Madison and Jefferson
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The editor, like the vice president, was found not guilty. His prosecution came late anyway, as Dennie’s invective had mostly dried up by 1805. When he died in 1812, his monument would read, in part: “A wit sportive, not wanton.”31
“Bring the Mad King to His Senses”
One month into the Burr treason trial, even worse news arrived at the President’s House. The Chesapeake, a forty-gun American frigate bound for the Mediterranean, had come under fire a few hours after it sailed from the port of Norfolk. The captain of a British vessel, the fifty-gun Leopard, was under orders to search the Chesapeake for deserters, and he blew holes in the American ship when it resisted. The British boarded, and a single deserter was taken off the ship, along with three American sailors who had been impressed into the Royal Navy—improperly taken off another U.S. vessel—some months earlier.
This outrage was as severe an insult to U.S. sovereignty as an American president could imagine. The American flag was meant to be insurance against impressment, both for U.S. citizens and for foreigners aboard an American ship. No international law stipulated otherwise. The Carolina Gazette hit the nail on the head when it described the “dogma of Britain” as a mockery of civilized life: “Once a subject always a subject” was ludicrous. How could a nation that called itself free say, in essence, that no man is free to emigrate?32
Jefferson’s reaction to the Chesapeake incident was immediate. As the boarding occurred off the Virginia shore, he urged the governor of his home state, William Cabell, to “prevent future insults.” Then on July 2, 1807, he and his cabinet issued a public proclamation ordering all armed British ships from American harbors. The statement reminded the world that ports within the United States had maintained, in times of Anglo-French war, a just neutrality, carrying on “with all the belligerents, their accustomed relations of friendship, hospitality & commercial intercourse.” This being the case, the Leopard had acted “without provocation” at Norfolk, hovering about with predatory purpose, scoffing at America’s generosity.
Newspapers exploded with calls for war to avenge the dishonor. The National Intelligencer likened the crisis to the immediate causes of the Revolution: “What we did in the weakness of infancy, it will be strange if we cannot repeat in the vigor of manhood.” Rumors circulated that Britain had declared war on America. Many residents of Virginia believed that the British had already invaded.
As unrelenting as Jefferson was in his mistrust of the British, the strongest lines in his July 2 proclamation belonged to Madison, who seems to have wished that the wording could have been made even stronger. His proposed draft contained the accusatory “Jeffersonian” phrase “lawless & bloody purpose” in characterizing the “uncontrouled abuses” and “injuries & irritations” perpetrated by the British. Madison and Jefferson recognized this as a moment when heightened security and bold diplomacy would be equally critical.33
Others sent supportive letters to the secretary of state, urging him to stand up to any and all insults. From Boston, Elbridge Gerry wrote: “The public indignation is universally excited.” It was Gerry whose presence in France during the XYZ Affair had helped to prevent a worse result than “quasi” war. “If redress … cannot be obtained,” he said now, “will not a state of warfare be preferable to such a state of national insult & degradation?” John G. Jackson, a western Virginia congressman who was married to Dolley Madison’s younger sister, brought unrelated imagery of military adventuring into his wide-ranging anti-British comments: “A tame submission to such outrages will be the signal for every species of insult until the national spirit, broken, sunk & degraded, will return with loathing & abhorrence from the Republican system we now so fondly cherish, & take refuge against such wrongs in a military despotism, where another Buonaparte or a Burr will give Law to the Republic.” The congressman was unremitting: “At no period has the Eyes of the Nation—of the World—been more anxiously looking for your decision.”34
On July 11 President Jefferson addressed his thoughts to Barnabas Bidwell, a Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Republican who was leaving Congress to become attorney general of his state. Referring to “the atrocious acts committed by the British,” he stated his principles: first, to give London an opportunity to “disavow & make reparation”; second, to take as much time as it took for America’s seaborne vessels to return home, before any hostile act was even considered; and third, to commit to no course of action before Congress could choose “between war, non-intercourse, or any other measure.” He had decided to wait until October to call Congress into session, because he did not expect to have a clear response from London until then.
A few days passed, and the president received a letter from Richmond in a recognizable handwriting. His boyhood friend John Page, who had succeeded Monroe as governor in 1802, now held a lucrative federal appointment, courtesy of the president, as commissioner of loans. It was not the first time that Page had exhorted Jefferson to take decisive action. In April 1776 he had written to him in the Continental Congress: “For God’s sake declare the Colonies independent at once, and save us from ruin.” Now it was: “I have heard it repeatedly said that ‘an immediate Embargo is necessary’ … to retrieve our lost honor & to bring the mad king to his senses.” Page reminded Jefferson that George III still harbored personal animus toward him, and he underscored the fear “that you will lose by delay, & it is evidently certain that he is bent on a war with the U.S., relying on the support of federal partizans … Burr’s Choice Spirits, & I suppose Insurrections of Slaves in the Southern States.” It is curious that Virginians John G. Jackson and John Page could not but see the British threat in conjunction with domestic instability.
