested him. ^' I am so pleased,"
he writes, ^^ with the new invented lamp that I
shall not grudge two guineas for one of them."
He had seen **a pocket compass of somewhat
larger diameter than a watch, and which may be
carried in the same way. It has a spring for
Stopping the vibration of the needle when not in
use. One of these would be very convenient in
case of a ramble into the western country." A
small telescope, he suggests, might be fitted on as
a handle to a cane, which might ^^ be a source of
many little gratifications," when " in walks for ex-
ercise or amusement objects present themselves
which it might be matter of curiosity to inspect,
but which it was difficult or impossible to ap-
proach." Jeflferson writes him of a new invention,
a pedometer; and he wants one for his own
pocket. Trifles like these show the bent of his
mind ; and they show a contented mind as well.

While writing of important acts of the legis-
lature of 1785, he is careful to give other infor-
mation in a letter to Jefferson, which is not unin-
teresting as written ninety-^ight years ago, and
written by him.

*'L Bumsey/' he says, ''by a memorial to the last

IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE. 78

session, represented that he had invented a mechanism
by which a boat m%ht be worked with little labor^ at the
rate of from twenty-fiye to forty miles a day, against
a stream running at the rate of ten miles an hour, and
prayed that the disclosure of his invention might be pur-
chased by the public The apparent extravagance of his
pretensions brought a ridicule upon them, and nothing
was done. In the recess of the Assembly he ezempliiied
his machinery to Greneral Washington and a few other
gentlemen, who gave a certificate of the reality and im-
portance of the invention, which opened the ears of this
Assembly to a second memorial. The act gives a mo-
nopoly for ten years, reserving a right to abolish it at
any time by paying £10,000. The inventor is soliciting
similar acts from other States, and will not, I suppose,
publish the secret till he either obtains or despairs of
them."

This intelligence was evidently not unheeded
by Jefferson. In writing, some months after he
received it, to a friend on the application of steam-
power to grist-mills, then lately introduced in
England, he adds : ^ I hear you are applying the
same agent in America to navigate boats, and I
have little donbt but that it will be applied gen->
erally to machines, so as to supersede the use of
"water-ponds, and of course to lay open all thd
streams for navigation." Nor does Madison seem
to have been one of those who doubted if anything
was to come of Rumsey's invention. All this was
less than a hundred years ago, and now there is a
steam-ferry between New York and Europe run-
ning about twice a day.

74 JAMES MADISON.

In a similar letter, a year later, he is careful,
among grave political matters, to remember and
report to the same friend that in the sinking of a
well in Richmond, on the declivity of a hill, there
had been found, "about seventy feet below the
surface, several large bones, apparently belonging
to a fish not less than the shark ; and, what is more
singular, several fragments of potter's ware in the
style of the Indians. Before he [the digger]
reached these curiosities he passed through about
fifty feet of soft blue clay." Mr. Madison had
only just heard of this discovery, and he had not
seen the unearthed fragments. But he evidently
accepts the story as true in coming from " unex-
ceptionable witnesses." He adds, as a corrobora-
tion, that he is told by a friend from Washington
County of the finding there, in the sinking of a
salt-well, " of the hip-bone of the incognitum, the
socket of which was about eight inches in diam-
eter." Such things were peculiarly interesting to
Jefferson, and Madison was too devoted a friend
to him to leave them unnoticed. But they were
hardly less interesting to himself, though he had
not much of Jefferson's habit of scientific investi-
gation. That " the potter's ware in the style of
the Indians" should be found so deeply buried
only seems to him " singular ; " nor, indeed, is there
any record, so far as we know, that this particular
fact was any more suggestive to Jefferson, though
apparently so likely to arouse his inquiring mind

IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE. 75

to seek for some satisfactory explanation. But
his geological notions were too positive to admit
even of a doubt as to the age of man. Supposing
a Creator, he assumed that ^^ he created the earth
at once, nearly in the state in which we see it, fit
for the preservation of the beings he placed on
it." Theorist as he was himself, he had little pa-
tience with the other theorists who were already
beginning to discover in the structure of the earth
the evidence of successive geological eras. The
different strata of rocks and their inclination gave
him no trouble. He explained them all by the as-
sumption that ^^rock grows, and it seems that it
grows in layers in every direction, as the branches
of trees grow in all directions." That evidences
of the existence of man should be found with a
super-imposed weight of earth seventy feet in
thickness would present to him no difficulty. If
the fact had specially aroused his attention he
would have explained it in some ingenious way as
the result of accident.

CHAPTER VL

PUBLIC DISTUBBANCES AND ANXIETIES.

In February, 1787, Madison again took a seat
in Congress. It was an anxioas period. Sbays's
rebellion in Massachusetts bad assumed ratber
formidable possibilities, and seemed not unlikely
to s-pread to otber States. Till tbis storm should
blow over, tbe important business of Congress was
to raise money and troops ; in reality, to go to tbe
help of Massachusetts, if need should be, though
the object ostensibly was to protect a handful of
people on the frontier against the Indians* It was
a striking instance of the imbecility of the goY-
emment under the Articles of Confederation, that
it could only undertake to suppress rebellion in a
State under the pretense of doing something else
which came within the law* Massachusetts, it is
true, was quite able to deal with her insurgents ;
but when Congress convened it was not known in
New York that Lincoln had dispersed the main
body of them at Petersham. Nevertheless, a like
difficulty might arise at any moment in any other
of the States, where the strength to meet it might
be quite inadequate.

PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES. 77

Madison's ideal still was, the Union before the
States, and for the sake of the States; the whole
before the parts, to save the parts ; the binding
the fagot together that the sticks might not be
lost. " Our situation," he wrote to Edmund Ran-
dolph, in February, " is becoming every day more
and more critical. No money comes into the fed-
eral treasury ; no respect is paid to the federal au-
thority; and people of reflection unanimously
agree that the existing Confederacy is tottering to
its foundation. Many individuals of weight, par^
ticnlarly in the eastern district, are suspected of
leaning toward monarchy. Other individuals pre-
diet a partition of the States into two or more
confederacies. It is pretty certain that if some
Tadical amendment of the single one cannot be
devised and introduced, one or the other of these
revolutions, the latter no doubt, will take place."

It is not impossible that Madison himself may
have had some faith in this suspicion that *^ indi-
viduals of weight in the eastern district " were
inclined to a monarchy. For such suspicion, how-
ever, there could be little real foundation. There
were, doubtless, men of weight who thought and
said that monarchy was better than anarchy.
There were, doubtless, impatient men then who
thought and said, as there are impatient men now
who think and say, that the rule of a king is better
than the rule of the people. But there was no dis-
loyalty to government by the people among those

78 JAMEB MADISON.

who only maintained that the English in America
must draw from the common heritage of English
institutions and English law the material where-
with to build up the foundations of a new nation.
No intelligent and candid man doubts now that
they were wise ; nor would it have been long
doubted then, had it not so speedily become mani-
fest that, if the stigma of " British " was once af-
fixed to a political party, any appeal from popular
prejudice to reason and common sense was hope-
less.

There were a few persons who would have done
away with the divisions of States and establish
in their place a central government. Those most
earnest in maintaining the autonomy of States de-
clared that such a government was, as Luther
Martin of Maryland called it, of *^ a monarchical
nature." What else could that be but a mon-
archy? An insinuation took on the form of a
logical deduction and became a popular fallacy.
Yet those most earnest for a central government
only sought to establish a stable rule in place of
no rule at all ; or, worse still, of the tyranny of
an ignorant and vicious mob under the outraged
name of democracy, into which there was danger
of drifting. Whether their plan was wise or fool-
ish, it did not mean a monarchy. Even of Shays's
misguided followers Jefferson said : " I believe you
may be assured that an idea or desire of return-
ing to anything like their ancient government

PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES. 79

never entered into their heads." As Madison
knew and said, the real danger was that the States
would divide into two confederacies, and only by
a new and wiser and stronger union could that ca-
lamity be averted.

To gain the assent of most of the States to a
convention was surmounting only the least of the
difficulties. Three weeks before the time of meet-
ing Madison wrote: *'The nearer the crisis ap-
proaches, the more I tremble for the issue. The
necessity of gaining the concurrence of the con-
vention in some system that will answer the pur-
pose, the subsequent approbation of Congress, and
the final sanction of the States, present a series of
chances which would inspire despair in any case
where the alternative was less formidable." He
said, in the first month of the session of that body,
that " the States were divided into different inter-
ests, not by their difference of size, but by ojjher
circumstances ; the most material of which re-
sulted partly from climate, but principally from
the effects of their having or not having slaves.
These two causes concurred in forming the great
division of interests in the United States. It did
not lie between the large and small States. It
lay between the Northern and Southern."

During the earlier weeks of this session of Con-
gress, and, indeed, for some months before, events
had made so manifest this difference of interest,
coincident with the difference in latitude, that

80 JAMES MADISON.

there seemed little ground for hope that any good
would come out of a constitutional convention.
The old question of the navigation of the Missis-
sippi was again agitated. The South held her
right to that river to be of much more value than
anything she could gain by a closer union with
the North, and she was quite ready to go to war
with Spain in defense of it. On the other hand,
the Northern States were quite indifferent to the
navigation of the Mississippi, and not disposed ap*
parently to make any exertion or sacrifice to secure
it. Just now they were anxious to secure a com-
mercial treaty with Spain ; but Spain insisted, as
a preliminary condition, that the United States
should relinquish all claim to navigation upon a
river whose mouths were within Spanish terri-
tory. In the Northern mind there was no doubt
of the value of trade with Spain ; and there was
a good deal of doubt whether there was any*
thing worth contending for in the right to sail
upon a river running through a wilderness where,
as yet, there were few inhabitants, and hardly any
trade worth talking about. More than that : there
was unquestionably a not uncommon belief at the
North and East, that the settlement and prosper-
ity of the West would be at the expense of the
Atlantic States. Perhaps that view of the matter
was not loudly insisted upon ; but many were none
the less persuaded that, if population was attracted
westward by the hope of acquiring rich and cheap

PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES, 81

lands, prosperity and power would go with it. At
any rate, those of this way of thinking were not
inclined to forego a certain good for that which
would profit them nothing, and might do them
lasting harm.

For these reasons, spoken and unspoken, the
Northern members of Congress were at first quite
willing, for the sake of a commercial treaty, to
concede to Spain the exclusive control of the Mis-
sissippi. But to pacify the South it was proposed
that the concession to Spain should be for only
five and twenty years. If at the end of that period
the navigation of tiie Mississippi should be worth
contending for, the question could be reopened.
The South was, of course, rather exasperated than
pacified by such a proposition. The navigation of
the river had not only a certain value to^ them
now, but it was theirs by right, and that was rea-
son enough for not parting with it even for a
limited period. Concessions now would make the
reassertion of the right the more difficult by and
by. If it must be fought for, it would lessen the
chance of success to put ofiE the fighting five and
twenty years. Indeed, it could not be put off, for
war was already begun in a small way. The
Spaniards bad seized American boats on trading
voyages down the river, and the Americans had
retaliated upon some petty Spanish settlements.
Spain, moreover, seemed at first no more inclined
to listen to compromise than the South was.

6

82 JAME8 MADISON.

England watched this controversy with interest.
She had no expectation of recovering for herself
the Floridas, which she had lost in the war of the
Revolution, and had finally ceded to Spain by the
treaty of 1783 ; but she was quite willing to see
that Power get into trouble on the Mississippi
question ; and more than willing that it should
threaten the peace and union of the States. Her
own boundary line west of the Alleghanies might
possibly be extended far south of the Great Lakes,
if the Northern and Southern States should divide
into two confederacies ; but, apart from any lust
of territory, she rejoiced at anything that threat-
ened to check the growth of her late colonies.

Fortunately, however, the question was disposed
of, before the Constitutional Convention met at
Philadelphia, by the failure to secure a treaty.
The Spanish minister, Guardoqui, consented, at
length, after long and obstinate resistance, to
concede the navigation of the river for five and
twenty years ; but Mr. Jay, who was willing,
could he have had his way, to concede anything,
found at that stage of the negotiations he could
not command votes enough in Congress to secure
a treaty even in that modified form. Hitherto he
had relied upon a resolution, passed by Congress
in August, 1786, by the vote of seven Northern
States against five Southern. This, it was assumed,
repealed a resolution of the year before, and au-
thorized the Secretary to make a treaty. The

PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES, 88

resolution of the year before, August, 1785, had
been passed by the votes of nine States, and was in
confirmation of a provision of the Articles of Con-
federation declaring that '' no treaties with foreign
powers should be entered into but by the assent
of nine States." The minority contended that
such a resolution could not be repealed by the
vote of only seven States, for that would be to
violate a fundamental condition of the Articles of
Confederation. It is easy to see now that there
ought not to have been a difference among honor-
able men on such a point as that. Nevertheless
Mr. Jay, supported by some of the strongest North-
em men, held that the votes of seven States could
be made, in a roundabout way, to authorize an act
which the Constitution declared should never be
lawful except with the assent of nine States. So
the Secretary went on with his negotiations and
came to terms with the Spanish minister.

In April the Secretary was called upon to report
to Congress what was the position of these nego-
tiations. Then it first publicly appeared that a
treaty was actually agreed upon which gave up
the right to the Mississippi for a quarter of a cen-
tury. But it was also speedily made plain by
various parliamentary motions, that the seven
votes which the friends of such a treaty had re-
lied upon, had fallen from seven — even could
that number in the end have been of use — to, at
best, four. The New Jersey delegates had been

84 JAME8 MADISON.

instructed not to consent to the surrender of the
American right to the use of the Mississippi ; a
new delegate from Pennsylvania had changed the
vote of that State ; and Rhode Island had also
gone over to the other side. ^^ It was considered,
on the whole," wrote Madison, " that the project
for shutting the Mississippi was at an end."

These details are not unimportant. Forty-five
years afterward Madison wrote, that ^^ his main ob-
ject, in returning to Congress at this time, was to
bring about, if possible, the canceling of Mr. Jay's
project for shutting the Mississippi." Probably
it had occurred to nobody then that within less
than twenty years the Province of Louisiana
would belong to the United States, when their
right to the navigation of the river could be no
longer disputed. But, so long as both its banks
from the thirty-first degree of latitude southward
to the Gulf remained foreign territory, it was of
the last importance to the Southern States, whose
territory extended to the Mississippi, that the
right of way should not be surrendered. If a
treaty with Spain could be carried that gave up
this right, and the Southern States should be com-
pelled to choose between the loss of the Mississippi
and the loss of the Union, there could be little
doubt as to what their choice would be. It was
not a question to be postponed till after the Phil-
adelphia convention had convened; if not dis-
posed of before, the convention might as well not
meet.

PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES. 86

Madison's letters, while the question was pend-
ing, show great anxiety. He was glad to know
that the South was of one mind on this subject
and woald not yield an inch. He was quite con-
fident that his own State would take the lead, as
she soon did, in the firm avowal of Southern
opinion. But he rejoiced that the question did
not come up in the Virgiuia legislature till after
the act was passed to send delegates to the Phila-
delphia Convention. That he looked upon as a
point gained, and the delegates were presently
appointed; but he still despaired of any. good
coming of the convention, unless "Mr. Jay's proj-
ect for shutting the Mississippi" could be first
got rid of.

In a recent work ^ Mr. Madison is represented
as having ^ struck a bargain " with the Kentucky
delegates to the Virginia Assembly, agreeing to
speak on behalf of a petition relating to the Mis-
sissippi question, provided the delegates from Ken-
tucky — then a part of Virginia — would vote
for the representation of Virginia at Philadel-
phia. A " bargain " impUes an exchange of one
thing for another, and Madison bad no convic-
tions in favor of closing the Mississippi to ex-
change for a service rendered on behalf of a
measure for which he wished to secure votes.
Moreover, no bargain was necessary. It was not

1 A History of the People of the United States, VoL L By
John Bach McMaster.

86 JAMES MALISON,

easy to find any body in Virginia who needed to
be persuaded that the right to the Mississippi must
not be surrendered. Madison wrote to Monroe in
October, 1786, that it would "be defended by the
legislature with as much zeal as could be wished.
Indeed, the only danger is that too much resent-
ment may be indulged by many against the fed-
eral councils." His only apprehension was lest
the Mississippi question should come up in the As-
sembly before the report from the Annapolis Con-
vention should be disposed of, for if that were
accepted the appointment of delegates to Phila-
delphia was assured. " I hope," he wrote to
Washington in November, "the report will be
called for before the business of the Mississippi
begins to ferment." It happened as he wished.
" The recommendation from Annapolis," he wrote
again a week later, " in favour of a general re-
vision of the federal system was unanimoudy
agreed to ; " — (the emphasis is his own.) He
afterward reported to Jefferson that "the pro-
ject for bartering the Mississippi to Spain was
brought before the Assembly after the preceding
measure had been adopted." There was neither
delay nor difficulty in securing the unanimous con-
sent of the Assembly to resolutions instructing
the members of Congress to oppose any conces-
sion to Spain. But Madison's anxiety was not in
the least relieved by the speedy appointment of
delegates to the Philadelphia Convention ; for, he

PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES. 87

wrote presently to Washington, "I am entirely
convinced, from what I observe here (at Rich-
mond}, that, miless the project of Congress can
be reversed, the hopes of carrying this State into
a proper federal system will be demolished." He
had already said, in the same letter, that the res-
olutions on the Mississippi question had been
"agreed to unanimously in the House of Dele-
gates," and three days before the letter was writ-
ten the delegates to Philadelphia had been ap-
pointed.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

Mb. Madison is called " the Father of the Con-
stitution." A paper written by him was laid before
his colleagues of Virginia, before the meeting of
the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia, and
was made the basis of the ^'Virginia plan," as it
was called, out of which the Constitution was
evolved. In another way his name is so identified
with it that one cannot be forgotten so long as the
other is remembered. From that full and faithful
report of the proceedings of the convention, in
which his own part was so active and conspicuous^
we know most that we do, or ever can, know of
the perplexities and trials, the concessions and
triumphs, the acts of wisdom, and the acts of
weakness of that body of men whose coming to-
gether time has shown to have been one of the
important events in the history of mankind.

Then it is also true that no man had worked
harder, perhaps none had worked so hard, to
bring the public mind to a serious consideration
of affairs and a recognition of the necessity of re-
organizing the government, if the States were to

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 89

be held together. Never, it seemed, had men bet*
ter reason to be satisfied with the result of their
labors when, a few months later, the new Consti-
tution was accepted by all the States. Yet the
time was not far distant when even Madison would
be in doubt as to the character of this new bond
of union, and as to what sort of government had
been secured by it. Nor till he had been dead
near thirty years was it to be determined what
union under the Constitution really meant ; nor
till three quarters of a century after the adoption
of that instrument was the more perfect union
formed, justice established, domestic tranquillity
insured, the general welfare promoted, and the
blessings of liberty secured to all the people,
which by that great charter it was intended, in
1787, to ordain and establish. All the difficulties,
which they who framed it escaped by their work,
were as nothing to those which it entailed upon
their descendants.

Two parties went into the convention. On one
point, of course, they were agreed, else they would
never have come together at all: that a united
government under the Articles of Confederation
was a failure, and, unless some remedy should be
speedily devised. States with common local inter-
ests would gravitate into separate and, perhaps,
antagonistic nationalities. But the differences be-
tween these two parties were radical, and for a
time seemed insurmountable. One proposed sim-

90 JAMES MADISON.

ply to repair the Articles of Confederation as they
might overhaal a machine that was out of gear ;
the other proposed to form an altogether new Con-
stitution. One wanted a merely federal govern-
ment ; not, however, meaning by that term what
the other party — soon, nevertheless, to be known
as Federalists — were striving for; but a confed-
eration of States, each independent of all the rest
and supreme in its own right, while consenting to
unite with the rest in a limited government for
the administration of certain common interests.^

. This idea of the independence of the States was
a survival of the old colonial system, when each
colony under its distinct relation to the crown had
attained a growth of its own with its separate in-
terests. Each of these colonies had become a

^ Those who were zealous for state-rights, and opposed to a
central government, called the system they wished to reestablish
a Pederal System — a confederacy of States. It was too conren-
ient, and probably too popular a term to be lost, and the other
party adopted it when the new Constitution was formed. The
Federalist was the name chosen for the volume in which were
collected the papers, written first under the signature of " A Cit-
izen of New York," but afterward changed to '' Publius," in sup-
port of the new Constitution, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. In
one of the earlier papers, Mr. Hamilton refers to the Articles of
Confederation, which were to be superseded, as the Federal Con-
stitution ; but in the later papers Madison is careful to refer to
the proposed form of government as the Federal Constitution,
and Federal soon came to be the distinguishing name of the party
which first came into power under the new Constitution. What-
ever may be said of Madison's other title, his right to that of fa-
ther of the Federal party can hardly be disputed.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 91

State. The Revolution had secured to each, it was
maintained, a separate independence, achieved, it
was true, by united efforts, but not therefore bind-
ing them together as a single nation. It was held
as a legitimate result of that doctrine that each
State, not the people of the State whether many
or few, should be represented by the same number
of votes in a federal government as they were un-
der the Articles of Confederation, because such a
government was a union of States not of a people.
All men, it was argued, — going back to a state
of nature, — are equally free and independent;
and when a government is formed every man has
an equal share by natural right in its formation
and in its subsequent conduct. While numbers
are few every member of the State exercises his
individual right in person, and none can rightfully
do more than this, however wise, or powerful, or
rich he may be. But when government by the
whole body of the people becomes cumbersome
and inconvenient through increase of numbers, the
individual citizen loses none of his rights by in-
trusting their exercise to representatives, in choos-
ing and instructing whom all have an equal voice.
So when States are united in a confederacy each
State has the same relation to that government
that individuals have to each other in a single
State. They are free and equal, and none has a
larger share of rights in the confederacy because
its people are more numerous, or because it is

92 JAMEa MADiaON.

richer or more powerful, than the rest. In such a
confederacy it is not the individual citizen who is
to be represented, but the individual State. In
such a confederacy there would be the same rep-
resentation for a State, say of ten thousand inhab-
itants, as for one of fifty thousand. This, it was
maintained, preserved equality of suffrage in the
equality of States ; while the representation of the
individual citizens of the States would be in real-
ity inequali^ of suffrage because the autonomy of
the State would be lost sight of. If in such a case
it were asked, what had become of the rights
which the majority of forty thousand had inher-
ited from nature ; the answer was that those
rights were preserved and represented in the
state government. The difficulty, nevertheless,
remained: how to reconcile in practice this doc-
trine of the equal rights of States, where there
might be a minority of persons, with the actual
rights of the whole people where, according to the
underlying democratic doctrine, the good of the
whole must be decided by the larger number.

Those who proposed only to amend the old
Articles of Confederation and opposed a new Con-
stitution, objected that a government formed un-
der such a Constitution would be not a federal,
but a national, government. Luther Martin said,
when he returned to Maryland, that the delegates
^* appeared totally to have forgot the business for
which we were sent. • • • We had not been sent

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 98

to form a government oyer the inhabitants of
America considered as individuals. . . • That the
system of government we were intrusted to pre-
pare was a government over these thirteen States ;
but that in our proceedings we adopted principles
which would be right and proper only on the sup-
position that there were no state governments at
all, but that all the inhabitants of this extensive
continent were in their individual capacity, with-
out government, and in a state of nature." He
added that, ^^ in the whole system there was but
one federal feature, the appointment of the sena-
tors by the States in their sovereign capacity, that
is by their legislatures, and the equality of suf-
frage in that branch; but it was said that this
feature was only federal in appearance."

The Senate, the second house as it was called
in the convention, was in part created, it is need-
less to say, to meet, or rather in obedience to, rea-
soning like this. There was almost nobody who
would have been willing to abandon the state
governments, as there was next to nobody who
wanted a monarchy. "We were eternally trou-
bled," Martin said, *^with arguments and prece-
dents from the British government." He could
not get beyond the fixed notion that those whom
he opposed were determined to establish " one gen-
eral government over this extensive continent, of
a monarchical nature." If he, and those who
agreed with him, sincerely believed this to be

94 JAMES MADISON.

true, it was natural enough that the frequent al-
lusions to British precedents, as wise rules for
American guidance in constructing a government^
should be looked upon as an unmistakable hanker*
ing after lost flesh-pots. Should the state govern-
ments be swept away it might be that, in time of
danger from without or of peril from internal dis-
sensions, the country, under '^ a government of a
monarchical nature," might drift back to its old
allegiance. If those who feared, or said they
feared, this were not quite sincere, the temptation
was almost irresistible to use such arguments to
arouse popular prejudice against political oppo-
nents. It is curious that Madison seemed quite
unconscious of how much the frequent allusions
in his articles in ^^ The Federalist " to the British
Constitution might strengthen these accusations
of the opposition ; while he half believed that the
same thing in others showed in them a leaning to-
ward England, from which he knew that he him-
self was quite free.

The Luther Martin protestants were too radical
to remain in the convention to the end, when they
saw that such a confederacy as they wanted was
impossible. But there were not many who went
the length they did in believing that a strong cen-
tral government was necessarily the destruction
of the state governments. Still fewer were those
who would have brought this about if they could.
That the rights of the States must be preserved

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 95

was the general opinion and determination, and it
was not difficult to do this by limiting the powers
of the higher government, or federal as it soon
came to be called, and by the organization of the
second house, the Senate, in which all the States
had an equal representation. The smaller States
were satisfied with this concession, and the larger
were willing to make it, not only for the sake of
the Union, but because of the just estimate in
which they held the rights belonging to all the
States alike. The real difficulty, as Madison said
in the debate on that question, and as he repeated
again and again after that question was settled,
was not between the larger and smaller States,
but between the North and the South ; between
those States that held slaves and those that had
none.

Slavery in the Constitution, which has given so
much trouble to the Abolitionists of this century,
and, indeed, to everybody else, gave quite as much
in the last century to those who put it there. Many
of the wisest and best men of the time. Southern-
ers as well as Northerners, and among tbem Mad-
ison, were opposed to slavery. They could see
little good in it, hardly even any compensation for
the existence of a system so full of evil. There
was hardly a State in the Union at that time that
had not its emancipation society ; and there was
hardly a man of any eminence in the country who
was not an officer, or at least a member, of such

96 JAME8 MADISON.

a society. Every where north of South Carolina,
slavery was looked upon as a misfortune which it
was exceedingly desirable to be free from at the
earliest possible moment; everywhere north of
Mason and Dixon's Line, measures had already
been taken, or were certain soon to be taken, to
put an end to it ; and by the Ordinance for the
government of all the territory north of the Ohio
River, it w«s absolutely prohibited by Congress, in
the same year in which the Constitutional Con-
gress met.

But it was, nevertheless, a thing to the con-
tinued existence of which the antinslavery people
of that time could consent without any violation
of conscience. Bad as it was, unwise, wasteful,
cruel, a mockery of every pretense of respect for
the rights of man, they did not believe it to be
absolutely wicked. If they had so believed, let us
hope they would have washed their hands of it.
As it was, it was only a question of expediency
whether, for the sake of the Union, they should
protect the system of slavery, and give to the
slave-holders, as slave-holders, a certain degree of
political power. To refuse to admit a slave-hold-
ing State into the Union did not occur, probably,
to the most earnest opponent of the system ; for
that would have been simply to say that there
should be no Union. That was what Madison
meant in saying so repeatedly that the real dif-
ficulty in the way was, not the difference between

TEE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 97

the large aud the small States, but the difference
between the slave-holding and the non slave-hold-
ing States. If there could be no conciliation on
that point there could be no Union.

Some hoped, perhaps, rather than believed, that
slavery was likely to disappear ere long at the
South as it was disappearing at the North. It is
an impeachment of their intelligence, however,
to suppose that they relied much ujfon any such
hope. The simple truth is that slavery was then,
as it continued to be for three quarters of a cen-
tury longer, the paramount interest of the South.
To withstand or disr^ard it was not merely diffi-
cult, but was to brave immediate possible dangers
and sufferings, which are never Tolontarily en-
countered except in obedience to the highest sense
of duty ; or to meet a necessity, from which there
was no manly way of escape. The sense of abso-
lute duty was wanting ; the necessity, it was hoped,
might be avoided by concessions. It can only be
sidd for those who made them that they did not
see what fruitful seeds of future trouble they were
sowing in the Constitution.

7

CHAPTER VIIL

"THE COMPBOmSBS."

The question with the North was, how far could
it yield; with the South, how far could it en-
croach. It turned mainly on representation ; on
" the unimportant anomaly,'' as Mr. George Tick-
nor Curtis calls it in his ^' History of the Consti-
tution,'* " of a representation of men without po-
litical rights or social privileges." However much
they differed upon the subject in the convention,
there was nobody then and there who regarded
the question as ^^ unimportant ; " nor was there a
political event to happen for the coming eighty
years that it did not influence and generally gov-
ern. There were some who maintained at first
that the slave population should not be repre-
sented at all. Hamilton proposed in the first days
of the convention ^^ that the rights of suffrage in
the national legislature ought to be proportioned
to the number of free inhabitants." Madison was
willing to concede this in one branch of the legis-
lature, provided that in the representation in the
other House the slaves were counted as free in^
habitants. The constitution of the Senate subse-
quently disposed of that proposition.

^^THE compromises:' 99

But why should slaves be represented at all?
^^ They are not free agents," said Patterson, a del-
egate to the convention from New Jersey; they
^^ have no personal liberty, no faculty of acquiring
property; but, on the contrary, are themselves
property, and, like other property, entirely at the
wiU of the master. Has a man in Virginia a
number of votes in proportion to the number of
his slaves? And if negroes are not represented
in the States to which they belong, why should
they be represented in the general government?
• • • If a meeting of the people was actually to
take place in a slave State, would the slaves vote ?
They would not. Why, then, should they be rep-
resented in a federal government ? " There could
be but one reply; but that was one which it
would not have been wise to make. It was slave
property that was to be represented, and this
would not be submitted to among slave-holders as
against each other, while yet they were a unit in
insisting upon it in a union with those who were
not slave-holders. Among themselves slavery
needed no protection ; their safety was in equal-
ity. But to their great interest every non-slave-
holder was, in the nature of things, an enemy ; and
prudence required that the power either to vote
him down or to buy him up should never be want-
ing. It was as much a matter of instinct as of
deliberation, for love of life is the first law. The
truth was covered up in Madison's specious asser-

100 JAMES MADIBON.

tion that "every peculiar interest, whether in
any class of citizens or any description of States,
ought to be secured as far as possible." The only
" peculiar " interest, however, belonging either to
citizens or States, that was imbedded in the Con-
stitution, was slavery.

So Wilson of Pennsylvania asked : " Are they
[the dayes] admitted as citizens - then why are
they not admitted on an equality with white citi-
zens? Are they admitted as property — then
why is not other property admitted into the com-
putation ? " He was willing, however, to concede
that it was a difficulty to be "overcome by the
necessity of compromise."

Never, probably, in the history of legislation,
was there a more serious question debated. Com-
promise is ordinarily understood to mean an ad-
justment by mutual concessions, where there are
rights on both sides. Here it meant whether the
side, which had no shadow of right whatever to
that which it demanded, would consent to take a
little less than the whole. It was the kind of
compromise made between the bandit and his vic-
tim when the former decides that he will not put
himself to the trouble of shooting the other, and
will even leave him his shirt. It was not diffi-
cult to understand that horses and cattle could be
justly counted only where property was to be the
basis of representation. Yet the slaves, who were
counted, were, in the eye of the law, either per-

""THE C0MPB0MI8E8." 101

8onal property or real estate ; and were no more
represented as citizens than if they also had £;one
upon aU fours. Their enumeration, nevertheless,
was carried, and it so increased the representative
power of their masters that inequality of citizen-
ship became the fundamental principle of the
government. This, of course, was to form an oli-
garchy, not a democracy. Practically the govern-
ment was put in the hands of a class ; and there
it remained from the moment of the adoption of
the Constitution to the Rebellion of 1860 ; while
that class, including those of so little consequence
as to own only a slave or two, in its best estate,
probably never exceeded ten per centum of the
whole people.

There was, if one may venture to say so, a sin-
gular confusion in the minds of the venerable
fathers of the republic on this subject. They
could not quite get rid of the notion that the
slaves, being human, ought to be included in the
enumeration of population, notwithstanding that
their enumeration as citizens must necessarily dis-
appear in their representation as chattels. Slaves,
as slaves, were the wealth of the South, as ships,
for example, were the wealth of the North ; but,
being human, the mind was not shocked at hav-
ing the slaves reckoned as population in fixing the
basis of representation, thoi^gh in reality they
only represented the masters' ownership. But
nobody would have been at a loss to see the ab-

102 JAMES MADISON.

surdity of counting three fifths of the Northern
ships as population. Even a Webster Whig of
sixty-five years later could, perhaps, have under-
stood that that was something more than an
" unimportant anomaly." There was no clearer-
headed man in the convention than Gouverneur
Morris; yet he said that he was ^'compelled to
declare himself reduced to the dilemma of doing
injustice to the Southern States or to human na-
ture ; and he must do it to the former." C. G.
Pinckney of South Garolina declared that he was
^^ alarmed " at such an avowal as that. Yet had
the question been one of counting three fifths of
the Northern ships in the enumeration of popu-
lation, Morris would have discovered no '^ di-
lemma," and Pinckney nothing to be *' alarmed "
at. So palpable an outrage on common sense
would have been merely laughed at by both.

In reply to Pinckney, however, Morris grew
bolder. ^^ It was high time," he said, *^ to speak
out." . He came there ^^ to form a compact for the
good of America. He hoped and believed that all
would enter into such compact. If they would
not, he was ready to join with any States that
would. But as the compact was to be voluntary,
it is in vain for the Eastern States to insist on
what the Southern States will never agree to. It
is equally vain for the latter to require what the
other States can never admit ; and he verily be-
lieved the people of Pennsylvania will never

''TBE compromises:' 108

agpree to a representation of negroes : " of negroes,
he meant, counted as human beings, not for their
own representation, but, as ships might be counted,
for the increased representation of those who held
them as property. The next day he " spoke out "
still more plainly. " If negroes," he said, " were
to be yiewed as inhabitants, . . . they ought to
be added in their entire number, and not in the
proportion of three fifths. If as property, the
word wealth was right," — as the basis, that is,
of representation. The distinction that had been
set up by Madison and others between the North-
em and Southern States he considered as heret-
ical and groundless. But it was persisted in, and
^^he saw that the Southern gentlemen will not be
satisfied, unless they see the way open to their
gaining a majority in the public councils. • . .
Either this distinction [between the North and
the South] is fictitious or real ; if fictitious, let it
be dismissed, and let us proceed with due confi-
dence. If it be real, instead of attempting to
blend incompatible things, let us at once take a
friendly leave of each other."

But could they take ^' a friendly leave of each
other ? " Should a union be secured on the terms
the South offered? or should it be declined, as
Morris proposed, if it could not be a union of
equality ? The next day Madison again set forth
the real issue, quietly but unmistakably. *'It
seemed now," he said, " to be pretty well under-

104 JAME8 MADISON.

stood, that the real difference of interests lay, not
between the large and small, but between the
Northern and Southern States. The institution
of slavery and its consequences formed the line of
discrimination." There is sometimes great power,
as he well knew, in firm reiteration. So long as
slavery lasted the lesson be then inculcated was
never forgotten. Thenceforward, as then, '''the
line of discrimination," in Southern politics, lay
with "slavery and its consequences." One side
would abate nothing of its demands ; there could
be no " friendly leave " unless the determination,
on the other side, to overcome the desire for union
and take the consequences was equally firm.

When the question again came up, however,
Morris had not lost heart. His talk was the talk
of a modem abolitionist : —

'^ He never would concur in upholding domestio
slavery. It was a nefarious institution. It was the
curse of heaven on the States where it prevailed.
Compare the free regions of the Middle States, where
a rich and noble cultivation marks the prosperity and
happiness of the people, with the misery and poverty
which overspread the barren wastes of Virginia, Mary-
land, and the other States having slaves. Travel
through the whole continent, and you behold the pros-
pect continually varying with the appearance and dis-
appearance of slavery. . • • Proceed southwardly, and
every step you take through the great regions of
slavery presents a desert increasing with the increasing

^'THE COMPROMISES.'* 106^

proportion of these wretched beings. Upon what prin-
ciple is it that the slaves shall be computed in the rep-
resentation ? Are they men ? Then make them citizens,
and let them vote. Are they property ? Why then is
no other property included? The houses in this city
[Philadelphia] are worth more than all the wretched
slaves who cover the rice swamps of South Carolina.
. . . And what is the proposed compensation to the
Northern States for a sacrifice of every principle of
right, of every impulse of humanity ? They are to bind
themselves to march their militia for the defense of the
Southern States, for their defense against those very
slaves of whom they complain? They must supply
vessels and seamen in case of foreign attack. The leg-
islature will have indefinite power to tax them by ex-
cises and duties on imports, both of which will fall
heavier on them than on the Southern inhabitants ; for
the Bohea tea used by a Northern freeman will pay
more tax than the whole consumption of the miserable
slave, which consists of nothing more than his physical
subsistence and the rags that cover his nakedness. . . •
Let it not be said that direct taxation is to be propor-
tioned to representation. It is idle to suppose that the
general government can stretch its hand directly into
the pockets of the people scattered over so vast a coun-
try. • . . He would sooner submit himself to a tax for
paying for all the negroes in the United States, than
saddle posterity with such a Constitution."

So much of this as was not already fact was
prophecy. Yet not many weeks later this impas-
sioned orator put bis name to the Constitution,

106 JAME8 MADISON.

though it had grown meanwhile into larger pro-
slavery proportions. There was undoubtedly some
sympathy with him among a few of the members ;
but the general feeling was more truly expressed a
few days later by Rutledge of South Carolina, in
the debate on the continuance of the African slave-
trade. "Religion and humanity," he said, "had
nothing to do with this question. Interest alone
is the governing principle with nations. The
true question at present is, whether the Southern
States shall or shall not be parties to the Union.
If the Northern States consult their interest, they
will not oppose the increase of slaves, which will
increase the commodities of which they will be-
come the carriers." The response came from
Connecticut, Oliver EUswoi-th saying : " Let every
State import what it pleases. The morality or
wisdom of slavery are considerations belonging to
the States themselves. What enriches a part en-
riches the whole," — especially Newport and its
adjacent coasts, he might have added, with its
trade to the African coast.

But a Yirginian, George Mason, had another
tone. He called the traffic " infernal." " Slavery,"
he went on, "discourages arts and manufactures.
The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.
They prevent the emigrsttion of whites, who
really enrich and strengthen a country. They
produce the most pernicious effect on manners.
Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant.

''THE COMPROMISES.'* 107

They bring the judgment of heaven on a coun-
try. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished
in the next world, they must be in this. By an
inevitable chain of causes and effects Providence
punishes national sins by national calamities."

These were warnings worth heeding. But Ells-
worth retorted with a sneer : '' As he had never
owned a slave, he could not judge of the effect of
slavery on character." He said, however, that,
** if it was to be considered in a moral light, we
ought to go farther, and free those already in the
country." But, so far from that, he thought it
would be ^^ unjust toward South Carolina and
Georgia," in whose " sickly rice swamps " negroes
died so fast, should there be any intermeddling to
prevent the importation of fresh Africans to labor,
and, of course, to perish there. Perhaps it was
this shrewd argument of the Connecticut delegate
that suggested, half a century afterward, to a Mis-
sissippi agricultural society the economical cal-
culation that it was cheaper to use up a gang of
negroes every few years, and supply its place by a
fresh gang from Virginia, than rely upon the
natural increase that would follow their humane
treatment as men and women. His colleague,
Roger Sherman, came to Ellsworth's aid. It
would be, he thought, the duty of the general
government to prohibit the foreign trade in slaves,
and should this be left in its power, it would prob-
ably be done. But he would not, if the Southern

108 JAMES MADISON.

States made it the condition of consenting to the
Constitution that the trade should be protected,
leaye it in the power of the general government
to do that which he acknowledged that it should,
and probably would, do.

Delegates from Georgia and the Carolinas de-
clared that to be the condition — among them C.
C. Pinckney of South Carolina. " He should con-
sider," he said, <^ a rejection of the clause as an
exclusion of South Carolina from the Union."
Nevertheless he said to the people at home, when
they came together to consider the Constitution :
^^ We are so weak that by ourselves we could not
form a union strong enough for the purpose of
effectually protecting each other. Without union
with the other States, South Carolina must soon
fall." On the part of that State it had been a
game of brag all along. The first lesson in the
South Carolinian policy was given in the Consti-
tutional Convention. Of the result, this was
Pinckney's summing up to his constituents : —

^' By this settlement we have secured an unlimited im-
portation of negroes for twenty years ; nor is it declared
that the importation shall be then stopped ; it may be
contiDued. We have a security that the general gov-
ernment can never emancipate them, for no such author-
ity is granted. . . . We have obtained a right to re-
cover our slaves, in whatever part of America they may
take refuge, which is a right we had not before. In
short, considering all circumstances, we have made the

*'TRE COMPROMISES.'' 109

best terms, for the security of this species of property, it
was in oar power to make. We would have made better
if we could, but on the whole I do not think them bad."

A more moderate and a more significant state-
ment could hardly have been made.

On the foreign slave-trade Madison had little
to say, but, like most of the Southern delegates
north of the Carolinas, he was opposed to it.
" Twenty years," he said, " will produce all the
mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty
to import slaves. So long a term will be more
dishonorable to the American character than to
say nothing about it in the Constitution." The
words are a little ambiguous, though he is his own
reporter. But what he meant evidently was, that
any protection of the trade would dishonor the na-
tion ; for at another point of the debate, on the
same day, he said that ^^ he thought it wrong to
admit in the Constitution the idea that there could
be property in men." Such property he was
anxious to protect as the great Southern inter-
est, so long as it lasted ; but he was not willing
to strengthen it by permitting the continuance of
the African slave-trade for twenty years longer
under the sanction of the Constitution. But he
held it to be, as he wrote in " The Federalist,"
*^ a great point gained in favor of humanity, that
a period of twenty years may terminate forever
within these States a traffic which has so long and
so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modem pol-

110 JAMES MADISON.

icy." He added, ^^the attempt that had been
made to pervert this clause into an objection
against the Constitution, by representing it as a
criminal toleration of an illicit practice," was a
misconstruction which he did not think deserving
of an answer.

