James and Dolley Madison

by Bruce Chadwick

  By the beginning of the winter of 1808, most people in America thought there was going to be a war. “If by mid-summer [of 1809] the [embargo] does not occasion a relaxation in the belligerents a war will be substitute. The people are quite up to the war,” wrote Congressman Joseph Story.16

  The press predicted war as well. “As in all affairs that are human no god is without the ally of evil,” wrote the editor of the Aurora, the pro-Republican newspaper in Philadelphia, of the British just prior to Madison's inauguration.17

  The editor was not the only American convinced of the inevitability of conflict; so was Dolley Madison. She wrote bluntly to her sister early in 1809, “It is likely there will be a war.”18

  James Madison, too, felt that war was inevitable. “Few are desirous of war, and few are reconciled to submission, yet the frustration of intermediate courses seems to have left scarce an escape from that dilemma,” he said on New Year's Day 1810.19

  Some people had thought that more than ten years earlier, when Jefferson took office. “There is a mass of violence and passion in the party which seems to me disposed to press on to war…[the administration] will use all means to excite the resentment and the hate of the people against England,” wrote John Marshall in 1801, before he was chief justice.20

  Even Jefferson foresaw war as the embargo failed. “War will become preferable to the continuance of the embargo after a certain time,” he told Madison at the end of 1808.21

  The rage against the embargo was so great that a small group of unhappy residents in New England tried to get their states to secede from the United States in order to protect their economy. “If the patriots of the revolution had refused to submit to privations equal to [that] of the embargo what would have been the condition of America now?” wailed a writer in the Aurora. The editor of the Lexington, Kentucky, Reporter reminded all that “the federal papers in the eastern states are openly an unblushingly advocating a dissolution of the union.”22

  Instead of seeing this as a telltale sign that a growing portion of the people were against the embargo, Secretary Madison only saw those against it as traitors. Instead of dealing with them in a diplomatic way, he excoriated them publicly and called them names. He said he could not believe that there was “so much depravity and stupidity” among the New Englanders. He vented every time he had the opportunity. On threatened secession, he railed that “such a project may lurk within a junto ready to sacrifice the rights, interests and honor of their country, to their ambitious or vindictive views.”23

  He had fumed to everybody that the embargo was the right policy. He wrote Pinckney in the spring of 1808 that the embargo was correct and that most Americans supported it, which they did not. He told Pinckney that public opinion in Great Britain would overwhelm the government. It faced “the distresses of the West Indies, the discontents at home [and] the alienation of [American] habits from their manufacture.”24

  He was wrong.

  To the day it was repealed, Madison never admitted that he had made a catastrophic mistake. “If it failed, it was because the government did not sufficiently distrust those…whose successful violations of the law led to…its repeal.” he wrote.25

  And, too, there were always organizations or politicians he could point to as supporters of the embargo and a major reason he had embraced it and held onto his support of it. After all, President Jefferson had supported it every single day that it was law. The problem with Jefferson, though, critics said, was that he was in favor of it because he never took time to try to understand why so many were against it. Madison was delighted with a letter Jefferson received from a large group of citizens in Maryland, in early February 1809, that offered continued support for the embargo as a way to strike back at England. Jefferson had responded by telling the Marylanders that “the aggressions and injuries of the belligerent nations have been the real obstructions which have interrupted our commerce and now threaten our peace…embargo laws were indispensable.”26

  Surprisingly, one of the few people in the American government to realize the failure of the embargo was Dolley Madison, who had lectured her husband on it without success. Dolley, who feared the embargo would not work and that war would follow, and who listened to her husband explain it but also listened to her diplomatic and business friends denounce it, said that “the President and Madison have been greatly perplexed by the remonstrances from so many towns to remove the embargo…the evading it is a terrible thing. Madison is uneasy.”27

  Madison's error in supporting it went back to one of his own fundamental warnings about democratic government, that no government is without fault and the legislator or cabinet officer was not born who did not make mistakes—and refuse to admit it. “The problem to be solved,” he believed about democracy, “is not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.”28

  The embargo had been imperfect, and so had Madison.

  The inauguration of James Madison as the nation's fourth president was a day full of music, cheering, and wild celebrations in every nook and cranny of Washington, DC. When the sun rose early that morning, everyone in the capital knew it was a special day because the big artillery guns at the Navy Yard and at nearby Fort Warburton roared out a loud, smoky welcome to the city as a reminder of the inauguration. Troops of smartly dressed, uniformed soldiers from Georgetown and Alexandria marched to Washington to accompany President-elect Madison and his wife, Dolley, to the House of Representatives chamber, where he was sworn in as the fourth president of the United States. Thousands, some who had driven for miles for the event, packed the parade route taken by the soldiers and the Madisons. “The House of Representatives was very much crowded, and its appearance very magnificent,” said John Quincy Adams, who was there.1

  The morning gossip was full of news about that night's upcoming inaugural ball and the recently repealed embargo, a congressional move in February that saddened Madison but gave most in the country much relief. The House galleries were jammed with men and women attired in their finest suits and dresses. Madison, a slight man dressed in black, smiled a bit as he looked out at the crowd that pushed its way into every available square foot of space in the chamber and placed his hand on the Bible. The oath was delivered by Chief Justice John Marshall, who towered over Madison and dominated the scene with his huge frame and deep, black, penetrating eyes.

