James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

by Lynne Cheney

  Hamilton entered the debate and managed to inflame it. Since the federal government lacked energy for “pervading and uniting the states,” he declared, federal revenue agents should be sent into the states to supply it. Madison tried to appeal to the delegates’ better selves. “The idea of erecting our national independence on the ruins of public faith and national honor must be horrid to every mind which retained either honesty or pride,” he said. He reminded his colleagues that the debate in which they were engaged had been precipitated by “a very solemn appeal from the army to the justice and gratitude of their country,” and he asked, “Is not this request a reasonable one?” He also noted that “the patience of the army has been equal to their bravery, but that patience must have its limits, and the result of despair cannot be foreseen nor ought it to be risked.” In addition, he responded to Arthur Lee by setting forth what he believed it meant to represent a constituency: “Although the delegates who compose Congress more immediately represented and were amenable to the states from which they respectively come, yet in another view they owed a fidelity to the collective interests of the whole.” Even in the face of express instructions from his state, Madison said, a delegate would find occasions on which clear conviction should lead him to “hazard personal consequences” and ignore the instructions from home. This was such a time.40

  Madison’s speech resulted in a positive vote on the principle of general revenue, but opposing forces tried to walk the decision back. Arthur Lee took the floor proclaiming that he would “rather see Congress a rope of sand than a rod of iron,” but his fiery rhetoric had little effect. A committee that included Madison and Hamilton was directed to come up with a plan for general funds.41 The program they devised, an impost amendment to the Articles of Confederation, had a 5 percent import tax at its heart, as well as a long-term requisition of $1.5 million a year.

  The articles required that each state’s share of a requisition be determined by the value of each state’s land, a plan that was widely recognized as unworkable since states did not trust one another to determine their own real estate values. In private notes, Madison proposed that instead of “apportioning pecuniary burdens according to the value of land,” population be substituted. Because much of the wealth of the South came from slave labor, he further proposed including slaves in the count, “reckoning two slaves as equal to one free man.” This became a committee report recommending that the financial burden be apportioned according to each state’s “number of white inhabitants” and “one half of the number of all other inhabitants.” A debate followed, with several northerners recommending that three-fourths of slaves be counted rather than one-half, which would mean southern states paying more in taxes. Madison did the math and came up with a figure that split the difference—three-fifths—which was accepted.42

  • • •

  LIKE OTHER FOUNDERS, Madison understood that slavery was a moral issue. When the Virginia Assembly had proposed encouraging enlistments by granting each enlistee a slave, he had objected, “Would it not be as well to liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks themselves as to make them instruments for enlisting white soldiers? It would certainly be more consonant to the principles of liberty which ought never to be lost sight of in a contest for liberty.” When he became convinced that Billey, the enslaved man who had traveled to Philadelphia with him, had become “too thoroughly tainted” by having lived among free blacks to return to Montpelier, he made arrangements that freed him after a time, perhaps after a period of indentured servitude. “I do not expect to get near the worth of him,” Madison wrote to his parsimonious father, “but cannot think of punishing him by transportation merely for coveting that liberty for which we have paid the price of so much blood and have proclaimed so often to be the right and worthy the pursuit of every human being.”43

  But Madison, like political leaders in both the North and the South, was completely capable of laying the morality of slavery aside and dealing with it simply as a fact. And thus it was that a dispassionate debate about revenue gave rise to counting three of every five slaves and creating the three-fifths ratio that would rightly appall future generations. In one of history’s ironies, the three-fifths ratio, when later used for purposes of deciding how many representatives a state would have in Congress, would result in slave states having fewer representatives and less power than they would have had if slaves had been reckoned equal to free citizens.

  • • •

  HAMILTON WAS NOT SATISFIED with working the revenue issue solely from within Congress. He joined with others in Philadelphia who believed that the most effective way to get Congress to approve a revenue measure was to bring more pressure to bear from the army. Washington, realizing the direction he was heading, warned him: “The army … is a dangerous instrument to play with.” Meanwhile, at winter quarters in Newburgh, New York, John Armstrong, who had served as an aide to Horatio Gates, posted an anonymous address “To the Officers of the Army,” describing “a country that tramples upon your rights, disdains your cries and insults your distresses.” He urged officers to carry their appeal “from the justice to the fears of government.”44 So effective was the address that Washington felt obliged to speak before the officers at Newburgh in order to soothe the mutinous impulses it aroused.

  • • •

  AFTER LONG DEBATE Congress passed the impost amendment, “with the dissent of Rhode Island and the division of New York only,” Madison wrote to Jefferson. Hamilton, mercurial as ever, had caused the division, voting no, Madison explained, because he had in mind “a plan which he supposed more perfect.”45 Madison, embracing the art of the possible, composed a letter to the states urging the measure’s ratification. He wrote anonymously, as there was good reason for him to do. Opposition in Virginia was strong; the state had voted down an earlier impost; and there was no benefit to be gained from making himself the opponents’ main target. Moreover, other states were likely to be skeptical of an appeal from a Virginian since his state had proved an unreliable ally in a previous effort. There were advantages to being a modest man, among them that ego didn’t get in the way of smart politics.

