During his governorship of Virginia in 1779, Jefferson had revealed a lack of enthusiasm for enforcing laws that people disliked, such as the requirement to serve in the militia. This approach soon became the case with his war preparations in 1808. Half-hearted attempts to raise men for the new regular army regiments floundered as badly as the call for the states to muster one hundred thousand militiamen. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a school that might have supplied officers to this program, had been neglected. It was an educational orphan, without a faculty, a curriculum, or soldierly standards of admission.
Meanwhile, Americans began to feel the impact of the embargo. Ships rotted at anchor in dozens of ports. Thousands of unemployed sailors swarmed in the streets. Merchants went bankrupt. Congress grimly tightened the federal screws. The legislators made it a crime to export goods or food to Canada and Spanish Florida. Armed sloops patrolled the coasts and inland waterways to make sure no one was carrying banned food beyond the nation’s borders. One newspaper wryly wondered what was going on. Wasn’t the embargo supposed to protect and preserve America’s merchant fleet? Now Vermont farmers were being told that it was a crime to sell their pigs in Canada.
The President’s new rules inspired a New York Congressman, Barent Gardenier, to make an angry speech, asking this and other questions. Why was the President determined to block every hole “at which the industry and enterprise of our country can find vent?” Gardenier concluded that Jefferson’s Anglophobia and his long love affair with France was the explanation. “Darkness and mystery overshadow this House [of Representatives] and the whole nation,” Gardenier roared. “We sit here as mere automata, we legislate without knowing.”
Even in Virginia, people besides John Randolph began to lose faith. John Taylor, one of the most faithful—and voluble—Jefferson supporters, was one of the many who were troubled by doubts. In a long private letter, he condemned the embargo as a policy that would “impoverish farmers, enrich the lawless [smugglers], drive our seamen into foreign service, drain the treasury…break our banks—and fail to achieve a better treaty” than the one Monroe had negotiated.
In New York, the Albany Gazette wondered why so little had been done to prepare for war. “Where are our defenses?” the editor asked, declaring New York Harbor and the entire Hudson River Valley were easy pickings for a well-armed, aggressive enemy. The paper concluded New Yorkers were the victims of an “anti-commercial spirit” emanating from Virginia.11
If the editor had had access to President Jefferson’s private correspondence, he would have been convinced that this charge was true. As criticism poured into Washington, D.C. from all parts of the nation, the President only grew more determined to maintain the embargo. “I place immense value in the experiment being fully made to see how far this embargo may be an effective weapon in the future as well as on this occasion,” he told Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin on May 27, 1808. “I set down [dismiss] the exercise of commerce, merely for profit, as nothing when it carries with it the danger of defeating the objects of the embargo.”
The exercise of commerce merely for profit. These were the words of a man who hated banks and stock markets and dismissed the embargo’s criticisms as “Federalist maneuvers and intrigues.” It would be hard to imagine a chief executive more out of touch with the American people.12
Further complicating matters, President Jefferson sabotaged the embargo by repeatedly telling correspondents and American diplomats abroad that he had never imagined the ban would last so long. In July 1808, he told a correspondent he thought it would end in the fall or winter. If it was still the law, “Congress will have to act.”
There was another hallmark of the Jeffersonian presidency. Congress will have to act. Not the president of the United States will have to act—words that would have come without hesitation from George Washington, who had insisted foreign relations were the president’s responsibility.13
The more stubborn and inflamed about his ideological voyage President Jefferson became, the more ferociously he turned to enforcing the embargo at the point of federal guns. He proclaimed the border area between Canada and the United States in a state of insurrection and had federal marshals and regular army soldiers patrolling it day and night. He told the governor of New York how important it was to “make individuals feel the consequences of daring to oppose a law by force.”
The man who had launched a minimal federal government in the Revolution of 1800 was acting more and more like Napoleon Bonaparte and others who believed that might made right. President Jefferson declared he alone knew “the real needs of the American people,” and he was determined not to allow “unprincipled adventurers” to commit “crimes against their country.”
In January 1809, Congress passed a truly appalling enforcement act. It made a joke out of the Fourth Amendment, barring unreasonable searches and seizures. Anyone who loaded food or goods on an American ship would henceforth need a federal permit. Federal inspectors would have the right to ban anyone they suspected of illegal intentions from going to sea. The President grew especially angry at Massachusetts, where outwitting the embargo had become a way of life. Their opposition “amounted almost to rebellion and treason,” he raged. The Bay State’s legislature passed a defiant resolution declaring that they would not “willingly become the victims of a fruitless experiment.”14
By this time, the cost of the embargo was becoming visible in dollars and cents, with Massachusetts the chief victim. Almost half the merchantmen in the nation sailed from her ports. In carrying charges alone, ship owners had lost $15 million. In 1808, American exports dwindled from $103 million to $23 million. Imports sank by more than half, from $144 million to $58 million. If we translate these numbers to modern money, we are talking about billions. The American economy ground to a paralyzed halt. Many people in the Bay State began to hate Virginians—a root cause of the future Civil War.15
The fantasies that President Jefferson and Secretary of State Madison communicated to Congress and the Democratic-Republican party faithful collapsed as the embargo lurched toward a full year. Both Britain and France found sources of food elsewhere in the world. The starvation the President liked to imagine he was inflicting on Britain never happened.
