James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

by Lynne Cheney

  On Wednesday, February 11, 1801, as a snowstorm whipped around the unfinished buildings of the Capitol, the House met and the states cast their ballots. The result was what everyone expected: eight votes for Jefferson, six for Burr, and two states divided. The voting continued around the clock until midday Thursday, by which time there had been twenty-eight votes, each with the same result. The deadlock continued through Friday, Saturday, Monday, and a vote at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday. Finally, on a second Tuesday vote, there was a break. Ten states voted for Jefferson, and on the thirty-sixth ballot he became president-elect of the United States.54

  Why did the Federalists give way? The fact that the Republicans had the upper hand and kept it throughout the balloting might have helped, and Jefferson’s threats likely did as well. Jefferson might also have been lobbying. James Bayard, Delaware’s sole delegate and thereby in control of its vote, was first to change his mind, and he later testified that he had received assurances about Jefferson’s intentions regarding the public debt, the navy, and certain Federalist officials—an assertion that Jefferson vehemently denied. Another factor was Alexander Hamilton. Convinced that Burr would be a disastrous president, he undertook a letter-writing campaign in which he accused Burr of being an American Catiline, ready to overthrow the Republic as Lucius Sergius Catilina had tried to do in Rome, in order to gain permanent power and wealth. One of Hamilton’s most powerful letters went to Congressman Bayard. “This man has no principle, public or private,” Hamilton wrote of Burr. “As a politician his sole spring of action is an inordinate ambition; as an individual he is believed by friends as well as foes to be without probity, and a voluptuary by system.” He added that there was no one of either party in New York “who does not think Mr. Burr the most unfit man in the U.S. for the office of president.” What might have made the letter particularly convincing was Hamilton’s confession that there was nothing he would rather do than “contribute to the disappointment and mortification of Mr. Jefferson,” but he thought Burr would bring such calamity that he would rather see Jefferson as president.55

  • • •

  IN JANUARY, before the election was decided, Madison had been ailing with “several complaints.” One was rheumatic, and he practiced “temperance and flannel” for relief, the flannel being wrapped around painful joints to keep them warm. What his other complaints were, he did not say, but in telling Jefferson about them, he struck a note of pessimism: “I am much afraid that any changes that may take place [in my health] are not likely to be for the better.” He was also concerned about his father, who was in a “very declining state,” and although Jefferson wanted Madison in Washington before the change in government on March 4, he had to decline. He made clear, however, that he did not mean by his delay “to retract what has passed in conversation between us.” Jefferson had asked him and he had agreed to serve as secretary of state.56

  He had thought he could get to Washington not long after the inauguration, but his father died. “Yesterday morning rather suddenly though very gently the flame of life went out,” he wrote to Jefferson. Now Madison was truly his family’s patriarch, and he must have thought with gratitude of the man he was replacing, the father he had addressed in so many letters as “Honored sir.” James senior had come to Montpelier when it was newly cut from the wilderness. He had been just nine years old when his own father, Ambrose, died. He had helped his mother, Frances, come through those days and over the years had expanded Madison holdings. He had managed Montpelier into his seventies, and if he had not rotated his crops as often as he should have, he had been frugal, eschewing the extravagance typical of many plantations, which might have meant that Montpelier, though likely dependent on credit, was less so than other great estates. His greatest indulgence had been his eldest son. He didn’t provide lavish support, probably a good thing then as now, but it was enough to enable James junior to become architect, builder, and leader of a great nation.57

  Madison was the executor of his father’s estate, and settling it was a complicated matter, he explained to the new president, because there were many heirs, and apportionment would be not by fiat but “by amicable negotiations, concessions, and adjustments.” Jefferson responded graciously, but he was feeling overwhelmed, “harassed with interruptions and worn down with fatigue,” he told his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph. It wasn’t just Madison who was missing from the new government. Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin was settling his affairs in Pennsylvania. Jefferson had also been turned down repeatedly in his effort to find a secretary of the navy. His response, finally, was to take a break himself. Less than four weeks after he was inaugurated, he departed the capital city to spend three weeks at Monticello. He wrote to Montpelier that he hoped Madison would return to Washington with him, but Madison reported “an attack on my health, which kept me in bed three or four days.” Settling his father’s will was also turning out to be more complicated and contentious than he had thought. In his hurry to get to Washington, he left much undone, which meant that his brother William was left to advise on many details.58 William’s role in settling James senior’s will would have repercussions decades hence.

  Finally, in late April, James and Dolley Madison, Payne Todd, and Anna Payne set out from Montpelier. The roads were muddy in places and Madison was still feeling unwell, but there were also long firm stretches, and as the carriage rolled along, the travelers could admire the redbuds in bloom. Spring had come round again.59

  Chapter 13

  THE REVOLUTION OF 1800

  REPUBLICANS CLAIMED that Jefferson’s victory signified a revolution, by which they meant that the Federalists had been turned out and their policies rejected, but Margaret Bayard Smith, wife of the publisher of the National Intelligencer, caught a deeper meaning when she described Jefferson’s inaugural to her daughter: “I have this morning witnessed one of the most interesting scenes a free people can ever witness. The changes of administration, which in every government and in every age have most generally been epochs of confusion, villainy, and bloodshed, in this our happy country take place without any species of distraction or disorder.”1 The peaceful transfer of power from a party of one philosophy to that of another made Jefferson’s election and inauguration a turning point not just for the United States but for the world.