It was, in fact, a bargain which he had not ap-
proved of, and did not now probably care to talk
about. It was made at the suggestion of Gouver-
neur Morris, who moved that the foreign slave-
trade, a navigation act, and a duty on exports be
referred for consideration to a committee. " These
things," he said, « may form a bargain among the
Iforthem and Southern States." When the com-
mittee reported in favor of the slave-trade, C. C.
Pinckney proposed that its limitation should be
extended from 1800 to 1808. Gorham of Massa-
chusetts seconded the motion, and it was carried
by the addition of the votes of New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, and Connecticut to those of Mary-
land, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

The committee also reported the substitution of
a majority vote for that of two thirds in legisla-
tion relating to commerce. The concession was
made without much difficulty, a Georgia delegate,
and three of the four South Carolina delegates
favoring it, two of the latter frankly saying they
did so to gratify New England. It was, C. C.
Pinckney said, " the true interest of the Southern
States to have no regulation of commerce ; *' but

''THE COMPROMISEBJ' 111

he assented to this proposition, and his constitu-
ents ** would be reconciled to this liberality," be-
cause, among other considerations, of ^* the liberal
conduct [of the New England States] towards
the views of South Carolina." There was no
question of the meaning of this sudden avowal of
friendly feeling. Jefferson relates in his " Ana,"
on the authority of George Mason, a member of
the convention, that Georgia and South Carolina
had ^^ struck up a bargain with the three New
England States, that if they would admit slaves
for twenty years, the two Southernmost States
would join in changing the clause which required
two thirds of the legislature in any vote."

The settlement of these questions was an oppor-
tune moment for the introduction of that relating
to fugitive slaves. Butler of South Carolina im-
mediately proposed a section which should secure
their return to their masters, and it was passed
without a word. As Pinckney said in the passage
already quoted, when he went back to report to
his constituents, '^ it is a right to recover our slaves
in whatever part of America they may take ref-
uge, which is a right we had not before."

It is notable how complete and final a settle-
ment of the slavery question " these compromises,"
as they were called, seemed to be to those who
made them. They were meant to be, as Mr. Mad-
ison called them, *^ adjustments of the different
interests of different parts of the country," and

112 JAMES MADISON.

being once agreed upon they were considered as
having the binding force and stability of a eon-
tract. The evils of slavery were set forth as an
element in the negotiation, but no question of es-
sential morality was raised that brought the system
within the category of forbidden wrong. What-
ever results might follow would be limited, it was
thought, by the terms of the contract ; whereas, in
fact, the actual results were not foreseen, and could
not be guarded against, except by the refusal to
enter into any contract whatever.

On all other questions involving political prin-
ciples, — the just relations of the Federal Govern-
ment and the governments of the States ; the re-
lations between the larger and the smaller States ;
the regulation of the functions of the executive,
the legislative, and the judicial departments of
government, — on all these the framers of the
Constitution brought to bear the profoundest wis-
dom. When one reflects upon the magnitude and
character of the work, Madison's conclusion seems
hardly extravagant, that ^* adding to these consid-
erations the natural diversity of human opinions
on all new and complicated subjects, it is impossi-
ble to consider the degree of concord which ulti-
mately prevailed as less than a miracle." There
were, nevertheless, the gravest and most anxious
doubts how far the Constitution would stand the
test of time ; yet as a system of government for a
nation of freemen it remains to this day practically

''THE COMPROMraES.'' 118

unchanged. But where its architects thought
themselves wisest they were weakest. That which
they thought they had settled forever was the one
thing which they did not settle. Of all the " ad-
justments " of the Constitution, slavery was pre-
cisely that one which was not adjusted.

Madison's responsibility for this result was that
of every other delegate, -^ no more and no less.
Neither he nor they, whether more or less opposed
to slavery, saw in it a system so subversive of the
rights of man that no just government should tol-
erate it. That was reserved for a later genera-
tion, and even that was slow to learn. To the
fathers it was, at worst, only an unfortunate and
unhappy social condition, which it would be well
to be rid of if this could be done without too much
sacrifice ; but otherwise, to be submitted to, like
any other misfortune.

While it did exist, however, Madison believed
it should be protected, though not encouraged, as
a Southern interest. The question resolved itself
into one of expediency, — of union or disunion.
What disunion would be, he knew, or thought he
knew. Perhaps he was mistaken. Disunion, had
it come then, might have been the way to a true
union. " We are so weak," said C. C. Pinckney,
" that by ourselves we could not form a union
strong enough for the purpose of effectually pro-
tecting each other. Without union with the other

States, South Carolina must soon fall." But he

s

114 JAME8 MADISON.

was carefal to say this at home, not in Philadel-
phia. In the convention, Madison wrote a month
after it adjourned, ^^ South Carolina and Georgia
were inflexible on the point of the slaves.*' What
was to be the union which that inflexibility car-
ried, was not foreseen. It was the children's
teeth that were to be set on edge.

CHAPTER IX.

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION.

Madison's labors for the Constitution did not
cease when the convention adjourned, although
he was not at that moment in a hopeful frame of
mind in regard to it. Within a week of the ad-
journment he wrote to Jefferson: ^^I hazard an
opinion, that the plan, should it be adopted, will
neither effectually answer its national object, nor
prevent the local mischiefs which excite disgusts
against the state governments."

But this feeling seems to have soon passed
away. Perhaps, when he devoted himself to a
careful study of what had been done, he saw, in
looking at it as a whole, how just and true it was
in its fair proportions. He now diligently sought
to prove how certainly the Constitution would an-
swer its purpose; how wisely all its parts were
adjusted ; how successfully the obstacles to a per-
fect union of the States had been, as he thought,
overcome; how carefully the rights of the sepa-
rate States had been guarded, while the needed
general government would be secured. Whether
there should be an American nation or not d&-

116 JAMES MADISON.

pended, as he had believed for years, upon
whether a national Constitution could be agreed
upon. Now that it was framed he believed that
upon its adoption depended whether there should
be, or should not be, a nation. In September, as •
he wrote to Jefferson, he was in doubt ; in Febru-
ary he wrote to Pendleton: "I have for some
time been persuaded that the question on which
the proposed Constitution must turn is the simple
one, whether the Union shall or shall not be
continued. There is, in my opinion, no middle
ground to be taken."

Those who would have called a second conven-
tion to revise the labors of the first had no sympa-
thy from him. He not only doubted if the work
could be done so well again; he doubted if it
could be done at all. With him, it was this Con-
stitution or none. " Every man," he said in "The
Federalist," referring to a picture he had just
drawn of the perils of disunion, — "every man
who loves peace, every man who loves his country,
every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever
before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart
a due attachment to the Union of America, and
be able to set a due value on the means of preserv-
ing it." This " means " was the Constitution.

Of the eighty papers of " The Federalist " he
wrote twenty-nine; Hamilton writing forty-six,
and Jay only five. These famous essays, of wider
repute than any other American book, are yet

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION, 117

more generally accepted upon faith than upon
knowledge. But at that time, when the new Con-
stitution was in the mind and on the tongue of
every thoughtful man, they were eagerly read as
they followed each other rapidly in the columns
of a New York newspaper. They were an ar-
mory, wherein all who entered into the contro-
versy could find such weapons as they could best
handle. What governments had been, what gov-
ernments ought to he, and what the political
union of these American States would be under
their new Constitution, were questions on which
the writers of these papers undertook to answer
all reasonable inquiries, and to silence all cavils.
Madison would undoubtedly have written more
than his two fifths of them, had he not been called
upon early in March to return to Virginia ; for the
work was of the deepest interest to him, and the
popularity of the papers would have stimulated to
exertion one as indolent as he was industrious.

But the canvass for the election of delegates to
the Constitutional Convention of Virginia called
him home. He had been nominated as the repre-
sentative of his county, and his friends had urged
him to return before the election, for there was
reason to fear that the majority was on the wrong
side. Henry, Mason, Randolph, Lee, and others
among the most influential men of Virginia, were
opposed to the Constitution. There must be
somebody in the convention to meet strong men

118 JAMES MADiaON.

like these, and Madison was urged to take the
stump and canvass for his own election. Even
this he was willing to do at this crisis, if need be,
though he said it would be at the sacrifice of every
private inclination, and of the rule which hitherto
from the beginning of his public career he had
strictly adhered to, — never to ask, directly or in-
directly, for votes for himself.

It is quite possible, even quite probable, that
Mr. Madison had little of that gift which has al-
ways passed for eloquence, and is, indeed, elo-
quence of a certain kind. If we may trust the
reports of his contemporaries, though he wanted
some of the graces of oratory, he was not wanting
in the power of winning and convincing. His ar-
guments were often, if not always, prepared with
care. If there was no play of fancy, there was no
forgetfulness of facts. If there was lack of imag-
ination, there was none of historical illustration,
when the subject admitted it. If manner was for-
gotten, method was not. His aim was to prove
and to hold fast ; to make the wrong clear, and to
put the right in its place ; to appeal to reason, not
to passion, nor to prejudice ; to try his cause by
the light of clear logic, hard facts, and sound
learning; to convince his hearers of the truth, as
he believed in it, not to take their judgment cap-
tive by surprise with harmonious modulation and
grace of movement. Not his neighbors only, but
the most zealous of the Federalists of the State,

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 119

sent him to the convention. It was there that
such eloquence as he possessed was peculiarly
needed. The ground was to be fought over inch
by inch, and with antagonists whom it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to beat. There was to
be contest over every word of the Constitution
from its first to its last. " Give me leave," cried
Patrick Henry in his opening speech, " to demand
what right had they to say ' We the people ' in-
stead of * We the States ? ' " He began at the be-
ginning. It was the gage of the coming battle ;
the defenders were challenged to show that any
better union than that already in existence was
needed, and that in this new Constitution a better
union was furnished.

As month after month passed away while the
Constitution was before the people for adoption,
the anxiety of the Federalists grew, lest the requi-
site nine States should not give their assent. But
when eight were secured there was room to hope
even for unanimity, if Virginia should come in as
the ninth. Should she say Yes, the Union might
be perfect ; for the remaining States would be al-
most sure to follow her lead. But should she say
No, the final result would be doubtful, even if the
requisite nine should be secured by the acquies-
cence of one of the smaller States. This answer
could not, of course, depend altogether upon one
man, but it did depend more upon Madison than
upon anybody else.

120 JAMEB MADIBON.

«

The convention was in session nearly a month.
At the end of a fortnight he was not hopeful.
"The business," he wrote to Washington, "is in
the most ticklish state that can be imagined.
The majority will certainly be very small, on
whatever side it may finally lie ; and I dare not
encourage much expectation that it will be on the
favorable side." But his fears stimulated rather
than discouraged him. He was always on his
feet ; always ready to meet argument with argu-
ment; always prompt to appeal from passion to
reason; quick to brush aside mere declamation,
and to bring the minds of his hearers back to a
calm consideration of how much was at stake, and
of the weight of the responsibility resting on that
convention. Others were no less earnest and dili-
gent than he; but he was easily chief, and the
burden and heat of the day fell mainly upon him.
Probably when the convention assembled the ma-
jority were opposed to the Constitution ; but its
adoption was carried at last by a vote of eighty-
nine to seventy-nine. Thenceforth opposition in
the remaining States was hopeless.

New Hampshire — though the fact was not
known in Virginia — preceded that State by a
few days in accepting the Constitution, so that
the requisite nine were secured before the conven-
tion at Richmond came to a decision. But it was
her decision, nevertheless, that really settled, so
far as can be seen now, the question of a perma-

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION, 121

nent Union. Had the vote of Virginia been the
other way it is not likely that Hamilton would
have carried New York, or that North Carolina
and Rhode Island would have finally decided not
to be left in solitude outside. What the history
of the nine united States only, with four disunited
States among them, might have been, it is impos-
sible to know, and quite useless to conjecture.
The conditions which some of the States attached
to the act of adoption ; the addition of a Bill of
Rights; proposed amendments to the Constitu-
tion ; and the suggestion of submitting it to a seo-
ond convention, were matters of comparatively
little moment, when the majority of ten delegates
was secured at Richmond. These were questions
that could be postponed. "The delay of a few
years," Madison wrote to Jefferson, " will assuage
the jealousies which have been artificially created
by designing men, and will at the same time point
out the faults which call for amendment."

Immediately after the adjournment of the Rich-
mond Convention he returned to New York, where
the Confederate Congress was still in session.
That body had little to do now but decide upon
the time and place of the inauguration of the
new government. Madison had entered upon his
thirty-eighth year, and we get an interesting
glimpse of him as he appeared at this time of his
life to an intelligent foreigner. "Mr. Warville
Brissot has just arrived here," he wrote to Jeffer-

122 JAMES MADISON.

son in August, 1788. This was Brissot de War-
ville, a Frenchman of the new philosophy, —
whose head, nevertheless, his compatriots cut off,
a few years later, — then traveling in America to
observe the condition and progress of the new Re-
public. His tour extended to nearly all the
States; he met with most of the distinguished
men of the country ; and he made a careful and
intelligent use of his many opportunities for ob-
servation. On his return to France he wrote an
entertaining volume, — " New Travels in the
United States of America," — still to be found in
some old libraries. What he says of Madison is
worth repeating, not only for the impression he
made upon an observant stranger, but as the evi-
dence of the contemporary estimate of his charac-
ter and reputation, which De Warville must have
gathered from others.

" The name of Madison," he writes, " celebrated in
America, is well known in Europe by the merited eulo-
gium made of him by his countryman and friend, Mr.
Jefferson.

"Though still young, he has rendered the greatest
services to Virginia, to the American Confederation,
and to liberty and humanity in general. He contrib-
uted much, with Mr. White, in reforming the civil and
criminal codes of his country. He distinguished him-
self particularly in the convention for the acceptation of
the new federal system. Virginia balanced a long time
in adhering to it. Mr. Madison determined to it the

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION, 128

members of the convention^ by his eloquence and logic.
This Bepablican appears to be about thirty-eight years
of age. He had, when I saw him, an air of fatigue ;
perhaps it was the effect of the immense labors to which
he has devoted himself for some time past. His look
announces a censor, his conversation discovers the man
of learning, and his reserve was that of a man con-
scious of his talents and of his duties.

'^During the dinner, to which he invited me, they
spoke of the refusal of North Carolina to accede to the
new Constitution. The majority against it was one
hundred. Mr. Madison believed that this refusal would
have no weight on the minds of the Americans, and
that it would not impede the operations of Congress. I
told him that though this refusal might be regarded as a
trifle in America, it would have great weight in Eu-
rope ; that they would never inquire there into the mo-
tives which dictated it; nor consider the small conse-
quence of this State in the confederation ; that it would
be regarded as a germ of division, calculated to retard
the operations of Congress ; and that certainly this idea
would prevent the resurrection of American credit.

^ Mr. Madison attributed this refusal to the attach-
ment of a great part of the inhabitants of that State to
their paper money and their tender act. He was much
inclined to believe that this disposition would not remain
a long time."

In October the Virginia Assembly met. Two
thirds of its members were opposed to the new
Constitution, and at their head was Patrick
Henry, his zeal against it not in the least abated

124 JAMES MADiaON.

because he had been defeated in the late con-
vention. The acceptance of the Constitution by
that representative body could not be recalled.
But the Assembly could, at least, protest against
it, and was led by Henry to call upon Congress to
convene a second national convention to do over
again the work of the first. The legislature was
to elect senators for the first Senate under the
new government ; and it was also to divide the
State into districts for its representation in the
lower House of Congress. In ordinary fairness,
as the State had, in a popular convention, so re-
cently accepted the Constitution, the party then
in the majority was entitled to at least one of the
representatives in the Senate. But Henry nom-
inated both, and could command votes enough to
elect them. In modem party usage this would
seem quite unobjectionable ; indeed, a modem pol-
itician who should not use such an advantage for
his party would be considered as unfit for practi-
cal politics. But a hundred years ago it was
thought sharp practice, and a fair proportion of
Henry's partisans refused to be bound by it. One
of Henry's nominees was elected by a majority of
twenty over Madison ; but in the case of the other
that majority was reduced more than half, and a
change of five more votes would have elected
Madison.

He had, however, neither expected nor wished
to be sent to the Senate, while he did hope to be

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 125

elected to the House of Representatiyes. The
Senate was intended to be the more dignified
body, requiring in its members a certaiu style of
living for which wealth was indispensable. Mad-
ison had not the means to give that kind of social
support to official position ; but he could afford to
belong to that body where a member was not the
less respectable because his whole domestic estab-
lishment might be a bachelor's room in a board-
ing-house.

Virginia was, as he wrote to Washington, ^' the
only instance among the ratifying States in which
the politics of the legislature are at variance with
the sense of the people, expressed by their repre-
sentatives in convention." This had enabled
Henry and a majority of his friends to elect sen-
ators who, representing " the politics of the legis-
lature," did not represent ^^ the sense of the peo-
ple " in regard to the national Constitution. But
in the election of members of the House of Rep-
resentatives, the sense of the people was to be
again appealed to, and a new way must be de-
vised for asserting the supremacy of legislative
power. The cleverness of Elbridge Gerry of
Massachusetts, many years later, under similar
circumstances, introduced a new word into the
language of the country, and, it was supposed
at the time, a new device in American politics.
But what has since been known as ^^ Gerryman-
dering " was really the invention of Patrick

126 JAMES MADISON,

Henry. This method of arranging counties into
congressional districts in accordance with their
political affinities, without regard to their geo-
graphical lines, Henry attempted to do with Mr.
Madison's own county. By joining it to distant
counties it was expected that an anti-Federal ma-
jority would be secured large enough to insure his
defeat. The attempt to elect him to the Senate
was, Madison wrote to Jefferson, "defeated by
Mr. Henry, who is omnipotent in the present leg-
islature." He adds that Henry " has taken equal
pains, in forming the counties into districts for
the election of representatives, to associate with
Orange such as are most devoted to his politics
and most likely to be swayed by the prejudices
excited against me." The scheme, however, was
unsuccessful, perhaps partly because of the indig-
nation which so dishonorable a measure to defeat
a political opponent excited throughout the State.
Madison entered upon an active canvass of his
district against James Monroe, who had been
nominated as a moderate anti-Federalist, and de-
feated him. It was winter-time, and in the ex-
posure of some of his long rides his ears were
frozen. In later life he sometimes laughingly
pointed to the scars of these wounds received, he
said, in the service of his country.

Thus Henry's " Gerrymander," like many an-
other useful and curious device, brought neither
profit nor credit to the original inventor. Had

J

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 127

Henry acted in the broader spirit of the modem
politician, who sees that he serves himself best
who serves his party best, he would have disposed
of every Federal county in the State as he dis-
posed of Orange. As it was, he only aroused a
good deal of indignation and defeated himself by
openly aiming to gratify his personal resentments.
Had he scattered his shot for the general good of
the party he would, perhaps, have brought down
his particular bird.

CHAPTER X.

THE FIBST OOKGBESS.

The Confederate Congress, at its final session
in 1788, had fixed the time for the election of
President and Vice-President under the Constitu-
tion, and the time and place for the meeting of
the first Congress of the new government. The
day appointed was the first Wednesday of the fol-
lowing March, and as that date fell on the fourth
of the month, a precedent was established which
has ever since been observed in the installation of
a new President. The place was not so easily
determined. The choice lay between New York
and Philadelphia, and the struggle was prolonged,
not because the question of the temporary seat of
government was of much moment, but because of
the infiuence the decision might have upon the
future settlement of the permanent place for the
capital.

No quorum of the new Congress was present at
New York on March 4, 1789, and neither House
was organized until early in April. On the 23d,
Washington arrived ; and on the 80th he took the
oath of office as first President of the United

THE FIRST COJ^GRESS. 129

States, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall,
at the comer of Wall and Broad Streets, a site
now occupied by another building used as the cus-
tom-house. A week before, when the ceremonies
proper for such an occasion were a subject of dis-
cussion in Congress, the question of fitting titles
for the President and Vice-President came up for
consideration. It was decided that when the Pres-
ident arrived the Vice-President should meet him
at the door of the Senate Chamber, lead him to
the chair, and then, in a formal address, inform
him that the two Houses were ready to witness
the administration of the oath of office. " Upon
this," says John Adams, in a letter written three
years afterward, ^' I arose in my place and asked
the advice of the Senate, in what form I should
address him, whether I should say, * Mr, Wash-
ington,' * Mr. President,' * Sir,' * May it please
your Excellency,' or what else? I observed that
it had been common while he commanded the
army to call him * His Excellency,' but I was free
to own it would appear to me better to give him
no title but ' Sir,' or * Mr. President,' than to put
him on a level with a governor of Bermuda, or
one of his own ambassadors, or a governor of any
one of our States."

Thereupon the question went to a conference
committee of both Houses, who reported that no
other title would be proper for either President
or Vice-President, at any time, than these which

9

180 JAMEa MADISON,

were given by the Constitution. To this report
the Senate disagreed and appointed a new com-
mittee. This proposed that the President should
be called, "His Highness, the President of the
United States, and Protector of their Liberties."
When wise men are absurd they presume on their
prerogative. The Senate accepted the report, but
the House had the good sense to reject it, consent-
ing, however, to leave the question in abeyance.
On these proceedings Mr. Madison thus com-
mented in a letter to Jefferson : —

« My last inclosed copies of the President's inaugural
speech, and the answer of the House of Representa-
tives. I now add the answer of the Senate. It will
not have escaped you that the former was addressed
with a truly republican simplicity to George Washing-
ton, President of the United States. The latter follows
the example, with the omission of the personal name,
but without any other than the constitutional title. The
proceeding on this point was, in the House of Represen-
tatives, spontaneous. The imitation by the Senate was
extorted. The question became a serious one between
the two Houses. J. Adams espoused the cause of titles
with great earnestness. His friend, R. H. Lee, al-
though elected as a republican enemy to an aristocratic
Constitution, was a most zealous second. The projected
title was. His Highness the President of the United
States and the Protector of their Liberties. Had the
project succeeded, it would have subjected the President
to a severe dilemma, and given a deep wound to our in-
fant government."

THE FIRST CONGRESS. 181

Washington has sometimes been accused of
wishing for the title of " His Highness," and of
having suggested it. Had this been true, Madi-
son would have been certain to know it, and he
was quite incapable of asserting in that case that
such a title would have been to the President ^^ a
severe dilemma." About Mr. Adams he was per-
haps mistaken, as he might easily have been, since
he was not a member of the Senate and probably
heard only a confused report of how the question
was brought before that body. As Mr. Adams's
letter, quoted just now, shows, he regarded the
charge as a calumny and resented it. He gave
them, according to his own statement, no other
opinion than that he preferred "Sir," or "Mr.
President," as a more proper address than " Ex-
cellency," a title then, as now, pertaining to gov-
ernors of States. He probably took no further
part in the debate, but it is not impossible that he
may in private have avowed a preference for some
other and higher title than either "Mr, Presi-
dent " or " Your Excellency." « For," he said in
the explanatory letter to his friend, " I freely own
that I think decent and moderate titles, as distinc-
tions of offices, are not only harmless, but useful
in society ; and that in this country, where I know
them to be prized by the people as well as their
magistrates as highly as by any people or any
magistrates in the world, I should think some dis-
tinction between the magistrates of the national

132 JAMJSa MADISON.

government and those of the state governments
proper." A distinction might be proper enough
if there were to be any titles whatever ; but cer-
tainly they were the wiser who preferred good
home-spun to threadbare old clothes. Had rags
of that sort been made a legal uniform it is almost
appalling to reflect upon the absurdities to which
the national fondness for titles would have carried
us.

From March 4 to April 1, though the House of
Representatives met daily, there were not mem*-
bers enough present to make a quorum. The first
real business brought before the House, except
that relating to its organization, was introduced
by Madison, two days after the inauguration. It
was a proposition to raise a revenue by duties on
imports, and by a tonnage duty on all vessels,
American and foreign, bringing goods, wares, or
merchandise into the United States. The essen-
tial weakness of the late Confederacy was, first of
all, to be remedied by uniform rules for the regu-
lation of trade. Revenue must be provided for
the support of government, and that in a way
which should not be oppressive to the people.
Commerce, Mr. Madison said, ^^ ought to be as
free as the policy of nations will admit ; " but
government must be supported, and taxes, the
least burdensome and most easily collected, are
those derived from duties on imports. He agreed,
however, as he said on the second day of the de-

TEE FIRST CONGRESS. 138

bate, with fchose who would so adjust the duties
on foreign goods as to protect the ^^ infant manu-
factories "of the country. With little interrup-
tion this subject was debated for the first six
weeks of the opening session of the First Congress.
No other could have been hit upon to test so thor-
oughly the strength of the new bond of union.
It was to brush aside all those trade regulations in
the several States which each had hitherto thought
essential to its prosperity. Every interest in the
country was to be considered, and their difiEerent,
sometimes opposing, claims to be reconciled.

New England was sure that, should the tax on
molasses be too high, the distilleries would be shut
up, and a great New England industry destroyed.
Nor would the injury stop there. The fisheries,
as well as the distilleries, would be ruined. For
three fifths of the fish put up for the West Indies
could find no market anywhere else ; and a market
existed there only because molasses was taken in
exchange. A prohibitory duty on that article,
or a duty that should seriously interfere with its
importation, would well-nigh destroy the fisheries.
What then would become of the nursery of Amer-
ican seamen ? With no seamen there would be
no ship-building. What sadder picture than this
of a New England without rum, without codfish,
without seamen, and without ships. One can
easily conceive that even in that restrained and dig-
nified First Congress there was no want of serious

134 JAMES MADISON.

and alarmed expostulation, and even some threat-
ening talk from such men as the tranquil Good-
hue, the thoughtful and scholarly Ames, and the
impulsive Gerry.

Then the South, for her part, was alarmed lest,
among other things, too high a tonnage duty
should leave her tobacco, her rice, and indigo rot-
ting in the fields and warehouses for want of ships
to take them to market. She had no ships of her
own and could have none, and she invited the
ships of the rest of the world to come for her
products and bring in return all she needed for
her own consumption. The picture of the possi-
ble ruin of New England was as nothing to that
of the Southern planter scanning the horizon with
weary eyes, in vain, for the sight of a sail, while
behind him was a dangerous crowd of hungry
blacks with nothing to do. That desolation seemed
complete to the southernmost States when it was
also proposed to levy a tax of ten dollars upon
every slave imported. In short, the whole sub-
ject bristled with difficulties. The problem was
nothing more nor less than how to tax everything,
and at the same time convince everybody that the
scheme was for the general good, while nobody's
special interests were sacrificed. The " infant
industries," to which Mr. Madison alluded, really
received no special consideration in the final ad-
justment, and they were too feeble then even to
cry for nursing. They have grown stronger since

THE FIRST CONGRESS. 186

though they are " infants " still ; and they should
never cease to be grateful to him who, however
unwittingly, gave them a name to live by for a
hundred years.

But the most remarkable part of the debate was
that upon the proposition of Mr. Parker of Vir-
ginia, to impose a duty upon the importation of
slaves. Could the progress of events have been
foreseen, that proposal might have been regarded
as meant to protect an " infant industry " of the
northernmost slave States. But the wildest imag-
ination then could not conceive of the domestic
slave-trade of a few years later, when a chief
source of the prosperity of Virginia would be her
virgintial crop of young men and women to be
shipped for New Orleans and a market. But Mr.
Parker had no ulterior motive when he avowed
his regret that the Constitution had failed to pro-
hibit the importation of slaves from Africa, and
hoped that the duty he proposed would prevent,
in some degree, a traffic which he pronounced " ir-
rational and inhuman." It would have been dif-
ficult to have found a Virginian of that day who
would not have taken down his shot-gun on hear-
ing that tjiere were miscreants prowling about his
kitchen doors in the hope of buying up the strong-
est young people of his household for export to
the Southwest.

Judging from the imperfect report of the debate
upon the subject, it would seem that the bargain

186 JAMES MADISON.

relative to the slave-trade, made in the Constitu-
tional Convention of two years before between
New England and the two southernmost States,
might still hold good. Or there may have been a
new bargain ; or, perhaps, both sides trusted to a
tacit recognition of the eternal fitness of things,
and made common cause where legislation threat-
ened at the same time the distillery and the slave-
ship.^ At any rate the extreme Southerners
expressed surprise at the audacity which would
disturb a compromise of the Constitution; the
extreme Northerners deprecated it as quite un-
called for in any consideration of the subject of
revenue. The principle of Mr. Parker's motion,
Mr. Sherman of Connecticut thought, was to cor-

1 Eleven years afterward, when the question of prohibiting the
carrying on the slave-trade from American ports came np, one
John Brown of Rhode Island said in Congress, '* Oar distilleries
and manufactories were all lying idle for want of an extended com-
merce. He had been well informed that on those coasts [African]
New England mm was much preferred to the best Jamaica spit-
its, and would fetch a better price. Why should it not be sent
there, and a profitable return be made ? Why should a heavy
fine and imprisonment [of slave-traders] be made the penalty for
carrying on a trade so advantageous?*' Sixty years later stiU,
there was another Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, who was
a member of the Committee of the Kansas Aid Society of New
England. He was about to withdraw from it for want of time to
attend to its duties, — had, indeed, actually sent in his resignation,
-*when news came of the doings of another John Brown at
Harper*s Ferry. The resignation was instantly recalled, with the
remark that it was not a time for Browns ,to seem to be backward
on the question of slavery. ^ Such is the irony of coincidence in
names.

THE FIRST CONGRESS. 187

rect a moral evil ; the principle of the bill before
the House was to raise a revenue. At some other
time he would be willing to consider the question
of taxing the importation of negroes on the ground
of humanity and policy ; but it was a sufficient
reason with him for not admitting it as an object
of revenue that the burden would fall upon two
States only. Fisher Ames of Massachusetts could
only take counsel of his conscience. From his
soul, he said, he detested slavery ; and — forget-
ting, apparently, that this tax was provided for by
the 'Constitution — he doubted whether imposing
it ^^ would not have the appearance of authorizing
the practice " of trading in slaves. This was his
reason for wishing to postpone the subject. But
Mr. Livermore of New Hampshire was more in-
genious still. If the imported negroes were goods^
wares, or merchandise, they would come within the
title of the bill, and be taxed under the general
rule of five per centum, which would be about the
same rate as ten dollars a head ; but if they were
not goods, wares, or merchandise, then such im-
portation could not properly be included in the
consideration of the question of a revenue from
duties on such articles of trade.

Mr. Madison came to the help of bis colleague,
and brushed aside the sophistries of the New Eng-
land allies of the slave-traders. If there were
anything wanting in the title of the bill to cover
this particular duty, it was easy to add it. If the

138 JAMES MADISON,

question was not one of taxation because it was
one of humanity, it would be quite as difficult to
deal with it under any other bill for levying a
duty as under this. If the tax seemed unjust be-
cause it bore heavily upon a single class, that
would be a good reason for remitting many taxes
which there was no hesitation in imposing. If
ten dollars seemed a heavy duty, a little calcula-
tion would show that it was only about the pro-
posed ad valorem duty of five per centum on most
other importations. " It is to be hoped," he added,
^'that by expressing a national disapprobation
of this trade we may destroy it, and save our-
selves from reproaches, and our posterity the im-
becility ever attendant on a country filled with
slaves." " If there is any one point," he contin-
ued, " in which it is clearly the policy of this na-
tion, so far as we constitutionally can, to vary the
practice obtaining under some of the state gov-
ernments, it is this. • . . It is as much the inter-
est of Georgia and South Carolina as of any in the
Union. Every addition they receive to their num-
ber of slaves tends to weaken and render them less
capable of self-defense. ... It is a necessary
duty of the general government to protect every
part of the empire against danger, as well internal
as external. Everything, therefore, which tends
to increase this danger, though it may be a local
affair, yet, if it involves national expense or safety,
becomes of concern to every part of the Union, and

THE FIRST CONGRESS. 189

is a proper subject for the consideration of those
charged ^^ith the general administration of the
government." No Northern man, except Elbridge
Gerry of Massachusetts, supported this measure ;
and none from the Southern States, except three
of the Virginia members, with Madison leading.
As the foreign slave-trade was protected in the
Constitution for twenty years by a bargain be-
tween the two southernmost States and New Eng-
land ; so now the same influence staved off the
imposition of the tax which was a part of the con-
sideration to be given for that constitutional pro-
tection of the trade. It is not a creditable fact ;
but it is, nevertheless, a fact and a representative
one in the history of the United States. And it
is to Madison's great honor that he had neither
part nor lot in it.

After six weeks of earnest debate, an amicable
and satisfactory agreement was made to impose a
moderate duty upon pretty much everything im-
ported, except slaves from Africa. It was liter-
ally a tariff for revenue ; but it was a settlement
that settled nothing definitely, except that the
provision of the Constitution for a tax of ten dol-
lars on imported slaves should be a dead letter.
Thenceforth the policy of free trade was estab-
lished, so far as African slaves were concerned, till
the traffic was supposed to cease by constitutional
limitation and Act of Congress in 1808.^

^ The subsequent legislation on this subject is a curious exem-

140 JAMES MADISON.

The determination to protect the commercial
interests of the country, beyond the point of mere
revenue, was more manifest in fixing the rate of
duty upon tonnage than in duties upon importa-
tions. It was generally agreed, after much debate,
that American commerce had better be in Amer-
ican hands, and a difference of twenty cents a ton
was made between the tax upon domestic and that
upon foreign ships, as a measure of protection to
American shipping. Mr. Madison proposed to
make it still larger, but the House would only
agree to increase it to forty cents on ships belong-
ing to powers with which the United States had

plification of the ingenuifcj with which way law obnoxious to the
owners of slaves was got rid of, when it was clear that it coold
not be defeated by force of numbers. In 1806 a final attempt was
made to impose the duty of ten dollars upon slaves imported, and
a resolution passed in favor of it. This was referred to a com-
mittee, with instructions to bring in a bill. A bill was reported
and pushed so far as a third reading, when it was recommitted,
which pnt it off for a year. When it next appeared it was a bill
for the prohibition of the importation of slaves, in accordance
with the constitutional provision that the traffic should cease in
1808. The new question, after some debate, in which there was
no allusion to the tax, was postponed for further consideration.
But it never again came before the House. A month later, Febru-
ary 13, 1807, a bill from the Senate, providing that the foreign
slave-trade should cease on the first day of the following January,
was received and immediately concurred in, and that seems to
have been silently accepted as disposing of the whole subject. No
tax was ever paid ; but 'the importation of slaves, notwithstand-
ing the law to put an end to importation in 1808, continued at the
rate, it was estimated, of about fifteen thousand a year. Proba-
bly it never ceased altogether till the beginning of the Rebellion
of 1860.

THE FIRST CONGRESS, 141

no treaties. The Senate, however, refused to ad-
mit this distinction, and insisted that all foreign
ships should be subject to the same tonnage duty
without regard to existing treaties. The House
assented, lest the bill should be lost altogether.
This proposed differential duty on foreign vessels
was as clearly aimed at Great Britain as if that
power had been named in the bill. Nor, indeed,
was there any attempt at concealment ; for it was
openly avowed that America had no formidable
rival except the English, who already largely con-
trolled the commerce of the United States. In
the debates and in the final decision of the ques-
tion is shown clearly enough the difference of
opinion and of feeling, which soon made the divid-
ing line between the two great parties of the first
quarter of a century under the Constitution. No-
body then foresaw how bitter that difference of
party was to be, nor what disastrous consequences
would follow it.

Mr. Madison was among the most zealous of
those who insisted upon a discrimination against
Great Britain. He thought it should be made
for the dignity no less than for the interest of the
United States. He bad no fear, he said, ^^ of en-
tering into a commercial warfare with that na-
tion." England, he believed, could 3o this coun-
try no harm by any peaceful reprisals she could
devise. She supplied the United States with no
article either of necessity or of luxury that the

142 JAMES MADISON.

people of the United States could not manufacture
for themselves. He called those " Anglicists "
who did not agree with him, and who believed
that it was in the power of Great Britain to hinder
or to help immensely the prosperity of the United
States. It was not of so much moment what
America bought of England, as it was that Eng-
land should consent to free trade with her colo-
nies ; and on every account it was wiser to concili-
ate than to defy Great Britain ; wiser to induce
her to enter into a friendly commercial alliance,
than to provoke her to retaliate upon the feeble
commerce of this country, upon which she had so
strong a grip. Madison had shown himself, before
this time, half credulous of the charges of a lean-
ing toward England and toward monarchy, made
by those who wanted a congress of petty States,
against those who wanted a strong national gov-
ernment. If, however, there were Anglicism on
one side, so there was quite as much Gallicism, if
not a good deal more, on the other. In writing
to Jefferson of the probability that the Senate
would make no discrimination in the tonnage du-
ties, he said that in that case ^^ Great Britain will
be quieted in the enjoyment of our trade, as she
may please to regulate it, and France discouraged
from her efforts at a competition, which it is not
less our interest than hers to promote." What-
ever may be thought of this first concession of
the new government to England, it is quite as

THE FIRST CONGRESS. 143

much the coming party leader as the statesman
who speaks here. It may not be doubted that he
sincerely thought it to be, as he said, ^^ impolitic,
in every view that can be taken of the subject, to
put Great Britain at once on the footing of the
most favored nation." But the relation of Amer-
ican interests to Elnglish interests was evidently
already associated in his mind with the relations
of France and England, so soon to be the absorb-
ing question in American politics.

The impost act was followed by others hardly
less important in putting the new Constitution
into operation under its first Congress. The di-
rection of business seems, by common consent,
to have been intrusted to Mr. Madison among
the many able men of that body ; doubtless, be-
cause of his thorough familiarity with the Consti-
tution, and of his methodical ways. He was sure
to bring things forward in their due order, to pro-
vide judiciously for the more immediate needs.
The impost bill secured the means to work with ;
the next necessity was to organize the machinery
to do the work. Resolutions to create the execu-
tive departments of Foreign Affairs, of the Treas-
ury, and of War, were offered by Mr. Madison.
These were required in general terms by the Con-
stitution, with a single officer at the head of each,
to be appointed by the President " by and with
the advice and consent of the Senate." The man-
ner of the appointment of subordinate officers was

144 JAMES MADISON.

provided for by the Constitution, bat the manner
of their removal from office was not. Was the
tenure of office to be good behavior? Were the
incumbents removable, with or without cause ?
If the power of removal existed, did it vest in
the power that appointed, that is, in the President
and Senate conjointly, or in the President alone ?

As the Constitution was silent, the question had
to be settled on its own merits. With all the ar-
guments that could be urged, either on one side or
the other, we are familiar enough in our time,
coming up as the question so often does in changes
in state constitutions and municipal charters, and
in the discussion of the necessity for civil service
reform. There is this essential difference, how-
ever, between now and then ; we know the mis-
chiefs that come from the power of official re-
moval, which were then only dimly apprehended.
The power of removal from office belonged, Mr.
Madison believed, rightfully to the Chief Magis-
trate, and if, by some unhappy chance the vrrong
man should find his way to that position and abuse
the power intrusted to him, ^* the wanton removal
of meritorious officers would," he said, "subject
the President to impeachment and removal from
his own high trust."

Lofty political principles like these may still be
found in the platforms of modern political par-
ties, —
" The Bouls of them famed-forth, the hearts of them tornHmk"

THE FIRST CONGRESa, 145

But Mr. Madison believed, at least, that he be-
lieved in them. There is in polities as in religion
an accepted doctrine of justification by faith ; and
this, perhaps, sustained him when, twelve years
later, as Jefferson's Secretary of State, he learned
from his chief that, as ^' Federalists seldom died
and never resigned," pai*ty necessities must find a
way of supplementing the law of nature. Jeffer-
son was a little timid in applying the remedy, but
Madison lived long enough to see Jackson boldly
remove, in the course of his administration, about
two thousand office-holders, whose places he wanted
as rewards for his Own political followers. From
that time to this there has not been a President
who might not, if Madison's doctrine was sound,
have been impeached for a ^* wanton" abuse of
power.

Though the Constitution had been adopted by
the States, it was not without objections by some
of them. To meet these objections Mr. Madison
proposed twelve amendments declaratory of cer-
tain fundamental popular rights, which, it was
thought by many persons, were not sufficiently
guarded by the original articles. This, also, was
left to him to do, no doubt because of his thor-
ough knowledge of the Constitution and of the
points wherein it was still imperfect, as well as
those wherein it had better not be meddled with.
The amendments, as finally agreed to after long
debate, were essentially those which he proposed,

10

146 JAMES MADISON.

and in due time ten of them were ratified by the
States. The two that were not accepted referred
only to the number of representatives in the
House, and to the pay of members of Congress.

