James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

by Lynne Cheney

  As for a declaration’s being unnecessary, Madison confessed that he had “not viewed [a bill of rights] in an important light,” in part because of his experience in Virginia. There he had seen the “parchment barriers” of that state’s declaration of rights “violated in every instance where it has been opposed to a popular current.” In a republic that was where the danger lay—with oppressive majorities. “This is a truth of great importance, but not yet sufficiently attended to,” he wrote to Jefferson, who had spent the last four years observing the court of Louis XVI. In a monarchy, where the possibility of abusing power rested with the government, a bill of rights was useful, Madison wrote. It set forth standards for the king and could serve to rally the people against him. But in a popular government, where power was vested “in a majority of the people,” there was no greater force to rally in opposition. Still, there were noble purposes for a bill of rights. In the first place, it could help citizens internalize the axioms underlying a republic: “Political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free government, and as they become incorporated with the national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion.” The second argument he offered would hold up equally well over the years. It was possible, he said, that the government in a republic could usurp power. In that case, “a bill of rights will be a good ground for an appeal to the sense of the community.”7

  Madison’s comments to Jefferson were philosophical, not political, but in the months ahead politics would be very much on his mind. He hoped to be chosen for federal office, and Virginia friends urged him to consider the Senate. As he thought about his prospects, he decided that Patrick Henry’s control of the Virginia legislature, which would make the choice, ruled the Senate out, but his name was nonetheless submitted. He didn’t lose badly, running a strong third behind Federalist candidates Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson, but he nonetheless lost—and had to endure a verbal assault by Patrick Henry in the process. On the floor of the House of Delegates, Henry declared Madison “unworthy of the confidence of the people” and warned that his election “would terminate in producing rivulets of blood throughout the land.”8

  Madison was in Philadelphia when he learned of his defeat and of Henry’s intention to keep him out of the House of Representatives as well as the Senate. At Henry’s direction, the House of Delegates passed an election law that put Orange County into a district with counties in which there was strong Antifederalist feeling. The law also required a year’s residence in the district, eliminating any possibility of Madison’s seeking another place to represent. Henry no doubt also had a hand in finding an attractive candidate to run against Madison for Congress—James Monroe. Madison’s friends were appalled. One called Monroe “the beau,” suggesting that vanity was at work. Others thought that personal hostility was involved. “You are upon no occasion of a public nature to expect favors from this gentleman,” Edward Carrington wrote. So troubled were Madison’s supporters at the effort to keep him out of elective office that when one of them, James Gordon Jr., “lost his reason” and had to be confined, the cause was said to be Gordon’s utter disappointment with the conduct of the House of Delegates toward Madison and the Constitution.9

  Madison set out for Virginia, stopping on the way at Mount Vernon, where he spent the better part of a week visiting with George Washington. While Madison’s election was no doubt one of the subjects the men talked about, the larger part of their conversation probably concerned Washington’s becoming president, which was increasingly likely, and the strength and stability of the new government, which seemed less likely by the day. Under Patrick Henry’s guidance, the Virginia Assembly was petitioning the outgoing Congress for a second convention, writing to Governor George Clinton of New York about cooperating in such an effort, and sending a circular letter to all the states seeking support. Both men were worried about Henry’s power. “He has only to say let this be law—and it is law,” Washington wrote. As Madison saw it, Henry’s aim was nothing less than “the destruction of the whole system.”10

  Madison arrived in Orange County to find his opponents whispering that he was “dogmatically attached to the Constitution in every clause, syllable, and letter” and would not therefore countenance amendments on any subject, including fundamental rights. He launched a letter-writing campaign to dispel that notion, particularly among his Baptist supporters, who were being told that he was no longer “a friend to the rights of conscience.” He explained to Baptist minister George Eve that before the Constitution was ratified, he had “opposed all previous alterations as calculated to throw the states into dangerous contentions and to furnish the secret enemies of the Union with an opportunity of promoting its dissolution.” But now that ratification had occurred, he believed Congress “ought to prepare and recommend to the states for ratification the most satisfactory provisions for all essential rights, particularly the rights of conscience.” A letter in which he made the same points to a Spotsylvania County resident ended up, surely not by accident, in the Virginia Herald.11

  Madison even took to the road, making campaign stops not just in Orange but also in Louisa and Culpeper counties. Soon he and Monroe were making joint appearances, one of which followed a Lutheran church service. After “music with two fiddles,” as Madison later remembered it, “we addressed these people and kept them standing in the snow listening to the discussion of constitutional subjects. They stood it out very patiently—seemed to consider it a sort of fight of which they were required to be spectators.” Afterward Madison rode twelve miles through the night to his home, acquiring a touch of frostbite on his nose along the way. In later years he would point to the scar with pride.12

