Then at the end of 1779 Madison agreed to serve Virginia, as Jefferson had four years before, as a delegate to the Continental Congress. He returned to Orange to prepare for the trip to Philadelphia. We have his and Jefferson’s testimony that their “intimacy” had formed by now, but that is all they tell us. What matters is that as Jefferson’s time in office grew stressful, Madison was far from the scene.
The one connection that hints at their cooperation involves Madison’s role in Mazzei’s mission to raise funds on the continent of Europe. Talkative and opinionated, Mazzei had been Jefferson’s friend and neighbor for several years, shared his interest in agricultural experimentation, and did much to kindle his interest in wine. Obviously Jefferson was a prime mover in Mazzei’s mission, and while Madison, protective of his delicate frame and fearful for his health, declined the offer to sail with the Italian, he did help to orchestrate his voyage and communicated with him on matters of compensation and security.47
The Mazzei mission was part of a larger effort to cultivate potential benefactors. While Madison was still in Williamsburg, Jefferson wrote to the governor of Spanish-held Louisiana, Don Bernardo de Gálvez. As part of an official appeal to a “powerfull and wealthy Empire,” he apprised the Spaniard of George Rogers Clark’s activities on behalf of Virginia. Clark’s success in establishing a presence on the Mississippi led Jefferson to propose a regular channel of commerce and communication with the gulf port. Announcing Virginia’s entry into Louisiana’s general neighborhood, Jefferson presumed that “the nature of those Commodities with which we can reciprocally furnish each other, point out the advantages which may result from a close Connection, and correspondence.”
So even at this early moment in the nation’s existence, Jefferson had his eye on Louisiana and on the strategic position of the port of New Orleans. He looked for any opportunity to gain an advantage there. When Henry was governor, Don Bernardo had conveyed to Spain Virginia’s request for a loan. Jefferson now renewed the application, acknowledging that his state was “encompassed … with Difficulties” and might not be able to repay Spain as readily as “our Gratitude would prompt us to.” As an adviser to Governor Henry, Madison had been a party to discussions regarding a Spanish-U.S. military alliance and free use of the port of New Orleans. When he arrived at Congress in Philadelphia, he would be the one to guide debate on relations with Spain and navigation of the Mississippi.48
Madison took his seat in March 1780. Snow had kept him in Virginia longer than planned, and the two-wheeled carriage, driven by his slave Billey Gardner, required twelve days, twice as long as usual, to reach Pennsylvania.49 He commented on the persistent rains he encountered and the “extreme badness of the roads” heading north. Not a single one of the Virginians who had been present in Congress during Jefferson’s tenure was still there when Madison joined the delegation. Among his colleagues were Jefferson’s neighbor John Walker and Joseph Jones, the uncle of James Monroe, until recently a judge of the Virginia General Court. Fifty-three years old and a past member of Congress (1777–78), Jones was knowledgeable. He would be a sounding board for the new congressman.
Madison had passed the winter studying government finance: he hoped to stop the depreciation of both the Continental currency and the paper currency in Virginia. By the time he took his seat in Congress, he had concluded that the crisis was less a result of the excess printing of money than a matter of the perceived creditworthiness of Virginia and the nation at large. The public had to trust that a note could be redeemed at face value at a specified time.
In his first letter home, Madison reconfirmed for his father that the depreciation of paper currency had introduced “disorder and perplexity” into public affairs. Congress was acting to coordinate exchange rates. It had devalued the dollar, was ceasing to issue Continentals, and was dictating a single, standard paper currency rate to the states. Each state would now be printing new money, backed by the United States and redeemable in six years. Even so, Madison believed that “perplexity” (“anxiety; distraction of mind,” according to Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary) would continue to plague the currency issue.50
Madison wrote two letters to Governor Jefferson at this time, the first of which has been lost. Thus, the second, dated March 27–28, 1780, marks the beginning—an inauspicious one—to their surviving correspondence. Madison minced no words as he reported on probable consequences if the currency crisis was not resolved: “An old system of finance discarded as incompetent to our necessities, an untried and precarious one substituted,” he warned. “I leave it to your own imagination.”