It was hoped that the selection of a place for
the permanent seat of government would be made
by this Congress. There was much talk of the
centres of wealth, of territory, and of population
then, and of where such centres might be in the
future. But the question was really a sectional
one. The Northern members were accused of
having made a bargain out of doors with the
members of the Middle States. The bargain,
however, was only this : that inasmuch as it was
hopeless that the actual centre should be chosen
as the site for a capital city, a place as near as
possible to it should be insisted upon. The
South, on the other hand, determined that the
seat of government should be within the boun-
daries of the Southern States. That was a fore-
gone conclusion with them, that needed no bargain.
The nearest navigable river to the centre of pop-
ulation was the Delaware ; but the jealousy of
New York stood in the way of any selection that
favored Philadelphia. The Susquehanna was pro-
posed. It empties into Chesapeake Bay. North
of it was, as Mr. Sherman showed, a population
of 1,400,000; and south of it 1,200,000. The
South wanted the capital on the Potomac, not be-
cause it was the centre of population then, but

THE FIRST CONGRESS. 147

because it might be at some future time, from the
growth of the West. On the other hand, it was
insisted that the population south of the Potomac
was then only 960,000, while north of it there
were 1,680,000 people, and that it was no more
accessible from the West than the Susquehanna
was. To many members, moreover, this talk
of the great future of the West seemed hardly
worthy of consideration. It was " an unmeasur-
able wilderness," and "when it would be settled
was past calculation," Fisher Ames said. "It
was," he added, " perfectly romantic to make this
decision depend upon that circumstance. Proba-
bly it will be near a century before these people
will be considerable." He was nearer right when
he said in the same speech "that trade and manu-
factures will accumulate people in the Eastern
States in proportion of five to three, compared
with the Southern. The disproportion will, doubt-
less, continue to be much greater than I have cal-
culated. It is actually greater at present, for the
climate and negro slavery are acknowledged to be
unfavorable to population, so that husbandry as
well as commerce and. manufactures will give more
people in the Eastern than in the Southern States."
It was, however, finally resolved by the House
" that the permanent seat of the government of
the United States ought to be at some convenient
place on the banks of the river Susquehanna in
the State of Pennsylvania;" and a bill accordingly
was sent to the Senate.

148 JAMES MADiaON.

I

Had the Senate agreed to this bill, there are
some luminous pages of American history that
would never have been written ; for the progress
of events would have taken quite another direc-
tion had the influences surrounding the national
capital for the first half of this century been
Northern instead of Southern. But the Senate
did not agree. For " the convenient place on the
banks of the Susquehanna" it substituted ten
miles square on the river Delaware, beginning
one mile from Philadelphia and including the vil-
lage of Germantown. To this amendment the
House agreed, and there, but for Madison, the
matter would have ended. He had labored earn-
estly for the site on the Potomac ; but failing in
that, he hoped to postpone the question till the
next session of Congress, when the representatives
from North Carolina would be present. He moved
a proviso that the laws of Pennsylvania should
remain in force within the district ceded by the
State till Congress should otherwise provide by
law. It seems to have been accepted without con-
sideration, a single member only saying that he
saw no necessity for it. At any rate, whether
that was Mr. Madison's motive or not, time was
gained, for it compelled the return of the bill to
the Senate. This was on September 28, and the
next day the session was closed by adjournment
till the following January.

When in that next session the bill came back

THE FIRST CONGRESS. 149

from the Senate to the Hoase, a member from
South Carolina said, in the course of debate, that
^* a Quaker State was a bad neighborhood for the
South Carolinians." The Senate had also come
to that conclusion, for the bill now proposed that
the capital should be at Philadelphia for ten
years only, and should then be removed to the
banks of the Potomac. It was done, Madison
wrote to Monroe, by a siDgle vote, for two South-
em senators voted against it. But the two sena-
tors from North Carolina were now present, and
the majority of one was made sure of somehow.

So much was gained by gaining time, and Mad-
ison thought the passage of the bill through the
House was possible, ^^but attended with great
difficulties." Did he know how these difficulties
were to be overcome ? *' If the Potomac suc-
ceeds," he adds, ^^ it will have resulted from a for-
tuitous coincidence of circumstances which might
never happen again." What the " fortuitous co-
incidence " was he does not explain ; but the term
was a felicitous euphuism to cover up what in the
blunter political language of our time is called
" log-rolling."

The reader of this series of biographies is al-
ready familiar with Hamilton's skillful barter of
votes for the Potomac site of the capital in ex-
change for votes in favor of his scheme for the as-
sumption of the state debts. Madison seems not
to have been ignorant of the progress of that bar-

150 JAMES MADISON.

gain, with which Jefferson was afterward so anx-
ious to prove that he had nothing to do. Madison
earnestly opposed the assumption of the state debts
from first to last ; but, when he saw that the meas-
ure was sure to pass the House, he wrote to Mon-
roe : ^^ I cannot deny that the crisis demands a
spirit of accommodation to a certain extent. If
the measure should be adopted, I shall wish it to
be considered as an unavoidable evil, and possibly
not the worst side of the dilemma." In other
words, he was willing to assent silently to what
he believed to be a great injustice to several of
the States, provided that the bargain should be a
gain to his own State. If Hamilton and Jeffer-
son were sinners in this business, Madison will
hardly pass for a saint.

CHAPTER XL

NATIONAL FINANCES. — SLAVBBY.

Hamilton's famous report to the First Con-
gress, as Secretary of the Treasury, was made at
the second session in January, 1790. Near the
close of the previous session a petition asking for
some settlement of the puhlic debt was received
and referred to a committee of which Madison
was chairman. The committee reported in favor
of the petition, and the House accordingly called
upon the Secretaiy to prepare a plan "for the
support of the public credit."

So far as Hamilton's funding scheme provided
for that portion of the debt due to foreigners it
was accepted without demur. There could be no
doubt that there the ostensible creditor was the
real creditor, who should be paid in full. The re-
port assumed that this was equally true of the
domestic debt. A citizen holding a certificate of
the indebtedness of the government, no matter
how he came by it, nor at what price, was entitled
to payment at its face value. But here the ques-
tion was raised, Was this ostensible creditor the
sole creditor? Was he, whose necessities had

152 JAMES MADISON.

compelled him to part with the government's
note of hand at a large discount when fall pay-
ment was impossible, to receive nothing now when
at last government was able to pay in full ? Was
it equity to let all the loss fall upon the original
creditor, and all the gain go to him who had lost
nothing originally, and had only assumed at small
cost the risk of a profitable speculation ? More-
over it was charged, and not denied, that in some
of these speculations there had been no risk what-
ever ; and that so soon as the tenor of the report
was known fast-sailing vessels were dispatched
from New York to the Carolinas and Georgia to
buy up public securities held by persons ignorant
of their recent rapid rise in value. As hitherto
they had been worth only about fifteen cents on
the dollar ; as upon the publication of the Secre-
tary's report they had risen to fifty cents on the
dollar ; and as, if the Secretary's advice should be
taken, they would rise to a hundred cents on the
dollar; it would be securing, what in the slang of
the modern stock -exchange is called ''a good
thing," to send agents into the rural districts in
advance of the news to buy up government paper.
" My soul rises indignant," exclaimed a member,
*' at the avaricious and moral turpitude which so
vile a conduct displays." Nor on that point did
anybody venture then to disagree with him
openly.
But besides the question as to who were in real-

NATIONAL FINANCES, -^SLAVERY, 158

ity the public creditors, a doubt was also raised
whether the debt ought to be paid in full to any-
body. Every dollar of the foreign debt was for
an actual dollar borrowed. But the domestic debt
was not incurred to any large amount for money
borrowed, but in payment for services, or for pro-
visions and goods purchased, for which double, or
more than double, prices had been exacted by
those who exchanged them for government paper.
If the exigencies of war had compelled the govern-
ment to promise to pay for fifty bushels of wheat
the price of a hundred bushels, the creditor, now
that the government was in a condition to redeem
its promise, was not entitled in equity to receive
more than the actual value of the fifty bushels at
the time of the purchase. Moreover, it was con-
tended, there was no injustice in such a settle-
ment of the debt, for the war had been carried
on and brought to a successful end, for the ben-
efit of the creditor as well as of everybody else.
The argument was analogous in a measure to that
used by a certain class of politicians in our time,
who maintained that the bonds of the United
States, bought at a discount for ^^ greenbacks,"
during the late rebellion, should not be redeemed
in gold when the war was over.

The answer to all this was obvious. The na-
tion must first be just by paying its debts to those
who could present the evidence that they were its
creditors. If, when that was done, it could afford

164 JAMSa MADiaON.

to be generous, it might, if so disposed, reimburse
those who had lost by parting with the certificates
of debt at a discount. The government could not
in honor go behind its own contracts. The Con-
stitution provided that ^'all debts and engage-
ments, entered into before the adoption of this
Constitution, shall be as valid against the United
States under this Constitution as under the Con-
federation." Here was a debt which the Confed-
eration had contracted, and the Federal Govern-
ment had no more right " to impair the obligation
of contracts " for its own benefit, than the sepa-
rate States had; and that they were expressly
forbidden by the Constitution to do.

Madison listened quietly day after day to the
long and earnest debates upon the subject, and
then advanced an entirely new proposition. He
agreed with one party in maintaining the inviola-
bility of contracts. The Confederacy had incurred
a debt to its own citizens, which the new govern-
ment had agreed to assume. But he also agreed
with the other party that there was a question as
to whom that debt was due. Were those who now
held the certificates entitled to the payment of
their face value, dollar for dollar, although the
cost to them was only somewhere from fifteen to
fifty cents on the dollar? It was true that the
original contract was transferable, and these
present creditors held the evidence of the trans-
fer. But did that transfer entitle the holder to

NATIONAL FINANCES. — SLAVERY. 165

the full value without regard to the price paid for
it ? Was there not in equity a reserved right in
the original holder, who, having given a full
equivalent for the debt, had only parted with the
evidences of it, under the compulsion of his own
poverty, and the inability of the government at
that time to meet its obligations ? Was not this
specially true in the case of the soldiers of the
late war, to whose devotion and sacrifices the na-
tion owed its existence ?

Mr. Madison thought that an affirmative reply
to the last two queries would present the true view
of the case, and he proposed, therefore, to pay both
classes of creditors — those who now held the evi-
dence of indebtedness, acquired by purchase at
no matter what price ; and those who had parted
with that evidence without receiving the amount
which the government had promised to pay for
services rendered. It was not, however, to be ex-
pected that the entire debt should be paid in full
to both classes. That was beyond the ability of
the government. But it would be an equitable
settlement, he contended, to pay the present hold-
ers the highest price the certificates had ever
reached, and to award the remainder to those who
were the original creditors.

This proposition received only thirteen votes out
of forty-nine. Many of those opposed to it were
quite ready to grant that it was hard upon the vet-
erans of the war that they, who had received so

156 JAMES MADISON.

little and who had borne so much, should not now
be recognized as creditors when at last the govern-
ment was able to pay its debts. But the House
could not indulge in sentimental legislation. That
would be to launch the ship of state upon another
sea of bankruptcy. There were in the hands of
the people tens of millions of paper money not
worth at the current rate a cent on the dollar. If
everybody who had lost was to be paid, the point
would soon be reached where nobody would be
paid at all. A limit must be fixed somewhere ;
let it be at these certificates of debt which were
the evidence of a contract made between the gov-
ernment and its creditors. These could be paid,
and they should be paid to those who were in law-
ful possession of them. The law, if not the equity,
of the case was clearly against Madison. That
the government should be absolutely just to
everybody who had ever trusted to it, and lost by
it, was impossible. It was a bankrupt compelled
to name its preferred creditors, and it named those
whom it was in honor and law bound to take care
of, and over whose claims there was, on the whole,
the least shadow of doubt. That the loss should
remain chiefly with the soldiers of the Revolution,
and the gain fall chiefly to those who were shrewd
enough, or had the means to speculate in the pub-
lic funds, was a lamentable fact ; but to discrim-
inate between them was not within the right of
the government. That he would have had it did-

NATIONAL FINANCES.^ SLAVERY. 157

criminate was creditable to Madison's heart; it
was rather less creditable to his head.

Of course, underneath all this debate there lay
other considerations than those merely of debtor
and creditor, of moral and legal obligation, of pity
for the soldiers, and of strict regard for the letter
of a contract. Mr. Hamilton and his friends,
it -was said, were anxious to establish the public
credit, not so much because they wished to keep
faith with creditors, as because they wished to
strengthen the government and build up their
own party. The reply to these accusations was,
that the other side, under pretense of consideration
for the soldiers and others on whom the burden of
the war had borne most heavily, concealed hostil-
ity to the Constitution and a consolidated govern-
ment. These were not reflections to be spoken of
in debate, but they were not the less cherished,
and gave to it piquancy and spirit. There was
truth on both sides, without doubt.

Though defeated in this measure Madison was
not less determined in his opposition to the as-
sumption of the debts of the States. Of these
debts some States had discharged more than
others ; and he complained, not without reason, of
the injustice of compelling those which had borne
their own burdens unaided to share in the obliga-
tions which others had n^lected. He was un-
fortunate, however, in assuming a superiority for
Virginia over some of the Eastern States, and

158 JAMES MADISON.

especially over Massachusetts, in services rendered
in the struggle for independence. The compari-
son provoked a call for official inquiry ; and that
proved that Massachusetts alone had sent more
men into the field during the war than all the
Southern States together. It was not much to be
wondered at, when this fact was considered, that
the debt of Massachusetts should be larger than
that of Virginia by 1800,000. The difference be-
tween Virginia and South Carolina was the same,
the truth being that the war had cost Massachu-
setts more money to pay her soldiers for the gen-
eral ser\'ice, and South Carolina more to repel the
enemy upon her own soil, than it had cost Virginia
for either purpose. Massachusetts and South Car-
olina were again found acting together, simply be-
cause each of them had a debt — $4,000,000 —
larger than that of any other State. The total
debt of all the States was about $21,000,000 ; and
as that of North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Con-
necticut, when added to the $8,000,000 of Mas-
sachusetts and South Carolina, amounted to half,
or more, of the whole sum, there was no difficulty
in forming a strong combination in favor of as-
sumption. No combination, however, was strong
enough to carry the measure on its own merits,
notwithstanding its advocates attempted to defeat
the funding of the domestic debt of the Federal
Union unless the debts of the several States were
assumed at the same time.

NATIONAL FINANCES.-^ SLAVERY. 159

The domestic debt, however, was at length pro-
vided for, and the assumption of the debts of the
States was rejected till that bargain, referred to
in the preceding chapter, which gave to the South-
em States the permanent seat of government, was
concluded. It would not have been diflBcult, prob-
ably, to defeat that piece of political jobbery by
a public exposure of its terms. Why Madison
did not resort to it, if, as seems certain, he knew
that such a bargain had been privately made, can
only be conjectured. Perhaps he saw that Ham-
ilton, who was applauded by his friends and de-
nounced by his enemies for his clever manage-
ment, had, after all, only made a temporary gain ;
and that Jefferson, whose defense was that Ham-
ilton had taken advantage of his ignorance and
innocence, would not, had he not been short-
sighted, have made any defense at all. For the
assumption of the state debts by the general gov-
ernment was only a distribution of a single local
burden ; and this was a small price for Virginia
and the other Southern States to pay for the per-
manent possession of the federal capital.

While these questions were pending another was
thrown into the House, which was not disposed
of for nearly two months. The debates upon it,
Madison said in one of his letters, " were shame-
fully indecent," though he thought the introduc-
tion of the subject into Congress injudicious. The
Yearly Meeting of Friends in New York and in

160 JAMES MADISON.

Pennsylvania sent a memorial against the con-
tinued toleration of the slaye-trade ; and this was
followed the next day by a petition from the Penn-
sylvania Society for the Promotion of the Aboli-
tion of Slavery, signed by Benjamin Franklin as
president, asking for a more radical measure.

" They earnestly entreat," they said, " your serious
attention to the subject of slavery; that you will be
pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty to these
unhappy men, who alone in this land of freedom are de-
graded into perpetual bondage, and who, amidst the gen-
eral joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile
subjection ; that you will devise means for removing
this inconsistency from the character of the American
people ; that you will promote mercy and justice to-
wards this distressed race ; and that you will step to the
very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging
every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men."

The words were probably Franklin's own, and
as he died a few weeks after they were written,
they may be considered as his dying words to his
countrymen, — counsel wise and merciful as his
always was.

A memorable debate followed the presentation
of these memorials. Even in the imperfect re-
port of it that has come down to us, the " shame-
ful indecency " of which Madison speaks is visible
enough. Franklin, venerable in years, exalted
in character, and eminent above almost all the
men of the time for services to his country, was

NATIONAL FINANCES,^ SLAVERY, 161

sneered at for senility and denounced as disre-
garding the obligations of the Constitution. But
the wrath of the pro-slavery extremists was spe-
cially aroused against the Society of Friends, and
was unrestrained by any considerations of either
decency or truth. In this respect the debate was
the precursor of every contest in Congress upon
the subject that was to follow for the coming
seventy years. The Quakers were the represen-
tative abolitionists of that day, and the measure
of bitter and angry denunciation that was meted
out to them was the same measure which, heaped
up and overflowing, was poured out upon those
who, in later times, took upon themselves the bur-
den of the cause of the slave. The line of argu-
ment, the appeals to prejudice, the disregard of
facts and the false conclusions, the misrepresenta-
tion of past history and the misapprehension of
the future, the contempt of reason, of common
sense, and common humanity, then laboriously and
unscrupulously arrayed in defense of slavery, left
nothing for the exercise of the ingenuity of mod-
em orators. A single difference only between
the earlier and the later time is conspicuous ; the
"plantation manners," as they were called five
and twenty years ago, which the Wises, the
Brookses, the Barksdales, and the Priors of the
modern South relied upon as potent weapons of
defense and assault, were unknown in the earlier

Congresses.

u

162 JAMES MADI80N.

Mr. Madison and some other members from the
South, particularly those from Virginia, opposed
the majority of their colleagues, who were unwill-
ing that these memorials should be referred to a
committee. "The true policy of the Southern
members," Madison wrote to a friend, " was to
haye let the affair proceed with as little noise as
possible, and to have made use of the occasion to
obtain, along with an assertion of the powers of
Congress, a recognition of the restraints imposed
by the Constitution." This in effect was done in
the end, but not till near two months had passed,
within which time the more violent of the South-
ern members had ample opportunity to free their
minds and exhaust the subject. The more these
people talked the worse it was, of course, for their
cause. Had Madison's moderate advice been ac-
cepted then, and had that example been followed
for the next sixty or seventy years, it is quite
likely that the colored race would still be in bond-
age in at least one half of the States. But there
was never a more notable example of manifest
destiny than the gradual but certain progress of
the opposition to slavery ; for there never was a
system, any attempt to defend which showed how
utterly indefensible such a system must needs be.
Every argument advanced in its favor was so
manifestly absurd, or so shocking to the ordinary
sense of mankind, that the more it was discussed
the more widespread and earnest became the op-

NATIONAL FINANCES.— SLAVERY. 168

position. Had the slave-holders been wise they
would never have opened their mouths upon the
subject. But like the man possessed of the devil,
they never ceased to cry, " Let me alone ! " And
the more they cried the more there were who un-
derstood where that cry came from.

In one respect Mr. Madison declared that the
memorial of the Friends demanded attention. If
the American flag was used to protect foreigners
in carrying on the slave-trade in other countries,
that was a proper subject for the consideration of
Congress. "If this is the case," he said, "is
there any person of humanity that would not
wish to prevent them ? " ^ But he recognized the
limitations of the Constitution in relation to the
importation of slaves into the United States, and
the want of any authority in the letter of the
Constitution, or of any wish on the part of Con-
gress, to interfere with slavery in the States. On
these points he would have a decisive declaration,
without agitation, and with as little discussion as

1 The most serious diflSculty in the way of the final suppres-
sion of the African slave-trade in the present century was, that
it could be carried on without molestation in American bottoms,
under the American flag. The ruling power in the United States,
from 1787 to 1860, was never willing that their own cruisers
should meddle with the slavers, and resented as an insult to the
flag the search, by the cruisers of other powers, of any vessel
under the American flag, though it might be absolutely certain
that she had come straight from the coast of Africa, and that her
" between-decks " was crowded full of negroes to be sold as slaves
inCnba.

164 JAMES MADISON,

possible, and there would have dropped the sub-
ject. It only needed, he evidently thought, that
everybody. North and South, should understand
the Constitution to be a mutual agreement to let
slavery altogether alone, when the bargain would
be on both sides faithfully adhered to.

This was all very well with the numerous per-
sons who were quite indifferent to the subject, or
who thought it very unreasonable in the blacks
not to be quite willing to remain slaves a few
hundred years longer. But there were two other
classes to reckon with, and Mr. Madison was not
much inclined to be patient with either of them.
To let the subject alone was precisely what the
hot-headed members from the South were incapa-
ble of doing then, as they proved to be incapable
of doing for the next seventy years. On the
other hand, all the petitioners could really hope
for was that there should be discussion. The gal-
leries were crowded at those earliest debates, as
they continued to be crowded on all such occa-
sions in subsequent years. Many went to learn
what could be said on behalf of slavery, who
came away convinced that the least said the bet-
ter. Agitation might disturb the harmony of the
Union, which was Madison's dread ; it might lead
to the death of an abolitionist, as it sometimes did
in later times ; but it was sure in the end to be
the death of slavery, though its short-sighted de-
fenders could never understand why. They could

NATIONAL FINANCES.-^ SLAVERY, 166

never be made to see that its most dangerous foes
were the friends of its own household, who could
not hold their tongues ; that for their case all
wisdom was epitomized in the vulgar caution ^' to
lie low and keep dark ; '* that the exposure of the
true character of slavery must needs be its de-
struction, and that nothing so exposed it as any
attempt to defend it. Slavery was quite safe
under the Constitution, as Mr. Madison intimated,
if its friends would only leave it there and claim
no other protection.

Advocates are never wanting in any oonrt who
believe that the most effective line of defense is to
abuse the plaintiff. The Quakers, it was said,
^* notwithstanding their outward pretenses," had
no *^more virtue or religion than other people,
nor perhaps so much." They had not made the
Constitution, nor risked their lives and fortunes
by fighting for their country. Why should they
^^ set themselves up in such a particular manner
against slavery ? " Did they not know that the
Bible, not only allowed but commended it, ^^ from
Genesis to Revelation " ? That the Saviour had
permitted it? That the Apostles, in spreading
Christianity, had never preached against it ? That
it had been — the illustration was not altogether a
happy one — " no novel doctrine since the days of
Cain ? " The condition of these American slaves
was said to be one of great happiness and com-
fort ; yet almost in the same breath it was asserted

166 JAME8 MADISON.

that to excite in their minds any, hope of change
would lead to the most disastrous consequences,
and possibly to massacre. The memorialists were
bidden to remember that, even if slavery " were
an evil, it was one for which there was no rem-
edy ; " for that reason the North had acquiesced
in it ; "a compromise was made on both sides —
we took each other with our mutual bad habits
and respective evils, for better, for worse ; the
Northern States adopted us with our slaves, and
we adopted them with their Quakers," With-
out such a compromise there could have been no
Union, and any interference now with slavery by
the government would end in a civil war. These
people were meddling with what was none of their
business, and exciting the slaves to insurrection.
Yet how forbearing were the people of the South-
ern States who, notwithstanding all this, ^^ had
not required the assistance of Congress to exter-
minate the Quakers ! "

This was not conciliatory. Those who had been
disposed at the beginning to meet the petitions
with a quiet reply that the subject was out of
the jurisdiction of Congress, were now provoked
to give them a much warmer reception. They
could not listen patiently to the abuse of the
Quakers, and, though they might acquiesce in
the toleration of slavery, they were not inclined
to have it crammed down their throats as a wise,
beneficent, and consistent condition of society

NATIONAL FINANCES. — SLAVERY. 167

under a republican government. Even Madison,
vih.0 at first was most anxious that nothing should
be said or done to arouse agitation, while acknowl-
edging that all citizens might rightfully appeal to
Congress for a redress of what they considered
grievances, was moved at last to say that the me-
morial of the Friends was *' well worthy of con-
sideration." While admitting that under the Con-
stitution the slave-trade could not be prohibited
for twenty years, " yet," he declared, " there are
a variety of ways by which it [Congress] could
countenance the abolition, and regulations might
be made in relation to the introduction of [slav-
ery] into the new States to be formed out of the
western territory."

Gerry was still more emphatic in the assertion
of the right of interference. He boldly asserted
that " flagrant acts of cruelty " were committed
in carrying on the African slave-trade ; and, while
nobody proposed to violate the Constitution,
^^ that we have a right to regulate this business is
as clear as that we have any right whatever ; nor
has the contrary been shown by anybody who has
spoken on the occasion." Nor did he stop there.
He told the slave-holders that the value of their
slaves in money was only about ten million AoV
lars, and that Congress had the right to propose
" to purchase the whole of them ; and their re-
sources in the western territory might furnish
them with the means." The Southern members

168 JAMES MADISON.

would, perhaps, haye been startled by such a
proposition as this, had he not immediately added
that ^^ he did not intend to suggest a measure of
this kind ; he only instanced these particulars to
show that Congress certainly had a right to inter-
meddle in the ^^ business." It is quite likely, had
he pushed such a measure with his well-known
zeal and determination, that it would have been
at least received with a good deal of favor ; and,
as the admirers of Jefferson are tenacious of his
fame as the author of the original Northwest Or-
dinance, so Gerry, had he seriously and earnestly
urged the policy of using the proceeds of the sales
of territorial lands to remunerate the owners of
slaves for their liberation, would have left behind
him a more fragrant memory than that which
clings to him as a minister to France, and as
the '* Gerrymandering " governor of Massachi^
setts. The debate, however, came to an end at
last with no other result than that which would
have been reached at the beginning without de-
bate, except, perhaps, that the vote in favor of
the reports upon the memorials was smaller than
it might have been had there been no discussion.
Within less than two years, however, Warner
Mifflin of Delaware, an eminent member of the
Society of Friends, who was one of the first, if
not the first, of that society to manumit his own
slaves, petitioned Congress to take some measure
for general emancipation. The petition was en-

NA TIONAL FINANCES, — SLA VER T. 169

tered upon the journal ; but on a subsequent day
a North Carolina member, Mr. Steele, said that
" after what had passed at New York on this sub-
ject, he had hoped the House would have heard
no more of it ; " and he moved that the petition
be returned to Mifflin and be expunged from the
journal. Fisher Ames explained in a rather apol-
(^etic tone that he had presented the petition at
Mr. Mifflin's request, because the member from
Delaware was absent, and because he believed in
the right of petition, though '^ he considered it as
totally inexpedient to interfere with the subject."
The House agreed that the petition should be re-
turned, and Steele then withdrew the motion to
expunge it from the journal.

In the next Congress, eighteen months after^
ward, the House took up the subject of the slave-
trade, apparently of its own motion, and a bill
was passed prohibiting the carrying on of that
traffic from the ports of the United States in for-
eign vessels. The question was as inexorable as
death, and the difference in regard to it then was
precisely what it was in the final discussion of the
next century which settled it forever. One set of
men was given over to perdition if they dared so
much as talk ; the other set talked all the more,
and went to the very verge of the Constitution in
act all the more, because they were bidden nei-
ther to speak nor to move. Courage was not
one of Madison's marked characteristics, but he

170 JAMES MADISON.

never showed more of it than in his hostility to
slavery.

At the third session of the First Congress,
which had adjourned from New York to Philadel-
phia, where it met in December, 1790, Madison led
his party in opposition to the establishment of a
national bank, which Hamilton had recommended ;
and again, as in the adjustment of the domestic
debt, he and his party were defeated. He com-
pared the advantages and the disadvantages of
banks, and possibly he did not satisfy himself, as
he certainly did not the other side, that the weight
of the argument was against their utility. At any
rate, he fell back upon the Constitution as his
strongest position. To incorporate a bank was
not, he maintained, among the powers conferred
upon Congress. The Federalists, who were be-
ginning to recognize him as the leader of the op-
position, were quite ready to accept that challenge.
"Little doubt remains," said Fisher Ames, in
rising to reply, "with respect to the utility of
banks." Assuming that to be settled, — whether
he meant, or not, that such was the conclusion to
be drawn from Madison's ai*gument on that point,
— he addressed himself to the constitutional ques-
tion. If the incorporation of a bank was forbid^
den by the Constitution there was an end of the
matter. If it was not forbidden, but if Congress
may exercise powers not expressly bestowed upon
it, and if by a bank some of the things which the

NATIONAL FINANCES. - SLAVERY. 171

Federal Government had to do could be best done,
it would be not only right but wise to establish
such an agency. This was the burden of the ar-
gument of the Federalists, and Madison and his
friends had no sufficient answer. The bill was at
length passed by a vote of thirty-nine to twenty.

But it had still to pass the ordeal of the cabi-
net. The President was not disposed to rely upon
his own judgment either one way or the other.
He asked, therefore, for the written opinions of
the Secretaries of the Treasury and of State, Ham-
ilton and Je£Ferson, and the Attorney General,
Randolph. The same request was made to Madi-
son, probably more because Washington held his
ability and knowledge of constitutional law in
high esteem, than because of the prominent part
he had taken in the debate. Hamilton's argu-
ment in favor of the bill was an answer to the
papers of the three other gentlemen, and was ac-
cepted as conclusive by the President.

CHAPTER XIL

PEDEBAUSTS AUD BEPUBLIGANS.

Madison weis a Federalist until, unfortunately,
be drifted into tbe opposition. He was swept
away partly, perhaps, by tbe influence of personal
friends, particularly of Jefferson, and partly by tbe
influence of locality — tbat " go-witb-tbe-State '*
doctrine, wbicb is a harmless kind of patriotism
wben kept witbin proper limits, but dangerous in
a mixed government like ours wben unrestrained.
Had be been born in a free State it seems more
tban probable tbat be would never bave been
President ; but it is quite possible tbat bis place
in tbe history of bis country would have been
higher. Tbe better part of bis life was before he
became a party leader. As his career is followed
the presence of tbe statesman grows gradually
dimmer in tbe shadow of the successful politician.

In tbe course of tbe three sessions of the First
Congress the line was distinctly drawn between
tbe Federal and Republican (or Democratic) par-
ties. Tbe Federalists, it was evident, bad suc-
ceeded in firmly uniting thirteen separate States
into one great nation, or into what, in due time,

FEDERALWra AND REPUBLICANS. 178

was sure to become a great nation. It was no
longer a loose assemblage of thirteen independent
bodies, revolving, indeed, around a central power,
but with a centrifugal motion that might at any
time send them flying off into space, or destroy
them by collisions at various tangents. Those
who opposed the Federalists, however, had no fear
of a tendency to tangents; the danger was, as
they believed, of too much centripetal force, and
that the circling planets might fall into the central
sun and disappear altogether. Even if there were
no flying ofiF into space, and no falling into the
sun, they had no faith in this sort of political as*
tronomy. They were unwilling to float in fixed
orbits obedient to a supreme law other than their
own.

There is no need to doubt the honesty of either
party then, whatever came to pass in later years.
Nor, however, is there any more doubt now which
was the vdser. Before the end of the century the
administration of government was wrested from
the hands of those who had created the Union ;
and within fifteen years more the Federal party,
under that name, had disappeared. It would not
be quite just to say that they were opposed for no
better reason than because they were in power.
But it is quite true that the principles and the
policy of the Federalists survived the party organ-
ization; and they not only survived, but, so far
as the opposite party was ever of service to the

174 JAMES MADISON.

country, it was when that party adopted the Fed-
eral measures. It was in accordance with the
early principles of Federalism that the Republic
was defended and saved in the war of 1860-65 ;
as it was the principles of the Democratic state-
rights party, administered by a slave-holding oli-
garchy, that made that war inevitable.

Hamilton said, in the well-known Carrington
letter in the spring of 1792, that he was thor-
oughly convinced by Madison's course in the late
Congress that he, "cooperating with Mr. Jeffer-
son, is at the head of a faction decidedly hostile to
me and my administration, and actuated by views,
in my judgment, subversive of the principles of
good government, and dangerous to the union,
peace, and happiness of the country." At first he
was disposed to believe, because of his " previous
impressions of the fairness of Mr. Madison's char-
acter," that there was nothing personal or factious
in this hostility. But he soon changed his mind.
Up to the time of the meeting of the First Con-
gress there had always been perfect accord be-
tween them, and Hamilton accepted his seat in
the cabinet " under the full persuasion," he said,
" that from similarity of thinking, conspiring with
personal good-will, I should have the firm support
of Mr. Madison in the general course of my ad-
minstration." But when he found in Madison his
most determined opponent, either open or covert,
in the most important measures he urged upon

FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS. 175

Congress, — the settlement of the domestic debt,
the assumption of the debts of the States, and the
establishment of a national bank, — he was com-
pelled to seek for other than public motives for
this opposition. "It had been," he declared,
" more uniform and persevering than I have been
able to resolve into a sincere difference of opinion.
I cannot persuade myself that Mr. Madison and I,
whose politics had formerly so much the same
point of departure, should now diverge so widely
in our opinions of the measures which are proper
to be pursued."

In the letter from which these extracts are
made Jefferson and Madison are painted as almost
equally black, though the color was laid the
thicker on Jefferson, if there was any difference.
Hamilton seemed to think that, if Jefferson was
the more malicious, Madison was the more artful.
He is accused of an attempt to get the better of
the Secretary of the Treasury by a trick which
was dishonorable in itself, and at the same time
an abuse of the confidence reposed in him by
Washington. Before sending in his message at
the opening of the Second Congress the President
submitted it to Madison, who, Hamilton declares,
so altered it, by transposing a passage and by the
addition of a few words, that the President was
made to seem, unconsciously to himself, to ap-
prove of Jefferson's proposal to establish the same
unit for coins as for weights. This would have

176 JAMES MADiaON.

been to disapprove of the proposal of the Secre-
tary of the Treasury that the dollar should re-
main the unit of coinage. The statement rests
on Hamilton's assertion ; and as he had forgotten
the words which made the change he complained
of ; and as the message was restored to its original
form by the President when its possible interpre-
tation was pointed out to him, it is impossible now
to judge whether Madison may not have been
quite innocent of the intention imputed to him.
It is plain enough, however, that Hamilton was
sore and disappointed at Madison's conduct, and
that he was quick to seize upon any incident that
justified him in saying, " The opinion I once en-
tertained of the candor and simplicity and fair-
ness of Mr. Madison's character has, I acknowl-
edge, given way to a decided opinion that it is one
of a peculiarly artificial and complicated kind.'*
To justify this opinion, and as an evidence of how
bitter Madison's political and personal enmity to-
ward him had become, he refers in the same let-
ter to Madison's relation to Freneau and his
paper, " The National Gazette." " As the coad-
jutor of Je£Ferson," he wrote, " in the establish-
ment of this paper, I include Mr. Madison in the
consequences imputable to it."

The story of Freneau need not be repeated
here at length, having been already told in an-
other volume of this series of biographies. If
there were anything in that affair, however, for

FEDERAUara and REPUBLICANa. 177

which Je£ferson could be fairly called to account,
Madison may be held as not less responsible.
When the charge was made that he had a sinister
motive in procuring for Freneau a clerkship in the
State Department, and in aiding him to establish
a newspaper, Madison frankly related the facts in
a letter to Edmund Randolph. He had nothing
to deny except to repel with some indignation th^
charge that he had helped to establish the jour*
nal in order that it might '^ sap the Constitution,"
or that there was the slightest expectation or in-
tention on his part of any relation between the
State Department and the newspaper. Freneau
was one of his college friends, a deserving man, to
whom he was attached, and whom he was glad to
help. There was nothing improper in commend-
ing one well qualified to discharge its duties for
the post of translator in a government office, and
as those duties, for which the yearly salary was
only two hundred and fifty dollars, were light,
there was no good reason why the clerk should not
find other employment for leisure hours.

If Mr. Madison, having said this, had stopped
there, his critics would have been silenced. But
when he added that he advised his friend with
another motive besides that of helping him to
start a newspaper, then, as the expressive modem
phrase is, he " gave himself away." There is a
feeling, common even in those early and innocent
days when such things were rare, that the editor,

12

178 JAM£8 MADISON.

whose daily bread, whether it be cake or crast,
comes from the bounty of the man in office or
other place of power — that an editor so fed, and
perhaps fattened, is only a servant boaght at a
price. Madison said that to help a needy man
whom he held in high esteem was his " primary
and governing motive." But he adds : " That, as a
consequential one, I entertained hopes that a free
paper . . . would be an antidote to the doctrines
and discourses circulated in favor of monarchy and
aristocracy; would be an acceptable vehicle of pub-
lic information in many places not sufficiently
supplied with it — this also is a certain truth."
What was this but an acknowledgment of the
essential truth of the charge brought against Jef-
ferson and himself ? Not that he might not de-
voutly hope for an antidote to the poisonous
doctrines of monarchy and aristocracy, though in
very truth the existence of any such poison was
only one of the maggots which, bred in the muck
of party strife, had found a lodgment in his brain ;
not that it was not a commendable public spirit to
wish for a good newspaper to circulate where it
was most needed ; not that it was not a most excel-
lent thing in him to hold out a helping hand to the
friend who had been less fortunate than himself ;
but that in helping his friend to a clerkship in a
department of the government, his motive was in
part that the possession of a public office would
enable the man to establish a party organ. That

FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS, 179

was precisely the point of the charge. which he
seems to have failed to apprehend — that public
patronage was used at his suggestion to further
party ends.

Freneau had intended to start a newspaper
somewhere in New Jersey. Whether or not that
known intention suggested that the project could
be better carried out in Philadelphia, and a clerk-
ship in the State Department would be an aid to
it, the change of plan was adopted and the clerk-
ship bestowed upon him. The paper — the first
number of which appeared five days after his ap-
pointment — was, as it was known that it would
be, an earnest defender of Jefferson and his friends,
and a formidable opponent of Hamilton and his
party. The logical conclusion was that the man,
being put in place for a purpose, was diligent in
using the opportunities the place afforded him to
fulfill the hopes of those to whom he was indebted.
Madison and Jefferson both denied, with much
heat and indignation, that they had anything to
do with the editorial conduct of the paper. No
doubt they spoke the truth. They had to draw
the line somewhere ; they drew it there ; and an
exceedingly sharp and fine line it was. For it is
plain that Freneau knew very well what he was
about and what was expected of him, and his
powerful friends knew very well that he knew it.
They could feel in him the most implicit con-
fidence as an untamed and untamable democrat,

180 JAMEa MADISON.

and one, perhaps, whose gratitude would be kept
alive by the remembrance of poverty and the
hope of future favors. There was clearly no need
of a board of directors for the editorial super-
vision of "The National Gazette," and it was
quite safe to deny that any existed. The fact,
nevertheless, remained, that a seat had been given
the editor at Mr. Jefferson's elbow.

Three months before Madison heard that his
relation to Freneau was bringing him under pub-
lic censure, he showed an evident interest in the
" Gazette " hardly consistent with his subsequent
avowal of having nothing to do with its manage-
ment. In a letter to Jefferson he refers to the
postage on newspapers, established by the bill for
the regulation of post-offices, and fears that it will
prove a grievance in the loss of subscribers. He
suggests that a notice be given that the papers
" will not be put into the mail, but sent as hereto-
fore^^* meaning by that, probably, that they would
be sent under the franks of members of Congress,
or by any other chance that might offer. " Will
you," he adds, " hint this to Freneau ? His sub-
scribers in this quarter seem pretty well satisfied
with the degree of regularity and safety with
which they get the papers, and highly pleased
with the paper itself." This was careful dry-
nursing for the bantling which had been pro-
vided with so comfortable a cradle in the State
Department.

FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS. 181

The political casuist of our time may wonder at
the importance which attached to this Freneau
affair. We are taught that "there were giants
in those days ; " but we may also remember that
in the modern science of " practical politics " they
were as babes and sucklings. Madison was making
good his place as a leader of the opposition hardly
second to Jefferson himself. As with Hamilton,
so with the Federalists generally, he fell more
even than Jefferson fell in their esteem. He fell
more, because he had farther to fall. No man
had been more earnest than he for a consolidated
government ; no one had shown more activity to
bring about a convention to frame a Federal Con-
stitution ; and when at last that work was done,
no one, not even Hamilton himself, was more
zealous to convince his countrymen that national
salvation depended upon union, and that union
was hopeless unless the Constitution should be
adopted. The disappointment and the shock were
all the greater when he gradually drew off from
those who had hitherto counted him as on their
side. They could not understand how he could
find so much to oppose in the legitimate adminis-
tration — as they believed it to be — of a Consti-
tution he had done so much to create, and the
beneficent results of which he had foreseen and
foretold. Or, if they understood him, it was on
the supposition that he had thrown his convic-
tions and his principles to the winds, abandoned

182 JAMES MADISON,

his old friends and attached himself to new ones,
from motives of personal ambition. This, of
course, may not have been absolutely just. It is
quite possible that he did not deliberately sur-
render his principles, but persuaded himself that
he was as true as ever to the Constitution. It is,
nevertheless, certainly true that the men with
whom he was now acting were the men who, hav-
ing failed to prevent the adoption of the Consti-
tution, now aimed by zealous endeavors for an as-
sumed strict construction to defeat the purpose
for which it was framed.^

Naturally his motives were suspected, and his
conduct narrowly watched. Jefferson's influence
over him was known to be great, and Jefferson had
had nothing to do with the framing of the Consti-
tution, had been doubtful at first of its wisdom,
and gave his assent to it at last with many doubts.
The Anti-Federal party was growing gradually
stronger in Virginia as in all the Southern States ;
most of Madison's warmest personal friends, as
well as Jefferson, were of that party. What
chance would he have in the public career he had

1 " I reverence the Constitution," said Fisher Ames, in debate,
" and I readily admit that the freqaent appeal to that as a stand-
ard proceeds from a respectful attachment to it. So far it is a
source of agreeable reflection. But I feel very different emotions,
when I find it almost daily resorted to in questions of little im-
portance. When by strained and fanciful constructions it is made
an instrument of casuistry, it is to be feared it may lose something
in our minds in point of certainty, and more In point of dig-
nity."

FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS, 183

marked out for himself if his path and theirs led
in opposite directions ? How much he was influ-
enced by these considerations it is impossible to
tell ; perhaps he himself could not have told.
Perhaps they were not even considerations, but
only unconscious influences, which he would have
thrown behind him had he recognized them as pos-
sible motives. To others, however, whether justly
or not, they were quite suflBicient to explain his
course, and, once accepted, no other explanation
was sought for. The appointment of Freneau to
office at Madison's request, followed by the almost
immediate appearance of a violent party organ,
edited by this clerk in Mr. Jefferson's department,
was quite enough to raise an outcry among the
Federalists; and Madison's explanation, when it
came to be known, of his share in that business,
did not add to his reputation either for frankness
or political rectitude. Perhaps it was at first more
the seeming want of frankness that disgusted his
old friends. They could have more readily for-
given him had he openly declared that he had
gone over to the enemy, instead of professing to
find in the Constitution sufficient ground for hos-
tility to their measures. These constitutional
scruples they sometimes thought so thin a disguise
of other motives as to be better deserving of ridi-
cule than of argument.

All he said and did was watched with suspicion.
In the interval between the First and Second

184 JAMES MADISON.

Congresses, he and Jefferson made a tour through
some of the Eastern States, as they said, for relax-
ation and pleasure. But it was looked upon as a
strategic movement. Interviews between them
and Livingston and Burr in New York were re-
ported to Hamilton as " a passionate courtship/'
They visited Albany, it was said, " under the pre-
text of a botanical excursion," but in reality to
meet with Clinton. Botany naturally suggests
agriculture, and as they continued on their jour-
ney into New England they were accused of " sow-
ing tares," as they traveled. Such treacliery
would have been considered as aggravated by
hypocrisy had it been known then that on his re-
turn Mr. Madison wrote to his father from New
York : " The tour I lately made with Mr. Jeffer-
son, of which I have given the outlines to my
brother, was a very agreeable one, and carried
us through interesting country, new to us both."
This was cool, if the journey really was a political
reconnoissance.

Though Mr. Madison may have been for a time
a special target for this kind of partisan rancor,
it was by no means confined to him. Jefferson
had a very pretty talent for exasperating his
enemies, and nobody could long divide with him
the distinction of being the best hated man in
the country. A curious instance of it was given
when the question was discussed, both in the
First and Second Congresses, as to the successor

FEDERALI8Ta AND RUFUBLICANS. 185

to the presidency in case the office should become
vacant by the deaths of both President and Vice-
President. A bill was sent down from the Sen-
ate to the House, providing, in case such a thing
should ever happen, that the President pro terrh
pore of the Senate, or, should the Senate have no
temporary President, the Speaker of the House
of Representatives should succeed to the vacant
office. The House sent back the bill with an
amendment substituting the Secretary of State
for the succession in the possible vacancy instead
of the presiding officers of the two Houses of Con-
gress. Madison was very earnest for this amend-
ment, but the Senate rejected it and the House
'finally assented to the original bill, which is the
law to-day. It was shown in the course of the
debate, that according to the doctrine of chances
the office of president would not devolve, through
the accident of death, upon a third person oftener
than once in about eight hundred and forty years.
The rejection of the amendment naming the Sec-
retary of State as the proper person to succeed to
the presidency, in the improbable event supposed,
was nevertheless resented by the Republicans as a
direct reflection upon Mr. Jefferson. Nor did the
Federalists deny it. With grim humor they seized
upon the opportunity, apparently, to announce,
that not with their consent should he ever be
president even by accident, though he should
wait literally eight hundred and forty years. It

186 JAMES MADISON.

was a long range shot, but there could not have
been one* better aimed.

If before there had been some room for hope,
Madison's course in the Second Congress left no
doubt as to which party he had cast his lot with.
His hostility to the establishment of a bank was,
he thought, justified by what he saw at the open-
ing of the subscription books in New York. The
anxiety to get possession of the stock was not to
him an evidence of public confidence, and an argu-
ment, therefore, in favor of such an institution ;
but " a mere scramble for so much public plun-
der." He could only see that "stock-jobbing
drowns every other subject. The coffee-house is
in an eternal buzz with the gamblers." " It pretty
clearly appears also," he said, " in what propor-
tions the public debt lies in the country ; what
sort of hands holding it ; and by whom the people
of the United States are to be governed." Here,
perhaps, was one cause of his hostility to Hamil-
ton's financial policy. Its immediate benefit was
for that class whose pecuniary stake in the stabil-
ity of the government was the largest. This class
was chiefly in the Northern States where capital
was in money and was always on the lookout for
safe and profitable investment. At the South,
capital was in slaves and land, and could not be
easily changed. If the Bank and the bond-hold-
ers were to exercise — as he feared they would,
and as he believed that the Federalists meant they

FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS. 187

shoald — a controlling influence over the govern-
ment, it was certainly pretty apparent " by whom
the people of the United States were to be gov-
erned." It would be the North, not the South ;
and he was a Virginian before he was a Unionist.
Perhaps he was influenced by this consideration
when he proposed that the payment of the domes-
tic debt should be divided between those who had
originally held, and those who had acquired by
purchase, the certificates of indebtedness. The
public creditors would, in that case have been
more widely distributed in different sections of
the country and among different classes. The
thought, at any rate, does not seem to have been
a new one when he saw and reported the eager-
ness with which the bank stock was sought for,
denounced it as stock-jobbing and gambling, and
indignantly reflected that in these men he saw the
future governors of the country, and particularly
of his own people. No doubt there was a good
deal of speculation ; and, as at all such times,
there were a few who made fortunes, while many
who had, at first, much money and no stock, next
much stock and no money, had at last neither
stock nor money. But Mr. Madison's indignation
was quite wasted, and his fears quite unfounded.
Neither the stock-jobbers, the Bank, nor the bond-
holders ever usurped the government, whatever
may have been Hamilton's hopes or schemes, if he
had any other than to serve his country. The

188 JAMES MADISON.

money-power of the North built cities and ships,
factories and towns, and stretched out its hands
to the great lakes and over the broad prairies, to
add to its dominion, to extend its civilization, and
to give to labor and industry their due reward. It
was the South that devoted itself to the business
of politics, and, united by stronger bonds than can
ever be forged of gold alone, soon entered into
possession of the government, which it retained
and used for its own interests, without regard to
the interests or the rights of the North, for nearly
three quarters of a century. Mr. Madison had no
prescience of any such future in the history of the
country, nor, indeed, then had anybody else. He
may have really believed that the holders of a
large public debt and the owners of a great na*
tional bank, through which the monetary affairs
of the country could be controlled, were aiming
to lay hold of the government. If all this were
true, imminent peril was impending over repub-
lican institutions. The inconsistency of which
Hamilton accused Madison was therefore not nec-
essarily a crime. It might even be a virtue, and
Madison be applauded for his courage in avowing
a change of opinion, if he saw in the practical
application of Hamilton's principles dangers that
had not occurred to him when looking at them
only as abstract theories. But the Federalists be-
lieved that Madison, governed by these purely
selfish motives, sacrificed his convictions of what

FEDERALISTa AND REPUBLICANS. 189

was best for the country that he might secure for
himself a position on what he foresaw was the
winning side. It is quite likely that the more
pronounced enmity he showed towards Hamilton
during the second session of Congress was due, in
some measure, to his knowledge of this feeling to-
wards himself among the Federalists. He seemed,
at any rate, to be animated by something more
than the proverbial zeal of the new convert. If
it was not always shown in debate, it lurked in
his letters. Anything that came from the Sec-
retary, or anything that favored the Secretary's
measures, was sure to be opposed by him. He
was not, of course, always in the wrong, and some-
times he was very right. There was a manifest
disposition on the part of the Federalists in the
House to defer to the Secretary in a way to pro-
voke opposition from those who did not share in
their estimate of his great ability. There was
some resentment, for example, when it was pro-
posed that Congress should submit to the Secre-
tary the question of ways and means to carry on
the Indian war at the West, after St. Clair's dis-
astrous defeat ; and when, a few days later, it was
suggested that he should be called upon to report
a plan for the reduction of the public debt. Mem-
bers, chief among them Madison, thought that
they were quite capable of discharging the duties
belonging to their branch of the government with-
out instructions from a head of department whom

190 JAMES MADISON.

many of them looked upon as only an official sub-
ordinate of Congress. For the same reason they
refused with prompt decision to permit the Secre-
tary to appear upon the floor of the House to ex-
plain some proposed measure. In the Carrington
letter Hamilton said that he had "openly de-
clared " a " determination to treat him [Madison]
as a political enemy." He probably took care
that Madison should hear of it, for he was not a
man who made idle threats. He was sometimes
arrogant and overbearing in manner, was always
ready for a fight, which he rather preferred to
quietude, and had little disposition to spare an en-
emy. These were not conciliating qualities likely
to temper the asperities of political warfare, and
they may have provoked even Madison, mild-man-
nered and almost timid as he was, to unusual heat.
All this, of course, is aside from the question
whether the party, to which Mr. Madison had
given his allegiance, was right or wrong. On that
point there may be an honest difference of opin*
ion. It is apart also from the question whether
a man may not honestly change sides in politics,
notwithstanding the suspicion that always follows
him who runs from one side to the other, when in
neither has there been any change in principles
or measures. It is quite possible that he may be
governed by the most sincere convictions ; and if
he obeys them and abandons old friends for new
ones, or consents to be friendless, it is the strong-

FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS. 191

est proof the statesman or politician can give of a
moral courage which ought to gain for him all
the more respect. But whether that respect must
be denied to Mr. Madison, because he was gov-
erned by other and lower motives, is the question.
There had been no change of political principles
either in the party he had left or the party he
had joined; but each was striving with all its
might to adapt the old doctrines to the altered
condition of affairs under the new Union. The
change was wholly in Mr. Madison. That which
had been white to him was now black ; that
which had been black was now as the driven
snow. Why was this ? Had he come to see that
in all those years he had been wrong ? Or had
he suddenly learned, not that he was wrong, but
that he had mistaken a straight and narrow path
for the broad road which would lead to the goal
he was seeking? These are not pleasant ques-
tions. He had served his country well ; one does
not like to doubt whether it was with a selfish
rather than a noble purpose. But of any public
man who changed front as he changed, the ques-
tion always will be — what moved him ? Not to
ask it in regard to Madison is to drop out of sight
the turning-point of his career ; not to consider it
is to leave unheeded essential light upon one side
of his character. For#his own fortunes the choice
he made was judicious, if to "gain the whole
world " is always the wisest and best thing to do.

192 JAME8 MALISON.

He gained his world, and was wise and virtaoos
in his generation according to the vote of a large
majority. Whether that decision still holds good
it is not so easy to say ; probably it does, however;
for the popular estimate of men often, remains un-
changed long after the judgment upon the events
which gave them celebrity is completely reversed.
But history, in the long run, weighs with even
scales; and the verdict on Madison's character
usually comes with that pitiful recommendation to
mercy from a jury loath to condemn. Admiration
for his great services in the Constitutional Con-
vention and after it, when its work was presented
to the people for their approval, has never been
withheld ; upon his official integrity and his high
sense of honor in all his personal relations, except
when obligation to party may have overshadowed
it, there rests no cloud ; and his intellectual power
is never questioned. One having these recognized
qualities, and who for five and twenty years was
generally high in office, must needs be held in
high estimation especially in a new country where
fame, like everything else, is cheap. Nevertheless,
impartial historians, who venture to believe that
nature admits of imperfections in a native of Vir-
ginia, declare their conviction that Mr, Madison
either wanted the strength and courage to resist
the influence of those about him, or that the am-
bition of the politician was strong enough to over-
come any consideration of principles that might
stand in his way.

CHAPTER Xm.

FRENCH POLinOS.

If any proof were wanting of how completely
Madison had gone over to the opposition, he gave
it in the memorable attack upon the Secretary of
the Treasury in the spring of 1793, within four
days of the close of the second session of the Sec-
ond Congress. It was hoped by that proceeding
tb overwhelm Hamilton with disgrace, and that
the President would feel himself obliged to expel
him from the cabinet. When the resolutions
with this aim were offered, a member said that
delicacy, decency, and every rule of justice had
been violated ; ^^ a more unhandsome proceeding
he bad never seen in Congress ; " he might have
remained a member to this day, and, save for the
attempts in our time to expel John Quincy Ad-
ams and Joshua R. Giddings, not have changed
his opinion.

In the course of the preceding year Hamilton,
under various signatures, had met his opponents
in the newspapers. But it was a veil, not a visor,
behind which he fought ; for everybody knew
from whom came the vigorous blows that he dealt

13

194 JAMES MADISON,

about him right and left. It was a boast always
of Jefferson that he never condescended to news-
paper controversy ; but it was pretty well under-
stood that he himself did not enter upon that
rather unsatisfactory mode of warfare, because he
preferred the safer method of fighting by proxy.
Hamilton never was in doubt as to who was his
real antagonist, and he aimed his blows over the
heads of his petty assailants to where he knew
they would hit home. They left bad bruises
upon his colleague in the cabinet. Among other
papers of the time, though not a newspaper arti-
cle, was an official letter to the President, in
which Hamilton defended his principles and his
measures. Early in 1792, the President, longing
to escape the toils of public life and to spend
the rest of his days in tranquillity, had consulted
Madison and his two Secretaries, Jefferson and
Hamilton, upon the propriety of his declining a
reelection. He soon changed his mind, influenced,
perhaps, as much by the dissensions, so evident in
the expostulations of his friends, as by the expos-
tulations themselves. He deprecated this open
feud between his Secretaries as a public misfor-
tune, and sought, if he could not reconcile them,
to silence it. That the Federalists were monarch-
ists, as Jefferson and Madison never ceased assert-
ing, he knew was not true, without the emphatic
and indignant declarations of Hamilton, Adams,
and other leading men of that party, when they ooor

FRENCH POLITICS. 196

descended to notice a charge which they deemed
80 absurd that it was difficult to believe that any-
body could make it in earnest. But, while he
knew there was no real danger from that quarter,
he could pot fail to see that the reverence and love
in which he was held constituted a bond of unity,
so long as he remained chief magistrate; and he
may have felt that, should he retire, there was no
other common tie strong enough at that moment
to hold together a Union, the possible dissolution
of which was, both at the North and at the South,
considered with calmness, sometimes with compla-
cency, and, when party passion was at a red heat,
even as a thing to be prayed for. At any rate
the President consented to take the advice of the
counselors whom he had consulted ; but in ask-
ing that advice he unwittingly aggravated the
quarrel among them which caused him so much
uneasiness.

Jefferson, in the arguments he set forth both in
conversation and by letter to influence Washing-
ton's decision, dwelt upon the imhappy condition
of public affairs. It was a storm which he himself
meant to get out of by retiring to Montioello,
though he thought it was Washington's duty to
remain at the helm and keep an eye to windward.
This unhappy condition of affairs, he said, had all
come from the course pursued by the Secretary of
the Treasury, and was the natural consequence of
the acts of Congress in relation to the public debt,

196 JAMES MADISON.

the Bank, excise, currency, and other important
measures passed in accordance with the Secre-
tary's policy. Whether this policy was meant to
destroy the Union, subvert the Republic, and es-
tablish a monarchy upon its ruins; at any rate
such must be the inevitable result of those mis-
chievous measures. He urged this view of the
subject with such pertinacity, that Washington,
either because he was impressed by so much ear-
nestness, or because he was curious to know how
the assertions could best be answered, sent them
to Hamilton, with other objections of a similar
character from other persons, and asked for a re-
ply. No names were given ; but it is not likely
that Hamilton was at any loss in guessing where
such strictures upon his administration of affairs
came from. *^ I have not fortitude enough," he
said in his answer, ^^ always to hear with calmness
calumnies which necessarily include me as a prin-
cipal object in the measures censured, of the false-
hood of which I have the most unqualified con-
sciousness. • • • I acknowledge that I cannot be
entirely patient under charges which impeach the
integrity of my public motives or conduct. I feel
that I merit them in no degree, and expressions of
indignation sometimes escape me in spite of every
effort to suppress them." There were only two
men in the country whom he could have had in
mind when he wrote such words as these. In all
Washington's career there is nowhere a stronger

FRENCH POLITICS. 197

proof of his strong will, self-reliance, and passion-
less impartiality, than that he could stand be-
tween two such furnaces as Hamilton on one side,
and Jefferson and Madison on the other, both
glowing at the intensest white heat, while he re-
mained usually as calm and as unmoved as if
breathing the softest, balmiest, and gentlest airs
of a day in June. But all this personal contro-
versy in the public prints, and in the olB&cial in-
tercourse of the cabinet, left on both sides an in-
tense exasperation, which could not fail to have
a controlling influence in the conduct of political
parties. Whether Jefferson was conscious or not
— and whatever his feeling was, Madison shared
it with him — that in this paper warfare he was
signally defeated, the attempt to ruin Hamilton
by an attack upon him in Congress followed, if it
was not the consequence of, the mortification of
defeat.

In February, 1793, Mr. Giles, a representative
from Virginia, offered a series of resolutions call-
ing upon the President for certain information re-
lating to the finances. They were a bold attack
upon the Secretary of the Treasury, and, should
it prove that they could not be satisfactorily an-
swered, would convict him of mismanagement of
the financial affairs of the government, of a disre-
gard of law, of usurpation of power, and even of
embezzlement of the public funds. Any reasonar
ble ground for believing such charges to be well-

198 JAMEB MADISON.

founded would be quite sufficient to bring the
Secretary to trial by impeachment. There was
probably little doubt at the moment as to whence
this blow came ; for, though the hand might seem
the hand of Esau, the voice was the voice of Jacob.
Behind Giles was Madison ; and behind Madison,
of course, was Jefferson. Mr. John C. Hamilton,
in his " History of the Republic," asserts that the
resolutions were still — when he wrote, twenty-
five years ago — in the archives of the State De-
partment at Washington, in Madison's handwrit-
ing; and he further declares that Giles assured
Rufus King that Madison was their author.

Hamilton's reply, so far as any intentional
wrong-doing was imputed to him, was conclusive.
There had been technical violations of acts of
Congress in one instance, but it was only to carry
out the acts themselves. Congress had, three
years before, passed two acts authorizing the ne-
gotiation of two loans, one for twelve million dol-
lars for the discharge of the foreign debt, and
another for two million dollars to be used at home.
It had been convenient, and had conduced to the
success of the negotiation, to offer in Holland to
contract a loan for fourteen million dollars, with-
out the unnecessary, and to foreigners probably
the confusing, statement that the authority for
borrowing that amount was derived from two sep-
arate acts of Congress. It was only in this bor-
rowing of the money that there waa any seeming

FRENCH POLlTICa. 199

disregard of (he letter of the law. The loans and
their purposes were kept entirely distinct in the
accounts of the department. Other questions
touching the management of these loans were so
clearly and frankly explained that nothing but
the captiousness of party could refuse to be satis-
fied. On one point — the charge of an alleged
deficit •«— the opposition was absolutely silenced.
The Secretary indignantly explained, that the sum
— as anybody could have known for the asking
from any officer in the Treasury Department —
which was made to appear as missing was in
credits for customs bonds not yet due, and bills
of exchange on Europe, sold but not yet paid for.
Though there was enough of decency, or of
prudence which took the place of decency, to^ drop
the insinuation that the Secretary had stolen what
had never been in his possession, it was not so
with the rest of the accusations. Only four days
before Congress was to adjourn, Giles offered an-
other set of resolutions. These assumed that the
defiance of law and unwarranted assumption of
power, which, at first, were only suggested by the
inquiries, were now proved to be true by the ex-
planations that had been given. The indictment,
therefore, was made to include the verdict and the
sentence ; the criminal was accused, was to be
found guilty, and condemned to capital punish-
ment in one proceeding, without the privilege of
trial, or a recognition of the right to be heard.

200 JAMES MADISON.

The argument of the resolutions was^ that certain
acts were a violation of law^ that the Secretary
had committed all those acts; and therefore it
was the will of the House that the facts be re-
ported to the President. The presumption ob-
viously was that the President would immediately
dismiss from office a disgraced and faithless public
servant. But the prosecution was an utter fail-
ure. The largest vote received for any of the res-
olutions was only fifteen ; that on the others was
from seven to twelve, in a quorum of from fifty to
sixty members. In the course of the debate Mr.
Madison had said that ^^ his colleague [Giles] had
rendered a service highly valuable to the legisla-
ture, and no less important and acceptable to the
public." The House showed by its votes how
very far it was from agreeing with him. But
Fisher Ames wrote, about that time, — ^^ Madison
is become a desperate party leader, and I am not
sure of his stopping at any ordinary point of ex-
tremity." If it be really true that he instigated
this attack upon Hamilton, and was the author
of the resolutions, using Giles as his tool to get
them before the House, Ames's reflection was not
uncharitable.

It would not be just, however, to leave the im-
pression that the hostility shown in this a£Fair was
purely personal. Both Jefferson and Madison had
a hearty hatred for Hamilton which would have
been greatly gratified could they have made it the

FRENCH POLITICS. 201

plain duty of the President to put him out of the
Treasury Department, a dishonored and ruined
man. But this particular outbreak of their en-
mity was intensified by their sincere and earnest
enthusiasm for France. They were quite willing
to bring Hamilton to grief at any time, because
he was Hamilton ; they were more than ordina-
rily exasperated against him just now because in
recent newspaper and other controversies he had
altogether got the better of them ; but in this par-
ticular instance they wanted to punish him be-
cause of delay of payments in discharge of the in-
debtedness of the United States to France. This
was the essential delinquency at which the Giles
resolutions were pointed. The difficulty was, not
that the Secretary of the Treasury was not care-
ful enough of the public money, but that he was
too careful. He insisted upon being quite certain,
when paying off a public debt, that he was paying
it to the right persons, and that no risk should be
incurred of its being demanded a second time.
He felt there was no such certainty about pay-
ments to France. The King was dethroned; but
it was not wise, the Secretary thought, to be hasty
in recognizing revolutionary governments. It was
a republic to-day ; it might be a regency to-mor-
row ; a monarchy again .the third day. It was
more prudent to await a reasonable period for the
evidence of permanency on one side or the other.
Those old enough to remember the late war of the

202 JAMEB MADISON.

rebellion know how important the maintenance of
this doctrine was in regard to the recognition of
the rebel confederacy by England and France.

But to all this Jefferson did not in the least
agree ; neither did Madison. They were in full,
even passionate, sympathy with the men who
brought Louis XYI. to the guillotine. Money,
they knew, was needed, and it was a crime
against liberty to delay payment, when payment
was due to the French government. With Ham-
ilton the question was, not whether the revolu-
tionists ought to be, but whether they were,
France. With Jefferson and Madison they were
France, because they ought to be. Hesitation to
acknowledge that the revolution was the nation,
they thought, could only come from an *' Anglican
party," the " enemies of France and of Liberty,'*
who would lead the American people ^^into the
arms, and ultimately into the government of
Great Britain " — to use the terms in which Mad-
ison spoke, a little later, of the Federalists.
Which of these men, in this regard at least, were
the thoughtful and prudent statesmen, and which
were doctrinaires^ nobody now, probably, ques-
tions. The larger proportion of the people, how-
ever, were then carried away by the enthusiasm
for the French revolutionists. It was so, no
doubt, at firglt without much distinction of party ;
but it was inevitable, when the government should
be called upon to take some decisive stand in rela-

FRENCH POLITICS. 208

tion to European politics, that the country should
divide into two hostile camps ; or, rather, that the
two camps already existing should become more
hostile to each other than ever. It is not neces-
sary to assume that the mass of the people gave
themselves up to any very hard thinking about
the matter. For the most part they followed, as
the way is with parties, the political leaders to
whom they were already accustomed, never doubt-
ing that not to do so would be treacherous to the
gratitude America owed to France, and to the
cause of liberty and democracy, which, in the
hands of the Frenchmen, was hurling monarchs
from their thrones — at least one monarch from
his, and more, it was hoped, would follow. But
when the revolution ran into the terrible excesses
of a later stage, if any Federalists had wavered in
their allegiance to their chiefs they soon returned,
persuaded that the wild and bloody anarchy of
Paris was not the road that led to the establish-
ment of a wise and safe popular government.

There was no need now of pretexts for quarrel-
ing; real causes came fast enough. France de-
clared war against England, and the United
States had its part to play in this strife of giants.
Its real interest was to keep out of trouble ; and,
if all were agreed on that point, it does not seem
that there should have been much difficulty in
saying so. *' It behooves the government of this
country," wrote Washington to Hamilton, "to

204 JAMES MADISON.

use every means in its power to prevent the (sAr
izens thereof from embroiling us with either of
those powers, by endeavoring to maintain a strict
neutrality." It is difficult to conceive of a man
being sincerely desirous of helping neither one
side nor the other ; of injuring neither one side
nor the other ; of maintaining, so far as help or
harm could go, an attitude of absolute impar-
tiality towards both — it is difficult to conceive of
such a man quarreling with the word ^^neutral-
ity" as applied to his position. But Jefferson,
nevertheless, quarreled with it; not frankly and
directly as a thing he did not want, but captiously
and hypercritically objecting to the word to cover
his dislike to the thing itself. *^ A declaration of
neutrality," he said, ^^ was a declaration that there
should be no war, to which the Executive was not
competent."

It was true that the Executive was not compe-
tent to declare that there should be no war ; it
was not true that the use of the word ^^ neutral-
ity " could have any such application to the future
as to prevent Congress, when it should assemble,
from declaring war should it see fit to do so. But
meanwhile, Congress not being in session, and no
exigency having arisen that made it desirable in
the President's judgment to call an extra session,
he, with the assent of the cabinet, — for Jefferson
did not venture upon direct opposition, — issued a
proclamation ^^ to exhort and warn the citizens of

FRENCH POLITICS. 205

the United States carefully to avoid all acts and
proceedings whatsoever " that might interfere with
** the duty and interest of the United States " to
^' adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and im-
partial towards the belligerent powers." The ob-
jectionable word was left out in deference to Mr.
JeflEerson, who, really preferring that there should
be no proclamation at all, hoped to take the sting
out of it by the omission of a phrase. It was the
thing said, not the way of saying it, that the Pres-
ident insisted upon, as it was his duty to preserve
the peace till the legislature should declare for
war, and his inclination to preserve it altogether.

It can hardly be doubted that JefEerson and his
friends saw as plainly as the other party saw how
perilous to the interests of the United States a
foreign war would probably be. But while pro-
fessing a desire to avoid it, they were far more
anxious, apparently, to give aid, moral as well as
material, to France, with whose revolution9,ry
struggles they sympathized so deeply, than they
were to avoid offense to England, whom they
hated and would gladly see crippled. Not to be an
enemy of England they held was to be an enemy
of France ; and not of France merely, but of the
" rights of man." They could not or would not
comprehend any wisdom in moderation, any pru-
dence in delay. It is curious to see how party ani-
mosity blinded even the best of them. The objec-
tion to the word " neutrality " was a mere quib-

206 JAMES MADISON.

ble ; for the proclamation called upon all good cit-
izens to maintain at their peril that state which, in
all dictionaries, neutrality is defined to be. Mr.
Jefferson, in instructing as Secretary of State the
American ministers abroad as to the attitude as-
sumed by the government, could find no better
term than ^^ a fair neutrality." The fact was, the
Republican leaders wished to avoid taking any
positive stand, partly because delay might be a
help to France, and partly in obedience to the law
of party politics, in opposition to the other side.
They were not at first quite sure of their ground,
and wanted to gain time. Mr. Madison seems to
have waited about six weeks before he could ven-
ture upon a positive opinion as to the proclama-
tion. The newspapers helped him to a knowledge
of party opinion, and party opinion helped him to
make up his own. " Every * Gazette ' I see," —
he wrote in June, about eight weeks after the
proclamation was published, — " every * Gazette '
I see (except that of the United States [Federal-
ist]), exhibits a spirit of criticism on the Anglified
complexion chained on the Executive politics. . . •
The proclamation was, in truth, a most unfortu-
nate error." A week before he had been seem-
ingly cautious even in writing to Jefferson. Then
he had observed that newspaper criticisms aroused
attention, and he had heard expressions of surprise
<^that the President should have declared the
United States to be neutral in the unqualified

FRENCH POLITICS. 207

terms used, when we were so notoriously and un-
equivocally under eventual engagements to de-
fend the American possessions of France. I have
heard it remarked, also, that the impartiality en-
joined on the people was as little reconcilable with
their moral obligations as the unconditional neu-
trality proclaimed by the government is with the
express articles of the treaty." He adds, " I have
been mortified that on these points I could offer
no lond fide explanations that might be satisfac-
tory." He was not in doubt long, however. Mr.
Jefferson sent him within two or three weeks a
series of papers by Hamilton, under the signature
of **Pacificus," in defense of the proclamation,
and urged him to reply. This Madison undertook
to do at once, and in five papers, under the signa-
ture of " Helvidius," he took up all the points in
dispute.

The question relating to treaty obligations was
the more serious. By the treaty of 1778 the
United States had guarantied ^^ to his Most Chris-
tian Majesty, the present possessions of the Crown
of France in America." An attempt on the part
of Great Britain to take any of the French West
India Islands would involve the United States in
the war. How, then, Mr. Madison's friends might
well ask, as, in the letter just quoted he said they
did, could '^ the President declare the United
States to be neutral in the unqualified terms used,
when we were so notoriously and unequivocally

208 JAMES MADISON.

under eventual engagements to defend the Amer-
ican possessions of France " ? Hamilton's ground
was that the treaty, by its terms, was ^' a defen-
sive alliance," and therefore not binding in this
case, inasmuch as the present war against England
was offensive ; and that, besides, the treaty was
in suspension, as France herself was, in a sense, in
suspension, having only a provisional government,
the permanent and legitimate successor to which
was uncertain. But an important point was
gained, it was thought, in the decision to receive
Genet as the French minister. Hamilton, still
acting in accordance with that cautious policy
which he thought to be, in such a crisis, the most
judicious, questioned whether a minister from the
provisional government in Paris should be recog-
nized without reservations. Such an ambassador
might be followed presently by another accredited
by a new power in the revolutionary progress.
This would, at the least, be an awkward dilemma
not to be recovered from vrithout the loss of some
dignity by the government of the United States.
But this point also was yielded in deference to
Jefferson, and much to his mortification the con-
cession turned out to be before he was many weeks
older.

"I anxiously wish," Madison wrote to Jeffer-
son, "that the reception of Genet may testify
what I believe to be the real affections of the peo-
ple." He was amply gratified. From Charles-

FRENCH POLITICS, 209

ton, where he landed, to Philadelphia, Genet was
received with the warmest enthusiasm by all who
sympathized with France, and by that larger
number among Americans who are always ready
to hurrah for anything or anybody that has
caught the popular fancy. Madison watched his
progress with great interest, and apparently with
some misgivings. Writing again a few days later,
to Jefferson, he says that ^^the fiscal party in
Alexandria was an overmatch for those who
wished to testify the American sentiment." In-
deed, he thinks it certain, he says in the same let-
ter, ^^ that Genet will be misled if he takes either
the fashionable cant of the cities or the cold cau-
tion of the government for the sense of the pub-
lic " — falling himself, before he reaches the end
of the sentence, into the cant of assuming neutral-
ity in the government to be only a " mask " be-
hind which to hide its " secret Anglomany." But
he was quite mistaken in supposing that Genet
was likely to be misled, or led at all, by anybody.
He was almost capable, as General Knox said, of
declaring the United States a department of
France and of levying troops here to reduce the
Americans to obedience. The man's conduct, if
it had not been so outrageous, would have been
ludicrous in its assumption of power, its disregard
of the laws of the country, and its defiance of the
government. Within three months of his arrival

Jefferson himself was constrained to acknowledge

14

210 JAMES MADISON.

that he had developed ^' a character and conduct
so unexpected and so extraordinary, as to place us
in the most distressing dilemma, between our re-
gard for his nation, which is constant and sincere,
and a regard for our laws, the authority of which
must be maintained ; for the peace of our country,
which the executive magistrate is charged to pre-
serve; for its honor, ofEended in the person of
that magistrate ; and for its character, grossly
traduced in the conversations and letters of this
gentleman." Though this was in an official letter
it gave, no doubt, Jefferson's real opinion ; for no
man had more reason than he for resenting the
conduct of the irrepressible Frenchman. Jeffer-
son lias been accused of too much familiarity with
the French minister in private, and of tardiness
in the discharge of his own duty as Secretary
where it was likely to clash with the other's
schemes. Genet himself complained that he was
thrown over by Jefferson after receiving from him
every encouragement This is, of course, true,
but not in the least discreditable to Jefferson,
When Genet arrived in Philadelphia, he was, al-
though he had already committed some illegal
acts in Charleston, profuse in his promises of good
behavior. The Secretary of State had welcomed
him as the representative of France and the Rev-
olution, and naturally he meant to make the most
he could out of him, for the sake of the Republi-
can party, as well as for the sake of the sacred

FRENCH POLITICS. 211

cause of ^^ liberty, eqaality, and fraternity." But .
he soon saw that he was dealing with one who
was a cross between a mountebank and a mad-
man, as we learn from a letter of Madison to Jef-
ferson, written within two months of Jefferson's
first interview with Genet. "Your account of
Genet," says the letter, " is dreadful. He must
be brought right if possible. His folly will otheiv
wise do mischief which no wisdom can repair."

The mischief dreaded was, that the administrar
tion party would take advantage of the insolent
and outrageous conduct of the French minister to
show the folly of precipitancy, and to gain popu-
larity and strength for itself. Madison soon
writes to Jefferson to acquaint him with the re-
action taking place in Virginia, " in the surprise
and disgust of those who are attached to the
French cause, and who viewed this minister as
the instrument for cementing, instead of alien-
ating the two Republics." He asserts that " the
Anglican party is busy, as you may suppose, in
making the worst of everything, and in turning
the public feelings against France and thence in
favor of England." In a sense this must have
been true. The "fiscals," the " Anglomanys,**
the " Anglican party," the " monarchists " —
which were Mr. Madison's pet names for his old
friends — were good enough politicians to take
great satisfaction in keeping well stirred and in
lively use the muddy waters into which their op-

212 JAMES MADISON,

ponents had floandered. They were not, proba-
bly, careful always to remember that France was
neither the better nor worse, neither the wiser nor
the less wise, because one of the mad fanatics,
bred of the Revolution, had found his way, unfor-
tunately, to the United States as a minister plen-
ipotentiary. But, on the other hand, it was not
true that there was any *' Anglican party," in the
sense in which Madison used the term ; — a party
led by men who were *' the enemies of France
and of liberty, at work to lead the well-meaning
from their honorable connection with those [the
French people] into the arms and ultimately into
the government of Great Britain." Washington
said that he did not believe there were ten men
in the United States, whose opinions deserved any
respect, who would change the form of govern-
ment to a monarchy. But if there were only ten
men in the country whose opinions, in the esti-
mate of Jefferson and Madison, were not worth
much, Washington was among them. The affec-
tion and reverence, with which he was regarded
by the people, they would have been glad to ap-
peal to on behalf of their own party; but it is
easy to read between the lines in Jefferson's
" Ana," and in his and Madison's correspondence,
that they looked upon the President as the dupe
of his Secretary of the Treasury. Not that they
were ever wanting in terms of respect and even
of veneration for the President, but the tone was

FRENCH POLITICS, 218

often one of pitiful r^ret almost akin to con-
tempt.

^^I am extiemely afraid," Madison wrote to
Jefferson, *^ that the President may not be suffi-
ciently aware of the snares that may be laid for
his good intentions by men whose politics at bot-
tom are very different from his own." Again he
says, a few days later, " I regret extremely the
position into which the President has been thrown.
The unpopular cause of Anglomany is openly lay-
ing claim to him. His enemies, masking them-
selves under the popular cause of France, are play*
ing off the most tremendous batteries on him. . . .
It is mortifying to the real friends of the Presi-
dent that his fame and his influence should have
anything to apprehend from the success of liberty
in another country, since he owes his preeminence
to the success of it in his own. If France tri-
umphs, the ill-fated proclamation will be a mill-
stone, which would sink any other character and
will force a struggle even on his." Yet it is cer-
tain that Washington was not in the least doubt as
to his own political principles ; that he was never
in danger of being inveigled into the betrayal of
those principles, whatever they might be, and that
he was quite capable of due care for his own rep-
utation.

If Madison did not know that these tears over
Washington, if sincere, were quite uncalled for,
Jefferson was not in the least deceived. He re-

214 JAMES MADISON,

cords in his " Ana " that the President, referring
to certain articles that had recently appeared in
Freneau's " Gazette," said that " he considered
those papers as attacking him [Washington] di-
rectly ; for he must be a fool indeed to swallow
the little sugar-plums here and there thrown out
to him. That in condemning the administration
of the government they condemned him, for if they
thought there were measures pursued contrary
to his sentiments, they must conceive him too
careless to attend to them, or too stupid to under-
stand them." Again, some months later, the Pres-
ident, alluding to another article in Freneau's pa-
per, — that " rascal Freneau," as he called him, —
said, ^^ that he despised all their attacks on him
personally, but there never had been an act of the
government — not meaning in the executive line
only, but in any line — which that paper had not
abused. He was evidently sore and warm," con-
tinues the candid Secretary, ^< and I took his in-
tention to be, that I should interpose in some way
with Freneau, perhaps withdraw his appointment
of translating clerk in my office. But I will not
do it."

These frank and indignant avowals of feeling
and opinion were not, if we may believe Jeffer-
son, unusual with Washington, even in cabinet
meetings ; and it seems hardly likely that Madi-
son, who was on the most friendly and intimate
terms with the President, could have been so igno-

FRENCH POLITICS. 215

rant of how he felt and thought, as to suppose him
the mere dupe of designing men. The truth is,
probably, that Madison did not, any more than
Jefferson, believe this. It was only a bit of party
tactics to assume, lest the President should have
too much influence over the minds of the people,
that, in the hands of the wicked " Anglicists," he
was as clay in the hands of .the potter. The two
friends, whether in writing or by speech they la-
mented and excused the unhappy position, as they
were pleased to call it, of the President, must
have appeared to each other like the Roman au-
gurs in G^rome's picture.

CHAPTER XIV.

HIS LATEST YBABS IN CONGBBSS.

Genet was at last got rid of, but the evil that
he did lived after him. His presence had pro-
voked an outbreak, to some degree, of the phe-
nomena of the French Revolution, which, however
significant they might be in the upheaval of an
old monarchical despotism, were an unwholesome
growth among a simple people, where one man
was as good as another before the law; where,
from the first settlement of the country, all had
largely possessed the advantages of a popular gov-
ernment ; and where any other than a republican
government for the future was well-nigh impos-
sible. For men to address each other as ^^citi-
zen," as if the word had the new significance in
America that it had jast gained in France ; to
swear eternal fidelity to liberty, equality, and fra-
ternity, as if these were lately discovered rights,
which had been denied the common people for
centuries by kings and nobles, who had always
lived in the next street in inconceivable luxury
wrung from the blood and sweat of the poor ; to
form Jacobin Clubs pledged to the suppression of

ma LATEST TEARS IN CONGRESS. 217

the tyranny of aristocrats in a country where, as
Samuel Dexter said of New England, there was
hardly a man rich enough to own a carriage, and
few so poor as not to own a horse ; for men thus
to ape those revolutionary ways, which meant so
much in Paris, may have seemed at the moment,
to sober-minded people, more fantastic than harm-
ful. It was harmf u], however, insomuch as it sub-
stituted sentiment for common sense, and made
enthusiasm, not reason, the guide of conduct. A
character was given to political conflict which ob-
tained for years to come. There was, it is true, a
certain manliness about it in remarkable contrast
with that maudlin sentimentality of our time,
which is rather inclined to ask pardon of the reb-
els of the late civil war for having put them to
the trouble of getting up a rebellion. It was a
conflict, nevertheless, more of party passion than
of principle, wherein it is impossible to see that
either party was absolutely right, or either abso-
lutely wrong. The Francomania phase of it dis-
appeared for a time in John Adams's administra-
tion ; but it revived again, and gave intensity and
virulence to the political struggles, in the first de-
cade of this century. Then it was that men went
about their daily affairs with cockades on their
hats as distinctive party badges. In their social
as well as in their business relations they were
governed by party affinities. Neighbors differing
in politics would hardly speak to each other, and

218 JAMES MADISON,

each was always ready to accept the other's polit-
ical crookedness as the measure of his possible de-
pravity in everything else. They would hardly
walk on the same side of the street ; or sail in the
same packet ; or ride in the same stage-coach ; or
buy their groceries at the same shop ; or listen to
the preaching of the gospel from the same pulpit ;
indeed, if the preacher was known to have pro-
nounced political opinions, he was held, by those
who did not agree with him, as one from whose
shoulders the clerical gown should be torn.

Grratitude to France had not yet even become
traditional, and it was intensified by the deepest
sympathy for a people struggling for what, by
their aid, Americans had so recently gained.
Added to this was the old hatred to England, which
England as carefully nursed as if it were her set-
tled policy, by exciting Indian hostilities on the
borders, by outrages on the high seas, and by an
interference with American commerce, exercised
with as little consideration of the rights of an inde-
pendent nation as if the States were still colonies
in revolt. Never did a party find, ready-made and
close at hand, so many elements of popularity ; and
these being appealed to as Genet appealed to them,
it was easy to set the country in a blaze. When
the Administration was determined that he should
be recalled, and the Republican leaders were anx-
ious to get rid of him, as they could not restrain
him, Jefferson opposed, in a meeting of the cabinet,

HIS LATEST TEARS IN CONGRESS. 219

the proposition to ask for his recall, lest such pop-
ular indignation should be aroused as would en-
able the French minister to defy the Government
itself. The seed sowed by such a man, on such a
soil, bore fruit a thousand-fold for almost a gener-
ation. It is not to be wondered at that the Fed-
eralists could not long hold their own against a
party that did not ask the people to think, but
bade them only to remember, — much, indeed,
that ought to be remembered, — and to feel.
That is always so much easier to do than the other,
and it is always so much easier to appeal effectu-
ally to sentiment than to reflection, that the won-
der rather is that the Federalists could hold their
own so long as they did. All things were against
them but one. Washington, though altogether
above any partisan bias, as he believed to be the
imperative duty of the chief magistrate of the na-
tion, conducted his administration by the princi-
ples which distinguished the Federalists. He was
neither, as he intimated to Jefferson, so careless
as not to know what was done, nor such a fool
as not to understand why it was done; and so
greatly was he revered for his exalted character,
so universal was the confidence in his integrity,
sagacity, and sound judgment, that, so long as he
remained President, the party that surrounded him
was immovable as a mountain. His policy was
to stave off a rupture with England, and, if pos-
sible, to bring that power into pacific and rational

220 JAMES MADISON.

relations with the United States. The govern-
ment aimed to keep itself clear of entanglement
with all foreign politics ; to maintain that perfect
neutrality which should violate no treaties, offend
no national friendships, provoke no jealousies, and
leave England and France to fight their own bat-
tles, content that the United States should be an
impartial spectator. Thirty years afterward, when
the Federal party had ceased to exist under that
title, this was announced as the true American
policy, and was thenceforth known as " The Mon-
roe Doctrine," though the merit, even of re-dis-
covery, did not belong to President Monroe.