  Looking back, Madison's election seemed easy even though it did not appear that way just a few months before the process began. There had been some stiff opposition to his elevation to the presidency. The hatred of the Embargo Act was considerable, especially in New England, and even worse was the public anger at Madison, and Jefferson, for clinging to it after so many charged that it was a calamity. Most of the Senate's business in the last few months had been the debates over the successful repeal of the embargo, and they had filled the front pages of most newspapers.2 Ironically, Republicans who loved Jefferson refused to blame him, their sainted hero, for the embargo, so they blamed Madison instead.3

  The Federalists opposed to Jefferson charged that Madison's administration would just be an extension of his; they were best friends. Some joked that if they were in a law firm, Jefferson was the senior partner and Madison the junior partner. New England electors were vehemently against him from the start of the campaign. All of the Federalists were opposed to him. Many did not want the line of Virginia presidents to continue and were against Madison for that reason. In his own party, eccentric Virginia congressman John Randolph, who had hated him for years, mounted a campaign to get James Monroe elected and even started his own, small political party, the “Quids,” to do so. The Quids loudly rallied around Monroe.4

  Randolph never fretted about President Madison's animosity toward him and his years-long campaign to derail Madison's career. “When the President has done well, I will claim the right of approving him and I would say ‘well-done thou good and faithful servant’ and in so doing I am permitted to say ‘ill done thou bad an
d faithless servant.’ Where we have a right to praise, we have a right to dispraise,” the arrogant Randolph said in Congress.5

  Randolph was one of the Congress's more colorful members. A scion of the wealthy and influential Virginia Randolph family, John was an elegant dresser in and out of Congress and took his two pet dogs everywhere, including the congressional chamber. He never wore a wig or powdered his hair and kept his light-brown hair short. He suffered a childhood disease that damaged his throat; his voice remained high-pitched all of his life.

  Over the last few years, Randolph aroused controversy wherever he went. He was chosen as the chief prosecutor in the Senate impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, who caused controversies with his antipress rulings in Alien and Sedition trials, and he bungled the attack on the justice, who was acquitted. Worse, he insulted those who questioned his authority at the trial and publicly humiliated others. He always had a hard time controlling his temper. A year after the Chase trial, angry that the administration did not do something the way he suggested, he took a sudden vacation and went home, stranding the Ways and Means Committee without its chair and making it impossible for any Senate business to be completed. Shortly after that, enraged at both Jefferson and Madison over misdirected plans to purchase Florida, Randolph scorched both men, and others, in several House tirades. Senator Samuel Smith wrote that “Randolph expects that…a public explosion of our views and plans will render abortive this negotiation and render the Executive and poor little Madison unpopular…. However, he spares nobody and by his conduct has compelled all to rally around the Executive for their own preservation.”6

  Years before, just after Jefferson's first election, Randolph had criticized Jefferson and Madison and suggested that everything they did was not to benefit the country but to make it possible for Madison to succeed Jefferson as president.

  Both Samuel Smith and John Randolph were members of a powerful Senate and House political faction nicknamed “the Invisibles” because they were publicly together on many issues but split, and “invisible,” on others. Other members of the group were Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith, Samuel's brother; Jefferson's friend Wilson Nicholas; William Giles; Dr. Samuel Mitchill; and Michael Leib.7

  Senator Smith scorned Randolph, Madison, and all of the Republican Virginians, whom he saw as part of the “House of Austria,” as denouncers referred to Virginia politicians. Smith accused them of scheming to line up Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and perhaps others to permit Virginia control the country forever. Many others felt the same way.8

  Madison's presidential aspirations benefited from having Jefferson's blessing and being in the heavily favored and ever-growing Republican Party. The Federalist Party had just about collapsed during the previous four years and had little strength left on either the national or the state level.

  Congressional delegations met to decide party candidates in that era, following popular votes in some states that were seen by congressmen as barometers of the people's views. Some states held caucuses (just to show his true strength, Madison defeated Monroe handily in the Virginia caucus and, in a popular vote, defeated him in a landslide, 14,665 to 3,468).9 The Madisonian Republicans were so strong in Virginia that they also controlled seventeen of the twenty-four seats in the Richmond city council. Madison was nominated as the Republican candidate along with ailing vice president, George Clinton, who died soon after the election, and Federalist candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.

