James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

by Lynne Cheney

  But rumors of peace began to undercut his position. Neutral powers were said to be supporting a plan that would settle the North American conflict by giving contending parties possession of lands they currently occupied. With crucial parts of Georgia and South Carolina under military occupation, delegates from those states were desperate to do anything that might pull Spain into an alliance and push the British out of their territory before such a settlement occurred—including giving up free use of the Mississippi. Madison argued that free navigation was too important to concede “as long as there is a possibility of retaining it” and contended that Spain was trying “to alarm us into concessions.” But Theodorick Bland decided it was time for the Virginia Assembly to reconsider its instructions to congressional delegates and took the unusual step of writing a personal letter to Governor Jefferson. With many protestations about the “sense of … duty” that impelled him to go behind the backs of the rest of the delegation and communicate with the governor directly, Bland argued that free navigation should not stand in the way of “overtures” from Spain that might “relieve our present necessities” and “promise us peace and a firm establishment of our independence.”21

  Bland’s view became very convincing to Virginians when, in December 1780, the British sailed into the Chesapeake again, this time with the newly minted British brigadier general Benedict Arnold heading the fleet. Fearful of going the way of Georgia and South Carolina, the Virginia legislature instructed the state’s representatives in the Continental Congress to give up free navigation of the Mississippi if that was the price of a Spanish alliance.

  The change in Virginia’s instructions tilted the balance in Congress, and Madison found himself having to write a letter to Jay altering his orders. The experience was likely a bitter one, since Madison was convinced that cession was a mistake. Jay agreed, believing as Madison did that while Spain wanted America to give over navigation rights, it had no real intention of entering into an alliance. Jay included the concession in a series of offers that he thought Spain would be unlikely to embrace—a judgment that proved correct.22

  • • •

  WITH ARNOLD and his fleet at the mouth of the James River, Virginia’s assembly fled Richmond, which its members had made the commonwealth’s capital some twenty months previously, but just before leaving, they took a crucial vote and agreed to cede the western lands, the territory northwest of the Ohio River that Virginia had long claimed under its royal charter. Other states viewed the lands as belonging to the country as a whole, and Madison agreed that they were properly national—but only if they were used to create free and independent states. It galled him to think of them going to satisfy what he called the “avidity of land mongers,” speculators who swarmed Congress, pressing dubious claims. He was furious when he realized that Theodorick Bland and another Virginia delegate, John Walker, were acting on behalf of these interests. He believed the two men were naive rather than corrupt, but he was still so angry that he vowed to make them personally explain the whole matter to the Virginia Assembly. Upon “cooler reflection,” however, he decided that the proper course was to get the assembly to put protections against speculators in place—which he did.23

  Virginia’s offer to cede the western lands opened the way for the Articles of Confederation, sent to the states in 1777, finally to go into effect. They created a loose confederacy of the states, with a congress at the center. There was no executive branch, no national judiciary, and each state, no matter its size, had a single vote. Unanimous ratification of the articles was required, and Maryland had refused to sign until there was a Virginia cession. It would be another three years before agreement between Virginia and the United States was complete, but the resolution from the Virginia Assembly was enough for Maryland, and its delegates notified Congress on February 12, 1781, that they had authority to sign the articles.24

  • • •

  THE CRISES MADISON dealt with during his first year in Congress did not come in neat sequential order. A starving army, French delays, Arnold’s betrayal, Jay’s instructions, the western lands—all came rushing at him at a time when the larger cause of which they were part was doubtful. Underscoring the perilous state of the war was a mutiny in the Pennsylvania line that started on New Year’s Day 1781. Enlisted men encamped near winter quarters in Morristown, New Jersey, seized weapons, fired on officers, and set off for Philadelphia to demand redress. “The grievances complained of,” Madison wrote to Governor Jefferson, “were principally a detention of many in service beyond the term of enlistment and the sufferings of all from a deficient supply of clothing and subsistence and long arrearage of pay.” The president of Pennsylvania met with the mutineers and agreed to discharge those who had served more than three years—which amounted to more than thirteen hundred men.25 Civilian authorities had averted a crisis but set a dangerous precedent. How long before other American soldiers took up arms against their officers?

  Meanwhile, Madison learned that Arnold and his men had sailed up the James River and invaded Richmond, burning and pillaging there and in the surrounding countryside. They destroyed records, warehouses, and mills, all the while meeting little resistance. After Arnold had sailed back downriver, Madison wrote to Pendleton, “I am glad to hear that Arnold has been at last fired at.”26

  There was good news from South Carolina, where Virginia general Daniel Morgan and his men celebrated a stunning victory over the legendary Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, but at nearly the same time word came of a mutiny among New Jersey troops. Not long after, Nathanael Greene and his army began a retreat across the Carolinas, seeking the safety of Virginia. General Cornwallis was at their heels.

