James and Dolley Madison

by Bruce Chadwick

  British diplomats resisted every effort by Americans to talk them out of their policies. The Brits argued that under a 1756 law, they had the right to stop the ships of all countries trading with a wartime enemy, and that enemy was France. The British had every reason to suspect, too, that—like so many European wars—the conflict with Napoleon and France might last many years. They could not permit America to trade with Napoleon. The Americans argued that they were a neutral nation and were sending only commercial goods, not arms, to Napoleon. The stone-faced British refused to listen.

  John Quincy Adams even argued that Britain's action betrayed its own history and Constitution. “[It] is justified on the plea of necessity which being above all law, claims equal exemption from responsibility to the tribunal of reason,” he wrote, adding that he cheered Madison's tenacity.1

  That tenacity never wavered. Madison was, and would remain throughout his entire presidency, furious with the British. He wrote Jefferson in 1809 that the new British ministry was laden with “quackeries and corruption.” He said it was going from bad to worse and he saw no change for the better in the future. Jefferson, as angry as he, wrote back that he could not believe the British public went along with its government on their anti-American policies. “They are on the point of being blown up and they still proceed with the same madness and increased wickedness,” he wrote.2

  Madison's conversation and correspondence was dominated by his woes with England. The time and energy he had to spend on the British trouble left him little time to address domestic problems that grew each year.

  Why should the British be interested in any agreement, British supporters asked. Britain ruled the high seas; had the largest navy in the world; were officially at war with France; and had the right to stop neutrals such as the United States from aiding and abetting its enemy.

  There was another reason, though—revenge. England continued to smart from its catastrophic defeat in the American Revolution. The empire had lost the war to George Washington and his armies and also had been forced into fighting a far-ranging and very costly world war for eight years. The American Revolution had cost Britain nearly twenty thousand soldier and sailor lives and tens of millions of dollars. The British had been embarrassed. It was a defeat that would be remembered throughout hundreds of years of their history. They never forgot the debacle.

  In the winter of 1810, Robert Livingston, writing from London, reminded President Madison of that: “The King & the people of [England] hate, dread and envy us. And that they will do so until the memory of our having been rebel colonies is entirely lost and till the sordid spirit peculiar to a nation of merchants and tradesmen from the days of Carthage to the present era is extinguished by some great calamity.”3

  The Brits had refused to shut down their northwest forts in America, which was agreed upon in the peace treaty of 1783, for more than ten years. They had become involved in complicated negotiations over money owed to British merchants during the war and from the years prior to it. Now, in 1809, they would use their powerful navy to both interdict American shipping and humiliate America. They would do it for years, too, under the guise of the 1756 laws and the argument that they were always at war, somehow, someway, and needed to curtail American shipping for that reason.

  If America did not like that, well, British officials shrugged their shoulders, do something about it. America did not. It continually submitted; it constantly backed down.

  The president was only in office a few months when he fired off an angry note to the Republican Meeting of South Carolina. “The very unexpected and inauspicious turn given to our relations with Great Britain by the disavowal of the friendly arrangements concluded by her accredited minister, [do] not fail to excite a lively sensibility among a people conscious of their own just purposes and satisfied of the reasonable views and good faith, which have been evinced by their own government,” he told them.4

  England was not Madison's only problem, though. The French navy was just as bad as the British when it came to stopping American ships and seizing cargo and sailors. Madison's ministers had complained to Napoleon about his search-and-seizure policies, done under the same guidelines as the British, but the French emperor dismissed them. His attitude inflamed Madison. “The late confiscations by Bonaparte comprise robbery, theft and breach of trust, and exceed in turpitude any of his enormities not wasting human blood,” he wrote.5

  He began to get pledges of support for military action by local militias in different states. He wrote one that “with every allowance for the extraordinary course of events in Europe, the violent and unprovoked conduct of the principal belligerents towards the U.S. justifies the feelings which it has existed in all good citizens.”6

  He wailed about the British to his ambassadors. He told William Pinkney that “the British government continues to be equally ignorant of our character” and that “it is impossible not to see that the avowed object is no longer to retaliate on an enemy, but to prevent our legitimate commerce.” He concluded his note to Pinkney by asking, “How can a national expect to retain the respect of mankind whose government described to so ignoble a career?”7

  And he exploded in a letter to Jefferson late in his first year in office about “the extremity to which things must rapidly proceed under the quackeries and corruption of an administration headed by such a being as [Spencer] Perceval [the new primate minister]?”8

  In a long letter, William Duane, the editor of the Aurora, told Madison that he should consider military options and that the people would support him. The British, he told the president, were so tied up in their European wars that they paid no attention to any American pleas on impressment. “The course which is best adapted to the interests and policy of the United States, though it cannot be very well mistaken by men of sober minds, is not so easily pursued directly, as it would be were the attacks upon the nation open instead of insidious—or by other weapons than those of diplomacy and intrigue,” Duane told him.9