  When James Madison arrived with his wife in the new capital in late April, he surely saw that it reflected the new direction of the country. Here there were no kingly gardens, no grand buildings lining palatial avenues—indeed, no avenues save the one named after Pennsylvania, and it was unpaved. The president’s house was an imposing building, but it stood on a barren plain, its grounds seeming “never to have been touched by spade or pick-axe,” a British visitor observed. As for the Capitol, rising on Jenkins Hill a mile and a half away, it consisted of two wings unconnected by a central structure, and only one of the wings was finished.2

  Washington City wasn’t a city at all, which was fitting enough for a new administration that held up rural life as the American ideal. The new capital had “several points of natural beauty to recommend it,” a visitor observed, “the ground being elevated on both sides of the Potomac, and the views varied as well as in many parts romantic, particularly just above the city where the river is obstructed by rocks and at the Eastern Branch where there are fine woods and some delightful rides.” Cows grazed where the city’s planner, Pierre L’Enfant, envisioned grand plazas. Fields of corn grew not far from the president’s house. Such was Washington’s undeveloped state that the clusters of buildings here and there were mostly known not by street numbers but by how many buildings were in the group. Ask people where they lived and they might respond “Seven Buildings” or “Twenty Buildings.”3

  As the Madisons rode up to the president’s house in their carriage, they would have seen that Jefferson was already remodeling, changing the entrance from the north side to the south. He was also having the wooden privy that had stood alongside the house torn down and installi
ng water closets inside. He probably showed the new arrivals how he was changing around the way the rooms were used, pointed out the cornices he was upgrading and the location he had chosen for a wine cellar. The Madisons, used to his “putting up and pulling down” at Monticello, would not have been surprised at any of this.4 Jefferson had once advocated that governments be newly formed every nineteen years. His buildings were fortunate to get nineteen months.

  James and Dolley Madison stayed with Jefferson for three weeks, time during which he had another houseguest as well. Twenty-six-year-old Meriwether Lewis was living behind hastily constructed partitions at one end of what is today the East Room. Jefferson might have intended to use him for a secretary, but he seemed to be more a youthful companion, running errands for the president and spending time with him in long discussions about the American West, where Lewis had served in the army. In the mornings, Lewis could often be found hunting just off Pennsylvania Avenue, where snipe and partridge abounded.5

  When the Madisons moved from the president’s house, it was to “Six Buildings,” a row of brick houses on Pennsylvania Avenue where the State Department was temporarily located. Madison was still not feeling well, which probably made living where he worked, at least for a few months, appealing. He arrived at his temporary office to find a nearly overwhelming backlog of work. He apologized to a friend for not answering his letter sooner by explaining that he had found it “absolutely necessary to devote the whole of my time and pen to my public duties and consequently to suspend my private correspondences altogether.”6

  It was not diplomatic dispatches that were so much the problem. If anything, there was a temporary lull on that front. The Convention of Mortefontaine, negotiated by John Adams’s emissaries, had ended hostilities between France and the United States, and France was being unusually (if suspiciously) conciliatory. Great Britain, meanwhile, was focusing on the war in Europe. The great burden for Madison was answering letters from job seekers. A Rhode Island lawyer with whom he had served in the Continental Congress wrote to be sure that an aging acquaintance would be allowed to stay in his Newport customs post for life. The former congressman also wanted his son to be considered for “office of surveyor or any higher office” of port customs. A Pennsylvania Republican wrote to advocate the firing of all the Federalist excise officers in his state and to urge that he himself be considered for a post. Charles Peale Polk, who had painted portraits of Madison’s parents, solicited Madison’s help “obtaining any situation, here or elsewhere.”7

  By far the most troublesome job seeker was James Callender. The Sedition Act under which he had been convicted in Samuel Chase’s court had expired with the Adams presidency, and Jefferson had restored Callender’s rights—as well as those of others so convicted—with a presidential pardon. But Callender had paid a fine in addition to serving time in jail, and although he was entitled to his money back, the U.S. marshal in Virginia, an enemy of Jefferson’s, would not repay him. The unhappy Callender wrote a letter to Madison threatening to ruin Jefferson’s reputation unless he got his two hundred dollars—and the job of postmaster in Richmond. “Surely, sir,” Callender wrote, “many syllogisms cannot be necessary to convince Mr. Jefferson that, putting feelings and principles out of the question, it is not proper for him to create a quarrel with me.” In May, Callender appeared at the Six Buildings in Washington. When he was shown into Madison’s small office, what he got was “plain dealing,” which likely meant an explanation that although every effort was being made to get his two hundred dollars returned, he wasn’t getting the Richmond job. Jefferson, hearing that Callender was in town, sent Meriwether Lewis to offer assurances and give Callender fifty dollars to tide him over. Callender took the money, “not as a charity,” he said, but as “hush money” and “intimated that he was in possession of things which he could and would make use of” should he not get the post in Richmond.8

  Jefferson once said that he had “no secrets” from Madison, and Madison probably knew what Callender was hinting at: Jefferson’s intimate relationship with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman at Monticello. Hemings had borne Jefferson four children by this time, two of whom were living. The relationship had now been ongoing for over a decade, more than long enough for rumors to circulate and hints to appear in newspapers.9 At the least, Madison would have had suspicions—and been very relieved to learn in mid-June that Callender’s fine had been refunded. Callender took the money and went silent—for a time.