  As these events piled up, Madison seems to have suffered one or more of his sudden attacks. Between January 13 and 31, he is not mentioned in the congressional journal, and there is a similar absence between February 6 and 12. In March he received a letter from his cousin the Reverend James Madison. “I have heard of a severe attack,” the future bishop wrote. He knew Congressman Madison very well and seemed aware that he had once suffered an attack after studying too hard and exercising too little. “How do you relish your business?” he inquired. “Does it interfere with riding and so on?”27

  As though a conversation were going on among a group close to Madison, Edmund Pendleton wrote to him concerned about the effect of wartime pressures on his “crazy constitution,” and James Madison Sr., with whom Pendleton had been visiting, requested that his son get him a copy of William Cullen’s First Lines of the Practice of Physic. Cullen, who had until recently been president of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, was a man whose opinions were so valued that First Lines was one of the few titles smuggled into the United States during the war with Great Britain.28 Volume 1 of Cullen’s work, edited by Dr. Benjamin Rush, was published in Philadelphia in 1781, and it was probably a copy of this edition that Madison sent to his father.

  Volume 2 of First Lines, also edited by Rush, was published in Philadelphia in 1783, while Madison was still living there. Madison makes no mention of the second volume in his letters, but since it took up “nervous diseases,” it would hardly be surprising if he read it. Cullen wrote that epilepsy was caused by a “debility” arising from “original conformation”—a description very close to the “constitutional liability” to which Madison attributed his attacks. Cullen’s description of “aura eleptica” would have interested Madison, whose attacks seem to have involved a feeling in his chest. Cullen described “a sensation of something moving in some part of the limbs or trunk of the body and from thence creeping upwards to the head.” But most significant was Cullen’s description of “particular convulsions which are to be distinguished from epilepsy by their being more partial … and are not attended with a loss of sense.” Here was authority for Madison’s describing his attacks as “somewhat resembling epilepsy.”29

  Cullen mentioned iron, copper, flowers of zinc, mercury, and arsenic as being used to treat epilepsy ari
sing from a “debility” but clearly preferred “a considerable change of climate, diet, and other circumstances in the manner of life.” Many sensible thinkers made this recommendation, but in the middle of war taking a leave was no easy matter. Indeed, Theodorick Bland had taken advantage of Madison’s absence from Congress in February. Both he and Madison had been working to secure French naval aid for Virginia, but on February 9, 1781, with Madison apparently unwell at Mrs. House’s, Bland informed Governor Thomas Jefferson that “my personal application, singly, has been unremitted … to have a line of battleship and one or two frigates sent into our bay.” He wrote that he had lately “redoubled these applications and enforced them with the strongest arguments I could address,” and “the Minister of France has communicated to me and charged me with secrecy to every soul but your excellency” that the French were sending “one or two ships of the line and two frigates into our bay.”30

  As it turned out, claiming credit for getting the French to undertake this particular military action was a bad idea. Washington was furious. He had been working to get not a squadron but the entire French fleet to sail, and he pointed out to Virginia delegate Joseph Jones that because he was circumvented, the moment was lost for sending the commonwealth the full succor it needed. Madison put a copy of the letter from Washington to Jones in his own files, as if to point future historians to Bland’s machinations.31

  The attack that Madison might have suffered in the early months of 1781 did not keep him from vigorously advancing the cause of a stronger Congress. The church bells celebrating the March 1, 1781, ratification of the Articles of Confederation had scarcely ceased to peal when he began to argue that under the new framework a majority of states present and voting should prevail on ordinary matters. If, as some delegates wanted, the votes of seven states (a majority of the thirteen) were required to pass every measure, the result would be that when only seven states were present, one could prevent action desired by six; if eight states were present, two could block action; and so on. Madison saw this as a recipe for weakness, which indeed it was, but in a time when Americans were fighting a revolution to throw off an oppressive government, most states wanted Congress to be weak. The rule that Madison argued for was defeated.

  Thomas Rodney of Delaware was one of the delegates on the other side. A new arrival in Congress, he took an instant dislike to Madison, describing him as having “some little reading in the law,” being “just from the college,” and possessing “all the self-conceit that is common to youth and inexperience in like cases—but … unattended with that gracefulness and ease which sometimes makes even the impertinence of youth and inexperience agreeable or at least not offensive.” Rodney was a thoroughgoing eccentric who claimed to have personal visits from archangels, but odd though he was, his comment about the thirty-year-old Madison being fresh from college is revealing.32 A miniature painted by Charles Willson Peale about this time shows how Rodney might have made this mistake. The overall impression is of slender youth—except for Madison’s eyes, which seem to be making a very sharp assessment.