Instead of thinking seriously about a new course of action, President Jefferson drifted. He devoted many hours to helping the Connecticut writer, Joel Barlow, gather material for a history of his administration that would glorify the Revolution of 1800 and justify the embargo. In his annual message to Congress in December 1808, the President merely reported that the French and British had both rejected his offers to abandon the embargo if they repealed their decrees and orders in council.
Nevertheless, the President declared the embargo had demonstrated “the patriotism of our fellow citizens” and “the moderation and fairness which govern our councils.” The embargo also had an educational side. It had awakened Americans to “the necessity of uniting in support of the laws and rights of their country.” Best of all, it had “saved our mariners and our vast mercantile property.”
Missing was any admission that the embargo had been a failure. The unspoken message was the President’s conclusion that the abolition of America’s commerce remained preferable to surrendering to French and British tactics. Then came words that virtually proclaimed the bankruptcy of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency: “It will rest with the wisdom of Congress to decide on the course best adapted to such a state of things.”
These were words that President George Washington would never have spoken. He had seen what the wisdom of Congress produced in the American Revolution—disorganization, bankruptcy, and imminent defeat. It was why he and James Madison had created the office of the president—to offset the inability of legislative bodies to govern. Here was the fatal flaw of the ideologue who loved to legislate but not to enforce, implement, or lead. Thomas Jefferson’s surrender of the president’s authority and prestige at this moment of crisis would send a message oozi
ng through the next decades of American history, repeatedly sapping the will and power of the federal government.
The President’s followers began blaming the American people for the embargo’s failure. “We have been too happy and too prosperous,” Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin told his wife. He condemned Americans for considering “as great misfortunes” the supposedly minor privations that the embargo inflicted. Senator Wilson Cary Nicholas condemned “our people” for their readiness to “crucify their leaders” for not submitting to Britain and France while a hefty percentage of them could hardly wait to begin “pursuing after the[ir] lucrative trade.” Another Jefferson friend, Archibald Stuart, summed up this Democratic-Republican paroxysm by declaring the American people were “avaricious, enterprising, and impatient of restraint.”16
These were the traits that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton had considered crucial for the creation of a great nation. They would have disagreed with the loaded adjective, avaricious, and suggested a less hostile term—perhaps profit-minded. But they would have unquestionably disapproved the underlying loathing for business and finance that permeated the Revolution of 1800, thanks to the predilections of its leader.
Meanwhile, seeds of “scission” (secession) were sprouting in New England. The governor of Connecticut declared that the state had the right to “interpose their protecting shield between the right and liberty of the people and the assumed power of the federal government.” Massachusetts declared the embargo was “unconstitutional and not legally binding on the citizens of this state.” The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were coming back to life to torment their authors. When someone accused Old Republican Senator William Branch Giles of encouraging a military despotism with the embargo’s enforcement tactics, he piously declared the President was only seeking the power to “carry into effect a great national and Constitutional object.” These meaningless words would have fit comfortably in the mouth of Napoleon Bonaparte. More than a few people did not hesitate to point this out.
All this controversy had a debilitating effect on President Jefferson. Well before the end of his second term, he virtually withdrew from the duties and responsibilities of his high office. He shipped his books and furniture back to Monticello and wrote self-pitying letters to his daughter Martha, longing for her company and the affection of her numerous children. On March 4, 1809, Jefferson’s last day in office, Congress repealed the embargo. On this mournful note, the Revolution of 1800 ended and President Jefferson retreated to Monticello.
The contrast between President George Washington’s departure to Mount Vernon at the summit of his popularity, leaving behind his Farewell Address to echo through the centuries, and Thomas Jefferson’s return to Monticello in an aura of confusion and failure, underscores the importance of seeing the difference between these two men as a great divide in America’s journey to world power.
As James Madison took over as president and Thomas Jefferson departed for Monticello, his admirers in Washington, D.C. pretended the failure of the embargo had never happened. The National Intelligencer hailed the ex-president as if he were still the conquering hero of the Louisiana Purchase. “Never will it be forgotten as long as liberty is dear to man that it was on this day Thomas Jefferson retired from the supreme magistracy amid the blessings and regrets of millions,” the editor declared.
At the presidential mansion, a group of local citizens gathered to praise Jefferson’s “mild and endearing virtues” and thank him for presiding in such friendly fashion over their federal village. Jefferson was deeply touched and replied with words that testified to his deep love of his country.