In nine cases out of ten, perhaps in ninety-nine
out of a hundred, the wisest statesmanship is the
knowledge when and how to compromise. Cer-
tainly thajb was all John Jay, whom the President
sent to England to make a treaty, could do. The
treaty was a bad one ; that is, it was not such an
one as any President and Senate would have dared
to consent to for the last sixty years ; it was not
so good an one as that which Monroe and Pinkney
negotiated ten years later, and which President
Jefferson, lest it should help England and hurt
France, then quietly locked up in his desk with-
out permitting the Senate even to know of its ex-
istence ; nor was it so bad as the treaty of peace
made with England in 1814. But it was undoubt-
edly the best that could be done at the time. The
question was between it and nothing; and the

Eia LATEST TEARS IN CONGRESS. 221

best its warmest defenders could say was, that it
was better than nothing. No treaty meant war ;
and war at that moment with England meant
ruin. At least so the Federalists thought, and, so
far as human foresight could go, they were prob-
ably right.

But never was a treaty moi-e unpopular than
this, when its provisions came to be understood.
The government, in delaying to make it public,
seemed to fear for its reception, and by that hesi-
tation helped to raise the very doubts it was afraid
of. But when it was published the whole South
was aroused, as one man, on finding that the pay-
ment for fugitive slaves, who during the war of
the Revolution had sought refuge with the Brit-
ish army, was not provided for. Other concessions
made to England were, in other parts of the coun-
try, deemed not less humiliating and injurious to
the national honor than this refusal to pay for
runaway negroes. Also, there was a one-sided
stipulation relating to commerce in the West In-
dies, so injurious to American interests that the
President and Senate, rather than ratify it, de-
termined to reject the whole treaty and take the
consequences. There was hardly a town of any
note that did not hold its indignation meeting.
Jay was burned in effigy, or the attempt was made
so to express the public disapprobation, in more
than one of the larger towns. Hamilton, when
at a public meeting in New York he tried to

222 JAMES MAD180N,

explain and defend the treaty, was stoned and
compelled to retire. If the more violent oppo-
nents of the Administration were to be believed, its
members, from the President down, and all the
leading men of the party supporting it, were
bought by " British gold," or were ready without
being bought, but from pure original depravity,
to betray their own country and help to destroy
France. The name of the ingenious inventor of
the argument of ^^ British gold," then used for the
first time, has unfortunately been lost ; but it
has stood the test of a hundred years' usage, and
is as startling and conclusive to-day as it was a
century ago.

There soon came, however, the sober second
thought which took into consideration the circum-
stances under which the treaty was made, the pos-
sible, and even probable, consequences of its rejec-
tion, as well as the objections to the treaty itself.
After the first excitement had passed away, many
thought it worth while to read for themselves
what hitherto they had only reviled at the su^es-
tion of others, or from sympathy with the popular
clamor. The commercial community, the New
York Chamber • of Commerce leading the way,
came to the conclusion that their rights and in-
terests were reasonably protected; that to be rec-
ognized as a neutral between two such belligerent
powers as England and France was a great point
gained; that partial indemnity was better than

Bia LATEST TEARS IN CONGRESS. 223

total loss ; and that the chance of a fairly profita-
ble trade in the future was preferable to the ruin
of all foreign commerce. It was universally
agreed that peace was better than war ; but there
was this difference between the two parties :
while one maintained that war was not a neces-
sary consequence of the rejection of the treaty, the
other declared it must be inevitable, where there
were so many points of collision which could only
be escaped by mutual agreement. This was espe-
cially true on the frontier, where Indian hostilities
were sure to follow, and lead to general war, if the
military posts, which should have been given up at
the close of the Revolution, should remain longer
in the hands of the English.

But, after all, the real question with the Repub-
licans was the influence which a treaty with Eng-
land might have upon the relations of France and
the United States. They detested England for her
own sake; they detested her still more for the
sake of France. If there had been no question of
France in the way they would, perhaps, have been
vdlling, like the Federalists, to consider the rela-
tions of England and the United States on their
merits ; — to remember that the commerce be-
tween them was greater than that which the
United States had with any other country, the
loss of which might be a disastrous check to her
prosperity ; that the peoples of the two countries
were, after all, of one blood, and that theirs was

224 JAME8 MADISON.

a common heritage in the institutions, laws, lan-
guage, and character that distinguished the race ;
that the quarrel between them was — though it
might be the more bitter on that account — a
family quarrel, and ought, for that reason, to be
the more speedily settled. But, if England would
not remember these things «^ as she never has to
this day — if, on the contrary, she chose to be
overbearing, contemptuous, insolent, quite regard-
less of American rights — as she always has been
when she oould be so safely -^ then it behooved
the United States, inasmuch as she was a young
and as yet a feeble nation, to conciliate this pow-
erful enemy whenever she oould do so consist-
ently with her self-respect, to avoid giving un-
necessary offense or provoking fresh injuries, and,
in the meanwhile, to nurture and husband her
strength, to keep an accurate account of all the
wrongs that in her weakness she should be com-
pelled to submit to, and to bide her time. These
were the principles of the Federalists. Their aim
was not the good of England, but the good of the
United States. They were an American party;
to them foreign relations were of importance
mainly for the influence these might have upon
the prosperity, happiness, and power of their own
country. They did not forget the gratitude due
to France for the aid she had given to the strug-
gling colonies, though that aid was given not so
much for love of America as for hatred of £ng-

BIS LATEST TEARS IN CONGRESS. 225

land. The pacific and friendly relations already
established with France they held in due esti-
mation ; and their sympathies went out to her
people in full measure in their struggle for a pop-
ular government, so long as that struggle was
kept within the bounds of reason and humanity.
But sympathy with, and gratitude to France did
not blind them to the wisdom and expediency of
pacific and friendly relations with England, pro-
vided such could be established without the sacri-
fice of their own prosperity, independence, and
national pride. It was only to add to that pros-
perity, to gain new security for that independence,
and to build np a nation of which they and their
children, to the latest generation, might well be
proud, that they ought to be on good terms with
that powerful state with whom they were co-heirs
in all the ideas and institutions constituting the
civilization that made her great. They hoped to
build up, west of the Alantic Ocean, " an Inglishe
Nation'* in its broadest sense, of which Walter
Raleigh had hoped that he might live to see the
beginning, and which the latest historical writers
in England are just now recognizing as the most
important part of the modern empire of the Eng^
lish race.

The House of Representatives was not in ses^
sion when the Jay treaty was ratified by the
President and Senate ; but Mr. Madison's letters
show that he could see in it nothing but evil. In

16

226 JAMES MADISON.

February, 1796, the ratification by both govern-
ments was announced to both Houses of Congress,
and measures were at once taken by the Repub-
licans in the lower House to render the treaty, if
possible, null and void. A resolution, warmly
supported by Mr. Madison, was offered, calling
upon the President for copies of the instructions
under which Mr. Jay acted, with the correspond-
ence and any other papers, proper to be made
public, relating to the negotiation. The resolution
was subjected to a debate of three weeks, but was
finally passed. The request was refused by the
President on the ground that the treaty-making
power was, by the Constitution, confided to the
President and Senate. It was on this point
mainly that the debate had turned ; and the Pres-
ident in support of his opinion, as well as that of
the Federalists generally, referred to his recollec-
tion of the plain intention of the Constitutional
Convention ; and to the fact that a proposition,
^^ that no treaty should be binding on the United
States which was not ratified by law," was " ex-
plicitly rejected." Mr. Madison said, a day or
two after, that, while he did not doubt ^^ the case
to be as stated, he had no recollection of it." Of
the message itself he said, that it was ^ as unex-
pected as its tone and tenor are improper and in-
delicate." But Hamilton, he thought, wrote it,
and the President was, as usual, lamented over for
having been taken in. A resolution, however, was

Eia LATEST TEARS IN CONGRESS. 227

finally passed in favor of the treaty, thoagh by a
majority of three only. The debate upon it was
earnest and long, Mr. Madison leading the oppo-
sition. His disappointment was bitter. *^ The
pr(^ess of this business throughout," he wrote to
Jefferson, ^^ has been to me the most worrying
and vexatious that I ever encountered; and the
more so, as the causes lay in the unsteadiness, the
follies, the perverseness, and the defections among
our friends, more than in the strength, or dexter-
ity, or malice of our opponents."

Though the Jay treaty was not — as was said
on a previous page — such an one as the United
States would bave acceded to in latter times, the
result proved it to be a wise and timely measure.
Notwithstanding the disturbed condition of affairs
in Europe, its influence upon the United States,
and the increasing violence of faction here, the in-
crease for the next ten or twelve years of the com-
merce, and the consequent growth and prosperity
of the country, were greater than the most sanguine
supporters of the treaty had dared to hope for.
Their immediate expectations that it might bo
possible to establish better relations with England,
without disturbing essentially those existing with
France, were, however, signally disappointed.
Their opponents were wiser; for they not only
measured accurately the indignation of the French
by their own, but they took good care that it
should not languish for want of encouragement.

228 JAMEB MADISON.

The French Directory might have been reconciled
to the situation had it been plain to them that
there was neither an " Anglicized " party nor a
French party in the United States, but that the
people were united in the determination to main-
tain, for their own protection, whatever their per-
sonal sympathies might be, an absolute neutrality
between the belligerent powers. But as they
were assured that their friends in America meant
also to be their effectual allies, so they believed
that those who professed neutrality used it only
as a mask for friendship to England.

James Monroe had been received in Paris as
American minister, literally as well as morally,
with open arms, in that memorable scene when, in
the presence and amid the cheers of the National
Convention, the President, Merlin de Douai, im-
printed upon his cheeks, in the name of France,
the kiss of fraternity. Till he was recalled in the
latter days of Washington's administration, Mon-
roe was the representative, not so much of the gov-
ernment to which he owed allegiance, as of the
faction to which he belonged at home. He was
not, it is true, unmindful of the hundreds of out-
rages perpetrated by French naval vessels and pri-
vateers upon American merchantmen ; that their
crews were thrown into French prisons, and that
the detention of their cargoes had brought ruin
upon many American citizens ; nor did he neglect
to demand redress. But he seemed absolutely in-

Eia LATEST YEARS IN C0NGBE83. 229

capable of understanding that if there were any-
thing to choose between the insults and wrongs
which America was compelled to submit to from
England and France, it was only in the greater
ability of England to inflict them. English ships
swept the ocean, and pretexts were never wanting
for overhauling American vessels, stripping them
of some of their men, or confiscating both ships and
cargoes. France had as many pretexts and quite
as good a will to enforce them ; but she had fewer
ships, and for*that reason, and that only, did rather
less damage.

But however earnest Monroe was in insisting
upon the rights of neutrals, in urging upon the
French ministry the strict observance of treaty
obligations, and in complaining of the constant
injuries done in their despite, there was another
thing about which he was far more earnest. He
was as anxious to aid the French to baffle, if pos-
sible. Jay's negotiations in London as if he were
uncovering a plot against his own government.
When the ratification of the treaty was made
known in Paris, the indignation of the Directory
was hardly kept within bounds. The Minister of
Foreign Affairs notified Monroe that the Directory
considered the stipulations of the treaty of 1778
as altered and suspended in their most essential
parts by this treaty with England. Under any
circumstances the French would, no doubt, have
resented the establishment of friendly relations be-

280 JAMEB MADISON.

tween the United States and the old enemy of
France, with whom she, at that moment, was en-
gaged in a war arousing more than the bitter in-
herited enmity of the two peoples. Bat the coarse
Monroe had seen fit to parsae had done much to
assure the French that the strong party in the
United States, which he represented, would never
permit the virgin Republic to be delivered, as it
was assumed the treaty did deliver her, bound and
ga^ed into the hands of the power which Jeffer-
son loved to call ^ the harlot England." The first
enthusiasm of the Revolution was &st growing
into cant in both countries, and the language of
devotion to liberty, equality, and fraternity was
beginning to lose all meaning. But it was easy
to be deceived by the assurances, more significant
in actions than in words, of an official representa-
tive, that the American people, save an Anglicized
and decreasing minority, were the friends, and
meant to be the allies, of France. Of course the
French were all the more exasperated because
they had permitted themselves to be deluded.
Monroe was first rebuked by his own government
for neglecting to do all that might have been done
to reconcile the Directory to a treaty between the
United States and Great Britain ; and soon after,
his conduct continuing unsatisfactory, he was re-
called.

It is, of course, possible that the French Direc-
tory were not misled; that nothing would have

Hia LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS. 281

reconciled them to the British treaty; and that
their subsequent course would have been the
same, had they believed the American people
were desirous to be on good terms with England
solely for their own tranquillity and interest, and
not at all because any large portion of them were
at enmity with France. This, however, would not
be a valid excuse for Monroe's course as a repre-
sentative of his government. The only defense
for him is, that he was deceived by his friends at
home ; they must share, therefore, the responsibil-
ity for his conduct, inasmuch as they encouraged
a man, not over strong in mind or character and
more likely to be governed by impulse than by
good judgment, to abuse the confidence placed in
him by the Administration.

From any share in this responsibility, however,
Madison must be relieved. He was in very con-
stant correspondence with Monroe, and kept him
carefully advised as to the prc^ess of the treaty.
No man desired its defeat more earnestly than he,
and he believed that a majority of the people
were opposied to it. But he evidently doubted its
rejection from the first, and his discussion of pos-
sibilities in his letters to Monroe was always frank
and discriminating. In the end he accounted for
the vote in its favor in the House of Representa-
tives by the activity and influence of its friends,
which its opponents wanted the ability or the
time to overcome. It is probable that his col-

232 JAMES MADISON.

leagues of his own party in the House did not
agree with him that public opinion was against
the treaty, as it was by votes from their side that
its acceptance was carried.

With the ensuing session of Congress, at the
close of Washington's administration, Madison's
congressional service ended. The leadership of
the opposition, whatever may be thought of its
influence upon the welfare of the country, or of
the personal motives by which he may have been
governed, had devolved upon him, almost from the
beginning, by natural selection of the fittest for
that position. It was not an easy place to take,
either by one's own choice or by the suffrages of
others ; for at the head of the administration to
be opposed stood the man most revered by a
grateful country, surrounded by men among those,
at least, who were best known for their past ser-
vices and most esteemed for their ability and char-
acter. It was the more difficult for one whose
personal relation to the President was that of the
warmest friendship ; to whom the President was
accustomed to turn for counsel and even for guid-
ance; and who, being among those eminent men
to whom the people owed their new Constitution,
was counted upon to strengthen the union of the
States and build up a strong and stable govern-
ment. He played his difficult part, nevertheless,
with dignity; if not brilliant, he was always
ready with the best reasons that could be given

BIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS. 233

for the measures he supported ; and his zeal was
invariably tempered with a wise moderation and
a courtesy toward opponents, which made him al-
ways respected, and sometimes feared for reserved
force, in debate.

Somewhat more than a year before his retire-
ment from Congress Mr. Madison had married,
and it is quite possible that this may in part have
moved him to seek rest in the tranquillity of a
country life. Tradition says that Mrs. Madison
was a beautiful woman. She has in our time been
a marked figure in the society of Washington, and
many remember her for her fine presence, her
powers of conversation, and that beauty which
sometimes belongs to the aged, though it may not
have been preceded by youthful comeliness. Her
maiden name was Dolly Payne, and her parents
were members of the Society of Friends. When
Madison married her she was Mrs. Todd, the
widow of John Todd, a lawyer of Philadelphia.
Her age at this time was twenty-six years, Mr.
Madison being forty-three, and she survived him
thirteen years, dying in 1849. On her tombstone
she is called " DoUey ; " but Mr. Rives, in his life
of her husband, ever mindful of the proprieties,
calls her "Dorothea," or rather, Mrs. Dorothea
Payne Madison ; for, like the Vicar of Wakefield,
he loved to give the whole name.

CHAPTER XV.

AT HOME. — " EBSOLXJTIONS OF '98 AND '99.'*

Mb. Madison, in retiring for a time from pub-
lic office, did not lose his interest in public affairs.
Of few Americans can it be said with more truth,
that he had a genius for politics, and the sub-
ject, wherever he might be, was never out of his
mind. There is not much else in the volumes
of his published letters, while there is just enough
else to show that in these he said all he had to
say about anything. His more ambitious writ-
ings, the papers in "The Federalist," the essay
on The British Doctrine of Neutral Trade, his con-
troversial articles in the newspapers under various
pseudonyms, are all political, all able, and all of
great value as a part of the history of the times.
Those which are controversial, however, must be
taken, like his letters, as aids to knowledge rather
than as definite conclusions to be accepted with-
out question. It does not detract from the value
of these letters, however, that they are written
from the point of view of a party leader. Affairs
of only temporary importance sometimes loom up
before him merely because of their influence upon

AT HOME. 235

some immediate party movement; and others of
far-reaching consequences, which have no such
bearing, escape his notice altogether; but the
reader soon learns that he may, at any rate, con-
fide in the sincerity of the writer, and accept as
freely the reasons given for his course as they are
frankly stated.

Of the literary value of his writings, aside from
their historical interest, there is not much to be
said, though Mr. Madison always wrote, even in
his letters, as if writing for posterity. He was
not felicitous in the use of language ; the style is
turgid, heavy with resounding words of many syl-
lables, unillumined by any ray of imagination,
any flash of wit or of humor ; and the sentences
are often involved and badly put together. But
there is a genuineness, an evident sincerity of pur-
pose, in all he wrote, and occasionally an expres-
sion of deep feeling, which are always impressive.
We search for glimpses of his private life and
character in such letters, for they are not easily
apparent. In one sense he had no private life, or,
at least, none that was not so subordinate to his
public career that there was little in it either sig-
nificant or attractive. There is, in this respect,
a marked contrast between his correspondence
and that of Jefferson. There was, possibly, a lit-
tle affectation in Jefferson's frequent assertions of
his intense desire for the quiet of the country and
the tranquillity of home, and of his distaste for the

236 JAMES MADISON.

turmoils and anxieties of pablic office. But he
was certainly fond of country-life with the leisure
to potter about among his sheep and his trees ; to
watch the growth of his wheat and his clover ; to
contrive new coulters for his plows ; to talk of phi-
losophy, of the Social Contract, of mechanics, and
of natural history; if he was averse to pablic
life it was not because poUtical power and distinc-
tion were a burden to him, except as they brought
with them strife and unpopularity which truly his
soul loathed for himself, though he rather liked
to set other people by the ears. His private life
was unquestionably as full of interest to himself
as it is entertaining to look upon in the uncon-
scious revelation of his own letters.

But with Madison it was apparently quite
otherwise. He unbent with difficulty. Always
solemn aild dignified, it was rather painful than
pleasant to him to stoop to the petty matters of
every-day existence. He had no small afEecta-
tions, and was not forever asserting that he was
without ambition ; as if that, without which no-
body is of much use in the world either to him-
self or to others, were a weakness akin to deprav-
ity. With brief intervals, covering only a few
months altogether, he was where he best liked to
be, from his entrance upon public life in 1776 till
he stepped down in 1817 from that political ele-
vation beyond which there are no ascending steps.
During these forty-two years he found a certain

AT HOME. 287

enjoyment in a oountry home for a little while at
a time, but it was chiefly the enjoyment of needed
rest from official labor. The price of tobacco and
the promise of the wheat crop interested him
then, bat only as they interested him always as a
source of his own income, and as the index to the
general prosperity. At the end of a letter upon
political matters, he announces with satisfaction
that his Merino ewe has dropped a lamb and both
mother and offspring are as well as could be ex-
pected ; but it was probably Mr. Jefferson's grati-
fication rather than his own that he had in mind,
for it was Mr. Jefferson who had imported the
sheep. Again, in a similar letter, he takes a lit-
tle remaining space to express a hope that Mr.
Jefferson may permit the use of the rams of that
flock to improve the breed of the native stock;
not, apparently, that he cared so much about
wool, as that ho wished to show a courteous and
friendly interest in one of Mr. Jefferson's many
projects for the improvement of things generally.
It was during the year of comparative leisure
after he left Congress that Mr. Madison probably
built his house at Montpellier, about which some
question has been started recently. A house at
that time he certainly was building, and it Is not
likely that he ever employed himself in that way
more than once. Scattered among discussions of
Alien and Sedition Laws, the war in Europe, free
goods in neutral ships, and other public topics, are

238 JAMES MADISON,

brief allusions to lathing nails which he depended
upon Mr. Jefferson to supply; that gentleman
having recently set up a machine for their manu-
facture, which, however, like a good many other
of his contrivances, seems to have had a hitch in
it. So also he asks the Vice-President to see to
it, that, when the window-glass and the pullies
are forwarded, the " chord " for the latter shall
not be forgotten ; and orders for other articles,
only to be found in Philadelphia, are sent to his
obliging friend. Mr. Jefferson, it is easy to be-
lieve, found them rather the most interesting part
of the political letters to which they were ap-
pended ; and he was quite willing, no doubt, to
relieve the tedium of presiding over the Senate by
searching through the Market Street shops for the
latest improvements in builders' hardware. To
Mr. Monroe, Madison wrote that, as he is sending
off a wagon to fetch nails for his carpenters, " it
will receive the few articles which you have been
so good as to offer from the superfluities of your
stock, and which circumstances will permit me
now to lay in." Evidently he was getting ready
to go to housekeeping with his young wife. Mon-
roe's stock of household goods had been replen-
ished, perhaps by importations from France on
his recent return, and he was disposing of his old
supplies, by gift or sale, among his neighbors.
Madison, at any rate, sends this modest list of
what he would like to have : *^ To wit, two table-

AT HOME. 289

cloths for a dining-room of aboat eighteen feet ;
two, three, or four, as may be convenient, for a
more limited scale; four dozen napkins, which
will not in the least be objectionable for having
been used ; and two mattresses." It was not an
extravagant outfit, even though it had not been
meant for one of those lordly Virginia homes of
which some modem historians give us such
charming pictures. " We are so little acquaint-
ed," — Mr. Madison continues in that stately way,
which nothing ever surprised him into forgetting,
— ^^ we are so little acquainted with the culinary
utensils in detail that it is difficult to refer to such
by name or description as would be within our
wants."

But pots and kettles, — though that may not be
the name they were known by in Virginia, — ta-
ble-cloths and mattresses, however moderate in
number, are sure indications that the house, which
was to be his residence when he should be content
to retire from public service, was finished early in
1798. He had rested long enough, and was busy
that year in attendance upon the State Assembly
at Richmond, to which he consented the next year
to be returned as a member. Perhaps it was be-
cause he could not keep longer out of the fray.
Perhaps he felt called to a special duty. Affairs,
foreign and domestic, were in a critical condition.
France, in her resentment at the Jay treaty, had
committed so many fresh outrages upon American

240 JAMES MADISON,

commerce ; had so exasperated the American peo-
ple by these outrages ; and by refusing to receive
the ministers from the United States, had so in-
sulted them and the government they represented
in the proposed arrangements, — disclosed in the
X. Y. Z. correspondence, — that all friendly rela-
tions between the two countries had ceased, and it
had seemed impossible that war could be avoided.
For a while the popular sympathy was entirely
with Mr. Adams's administration, and the prom-
ise could hardly be fairer that the Federalists, if
they managed wisely, might remain in power and
be sustained by the whole country. But in some
respects they were as unwise as in othera they
were unfortunate. President Adams, though pos-
sessing many great qualities, was of too irascible
and jealous a temper to be a successful leader or
a good ruler. But there were other men of dis-
tinction among the Federalists who were hardly
less fond of having their own way than the Presi-
dent was of having his. The incompatibility of
temper was not altogether on one side in that
family quarrel. But all were equally responsible
for such a blunder as the enactment of the Alien
and Sedition Laws. The provocation, it is true,
was unquestionably great. Refugees from abroad
had crowded to the United States, many of whom
were professional agitators, and some were very
sorry vagabonds. Whatever reason they might
have had for fomenting discontent with govern-

'* RESOLUTXONa OF *98 AND W." 241

ment in England or in France, there was nothing
to justify any such violent measures in this coun-
try. But from their conduct as political partisans,
particularly as newspaper editors, they soon came
to be looked upon by the Federalists — for they
all joined the other party — as a dangerous class.
There grew up a feeling that it would be wiser
for civil affairs to remain, in city, state, and na-
tion, in the hands of those who were bom and ed-
ucated under republican institutions, and not to fall
altogether under control of those who were alien
in blood and religion, and who were inclined to
look upon politics, not in the light of the citizen's
duty to the common weal, but as an easy and
profitable calling where the least scrupulous scoun-
drel could gather the largest share of spoils. It
may be that the authors of those laws were so de-
termined to forestall the apprehended evils of such
a dispensation because use had not accustomed
them, as it has later generations of American citi-
zens, to live under it in humility if not content.
Or, perhaps, they wanted that profound faith of
our time that the longer this subversion of gov-
ernment is submitted to, the easier it will be to
get back to the rule of the honest and wise.

But, at any rate, whatever their reasons, they
meant by these laws relating to aliens to put the
acquirement of citizenship under more stringent
regulations and to check the growth* and promul-
gation of seditious doctrines. If it be true, as is

16

242 JAMEa MADISON.

sometimes maintained with some plausibility, that
citizens, to be intrusted with self - government,
should be endowed with a certain degi'ee of intelli-
gence and virtue, then the aim of the framers of
the laws, in the 'first case, was a good one ; and in
the second case, the country has had some experi-
ence in later times which tends to show that they
were not altogether wrong in believing that doc-
trines and practices which may lead to insurrection
and civil war might best be met, so far as is pos-
sible, at the outset. Nevertheless, the laws, under
the circumstances of the time, were ill-considered
and injudicious. For one reason, they put an effi-
cient weapon into the hands of the opposition at a
moment when it was at a loss where to turn for
one. "Anglicism" and "British Gold" were blun-
derbusses which, in the present popular irritation
against France, had, for a time, lost their useful-
ness, and were apt to miss fire. But an appeal to
a generous and impulsive people on behalf of the
unfortunate refugees, who had fled from the tyr-
anny of the old world to find liberty and a home
in the new, was sure to be listened to. A good
many, besides those who assumed that republi-
canism and the rights of man were in their spe-
cial keeping, believed that an unfortunate class
had been dealt with hastily, and even cruelly.
The clamor, once begun, told heavily against the
Federalists. They could be denounced now, not
only as the enemies of liberty in France, but as

''RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99^ 243

refusing it to men of any nation or any race who
should seek it in the United States, — it being, of
course, understood that races of black or yellow
complexion need not apply. It was, indeed, ad-
vanced as an argument against one* of the acts, —
which gave the President power to order out of
the country all aliens whose presence he thought
dangerous, — that it might be used to prevent the
importation of persons from Africa. On this
point Mr. Gallatin, a native of Switzerland, was
exceedingly anxious lest there be a violation of
the Constitution. But the outrage upon the
rights of man here apprehended was the right of
white men to make black men slaves.

Against the enactment of these laws Mr. Jeffer-
son did nothing as Vice-President. But whatever
was his motive for official inaction, it was not be-
cause he approved them. He wrote the Kentucky
" Resolutions of '98," — the strongest protest that
could be made against them, and to be thence-
forth held by nuUifiers and secessionists as their
covenant of faith. But he acted secretly, taking
counsel only with George Nicholas of Kentucky
and William C. Nicholas of Virginia (brothers),
and, Hildreth says, "probably with Madison."
The resolutions were to be offered in the Ken-
tucky legislature by George Nicholas, and, with
some modifications, were passed by that body in
November. A year afterward other resolutions
were passed to reassert the opinions of the pre-

244 JAMES MADJSOH.

yious session and to record against the laws the
'♦solemn protest " of the legislature ; and further
declaring ^' that a nullification by those sovereign-
ties [the States] of all unauthorized acts done un-
der color of that instrument [the Constitution] is
the rightful remedy." In the resolutions which
Mr. Jefferson had prepared for Nicholas the year
before this essential doctrine is found in that por-
tion which Nicholas had omitted, in these words —
'' where powers are assumed which have not been
delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful
remedy." As originally prepared the resolutions
were found in Jefferson's handwritii^ after his
death. Hildreth's conjecture that Madison, as
well as the brothers Nicholas, was consulted in
the preparation of these resolutions, rests only on
circumstantial evidence. The Kentucky Resolur
tions were passed in November ; those <^ Virginia
in December ; the former were written by Jeffer-
son, the latter by Madison ; and the doctrines in
each are essentially the same. It would have
been a perfectly natural thing for the two friends
to consult together upon a measure of so much
importance ; there is no reason why they should
not have done so ; and these coincidences suggest
that they probably did. Jefferson clearly shirked
the responsibility of an act which he knew would
endanger the Union; but Madison made no se-
cret, so far as can be seen now, of his going to
Bichmond, though not a member of the Assem-

*' RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99,'' 245

bly, apparently for the express purpose of writing
these resolutions and urging their adoption. But
Jefferson was not a man of courage even in doing
that which he believed to be wise. In Madison,
it was only the conscience that was timid ; and
having once convinced himself that the thing he
proposed to do was right he was always ready to
face the consequences. It may be that neither of
them foresaw that the real importance of this par-
ticular act was rather prospective than imme-
diate ; and if so their conduct is to be measured
by its instant purpose. If Jefferson meant then
and there to dissolve the Union, or even to weaken
the constitutional bond that held it together, he
was not over-cautious in keeping out of sight.
But if Madison's intention was to strengthen the
Union by withstanding what he believed to be a
perilous violation of the Constitution, then his
courage, though it is to be commended, is not to
be wondered at. That, he said, was his motive,
and to defend the resolutions and his own part in
regard to them was the chief interest and serious
labor of the latter years of his life. He was
elected a member of the Assembly for the session
of 1799-1800, probably because he and his friends
thought his official presence desirable when the
subject should again come up for consideration at
the reading of the replies from other States, to all
which the resolutions had been sent. The report
on those replies was also written by him, and the

246 JAMES MADISON.

position taken the year before was therein reaf-
firmed, explained, and elaborated at length.

In 1827-28 the doctrines of nullification and of
secession were assumed to be the legitimate co-
rollary of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
of 1798 and 1799. Jefferson was dead; but
Madison felt called upon to deny, in his own de-
fense and in defense of the memory of his friend,
that there was any similarity between them.
From 1830 to 1836 his mind seems to have been
chiefly occupied with this subject, upon which he
wrote many letters, and a paper of thirty pa^es,
entitled " On Nullification," which bears the date
of 1835-36, the latter year being the last of his
life. He resents the charge of any political in-
consistency in the course of his long career, and
most of all such an inconsistency as would im«
pugn his attachment to the Constitution and the
Union. The Resolutions of 1798, he maintains,
do not and were not meant to assert a right in
any one State to arrest or annul an act of the
General Government, as that is a right that can
only belong to them collectively. Nullification
and Secession he denounces as *^twin heresies,"
that "ought to -be buried in the same grave."
** A political system," he declares, " which does
not contain an effective provision for a peaceable
decision of all controversies arising within itself,
would be a government in name only. He as-
serts that " the essential difference between a free

*' RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99^ 247

government and governments not free, is that the
former is founded in compact, the parties to which
are mutually and equally bound by it. Neither of
them, therefore, can have a greater right to break
off from the bargain, than the other or others
have to hold them to it. ... It is high time that
the claim to secede at will should be put down by
the public opinion." What, — he writes to another
friend, — " what can be more preposterous than to
say that the States, as united, are in no respect or
degree a nation, which implies sovereignty ; . . .
and on the other hand, and at the same time, to
say that the States separately are completely na-
tions and sovereigns ? . . . The words of the Con-
stitution are explicit, that the Constitution and
laws of the United States shall be supreme over
the Constitution and laws of the several States ;
supreme in their exposition and execution, as well
as in their authority. Without a supremacy in
these respects, it would be like a scabbard, in the
hand of a soldier, without a sword in it." Abra-
ham Lincoln might have said this twenty-eight
years later when he determined that his first duty
as President was to suppress insurrection.

Such is the drift of the many pages Mr. Madi-
son wrote upon the subject during the last five or
six years of his life. He looked then, whatever
he may have thought in the closing years of the
preceding century, upon the United States as a
nation, and not as a confederacy having its parts

248 JAMES MADISON.

held together only by " a treaty or leagae " called
a constitntion. But his object is to show that
there is nothing inconsistent in the resolutions of
1798 with these opinions upon the sovereignty
of the United States ; that he held them just as
strongly then as he held them now ; and that
they, and he as their author, looked to the States
as a whole, not to a single State, to find and ap
ply a remedy in a constitutional way, for an un-
constitutional measure of which an administra-
tion of the government might be guilty. His
position is maintained with all the acuteness, in-
genuity, and logical skill which mark his earlier
writings. There is no sign of failure of mental
power, of which those accused him who could not
answer him. Such an imputation he resented
with as much indignation as he did a charge of
inconsistency, which here could only mean false-
hood. There is no possibility, then, of misundei^
standing his opinions during the last six years of
his life ; and the world has no right to doubt his
repeated and earnest assurances that these were
his opinions when he wrote the resolutions of
1798. It can only be said that the construction
he gave them, thirty years afterward, is opposed
to the universal understanding of them at the
time they were written.

But if his defense of himself be considered com-
plete, it is not even specious when presented on
behalf of Jefferson. Mr. Madison wrote in 1880 :

''RESOLUTIONS OF *98 AND '99 y 249

" That the term * nullification * in the Kentucky
Resolutions belongs to those of 1799, with which
Mr. Jefferson had nothing to do. . • • The resolu-
tians of 1798, drawn by him, contain neither that
nor any equivalent term." It was not then gen-
erally known, whether Mr. Madison knew it or
not, that one of the resolutions and part of an-
other which Jefferson wrote to be offered in the
Kentucky legislature in 1798 were omitted by
Mr. Nicholas, and that therein was the assertion
already quoted — " where powers are assumed
which have not been delegated, a nullification of
the act is the rightful remedy." The next year,
when additional resolutions were offered by Mr.
Breckenridge, this idea in similar, though not in
precisely the same language, was presented in the
words — "that a nullification by those sovereign-
ties [the States] of all unauthorized acts, done
under color of that instrument, is the rightful
remedy." In 1832, this fact, on the authority of
Jefferson's grandson and executor, was made pub-
lic ; and further, that another declaration of Mr.
Jefferson's in the resolution not used was an ex-
hortation to the co-States, ** that each will take
measures of its own for providing that neither
these acts nor any others of the general govern-
ment, not plainly and intentionally authorized by
the Constitution, shall be exercised within their
respective territories." All this must have been
known to Mr. Madison then, if not before. Tet

250 JAMES MADISON.

three years later, in his paper " On Nullification,"
under the date of 1836-86, he wrote : " The amount
of this modified right of nullification is, that a
single State may arrest the operation of a law
of the United States. . . . And this new-fangled
theory is attempted to be fathered on Mr. Jeffer-
son, the apostle of republicanism." It would be
charitable here to believe that there was some
lapse of memory in these latter days, and that he
had forgotten that Jefferson was, above all things,
his own words being witness, the apostle of nul-
lification.

The Alien and Sedition Laws — of which the
more obnoxious of the former was never enforced,
and the latter expired by limitation in two years
— had their infiuence in the presidential election
of 1800. But it was due more to differences be-
tween the President and some of the leaders of
the Federal party that that party lost its hold upon
power, never to be regained. With the election
of Jefferson, Madison entered upon another sphere
of duty, which was politically a promotion, but
where his infiuence, if it was so large, was not so
evident as when an active leader of his party. It
was at Mr. Jefferson's "pressing desire," Mr.
Madison himself says, in a letter written many
years afterward, that he took the office of Secre-
tary of State. In the same letter he explains
that he had declined an executive appointment
under Washington, because, in taking a seat in

'' RESOLUTIONa OF '98 AND '99.*' 261

the House of Representatives, he would be less ex-
posed to the imputation of selfish views in the
part he had taken in ^Hbe origin and adoption
of the Constitution ; " because there, if anywhere,
he could be of service in sustaining it against its
adversaries, especially as it was, " in its progress,
encountering trials of a new sort in the formation
of new parties attaching adverse constructions to
it." The latter reason seems to be one of those
happy after-thoughts which public men not un-
frequently flatter themselves will anticipate a
question they would prefer should not be asked.
Mr. Madison was a member of the First Congress
from the first day it met, before the new Constitu-
tion had encountered new trials from new parties
by any constructions either one way or the other.

CHAPTER XVI.

SECRETARY OP STATE.

On the morning of March 4, 1801, Mr. Jeffer-
son tied his horse to the fence and walked alone
into the Capitol to take the oath of oflBce as Presi-
dent. Mr. Madison was not present at that per-
functory ceremony, the death of his aged father
detaining him at home. He soon after, however,
assumed the duties of the station to which Mr.
Jefferson had called him, and there he remained
till he took the presidential office, in his turn, eight
years afterward.

The new dynasty entered upon its course under
happy circumstances. There was, of course, much
to fear from the condition of affairs in Europe;
for the United States must needs be in a perilous
position so long as the struggle for supremacy
continued between France and England, and that
would be while Napoleon could command an
army. But the danger of war with France was no
longer imminent, since Mr. Adams had wisely re-
established friendly relations, though many of the
leading Federalists believed it was at the cost of
ruin to his own party. English aggressions upon

SECRET ARY OF STATE. 258

American commerce had for the moment ceased ;
as fourteen years afterward they ceased altogether,
when the provocation disappeared with the per-
manent establishment of peace in Europe. In the
temporary loll of the tempest the sun shone out
of a serene sky, and the land was blessed with
quiet and prosperity. "Peace, commerce and
honest friendship with all nations, entangling alli-
ances with none," the President said in his inaugu-
ral address, were among " the essential principles
of our government, and consequently those which
ought to shape its administration/' The condi-
tion of the country was in accord with the thought
and may even have suggested it. " We are all
Republicans ; we are all Federalists," said Jeffer-
son in his inaugural ; it was meant, however, as
an avowal of a tolerant belief in the patriotism of
both parties, rather than, as has sometimes been
supposed, an assertion that party lines, so clearly
drawn in the election, were at length obliterated.
But hardly a year had passed before this seemed
to be almost literally true. One after another
States hitherto Federal, both at the North and at
the South, went over in their state elections to the
Republican or Democratic party; till, with the
exception of Delaware, there was not a single
Federal State outside of New England ; and even
in that stronghold one State, Rhode Island, had
marched oflE with the majority. " Everywhere,"
wrote Madison in October, " the progress of the

254 JAMES MADISON.

public sentiment mocks the cavils and clamors of
the malignant adversaries of the Administration."
If it may not be asserted that this overthrow of
the Federal rule was fortunate at that juncture, —
as nothing is more idle in history than speculation
upon what mighb have been, — it may at least
be said that Jefferson's administration for his
first four years was a happy one for his country
and acceptable to his countrymen. None since
Washington's has ever been so popular; and no
other, except Lincoln's, has ever been so success-
ful. Nor can it be said of it that it was a happy
period because it is without a history ; for it in-
cluded acts of moment, accepted then with an ap-
probation and enthusiasm which time has justified.
Not less shallow is that view of his character
and of those years of his administration, taken
by many of his contemporaries, who neither loved
nor respected him, and who attributed his suc-
cess and his popularity to his good fortune. This
was a favorite and easy way, among his political
opponents, of explaining a disagreeable fact. Par-
ton notes in his Life, that C. C. Pinckney could
only understand Jefferson's hold upon public con-
fidence as " the infatuation of the people." John
Quincy Adams said : " Fortune has taken a pleas-
ure in making Jefferson's greatest weaknesses and
follies issue more successfully than if he had been
inspired with the profoundest wisdom." " When
the people," said Gouverneur Morris, " have been

SECRETARY OF STATE, 255

long enough drunk, they will get sober, but while
the frolic lasts, to reason with them is useless."
There has been more than one occasion of late
years, and in more than one place, where this may
be truly said of popular political enthusiasm ; but
it was not true of that which prevailed for the
first four years of this century ; and Mr. Adams's
sarcasm can hardly fail to recall the fact, that
when Mr. Jefferson, in his second term, was really
guilty of a great folly in adhering to a prolonged
embargo, it was Mr. Adams who committed one of
the few follies of his own life in abandoning his
party to give his support to the President's blun-
der.

Though there were many changes in Mr. Jeffer-
son's cabinet in the course of eight years, they
were not the result of dissensions. Yet he was,
perhaps, more an absolute President than any
other man who has ever held that position. He
sought and listened to counsel, no doubt ; but
taking it was another matter. He certainly did
not take it if it did not suit him ; and if it was
not likely to suit him, he was in no hurry to ask
for it. It was in his own fertile brain, not in the
suggestions of others, that important measures
had their birth. That trait in his character, which
phrenologists have named secretiveness, largely
governed his actions. It was natural for him to
bring things about quietly and skillfully by set-
ting others to do what he wanted done, without

266 JAME8 MADISON.

himself being seen ; though sometimes there was
no other motive than the mere gratification of se-
cretiveness. He preferred often to suggest meas-
ures quietly to congressmen rather than to Con-
gress^ though the result in either case might be
the same. At other times, where the end to be
attained was of great importance and he was ab-
solutely sure only of himself, he boldly took the
responsibility, as he did in the purchase of Louisi-
ana, and in the suppression of the Monroe-Pinck-
^ ney treaty with England in his second term. It
is not surprising, therefore, that Madison's part,
during the eight years of JefPerson's presidency,
is found to be more a secondary one than is usual
with a Secretary of State, or than was usual with
him. He was in perfect accord with his chief,
who held always in the highest esteem his knowl-
edge and judgment, and sought, no doubt, his
sound and moderate advice when he thought he
needed advice from anybody. But Madison's in-
fluence is less visible in Jefferson's administration
than in Washington's, when he was in the oppo-
sition. Washington, where he doubted his own
ability to decide a question and felt the need of
enlightenment, was accustomed to call in Madi-
son, though he did not always accept his friend's
conclusions. It was rarely that Jefferson was
troubled with any doubt of his own judgment in
the discussion or decision of any question that
might come before him.