  Madison was also told by many that he should not get involved in any war with Britain, and that if he did, he could not win. An ambassador, John Jackson, wrote him in the autumn of 1809, “I would now as soon attempt to move the rocky top of the Alleghany to battle as make war with G B for existing differences without some new crisis to aid me. We…must play a cautious game.”10

  Near Christmas, Pinkney wrote back that Madison should push the British government harder and added that the people of England did not loathe Americans as their government did. Peace could be brokered by a public-relations blitz. “They [British people] seem to have awaked for the flattering dreams by which their understandings have been so long abused. Disappointment and disaster have dissipated the brilliant expectations of undefined prosperity which had dazzled them into moral blindness,” he said.11

  Madison was livid against England in his first Annual Message to Congress, delivered at the end of November 1809. He told the congressmen that America was, in fact, already involved in a “disastrous and protracted war, carried on in a mode equally injurious and unjust to the U.S.”12

  As the new president he was happy, as Jefferson had been, that not only Congress but also various state legislatures had passed proclamations supporting the administration in its troubles with Great Britain, such as the Pennsylvania Assembly, whose proclamation read “we have the fullest confidence in the wisdom, the patriotism and the integrity of the administration of the general government and we pledge ourselves to co-operate with them to maintain…our national rights.”13 Similarly, the North Carolina legislature sent him a message agreeing with his stand and said that it agreed with “unqualified and unanimous approbation of the course which you have pursued…in times portentous and alarming as the present…citizens of the United States, unassisted by that firmness, wisdom and patriotism which have characterized your public conduct would, indeed, have much to fear…support with energy and at the risk of our lives and fortunes such measures as the government shall think proper
.”14

  War was in the air. Even former president John Adams, who despised Jefferson and Madison, wrote lengthy letters to newspapers espousing war over embargos or further diplomatic maneuvers. “I think a war would be less evil than a rigorous enforcement of the embargo,” Adams wrote, and he added that “no nation under the sun” would put up with the indignities that England had hurled at America. In a second letter, just as strident, Adams wrote that in the late 1790s he, as president, had assurances from French diplomats that they would never put into effect stringent sea laws as they did just a few years later. Adams wrote that he now felt betrayed.15

  Throughout these years, Madison's men stood by him with loyalty and fierceness. Albert Gallatin, in a long letter to the National Intelligencer, wrote that the British were continually trying to rewrite history by misquoting American officials and party leaders. He told British ministers in strong language that there was no difference in American policy toward England in the Madison administration than in that of Thomas Jefferson. He warned the Brits, too, that they must listen to Madison and not opposing party leaders. “The groundless accusations of foreign bias and influence have been generated solely by the virulence of party spirit; and they were adopted abroad as an apology or pretense for unprovoked aggressions,” he wrote. 16

  President Madison was tough with the British, and the longer they ignored him, the tougher he became. In late May 1809, as the temperature rose in Washington, the temperature rose in Madison's writings. He sent a message to Congress on May 23 that outlined a massive American buildup for war, including the spending of millions for national defense, the creation of a system of militia and a military call-up plan, plus the moving of all US gunboats to form a stronger navy. His message was clear. If Britain's leaders wanted war, Madison was happy to give it to them.17

  So were many Americans. Congressmen rallied around Madison, and newspapers pledged their support. Robert Price, the head of the Washington and Jefferson Artillery Company, a militia unit in northern Virginia, said that his men were “ready to march at a moment's notice” to wherever the president needed them for a war with England.18

  All over the country, political clubs at their meetings toasted Madison and, shortly afterward, the American seamen who were the object of the British searches and seizures. Newspapers began running letters from disgruntled seamen held in French or British ports or serving on British ships. One impressed American sailor wrote that “no man has ever yet writhed under the tyrant's lash without wishing to breathe the murmurs of his spirit and enlist the world in his cause.”19

  Each search and seizure on the high seas or at a British port wound up described in American newspapers. The editor of the Philadelphia Aurora complained that the British were “disregarding the petty obligations of oaths and bonds, and other legal restraints, to swell the coffers of their principals.”20

  During these years, Madison solidified much presidential power. He agreed with Gallatin's view that the presidential power Jefferson exercised in purchasing the Louisiana Territory could be used by him, or succeeding presidents, to purchase parts of or all of Florida.21 He also understood that Britain might be scheming to gain rights not only to Florida but to Cuba, too. Jefferson told Madison that the United States should buy Cuba from Spain, but, to calm down those who would think America too aggressive, put up a monument on the southern shore of the island that would state the United States would not buy or take any islands south of Cuba. Madison declined.22

  All of America breathed a sigh of relief at the end of April when Britain's foreign minister announced that he had reached an amicable agreement with the United States to end the practice of the impressment of seamen on the Atlantic and the policy of stopping American merchant ships. There would be no war. Madison had won. The news was so momentous that the National Intelligencer even put out its very first special edition to announce the details of the agreement. The special edition even carried the official letter from British minister D. M. Erskine that outlined the policy. “I have the honor to inform you that I have received His Majesty's commands to represent [England] to the government of the United States that His Majesty is animated by the most sincere desire for an adjustment of the differences which have unhappily so long prevailed between the two countries.”23