War news was hardly more promising. “Gen. Washington writes that a failure of bread has already commenced in the army,” Madison told Jefferson. By May, when he brought Jefferson up to date on currency and credit, Madison expressed equal concern that the national legislature had erred in ceasing to print money (when it passed that responsibility on to the individual states). With reference to Congress, he wrote: “They are now as dependent on the States as the King of England is on parliament.”
The updates continued, but information was flowing in one direction only, and Madison grew concerned. He prodded Jefferson to give him an indication that his several “private” letters had arrived safely in the governor’s hands. “If your Excellency has written any acknowledgements of them,” he said, “they have never reached me.” Then, knowing of Jefferson’s particular apprehension with regard to Indian attacks, he conveyed ominous war news from upstate New York: “The Savages are making the most distressing incursions, under the direction of the British agents … It is probable the Enemy will be but too successful this campaign in exciting their vindictive spirit against us throughout the whole frontier of the United States.” The Continental Army was not helping: “General Washington has found it of the utmost difficulty to repress the mutinous spirit engendered by hunger and want of pay.” And then there were the actions of Pennsylvania to reflect on: the governor there had just been given the power to seize supplies from any source whatsoever and deliver them to Washington’s army. It was a move that Madison viewed as a dangerous experiment in executive dictatorship. In all, the congressman had nothing to cheer about.51
The first of Jefferson’s letters to Madison (that we possess) is dated July 26, 1780, from Richmond, the new state capital. While Madison fretted about currency issues, the hamstrung governor was mainly concerned with regional developments. The enemy had devised a new strategy for the dismemberment of the United States. The “Southern war,” as Jefferson called it, was under way and centered, for the moment, in South Carolina. He could not decide how best to divide Virginia’s contribution of troops and horses among the beleaguered armies of the North and South. Dwindling tobacco profits did not help the situation. At least Jefferson could cap his letter with an optimistic report on Reverend Madison’s administration of the College of William and Mary and George Wythe’s establishment of a law school there, where “the young men dispute with elegance, method and learning.” The governor’s sign-off was agreeably unceremonial: “I wish you every felicity.”52
Within days Madison heard from his cousin directly. “We are here in perfect Repose,” the college president wrote, meaning it as a critique of the passivity of the young men who should have been thinking of the war. “The Arrival of ye. French Fleet has dissipated our apprehensions, and I doubt not, but ye lethargic Spirit of Virginia will enjoy her Slumbers.” Even the arrival of South Carolina refugees in Williamsburg had had little effect.53
Like his cousin, the Reverend Madison was enjoying national prestige. At the end of January 1780, he was granted membership in the American Philosophical Society, the institution founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743 to showcase the talents of American scholars and scientific experimenters. Alongside Reverend Madison’s name in press reports were those of other new members of the society: George Washington (for reasons other than academic), Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Jay, and Washington’s young aide-de-camp Colonel
Alexander Hamilton, who was in his mid-twenties. The curious mingling of names at this uninspired moment amid war makes the society’s announcement a sign, if not a portent. With the exception of the college president, who possessed no greater ambition, these were all gentlemen with critical roles to play in the development of a sense of nationhood. Congressman Madison was not on the list.54
Edmund Pendleton was starved for information. He wrote to Madison, in his usual happy style, from the seclusion of his estate in Caroline County. “Placed as I am in a Forest, occurrences will not enable me to give you much entertainment,” he submitted. The benefits accrued by a continuing correspondence would be far greater for him than for Madison, he said, but he bade the young congressman to keep him abreast of news nonetheless. The reply he received a few weeks later was the first of dozens of informative letters that the two would exchange during Madison’s time in Philadelphia. Picking up on Pendleton’s natural enthusiasm, Madison wrote to the squire of Edmundsbury with more verve than he showed when he addressed letters to the squire of Monticello.55
In May 1780 Charleston fell into enemy hands, and the whole American southern army, more than three thousand men, was taken. Many of them were Virginians. Lord Charles Cornwallis, in charge of the southern strategy, quickly capitalized on a demoralized people by sending raiders into the backcountry. One name stood out: Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a twenty-six-year-old merchant’s son from Liverpool. Relentless (some said possessed), Tarleton was flamboyant and hard-charging and coordinated his activities with Tory cavalrymen. Horatio Gates, the American general who had earned fame as the victor at Saratoga, took over the U.S. southern effort and was disastrously defeated at the Battle of Camden after Tarleton broke through his lines.
