Madison and Jefferson

by Nancy Isenberg;Andrew Burstein

  “The President—Lost!”

  As 1814 opened, news arrived that Napoleon had suffered more serious reverses and was retreating into France. His abdication in early April improved British military prospects in America. Men and ships previously committed to Europe would now be able to come to the aid of Canada. Russian mediation had collapsed late in December, but the British still expressed a readiness to restart negotiations in Sweden. That was where the American negotiating team went—a group that had grown to include J. Q. Adams, Albert Gallatin, and James Bayard, with the new addition (so as not to appear too conciliatory) of Speaker of the House Henry Clay.

  Federalists assumed that the recent course of events would prompt Madison to press for peace on just about any terms. But that was wishful thinking on their part. For one, American sailors, as a rule, were happy with their commanders and nationalistic in spirit. Privateers were having a tremendous impact on the war: the more than five hundred authorized privateering vessels had captured more than thirteen hundred British prizes and earned considerable financial rewards in so doing. In the view of the enemy, these motley crews did greater damage than the U.S. Navy.30

  The United States was now fielding disciplined forces. They were led by men in their twenties and thirties: Winfield Scott, Jacob Brown, and Edmund Pendleton Gaines (named after, but not directly related to, the Revolutionary), all of whom came under heavy onslaughts from the north but whose decisions and determination had secured the strategic Niagara region. The British had some success as they pressed south from Montreal, until routed at the Battle of Plattsburgh at the end of summer. This was more than tit for tat, as the casualty rate along the Canadian frontier was severe on both sides.31

  The state of affairs to the north was eclipsed in August 1814 by the more than symbolic British assault on the Chesapeake and the wanton destruction of Washington, D.C. The man at the helm for the British was forty-two-year-old Rear Admiral George Cockburn, who had seen considerable action against Napoleon before coming to America. Though some under his command felt a kinship with their American cousins, Cockburn was well known for his near-obsessive need to punish the upstarts for their challenge to British preeminence. Secretary Armstrong, to his discredit, believed the federal city safe and focused on the defense of Baltimore. Madison himself appears to have been watching and waiting more than he might have. From Montpelier in May, he apologized to Jefferson that he would be unable to visit Monticello anytime soon. “I am obliged,” he wrote, “to hold myself in readiness,” in the event that he was called to Washington on short notice. Absent from their correspondence was any concern with brutality or loss of life on the battlefield. In their letters, war had become not an abstraction, but a predominantly political issue. Madison relished relating the defeat of antiwar Federalists at the polls in New York. He did not feel hamstrung by factions in Congress and the states, believing more than ever that he could direct the course of political measures and make political appointments.32

  He took his life in his hands simply by returning to Washington as the hot, sticky, “bilious” months began, when acute gastrointestinal ailments ravaged the area. The president was sixty-three, far from robust, and accustomed to spending his summers, as Jefferson had, in the healthier setting of Piedmont Virginia. But having returned at this unseasonable time, Madison got straight to business. He called together the members of his cabinet, who were still focused on prosecuting the war for Canada.

  Over the course of June and July, Armstrong continued to plod along, while Madison and Monroe, wary of that gentleman’s motives, increasingly feared that Washington itself was the prize Cockburn sought. Madison began to inspect War Department records more closely, trying to read into the secretary’s routine, and realized that Armstrong had communicated with his generals on subjects of critical importance without showing that correspondence to the president.

  All intelligence suggested that the enemy was strengthening. The capital was “in a state of perturbation,” Dolley Madison wrote to Hannah Gallatin in late July, openly wishing she were back in Philadelphia. As Cockburn’s warships hovered nearby, the first lady stated that her husband had resolved to stay at his post in the event of an invasion and go down with the ship of state. From Boston, Vice President Gerry wrote the president that he approved strong war measures to match “mad” Britain’s “vindictive feelings …, pride & vain glory.” Meanwhile, news arrived that fifteen thousand more British troops had landed in Montreal.33

