James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

by Lynne Cheney

  Finally, on July 2, Mrs. Madison was able to tell the president’s secretary, Edward Coles, who was ill himself, “Mr. Madison recovers. For the last three days, his fever has been so slight as to permit him to take bark every hour and with good effect. It has been three weeks since I have nursed him night and day—sometimes in despair! But now that I see he will get well I feel as if I should die myself, with fatigue.” While Madison had been ill, details had come in of defeats on the Niagara front at Stoney Creek and Beaver Dams. The president was probably still in his sickbed on July 6, 1813, when he ordered Secretary Armstrong to relieve General Dearborn of his command. He was still returning to health in mid-July when word came that British warships were headed up the Potomac. Secretary of War Armstrong rode with a troop of regulars to man Fort Warburton, which overlooked the Potomac. Secretary of State Monroe, not to be outdone, led volunteer cavalry all the way to Blackiston Island on the Chesapeake Bay and suggested attacking the British forces he found there. Madison told him no, tactfully emphasizing that if anything went wrong, it “would be peculiarly distressing not only to your friends but to the public.” After setting pulses racing in the summer of 1813, the British squadron moved away from the coast but continued to keep nerves frayed by leaving some ships to linger in the Chesapeake for months.29

  Senators pushed again for a meeting about peace commissioners, and Madison received them but refused to discuss their objection that Gallatin should not serve as both Treasury secretary and envoy. Because he would go no further than acknowledging an executive-senatorial disagreement, the senators’ meeting with the president was brief—as was the interval before they voted down the Gallatin nomination.30 Madison’s stubborn defense of presidential prerogative had come at a cost.

  His recovery continued despite the Senate, and on August 2, 1813, Richard Rush, the comptroller of the Treasury, was able to report to John Adams that “Mr. Madison rides out and attends to business again.” This was news the former president was glad to hear. He believed the war “both just and necessary” and was thrilled with U.S. victories at sea. He was gratified that Madison was in favor of expanding the navy, which he, Adams, had led the way in creating. “I rejoice that Mr. Madison[’s] health continues to improve,” he wrote. “His life is of great importance.”31

  Madison had not had his two months on the mountain in 1812, but in the summer of 1813, war or not, he was determined to spend time at Montpelier. He and Mrs. Madison made the journey in four days, but even as he breathed the fresh air of the Piedmont, he could not keep his thoughts from the war and the northern theater in particular. He had concluded that command of Lakes Erie and Ontario was crucial to obtaining security along the border with Canada, and to that end Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry, twenty-seven years old, had been sent to oversee the building of a naval squadron to seize control of Lake Erie. Madison received positive reports of Perry’s progress, and then came the news of victory in late September. Perry, aboard his flagship, Lawrence, had defeated the British in a bloody fight. When it was over, he had written a short message on the back of an old letter to General William Henry Harrison, who was anxiously awaiting word of the outcome: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”32

  The British, their Lake Erie supply line cut, withdrew from Detroit into Canada, and Harrison, reinforced by Kentucky volunteers, pursued. Crying “Remember the Raisin,” he and his troops defeated the British and their Indian allies near the Thames River. Among those killed was the Indian leader Tecumseh, and as if to show that no one in this war had a corner on brutality, American forces cut souvenir slices of skin from his corpse.33

  News of the Battles of Lake Erie and the Thames reached Madison before he left Montpelier. Perry’s triumph alone, John Adams opined, should be “enough to revive Mr. Madison if he was in the last stage of a consumption.”34 The land victory was also sweet. The United States had recovered the territory it had lost when Hull had surrendered and, by breaking up the Indian confederacy, as Tecumseh’s death had done, was a step nearer a goal Madison had been pursuing since his time on the Virginia Council of State: control of the lands northwest of the Ohio River.

  But by the time the Thirteenth Congress met in its second session in December 1813, the president also had a most disappointing failure to report. American troops attempting to advance on Montreal had not managed even to get in sight of the city. One failed invasion force had been led by Aaron Burr’s erstwhile ally General James Wilkinson, who had revealed yet once more his capacity for startlingly bad judgment. Suffering from dysentery, he had tried to command his troops while heavily dosed with laudanum.35 Soon would come word of a major reversal along the Niagara frontier, with American forces abandoning Fort George, which just six months before they had captured in a combined action led by Winfield Scott and Oliver Hazard Perry.

  Madison was also faced with conflict in his cabinet. Secretary Armstrong had spent most of the last half of 1813 in New York, trying futilely to buttress planning for the attack on Montreal. Monroe, probably thinking that a success would improve Armstrong’s presidential prospects (a thought that had certainly occurred to Armstrong), tried to turn Armstrong’s absence to his advantage. He removed all the correspondence concerning the war effort of 1813 from Armstrong’s department to his, thus putting himself in a position to control information about the war. When the president found out, he was furious. He summoned Monroe and, upon learning that he had left town, personally went to the State Department and had the papers transferred back to the War Department. Later in the year when Armstrong, concerned about a lack of recruits in the regular army, began to float the idea of conscription, Monroe demanded the president fire him: “This man, if continued in office, will ruin not you and the administration only, but the whole Republican party and cause.”36 Madison was not the first president to experience cabinet rivalries, nor would he be the last. He chose the course that many chief executives have taken—and a few have found successful—of trying to stay above the fray.

  Madison followed up on his message to Congress with a secret recommendation for a complete embargo on American exports and a ban on importing British products. He knew that such a move would further anger New England, which, possessing the only coastline not under British blockade, had a virtual monopoly on American exports, but he was angered that goods from the United States were supplying not only “British armies at a distance,” as he told Congress, “but the armies in our neighborhood with which our own are contending.” Just months before, Congress had rejected an embargo, but it now swiftly passed a measure imposing one, no doubt a sign that members were growing increasingly concerned about the war. The weeks ahead gave them more reasons to worry. News came that the British had captured Fort Niagara; moved down the Niagara River, wreaking havoc along the way; and destroyed the village of Buffalo. Daniel Tompkins, the Republican governor of New York, wrote to Madison describing “the massacre and scalping of a number of inhabitants of Lewiston and Niagara, many of whose bodies have been found mangled in a most shocking manner.” Citizens were panicking, Tompkins reported. “They are abandoning their possessions and retiring into the interior.”37

  A ship called the Bramble arrived in the harbor at Annapolis bringing news of Napoleon. He had managed to raise another army and drive the Prussians over the Elbe and the Oder, but at Leipzig, where he also faced the Austrians, Russians, and Swedes, he had been dealt a stunning defeat, which renewed worries about Great Britain’s stepping up its war effort against the United States.38 The Bramble also brought news offering some hope of peace. Although the British had turned down the Russian offer of mediation, they now proposed direct negotiations. Madison quickly nominated John Quincy Adams, James Bayard, and Albert Gallatin, all in Europe, to the negotiations and added Speaker of the House Henry Clay and diplomat Jonathan Russell. They were soon confirmed by the Senate, whose members were in part pacified by Gallatin’s formal exit from the Treasury. Republicans who had been recalcitrant before could also
imagine Britain fast turning its attention to its former colonies.

  The news of Leipzig heartened Federalists, whose opposition to the war had been growing steadily more threatening. Some suspected that they were actually aiding the enemy. In December 1813, the British had extended their blockade to include New England, an action that trapped naval hero Stephen Decatur’s squadron in a Connecticut river. When a stormy night offered the chance for him to sail out of the harbor at New London, blue lights suddenly appeared onshore. He believed—and reported to the secretary of the navy—that they were signals to the British of his movements. Decatur’s story, fitting as it did into the pattern of extreme Federalist opposition to the war, was instantly picked up by Republicans, who began to use the phrase “Blue Light Federalists” to describe seditious opposition.39

  Madison managed to keep in mind that while Federalists might be aiding the enemy, they weren’t the enemy. When Governor Martin Chittenden of Vermont ordered his state’s militia, who were in New York under federal authority, to return home to protect Vermont, Congressman Solomon Sharp of Kentucky claimed the governor had thus enticed “soldiers in the service of the United States to desert” and demanded a federal prosecution. Apparently, with the encouragement of the president, the House tabled his motion.40

  But it was not possible to ignore events in Europe, particularly after the coalition allied against Napoleon entered France. The embargo that the United States had instituted in December 1813 could no longer be thought of as having any impact on Great Britain, since it could now trade with the entire European continent with the exception of France. Its main effect now was to drive down badly needed Treasury revenues and alienate New England. Swallowing his indignation about Americans provisioning British armies, President Madison asked Congress to repeal the embargo, which the two houses voted to do. Some Republicans were stunned by the change in policy, but Congressman John Calhoun, although no supporter of the embargo, pushed back against the charge of inconsistency. “Men cannot always go straightforward, but must regard the obstacles which impede their course,” he said. “Inconsistency consists in a change of conduct when there is no change of circumstances which justify it.” Federalists, on the other hand, were in a jubilant mood. Observed Representative Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, one of the Old Republicans, “They have all a smile on their countenances and look at each other as if they were the men which had brought this great and good work about.”41

  Madison, as though aware that the summer months would exceed in difficulty anything he had experienced as president thus far, decided to spend most of May in Montpelier. His crops there showed no effect from the previous summer’s drought, but Hessian fly was in evidence. The insect that Jefferson had studied during their 1791 tour of New York was now ravaging Virginia crops, but the damage to his wheat was hardly Madison’s biggest concern. He worried about what kind of military campaign the United States should wage given the changed circumstances of the world. And he worried about the man he had placed in charge of America’s military, John Armstrong. He was furious when he read in the National Intelligencer that Armstrong had, in the process of consolidating regiments, taken it upon himself to decide which general officers would stay and which go. That was a presidential prerogative. Wrote Madison to Armstrong in an icy tone, “You must have inferred more from my conversations than I could have meant to convey by anything in them on the subject.”42

  The thin-faced, haughty Armstrong had brought much-needed change to the army, moving younger men into general ranks, but he alienated nearly everyone with whom he worked, and the president was fast joining their numbers. Both men agreed that forty-seven-year-old Andrew Jackson, who had won notable victories in the South over a militant band of Creeks, should become a major general, but there was no opening. Thus the president decided to promote him to brigadier with a brevet (or promise) of major general when an opening occurred. When Madison received news from Armstrong that William Henry Harrison had resigned, creating such an opening, he responded that now Jackson could be moved directly into a major generalship but very specifically told Armstrong to wait until he, Madison, had returned to Washington: “I suspend a final decision, however, till I see you, which will be in two or three days after the arrival of this.” But the president arrived back in the capital to find that Armstrong, despite being told to wait, had already notified Jackson of his promotion to major general. Madison suspected that two factors were at work: Armstrong wanted to get the credit from Jackson for the promotion, and he wanted to eliminate any possibility of the president’s persuading Harrison, whom Armstrong did not like, to withdraw his resignation. Realizing that he needed to rein in his secretary of war, Madison began a detailed examination of Armstrong’s conduct of the war thus far, and he began sending him instructive memos on how he could improve his performance.43

  The news from Europe grew ever more unsettling. Napoleon had been deposed, and, reported Albert Gallatin in his clear-eyed way, “the numerous English forces in France, Italy, Holland, and Portugal, ready for immediate service and for which there is no further employment in Europe, afford to [the British] government the means of sending both to Canada and to the United States a very formidable army.” The British were also ready to “turn against us as much of their superabundant naval forces as they may think adequate to any object they have in view.” An expanded war effort against America would be well received by the British public, Gallatin noted. “In the intoxication of an unexpected success, which they ascribe to themselves, the English people eagerly wish that their pride may be fully gratified by what they call the ‘punishment of America.’” Gallatin and Bayard, writing together, reported that the British ministry was being petitioned to demand concessions from the United States, including restrictions on American commerce and fisheries and control of the great inland lakes. It was hardly the time, they observed, for the United States to be making demands about impressment, particularly since it could well become an abstract issue. With the defeat of France, the British would no longer be desperate to build up naval manpower. On June 27 the cabinet met and agreed to change instructions to the negotiators, authorizing them to conclude a treaty silent on the matter. On hearing the news, the French minister commented to his government, “The cabinet is frightened.”44 They had good reason to be concerned.

  The British were almost certain to launch a major attack; the only question was where. On the Niagara front, at the Battles of Chippawa and Lundy’s Lane, a new generation of military leaders, including Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott, were demonstrating that American regulars and even militia, well drilled and well commanded, were the equal of British regulars, but how would they fare as more British troops poured in? The entire eastern coastline was vulnerable, and in June the president began to think that Washington might be a prime target. His cabinet members were not convinced. The false alarm of the previous summer might have influenced their thinking, and they also believed that the British would attack locations of more strategic significance. Washington was, in the words of one of them, “a meager village,” its inhabitants numbering little more than eight thousand. The prosperous port of Baltimore was more inviting, and as the secretary of war, the most skeptical member of the cabinet, noted, it could be attacked with some rapidity, whereas Washington had to be approached by either the Potomac (“long and sinuous”) or the Patuxent, which would require an overland march of some twenty miles.45

  But the president, understanding “the éclat” that the British would gain by a successful attack on the capital, summoned his cabinet to a July 1 meeting from which emerged specific recommendations: create a tenth military district that would include Washington, Annapolis, and Baltimore; immediately establish a force of more than three thousand to defend the new district; hold in readiness in their jurisdictions ten thousand militiamen from the District of Columbia and neighboring states; and create caches of military equipment and arms to be readily available in an emergency. There was no dissent, wh
ich likely gave the president confidence the plan would be executed—a false confidence, it would turn out.46

  One important failure occurred as a result of Brigadier General William Winder’s having less effective connections than had been thought. Winder was assigned to command the newly created military district in large part because his uncle was the Federalist governor of Maryland and Winder was believed likely to be able to gain his cooperation. Winder traveled to Annapolis, where Levin Winder, the governor, offered reassurances about fielding the initial force of three thousand but ultimately delivered fewer than three hundred.47

  Other failures came about because of the lack of urgency that the secretary of war attached to the situation. On July 17 he wrote to Winder authorizing him to notify Pennsylvania to ready five thousand militiamen and Virginia to ready two thousand for the Tenth Military District. By this time Armstrong had received word of a new British squadron in the Chesapeake and suggested that it might be a “precursor of the main fleet,” but he did nothing to ensure that his letter reached Winder, who was traveling around the Tenth District. It would be more than three weeks before Winder got the notice, far too late for action upon it to aid in the defense of Washington.48

  Armstrong’s apathy might have been a result of his conviction that the British would not attack Washington, but it is also the case that few people have risen as high as he with as low a level of industriousness. His biographer, C. Edward Skeen, noted that Armstrong freely admitted to lacking diligence and loving ease. He might also have been encouraged in his naturally indolent ways by Madison’s continuing examination of his department. On August 13 the president sent him a memorandum in which he made clear that he was tired of reading in the newspaper about actions on which he should have been consulted. Henceforth, Armstrong was to check first on matters involving the “responsibility of the president,” such as making notifications of commissions or issuing directives to the commanders of military districts, corps, or stations concerning military movements.49 To a person who found it difficult to gear himself up for action in any case, this might have seemed like an invitation not to bother. Armstrong was also both proud and petulant, and being told that he had to get certain of his ideas approved might have determined him to cease making suggestions altogether.