  In its next edition, the editor of the National Intelligencer praised the British for ending their practices. “The British orders have been rescinded so far as they respect the United States. On these happy results, together with the consequent renewal of amicable intercourse between the two nations, we most sincerely congratulate our fellow citizens.”24

  At Monticello, Jefferson, who had battled the British prior to his retirement, was happy. Jefferson believed that the English had changed their minds because of reversals in their policy in Spain. He also told Madison that he was right for sticking with the embargo and perhaps the British change of heart was, in a great part, due to that policy. “I sincerely congratulate you on the change it has produced in our situation. It is a source of very general joy here.”25

  Little did he know what lay ahead.

  As soon as British leaders back in London learned what the headstrong, impulsive Erskine had done, they announced that he had overstepped his boundaries. Nothing he said or wrote meant anything, they said in tough language. British sea policy was firm and would not be changed. It was like an iron door that slammed between America and Britain.

  Madison was livid. He said that England's behavior was “fraud and folly” and told friends that he had been double-crossed by George Canning, Britain's secretary of foreign affairs. Jefferson was aghast. “Canning's equivocations degrade his government as well as himself. I despair of accommodations with them because I believe they are weak enough to intend seriously to claim the ocean as their conquest and to think to amuse with embassies and negotiations until the claim shall have been strengthened.”26

  Attorney General Caesar Rodney was angry over the reversal of policy. “The very unexpected and inauspicious turn given to our relations with G.B. by the disavowal of the friendly arrangement concluded by her accredited minister [does] not fail to excite a lively sensibility among a people conscious of their own just purposes,” he told Madison.27

  All of America's diplomatic efforts had failed. Politics had failed. History had failed. America was right back where it started, and Britain would continue to bully her. A corner had been turned, though. Now Madison and all Americans saw the British as duplicitous. They were not only never going to change their policy but also would slap down anyone, even their own minister, who even suggested that they might.

  A summer darkness fell over James Madison's White House.

  Madison ruled over a country filled with extensive change, a nation in which something new seemed to be happening all the time, a society in high-speed transition. These changes, combined with the actions of the president and the people in his administration, contributed mightily to the “new” America that was rapidly developing.

  It was a country whose life was distinctly different from that in nations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. The United States had changed much since the first days of the revolution in 1775, but now, in the early 1800s, change was lightning fast. Everything seemed to be in flux, yet Americans adapted easily to all of it, no matter how crazy it became.

  Madison was responsible for most of it or harnessed it and let it help him shape his government. The period of 1800 to 1836, which began with Madison's appointment as secretary of state and ended with his death, saw monumental differences in the United States.

  James and Dolley Madison were well aware of the social revolution taking place when they arrived in Washington. The pair had adapted to dozens of changes in their own lives and had found that they were able to turn as the lives of the people turned. They were not stuck in the past, unable to look at their new country with new eyes, like so many of their friends in the colonial era, but instead they were constantly on the move. M
adison had gone to college when the nation was part of the British Empire; served in Congress during one of the world's bloodiest revolutions; wrote a new Constitution for America; lobbied to have it ratified; served two terms in the new United States Congress; helped George Washington construct America's first government; and was now, in 1801, the secretary of state in a party that no one ever heard of a decade earlier. In his personal life, he had spent forty-three years as a bachelor and then suddenly turned around and married. More than that, he had married a much younger, dazzling woman. His new wife introduced him to new friends and a brand-new life.

  Dolley Madison had been born in a log cabin and now lived in a palatial mansion on one of the largest plantations in America. She had married happily as a young woman, lost her husband, and then married again. She had been accepted into and then booted out of the Quakers. In a few years, she had gone from a young woman who had just a handful of dresses to the fashion queen of America. Dolley had transitioned quite easily from an unknown girl in Philadelphia with few friends into the most famous woman in the world. Change? The Madisons knew all about it.

  It was everywhere. The national change was no better represented, perhaps, than in the transportation revolution. In the early 1800s, the local Washington newspapers were full of advertisements looking for workers and heralding the success of the construction of the new Potomack Canal, one of the first lengthy canal waterways in America.1 The canal, which went around the Great Potomac Falls several miles west of Washington, was the brainchild of President Washington. He had first sailed up the Potomac in 1754 when he was an officer in the Virginia militia, attached to the British army in the French and Indian War. His original purpose was to see what the possibilities were for the movement of British military troops up the river by boat into the Ohio territory. He immediately saw a controlled waterway, a canal. “I doubt but you will readily concur with me in judging it more convenient, least expensive and I may further say by much the most expeditious way to the country,” he wrote James Innes in the summer of 1754. Later, in 1783, he went further, writing French diplomat Chevalier de Castellux that “I shall not rest contented until I have explored the west country [via canals].” He added that canals would give America “a new empire.”2