  • • •

  THE CONSTITUTION provided that although the president was commander in chief, only Congress could declare war. But what if another nation put the United States into a state of war? Could the president then act without Congress? That was the question discussed at the first cabinet meeting that Madison attended, which probably occurred in Jefferson’s office in the president’s house, located where the State Dining Room is today. Maps and charts were pinned on the walls, and globes were scattered around the edges of the room. A mockingbird that Jefferson sometimes let fly around his office sang in a cage hanging in a window recess, where pots of roses and geraniums bloomed. A long, baize-covered table was in the center, and it was probably here that cabinet members sat to discuss the pasha of Tripoli. The tribute that the United States had been paying him for several years to protect its shipping was overdue, and he was demanding $225,000 immediately and $25,000 a year after that. He was already fitting out corsairs to attack American ships in case the money wasn’t handed over promptly. Although Congress, which would not be in session for another six months, could not be consulted, Madison and the rest of the cabinet endorsed the idea of the president’s ordering American ships to the Mediterranean. Madison, who had seen to it at the Constitutional Convention that the president had “the power to repel sudden attacks,” also endorsed the idea that if American commanders found a state of war to exist when they reached the Mediterranean, they were authorized “to search for and destroy the enemy’s vessels wherever they can find them.” Before the American frigates could leave the harbor at Norfolk, the pasha cut down the American flagpole at the consulate in Tripoli—his way of formally declaring war.10

  Madison’s long-standing principle was that the United States should stay out of war, thus avoiding the debt, taxes, and executive aggrandizement that were sure consequences, but in this instance he believed that it would cost little more for ships to sail than it did to maintain them in harbor. It was a point on which he would turn out to be spectacularly wrong. The United States would lose a frigate in the harbor at Tripoli, more than three hundred Americans would be captured, and expenses would skyrocket as reinforcements had to be sent. Finally—and with Madison’s blessing—the United States would launch a land and sea assault on Tripoli aimed at replacing the pasha with his equally corrupt brother, thus inspiring the pasha to agree to a truce that involved no tribute. The United States would, however, pay him sixty thousand dollars to ransom its prisoners.11

  Madison also thought that the mission to Tripoli would provide U.S. mariners with valuable experience, and in this case he was spectacularly right. Veterans of the Barbary War, among them William Bainbridge, Isaac Hull, Stephen Decatur, and Oliver Hazard Perry, would be naval heroes in a later war that Madison would oversee as commander in chief. The Barbary War of 1801–1805 would also be memorable because eight U.S. marines marched with the force of Greek mercenaries, Arabs, and Bedouins that intended to overthrow the pasha. While they participated in a land assault on the fortress at Derna, their fellow marines attacked from the bay. Success in that battle gave the United States its first victory on foreign soil and the Marine Corps hymn its beginning lines: “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli / We will fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea.”12

  • • •

  BY THE SUMMER of 1801, Madison’s health had improved “in a moderate degree,” but July brought a setback. The language he used to describe it—a “slight attack of bile to which my constitution is pec
uliarly prone”—suggests that this was another example of his “constitutional liability to sudden attacks, somewhat resembling epilepsy,” though a mild one. Jefferson hoped that Madison could get off to Montpelier by the middle of July, which seemed like a fine idea to Madison. “If I can get into the pure air which I breathe at home,” he wrote, “without a return of the attack, I shall have a more flattering prospect than I have had for nearly two years past.”13 It was the end of the month, however, before he got away. The next day, Jefferson also departed the federal city and headed home.

  Spending the high malarial season of August and September away from Washington and in the Piedmont became a pattern for Madison and Jefferson. They continued to work during the summer, sending messages back and forth between Monticello and Montpelier by special courier. The Madisons typically visited Monticello in early September, and Jefferson often returned the visit later in the month.

  Jefferson relied on Madison’s judgment to an extraordinary degree, as the two men’s letters from the summer of 1801 on the subject of “prizes” reveal. The British chargé d’affaires, Edward Thornton, had made the case that because of the Jay Treaty, British ships captured by France and brought to American ports should not be turned over to a prize court to have their disposition determined, but should be ordered away. The president thought Thornton’s argument was sound, but knowing that Madison objected, he wrote to his secretary of state, “Still, wishing you to revise this opinion of mine, I refer it back to yourself to give the order for departure or any other answer you think best.” Madison found a precedent for sending the ships away that did not involve the Jay Treaty, which he despised, and passed the decision to the British minister. When Madison communicated decisions, he routinely framed them as the president’s, and he did so in this case—even though he was, in fact, with the president’s permission, effectively reversing the president.14