That autumn another hero of the Battle of Saratoga, Benedict Arnold, was exposed as a traitor as he attempted to turn over the strategic fortification at West Point to the British. As Arnold’s defection became known, British and Tory elements moved their increasingly successful campaign from South to North Carolina. As Jefferson mourned the situation, Madison and the Virginia congressional delegation in Philadelphia wrote to him, with more loathing than fear, on the subject of Major General Arnold and his shocking move. “Every Mark of horror and resentment has been expressed by the Army at such atrocious and Complicated Vilainy,” they reported jointly. “The Mob in this city have burnt the traitor in Effigy.”
When he should have been focused on military strategy, Jefferson was presiding over an impoverished treasury and wishing release from his duties. “Extremely mortifyed” by setbacks in the Carolinas, and doing his best to contribute supplies and reinforcements in “our present moneyless situation,” he admitted to Richard Henry Lee in mid-September 1780 that he felt himself no longer up to the job: “The application requisite to the duties of the office I hold is so excessive, and the execution of them after all so imperfect, that I have determined to retire from it at the close of the present campaign.”56
Adding to the demands of official business, Governor Jefferson was cultivating a young protégé: he had agreed to serve as law tutor to Congressman Joseph Jones’s nephew, the twenty-two-year-old James Monroe. After two years of soldiering, Monroe was back in Virginia. He had taken part in several engagements as a Continental Army officer. He had fought Cornwallis at the Battle of Monmouth (New Jersey) in June 1778, where, during a lull in the fighting, the young major led a scouting party to spy on the enemy’s movements. Discovering British intentions, he alerted General Washington directly and helped to ensure a positive outcome. After his return south, Monroe began a course of study with George Wythe, in Williamsburg, before exchanging the old capital for the new and taking instruction from the sitting governor in Richmond.57
Jefferson felt sympathy for the emotionally demanding Monroe, fifteen years his junior and seven years younger than Madison. As a rule, Jefferson was patient with those who had trouble holding their passions in check, so long as they were loyal and receptive. That was Monroe, who in 1780 assisted the governor by traveling to North Carolina and setting up a network of military communications; his work linking Richmond to points south was of real value to the war effort. In September of that year Monroe wrote fawningly to Jefferson: “I feel that whatever I am at present in the opinion of others or whatever I may be in future has greatly arose from your friendship.” It was a prophetic statement. He went on to bemoan the modesty of his “private fortune,” a comment he would repeat many times over the years. Monroe’s courage could not be doubted, but his saccharine correspondence foretold the different ways in which Jefferson would come to deal with his two closest allies and successors as president.58
In Philadelphia, the emotionally restrained Congressman Madison boarded at the home of Mary House and her married daughter, Eliza House Trist, establishing a close bond with his landladies. Other boarders were Virginians Joseph Jones and John Walker and a New York delegate from Suffolk County, Long Island. William Floyd was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his daughter Kitty, just thirteen, would soon draw the attention of the bachelor from Orange County, Virginia.