Madison would not have trusted such wayward thoughts to the mails. But Jefferson and Page had shared confidences since their days at William and Mary, and Page’s fond and faithful letters over the years contained undisguised emotion. Madison issued instructions to the U.S. minister in Madrid to suspend his efforts to purchase the Floridas, East and West. His thinking was twofold: war with England, if it came, would require massive expenditures; and with war, the Floridas would be had for a lower price, because the United States would be doing Spain and France a favor by keeping it out of British hands.35
Back in Virginia for August and September, Madison and Jefferson paused to consider a strategy. During these two months they wrote constantly, weighing information received from Secretary of War Henry Dearborn concerning the number of troops that could be raised if war took place. It was at this time, too, that Jefferson explored with Madison the prospect of simply taking the Floridas from Spain, confiding that he had “rather have war against Spain than not.” On October 1 Jefferson stopped at Montpelier to pick up Madison, and they returned to Washington for the first session of the Tenth Congress.36
The British proved that they were not in a conciliatory mood. The men taken from the Chesapeake were brought north to Canada and subjected to what Madison termed “an insulting trial.” The British subject among them was executed. Word soon reached him that London was equivocating in its renunciation of the “pretension” that it could search ships of war for deserters. Madison wanted demonstrable “atonement,” he said to Jefferson. It was not forthcoming.37
Treasury Secretary Gallatin was especially concerned about the nation’s readiness for war, having warned in 1805 that a strong navy was required if U.S. foreign policy was to have real teeth. Otherwise, he wrote the president, “we must be perpetually liable to injuries and insults, particularly from the belligerent powers, when there is a war in Europe.” The United States had an impressive merchant presence on the high seas but a very modest navy. During his first term Jefferson had deliberately reduced naval expenditures, considering defense of the home shores a much higher priority than an offensive fleet. When, at the end of 1805, he called for both gunboats and larger warships, and the Republican Congress balked at the latter, Jefferson vigorously pressed the case for more gunboats. After the attack on the Chesapeake, hi
s Federalist critics mocked him with an insincere toast: “The President of the United States—First Admiral of American Gun-Boats!”
It was clear in the fall of 1807, as the dust began to settle, that in spite of the tough talk, neither the Congress nor the executive branch really wished to go to war. The Republican governor of Massachusetts, James Sullivan, wrote to Jefferson in a state of panic, warning that many in the eastern part of his state would likely act to undermine U.S. interests: “To send our sons into the field against an invading enemy, & to leave a great number of the enemies friends in the rear, as orators, scriblers, & printers, would never do.” He asked the president to consider carefully.38
Madison and Jefferson agreed that a meaningful form of commercial retaliation was called for. The United States would stop trading with the world—shock tactics—in a unilateral attempt to obtain what ordinary diplomacy could not. Madison drafted an Embargo Message for the president, and on December 22, 1807, it passed Congress easily, despite outcries from entrenched Federalist Timothy Pickering and the Republicans’ expert in harassment, John Randolph. Within days Gallatin, who was an early critic of the embargo, notified Jefferson that he had information about the tricks being employed to evade the law: laden vessels were registering their destinations as domestic ports and then actually heading out to foreign destinations.39
Just after New Year’s Day 1808 Morgan Lewis addressed his concerns to Madison. The New Yorker who defeated Aaron Burr in the gubernatorial contest of 1804, though known for his political independence, had been, by process of elimination, the Clintonian candidate that year. He was now a bitter critic of George Clinton, the sixty-eight-year-old vice president, and felt the need to apprise Madison of his strong feelings.
Lewis’s immediate alarm was tied to the embargo. It was throwing out of work a lot of good family men who labored at New York’s harbor, “dependent on the wages of the day for subsistence.” Seamen, shipwrights, rope-makers and sail-makers, riggers, caulkers, and draymen were being lost to the economy—150 such men had just sailed to Canada, where their labors were much needed. Lewis saw huge implications as the new coercive policy went forward: Republicans should not be alienating their natural constituency. Lewis had good Republican credentials; he was also the husband of Robert and Edward Livingston’s sister. Would Madison listen?
Lewis wished for Madison to succeed Jefferson. He saw that Clinton would profit from the embargo’s unpopularity. So he made his remarks blunt: discouraging working-class citizens aided not only the Federalist cause but also Clinton’s presidential hopes and would work to Madison’s detriment. This was when Lewis’s repugnance for the vice president came out. “Is it possible,” he posed nervously, “that a Man of such feeble Intellect, of so few Acquirements, can be thought of” as presidential timber in a time of national crisis?