  For all his insistence that he didn’t like campaigning, Madison proved effective at it. In a district where the deck had been stacked against him, he garnered 1,308 votes to 972 for Monroe. Among the congratulatory letters he received was one from his old friend Baptist minister John Leland, who modestly wrote that if his effort in the late campaign accomplished nothing else, “it certainly gave Mr. Madison one vote.”13

  Madison received a letter from George Washington that suggested how extensive a role he was likely to play in the new government. Washington wanted Madison’s help with his inaugural address. He had a draft—a seventy-three-page creation produced by an aide—but he was doubtful about it and hoped that as Madison traveled to New York to assume his seat in Congress, he would stop at Mount Vernon and offer his advice. When Madison reached the president-elect’s home on February 22, 1789, he found that Washington was right to have concerns. The seventy-three-page draft was, he later observed, a “strange production.” He stayed with Washington for a week, writing a much shorter speech for him.14

  Seven of the ten representatives to Congress elected in Virginia were Federalists, and Madison left Mount Vernon with one of them, John Page, and met another, Richard Bland Lee, in Alexandria. The three men slogged toward New York through wintry weather, but reports of Federalists sweeping other states no doubt took some of the edge off the chill. Outside Baltimore, they fell in with “the bearer of the electoral votes of Georgia,” and Madison was able to write to Washington that “they are unanimous as to the president.”15

  • • •

  LIKE MANY eighteenth-century events, the First Congress was late in convening—four weeks late, in fact—but after a quorum was finally formed in both houses, what everyone knew became official: Washington would be the first president. Every elector in every state had voted for him. John Adams, although he received less than half the number of votes that Washington did, still had the second-highest number and would be vice president.

  On April 30, Madison took his place in the inaugural procession, his carriage behind Washington’s grand equipage—a bright yellow carriage drawn by white horses. The train of troops and dignitaries made its way through Dock and Broad streets to the splendidly remodeled Federal Hall, where Madison, as part
of the official five-man inaugural committee from the House, likely accompanied the president-elect as he walked up the stairs and stepped out on the colonnaded balcony. At Washington’s appearance a great roar went up from the multitudes assembled below. The president-elect, dressed for the occasion in a suit of brown American broadcloth, white silk stockings, and silver-buckled shoes, put his right hand on a Bible lent for the occasion by a New York Masonic lodge and took the oath of office prescribed by the Constitution. At the end of the oath, according to well-established tradition, he added “So help me God.” Then he bent to kiss the Bible.16

  In the second-floor Senate chamber of Federal Hall, a splendid room with a high arched ceiling, tall windows, and crimson curtains, Washington, uncharacteristically nervous, read the address Madison had drafted at Mount Vernon. They had doubtless consulted about it as Madison wrote, because it suited Washington well, capturing his modesty, his belief in the providential agency that guided the nation, and his love for his country. But one moment in the address was quintessentially Madisonian. It occurred when the president declared that “the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the Republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” Madison often used the word “sacred” to convey the ultimate nature of such civic concepts as rights, responsibilities, and liberty. He used the word “staked” to indicate crucial dependencies, once describing the Constitution as a document “on which would be staked the happiness of a people.”17 He had used the metaphor of government as an experiment in more than a dozen numbers of The Federalist, conveying the notion that human arrangements, particularly those aimed at establishing self-government, are fragile and might fail. Their preservation required vigilance.

  Madison’s hand was also evident in the sole legislative measure the president mentioned, amendments to the Constitution, which had now become a priority for Madison. Washington spoke of amendments in a way that fit with Madison’s thinking, expressing confidence that Congress would “carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government” and at the same time have “reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen and a regard for the public harmony.”

  After the inauguration, Madison wrote the House of Representatives’ formal response to Washington’s speech, and he soon heard from the president, who wanted him to take yet another step. “Notwithstanding the conviction I am under of the labor which is imposed upon you by public individuals as well as public bodies,” Washington wrote, tacitly admitting that he owed his inaugural address to Madison, “yet as you have began, so I would wish you to finish the good work in a short reply to the address of the House of Representatives.” Madison wrote Washington’s reply to the House address (which he had written in response to the president’s address, which he had ghostwritten), and twelve days later, again at the president’s request, he wrote Washington’s response to the Senate as well.18 Never again in the history of the United States would any politician’s voice reverberate as Madison’s did in the early days of the Republic.