  He began the letter to the states with the simple proposition that having won the war, the United States now had to pay the debts left by the war, and he listed those to whom the debts must be paid, including “that illustrious and patriotic band of fellow citizens, whose blood and whose bravery have defended the liberties of their country.” Paying such debts was not only a fiscal responsibility but a matter of acting honorably, which the country had to do or risk betraying the ideals for which the Revolution had been fought:

  Let it be remembered finally that it has ever been the pride and boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature. By the blessings of the Author of these rights on the means exerted for their defense, they have prevailed against all opposition and form the basis of thirteen independent states. No instance has heretofore occurred, nor can any instance be expected hereafter to occur, in which the unadulterated forms of republican government can pretend to so fair an opportunity of justifying themselves by their fruits. In this view the citizens of the United States are responsible for the greatest trust ever confided to a political society. If justice, good faith, honor, gratitude, and all the other qualities which ennoble the character of a nation and fulfill the ends of government be the fruits of our establishments, the cause of liberty will acquire a dignity and luster which it has never yet enjoyed; and an example will be set which cannot but have the most favorable influence on the rights of mankind. If on the other side, our governments should be unfortunately blotted with the reverse of these cardinal and essential virtues, the great cause which we have engaged to vindicate will be dishonored and betrayed; the last and fairest experiment in favor of the rights of human nature will be turned against them; and their patrons and friends exposed to be insulted and silenced by the votaries of tyranny and usurpation.46

  Madison�
��s words traveled across the nation, soon to be supplemented and reinforced by a letter from Washington himself urging ratification of the revenue measure.

  At age thirty-two, just three years after entering Congress, James Madison was becoming a leader of the new nation. Some who knew him in Virginia suspected that he was the author of the eloquent letter to the states, but even those who did not were aware of how rapidly his star was rising. One ambitious young Virginian, James Monroe, attributed Madison’s success to perseverance: “Mr. Madison I think hath acquired more reputat[io]n by a constant and laborious attendance upon Congress than he would have done had he dashed from Philadelphia here as occasion might require.” But more than diligence was involved. Madison grew as he worked, learning every day, acquiring wisdom every day, until he was recognized, in the words of French minister Luzerne, as “the man of the soundest judgment in Congress.”47

  It was a happy time in Madison’s life. He had managed to persuade his friend Thomas Jefferson to leave the exile into which he had withdrawn at Monticello. The Virginia Assembly had passed a resolution to investigate Jefferson’s actions during the British invasion, and although the delegates had finally declared him blameless, their action wounded him deeply. Then his beloved wife, Martha, died, and he seemed for a time to give up on the world altogether. But Madison brought him back, offering a resolution in Congress to make him a peace negotiator in Paris. Jefferson accepted, stopping in Philadelphia on the way to Baltimore, where his ship was to depart, and staying at Madison’s boardinghouse. The two men discussed the nation’s affairs, drew up a list of books for a library for Congress, and went over the notes Madison had been taking on congressional proceedings.

  After Jefferson departed for Baltimore, the two gossiped by letter. Worried about mail being intercepted, they used an agreed-upon code. Madison commented on correspondence recently received by Congress “from 503.12.13.1” (Mr. Adams) and noted that it had mainly served as a “274.3 of 407.36.845.15,” or “display of his vanity.” Jefferson commented on Adams’s ill temper, noting that he hated “367.4.483.30” (Franklin), “25.427.6” (Jay), “816.27.1006.39” (the French), and “816.27.1004.1” (the English). “To whom will he adhere?”48

  Peace negotiations with the British advanced so far that Congress suspended Jefferson’s mission to Paris, and in late February the Virginian returned to Philadelphia. He stayed at Mrs. House’s until after his mission was formally canceled in April and found the group there (he called them family) in a buoyant mood, their hearts lifted by the prospect of peace, by the promise of springtime—and by the observation that one of their own, James Madison, had fallen in love.

  Chapter 5

  LOVE AND OTHER RESOURCES OF HAPPINESS

  CATHERINE FLOYD—or Kitty, as family and friends called her—was a pretty girl with light brown hair and dark brown eyes. In a miniature painted about the time that Jefferson noticed Madison’s interest in her, she wears her hair upswept in a sophisticated style, but her round face, which does not seem fully formed, and her languid expression mark her for the teenager she was, fifteen, soon to be sixteen, an age thought quite appropriate in the eighteenth century for a female to marry.1

  Kitty had been just nine when the British took Long Island, where she and her family lived. Her father, William, had been in Philadelphia as the redcoats came ashore at Gravesend Bay, and her mother, Hannah, had taken charge. When the Floyd home was threatened, Hannah buried the family silver and fled with Kitty and her other two children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut.2 The British occupied the estate, and because Floyd had been a member of the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence, they undoubtedly took pleasure in felling his trees, killing his livestock, and making off with the family’s belongings.