SECRETARY OF BTATE. 257

The most important measure of his administra-
tion was peculiarly his own, and when once de-
termined upon it was pushed to a conclusion with
vigor and courage. Nobody doubts now, or has
doubted since the abolition of slavery, that the
purchase of Louisiana was an act of sound states-
manship. Jefferson did not foresee that the ac-
quisition of that fertile territory would stimulate
a domestic trade in slaves, as profitable to the
slave-breeding as to the slave-consuming States ;
or that, as slavery increased and brought prosper-
ity and power to a class, there would grow up an
oligarchy, resting on ownership in negroes, which,
within sixty years, would hare to be uprooted at
an enormous cost. But his aim was to secure the
peaceful possession of the Mississippi territory on
both its banks, as a permanent settlement of a
question which, so long as it remained open, was
a perpetual menace of war with one or another
European power. That danger would always in-
volve the possibility of the Appalachian range
becoming . the western boundary of the United
States; in which case the valley of the Missis-
sippi, and the vast region west of it, would fall
into the power of an alien people. So far was
plain to Mr. Jefferson ; but the result of the re-
bellion of 1861 proves that he was wiser than he
knew when he acquired the territory stretching
to the Sabine and the foot of the Rocky Moun-
tains, for the occupation of a free people.

17

258 JAMES MADISON.

It is not necessary to repeat here the story of
the purchase. The news of it reached Washing-
ton in July and was received with enthusiasm.
Tfiat there was no warrant in the Constitution
for an acquisition of territory by purchase was
manifest ; and Mr. Jefferson's opponents were not
in the least backward in heaping reproaches and
ridicule upon the great champion of strict con-
struction, who had no hesitation in violating the
Constitution when it seemed to him wise to do
so. Both the President and his Secretary frankly
met the accusation by acknowledging its entire
justice ; but at the same time they put in, as a
sufiBcient defense, the plea of the general welfare.
This did not abate the ridicule, though the argu-
ment was a hard one for the Federalists to with-
stand ; for it could not be forgotten that it was
on this ground that Hamilton, as Secretary of the
Treasury, had justified the imposition of certain
taxes, and the Republicans had maintained that
the plain limitations of the Constitution could not
be overstepped on such a plea, even for the gen-
eral good. Jefferson was so sensitive to this con-
stitutional objection that he proposed to meet it
by an amendment to the Constitution ; but it was
soon evident that the unwritten law of manifest
destiny did not need the appeal to the ballot-box.
" The grumblers," Jefferson wrote to a friend
soon after the news of the treaty was received,
<^ gave all the credit of the acquisition to the ac-

SECRETARY OF STATE. 259

cident of war." " They would see," he added, in
records on file " that though we could not say
when war would arise, yet we said with energy
what would take place when it should arise."
He only meant by this, probably, that from the
beginning of his administration he had been pre-
pared to take advantage of circumstances when
war should break out again between England and
France, as it was evident enough to the whole
world that it must break out sooner or later.
That the particular conjunction of circumstances,
however, would occur that did occur, could not
have been foreseen. JeflEerson could have had no
prescience that Spain would reconvey Louisiana
to France; that Napoleon would enter at once
upon extensive preparations for colonization on
the banks of the Mississippi ; and that he would
be willing to relinquish this important step in his
great scheme of a universal Latin Empire, that
he might devote himself to the necessary prelimi-
nary work of subduing his most formidable enemy
of the rival race. But it is Jefferson's best title
to fame that he was ready to take advantage of
this conjunction of incidents at exactly the right
moment. Doubtless, the progress of civilization
would have been essentially the same had he
never been bom. But having been bom it fell to
him to contribute largely to the events that have
distributed the race speaking the English tongue
the most widely over the globe, and to exercise a

260 JAMES MADIBON.

powerful influence upon the age. It does not de-
tract from the merit of his act, however, that he
by no means saw all its importance nor even
dreamed of its consequences. The region beyond
the Mississippi, he thought, might be made useful
as a refuge for Indian tribes of the East ; but he
neither saw, nor could see, then that the purchase
of Louisiana was the essential, though only the
preliminary, step toward the occupation of the
continent to the Pacific by the English race.
The expedition of Lewis and Clarke, which he
sent out the next year, was in the interest of sci-
ence, and especially of geography, rather than of
any possible settlement of that distant region.
Indeed, he said that if the new acquisition of ter-
ritory were wisely managed, so as to induce the
eastern Indians to cross the great river, the result
would be the " condensing, instead of scattering,
our population." But "man proposes and God
disposes."

The immediate consequences, however, of the
acquisition of Louisiana were enough to bring al-
most universal popularity to the President, es-
pecially at the South and West, without any rev-
elation of the future. Nor was the act the less
popular because it was an immediate stimulus to
the foreign slave-trade, partly because at the
North that excited but little interest, and partly
because at the South it excited a great deal. The
abolition societies, it is true, asked that the impor-

SECRETARY OF STATE. 261

tation of slaves from Africa into, the annexed ter-
ritory should be forbidden ; and an act was passed
prohibiting their introduction, except by those
persons from other parts of the United States who
intended to be actual settlers, and were, therefore,
permitted to bring slaves imported previous to
1798. But the law might properly have been
entitled an Act for the Encouragement of the
Trade in Negroes ; and so it seems to have been
regarded by the older slave States. South Caro-
lina reopened the trade to Africa, and as Con-
gress failed to levy the constitutional tax of ten
dollars a head, the raw material, so to speak,
came in free. The rest could be safely left to the
law of supply and demand. Neither South Caro-
lina, nor any other State, had imported slaves
since 1798. The whole slave population, there-
fore, could be legally taken into Louisiana by act-
ual settlers, and its place supplied in the old
States by new importations. The demand regu-
lated the supply, and the supply came from Af-
rica as truly as if the importation had been direct
to New Orleans. This was the legal course of
trade till 1808 ; thenceforward it flourished with-
out the protection of law but in spite of it, so long
as it was profitable — so long, that is, as the nat-
ural increase of the eastern negro was insufficient
to answer the demand of the southwestern mar-
ket.

But besides the peaceful extension of the na-

262 JAMEB MADISON.

tional domain there was much else in the first four
or five years of Jefferson's administration to com-
mend it to his countrymen. His party had noth-
ing to complain of, despite that genial and gener-
ous assurance of the inaugural which could not be
forgotten — " we are all Republicans ; we are all
Federalists ; " and the other party had reason to
be thankful that, considering, as he said, '' a Fed-
eralist seldom died, and never resigned," the num-
ber was not large who were remindjed, by their
removal from office, of their unreasonable delay
in doing either the one thing or the other. It
was only the politicians, however, a class much
smaller then than it is now, who were concerned
in such matters ; the people at large were influ-
enced by other considerations. Credit was given
to the President for things that he did not do as
well as for things that he did. It was due to him
that the administration was an economical one;
but it was through Mr. Gallatin's skillful manage-
ment of the finances that the old public debt was
in process of speedy extinction. Occasional im-
peachments enlivened the proceedings of Con-
gress, which otherwise were as harmless as they
were dull. Jefferson was never so much out of
his proper element as in war, yet a successful one
was carried on, during his first term, with the
Barbary States which put an end for many years
to the exactions and outrages which had long been
needlessly submitted to. It was a war, however,

SECRETARY OF STATE. 268

of only a few naval vessels in the hands of such
energetic and brave men, destined to become fa-
mous in later years, as Bainbridge, Decatur,
Preble, and Barron ; and to send oSL the expedi-
tion was about all the government had to do with
it. It was easy to keep clear of ^^ entangling alli-
ances," or entanglements of any sort with Eu-
ropean powers, so long as they left the commerce
of the United States to pursue its peaceful and
profitable course without molestation. This both
England and France did for several years, and
there fell, in consequence, an immense carrying
trade into the hands of American merchants
which brought prosperity to the whole country,
such as was never known before, and was not
known again, after it was lost, for near a quarter
of a century. All these things made Mr. Jeffer-
son acceptable to the people as almost a heaven-
appointed President. If, as John Quincy Adams
thought, fortune delighted to beam upon him
with her sunniest smiles, he knew, at least, how
best to take advantage of them. While they
lasted his Secretary of State sat in their light and
warmth, quietly and contentedly busy and in the
diligent and faithful discharge of official duty,
which could not in those years of prosperous tran-
quilUty be over-burdensome.

CHAPTER XVIL

THE EMBABGO.

Almost at the beginning of his second term,
Jefferson found himself in troubled waters, as the
United States was drawn slowly but surely into
the vortex of European war. The carrying trade
at home and abroad had fallen very much into
the hands of Americans, and this became the root
of bitterness. The tonnage of their vessels em-
ployed in foreign trade and entered at the custom-
houses of the United States was equal to nearly
four fifths . of the tonnage of British vessels en-
gaged in the same traffic and entered at home.
But there was this difference : the foreign com-
merce of Great Britain was almost all carried on
from her own ports, and the returns, therefore,
showed its full volume. On the other hand, the
American ships were largely the carriers between
the ports of the belligerents and of other powers
in Europe, and there were no entries at tiie Amer-
ican custom-houses of their employment, or that
they were employed at all. As early as 1804-05,
the aggregate value of this foreign trade in the
hands of Americans was probably much larger

THE EMBARGO. 265

than that controlled by English merchants ; and
the former increased to the time of the promul-
gation of the Berlin decree of 1806, and the Brit-
ish orders in council of the next year. Nor was
it only that wealth flowed into the country as the
immediate return from this trade abroad. It stim-
ulated enterprise and industry at home by the in-
crease of capital ; and there was not only more
money to work with, but more to spend. Conse-
quently the increase in exports and in imports grew
steadily. In 1806, 1806, and 1807, about one half
the average total exports, something over the value
of twenty million of dollars, went to Great Britain
alone ; and the value of the imports from that
country for the same period was about sixty mil-
lion dollars a year. Nor did this disproportion,
though increasing with the growing prosperity,
represent a general balance of trade against the
United States, as one school of political econo-
mists would insist it must have done. For the
imports were small from other European countries
in exchange for American products ; and the dif-
ference, together with the profits of the carrying
trade abroad, was remitted in English manufac-
tures. In other words, the imports from England
represented the returns for all exports to Europe,
and the returns also — available in the first in-
stance through bills of exchange — of the trade
which had been gained by Americans and lost by
those nations whose ships the war had driven from
the ocean.

266 JAMES MADISON.

The British manufacturer had no reason for
discontent with this state of things. The best
market for his goods was constantly improving,
and he did not much care who took them to Amer-
ica. But the English government, and the Eng-
lish merchants who owned ships, looked on with
neither pleasure nor patience. It was impossible
not to see that the United States was fast becom-
ing a great commercial rival. This in itself was
bad enough ; but it was the harder to bear when it
was remembered — and it could not be forgotten
— that the rivalry came from States so lately in
revolt against England, and that their President at
that moment was one of the most obnoxious of
the rebels. Then what did it avail that England
was mistress of the seas, if her formidable enemy
could laugh at any eflEort of hers to destroy the
commerce of France, so long as that commerce
could be carried on in safety under a neutral flag ?
If that flag must be respected, English naval ves-
sels and privateers would cruise in vain for prizes,
for the merchant ships of any belligerent, not
strong enough to protect them, stayed in port. It
had not yet come to be the acknowledged law of
nations that free ships make free goods. But
nearly the same purpose was answered, if the
property of belligerents could be safely carried in
neutral ships under the pretense of being owned
by neutrals. The products of the French colonies,
for example, could be loaded on board of Ameri-

THE EMBARGO. 267

can vessels, taken to the United States and re-
shipped there for France as American property.
England looked upon this as an evasion of the
recognized public law that property of belligerents
vras good prize. Accordingly when she saw that
French commerce was thus put out of her reach,
and that the rival she most dreaded was growing
rich and powerful in the possession of it, she sought
a remedy and was not long in finding one.

It was denied that neutrals could take advan-
tage of a state of war to enter upon a trade which
had not existed in time of peace ; and American
ships were seized on the high seas, taken into port,
and condemned in the Admiralty Courts for car-
rying enemy's goods in such a trade. The exer-
cise of that right, if it were one by the recog-
nized law of nations, would be of great injury to
American commerce, unless it could be success-
fully resisted. To show that it was not good
law, Mr. Madison wrote his " Examination of
the British Doctrine which Subjects to Capture a
Neutral Trade not open in the Time of Peace."
The essay was a careful and thorough discussion
of the whole question, and showed by citations
from the most eminent writers on international
law, by the terms of treaties, and by the conduct
of nations in the past, that the British doctrine
was erroneous and would lead to other infringe-
ments of the rights of neutrals. But argument,
however unanswerable, has never yet brought the

268 JAMES MADISON.

British government to reason, unless there was
something behind it not so easy to disregard. The
appropriation for Mr. Jefferson's gunboats could
not get that naval arm ready for eflfective service
much before the year 1816, even if it could then
be of use ; and there was, moreover, this further
difficulty in the way of its efficiency at the time,
— that as it could not go to the enemy, it must
wait for the enemy to come to it; the conflagra-
tion would have to be brought to the fire-engines.
A war with England must be a naval war ; and
the United States not only had no navy of any
consequence, but it was a part of Mr. Jefferson's
policy, in contrast with the policy of the preceding
administrations, that there should be none, except
these gunboats kept on wheels and under cover in
readiness to repel an invasion. But there was no
fear of invasion, for by that England could gain
nothing. " She is renewing," Madison wrote in
the autumn of 1806, "her depredations on our
commerce in the most ruinous shapes, and has
kindled a more general indignation among our
merchants than was ever before expressed."

These depredations were not confined to the
seizing and confiscating American ships under
the pretense that their cargoes were contraband.
Seamen were taken out of them on the charge of
being British subjects and deserters, not only on
the high seas in larger numbers than ever before,
but within the waters of the United States. Ko

THE EMBARGO. 269

doubt these seamen were often British subjects
and their seizure was justifiable, provided Eng-
land could rightfully extend to all parts of the
globe and to the ships of all nations the merciless
system of impressment to which her own people
were compelled to submit at home. Monroe, in a
note to Madison, said that the British minister
had informed him that " great abuses were com-
mitted in granting protections " in America, and
acknowledged that ^^he gave me some examples
which were most shameful." But even if it could
be granted that English naval officers might seize
such men without recourse to law, wherever they
should be found and without respect for the flag
of another nation, it was a national insult and out-
rage, calling for resentment and resistance, to im-
press American citizens under the pretense that
they were British subjects. But what was the
remedy ? As a last resort in such cases, nations
have but one. Diplomacy and legislation may be
first tried, but if these fail, war must be the final
ordeal. For this the Administration made no prep-
aration, and the more evident the unreadiness the
less was the chance of redress in any other way.
Immediate war would, of course, have been im-
wise ; for what could a nation almost without a
ship, hope from a contest with a power having the
largest and most efficient navy in the world ? If
this, however, was true from 1805 to 1807, it was
not less true in 1812. But it need not have been

270 JAMES MADISON,

true when war was actually resorted to, had the
intervening years been years of preparation. The
fact was, however, that the party which supported
the Administration was no more in favor of war
at the earlier period than the Administration
itself was ; and meanwhile, till a war-party had
come into existence and gained the ascendency,
the country had been growing every year less and
less in a condition to appeal to war.

The first measure adopted to meet the aggres-
sions of the English was an act prohibiting tbe
importation of certain British products. This had
always been a favorite policy with Madison. He
had advanced and upheld it in former years, when
a member of Congress, and when Great Britain
had first violated the rights and dignity of the
United States by interference with her foreign
trade and by impressing her citizens. Non-inter-
course had been an eflEective measure thirty years
before, and had a kind of prestige as an American
policy. It was not seen, perhaps could not be
seen without experience, that a measure suited to
the colonial condition was not sufficient for an
independent nation. But the President and Sec-
retary were in perfect accord ; for Jefferson pre-
ferred anything to war, and Madison was per-
suaded that England would be brought to terms
by the loss of the best market for her manufac-
tures. Others, and notably John Randolph, saw
in the measure only the first step, which, if per-

THE EMBARGO. 271

sisted in, mast lead to war ; while, in the mean-
time, to interfere with importations would be quite
as great an injury to the United States as to Great
Britain. Randolph was apt to blurt out a good
deal of truth when it happened to suit him. Im-
pressment, he said, was an old grievance which
had not been thought a sufficient provocation for
war when the nation was not prepared; and it
was no more ready to resort to that desperate
remedy now than it had been in the past. With-
out a navy it would be impossible to prevent the
blockading of all the principal American ports
by English squadrons. The United States would
need an ally, and he was not willing she should
throw herself into the arms of that power which
was seeking universal conquest. France, he said,
would be the tyrant of the ocean, if the British
navy should be driven from it. The commerce,
moreover, which it was proposed to protect, was
not the " honest trade of America ; " but " a
mushroom, a fungus of war — a trade which so
soon as the nations of Europe are at peace, will
no longer exist." It was only "a carrying trade
which covers enemy's property ; " and he did not
believe in plunging a great agricultural country
into war for the benefit of the shipping merchants
of a few seaports. There were many who agreed
with him ; for it was one of the cardinal principles
of the JeflEersonian school of politics, that be-
tween commerce and agriculture there was a nat-
ural antagonism.

272 JAMEa MADISON.

But the Administration did not rely upon l^is-
lation alone in this emergency. The President
followed up the act prohibiting the introduction
of British goods by sending William Pinkney to
England in the spring of 1806, to join Monroe,
the resident minister, in an attempt at negotiation.
These commissioners soon wrote that there was
good reason for hoping that a treaty would be con-
cluded, and thereupon the non-importation act was
for a time suspended. In December came the
news that a treaty was agreed upon, and soon after
it was received by the President. The most seri-
ous difficulty in the way of negotiation had been
the question of impressment. The British gov-
ernment claimed the right to arrest deserters from
its service anywhere outside the jurisdiction of
other nations, and that jurisdiction, it was main-
tained^ could not extend beyond the coast limit
over the open sea, the highway of all nations.
There was an evident disposition, however, to come
to some compromise. The English commission-
ers proposed that their government should pro-
hibit, under penalty, the seizure of American cit-
izens anywhere, and that the United States should
forbid, on her part, the granting of certificates of
citizenship to British subjects of which deserters
took advantage. But as this would be an acknowl-
edgment virtually of the right of search on board
American ships, and the denial of citizenship in
the United States to foreigners, the American

THE EMBARGO, 273

commissioners oould not entertain that proposi-
tion. They were willing, however, if the assumed
right to board American ships were given up, to
agree, on behalf of their government, to aid in the
arrest and return of British deserters when seek-
ing a refuge in the United States. But to this
the British commissioners would not accede.

Monroe and Pinkney were enjoined, in the in-
structions written by the Secretary of State, to
make the abandonment of impressment the first
condition of a treaty. A treaty, nevertheless, was
agreed upon, without this provision. But when
it was sent to the President, the ministers ex-
plained : —

**Tbat, although this government [the British] did
not feel at liberty to relinquish, formally, by treaty, its
claim to search our merchant vessels for British seamen,
its practice would nevertheless be essentially, if not com-
pletely, abandoned. That opinion has since been con-
firmed by frequent conferences on the subject with the
British commissioners, who have repeatedly assured us
that, in their judgment, we were made as sure against
the exercise of their pretension by the policy which their
government bad adopted in regard to that very delicate
and important question, as we could have been made by
treaty."

These assurances did not satisfy the President.
Without consulting the Senate, though Congress
was in session when the treaty was received, and
although the Senate had been previously informed

18

274 JAMES MADISON.

that one had been agreed upon, the President re-
jected it. On several other points it was not ac-
ceptable ; but, as Mr. Madison wrote to a friend,
"the case of impressments particularly having
bqen brought to a formal issue, and having been
the primary object of an extraordinary mission, a
treaty could not be closed which was silent on that
subject." The commissioners, therefore, were or-
dered to renew negotiations. This they faithfully
tried to do for a year, but were finally told by the
British minister that a treaty, once concluded and
signed, but afterward rejected in part by one of
the contracting powers, could not again be taken up
for consideration. The opponents of the Admin-
istration made the most of this action of Mr. Jef-
ferson. The country was not permitted to fo^et,
even were forgetfulness possible, that thousands
of seamen had been taken from American vessels,
and that the larger proportion of these were na-
tive-born citizens of the United States. Not that
these opponents wanted war ; that, they believed,
would be ruinous without a navy, and therefore
some reasonable compromise was all that could be
hoped for. But what was to be thought of an ad-
ministration that would not go to war because it
was not prepared ; would not prepare in the hope
that some future conjunction of circumstances
would stave off that last resort ; and, meanwhile,
would accept no terms which might at least miti-
gate the injuries visited upon the sea-faring peo-

THE EMBARGO, 275

pie of the United States, and possibly relieve the
nation from an insolent exercise of power which
it was not strong enough to resent ?

As England's need of seamen increased, the
captains of her cruisers, encouraged by the failure
of negotiation, grew bolder in overhauling Amer-
ican ships and taking out as many men as they be-
lieved, or pretended to believe, were deserters. In
the summer of 1807 an outrage was perpetrated
on the frigate Chesapeake, as if to emphasize the
contempt with which a nation must be looked
upon which only screamed like a woman at wrongs
which it wanted the courage and strength to re-
sent, or the wisdom to compound for. The Ches-
apeake was followed out of the harbor of Norfolk
by the British man-of-war Leopard, and when a
few miles at sea, the Chesapeake being brought to
under the pretense that the English captain wished
to put some dispatches on board for Europe, a de-
mand was made for certain deserters supposed to
be on the American frigate. Commodore Barron
replied that he knew of no deserters on his ship,
and that he could permit no search to be made,
even if there were. After some further alterca-
tion the Englishman fired a broadside, killing and
wounding a number of the Chesapeake's crew.
Commodore Barron could do nothing else but sur-
render, for he had only a single gun in readiness
for use, and that was fired only once and then with
a coal from the cook's galley. The ship was then

276 JAME8 MADISON.

boarded, the crew mustered, and four men arrested
as deserters. Three of them were negroes, — two
natives of the United States, the other of South
America. The fourth man, probably, was an Eng-
lishman. They were all deserters from English
men-of-war lying off Norfolk ; but the three ne-
groes declared that they had been kidnapped, and
their right to escape could not be justly ques-
tioned ; indeed, the English afterward took this
view of it apparently, for the men were released
on the arrival of the Leopard at Halifax. But
the fourth man was hanged.

For this direct national insult, explanation,
apology, and reparation were demanded, and at
the same time the President put forth a procla^
mation forbidding all British ships of war to re-
main in American waters. Of how much use the
latter was we learn from a letter of Madison to
Monroe : " They continue to defy it," he wrote,
" not only by remaining within our waters, but by
chasing merchant vessels arriving and departing."
Some preparation was made for war, but it was
only to call upon the militia to be in readiness,
and to order Mr. Jefferson's gunboats to the most
exposed ports. Great Britain was not alarmed.
The captain of the Leopard, indeed, was removed
from his command, as having exceeded his duty ;
but a proclamation on that side was also issued,
requiring all ships of war to seize British seamen
on board foreign merchantmen, to demand them

THE EMBARGO, 277

from foreign ships of war, and if the demand was
refused to report the fact to the admiral of the
fleet. It was not till after four years of irritating
controversy that any settlement was reached in
regard to the affair of the Chesapeake.

New perils all the while were besetting Amer-
ican commerce. In November, 1806, Napoleon's
Berlin decree was promulgated, forbidding the in-
troduction into France of the products of Great
Britain and her* colonies, whether in her own
ships or those of other nations. This was in vio-
lation of the convention between France and the
United States, if it was meant that American
vessels should come under the prohibition ; but for
a time there was some hope that they might be
excepted. In the course of the year, however, it
was oflBcially declared in Paris that the treaty
would not be allowed to weaken the force of a war
measure aimed at Great Britain. Under this de-
cision cargoes already seized were confiscated and
the trade of the United States faced a new calam-
ity. The decree, it was declared, was a rightful
retaliation of a British order in council of six
months before, which had established a partial
blockade of a portion of the French coast. In the
kidnapping business, France could not, of course,
compete with England ; for there were few of her
citizens to be found on board of American vessels,
and to seize a Yankee sailor, under the pretense
that he was a Frenchman, was an absurdity never

278 JAMES MADISON,

thought of. But hundreds of Americans, the
crews of ships seized for violation of the terms of
the Berlin decree, were thrown into French pris-
ons. So far, therefore, as the United States had
good ground of complaint on any score against
either power, there was little to choose between
them. Mr. Jefferson's repugnance to war was suf-
ficient to hold him back from one with England,
though he might have had France for an ally ; still
more unwilling was he, by a war with France, to
make a friend of England, whom he still looked
upon as the natural enemy of the United States ;
for, notwithstanding all that had come and gone,
he still regarded France with something of the
old affection. In the autumn of 1807 he called
a special session of Congress in consideration of
the increasing aggressions of Great Britain, espe-
cially in the attack upon the Chesapeake, and the
injury done by the interdiction of neutral trade
with any country with which that power was at
war. But he had no recommendations to offer
of resistance nor even of defense, except that some
additions be made to the gunboats, and that sailors
on shore be enrolled as a sort of gunboat militia.
The probable real purpose of calling the extra
session, however, appeared in about two weeks,
when he sent a special message to the Senate, rec-
ommending an embargo.

An act was almost immediately passed, which,
if anything more was needed to complete the ruin

THE EMBARGO, 279

of American commerce, supplied that deficiency.
A month before this time the English ministry
had issued a new order in council — the news of
which reached Jefferson as he was about to send
in his message — proclaiming a blockade of pretty
much all Europe, and forbidding any trade in neu-
tral vessels, unless they had first gone into some
British port and paid duties on their cargoes ; and
within twenty-four hours of the President's mes-
sage, recommending the embargo. Napoleon pro-
claimed a new decree from "Milan, by which it was
declared that any ship was lawful prize that had
anything whatever to do with Great Britain —
that should pay it tribute, that should carry its
merchandise, that should be bound either to or
from any of its ports. All that these powers could
do to shut every trading vessel out of all European
ports was now done ; and at this opportune mo-
ment Mr. Jefferson came to their aid by compelling
all American vessels to stay at home. It is not
easy in our time to conceive of a President propos-
ing, or of a party accepting, or of the people sub-
mitting to such a measure as this. But Mr. Jeffer-
son's followers were very obedient, and there was,
undoubtedly, a very general belief that trade with
the United States was so important to the nations
at war, that for the sake of its renewal the obnox-
ious decrees and orders in council would soon be
repealed. But, except upon certain manufacturers
in England, little influence was visible. General

280 JAMES MADISON,

Armstrong, the American minister in France,
wrote : " Here it is not felt ; and in England,
amid the more recent and interesting events of the
day, it is forgotten." When, however, the effect
was evident at home of a law forbidding any
American vessels from going to sea, even to catch
fish, and prohibiting the export of any of the prod-
ucts of the United States either in their own ships
or those of any other country, then there arose
a popular clamor for the abandonment of a policy
so ruinous. Within four months of its enactment,
Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts declared, in a de-
bate in Congress, that ^' an experiment, such as is
now making, was never before — I will not say
tried — it never before entered into the human
imagination. There is nothing like it in the nar-
rations of history or in the tales of fiction. All
the habits of a mighty nation are at once counter-
acted. All their property depreciated. All their
external connections violated. Five millions of
people are engaged. They cannot go beyond the
limits of that once free country ; now they are
not even permitted to thrust their own property
through the grates." While American ships at
home were kept there, those which had remained
abroad to escape the embargo were met by a new
peril. Some of them were in French ports await-
ing a turn in affairs ; others ventured to load with
English goods in English ports, to be landed in
France under the pretense, supported by f raudu-

THE EMBARGO, 281

lent papers, that they were direct from the United
States or other neutral country. The fraud was
too transparent to escape detection long, and Na-
poleon thereupon issued, in the spring of 1808, the
Bayonne decree authorizing the seizure and con-
fiscation of all American vessels. They were either
English or American, he said ; if the former they
were enemy's ships and liable to capture ; but if
the latter, they should be at home, and he was
only enforcing the embargo law of the United
States, which she ought to thank him for.

The prosperity and tranquillity which marked
the earlier years of Jefferson's administration dis-
appeared in its last year. Congress, both in its
spring and winter sessions, could talk of little else
but the disastrous embargo ; proposing, on the one
hand, to make it the more stringent by an enforce-
ment act, and, on the other, to substitute for it
non-intercourse with England and France, restor-
ing trade with the rest of the world, and leaving
the question of decrees and orders in council open
for future consideration. The President no longer
held his party under perfect control. The mis-
chievous results of the embargo policy were evi-
dent enough to a sufficient number of Republi-
cans to secure ; in February, 1809, the repeal of
that measure, to take effect the next month as to
all countries except England and France, and
with regard to them at the adjournment of the

282 JAMES MADISON.

next Congress. But the prohibition of importa-
tion from both these latter countries was contin-
ued till the obnoxious orders in council and the
decrees should be repealed.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MADISON AS PRESIDENT.

Mb. Jefferson named his own successor. Of
the three Democratic candidates, Madison, Mon-
roe, and George Clinton, he preferred Madison
now, and urged Monroe to wait patiently as next
in succession. Beyond two lives he did not, per-
haps, think .proper to dictate ; and, besides, Clin-
ton was not a Virginian. What little opposition
there was to Madison in his own party came from
those who feared that he was too thoroughly iden-
tified with Jefferson's policy to untie the knot in
which the foreign relations of the country had be-
come entangled. Of the 175 electoral votes, how-
ever, he received 122 ; but that was fewer by 39
than had been cast for Jefferson four years before.
Of the New England States, Vermont alone gave
him its votes, changing places with Rhode Island,
which had wheeled into line again with the Fed-
eralists.

During the winter of 1808-09, after Madison's
election but before his inauguration, he had qui-
etly conferred with Erskine, the British minister
at Washington, upon the condition of affairs.

284 JAMES MADISON.

Much was hoped from these conferences ; but the
end which they helped to bring about was the re-
verse of what was hoped for. Could Madison
have had his way, he would probably have pre-
ferred that Congress should have left untouched
at that session the questions of embargo and non-
intercourse ; for the tone of the debates and the
tendency of legislation naturally led the English
ministry to doubt the assurances which Erskine
gave, that these proceedings did not truly rep-
resent the friendly disposition of the incoming
President. In answer to those representations,
however, there came in April from Canning, tho
Foreign Secretary, certain propositions which were
so presented by Erskine, and so received by the
Administration, as to promise a settlement of all
differences between the two governments. Er-
skine was a young man, anxious very likely for
distinction; but a laudable ambition to be of ser-
vice in a good cause made him over-zealous. He
exceeded the letter of his instructions, while keep-
ing, as he thought, to their spirit. Probably he
mistook their spirit in assuming that his govern-
ment cared more to secure a settlement of existing
difficulties than for the precise terms and minor
details by which it should be reached. At any
rate he agreed that Great Britain would withdraw
her orders in council provided the United States
would maintain the non-intercourse acts against
France so long as the Berlin and Milan decrees

MADiaON AS PRESIDENT. 285

remained in force. This being secured, he did not
insist upon two other conditions — partly because
it was represented to him that they would need
some action by Congress, and partly because he
believed that the essential point was gained by an
agreement on the part of the United States to en-
force non-intercourse against France while her
decrees were unrepealed. These other conditions
were, first, that the United States should cease to
insist upon the right to carry on in time of war
the colonial trade of a belligerent which had not
been open in time of peace to neutrals ; and sec-
ond, the acknowledgment that British men-of-
war might rightfully seize American merchant
vessels when transgressing the non-intercourse
laws against France. He also proposed a settle-
ment of the Chesapeake question, but omitted to
say, as Canning had instructed him to say, that
some provision would be made, as an act of gener-
osity and not of right, for the wives and children
of the men who were killed on board that ship.
But when that settlement was accepted by the
Administration, he failed to resent some reflections
from Robert Smith, the Secretary of State, on the
conduct of Great Britain in that affair, which
Canning, when he heard of them, thought should
have been resented and their recall demanded, or
the negotiation stopped.

On the terms, however, as Erskine chose to
present them, an agreement was reached, and the

286 JAMES MADISON,

President issued a proclamation repealing the acts
of embargo and non-intercourse as against Great
Britain and her colonies after June 10. On that
day more than a thousand ships, loaded and riding
at anchor in all the principal ports in anxious
readiness for the signal for flight, spread their
wings, like a flock of long-imprisoned birds, and
flew out to sea. There was an almost universal
shout of gratitude to the new President, who, in
the first three months of his administration, bad
banished the fear of war abroad, and at home was
sweeping away involuntary idleness, want, and
ominous discontent. Madison had known some-
thing of popularity during his long career; but
never before had he felt the exultation of riding
upon the very crest of a mighty wave of popular
applause. But it was one of those waves that
collapse suddenly into a surprising flatness. Can-
ning repudiated all that Erskine had done and
immediately recalled him. The ships that had '
gone to sea, under the sanction of the President's
proclamation, were permitted by an order in
council to complete their voyages unmolested ; but
otherwise all commerce was once more brought to
a stand-stilL It would have been easier to bear
some fresh misfortune than to be compelled to
struggle again with calamities so well understood
and which it was hoped had been left behind for-
ever. Madison and Gallatin, who had been re-
tained in the Treasury Department and was the

MADISON A8 PRESIDENT, 287

President's chief adviser, wer^* accused of having
been either imbecile or treacherous. It was
openly said that they had led the young minister
to agree to an arrangement which they knew his
government would not sanction. But they could
hardly have been so foolish as to make a bargain
with the certainty that it would stand only so
long as a ship could go and come across the At-
lantic. Nobody understood better than Madison
how grateful a reconciliation with England would
be to a large proportion of the people, and nobody
was more disappointed that the negotiations came
to worse than nothing, inasmuch as their failure
led to new embarrassments.

He said with some bitterness, in a letter to Jef-
ferson, early in August : ** You will see by the in-
structions to Erskine, as published by Canning,
that the latter was as much determined that there
should be no adjustment as the former was that
there should be one." He was unjust to Can-
ning ; the real' fault was with Erskine, and with
him only because his zeal outran his judgment.
In another letter to JefiEerson, the President says:
" Erskine is in a ticklish situation with his gov-
ernment. I suspect he will not be able to defend
himself against the charges of exceeding his in-
structions, notwithstanding the appeal he makes
to sundry others not published. But he will
make out a strong case against Canning, and be
able to avail himself much of the absurdity and '

288 JAMES MADISON,

evident inadmissibility of the articles disregarded
by him." Possibly Mr. Erskine considered that
his government would approve of his not urging
these points too earnestly, inasmuch as the other
side refrained from insisting upon the abandon-
ment of impressment of seamen on board Ameri-
can ships. But Mr. Madison's indignation must
have covered up a good deal of mortification. He
could hardly have been without the sensation of
one hoisted by his own petard. It was only two
years since Mr. Jefferson, with his approval, had
rejected the Monroe - Pinkney treaty because in-
structions had not been literally complied with.
Mr. Canning, in following that example, could
have pleaded, had he chosen, much the stronger
justification, under the circumstances of the two
cases ; and Mr. Madison could not fail to remem-
ber, without being reminded of it, when this
agreement was thrown back in his face, that he
had been willing to accept it without any protec-
tion of the rights of American seamen, the want
of which was the ostensible reason for rejecting
the Monroe-Pinkney treaty.

However, the Administration was now com-
pelled to meet anew the old difficulties which the
Erskine agreement had failed to dispose of. The
President's first duty was to issue a second procla-
mation, recalling the previous one which had sent
to sea every American ship in port. They could
all come back, if they would, to be made fast

MADISON AS PRESIDENT. 289

again at their wharves, till the recurrent tides at
last should ripple in and out of their open seams,
and their yards and masts drop piecemeal upon
the rotting decks. But many never came back,
preferring rather the risk of being sunk or burned
at sea, which happened to not a few, or of cap-
ture and confiscation by the belligerents whose
laws they defied. Erskine was followed by a new
ambassador from England, Mr. Jackson. His mis-
sion, however, had no other result than to widen
the breach between the two nations. A contro-
versy almost immediately arose between the min-
ister and Mr. Smith, the Secretary of State, — or
rather Mr. Madison himself, who, as he com-
plained at a later period, did most of Smith's
work as well as his own, — touching the arrange-
ment with Erskine. Jackson intimated, or was
understood as intimating, that the Administration
must have known the precise terms on which Er-
skine was empowered to treat with the govern-
ment of the United States; and when a denial
was made with a good deal of emphasis on the
part of the Administration, the insinuation was re-
peated almost as a direct charge. Of course there
could be but one conclusion to correspondence of
this sort; further communication with Jackson
was declined and his recall asked for.

It was plain enough in the latter months of Jef-
ferson's administration, to himself as well as to
everybody else, that the embargo had not only

19

290 JAMB8 MADISON.

failed to bring the belligerents to terms abroad,
but that it had added greatly to the distress at
home. That the measure was a failure, Madison
himself acknowledged in one of his retrospective
letters written in the retirement of Montpellier,
sixteen years afterward. It was meant, he said
in that letter, as an experimental measure, prefer-
able to naked submission or to war at a time when
war was inexpedient. It failed, he added, " be-
cause the government did not sufficiently distrust
those in a certain quarter whose successful viola-
tion of the law led to the general discontent, which
called for its repeal." That is to say, the govern-
ment relied too confidently upon the submission of
New England ; was too ready to believe that her
merchants would not let their ships slip quietly out
to sea whenever they could evade the officers of the
customs, nor slip in to land a cargo at some unfre-
quented place where there was no custom-house.
" The patriotie fishermen of Marblehead," he says,
" at one time offered their services ; " and he re-
grets they were not sent out as privateers to seize
these contraband ships as prizes, and to ^^ carry
them into ports where the tribunals would en-
force the law." Apparently there was not a rea-
sonable doubt in his mind whether such tribunals
could be found in any port along the coast of New
England. It is also rather more than doubtful —
even assuming that there was much of the kind
of patriotism which he says existed in Marblehead

MADiaON A8 PRESIDENT. 291

— how long, had the government oflEered commis-
sions to private citizens to prey upon their neigh-
bors, the embargo would have been respected at
all east of Long Island Sound. But this was the
afterthought of 1826. Madison's policy in 1809-
10 was rather to conciliate than provoke " those
in a certain quarter." He could not command
entire unanimity even in his own party. Con-
gress passed the winter in vain efforts to find
some common ground, not merely for Democrats
and Federalists, but for the Democrats alone.
Various measures were proposed to meet the crit-
ical condition of the country. Some were too rad-
ical ; some not radical enough ; and none were so
acceptable that it was not easy to form combina-
tions for their defeat. AU were agreed that the
non-importation act must be got rid of ; but the
difficulty was to find a way to be rid of it so that
the nation should at once maintain its dignity, as-
sert its rights, and escape a war. The President
would have preferred that all British and French
ships be excluded from American ports, and that
importations from both countries should be pro-
hibited except in American vessels ; and a bill to
this effect was one of several that was defeated in
the course of the session. But at last, in May
(1810), an act was passed excluding only the men-
of-war of both nations, but suspending the non-
importation act for three months after the ad-
journment of Congress. The President was then

292 JAME8 MADISON.

authorized, when the three months were passed,
to declare the act again in force against either
Great Britain or France, should the commercial
orders or decrees of either nation be continued in
force while those of the other were repealed.

If the aim of the dominant party had been to
devise a scheme sure to lead to fresh complications
more difficult to manage than any that had gone
before, it could not have hit upon a better one
than this. Hitherto, in all the perplexities and
anxieties of the situation, the government had, at
least, kept its relations to other powers in its own
hands, to conduct them, whether wisely or un-
wisely, in its own way. It could resent or sub-
mit to encroachments upon the commerce of the
country as seemed most prudent; it could close
or open the ports, as seemed most judicious ; or it
could join forces with that one of its two enemies
whose alliance promised to secure respect on the
one hand, and compel it on the other. But now
it had tied itself up in a knot of provisos. It
would do something if England would do some^
thing else, or if France would do something else.
If the proposition was accepted by England and
was not accepted by France, then the United
States would remain in friendly relations with
England, and assume by comparison an unfriendly
attitude toward France; and if France accepted
the condition and England declined it, then the
situation would be reversed. Nothing would be

MADISON A8 PRESIDENT. 293

gained in either case that might not have been
gained by direct negotiation, and, no doubt, on
better terras. But if the proposition now offered
should be disregarded by both powers, the situa-
tion would be worse than before. This evidently
was Madison's view of the question. He wrote to
Pinkney, the minister at the Court of St. James,
a month after the act was passed : ^^ At the next
meeting of Congress, it will be found, according
to present appearances, that instead of an adjust-
ment with either of the belligerents there is an
increasing obstinacy in both ; and that the incon-
veniences of embargo and non-intercourse have
been exchanged for the greater sacrifices, as well
as disgrace, resulting from a submission to the
predatory system in force." Not that he wanted
war; his faith in passive resistance was still un-
shaken ; embargo and non-intercourse he was still
confident would, if persisted in long enough,
surely bring the belligerents to terms. But as to
this act, he weighs the chances as in a balance.
In England some impression may be made by the
prices of cotton and tobacco — "cotton down at
ten or eleven cents in Georgia; and the great
mass of tobacco in the same situation." He has,
however, no " very favorable expectations." But
as to France he evidently is not without hope that
she will be wise enough to see that " she ought
at once to embrace the arrangement held out by
Congress, the renewal of a non-intercourse with

294 JAMES MADiaON.

Great Britain being the very species of resistanoe
most analogous to her professed views." But he
was clearly not sanguine.