  The Federalist newspapers were against Madison (he was often called “an accommodating trimmer” and said to be antibusiness and a weak leader), and the Republican newspapers were for him. The Federalists saw him as an extension of Thomas Jefferson, and they loathed the third president. Jefferson was accused of “shameful doings” and Federalist editors were glad he was leaving office so he could no longer “deceive the people.” These editors saw a Madison presidency as “gloomy and alarming.”10 The editor of the Washington Expositor quoted a critic who charged that the congressional caucus that nominated the secretary of state did so unfairly and its actions were “in direct hostility to the principles of the Constitution and a gross assumption of power not delegated by the people.”11 In another issue, a writer using a pseudonym in the Expositor, who supported George Clinton, the longtime New York politician who was famous for his bushy eyebrows, argued that Madison was going to be president because he could cajole the congressional caucus into selecting him, ignoring the wishes of the people. Another writer in the Expositor said the idea that anyone would serve more than two terms after Washington had set that as a limit was ridiculous.12

  Impressment of sailors was an important election issue. Everybody wanted Jefferson, and now Madison, to do something to stop the constant kidnapping of American seaman by the British, even those who did not favor the embargo. Across the country, dozens of large and glamorous balls were staged to raise money to help the families of seamen sitting in British prisons or forced to work on British ships. Studies, including one ordered by Madison, showed that since impressment of American sailors had started in 1803, nearly three thousand had been taken and put aboard British ships, and were still there.13

  One reason for Madison's election, Senator Mitchill told friends, was the ability of his glamorous wife, Dolley, to make her husband look “presidential” at her many soirees and the inability of either Pinckney or Clinton to do the same. “The former [Madison] gives dinners and makes generous displays to the members [of Congress]. The latter [Clinton] lives snug at his lodgings and keeps aloof from such captivating exhibitions. Mr. M is going greatly ahead of him,” he said.14

  The Madisons clearly understood that they had to use their social skills as well as their political skills to win over members of the congressional caucus who would nominate men for president, and they did. Neither Madison nor his wife ever actually discussed the upcoming election at their parties, but that was the clear goal. They wanted everybody to see Madison as a likable and skilled man, someone you wanted to run the country. It was subtle and it was powerful, and it was all carefully, and skillfully, managed by Dolley. She had been doing this work for her husband as secretary of state for eight years and had been very successful at it. This effort to get him the presidency was just one more step in her social/political program.

  Another reason for his election was that Jefferson and Madison had talked up Madison's succession as a fait accompli for more than six months. The thinking in Washington, too, was that young Monroe could wait his turn to be president, and in the coming four or eight years gain even more experience with which to be a good chief executive. With Madison following Jefferson and Monroe next in line, the Republicans lined up three presidents in a row. One writer who supported Monroe gave up hope and said that “Mr. Madison would be acquiesced in” and that this “had been understood and agreed upon by the friends of both parties.”15

  There were more than twice as many Republican newspapers as Federalist, and their editors pushed Madison's candidacy everywhere. The Aurora wrote that “since the [Revolutionary] war, Mr. Madison has been in public life discharging a train of successive trusts with uniform superiority of talents and uniform purity of character.”16

  Madison had his supporters. British minister Foster, who knew him well, said of him that he was “social, jovial, and good humored companion full of anecdotes and sometimes matters of a loose description relating to old times, but oftener of a political and historical interest…he was a little man, with small features but occasionally lit up with a good-natured smile.”17

  National Intelligencer editor Smith, his longtime friend, went to a number of parties with Madison and remembered him as a cheerful companion. He always told friends the story that at one party, the usually solemn Madison recommended that everybody drink champagne all night. “[He said that] more than a few glasses always produced a headache the next day. This was the very time to try the experiment, as the next day being Sunday would allow time for a recovery from i
ts effects…. So, bottle after bottle came in.”18

  There were politicians, such as John Quincy Adams, who believed Madison was right in his embargo, even if had not worked. Adams felt that Madison's new Non-Intercourse Act, a watered-down bill passed after the embargo was eliminated, was a good idea, too. “Our intercourse with foreign nations…requires live oak hearts and iron or brazen mouths to speak that they may be distinctly heard, or attentively listened to, by the distant ear of foreigners,” he wrote.19

  And, of course, Madison had his detractors. John Beckley, the clerk to the House of Representatives, represented them all. “Madison is deemed by many [to be] too timid and indecisive a statesman, and too liable to a conduct of forbearance to the Federal party which may endanger our harmony and political safety,” he said.20

  John Randolph was always against Madison. When all of his protests against the president failed, Randolph always retreated to Madison's retirement from Congress in 1796. “In the hour or terror and persecution, he deserted his post and sought in obscurity and retirement a shelter from the political tempest,” he wrote, and he added that Madison had been retreating from the Republicans’ old principals.21

  Randolph was said to be the author of a statement signed by seventeen angry Republicans against Madison. It read, “We ask for energy and we are told [Madison's] moderation. We ask for talents and the reply is his unassuming merit. We ask for his services in the cause of public liberty and we are directed to the pages of The Federalist…. We ask for that high and honorable sense of duty which would at all times turn with loathing and abhorrance [sic] from any compromise with fraud and speculation. We ask in vain.”22

  As early as 1803, during talks about the proposed sale of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States, Randolph was criticizing Madison in Congress. He said that he was not a tough diplomat, but that his friend Jefferson always made him out to appear that way.23