Lewis had known Clinton for a good many years and recognized that the “encomiums” lavished on him as a soldier and statesman were pure embellishment. The man’s “unfitness” for the presidency was unquestionable; he was a military “blunderer,” unable to serve as an effective battalion commander, let alone as commander in chief. Never mind that Madison had never been anywhere near combat. As a Revolutionary colonel, and before that a Princetonian like Madison, Lewis asked the man-who-would-be-the-next-president to keep his reproachful letter in the strictest confidence. He assured Madison that he would repair to Washington immediately if his personal attendance at the seat of power would be of use.40
It seemed to this New Yorker, and to many others less friendly, that the embargo was ill conceived in every respect. Morgan Lewis’s counsel notwithstanding, Madison remained convinced that a full-scale embargo was the best approach to the present predicament. Since the 1790s, he had advocated commercial discrimination (higher tariff duties) as a means of sending a signal to nations refusing to sign reciprocal trade agreements with the United States. Time would prove, he was certain, that America, north, south, and west, would not have to rely upon foreign manufacturing, and he calculated that commercial coercion would gradually become less unpopular. Once England and France saw that the states stood united, they would wake up to the rights of neutrals and play by Washington’s rules.41
The embargo program was a bad miscalculation on Madison’s part; Jefferson was equally committed to it. Britain could have been seriously hurt only if its exports were prevented from reaching America—something that never really happened. Backed into a corner, Jefferson and Madison’s presidencies, from this point forward, would be defined by what they did not accomplish and by how they alienated segments of the population.
Proactive yet nonviolent, the embargo appeared viable to Madison and Jefferson for another reason. In their minds, Monroe’s efforts in London had come up empty. At a hopeful moment in the spring of 1806, when Madison thought that the issues of impressment and neutral rights would be discussed seriously, Baltimore attorney William Pinkney was dispatched to assist Monroe.42 But the treaty that the two American envoys sent by special messenger early in 1807 proved, under Madison and Jefferson’s inspection, to be little better than the hated Jay Treaty. It did not address impressment. The president did not even bother to show it to the Senate.
Monroe and Pinkney, unaware how disappointed Madison and Jefferson were, thought that their treaty was a step forward in trying times. Britain was blockading ports that had no evident stake in the Anglo-French conflict; Napoleon’s Berlin Decree barred allies of France from conducting trade with England. British naval chauvinism was resurgent, and America’s self-respect was of secondary concern at best to those who needed every advantage in a brutal struggle with the raging French emperor. London’s ministers were already predisposed against Jefferson in view of his previous pro-French bias, and they were most certainly aware of “schisms” within the Republican Party. The administration’s negotiating position was never as strong as Madison and Jefferson imagined.
Monroe was treated warmly by his English counterparts. From where he sat, it was necessary to compromise. He continued for some time to believe the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty “an honorable and advantageous adjustment with England.” It would have provided the nation’s maritime commerce with “ample protection” from harassment, and it would have convinced France that she should tread lightly with the United States. In his own words, Monroe felt that he had been “put into a state of duress” by Madison, who “criticized the treaty with Great Britain in terms which I thought it did not deserve.” He regarded Jefferson as the less forward critic.43
While unable to shield Monroe from embarrassment, Madison managed a few conciliatory sentences for his old friend when he wrote of the administration’s decision: “The President & all of us are fully impressed with the difficulties which your negociations had to contend with, as well as with the faithfulness & ability with which it was supported, and are ready to suppose, in as far as there may be variance in our respective views of things, that in your position we should have had yours, as that in our position, you would have ours.” Madison assumed agency for the president: “If he has been silent it is because he assures himself, that his sentiments cannot be misconceived by you.” If this was true, it was not apparent in Jefferson’s remarks to a congressional committee on March 3, 1807, when he showed little sympathy for the situation Monroe and Pinkney were in and laid considerable responsibility on them for the failure to secure better terms.
When he finally arrived back in the United States in December 1807, Monroe hurried to Washington, only to realize that the two he counted on most were treating him differently. In his presence, the president and secretary of state seemed to direct conversation away from delicate political matters. At first Monroe tried to convince himself that their concern with dissension in the party and Madison’s uncertain prospects in the election of 1808 were making them nervous. Likely Monroe also recalled Jefferson’s offer (in a letter he received in London) to serve as governor of Louisiana, an offer that, if accepted, would have placed him
at great distance from the presidential campaign.
Monroe’s doubt and confusion are understandable. He was unaccustomed to being placed at arm’s length from his closest political allies. Rather than confront them, though, he waited three months, until they were both in Albemarle, before baring his feelings to his neighbor the president. Monroe let Jefferson know, first of all, that he had interpreted Pinkney’s arrival in London as a strong hint that his services abroad were no longer required. He was, he said, “struck with astonishment and deeply affected” at the time. And he was persuaded upon arrival home that “your friendship had been withdrawn from me.” Jefferson’s famously placid countenance hid whatever disturbance he felt; as he heard Monroe out, he nimbly repaired the breach between them in no time at all.44
Monroe’s adherence to the culture of honor and reputation was strong and his sensitivity to criticism severe, but he may not have been inventing the tension he perceived. His proneness to injury must have been of enough concern to Madison and Jefferson that as they awaited his appearance, after so long abroad, they cooked up a conciliatory strategy that they carried off poorly. Beyond that, Madison was capable of exhibiting a blend of hard-headedness and resentment, which Monroe would have easily detected. Monroe’s position was that Madison should have communicated the administration’s requirements more clearly over the course of negotiations. So for now Jefferson was off the hook, and Madison and Monroe remained at an impasse.45
“Our Weapon Recoils”