  • • •

  BY THE TIME OF Washington’s inaugural, the House of Representatives had been in operation nearly a month. It had been the new government during that time and would continue to be until the executive branch could be filled out and the judiciary branch created. The members met in the airy, first-floor, octagonal chamber of Federal Hall, and it was there, under a coved ceiling that stretched upward forty feet and more, that they elected Frederick Muhlenberg, a Lutheran pastor from Pennsylvania, to be their Speaker. From the beginning, however, they recognized Madison as their leader, “our first man,” as one of his colleagues wrote.19

  Madison introduced the first piece of business: raising revenue. He suggested that the basis be the Impost of 1783, which he had written, and proposed duties to be placed on imported items such as spirituous liquors and sugar. Now that the United States had “recovered from the state of imbecility” that had made it unable to pay its debts, he said, the country needed “to revive those principles of honor and honesty that have too long lain dormant.”20

  But as is inevitably the case in representative government, the high purpose of the legislation quickly devolved into a debate over details as congressmen fought for the interests of their constituents. The battle over molasses was particularly fierce, with Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, an intense and brilliant man, pointing out that a duty would hurt not only his state’s distilleries, which used molasses to manufacture rum, but its fisheries, which traded fish for rum. It would even harm the poor, he said, who used molasses as a sweetener. This last claim was too much for Madison, who responded by pointing out that Virginia’s imports were three times those of Massachusetts. Many of those imports were necessary for the poor and would be subject to tariffs—which meant that Virginians had even more reason than citizens of Massachusetts to lament their lot. His point was that partial interests had to be put aside in order to support the general government, which had been “instituted for the protection of all.”21 The House passed the tariff bill—but not until the duty on molasses had been reduced.

  Fisher Ames seemed to be fascinated with Madison and described him in several letters he sent back home. In one he wrote:

  He derives from nature an excellent understanding … , but I think he excels in the quality of judgment. He is possessed of a sound judgment, which perceives truth with great clearness and can trace it through the mazes of debate without losing it. He is admirable for this inestimable talent. As a reasoner, he is remarkably perspicuous and methodical. He is a studious man, devoted to public business and a thorough master of almost every public question that can arise or he will spare no pains to become so, if he happens to be in want of information.

  Ames knew whereof he spoke. Madison had compared the laws of all the states in preparation for the debate on revenue and collected information on what the various states imported and exported. But for all Madison’s hard work, Ames, a man not easy to content, found him wanting. “He is probably deficient in that fervor and vigor of character which you will expect in a great man,” he wrote. Ames thought him “too much of a book politician” and “too much attached to his theories.”22

  Ames, who favored an emotional oratorical style, might have been reacting to Madison’s plain way of speaking. Madison made no attempt to practice oratory, which, given how often he spoke—124 times in the first session of the new Congress alone, more than twice any other member—was probably a mercy for all involved. His unadorned rhetoric had served him quite well thus far, including in the battle with Patrick Henry at the Virginia ratifying convention. His lack of artifice conveyed sincerity and underscored the importance of the ideas he was presenting rather than distracting from them.23

  • • •

  AFTER THE TARIFF BILL was passed, Madison began the work of building out the executive branch. He proposed the formation of the Departments of State, Treasury, and War. The heads of these departments were to be “appointed by the president by and with the advice and consent of the Senate”—and, according to Madison’s motion, “to be removable by the president.” This last provision, which was not in the Constitution, led to the first debate in Congress about the meaning of that document, and Madison was at the center of it. “I think it absolutely necessary that the president should have the power of removing from office,” he said, and his view prevailed.24

  Despite Ames’s observation that Madison was too fixed on his theories, Madison listened to the congressional debate and learned from it. He found a point made by Egbert Benson of New York particularly telling. Since the power of removal was not in the Constitution, said Benson, Madison’s proposal looked as though it were a grant of power from Congress. Benson suggested that the motion be worded so as to assume the president had the power of removal—and Madison agreed. It was an approach he would remember when he sat down to compose a bill of
rights.

  A matter on which Madison was less flexible was whether tariff and tonnage fees ought to be different for nations such as France, with which the United States had commercial treaty agreements, than they were for nations such as Great Britain, with which the United States did not. Madison was fixed on the notion that there should be a distinction, in part because France had been America’s crucial ally in the war against the British, but more because he wanted Britain to change what he called “her monopolizing regulations.” Since the Revolution, American ships had not been allowed to trade in the British West Indies, nor could they carry anything except American goods to England. Madison argued that such policies “bound us in commercial manacles and very nearly defeated the object of our independence.”25

  Madison was of the view that America could achieve an alteration in British navigation laws because Britain needed the food and raw materials that the United States exported more than the United States needed the manufactured products of Britain. Madison’s language, as he made this case in a letter to Jefferson, was revealing in the way that it cast the agricultural products that America produced as “essential” and the products of English factories as “superfluities or poisons.” Madison, like Jefferson, had long had a vision of America as a young, vigorous, and virtuous land where independent farmers reaped the bounty of the soil, producing necessities rather than manufacturing luxuries. It was an image fitting for a country in which the vast majority of people drew their living from the land, and it would play an important role in debates about the direction of the new government. In 1789, Congress was not persuaded, however, and in the end passed tariff and tonnage measures giving American goods and ships an advantage but making no distinction among other nations.26