Although the course of the war was in doubt, Madison’s ambition was being satisfied. He expressed no inclination to learn at the feet of his father how to manage the plantation economy. At twenty-nine, Madison appears to have been the youngest member of Congress. A Delaware delegate wrote dismissively in his private journal that the slight Virginian “possesses all the self conceit that is common to youth and inexperience.” The harshness of the comment may represent an impulsive first impression, the diarist’s own defective ego, or the ever-present jealousies that afflicted the politicians of Revolutionary America; but it also suggests that Madison, so often called shy by his biographers, was not a silent member of the national body for long.59
Affairs of state looked increasingly bleak, especially the nation’s finances. The “13 separate popular bodies” did not function well together, Madison wrote, and it looked like Congress would only see more “uncertainty & delay” and respond with “dilatory & undigested expedients.” The enemy remained well provisioned and was on the move. Madison advised his regular correspondents back in Virginia, Edmund Pendleton and Joseph Jones (who had left Congress after only a short stay), that British warships had sailed from New York. Their destination was unknown.
It was clear that Virginia should prepare for an invasion by sea. At the end of October 1780, Madison informed Pendleton that their common fear was well founded. It was Virginia, indeed, that the invaders had selected as their target. “I am sensible of the great difficulties you will have to contend with” was all he could say. He tried to take comfort in the expectation that the state legislature would “arm” the governor and his council with sufficient authority to “call forth the military resources of the Country.” Showing the confusion that really governed, Joseph Jones wrote to Madison from Richmond that he was waiting for confirmation of “flattering accounts from the South” that Cornwallis and his entire army had been captured. His nephew Monroe, now a colonel in the Virginia militia, was, Jones noted, a part of the most recently organized detachment of light infantry. But Jones shied from predicting what was to happen next, acknowledging “imperfections” in intelligence reports. Pendleton was more prone to believing good news and told Madison that “loose Accounts” of three thousand British surrendering struck him as “not improbable.”
The true picture was not what anyone wanted to hear. The British high command had assessed Virginia’s vulnerability. Pendleton realized that the House of Delegates lacked a quorum and would not meet until three weeks after originally scheduled. Virginia’s government was on vacation at the worst possible time. Several leading legislators, plus Governor Jefferson, all intended to resign. “It is a little cowardly to quit our Posts in a bustling time,” Pendleton contended. He meant Jefferson and others as well. But he certainly meant Jefferson.60
“British Horse Came to Monticello”
From the moment Br
itish warships were sighted off the coast in October 1780, Jefferson understood that many of the troops he intended to send south to join Gates and engage with Cornwallis in the Carolinas would now have to remain in Virginia. An invasion force of 2,200 men under Major General Alexander Leslie came ashore at Portsmouth and Newport News. The British boasted a mighty cavalry; the Virginia militia was short of weapons. Slaves, hearing of the landings, ran off to join the British. Yet Leslie stopped short, when he might have pushed inland with devastating effect.
Through the mails, Madison and Joseph Jones ran through the options available to slave owners. Jones was interested in a scheme that would raise white recruits by instituting a kind of property tax: “those wealthy in Negroes” would have to part with one, who would be transferred, as property, to a white soldier as a bounty for enlistment. Madison reacted against the idea of a “Negro bounty,” suggesting instead that loyal slaves could earn their freedom by enlisting in the fight against the British. Agreeing with Jones that troops were needed quickly, he argued: “Would it not be as well to liberate and make soldiers at once of the blacks themselves as to make them instruments for enlisting white Soldiers? It wd. certainly be more consonant to the principles of liberty which ought never to be lost sight of.” Madison tried to frame his proposal logically. Slave recruits would promptly identify with their free comrades, he surmised, “experience having shown that a freeman immediately loses all attachment & sympathy with his former fellow slaves.” Though Madison’s emphasis lay with practical measures and the psychology of war, he did take the moral high ground, showing that he had no fear in the arming of slaves. He wanted to beat the British at their own game.
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