  Rodney might have been reacting to Madison’s undisguised disapproval of Delaware’s recent actions. That state refused to go along with an embargo on the export of foodstuffs that was intended to ensure there were adequate provisions for the army. As Madison described it to Jefferson, “Delaware absolutely declined coming into the measure and not only defeated the general object of it, but enriched herself at the expense of those who did their duty.” Madison proposed an amendment to the Articles of Confederation authorizing Congress “to employ the force of the United States as well by sea as by land” to force recalcitrant states to fulfill their federal obligations.33

  Madison had no better luck with this amendment than with his effort to obtain what he believed to be a practical definition of a majority, and while he labored in futility, news of the war seemed increasingly grim. General Nathanael Greene performed brilliantly, escaping into Virginia, obtaining reinforcements, and turning back into North Carolina. He destroyed a quarter of Cornwallis’s army at Guilford Courthouse before withdrawing from the field in order to save his own army for future combat. Left with fewer than fifteen hundred men, Cornwallis decided to cross into Virginia, where he united with British forces now under the command of Major General William Phillips, Jefferson’s erstwhile friend, whose second-in-command was British brigadier general Benedict Arnold. Washington had sent the marquis de Lafayette with a small force to aid Virginia, but they were well outnumbered by the combined British forces and could do little to stop their rampages. In June, Cornwallis sent an expedition under Banastre Tarleton to Charlottesville, to which the Virginia legislature had retreated from Richmond. The raiders took a number of assemblymen prisoner and nearly captured Thomas Jefferson, who fled Monticello just as British dragoons were approaching.34

  Madison pinned his hope for relief for Virginia on the French joining General Washington in a siege of New York, a move that, he believed, “will certainly oblige the enemy to withdraw their force from the southern states.” In August, however, it became clear that French might was going to be brought to bear on the British in Virginia itself. A huge fleet under the command of Admiral de Grasse was sailing for the Chesapeake from the West Indies and would be met there by the French fleet from Newport. Meanwhile, the American and French armies were on the march to Virginia. Madison watched them pass through Philadelphia, the Americans first, lean and ragged, followed by the French, polished, shining, and exact in their maneuvers. “Nothing can exceed the appearance of this specimen which our ally has sent us of his army,” Madison wrote.35

  French forces at sea and American and French forces on land came together in near-perfect conjunction, trapping General Cornwallis on the Virginia peninsula at Yorktown and forcing him to surrender his entire garrison of some seven thousand British soldiers. When the news reached Philadelphia on the early morning of October 24, there was an outpouring of joy. Citizens thronged into the streets, and that night the city was aglow as Philadelphians lit candles in their windows. An elated Madison wrote to Edmund Pendleton, “If these severe doses of ill fortune do not cool the frenzy and relax the pride of Britain, it would seem as if heaven had in reality abandoned her to her folly and her fate.”36

  • • •

  A FORMAL PEACE TREATY was nearly two years away, but it was time, Madison believed, for the United States to face up to its enormous debts. Money was owed not only to foreign creditors but to domestic ones, including the men who had fought the war, and there was great unwillingness on the part of several states to provide Congress with the means to settle those debts. Virginia was one of those states, but Madison took the lead nonetheless in trying to establish a funding stream that would allow the nation to meet its obligations, and he gained a valuable ally when twenty-seven-year-old Alexander Hamilton rode into Philadelphia in November 1782.

  A seasoned veteran, despite his young age, Hamilton had crossed the Delaware with George Washington, fought at Trenton and Princeton, and served as the commander in chief’s aide-de-camp for more than four years. At the climax of the Revolutionary War, he received what he had long coveted, a battlefield command, and he led his men with great bravery at Yorktown. Like Madison, he was small of stature, or “not tall,” as one observer described him, but he was the Virginian’s opposite in many other ways.37 Far from being of respectable lineage, he was the child of an illegitimate union. Rather than having roots stretching far back in America, he had spent his childhood in the British West Indies. Instead of being circumspect, Hamilton was high-strung and impatient, a risk taker, who charmed with cosmopolitan ease. But he and Madison shared brilliance and determination, and it seemed obvious to both that Congress needed a source of revenue to pay the nation’s debts.

  Underscoring the danger of empty federal coffers was a petition carried to Congress by Major General Alexander McDougall of New York reporting the “great distress” under which the officers and soldiers of the army, l
ong unpaid, were laboring. “We complain that shadows have been offered to us while the substance has been gleaned by others,” the memorial asserted, continuing, “We have borne all that men can bear—our property is expended—our private resources are at an end—and our friends are wearied out and disgusted with our incessant applications. We therefore most seriously and earnestly beg that a supply of money may be forwarded to the army as soon as possible. The uneasiness of the soldiers for want of pay is great and dangerous. Any further experiments on their patience may have fatal effects.” Madison was deeply sympathetic to the officers’ cause, but when he met with them as part of a committee, he kept his counsel. “What can a Virginia delegate say to them,” he wrote to his friend Edmund Randolph, when his “constituents declare that they are unable to make the necessary contributions and unwilling to establish funds for obtaining them elsewhere?”38

  Madison and Hamilton both offered motions declaring the need for Congress to collect funds to meet the nation’s obligations. Madison’s proposal brought the contentious Arthur Lee, now one of Virginia’s delegates, to his feet. He declared Madison’s motion to be “repugnant to the Articles of Confederation; and by placing the purse in the same hands with the sword was subversive of the fundamental principles of liberty.” Moreover, said Lee, the states were averse to a plan of general revenue, and—in case Madison had forgotten—Lee noted that Virginia, in particular, was opposed.39