“The station which we occupy among the nations of the earth is honorable but awful. Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self government…all mankind ought…with us to rejoice in its prosperous and sympathize with its adverse fortunes, as involving everything dear to man. And to what sacrifices of interest or convenience ought not these considerations to animate us? To what compromises of opinion and inclination to maintain harmony and union among ourselves and to preserve from all danger this hallowed ark of human hope and happiness?”17
Thomas Jefferson’s gift for inspiring words should persuade the readers of this book to summon forgiveness and rueful—or better, sympathetic—admiration for this deeply conflicted man. Every nation needs a voice of hope and promise as well as a model of realistic leadership that will enable these visions of an ideal tomorrow to survive. In George Washington, Americans have been blessed with a primary example of this kind of leadership. Like him, our greatest presidents have valued the visionary side of our heritage, but resisted the demands and pretensions of ideologies as well as the envies and angers of party politics.
CHAPTER 33
The Transformation of James Madison
AT PRESIDENT JAMES MADISON’S inaugural ball in 1809, one observer noted that the new chief executive soon became “spiritless and exhausted.” His face was so “woebegone” people began to wonder if he had the strength to stand, much less dance. Madison confessed to one guest that he would have much preferred to be home in bed. A woman party-goer described him as “a small man quite devoid of dignity.”1
Even his critics admitted that Madison was a charming and lively conversationalist in private. Unfortunately, the presidency required a strong public personality. James Madison simply did not have one. His fragile health, his slight physique, his timid public manner—he trembled visibly as he began his inaugural address—were the virtual opposite of his two predecessors, Washington and Jefferson, and was almost as starkly opposed to John Adams, who was a superb orator.
At Jefferson’s suggestion, Congress had begun nominating the presidential candidates of the Democratic-Republican Party. The practice inclined many senators and congressmen to look on the chief executive with domineering eyes. The phrase “King Caucus” quickly became shorthand for the legislators’ attitude toward the nation’s chief executive. He was their servant, and they welcomed the chance to let him know it at almost every opportunity.
The President’s responsibility for foreign policy, something George Washington thought he had established, all but vanished in this new arrangement. Congress served notice of this reversal on Madison almost immediately when the legislators refused to ratify Albert Gallatin as his choice for secretary of state. Radical Old Republican Senator William Branch Giles was behind this rejection. He thought he deserved the job, which he saw as a stepping-stone to the presidency.
Robert Smith, Jefferson’s Secretary of the Navy, pushed his own candidacy, which was backed by his brother, a powerful and corrupt Maryland senator. President Madison abandoned Gallatin and accepted Smith as the secretary of state, ignoring his barely concealed contempt for “Little Jemmy,” a nickname many congressmen began using. Quid leader John Randolph summed up the choice in his usual savage style. If Smith could spell, he said, “he ought to be preferred to Giles.”2
When President Jefferson left office, he had vowed a total withdrawal to Monticello. He even circulated a letter to officials in Washington announcing that under no circumstances would he recommend anyone for a federal job. Jefferson seldom if ever intruded on Madison’s day-to-day administration of the government. But Madison wrote his predecessor numerous letters, reporting on his problems and frustrations. Jefferson responded to these messages with strong opinions about what should be done.
In negotiations with the British to replace the expired Jay Treaty, Jefferson urged his successor to make sure that this hated document was never “quoted or looked at or even mentioned.” The new president should rely on America’s “forbearing yet persevering system” of embargoes and semi-embargoes. Napoleon had recently routed a British army that attempted to oppose his occupation of Spain. After gloating over the British defeat, Jefferson speculated that Bonaparte, with the control of Madrid’s South American empir
e in his grasp, might be willing to let America buy the Floridas and Cuba.
Jefferson thought President Madison could browbeat the Man of Destiny by threatening to aid revolutions in Mexico and other Spanish colonies. To reassure the Emperor that America had no ambitions in South America, Jefferson recommended erecting a column on “the southernmost limit of Cuba” with the inscription “Ne Plus Ultra” [No More Beyond This Point] on it.
Next, Madison might look to Canada, which Jefferson called “The North,” and seize that huge chunk of the continent. Then “we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation.” Best of all, Jefferson continued, these acquisitions could be defended without a navy. “Nothing should ever be accepted which would require a navy to defend it,” he virtually decreed.3
In 1810, Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin asked Congress to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States for another twenty years. A Senate committee approved the proposal, but the measure was savagely attacked by John Randolph’s Quids and numerous Old Republicans. The result was a Senate deadlock, which gave Vice President George Clinton the deciding vote.
Still hungry for revenge against the long-dead Alexander Hamilton, the aging New Yorker voted no. War with either France or Britain loomed just over the horizon and the federal government was now no longer able to borrow money. Gallatin saw deficits swelling and requested a rise in import duties. Congress turned him down and told him to borrow $5 million. They had no idea where or how he should manage this feat, or the interest rates he would have to pay.
The Great Divide Page 45