If that was his wish, however^ it was gratified.
Napoleon did take advantage of the act; but
in such a way as to reverse the relative positions
of the two nations by seizing for France and tak-
ing from the United States the power or tiie will
to dictate terms. The French minister, Cham-
pagny, announced in a letter merely, in August,
the revocation of the Berlin and Milan decrees,
from the Ist of the following November; and, a
day or two after, such new restrictions were im-
posed upon American trade, by prohibitory duties
and a navigation act, as pretty much to ruin what
little there was left of it. The revocation of the
edicts, moreover, was coupled with the conditions
that Great Britain should not only recall her order
in council, but renounce her ^^new principles of
blockade," or that the United States should
^^ cause their rights to be respected by the Eng-
lish." Napoleon had in this three ends to gain,
and he gained them all : First, to secure France
against a renewal of the non-importation act of
the United States, if the President should accept
this conditional recall of the decrees as satisfac-
tory ; second, to leave those decrees virtually un-
repealed, by making their recall depend upon the
action of England, who, he well knew, would not
listen to the proposed conditions ; and, third, to

MADiaON AS PRESIDENT. 295

inyolve the United States and England in new
disputes, which might lead to war. Everything
turned out as the Emperor wished. The Presi-
dent accepted the conditional withdrawal of the
French, decrees, as in accordance with the act of
Congress ; England refused to recognize a contin-
gent withdrawal as a withdrawal at all ; and the
result at length was war between England and
the United States.

The acquiescence of the President in the decis-
ion of Napoleon was the more significant inasmuch
as Mr. Smith, the Secretary of State, had assured
the French government, when a copy of the act
of May was sent to it, that there could be no ne-
gotiation under the act until another matter was
disposed of. A decree, issued at RambouiUet in
March, 1810, and enforced in May, ordered the
confiscation of all American ships then detained in
the ports of France, and in Spanish, Dutch, and
Neapolitan ports under the control of France.
The loss to American merchants, including ships
and cargoes, was estimated to be about forty mil-
lion dollars. This decree was ostensibly in retal-
iation of that act of non-intercourse passed by
Congress more than a year before, and was, there-
fore, a retrospective law. The non - intercourse
act, moreover, had expired by its own limitation
months before many of these ships were seized ;
but all, nevertheless, were confiscated, though some
of them had entered the ports merely for shelter.

296 JAMES MADISON.

By order of the President, Smith wrote to Arm-
strong, the American minister at Paris, that ** a
satisfactory provision for restoring the property
lately surprised and seized by the order, or at the
instance of the French goyemment, must be com-
bined with a repeal of the French edicts, with a
view to a non-intercourse with Great Britain;
such a provision being an indispensable evidence
of the just purpose of France toward the United
States." The injunction was repeated a few weeks
later ; but when the Emperor's decision upon the
decrees was announced, in August, the ^^ indis-
pensable " was dispensed with, and a few months
later an absolute refusal of any compensation for
the spoliation under the Rambouillet decree was
quietly submitted to.

But meanwhile the President, in November, is>
sued a proclamation announcing that France had
complied with the act of the previous May, and
revoked the decrees, while the English orders in
council remained unrepealed. But England still
had three months, according to the act, in which
to make her choice between a recall of her orders
in council or the alternative of seeing the Amer-
ican non-intercourse act revived against her.
But, it is to be observed, the French minister's
announcement of the acceptance of the act of
May was not made till August, and then the revo-
cation of the decrees was not to take effect till
November. November came bringing with it the

MADISON AS PRESIDENT. 297

President's proclamation, when it soon appeared
that there was still to be ^^ taiTying in the eating
of the cake." The decrees were to remain in
force at least three months longer, till it should be
known whether Great Britain would comply with
those terras which France — not the United States
— made the condition of revoking the orders in
council ; and if Great Britain did not comply, then
the French decrees were not revoked. The legal-
ity of the President's proclamation, of course, was
questioned. There was, as Josiah Quincy said-
in debate in the House, the following February
(1811), "a continued seizure of all the vessels
which came within the grasp of the French cus-
tom-house, from the 1st of November down to the
date of our last accounts." Other members, not
more earnest, were less temperate in the expres-
sion of their indignation at what, one of them said,
would be called swindling in the conduct of pri-
vate affairs ; while another declared that the Pres-
ident was throwing the people ^^ into the embrace
of that monster at whose perfidy Lucifer blushed
and hell stands astonished." France knew all this
while what England's decision would be. She was
ready to rescind the orders in council when the
French edicts were revoked, but she did not recog^
nize a mere letter from the French minister,
Champagny, to the American ambassador as such
revocation. The second French condition, that
England should abandon her ^^ new principles of

298 JAMES MADISON,

blockade " and accept in their place a new French
principle, was peremptorily rejected by the Eng-
lish ministry. That proposition opened a question
not properly belonging to an agreement touching
the decrees and orders — a question of what was
a blockade, and what could properly be subject to
it. Napoleon's doctrine was, not only that a pa-
per blockade was not permissible by the law of
nations, but that there could be no right of block-
ade ^^ to ports not fortified, to harbors and mouths
of rivers, which, according to reason and the usage
of civilized nations, is applicable only to strong or
fortified places." Mr. Emott, a member of the
House from New York, said in debate that the
United States might well be grateful to both Eng-
land and France, if they would agree upon this
doctrine as good international law ; since, in that
case, as there were no fortified places in the United
States, she would never be in peril of a blockade.
But it was precisely what England would not ad-
mit nor even discuss as relevant to an i^eement
to revoke the orders and decrees*

To ^^ this curious gallamatry," as Quincy called
it, *^ of time present and time future, of doing and
refraining to do, of declaration and understand-
ing of English duties and American duties," was
added another ingredient of Madison's own devis-
ing. The American ministers in England and
France were instructed that Great Britain would
be expected to include in the revocation of her

MADISON AS PRESIDENT. 299

orders in council the blockade of a portion of
the coast of France, declared in May, 1806 ; and
the President oflEered, unasked, a pledge to the
French Emperor, that this should be insisted upon.
Whether he meant to make it easier for Napo-
leon and harder for Great Britain to respond to
the act of May, is a question impossible to answer ;
but the opponents of the policy he was pursuing
were careful to point out that the act of May
said nothing whatever, either of this or any other
blockade ; that when, the year before, the agree-
ment was made with Erskine, the President did
not pretend that the orders in council included
blockades; and that it was remarkable that he
should forget his own declaration regarding the
monstrous spoliation of a few months before by
the French, under the Rambouillet decree, and yet
remember this British order of blockade of four
years before, which everybody else had forgotten.
Indeed, so completely had it passed out of mind,
that the American minister in London, Mr. Pink-
ney, was obliged to ask the British Foreign Secre-
tary whether that order had been revoked or was
still considered as in force. It had never been for-
mally withdrawn, was the answer, though it had
been comprehended in the subsequent order in
council of January, 1807. England refused, how-
ever, to recall specifically this blockade of 1806,
for that would have been construed as a recogni-
tion of Napoleon's right to demand an abandon-

800 JAMES MADISON.

ment of her " new principles of blockade ; " but
in fact — as the British minister in Washington
afterward acknowledged — the recall of the order
in council of 1807 would have annulled the order
of blockade of 1806, which it had absorbed.

The truth is, the whole negotiation was a trial
of skill at diplomatic fence, in which England
would not yield an inch to the United States or
to France. Madison and his party were more than
willing to aid Napoleon ; and Napoleon hoped to
defeat both his antagonists by turning their swords
against each other. A quite different result would
have followed had France been as willing as Eng-
land apparently was that the commercial edicts
should be considered without regard to other
questions ; or if the American Executive had in-
sisted that it would accept their unconditional rev-
ocation, pure and simple and not otherwise, from
either power, as was contemplated in the act of
May, 1810. But instead, when Congress rose in
March, 1811, it left behind it an act renewing
non-intercourse with England, in accordance with
Napoleon's demand that the United States should
*^ cause their rights to be respected by the Eng-
lish." This meant war.

CHAPTER XIX.

WAB WITH ENGLAND.

In May, 1811, there occurred one of those acci-
dents which happen on purpose, and often serve
as a relief when the public temper is in an exas-
perated and almost dangerous condition. This
was the fight between the American frigate Pres-
ident, of forty-four guns, and the English sloop-
of-war, Little Belt, of eighteen guns. This ves-
sel belonged to the British squadron, which was
ordered to the American coast to break up the
trade from the United States to France ; and the
President was one of the few ships the Govern-
ment had for the protection of her commerce.
The ships met a few miles south of Sandy Hook,
chased each other in turn, then fired into each
other without any reasonable pretext for the first
shot, which each accused the other of having fired.
The loss on board the English ship, in an en-
counter which lasted only a few minutes, was over
thirty in killed and wounded, while only a single
man was slightly wounded on board the President.
It was, as Mr. Madison said, an ^^ occurrence not
unlikely to bring on repetitions," and that these

802 JAMES MADISON,

would "probably end in an open rupture or a
better understanding, as the calculations of the
British government may prompt or dissuade from
war." This certainly was obvious enough ; though
it would be a great deal easier for England to
bring on a war than to avert it, in the angry mood
in which the majority of the Democratic party
then was. But Mr. Madison preserved his equa-
nimity. Considering his old proclivity for France,
and his old dislike of England, his impartiality
between them is rather remarkable. But his aim
was still to keep the peace while he abated noth-
ing of the well-founded complaints he had against
both powers. When a new Congress assembled
in the autumn he was careful to point out in his
message the delinquencies of France as well as the
offenses of England. He insisted that, while Eng-
land should have acknowledged the Berlin and
Milan decrees to be revoked and have acted ac-
cordingly, France showed no disposition to repair
the many wrongs she had inflicted upon American
merchants, and had lately imposed such " rigorous
and unexpected restrictions " upon commerce that
it would be necessary, unless they were speedily
discontinued, to meet them by " corresponding re-
strictions on importations from France."

This tone is even more pronounced in his let-
ters for some following months. If anything, it
is France rather than England that seems to be
looked upon as the chief offender, with whom there

WAR WITH ENGLAND. 808

was the greater danger of armed collision. A fort-
night after Congress had assembled he wrote to
Barlow, the new minister to France, that though
justified in assuming the French decrees to be so
far withdrawn that a withdrawal of the British
orders might be looked for, ^^ yet the manner in
which the French government has managed the
repeal of the decrees and evaded a correction of
other outrages, has mingled with the conciliatory
t^idency of the repeal as much of irritation and
disgust as possible." ^^ In fact," he adds, ^^ with-
out a systematic change from an appearance of
crafty contrivance and insatiate cupidity, for an
open, manly, and upright dealing mth a nation
whose example demands it, it is impossible that
good-will can exist; and that the ill-will which
her policy aims at directing against her enemy
should not, by her folly and iniquity, be drawn
off against herself." French depredations upon
American commerce in the Baltic were " kindling
a fresh flame here," and, if they were not stopped,
^^ hostile collisions will as readily take place with
one nation as the other ; " nor would there be any
hesitation in sending American frigates to that
sea, " with orders to suppress by force the French
and Danish depredations," were it not for the
^^ danger of rencounters with British ships of supe-
rior force in that quarter."

By this time, however. Congress, under the lead
of younger, vigorous men — chief among them

u

804 JAMES MADiaON,

Clay and Calhoun — panting for leadership and
distinction, was beginning its clamor for war
with England. How mach respect had Madison
for this movement, and how much faith in it?
A letter to Jefferson of February 7 answers both
questions. Were he not evidently amused be
would seem to be contemptuous. ^^ To enable the
Executive to step at once into Canada," he says,
^Hhey have provided, after two months' delay,
for a regular force requiring twelve to raise it, and
after three months for a volunteer force, on terms
not likely to raise it at all for that object. The
mixture of good and bad, avowed and disguised
motives, accounting for these things, is curious
enough but not to be explained in the compass of
a letter." This is not the tone of either hope or
fear. If war was in bis mind at that time, it was
not war with England. Three weeks later, be
writes to Barlow at Paris. On various points of
negotiation between that minister and the French
government, he observes much that ^^ suggests dis-
trust rather than expectation." He complains of
delay, of vagueness, of neglect, of discourtesy, of
a disregard of past obligations as to the liberation
of ships and cargoes seized, and of late condemna-
tions of ships captured in the Baltic ; and con-
cerning all these and other grievances he says,
^* we find so little of explicit dealing or substantial
redress mingled with the compliments and en-
couragements which cost nothing because they

WAR WITH ENGLAND. 806

mean nothing, that suspicions are unavoidable ;
and, if they be erroneous, the fault does not lie
with those who entertain them." France, he be-
lieves, in asking for a new treaty, which he thinks
quite unnecessary, is only seeking to gain time
that it may take advantage of future events.
The commercial relations between the two coun-
tries are so intolerable, that trade ^^ will be pro-
hibited if no essential change take place." Unless
there be indemnity for the great wrongs committed
under the Rambouillet decree, and for other spo*
liations, he declares that ^^ there can be neither
cordiality nor confidence here ; nor any restraint
from self-redress in any justifiable mode of effect-
ing it." The letter concludes with the emphatic
assertion that, if dispatches soon looked for '^ do not
exhibit the French government in better colours
than it has yet assumed, there will be but one
sentiment in this country ; and I need not say
what that will be."

Congress all this while was lashing itself into
fury against England. The ambitious young lead-
ers of the Democratic party in the House were, so
to speak, *' spoiling for a fight," and they chose
to have it out with England rather than with
France. Not that there was not quite as much
reason for resentment against France as against
England. Some, indeed, of the more hot-headed
were anxious for war with both ; but these were
of the more impulsive kind, like Henry Clay, who

20

306 JAMEB MADI80K.

laughed in scorn at the doubt that he could not at
a blow subdue the Canadas with a few regiments
of Kentucky militia. But war with England was
determined upon, partly because the old enmity
toward her made that intolerable which, to the
old affection for France was a burden lightly
borne ; and partly because the instinctive jealousy
of the commercial interest, on the part of the
planter-interest, preferred that policy which would
do the most harm to the North. On Api-il 1,
1812, just five weeks after the writing of this
letter to Barlow, Mr. Madison sent to Congress a
message of five lines, recommending the immedi-
ate passage of an act to impose ^^ a general em-
bargo on all vessels now in port or hereafter arriv-
ing for the period of sixty days." It was meant
to be a secret measure ; but the intention leaked
out in two or three places, and the news was hur-
ried North by several of the Federalist members
in time to enable some of their constituents to
send their ships to sea before the act was passed.
Nor, probably, was it a surprise to anybody ; for
war with England had been the topic of debate in
one aspect or another all winter, and the purpose
of the party in power was plain to everybody.
That the embargo was intended as a preparation
for war was frankly acknowledged. An act wajs
speedily passed, though the period was extended
from sixty to ninety days. Within less than sixty
days, however, another message from the Pres-

WAR WITH ENGLAND, 807

ident recommended a declaxation of war. On
June 3, the Committee on Foreign Relations, of
which Calhoun was chairman, reported in favor of
** an immediate appeal to arms," and the next day
a declaratory act was passed. Of the seventy-nine
affirmative votes in the House, forty-eight were
from the South and West, and of the other thirty-
one votes from the Northern States, fourteen were
from Pennsylvania alone. Of the forty-nine votes
against it, thirty-four were from the Northern
States, including two from Pennsylvania. On the
17th, a fortnight later, the bill was got through
the Senate by a majority of six.

Mr. Madison for years had opposed a war with
England as unwise and useless ; unwise, because
the United States was not in a condition to go to
war with the greatest naval power in the world ;
and useless, because the end to be reached by war
could be gained more certainly, and at infinitely
less cost by peaceful measures. The situation had
not changed. Indeed, up to within a month of
the message recommending an embargo as a pre-
cursor of war, his letters show that, if he thought
war was inevitable, it must be with France, not
England. But the faction determined upon war
must have at their command an administration to
carry out that policy. Their choice was not lim-
ited to Madison for an available candidate. Who-
ever was nominated by the Democrats was sure to
be chosen^ and Madison had two formidable rivals

808 JAMES MADISON.

in James Monroe, Secretary of State, and De Witt
Clinton, Mayor of New York, both eager for war.
The choice depended on that question,, and be-
tween the embargo message of April 1, and the
war message of June 1, the nomination was given
to Madison by the congressional caucus. It was
understood and openly asserted at the time by the
opponents of the Administration, that the nomina-
tion was the price of a change of policy. At the
next session of Congress, before a year had passed
away, Mr. Quincy said in the House : ** The great
mistake of all those who reasoned concerning the
war and the inyasion of Canada, and concluded
that it was impossible that either should be seri-
ously intended, resulted from this, that they never
took into consideration the connection of both
those events with the great election for the chief
magistracy which was then pending. It was never
sufficiently considered by them that plunging into
a war with Great Britain was among the condi-
tions on which the support for the presidency was
made dependent." The assertion, so plainly aimed
at Madison, passed unchallenged, though the
charge of any distinct bargain was vehemently de-
nied.

If Mr. Madison's conscience was not always
vigorous enough to enable him to resist tempta-
tion, it was so sensitive as to prompt him to look
for excuses for yielding. In a sense this was to
his credit as one of the better sort of politicians,

WAR WITH ENGLAND. 809

without assuming it to be akin to that hypocrisy
which is the homage vice pays to virtue. Per-
haps it was this sentiment which led him to ac-
cept so readily the pretended disclosures of John
Henry, and to make the use of them he did.
These were contained in twenty-four letters for
which the President, apparently without hesita-
tion, paid fifty thousand dollars. On March 9
he sent them to Congress with a message, and on
the. same day, in a letter to Jefferson, alludes to
them as "this discovery, or rather formal proof
of the cooperation between the Eastern Junto and
the British cabinet." In the message he inti-
mates that this secret agent was sent directly by
the British government to Massachusetts to fo-
ment disaffection, to intrigue " with the disaf-
fected for the purpose of bringing about resistance
to the laws and eventually, in concert with a Brit-
ish force, of destroying the Union," and reannex-
ing the Eastern States to England. In the war-
message of June 1, these charges are repeated as
among the reasons for an appeal to arms. Mr.
Calhoun's committee followed this lead and im-
proved upon it in the report recommending an
immediate declaration of war. The Henry affair
was declared an " act of still greater malignity "
than any of the other outrages against the United
States of which Great Britain had been guilty,
and that which "excited the greatest horror."
The incident was seized upon, apparently, to an-

810 JAMEB M ALISON.

8wer a temporary purpose, and then, so far as Mr.
Mttdison was concerned, was permitted to sink
into oblivion. In the hundreds of pages of his
published letters, written in later life, in which
he reviews and explains so many of the events of
his public career, there is no allusion whatever to
the Henry disclosures, which, in 1812, were held,
with the ruin of American commerce and the im-
pressment of thousands of American citizens, as
an equally just cause for war. In truth there was
nothing whatever in these disclosures, for which
was paid an amount equal to the salary of half a
presidential term, to warrant the assumptions of
either Mr. Madison's messages or Mr. Calhoun's
report. The man had been sent, at his own sug-
gestion, early in 1809 by the Governor of Canada
to Massachusetts to learn the state of affairs there
and observe the drift of public opinion. His na*
tional proclivity — he was an Irishman — to con.
spiracy and revolution, had led him to see in the
dissatisfaction with the embargo a determination
in the New England people to destroy the Union,
reannex themselves to England, and return to the
flesh-pots of the colonial period. To learn how
far gone they were in these designs, to put him-
self in intimate relations with the leading conspir-
ators and to bring them into communication with
Sir James Craig, the Governor General of Can-
ada, that sufficient aid should come through him
at the proper moment from the British govern-

WAR WITH ENGLAND, 811

ment, was Henry's mission. Of this truly Irish
plot Henry was the villain and Craig the fool ;
but it is hardly possible that three years after-
ward Madison and his friends, with all the letters
spread before them, could really have been the
dupes.

Henry went to Boston and remained there
about three months, living at a tavern. He found
out nothing because there was nothing to be found
out. He knew nobody, and nobody of any note
knew him, and all the information he sent to
Craig might have been, and doubtless was, picked
up in the ordinary political gossip of the tavern
bar-room, or culled from the columns of the news-
papers of both parties. He compromised nobody,
for — as Mr. Monroe as Secretary of State, tes-
tified, in a report to the Senate — he named no
person or persons in the United States, who had,
**in any way or manner whatever, entered into
or countenanced the project or views " of himself
and Craig; and all he had to say was pointless
and unimportant, except so far as his opinions
might have some interest as those of a shrewd ob-
server of public events. Indeed, his own conclu-
sion was that there was no conspiracy in the East-
em States; that the Federal party was strong
enough to keep the peace with England ; and
that there was no talk of disunion nor any likeli-
hood of it unless it should be brought about by
war. The correspondence itself showed, in a let-

812 JAMES MADISON.

ter from Robert Peel, then secretary to Lord
Liverpool, that the letters of Henry were found,
as a matter of course, among Canadian official pa-
pers as they related to public affairs; but they
had either never attracted any attention or had
been entirely forgotten, and Lord Liverpool was
quite ignorant of any "arrangement or agree-
ment " that had been made between the Governor
of Canada and his emissary to New England.
It was only because of his failure to get any re-
ward from the British government or from Craig's
successor in Canada, for what he was pleased to
call his services, that the adventurer came to
Washington in search of a market for himself and
his papers. He came at an opportune moment.
Notwithstanding the Secretary of State frankly
declared that, neither by writing nor by word of
mouth, did the man implicate by name anybody
in the United States ; notwithstanding one of the
letters was evidence, the more conclusive because
incidental, that the British Secretary of State had
known nothing of this mission contrived between
Henry and Craig; yet Mr. Madison pronounced
the letters to be the " formal proof of the coopera-
tion between the Eastern Junto and the British
cabinet." The charge was monstrous, for this
pretended proof had no existence. If the Presi-
dent, however, could persuade himself that the
story was true it would help him to justify him-
self to himself for a change of policy, the result of

WAR WITH ENGLAND. 813

which would be the coveted renomination for the
presidency.

Not that there had never been talk of disanion
in New England. There had been in years past,
as there was to be in years to come. But talk of
that kind did not belong exclusively to that par-
ticular period, nor was it confined to that particu-
lar region of country. Ever since the adoption of
the Constitution the one thing that orators, North
and South, inside the halls of Congress and out-
side them, were agreed upon was, that in all de-
bate there was one argument, equally good on
both sides, to which there could be no reply ; that
in all legislation there was one possible supreme
move that would bring all the wheels of govern*
ment to a dead stop. The solemn warning or the
angry threat was always in readiness for instant
use, that the bonds of the Union, in one or an-
other contingency, were to be rent asunder. But
so frequent had been these warning cries of the
coming wolf that they were listened to with in-
difference, except when some positive act indi-
cated real danger, as in the Jefferson- Madison
" Resolutions of '98." It was easy, therefore, to
alarm the public with confessions of a secret emis-
sary, as he pretended, who had turned traitor to
the government which had employed him and to
the conspirators to whom he had been sent ; and
the more reprehensible was it, therefore, in a
President of the United States, to make the use

814 JAMES MADISON.

that was made of this story, which an impartial
examination would have shown was essentially ab-
surd and infamously false. Mr. Madison's intelli-
gence is not to be impugned. He was too saga-
cious, as well as too unimpassioned a man, to be
taken in by the ingenious tale of such an adven-
turer as Henry. In a letter to Colonel David
Humphreys, written the next spring, in defense of
the policy of commercial restrictions, he says : ^' I
have never allowed myself to believe that the
Union was in danger, or that a dissolution of it
could be desired, unless by a few individuals, if
such there be, in desperate situations or of un-
bridled passions." New England, he continues,
** would be the greatest loser by such an eyent,
and not likely, therefore, deliberately to rush into
it." " On what basis," he asks, " could New Eng-
land and Old England form commercial stipula^
tions ? " Their commercial jealousy, he contends,
forbade an alliance between them, for that was
" the real source of our revolution." He closes
with the significant assertion that, ^*if there be
links of conmion interest between the two coun-
tries, they would connect the Southern and not
the Northern States with that part of Europe."
How, then, could he seriously accept Henry's pre-
tended disclosures as '* formal proof," as he wrote
to Jefferson at that time, ^^of the cooperation
between the Eastern Junto and the British cabi-
net ? " By the Eastern Junto is meant the Fed-

WAR WITB ENGLAND, 815

eral party, or, at least, the influential and able
leaders of that party ; and he could not consider,
nor would he have spoken of them as ^* a few in-
dividuals, if such there be, in desperate situations
or of unbridled passions." He accepted, then, the
Henry story in spite of his deliberate opinions, as
a help to involve the country in a party war.

Even at the risk of some prolixity it is need-
ful to follow the course of events that led to this
war a little farther ; for here was the culmina-
tion of Mr. Madison's career, and from his course
in shaping and directing these events we best
learn what manner of man he was, and where his
true place is among the public men of our ear-
lier history. For a year and a half the United
States had acted on the assumption that France
had recalled her decrees, and that England had
not revoked her orders. The extracts from Mr.
Madison's letters, given on previous pages, show
his conviction that the revocation of either de-
crees or orders was practically no more true of one
power than it was of the other. The government
of the United States, nevertheless, submitted to
the one, and against the other it first reenacted the
non-intercourse act, then proclaimed an embargo
preparatory to war, and finally declared war. Yet
the whole world knew, and nobody so surely as
the Emperor of France, that the Berlin and Milan
decrees had never been formally repealed at all ;
meanwhile French outrages upon American com-

816 JAMES MADISON.

merce had continued, and all redress so persist-
ently refused, that so late as the last week in Feb-
ruary, 1812, the President intimated that war —
war with France, not England — might prove the
only remedy. But he suddenly yielded to the
clamors of the war party at home, whatever may
have been his motive. Then, and not till then,
were the decrees actually revoked by Napoleon.
In May, 1812, more than a month after the Presi-
dent bad recommended an embargo, the hostile
purport of which was so well understood, a de-
cree was proclaimed by the Emperor which for
the first time really revoked those of Berlin and
Milan. True, it was dated — "purported to be
dated," it was said in an official English docu-
ment — April, 1811. But that was of no mo-
ment ; the essential point was, that it had never
seen the light ; that any hint of its existence had
never been given to the American government or
its representatives abroad, till the United States
had taken measures to " cause their rights to be
respected by the English," which was the original
condition of a revocation of the decrees. Its os-
tensible date was when the news reached France
that non-intercourse had been again enforced
against England in March, 1811 ; but its promul-
gation was to all intents and purposes the real
date, when news reached France, in April or
May, 1812, that war against England was finally
determined upon.

WAR WITH ENGLAND. 817

The Duke of Bassano, the French minister, had
not, moreover, brought out this year-old decree
without pressure from the American minister.
Barlow. The President had written Barlow in
that February letter, already quoted, that if his
expected dispatches did not ^'exhibit the con-
duct of the French government in better colours
than it has yet assumed, there will be but one
sentiment in this country, and I need not say
what that will be." When the dispatches came
Mr. Madison received no assurances of redress for
past wrongs and no promises for the future ; but
he learned, on the contrary, that Bassano, in a
recent report to the Emperor, had referred to the
decrees of Berlin and Milan as still in full force
against all neutral nations which submitted to the
seizure of their ships by the British, when con-
taining contraband goods or enemy's property.
Naturally the British ministry was not slow in
presenting this precious acknowledgment to the
United States as a proof that she had all along
been in the wrong, and that in common justice to
England the non-importation act should now be
repealed. The assurance was at the same time
repeated, possibly in a tone of considerable satis-
faction, that when Napoleon really should revoke
his decrees Great Britain was ready, as she al-
ways had been, to follow his example with her
orders. It was an awkward dilemma for the
President and his minister to France. But by

818 JAMEB MADIBON.

this time, the Presidential nomination impending,
Mr. Madison had made up his mind what to do. He
was not exactly a wolf ; neither was Great Britain
a lamb ; but the argument he used was the argu-
ment of the fable. Instead of advising — Bassano
having declared the decrees still in force — a re-
peal of the non-importation act, as Great Britain
claimed was in justice and comity her due, he rec-
ommended a war measure. But Barlow evidently
felt himself to be under some decent restraint of
logic and consistency. He urged upon the French
minister the necessity now of a positive and impe-
rial declaration that the decrees, so far as regarded
the United States, were absolutely revoked ; for
this recent assertion of Bassano that they were still
in force, put the United States in an attitude both
towards France and England utterly and absurdly
in the wrong. Barlow represented that, should the
revocation be extended only to the United States,
Great Britain would not for that alone repeal h^
orders. In that case France would lose nothing
of the advantage of her present position, while
everything would be lost should the United States
be compelled to repeal her non-importation laws
against England. Bassano was quick to see the
necessity of jumping into the bramble-bush and
scratching his eyes in again, and he tlien produced
his year-old edict. Being a year old, it, of course,
covered all questions. But was it a year old?
Who knew? It had never been published? No,

WAR WITH ENGLAND. 819

the Duke said; bat it had been shown to Mr.
Jonathan Russell, who, at that time, was ChargS
des Affaires at Paris. Mr. Russell denied it, though
a denial was hardly needed. He would not have
ventured to withhold information so important
from his government ; and it was evident, from the
tone of his dispatches of a subsequent date, that
he had no suspicion of its existence. For he had
maintained it, as a point of ^^ national honor," that
the revocation of the French decrees must have
preceded the President's proclamation of Novem-
ber 1, 1810 ; and this he would not have dared to
do had he known that the actual revocation by the
French minister was not made till six months
after the date of the President's proclamation, and
was then made secretly.

However, as if to defeat all these machinations
of France and the United States, Great Britain
immediately recalled her orders in council, when,
in May, 1812, the Duke of Bassano announced the
edict of April, 1811, revoking the Berlin and Mi-
lan decrees, though so far only as they concerned
American vessels. The declaration of war of June
18 had not reached England, and there was still
a chance for peace. Foster, the late English min-
ister to the United States, learned at Halifax —
where he had stopped on his way home — that the
orders in council were repealed, and he took im-
mediate steps to bring about an armistice between
the naval commanders on the coast of Nova Scotia,

820 JAMES MADISON,

and between the Governor of Canada and the
American general, Dearborn, in command of the
frontier. The government at Washington, how-
ever, refused to ratify any suspension of hostilities.
Some negotiations followed, but, decrees and or-
ders being out of the way, there was nothing left
to negotiate about except the question of impress-
ment. Upon that question the two governments
were as wide apart as ever and not in the least
likely to come together. Mr. Madison determined
that on that ground alone (he war should go on.
It had been as good and sufficient ground for such
a war any time for the past dozen years ; but
whether it could be settled by an appeal to arms,
was a question of possibilities and probabilities by
which both Jefferson and Madison had hitherto
been ruled. Was that still the essential question ?
With the result came the answer. Two years
later the Administration was glad to accept a
treaty of peace in which impressment was not
even alluded to. Great Britain did not relin-
quish by a syllable her assumed right to board
American ships in search of British seamen ; and
tl)e Administration instructed its Peace Commis-
sioners not even to ask that she should.

CHAPTER XX.

CONCLUSION.

Eably in the war Mr. Madison said to a friend,
in a letter " altc^ther private and written in con-
fidence," that the way to make the conflict both
** short and successful, would be to convince the
enemy that he was to contend with the whole and
not part of the nation." That it was a war of a
party and not of the people, was a discouragement
to himself, however the enemy may have regarded
it, which he could never see any way of overcom-
ing. He could not listen to an opponent nor learn
anything from disaster. ^^ If the war must con-
tinue," said Webster within a year of its end,
^^ go to the ocean. Let it no longer be said that
not one ship of force, built by your hands since
the war, yet floats. If you are seriously contend-
ing for maritime rights go to the theatre where
those rights can be defended. . . . There the
united wishes and exertions of the nation will go
with you. Even our party divisions, acrimonious
as they are, cease at the water's edge. ... In
protecting naval interests by naval means, you
will arm yourself with the whole power of na-

21

822 JAMES MADISON.

tional sentiment, and may command the whole
abundance of national forces." Taking now in
one view the events of those years, it is easy to
see in our generation how mad were Madison and
his party to turn deaf ears to such considerations
as these. Their force and wisdom had already
been proyed by eighteen months of disaster on
land, which had made the war daily more and
more unpopular; and by brilliant success for a
time at sea, when each fresh victory was hailed
with universal enthusiasm. ^^ Our little naval tri-
umphs," was the President's way oi speaking of
the latter ; and the only importance he seems to
have seen in them was, that they excited some
*^rage and jealousy" in England and moved her
to increase her naval force. How could Mr. Mad-
ison expect that the whole and not a part only of
the nation could uphold an administration which,
after eighteen months of fighting, could be re-
proached on the floor of Congress with not having
launched a ship since the war was begun? Or
did he only choose to remember that the navy,
which alone so far had brought either success or
honor to the national arms, was the creation of
the Federalists in spite of the Jeffersonian policy?
It surely would have been wiser to try to propi-
tiate New England, with which he was in perpet-
ual worry and conflict, by enlisting it in a naval
war in which it had some faith. A large propor-
tion of her people would have been glad to escape

CONCLUSION. 823

idleness and poverty at home for service at sea,
though they were reluctant to aid in a vain at-
tempt to conquer Canada.

Even to that purpose, however, Massachusetts
contributed, in the second campaign of 1814, more
recruits than any other single State; and New
England more than all the Southern States to-
gether. New England could have given no
stronger proof of her loyalty, if only Mr. Madison
had known how to turn it to advantage. He was
absolutely deaf and blind to it ; but his ears were
quick to hear and his eyes to see, when he learned
presently that the New Englanders were seriously
calculating the value of the Union under such
rule as they had had of late. It was not often
that he relieved himself by intemperate language,
but he could not help saying now, in writing to
Governor Nicholas of Virginia, that " the greater
part of the people in that quarter have been
brought by their leaders, aided by their priests,
under a delusion scarcely exceeded by that re-
corded in the period of witchcraft ; and the lead-
ers themselves are becoming daily more desperate
in the use they make of it." The "delusion"
was taking a practical direction. Mr. Madison
had learned before the letter was written that a
convention was about to meet at Hartford, the
object of which was to weigh in a balance, upon
the one side, the continuation of such government
as that of the last two or three years, and, upon

824 JAME8 MADISON.

the other side, the value of the Union. He ar-
dently hoped that the commissioners, then assem-
bled at Ghent, would agree upon a treaty; and
there seemed to be no good reason why there
should not be peace when nothing was to be said
of the cause of the war, no apology demanded for
the past, and no stipulation for the future. But
if by any chance the commissioners should fail,
Mr. Madison saw in the Hartford Conyeution the
huge shadow of a coming conflict more difficult
to deal with than a foreign war. It was the first
step in dead earnest for the formation of a North-
ern Confederacy, and it is quite possible he may
have felt that he was not the man for such a
crisis. Every line of the letter pulsates with anx-
iety. The only consoling thought in it is, that
without "foreign cooperation revolt and separa-
tion will hardly be risked," and to such coopera-
tion he hoped a majority of the New England
people would not consent. A treaty of peace,
however, came to save him and the Union. Within
a few weeks the administration papers were laugh-
ing at Harrison Gray Otis of Boston, who had
started for Washington as the representative of
the Hartford Convention, but turned back at the
news of peace ; and were advertising him as miss-
ing under the name of Titus Oates. It was, how-
ever, ,the hysterical laugh of recovery from a ter^
rible fright.

If ambition to be a second time President led

CONCLUSION. 826

Mr. Madison to consent against his own better
judgment to a war with England, he paid a heavy
penalty. It was the act of a party politician and
not of a statesman ; for the country was no more
prepared for a war in 1812, when as a politician
he assented to it, than it had been for the pre-
vious half dozen years when as a statesman he
had opposed it. He gave the influence of the
United States in support of a despotism that
aimed at the subjugation of all Europe ; he threw
a fresh obstacle in the way of that power to which
Europe could chiefly look to resist a common
enemy ; and he did both under the pretense that
the just complaints of the United States were
greater against one of these powers than against
the other. He declared war mainly to redress a
wrong which ceased to exist before a blow was
struck ; he then rejected an offer of peace because
another wrong was still persisted in ; but finally,
of his own motion, be accepted a treaty in which
the assumed cause of war was not even alluded to.
That Mr. Madison was not a good war-Presi-
dent, either by training or by temperament, was, if
it may be said of any man, his misfortune rather
than his fault. But it was his fault rather than
his misfortune that he permitted himself to be
dragged in a day into a line of conduct which the
sober judgment of years had disapproved. He is
usually and most justly regarded as a man of
great amiability of character; of unquestionable

826 JAMES MADiaON.

integrity in all the purely personal relations of
life ; of more than ordinary intellectual ability of
a solid, though not brilliant, quality ; and a dili-
gent student of the science of government, the
practice of which he made a profession. But he
was better fitted by nature for a legislator than
for executive office, and his fame would have been
more spotless, though his position would have
been less exalted, had his life been exclusively de-
voted to that branch of government for which he
was best fitted. It was not merely that for the
sake of the Presidency he plunged the country
into an unnecessary war ; but when it was on his
hands he neitherZew what to do with it himself
nor how to choose the right men who did know.

It is our amiable weakness — if one may ven-
ture to say so of the American people — that all
our geese are swans, or rather eagles ; that we are
apt to mistake notoriety for reputation ; that it is
the popular belief of the larger number that he
who, no matter how, has reached a distinguished
position, is by virtue of that fact a great and good
man. This is not less true, in a measure, of Mr.
Madison than of some other men who have been
Presidents, and of still more who have thought
that they deserved to be. But, if that false esti-
mate surrounds his name, there is a strong under-
current of opinion, common among those whose
business or whose pleasure it is to look beneath
the surface of things historical, that he was want-

CONCLUSION, 827

ing in strength of character and in courage. He
did not lack discernment as to what was wisest
and best; but he was too easily influenced by
others or led by the hope of gaining some glitter-
ing prize which ambition coveted, to turn his back
upon his own convictions. It was this weakness
which swept him beyond his depth into troubled
waters where his struggles were hopeless. Had
he refused to assume the responsibility of a war
which his judgment condemned, and which he
should have known that he wanted the peculiar
ability to bring to a successful and honorable con-
clusion, he might never have been President, but
his fame would have been of a higher order.
History might have overlooked the act of politi-
cal fickleness in his earlier career, which was so
warmly resented by many of his contemporaries.
Abandonment of party is too common and often
too justifiable to be accounted as necessarily a
crime ; and it can rarely be said with positiveness,
whatever the probabilities, that a political de-
serter is certainly moved by base motives. It is
rather from ex post facto than from immediate ev-
idence, as in Madison's case, that a just verdict is
likely to be reached. But there can be neither
doubt nor mistake as to the President's manage-
ment of foreign affairs during the two years pre-
ceding the declaration of war against England;
nor of the remarkable incompetence which he
showed in rallying the moral and material forces

828 JAMES MADISON.

of the nation to meet an emergency of his own
creation.

Opposition to war generally and, therefore, op-
position to an army and navy were sound cardinal
principles in the Jeffersonian school of politics.
Mr. Madison was curiously blind to the logical
consequences of this doctrine ; he could not see,
or he would not consider, that, when war seemed
advisable to an administration, the result must de-
pend mainly upon the success of the appeal to the
people for their countenance and help. But he
unwisely sought to raise and employ an army for
the invasion and conquest of the territory of the
enemy in spite of the opposition of a large propor-
tion of the wealthiest and most intelligent people
in the country ; while at the same time he refused
to see any promise or any presage in a naval war-
fare which had opened with unexpected brilliancy
and would, had it been followed up, have been
sure of popular support. His title to fame rests,
with the multitude, upon the fact that he was one
of the earlier Presidents of the Republic. But it
is that period of his career which least entitles
him to be remembered with gi'atitude and respect
by his countrymen.

Its crowning humiliation came with the capture
of Washington in August, 1814, when the British
admiral, Cockburn, entered the Hall of Represen-
tatives, at the head of a band of followers, and
springing into the speaker's chair shouted : *^ Shall

CONCLUSION. 829

this harbor of Yankee Democracy be burned?
All for it will say, Aye I " Early in the war
Madison had written to Jefferson, " we do not
apprehend invasion by land " — the one thing, it
would seem, that a commander-in-chief should
have apprehended, whose single aim was the in-
vasion and conquest of the enemy's territory.
His devotion to this one purpose, to the exclusion
of any other idea of either offense or defense and
in spite of continued failure, was almost an in-
fatuation. Within a year of that expression of
confidence to Mr. Jefferson the whole coast was
blockaded from the eastern end of Long Island
Sound to the mouth of the Mississippi. For a
year before Washington was taken, the shores of
Chesapeake Bay were harassed and raided and
devastated by a blockading force, till the people
were reduced almost to the condition of a con-
quered country. Two months before the British
commanders, Ross and Cockburn, went up the Po-
tomac, Mr. Gallatin, who was then in London,
had informed the President that the fleet was to
be reinforced for that very purpose ; but neither
he nor Congress took any effective measures to
meet a danger so imminent. Their eyes were
fixed with a far-off gaze across the Northern bor-
der, while only five hundred regular troops, a
body of untrained militia who had never heard
the whistle of a bullet, and a few gunboats on the
Potomac, guarded the national capital against a

830 JAMES MADISON.

British fleet, a thousand marines, and thirty-five
hundred men from Wellington's best regiments.
The President fleeing in one direction with the
Secretary of War, the Secretary of State, and the
general in command; Mrs. Madison fleeing in
another, with her reticule filled with silver spoons
snatched up in haste as she left the White House ; ^
behind them all as they fled, the horizon red with
the blaze of the largest navy yard in the country
and of all the public buildings, but one, of the
capital ; — these incidents are an amazing com-
mentary on the early assertion that invasion was
not to be apprehended.