  Sent back to Congress in 1779, Floyd had his family join him at Mrs. House’s. By 1783, Polly, the older Floyd daughter, was being courted by Major Benjamin Tallmadge, and Kitty, the younger, by Congressman Madison.3

  Thomas Jefferson, realizing that his friend was in love, immediately set out to discover the young woman’s feelings for Madison—and even to make Madison’s case. In a letter written shortly after he left Philadelphia, he reported, using code, that he had often made the romance “the subject of conversation,” even “exhortation” with Floyd and been able to convince himself “that she possessed every sentiment in your favor which you could wish.”4

  Madison wrote back in code, “Before you left us, I had sufficiently ascertained her sentiments. Since your departure the affair has been pursued. Most preliminary arrangements although definitive will be postponed until the end of the year in Congress. At some period of the interval I shall probably make a visit to Virginia. The interest which your friendship takes on this occasion in my happiness is a pleasing proof that the dispositions which I feel are reciprocal.” Madison accompanied the Floyds when they left Philadelphia to return to their home on Long Island in late April 1783, riding with them to Brunswick, New Jersey. There he took his leave and returned to Philadelphia, where he waited for a letter from Kitty setting their wedding date.5 In early June, he was still planning on a trip to Virginia so that he could make arrangements for married life there, but he hadn’t heard from Kitty and was probably beginning to worry.

  • • •

  AS JUNE PROGRESSED, reports began to circulate of troops refusing to be discharged until they were paid in full for their service—which Congress, unable to raise funds, had no ability to do. On June 21, several hundred soldiers marched with drums beating and bayonets fixed to the statehouse, where Madison was attending a session. The soldiers circled the building so no one could leave and “remained in their position,” Madison noted with considerable sangfroid, “without offering any violence, individuals only occasionally uttering offensive words and wantonly pointing their muskets to the windows of the hall of Congress.”6

  Delegates urgently requested that the executive council of Pennsylvania, meeting in the same building, call out the militia, but the council refused, and the situation grew uglier as “spirituous drink from the tippling houses adjoining began to be liberally served out to the soldiers,” Madison wrote. Delegates decided to adjourn, and as they passed through the line of soldiers, they were taunted by some, who put up “a mock obstruction,” as Madison described it. When further congressional demands for the Pennsylvania Executive Council to call out the militia were refused, Congress, meeting at night when the soldiers were in their barracks, authorized the president of Congress, Elias Boudinot, to move its meeting place. Over the next few days, as rumors began to fly that mutineers would seize the Bank of North America or kidnap delegates, Boudinot decided on Princeton as the location where Congress might better maintain “the dignity and authority of the United States.”7

  Madison dutifully traveled to Princeton, but he didn’t stay long. He, who had been one of the most dependable attendees of Congress, began to miss most meetings. He told Edmund Randolph that he had to be in Philadelphia to prepare for retiring from Congress, which the Articles of Confederation required that he do after serving three consecutive years. To Jefferson he explained he had undertaken a writing project that required him to be near his papers in Philadelphia.8 And, although he didn’t say so, he was surely waiting to hear from Kitty Floyd, who was likely to direct her mail to Mrs. House’s.

  The letter that finally arrived no longer exists, but from the letter Madison wrote to Jefferson after receiving it, we know that it terminated plans for a marriage at the end of the congressional session. On August 11, Madison explained, “I expected to have had the pleasure by this time of being with you in Virginia. My disappointment has proceeded from several dilatory circumstances on which I had not calculated. One of them was the uncertain state into which the object I was then pursuing had been brought by one of those incidents to which such affairs are liable. The result has rendered the time [of] my return to Virginia less material, as the necessity of my visiting the state of New Jersey no
longer exists.” Madison, distressed, had not taken time to encode the letter, and in old age he would try to obliterate what he had written. He succeeded in part, but the above can be read, and here and there other words can be discerned beneath the scribblings over, some suggesting that Madison did not yet totally despair: “For myself a delicacy to female character will impose some patience” and “hope for … some more propitious turn of fortune.”9

  Jefferson wrote back offering sympathy: “I sincerely lament the misadventure which has happened from whatever cause it may have happened.” He seemed to acknowledge Madison’s hope that things might still work out but offered suggestions in case they didn’t: “Should it be final, however, the world still presents the same and many other resources of happiness, and you possess many within yourself. Firmness of mind and unintermitting occupations will not long leave you in pain. No event has been more contrary 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 inexplicable.”10 Jefferson’s advice fit with what Madison had learned after his college days, when his sudden attacks had thrown him into despair: the best remedy for gloom was an active and involved life.

  One has to wonder when Madison told Kitty Floyd of his disorder. At some point he would have felt honor-bound to do so, and if he used the occasion of the trip with her family to New Jersey, the information might have turned attraction to aversion. According to Floyd family lore, Kitty sealed her final letter to Madison with a bit of rye dough, possibly some calculated message about health, since rye dough was part of a Floyd family remedy. But the gesture might simply have been impetuous, which fits with what we know of Floyd as she grew older. She married William Clarkson, a medical student who became a clergyman, and, according to her father, lived with little forethought. In a will dated 1817, the year Kitty Floyd turned fifty, her father wrote: