James Madison: A Life Reconsidered

by Lynne Cheney

  At Mount Vernon, Gay Hart Gaines, former regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, provided many opportunities for me to visit Washington’s lovely home. We spent one early summer evening on the piazza at Mount Vernon with a full moon overhead. It was a reminder that although much separates us from the eighteenth century, there are timeless aspects of life on this earth that connect us.

  At James Monroe’s home, Dorothy Brown was my informative guide, and I would like to thank her as well as Jarod Kearney, the curator of the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I would also like to acknowledge the generous assistance of Michele R. Lee, the librarian and archivist at Gunston Hall, George Mason’s home, and Judith S. Hynson, director of research and library collections at Stratford Hall, fabled home of the Lees. Thanks as well to archivist Elise Allison at the Greensboro Historical Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. Gratitude also to Clive and Susan Duval for having graciously welcomed me into their home, Salona, where Madison is said to have spent the night of August 24, 1814.

  J. C. A. Stagg, David B. Mattern, Ralph Ketcham, Catherine Allgor, and Holly C. Shulman, whose staggering contributions to Madison scholarship are acknowledged in the prologue to this book, were kind enough to read the manuscript, as were Celeste Colgan and Janet Rogers. This outstanding group was wise in its guidance, saved me from mistakes—and any that remain are entirely my own.

  As I described in this book, John Payne Todd, Madison’s stepson, regularly pilfered things from Montpelier and sold them, which is one of the reasons that uncataloged Madison documents remain in private hands. If someone tells you that he or she has a Madison letter, you should listen carefully, as I did to Robert Shannahan, a friend from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Bob, in fact, has two important letters, which he generously shared.

  I want to thank the American Enterprise Institute for supporting my work on James Madison. I would particularly like to acknowledge Arthur C. Brooks, AEI’s dynamic president, and Karlyn Bowman, who in addition to writing insightful articles on public opinion keeps those of us who work in the humanities from disappearing into our libraries. AEI attracts amazing young people to work as research assistants, and two of the best aided me in writing this book. I would like to thank the smart, creative, and meticulous Hannah Gray, who knows what questions to ask, finds the right answers with astonishing speed, and brings a cheerful, can-do attitude to every task. Indeed, I have yet to find an assignment she cannot fulfill. Here is a prediction: we will all be hearing about Hannah in the future. Her predecessor, Cristina Allegretti, my right-hand person in the first years of writing this book, is sharp, efficient, and organized, with a great eye for detail that will serve her well in the years ahead. I want to thank her for her tireless efforts on this project and congratulate her as she finishes Columbia Business School and launches what I am certain will be a very successful career. I also want to thank the bright and hardworking interns who undertook various tasks: Gabriella Angeloni, Sarah Balakrishnan, Karen Brentano, Rachel Elias, Jeffrey Gerlomes, Elizabeth Gunnell, Julia Harvey, Lauren Hewitt, Margaret Inomata, Christina Johannsen, Steven Lindsay, Annelise Madison, Meredith Manning, Marissa Miller, Cars Paulan, Camille Santrach, and Lindsay Schare.

  I end these acknowledgments by expressing gratitude to my husband, Dick Cheney, first and foremost for his love and support. I also thank him for the longtime front-row seat I have had on congressional and presidential politics. That experience has been invaluable in helping me understand—and I hope convey—what a master of the political arts James Madison was.

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS

  Repositories and Collections

  LCLibrary of Congress.

  LC-GWLibrary of Congress, George Washington Papers.

  LC-JMLibrary of Congress, James Madison Papers, series 1, unless otherwise indicated.

  LC-TJLibrary of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Papers, series 1, unless otherwise indicated.

  UVAUniversity of Virginia.

  Abbreviated Titles

  ASP-FR American State Papers, Foreign Relations. Edited by Walter Lowrie, Matthew St. Claire Clarke, Walter S. Franklin, Asbury Dickins, and James C. Allen. 6 vols. Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1833–1858.

  ASP-MAAmerican State Papers, Military Affairs. Edited by Walter Lowrie, Matthew St. Claire Clarke, Walter S. Franklin, Asbury Dickins, and John W. Forney. 7 vols. Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832–1861.

  PMHBPennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.

  VMHBVirginia Magazine of History and Biography.

  Published Papers from the Founding Period

  DHRCDocumentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.

  PDMPapers of Dolley Madison Digital Edition.

  PHPapers of Alexander Hamilton.

  PJPapers of Thomas Jefferson.

  PMCPapers of James Madison, Congressional Series.

  PMPPapers of James Madison, Presidential Series.

  PMRPapers of James Madison, Retirement Series.

  PMSPapers of James Madison, Secretary of State Series.

  PWCEPapers of George Washington, Confederation Series.

  PWDPapers of George Washington, Diaries.

  PWPPapers of George Washington, Presidential Series.

  PWRPapers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series.

  PWRTPapers of George Washington, Retirement Series.

  PROLOGUE

  1.Grigsby, Virginia Convention of 1776, 36n; Billy G. Smith, “Lower Sort,” 33–36; Lippincott, Early Philadelphia, 51–54; Cutler and Cutler, Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, 1:271–72; “Meteorological Observations.” In quotations throughout this book, spelling and punctuation have, with a few exceptions, been modernized, and abbreviations have been written out. Although writers of the period covered in the book underscored words more often than twenty-first-century writers do, their underscorings have been reproduced by italicizing them because they provide useful hints about what the writers wanted their readers to pay attention to. When dates for documents were uncertain, the best estimates of documentary editors have been accepted.

  2.Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 1:362–63; Terrio, Philadelphia 1787; Grigsby, History of the Virginia Federal Convention, 1:96.

  3.Dunbar, History of Travel in America, 1:174; Annette Kolodny, ed., “The Travel Diary of Elizabeth House Trist: Philadelphia to Natchez, 1783–84,” in Journeys in New Worlds, 185–95. In PMC, 9:409, to William Irvine, May 5, 1787, Madison wrote that he left New York “on Thursday last,” which was May 3, 1787. He probably crossed the river to Paulus Hook that evening in order to catch the Flying Machine, a stage that left for Philadelphia on Friday mornings and arrived there Saturday afternoon.

  4.Rives Papers, Coles to Grigsby, Dec. 23, 1854; Grigsby, History of the Virginia Federal Convention, 1:95; Jefferson, Autobiography, 55.

  5.Joseph Addison, “No. 231,” Spectator, 2:92, Nov. 24, 1711.

  6.Rives, Life and Times of James Madison, 2:612n.

  7.Jefferson, Autobiography, 55; PMC 1:194, from Samuel Stanhope Smith, Nov. 1777–Aug. 1778; Farrand, Records, 3:94–95, William Pierce, “Character Sketches of Delegates to the Federal Convention.”

  8.PJ, 7:97, from Eliza Trist, April 13, 1784; De Coppet Collection, Madison to Delaplaine, memo, Sept. 1816; Brant, Madison, 1:106–7.

  9.Rives Papers, Coles to Grigsby, Dec. 23, 1854.

  10.PMC, 10:269, Federalist 10, Nov. 22, 1787.

  11.Gordon Wood described this transformation as “the end of classical politics” in Creation of the American Republic, 606–7.

  12.Howe, Genius Explained, 14–15; Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music, 199; Gladwell, Outliers, 40–41; Isaacson, Einstein, 36.

  13.PMC, 1:101, to William Bradford, Dec. 1, 1773.

  14.PMC, 8:474, 501, to Jefferson, Jan. 22 and March 18, 1786.

  15.Howe, Genius Explained, 3; Isaacson, Einstein, 36, 90–140; Howard Gardn
er describes the “acid test” of large-scale creativity as being whether the creative person changes the domain in which he or she works in Intelligence Reframed, 116.

  16.PJ, 14:650, to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789; PMC, 14:371, “A Candid State of Parties,” National Gazette, Sept. 22, 1792.

  17.Adams-Jefferson Letters, 508, Adams to Jefferson, Feb. 2, 1817.

  18.Ingersoll, Historical Sketch, 1:260; McCoy, Last of the Fathers, 25–26.

  19.Another two volumes of Madison’s papers are planned for the presidential series and an estimated eleven additional volumes for the years he was secretary of state and in retirement.

  Chapter 1: SUNLIGHT AND SHADOWS

  1.Nugent, Cavaliers and Pioneers, 1:280.

  2.Ibid., 280, 350, 369, 389, 466, 469, 565–66.

  3.[Old] Rappahannock County Deed Book 7, 26–27; Jones, Present State of Virginia, 34; Miller, Short Life and Strange Death of Ambrose Madison, 7, 36n7; Nugent, Cavaliers and Pioneers, 2:255; Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, 3:147, 371; Boorstin, Americans, 111; Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves, 267; Horn, Adapting to a New World, 188–89.

  4.Miller, Short Life and Strange Death of Ambrose Madison, 51–52.

  5.Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, 4:172; Miller, Short Life and Strange Death of Ambrose Madison, 23–25, 81; Taylor, American Colonies, 153; Boorstin, Americans, 100–101; Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves, 320; Baylor Family Papers, Baylor Ledger no. 1, 155.

  6.Miller, Short Life and Strange Death of Ambrose Madison, 25–28.

  7.Chambers, Murder at Montpelier, 68; Miller, Short Life and Strange Death of Ambrose Madison, 67.

  8.Meade, Old Churches, 2:96; PMC, 1:190, 191n2, to Madison Sr., March 29, 1777.

  9.“Will of Ambrose Madison, 1732,” in “Notes and Queries,” 434–35; Orange County Deed Book 2, 11.

  10.Orange County Deed Book 2, 11–12; Horn, Adapting to a New World, 316–21; Dorman, Orange County, Virginia: Deed Books 1 and 2, 1735–1738; Judgments, 1735, 33–37.

  11.Jones, Present State of Virginia, 39; Middleton, Tobacco Coast, 111–13; Breen, Tobacco Culture, 46–53.

  12.Madison Sr. Account Book, 1744–1755; Shane Collection, Presbyterian Historical Society, Madison Family Papers, invoice from John Maynard & Son, Feb. 21, 1742, and invoice from Hunt & Waterman, March 16, 1749.

  13.Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves, 79; Madison Sr. Account Book, 1744–1755; Shane Collection, Presbyterian Historical Society, Madison Family Papers, Madison Sr. Account Book, 1755–1763; W. W. Scott, History of Orange County, Virginia, 73.

  14.Hayden, Virginia Genealogies, 244.

  15.Hunt, Life of James Madison, 22; LC-JM, Chew to Madison Sr., Sept. 6, 1749, and May 21, 1750.

  16.Madison Sr. Account Book, 1744–1755.

  17.Reeves and Fogle, “Excavations at the Madisons’ First Home, Mount Pleasant,” 17.

  18.Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 158–61.

  19.Aristotle, Problems II, 155.

  20.Madison Sr. Account Book, 1744–1755; Shane Collection, Presbyterian Historical Society, Madison Family Papers, “List of Drugs for Mrs. F. Madison,” Oct. 11, 1753; Quincy, Complete English Dispensatory, 73, 82, 84, 112–13, 169–70, 172–74, 178–79, 290–94, 495; Hill, History of the Materia Medica, 125.

  21.“Febrile Seizures Fact Sheet,” National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/febrile_seizures/detail_febrile_seizures.htm; Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson, 252, Martha Randolph to Jefferson, Jan. 14, 1804.

  22.Interview with Dr. Orrin Devinsky, director, Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, Langone Medical Center, New York University, May 10, 2009; Devinsky to author, e-mail, Sept. 22, 2013; De Coppet Collection, Madison to Delaplaine, memo, Sept. 1816.

  23.Richard Steele, “No. 20,” “No. 340,” and “No. 154,” Spectator, March 23, 1711, 1:80; March 31, 1712, 2:484; Aug. 27, 1711, 1:529; “James Madison’s Autobiography,” 197.

  24.Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves, 104–7; Burnaby, Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North-America, 25.

  25.Shane Collection, Presbyterian Historical Society, Madison Family Papers, Madison Sr. Account Book, 1755–1763; Fithian, Journal and Letters, 63–64.

  26.W. W. Scott, History of Orange County, Virginia, 43; Meade, Old Churches, 2:86, 98; Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and Social Structure in Virginia,” in Seventeenth-Century America, 111.

  27.Meade, Old Churches, 2:89; “James Madison’s Autobiography,” 197; Brant, Madison, 1:64.

  28.LC-JM, ser. 6, “A Brief System of Logick”; PMC, 1:32–37, “Notes on a Brief System of Logick,” 1766–1772. The name James A. Garlick, written on the cover of this book, connects it to Madison’s time at Robertson’s school, when at least two students named Garlick attended. The initials “hB” doodled twice on one of the book’s first pages might also connect it to Robertson’s, where Horace Bruckner was Madison’s fellow student in the Latin curriculum for several years.

  29.LC-JM, ser. 6, “A Brief System of Logick”; PMC, 1:36, “Notes on a Brief System of Logick,” 1766–1772.

  30.Miller, “Historic Structure Report,” 41; Reeves and Fogle, “Excavations at the Madisons’ First Home, Mount Pleasant,” 10.

  31.W. W. Scott, History of Orange County, Virginia, 208.

  32.Proceedings and Addresses at the Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Founding of the Cliosophic Society of the College of New Jersey, 9.

  33.Richard A. Harrison, Princetonians, xix; Malone, Jefferson, 1:52; “James Madison’s Autobiography,” 197.

  34.Brant, Madison, 1:411n1; Jefferson, Memorandum Books, 1:397–98, reports this route; Burnaby, Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North-America, 82; Fithian, Journal and Letters, 152–54, 168–69, also describes crossing the Chesapeake.

  35.Burnaby, Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North-America, 93–94.

  36.De Chastellux, Travels in North-America, 160; PMC, 1:43, to Martin, Aug. 10, 1769.

  37.Fithian, Journal and Letters, 7–8.

  38.PMC, 1:78, from Freneau, Nov. 22, 1772; 1:83, to Bradford, April 28, 1773.

  39.Fithian, Journal and Letters, 256–57; Looney, Nurseries of Letters and Republicanism, 4–8; PMC, 1:65, “Collegiate Doggerel,” June 1771–April 1772.

  40.Collins, Princeton, 75–76; PMC, 1:50, to Madison Sr., July 23, 1770.

  41.Woods, John Witherspoon, 40; Witherspoon, “Lectures on Moral Philosophy,” in Works, 3:407, 419; Morrison, John Witherspoon, 4.

  42.Morrison, John Witherspoon, 72, 130.

  43.Collins, Princeton, 63; Wertenbaker, Princeton, 72.

  44.Rice, Rittenhouse Orrery, 33; Bruff, “The Federalist Papers: The Framers Construct an Orrery,” 7.

  45.Rice, Rittenhouse Orrery, 73.

  46.Witherspoon, “Introductory Lecture on Divinity,” in Works, 4:46; Green, Witherspoon, 122, 132; Edwards, Works, 26:93.

  47.Witherspoon, “Lectures on Moral Philosophy,” in Works, 3:367–68.

  48.PMC, 1:46, to Madison Sr., Sept. 30, 1769.

  49.“James Madison’s Autobiography,” 197; PMC, 1:68, 69n1, to Madison Sr., Oct. 9, 1771; De Coppet Collection, Madison to Delaplaine, memo, Sept. 1816; Devinsky, Epilepsy, 61.

  50.PMC, 1:194, from Samuel Stanhope Smith, Nov. 1777–Aug. 1778; Witherspoon, “Introductory Lecture on Divinity,” in Works, 4:43, 47.

  51.Aristotle, Problems II, 155; Hippocrates, Medical Works, 179.

  52.Temkin, Falling Sickness, 92, 221–23; Churchwell, “Epilepsy and Holy Orders in the Canonical Practice of the Western Church,” 67; Harle, Historical Essay on the State of Physick, 22. The canon law of the Catholic Church, promulgated in 1918, maintained that those “who either are or have been epileptics, madmen, or possessed by a demon” could not be ordained. Churchwell, “Epilepsy and Holy Orders in the Canonical Practice of the Western Church,” 172. References to people with epilepsy and demoniacs were removed in 198
3.

  53.De Coppet Collection, Madison to Delaplaine, memo, Sept. 1816; Vickers, Coleridge and the Doctors, 134–43.

  54.Witherspoon Collection, “Titles of Volumes Once Belonging to President Witherspoon and Bought by the College from President Smith”; Tait, Piety of John Witherspoon, 197; Clarke, Paraphrase on the Four Evangelists, 1:115; Catalogue of Books in the Library of the College of New Jersey, 26; Eadie and Bladin, Disease Once Sacred, 85, 171.

  55.PMC, 1:4–7, “Commonplace Book: Editorial Note”; 1:7, 13–14, “Commonplace Book,” 1759–1772; de Retz, Memoirs, 2:307.

  56.Locke, Some Familiar Letters, 280, from Dr. Molyneux, Dec. 20, 1692; PMC, 1:21, “Commonplace Book,” 1759–1772.

  Chapter 2: SEASON OF DISCONTENT

  1.PMC, 1:74–75, to Bradford, Nov. 9, 1772.

  2.Shane Collection, Presbyterian Historical Society, Madison Family Papers, Madison Sr. to Clay and Midgley, Aug. 4, 1770; Orange County Will Book 4, 56, “Inventory of the Estate of James Madison Deceased,” Sept. 1, 1801; Burkitt, Expository Notes with Practical Observations, 37–38.

  3.PMC, 1:52, “Notes on Commentary on the Bible,” 1770–1773; Burkitt, Expository Notes with Practical Observations, 284.

  4.PMC, 1:52–57, 59n18, “Notes on Commentary on the Bible,” 1770–1773.

  5.PMC, 1:76, to Bradford, Nov. 9, 1772; “James Madison’s Autobiography,” 198; Orange County Will Book 4, 56–57, “Inventory of the Estate of James Madison Deceased.” Some of the books in the inventory were likely acquired after 1772; the ones discussed were all published long before.

  6.Todd, Imagining Monsters, 1–7; Blondel, Power of the Mother’s Imagination over the Foetus Examin’d, xi, 40–42, 53–54.

  7.Temkin, Falling Sickness, 229.

  8.PMC, 1:80, from Bradford, March 1, 1773.

  9.PMC, 1:84, to Bradford, April 28, 1773; Orange County Will Book 4, 56, “Inventory of the Estate of James Madison Deceased”; Wesley, Primitive Physic, iv, vii, ix.

  10.Wesley, Primitive Physic, x; Blondel, Power of the Mother’s Imagination over the Foetus Examin’d, 95–96; PMC, 1:84, to Bradford, April 28, 1773. See also Cheyne, Essay of Health and Long Life, 159.