The end of this wretched war, which has been
foolishly called the second war of independence,

^ Paul Jennings, who was a slave and the bodj-servant of Mr.
Madison, says in his Reminiscences: "It has often been stated
in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White
House, she cut out from the frame the large portrait of Washing-
ton (now in one of the parlors there) and carried it off. This is
totally false. She had no time for doing it. It would have re-
quired a ladder to get it down. All she carried off was the silver
in her reticule, as the British were thought to be but a few
squares off, and were expected every moment. John Snse (a
Frenchman, then doorkeeper, and still [1865] living), and Ma-
graw, the President's gardener, took it down and sent It off on a
wagon, with some large silver urns and such other valuables as
could hastily be got hold of. When the British did arrive, they
ate up the very dinner, and drank the wines, etc, that I had pre-
pared for the President's party." On a previous page he had re-
lated that : '* Mrs. Madison ordered dinner to be ready at three
as usual ; I set the table myself, and brought up the ale, cider,
and wine, and placed them in the coolers, as all the cabinet and
several military gentlemen and strangers were expected."

CONCLUSION. 831

came four months afterward. Never was a peace
so welcome as this was on all sides. England
was exhausted with the long contest with Napo-
leon ; and now, that being over, as there was no
practical question to differ about with the United
States, the ministry were not unwilling to listen
to the demands of the commercial and manufac-
turing classes. In America so great was the uni-
versal joy that the Federalists and the Democrats
forgot their differences and their hates, and wept
and laughed by turns in each other's arms and
kissed each other like women. One party was
delivered from calamities for which, if continued
much longer, there seemed only one desperate and
dreaded remedy ; the other was overjoyed to back
out of a blunder which was the straight and broad
road to national ruin. Of all men, Mr. Madison
had the most reason to be glad for a safe deliver-
ance from the consequences of his own want of
foresight and want of firmness. Less than two
years remained to him of his public career. In
that brief period much was forgotten and more
forgiven — as our national way is — in the prom-
ise of a great prosperity to be speedily achieved
in the released energies of a vigorous and indus-
trious people. He had not again to choose be-
tween differing factions of his own party, nor to
carry out a policy s^inst the will of a formidable
opposition. To the Federalists hardly a name
was left in the progress of events at home and

832 JAMES MADISON.

abroad; while all immediate vital questions of dif-
ference vanished, the party in power remained
in almost undisputed ascendency. The most im-
portant Democratic measures it then insisted upon
were a national bank and a protective tariff. To
the establishment of a bank Mr. Madison assented
against his own conviction that any provision
could be found for it in the Constitution ; and a
tariff, both for revenue and for the protection and
encouragement of American industry, he agreed
with his party was the true policy.

For nearly twenty years after his retirement to
Montpellier — a name which, with rare exceptions,
he always spelled correctly, and not in the Amer-
ican way — it was his privilege to live a watchful
observer of the prosperity of his country. If it
ever occurred to him in his secret soul that at the
period of his preeminence he had done anything
to arrest that prosperity, he gave no sign. He
loved rather to remember and sometimes to recall
to others the part he had taken in the nurture of
the young Republic in the feeble days of its in-
fancy. Of his own administration and the events
of that time he had much less to say than of the
true interpretation of the Constitution, of the
intent of its framers, and the circumstances that
influenced their deliberations. His voluminous
correspondence shows the bent of his mind as a
legislator and a student of fundamental law ; and
on thaty rather than on his ability and success as

CONCLUSION. 833

the chief magistrate of the nation, rests his true
fame.

These twenty years, though passed in retirement,
were not years of leisure. "I have rarely," he
wrote in 1827, '* during the period of my public

j life, found my time less at my disposal than since I

took my leave of it ; nor have I the consolation of
finding, that as my powers of application necessa-
rily decline, the demands on them proportionally
decrease." Much as he wrote upon questions of

\ an earlier period, there were no topics of the cur-

rent time that did not arouse his interest. Upon
the subject of slavery he thought much and wrote

I much and always earnestly and humanely. How

j to get rid of it was a problem which he never

solved to his own satisfaction. Though it was one
he always longed to see through, it never occurred
to him that the way to abolish slavery was — to
abolish it. How kind he was as a master, Paul
Jennings bears witness. " I never," he says, *' saw
him in a passion, and never knew him to strike
a slave, though he had over a hundred; neither
would he allow an overseer to do it." If they
were in fault he rebuked them; but, adds Jen-
nings, he would " never mortify them by doing it
before others." It will be remembered that on
the first occasion of his being a candidate for
public office he refused to follow the universal Vir-
ginian habit of "treating" the electors. To the
principle which governed him then he adhered

884 JAMES MADISON,

through life, and his letters show the warm inter-
est he always took in every phase of the temper-
ance movement. ^^ I don't think he drank a quart
of brandy in his whole life," says Jennings. A
single glass of wine was all he ever took at din-
ner, and this he diluted with water, when, says
the same witness, *^ he had hard drinkers at his
table who had put away his choice madeira pretty
freely." This will go for something, considering
the times, with even the most zealous of the mod-
em supporters of that cause ; but they must be
quite satisfied to know that ^' for the last fifteen
years of his life he drank no wine at all." Consid-
eration for his own health, always feeble, may
have led him to this abstinence ; but it is rather
remarkable that a man of his position should have
held, fifty years ago, the advanced notions which
he certainly did upon this question ; and that the
doubt only of the possibility of enforcing laws for
prohibiting the manufacture and sale of spirits
seems to have withheld him from proposing them.
Social as well as moral questions he discussed
with evident interest and without passion or prej-
udice. Aside from the party meaning of the term,
he belonged to that school of democracy, now ex-
tinct, which believed that the highest object of
human exertion is to improve man's condition and
to secure to each the rights which belong to all.
He did not agree with Robert Owen as to meth-
ods ; but neither did he reject his schemes as in-

CONCLUSION. 336

evitably absurd because they were new and untried.
One would not gather from his correspondencje
with Prances Wright that this was the notorious
Fanny Wright whom the world chose to consider,
as its way is, a disreputable and probably wicked
woman, inasmuch as she proposed some radical
changes in its social relations, which she thought
would be a gain. He gave much attention to
popular education, and all the influence he could
command was devoted, through all the later years
of his life, to the establishment and well-being of
the University of Virginia. Education, he main-
tained, was the true foundation of civil liberty, and
on it, therefore, rested the welfare and stability of
the Republic. It is probable that he would have
drawn a line at difference of color then, simply
because of the difference of condition implied by
color. But he made no such distinction in sex.
Sixty-three years ago he saw his way quite clearly
on a question which is a sore trial now to many
timid souls. The capacity of " the female mind "
for the highest education cannot, he said, ^'be
doubted, having been suflBciently illustrated by its
works of genius, of erudition, and of science." The
capacity, he assumed, carried with it the right.
In short, he was ready always to consider fairly
questions relating to the well-being of society
which since his time have deeply agitated the
country ; and he approached them all much in the
spirit of the reformer who hopes to leave the world

836 JAMES MADISON.

a little better and happier because he has lived
in it.

" Mr. Madison, I think," says Paul Jennings,
" was one of the best men that ever lived." This
is the testimony of an intelligent man whose op-
portunities of knowing the personal qualities of
him of whom he was speaking were more intimate
than those of any other person could be except
Mrs. Madison. ",He was guilty," says Hildreth,
"of the greatest political wrong and crime which
it is possible for the head of a nation to com-
mit." One saw the private gentleman, always
conscientious and considerate in his personal rela-
tions to other men ; the other judged the public
man, moved by ambition, entangled in party ties
and supposed party obligations, his moral sense
blinded by the necessities of political compromises
to reach party ends. It is not impossible to strike
a just balance between these opposing estimates,
though one is that of a servant, the other that of
a learned and judicious historian.

Mr. Madison left a legacy of "Advice to My
Country," to be read after his death and to " be
considered as issuing from the tomb, where truth
alone can be respected, and the happiness of man
alone consulted." It is the lesson of his life, as
he wished his countrymen to understand it. " The
advice," he said, " nearest to my heart and deepest
in my convictions is, that the Union of the States
be cherished pud perpetuated. Let the open enemy

CONCLUSION. 887

to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box
opened, and the disguised one as the serpent creep-
ing with his deadly wiles into Paradise." The
thoughtful reader, as he turns to the first page of
this volume to recall the date of Mr. Madison's
death, will hardly fail to note how few the years
were before these open and disguised enemies,
against whom he warned his countrymen, were
found only in that party which he had done so
much, from the time of the adoption of the Consti-
tution, to keep in power.

22

/

INDEX.

Adams, Jobn, on presidential titles,
129, 131 ; his administration, 240.

Adams, J. Q., memoir of Madison, 1,
2 ; opinion of Jefferson, 264.

Alien and Sedition Laws, 240, 260.

Ames, Fi^er, on the slare-trade, 137 ;
on site of Federal capital, 147 ; on
a United States bank, 170 : the ap-
peals to the Gonstitntinn, lo2, note ;
opinion of Madison, 200.

Annapolis, first conrention at, 61 ;
second convention at, 64, 88.

Bank, United States, 170 ; speculation
in stock of, 186.

Barbaiy States, war with, 262.

Barlow, Joel, minister to France, ap-
peal to I)uke of Bassano, 318.

Barron, Commodore, of frigate Chesa-
peake, 275.

Baissano, Duke of, announces repeal
of decrees, 317.

Bayonne, decree issued at, 281.

Berlin decree issued, 277 ; informal
repeal of, 316 ; final repeal of, 316.

Breckenridge, offers resolutions in
Kentucky legislature in 1799, 249.

Bonaparte. See Napoleon.

Butler, Peiree, proposes fugitiye slave
clause in Federal Constitution, 111.

Calhoun, John C, in Congress, 304.

Canning, George, repudiates Erskine-s
treaty, 284.

Capital, site of the, discussed, 128,
146 ; the bargain for, 149, 169.

Champagny, French minister, infor-
mal revocation of Berlin and Milan
decrees, 294.

Chesapeake, frigate, attacked by the
Leopard, man-of-war, 275 ; proposed
settlement of the case of, by £r-
skine, 385.

Clay, Henry, in Congress, 304 ; his
proposal to t^e Canada, 305.

Clinton, De Witt, a candidate for
presidential nomination, 9^.

Cockbum, Admiral, in Washington,
328.

Commerce of the United States, 264
et seq.

Compromises of the Constitution, 96,
110.

Congress, meeting of the First, under
the Federal Constitution, 128.

Constitution, the. 112 ; adoption of,
115 et seq. ; in New Hampshire
and Virginia, 120.

Constitutional Convention, 88 ; de-
bates in the, 115 et seq. ; character
of the, 112.

Craig, Sir John, and John Henry, 810
et seq.

Curtis, George T., History of the Con-
stitution, 98.

Debt, public, the, 22, 29, 152 et seq.

Dexter, SamueL estimate of New Eng-
land people, 217.

Disunion, frequent threats of, 31, 313.

Draper, Ljrman C, correspondence
with Madison, 4, 5, 6.

Duties. See Tariff.

Ellsworth. Oliver, Member of Con-
gress, 31 ; on slavery, 106, 107.
Embargo, the, 264 ; repealed, 286,
Essex Junto, 312, 814.

Federal Ctovemment, organization of
the, under the Constitution, 128,
143.

Federalists, origin of the name of the.
90.

Federalist, The, writers of, 116.

Floyd, Catherine, affianced to Madi-
son, 43.

France, payments to, 201 ; Revolu-
tion in, 202; declares war against
England, 208 ; influence of revolu-

340

INDEX.

tioniiry ideas of, in fhe United
States, 216.

Franklin, Benjamin, on slavery, 160.

Freneau, Philip, 176 et seq. ; Wash-
ington's opinion of, 214.

Friends, petitions of tlie Society of,
for abolition of slarery, 160 ; de-
nounced in Congress, 166.

Oallatin, Albert, fears of effect of laws
against aliens, 248 ; Secretary of
the Treasury, 286.

Genet, G. C, received as minister
from France, 208 ; his recall pro-
posed, 218.

Gerry, Elbridge, on slavery, 167.

Giles, W. B., attack on Hamilton,
197.

Great Britain, non-observance of
treaty of 1788, 64 ; tonnage duties
of ships of, 141 ; war with France,
203; Jay's treaty with, 220 ; trade
with, 264 ; Monroe-Pinkney treaty
with, 273 ; orders in council, 277 ;
war decUixed against, by United
States. 807 ; repeals orders in coun-
cil, 319 ; peace, 1814, 831.

Hamilton, Alexander, in Congress, 81',
on right of taxation, 87 ; on basis
of representation, 98 ; report of, as
Secretary of State in 1790. 151 ; dif-
ference with Madison, 170, 190 : at-
tacked by the Republicans, 198 ;
letter to Washington, 196.

Hartford Convention, £B8.

Henry, John, 809 et seq.

Henry, Patrick, opposes the adoption
of the Constitution, 117 ; opposed
to Madison and " Gerrymanders "
the State, 126.

Impressment of seamen, 229, 268, 272,
274, 276, 288.

Jackson, F. J., British minister, 289.

Jay, John J minister to Spain, 82, 84 ;
negotiations on the Mississippi ques-
tion, 82 ; negotiates treaty with
Great Britain, 220.

Jefferson, Thomas, on religious free-
dom, 68, note ; on use of steam, 74 ;
his geological theory, 76 ; on Shays's
Bebellion, 78 ; letter to Washing-
ton on condition of affairs, 195 : re-
lations with Washington, 214 ; Ken-
tucky resolutions of 1798-99, 246 ;
inauguration of, 252 ; inau^ral
speech, 258 ; purchase of Louisiana,
268 ; rejects Monroe-Pinkney treaty,
274 ; names his successor to the
presidency, 288.

Jennings, Paul, on the eaptare of
Washington, 336.

Kentucky resolutions of 1798-99, 248
et seq.

Leopard, man-of-war, fight with the

Chesapeake, 276.
Lewis and Clarke Expedition, 260.
Library, Congressional, proposed by

Madison, 82.
Little Belt, sloop-of-war, fight with

the President. 801.
Livermore, Samuel, on slave -trade,

187.
Liverpool, Lord, ignorance of Henry,

312.
Louisiana, purchase of, 267.

Madison, James, birth and death, 1 ;
ancestry. 8 et seq. ; education, 10 ;
on religious liberty, 18, 17, 66 ;
member of Committee of Safety, 16 ;
of YiriBrinia Constitutional Conven-
tion, 16 ; of Assembly, 20 ; delegate
to Congress. 20 ; letter on public
affairs, 1789, 21 ; his faithfulness
and industry, 24 ; his pay, 25 ; in-
structed on the right to navigation
of the Mississippi, and on imposts,
84 ; position on public debt, 86,
154 ; and on taxation, 88 ; and on
basis of representation, 2& ; engaged
to be married, 48 ; elected to State
Aftsembly, 47 ; on national and state
commerce, 58 ; navigation of the
Potomac, 55; proposition to Mary-
land, 56 ; on state of commerce in
Virginia, 58 ; proposes a national
convention, 59 ; position on treaty
obligations, 65 ; his tastes and stud-
ies, 71 ; on steam-power^ 78 ; pre-
historic relics in Virginia, 74 ; on
necessity of union of the States, 77,
79, 314, 336 ; course on the Missis-
sippi question and National Conven-
tion in Virginia Assembly, 85 ;
" father of the Constitution,*' 88 ;
on slave representation, 98; differ-
ence between the North and the
South, 104 ; on slavery, 109, 162,
838 ; in the Constitutional Conven-
tion, 113 ; author of papers in " The
Federalist," 116 ; delegate to Con-
stitutional Convention of Virginia,
117 ; de Warvi lie's sketch of him,
122 ; candidate for First Congress,
124 ; opposed by Patrick Henry,
126 ; on presidential title, 180 ; on
free trade, 182 ; on the slave-trade,
187 ; difference with Hamilton, 174 ;
changes his party, 181 et seq. ; Jour-

INDEX.

341

ney northward, 184 ; Hamilton's
opinion of, 190 ; leads attack on
Hamilton, 198 ; on neutrality, 206 ;
interest in Genet, 208 ; his pity
for Washii^ton, 212 ; disapproves
Jay's treaty, 226 ; as leader in Con-
gress, 2ffl ; marries Mrs. Todd, 283 ;
yalue of his writings, 235, 833 ; his
private Ufe and habits, 236, 334 ;
resolutions of '98, 244 et seq. ; Sec-
retary of State, 262 : elected Presi-
dent,* 283; proclamation repealing
embargo, 286 ; proclamation re-
called, 288 ; letter to Pinkney, 293 ;
pledge to Napoleon on blockade,
299 ; attitude toward France and
Great Britain, 302 ; letter to Jeffer-
son on preparations for war, 304 ;
to Barlow, 302, 317; complains of
France, 805 ; proposes general em-
bargo and war with England, 806 ;
renominated for President, 308 ;
purchases Henry's papers, 309 ; re-
turns to Montpellier, 332 ; his char-
acter, ^4, 333 ; legacy to his coun-

• try, 336.

Marblehead, patriotic fishermen of,
290.

Martin, Luther, fears of a monarchy,
78 ; on the Constitutional Conven-
tion, 92, 93; in the Virginia Con-
vention, 119 ; opposes Madison, 126.

Maryland, proposes meeting of com-
missioners, 57, 60.

Mason, George, on slavery, 106.

Massachusetts, revolutionary services
and public debt of, 158 ; in war of
1812, 324.

Merino sheep, 277.

Miflain, Warner, petitions Congress,
169.

Mississippi, nav^ation of, 32, 80.

Monroe, James, Minister to France,
228 et seq. ; candidate for presiden-
tial nomination, 808 ; testimony
against Henry, 311.

Monroe-Pinkney treaty rejected, 288.

Morris, Gouvemeur, on Jefferson,
254,300.

Morris, Bobert, on slavery, 102, 104.

Napoleon Bonaparte, his policy, defi-
nition of blockade, 298.

Nicholas, George, offers Kentucky
Resolutions of '98, 24a

Non-importation Act of 1810, 291 ; of
1811, 300.

Nullification, Madison's opinion of,
246 ; Jefferson the father of, 249.

Otis. Harrison Gray, advertised as
missing, 324.

Owen, Robert, corresponds with Mad-
ison, 334.

Paper money, 70.

Parker, Jonathan, proposes duty on

importation of slaves, 136.
Patterson, William, on slavery, 99.
Peel, Robert, on the Henry letters,

Pinckney, C. C, on slavery, 102, 148 ;
on the Union, 118 ; on Jefferson,
254.

Pinkney, William, minister to Eng-
land, 272.

Potomac Company, plan of, 57.

Potomac, navigation of, 55.

Pre-historic remains in Virginia, 74.

Presidency, succession in the, lo4.

President, title of the, 129.

President, the frigate, battle of, with
the Little Belt, 801.

Quakers. See Friends.

Quincy, Josiah, on the embargo, 280 ;
on French outrages, 297 ; on foreign
relations, 2^8 ; on Madison's nomi-
nation and the war, 808.

Rambouillet decree, 295.

Randolph, John, on the embargo,
270.

Religious freedom, 13, 17, 66, 68.

Representation in Congress, basis of,
39, 42.

Rhode Island, rejects impost law, 84 ;
joins the Republican party, 258;
returns to the Federalist party, 283.

Rives, William C, biography oi Mad-
ison, 3, 9, 19; on Virginia planta-
tion life, 50.

Rumsey, J., application of steam-
power, 78.

Rutledge, John, on the slave-trade,
106.

Shays's Rebellion, 76.

Sherman, Ro^r, on slavery, 107.

Slavery, possible extinction of, in the
eighteenth century, 41 ; influence
of, in Vii^iniiu 49 et seq. ; in the
Constitution, 95 ; debate on, in the
Constitutional Convention 99 et seq.;
petitions on, to Congress, 160.

Slave-trade, domestic, 135 ; in Louis-
iana, 261.

Slave-trade, foreign, debate on duty
upon, 136 et seq. ; abolition of, 140 ;
policy of the government on, 153,
note.

Smith, Robert, Secretary of State,
285; demands satisfaction of France,
296.

842

INDEX.

Solomon, ^yne, a Jew, befriends

Madison, 26.
South Carolina, reTolutionary debt of,
. 158.
Steam-power first used, 78.

Tariff, proposed in First Congress,
182 ; dreaded effect of, in New Bng-
land, 183; and at the South, 184;
on importation of slaves, 186 ; on
foreign ships, 142.

Taxation, 81, 84.

Todd, Dolly, marries MadJson, 288.

Virginia, ratifies the Constitution of
the United States, 120; religious
freedom in, 13, 17, 66 ; on the Missis-
sippi question, 88, 86 ; on imposts,
84 ; public debt, 4Q\ planters of, 49 :
port bill passed, 68 ; proposed in-
structions to her delegates in Con-
gress, 69 ; delegates to Convention at
Annapolis, 68; refuses oompUanoe

with treaty with Oreat Britain, 64 *,
" Gerrymandering " in, 126 ; reso-
lutions of '98, 246.

Warrille de Brissot, sketch of Madi-
ison, 122.

Washington, city, proposed site of cap-
ital, 146, 169 ; taken by the British,
828.

Washington, George, delegate to Con-
stitutional Convention, 68 ; inaug-
uration as first President 128 ; the
official title, 129; proclamation of
neutrality, 206 : Jefferson's and
Madison's attitude toward, 212 ;
principles of his administration,
216 ; portrait of, saved, 880.

Webster, Daniel, on the war witii
Great Britain, 821.

Tinison, James, member of Oongress,
81 ; on slavery, 100.

Wright, Frances, corresponds with
Madison, 826.

9lmericatt S>tatesimett.

A Series of Biographies of Men conspicuous in the
Political History of the United States,

EDITED BT

JOHN T. MORSE, Jr.

The object of this series is not merely to give a
number of unconnected narratives of men in Ameri-
can political life, but to produce books, which shall,
when taken together, indicate the lines of political
thought and development in American history, —
books embodying in compact form the result of ex-
tensive study of the many and diverse influences
which have combined to shape the political history of
our country.

The series is under the editorship of Mr. John T.
Morse, Jr., whose historical and biographical writmgs
give ample assurance of his special fitness for this
task. The volumes now ready are as follows : —

^ohn Quincy Adams, By John T. Morse, Jr.
Alexander Hamilton. By Henry Cabot Lodge.
John C, Calhoun, By Dr. H. von Holst.
Andrew Jackson, By Prof. W. G. Sumner.
John Randolph, By Henry Adams.
James Monroe, By Pres. Daniel C. Oilman.
Thomas Jefferson, By John T. Morse, Jr.
Daniel Webster, By Henry Cabot Lodge.
Albert Gallatin, By John Austin Stevens.
James Madison, By Sydney Howard Gay.

IN PREPARATION,

John Adams, By John T. Morse, Jr.

Henry Clay, By Hon. Carl Schurz.

Samuel Adams, By John Fiske.

Martin Van Buren, By Hon. William Dorsheimer.

Others to be announced hereafter. Each biography
occupies a single volume, i6mo, gilt top. Price $1.25.

ESTIMATES OF THE PRESS.

"JOHN QUINCY ADAMS."

That Mr. Morse's conclusions will in the main be those of
posterity we have very little doubt, and he has set an admirable
example to his coadjutors in respect of interesting narrative,
just proportion, and judicial candor. — New York Evening Post,

The work is done in a vigorous and every way admirable
manner, which it is not too much to say touches the high mark
of impartial but appreciative history. ^ Independent (New
York).

Mr. Morse has written closely, compactly, intelligently, fear-
lessly, honestly. — New York Times,

"ALEXANDER HAMILTON."

The biography of Mr. Lodge is calm and dignified through- y
out He has the virtue — rare indeed among biographers —
of impartiality. He has done his work with conscientious care,
and the biography of Hamilton is a book which cannot have
too many readers. It is more than a biography ; it is a study
in the science of government. — St. Paul Pioneer-Press,

Mr. Lodge's portrait of Hamilton is carefully, impartially, and
skilfully painted, and his study of the epoch in which Hamil-
ton was dominant is luminous and comprehensive. — Philadel-
phia North American,

"JOHN C. CALHOUN."

Dr. von Hoist's volume is certainly not the least valuable of
the three that constitute the series, so far as it has at present
progressed ; and of the series, as a whole, it may be said that
if the succeeding volumes are of the same high order of excel-
lence as those that have already appeared they will serve a
valuable purpose, not only as exemplifying American statesmen,
but as a means of training in statesmanship. — Boston Journal,

Nothing can exceed the skill with which the political career
of the great South Carolinian is portrayed in these pages. The
work is superior to any other number of the series thus far, and
we do not think it can be surpassed by any of those that are to
come. The whole discussion in relation to Calhoun's position
is eminently philosophical and just. ^ The Dial (Chicago).

"ANDREW JACKSON."

Prof. Sumner has written what we think may rightly be called
an impartial life of perhaps the strongest personality that was
ever elected President, and yet he has not made his story dull.
He has, ... all in all, made the justest long estimate of Jackson
that has had itself put between the covers of a book. — New
York Times,

Professor Sumner's account and estimate of Andrew Jackson
as a statesman is one of the most masterly monographs that we
have ever had the pleasure of reading. It is calm and clear. —
Providence yournal,

A book of exceptional value to students of politics. ^- Cort"
gregationalist (Boston).

"JOHN RANDOLPH."

The book has been to me intensely interesting. I have been
especially struck by the literary and historical merit of the first
two chapters : they are terse ; full of picture, suggestion, life ;
with fine strokes of satire and humor. The book is rich in new
facts and side lights, and is worthy of its place in the already
brilliant series of monographs on American Statesmen. I
heartily congratulate Mr. Morse over the solid success the series
has already won. — Prof. Moses Coit Tyler.

Remarkably interesting. . . . The biography has all the ele-
ments of popularity, and cannot fail to be widely read. — Hart-
ford Courant

A most lively and interesting volume. — New York Tribune*

"JAMES MONROE."

In clearness of style, and in all points of literary workman-
ship, from cover to cover, the volume is well-nigh perfect.
There is also a calmness of judgment, a correctness of taste,
and an absence of partisanship which are too frequently want-
ing in biographies, and especially in political biographies. —
American Literary Churchman (Baltimore).

At last the character of this distinguished statesman has re-
ceived justice at the hands of the historian. His biographer
has written the most satisfactory account of the life of this il-
lustrious man which has been given the country. — San Fran-
cisco Bulletin,

A volume which gives an excellent and well-proportioned
outline of the eminent statesman's career. — Boston jfournal.

"THOMAS JEFFERSON."
The requirements of political biography have rarely been met
so satisfactorily as in this memoir of Jefferson. . . . Mr. Morse
has shown himself amply competent for the task, and he has
given us a singularly just, well-proportioned and interesting
sketch of the personal and political career of the author of the
Declaration of Independence. — Boston Journal-

The book is exceedingly interesting and readable. The at-
tention of the reader is strongly seized at once, and he is carried
along in spite of himself, sometimes protesting, sometimes
doubting, yet unable to lay the book down. — Chicago Standard,

"DANIEL WEBSTER."

The massiveness of Mr. Lodge's subject, the compass and
high significance of many of the single themes with which he
has had to labor, and the voluminous amount of the material
requiring his critical study would seem to have demanded a
singular skill of compression in bringing the results within this
small volume. Yet the task has been achieved ably, admirably,
and faithfully. — Boston Transcript.

It will be read by students of history ; it will be invaluable as
a work of reference ; it will be an authority as regards matters
of fact and criticism ; it hits the key-note of Webster's durable
and ever-growing fame ; it is adequate, calm, impartial ; it is
admirable. — Philadelphia Press,

"ALBERT GALLATIN."
The greater part of Mr. Stevens's frank, simple, and straight-
forward book is devoted to a careful narrative of Gallatin's
financial administration, and next in importance to this is the
excellent chapter devoted to Gallatin's brilliant diplomatic ser-
vices. The study of an honorable and attractive character is
completed by some interesting pages of personal and domestic
history. — New York Tribune.

It is one of the most carefully prepared of these very valu-
able volumes, . . . abounding in information not so readily ac-
cessible as is that pertaining to men more often treated by the
biographer. . . . The whole work covers a ground which the
political student cannot afford to neglect — Boston Correspon-
dent Hartford Courant.

*«* For sale by aU Booksellers, Sent by mail, post-feud, om rteeipi of
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, Boston.

SLmerican JEen of fLetters*

EDITED BY

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.

A series of biographies of distinguished American
authors, having all the special interest of biography,
and the larger interest and value of illustrating the
different phases of American literature, the social,
political, and moral influences which have moulded
these authors and the generations to which they be-
longed.

This series when completed will form an admi-
rable survey of all that is important and of historical
influence in American literature, and will itself be a
creditable representation of the literary and critical
ability of America to-day.

Washington Irving. By Charles Dudley Warner.
Noah Webster, By Horace E. Scudder.
Henry D. Thoreau. By Frank B. Sanborn.
George Ripley, By Octavius Brooks Frothingham.
y, Fenimore Cooper. By Prof. T. R. Lounsbury.
Margaret Fuller Ossoli, By T. W. Higginson.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, By Oliver Wendell Holmes.

IN PREPARA TION,

Edgar Allan Poe, By George E. Woodberry.
Edmund Quincy, By Sydney Howard Gay.
Nathaniel Parker Willis, By Henry A. Beers.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, By James Russell Lowell.
William Cullen Bryant, By John Bigelow.
Bayard Taylor, By J. R. G. Hassard.
William Gilmore Simms, By George W. Cable.
Benjamin Franklin, By John Bach McMaster.

Others to be announced hereafter.

Each volume, with Portrait, i6mo, gilt top, $1.25.

"WASHINGTON IRVING."

Mr. Warner has not only written with sympathy, minute
knowledge of his subject, fine literary taste, and that easy,
fascinating style which always puts him on such |;ood
terms with his readers, but he has shown a tact, cntical
sagacity, and sense of proportion full of promise for the
rest of the series which is to pass under his supervision.

— New York Tribune,

Mr. Charles Dudley Warner has made an admirable
biography of Washington Irving, and his critical estimate
of the man and the writer is unbiased, well weighed, and
accurate. — Philadelphia Press,

It is a very charming piece of literary work, and pre-
sents the reader with an excellent picture of Irving as a
man and of his methods as an author, together with an
accurate and discriminating characterization of his works.

— Boston yournaL

It would hardly be possible to produce a fairer or more
candid book of its kind. — Literary World (London).

"NOAH WEBSTER."

Mr. Scudder's biography of Webster is alike honorable
to himself and its subject. Finely discriminating in all
that relates to personal and intellectual character, schol-
arly and just in its literary criticisms, analyses, and esti-
mates, it is besides so kindly and manly in its tone, its
narrative is so spirited and enthralling, its descriptions
are so quaintly graphic, so varied and cheerful in their
coloring, and its pictures so teem with the bustle, the
movement, and the activities of the real life of a by-gone
but most interesting age, that the attention of the reader
is never tempted to wander, and he lays down the book
with a sigh of regret for its brevity. — Harper's Monthly
Magazine,

Mr. Scudder has done his work with characteristic
thoroughness and fidelity to facts, and has not spared
those fine, unobtrusive cnarms of style and humor which
give him a place among our best writers. — Christian
Union (New York).

This little volume is a scholarly, painstaking, and intel-
ligent account of a singularly unique career. In a purely
literary point of view it is a surprisingly good piece of
work. — New York Times,

It fills completely its place in the purpose of this se-
ries of volume*?.— 7)4^ Critic (New York).

"HENRY D. THOREAU."

Mr. Sanborn's book is thoroughly American and truly
fascinating. Its literary skill is exceptionally good, and
there is a racy flavor in its pages and an amount of ex-
act knowledge of interesting people that one seldom meets
with in current literature. Mr. Sanborn has done Tho-
reau's genius an imperishable service. — American Church
Review (New York).

Mr. Sanborn has accomplished his difficult task with
much ability. . . . He has told in an entertaining and
luminous way the strange story of Thoreau*s remarkable
career, and has expounded with much appreciative sym-
pathy and analytical power the moral and intellectual
idiosyncrasies of the most striking and original figure in
American literature. — Philadelphia North American,

Mr. Sanborn has written a careful book about a curious
man, whom he has studied as impartially as possible ;
whom he admires warmly but with discretion ; and the
story of whose life he has told with commendable frank-
ness and simplicity. — New York Mail and Express,

It is undoubtedly the best life of Thoreau extant. —
Christian Advocate (New York).

"GEORGE RIPLEY."

Mr. Frothingham's memoir is a calm and thoughtful
and tender tribute. It is marked by rare discrimination,
and good taste and simplicity. The biographer keeps
himself in the background, and lets his subject speak.
And the result is one of the best examples of personal
portraiture that we have met with in a long time. — The
Churchman (New York).

He has fulfilled his responsible task with admirable
fidelity, frank earnestness, justice, fine feeling, balanced
moderation, delicate taste, and finished literary skill. It
is a beautiful tribute to the high-bred scholar and gener-
ous-hearted man, whose friend he has so worthily por-
trayed. — Rev, William H, Channing (London).

Mr. Frothingham has made a very interesting and val-
uable memoir, and one that can be read with profit by all
aspirants for recognition in the world of letters. He
writes affectionately and admiringly, though temperately.
— Chicago JournaL

It is a valuable addition to our literature. The work
was committed to a skilled hand, and it is executed with
the delicacy of perception and treatment which the sub-
ject required. — Charleston News and Courier*

"JAMES FENIMORE COOPER."

We have here a model biography. We venture to believe
that the accuracy of its statements will not be challenged,
its absolute impartiality will not be questioned, the sense
of literary proportion in the use of material will be ap-
preciated by all who are capable of judging, the critical
acumen will be intensely relished, and to the mass of
readers who care little for facts, or impartiality, or literary
form, or criticism, the story of the life will have some-
thing of the fascination of one of the author's own ro-
mances. For the book is charmingly written, with a felic-
ity and vigor of diction that are notable, and with a humor
sparkling, racy, and never obtrusive. — New York Tribune.

Prof. Lounsbury's book is an admirable specimen of
literary biography. . . . We can recall no recent addition to
American biography in any department which is superior
to it. It gives the reader not merely a full account of Coo-
per's literary career, but there is mmgled with this a suffi-
cient account of the man himself apart from his books, and
of the period in which he lived, to keep alive the interest
from the first word to the last — New York Evening Post.

"MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL"

Here at last we have a biography of one of the noblest and the
most intellectual of American women, which does full justice to
its subject. The author has had ample material for his work,
— all the material now available perhaps, — and has shown the
skill of a master in his use of it. . . . It is a fresh view of the
subject, and adds important information to that already given
to the public. Mr. Higginson throws new light on the family
connections and early years of Margaret Fuller, and gives the
best account we have yet had of what is termed the " Transcen-
dental " epoch in American literature, and of the origin and his-
tory of " The Dial," its representative organ. — Rev. Dr. F. H.
Hedge, in Boston Advertiser.

Mr. Higginson writes with both enthusiasm and sympathy,
and makes a volume of surpassing interest It is at once a
biography of Margaret Fuller, a sympathetic study of her char-
acter, her aspirations, and her work, and a specially valuable
history of the movement which he holds to have emancipated
American literature from its thraldom to foreign conventions
and models. — Commercial Advertiser (New York).

He has filled a gap in our literary history with excellent taste,
with sound judgment, and with that literary skill which is pre-
eminently his own. — Christian Union (New York).

%* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by maily post-paid^ on
receipt of price by the Publishers^

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American Connnon\Dealtt)0*

EDITED BY

HORACE E. SCUDDER.

A series of volumes narrating the history of such
States of the Union as have exerted a positive influ-
ence in the shaping of the national government, or
have a striking political, social, or economical history.

The commonwealth has always been a positive force
in American history, and it is believed that no better
time could be found for a statement of the life inher-
ent in the States than when the unity of the nation
has been assured ; and it is hoped by this means to
throw new light upon the development of the country,
and to give a fresh point of view for the study of
American history.

This series is under the editorial care of Mr. Hor-
ace £. Scudder, who is well known both as a student
of American history and as a writer.

The aim of the Editor will be to secure trustworthy
and graphic narratives, which shall have substantial
value as historical monographs and at the same time
do full justice to the picturesque elements of the sub-
jects. The volumes are uniform in size and general
style with the series of " American Statesmen " and
"American Men of Letters," and are furnished with
maps, indexes, and such brief critical apparatus as
add to the thoroughness of the work.

Speaking of the series, the Boston youmal says:
" It is clear that this series will occupy an entirely new
place in our historical literature. Written by compe-
tent and aptly chosen authors, from fresh materials,
in convenient form, and with a due regard to propor-
tion and proper emphasis, they promise to supply
most satisfactorily a positive want."

PRESS NOTICES,

"VIRGINIA."

Mr. Cooke has made a fascinating volume — one which it will
be very difficult to surpass either in method or interest. If all
the volumes of the series [" American Commonwealths "] come
up to the level of this one — in interest, in broad tolerance of
spirit, and in a thorough comprehension of what is best worth
telling — a very great service will have been done to the reading
public. True historic insight appears through all these pages,
and an earnest desire to do all parties and religions perfect jus-
tice. The story of the settlement of Virginia is told in full. . . .
It is made as interesting as a romance. — The Critic (New York).

It need not be said that it is written in a fascinating style, and
animated by a spirit of strong love for the author's native State,
and pride in its history. It should be said further that it brings
out many an obscure or forgotten bit of history, and makes real
an epoch which is familiar to very few. — New York Evening Post,

No more acceptable writer could have been selected to tell the
story of Virginia's history. Mr. Cooke is a graceful writer, and
thoroughly informed in reference to his subject. He writes from
a full mind, gained not from the point of view of the book-maker,
but from a deep love for Virginia and her people. He has mas-
tered his subject, and tells the story in a delightful way. — Edu-
cational Journal of Virginia (Richmond, Va.).

Mr. Cooke has succeeded, without going out of the domain of
history, in making his narrative attractive. We do not remember
ever to have read the story of colonial times as the story of the
people, their privations, their difficulties, their conflicts with sav-
ages without and corruption and idleness within, so graphically
told as it is in these pages. — Christian Union (New York).

It comes up to full compliance with the severe requisitions of
modern philosophical method. . . . Readers who feel that they
have already had a surfeit of American colonial history will find
their appetites reviving by contact with this delightfully written
work. — Boston Transcript,

Mr. Cooke is to be congratulated on his little history. It is
fresh, bright, and full of the most fascinating and dramatic scenes.
It is a book of which not only Virginia, but the whole country,
may well be proud. — Philadelphia Press.

"OREGON."

The long and interesting story of the struggle of five nations
for the possession of Oregon is told in the graphic and reliable
narrative of William Barrows. ... A more fascinating record
has seldom been written. . . . Careful research and pictorial skill
of narrative commend this book of antecedent history to all inter-
ested in the rapid march and wonderful development of our
American civilization upon the Pacific coast. — Springfield Repub-
lican,

There is so much that is new and informing to the reading
world embodied in this little volume that we commend it with
enthusiasm. It is written with great ability and in a pleasing
style, a vein of humor rippling along its pages and imparting an
agreeable and appetizing flavor to the varied descriptions. . . .
The book is worthy of careful perusal by all who claim to be
intelligent concerning the rich and progressive country beyond
the Rocky Mountains. — Magazine of American History (New
York).

This work is more than historical. It is full of information
with regard to the old territorial life, the fur hunting and trading,
the habits of the people, the romance of immigration, and kindred
topics. It is so readable that in this respect it will surprise those
who regard history as inevitably dull. . . . We commend this
book for its style, its information, and its great practical value. —
Christian Advocate (New York).

Mr. Barrows writes simply but vigorously and with the thor-
ough mastery of his subject only to be derived from observation
of passing events and study of those that had passed before he
appeared among the actors in the drama he describes. Many of
his chapters are thrillingly interesting. — Philadelphia Evening
Bulletin,

It will take its place as an authority on the topics discussed,
and the people of Oregon cannot but be thankful that it has been
written. — The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon).

^^J^ Far sale by all Booksellers, Sent by tnail^ post-paid, on re-
ceipt of price by the Publishers^

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The series, so far as arranged, comprises the fol-
lowing volumes : —

NOW READY.

Virginia. A History of the People. By John Esten
CooKE, author of "The Virginia Comedians,"
"Life of Stonewall Jackson," "Life of General
Robert E. Lee," etc.

Oregon. The Struggle for Possession. By William
Barrows, D. D.

Maryland, By William Hand Browne, Associate
of Johns Hopkins University.

IN PREPARA TION

Kentucky, By Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, S. D.,
Professor of Palaeontology, Harvard University, re-
cently Director of the Kentucky State Survey.

California, By Josiah Royce, Instructor in Philoso-
phy in Harvard University.

Kansas. By Leverett W. Spring, Professor in Eng-
lish Literature in the University of Kansas.

Connecticut By Alexander Johnson, author of a
"Handbook of American Politics," Professor of
Jurisprudence and Political Economy in the Col-
lege of New Jersey.

Pennsylvania. By Hon. Wayne McVeagh, late At-
torney-General of the United States.

Tennessee. By James Phelan, Ph. D. (Leipsic).

South Carolina. By Hon. William H. Trescot, au-
thor of " The Diplomacy of the American Revolu-
tion."

New York. By Hon. Ellis H. Roberts.

Michigan. By Hon. T. M. Cooley, LL. D.

Others to be announced hereafter. The history of
each State occupies a single volume. Each volume,
with Maps, i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. '

' * Hj: <

n