  A test was coming. The British invasion force landed on August 17, southeast of Washington along the Maryland shore. Armstrong was uncertain whether Baltimore or Washington was the immediate target. Secretary of State Monroe, a Revolutionary cavalry colonel, mounted his horse and reconnoitered personally. On the twenty-fourth the British broke camp and descended on Bladensburg, Maryland, just above the state’s border with the District of Columbia. Monroe joined the commander of the Baltimore militia and tried to direct the defense. But there was no time to rally the troops or even maintain order, as the British launched rockets and the American militia took to their heels. Cockburn himself rode a white steed and took charge of artillery at considerable personal peril. One bullet just missed him; another killed a marine standing beside him. While they lost more men than the Americans, who held the high position, the British routed the inexperienced militiamen. The road to the President’s House lay open to them.34

  Incredibly, there was no one left to defend Washington. When he returned to the executive mansion late that afternoon, the president learned that Dolley had fled with the army. She and their servant Paul Jennings had saved one canvas from the expected onslaught, refusing to leave George Washington’s portrait for the invaders. A week earlier a State Department clerk had taken care to remove the original of the federal Constitution for safekeeping. The president had nothing to gain by waiting around.

  It was not yet dark when Royal Marines reached the Capitol. A pyrotechnics expert was on hand to oversee its destruction. The Library of Congress, housed in the Capitol, went up in flames, and the whole could be seen for many miles into the night. According to Major General Robert Ross, who accompanied Cockburn up Pennsylvania Avenue, Madison was expecting a fine dinner and plenty of friendly company. Instead, the president’s table, laid out for forty, was the scene of a rollicking celebration by British raiders, who enjoyed Madison’s wine almost as much as they enjoyed the irony of it all. While Washington’s citizens were physically unharmed, the president’s domicile was consumed by flames, along with the other public buildings.35

  The Baltimore Patriot had its story ready the very next day but could only speculate as to the full damage. “The Navy Yard, report says, is burnt,” it read. “Whether the Capitol is destroyed is not known, though it is believed to be.” When the smoke cleared and the whole series of events became known, a militiaman’s letter expressed a loss of composure as yet unrecovered: “I do not pretend to censure any one in particular; but a dread responsibility rests somewhere. I almost blush to put on the American uniform.” As was customary in times of war, the fate of women and children framed the emotion of the memoirist: “I cannot describe the distress of the female part of our inhabitants, many of whom flew into the country without a hiding place or a protector.”

  A few days later, in receipt of the Boston Centinel issue covering the rout at Bladensburg, the Patriot editor lashed out at his New England Federalist counterpart, whom he called a “veteran news-perverter,” for striving “to gull his willing dupes” with assertions that those who led and fought bravely were Federalists, and Federalists alone. To set the record straight, the Patriot editor expressed pride that Republicans and Federalists were fighting side by side; it hardly mattered to them who officered a company, so long as it acquitted itself well in battle. This was no time, he charged, for any to promote “distrust and dissention, when all should unite for the public safety”; and it was no time for Americans anywhere to have to suffer a “bloated ignoramus” of an edit
or who would act to undo the growing fellowship claimed by citizens of different regions of the country.36

  That newspapermen could be cruel no one doubted. A Federalist paper in Delaware printed a couplet to memorialize Bladensburg: “Fly Monroe, fly! run Armstrong, run! / Were the last words of Madison.” On first reports, the Salem Gazette, in Massachusetts, ran the headline, “THE PRESIDENT—LOST!” It went on to elaborate: “Ever since the Battle of Bladensburg, MADISON has been missing—he does not even know where he is himself—entirely lost and bewildered!” Cowardice had always been a favorite charge of Federalists, and now Madison had become as susceptible to the charge as Jefferson. The unoriginal Delaware paper was quick to assign blame to “the idolators of Jefferson and Madison” for the military catastrophe: the “jacobin administration,” “feeble, improvident, disgraced,” had reduced the nation to a shadow of its former self, “by driving from our councils the pupils of Washington!”37

  The psychological power of the press can be acute in a time of war. Preliminary intelligence reaching Keene, New Hampshire, a full week after the burning of Washington, reported with horror what its distant citizens could only imagine happening at the seat of power:

  The British commander was issuing his Proclamations and orders from the President’s House! Public credit must receive a shock. A crisis is at hand. Let James Madison and Elbridge Gerry either resign (if they wish to save their country from further disgrace) and let Congress elect from the Senate better men—or let Mr. Madison, if he wont resign, dismiss his present weak and inefficient ministers, and appoint such as all parties must have confidence in.38

  Madison was not concerned at this point with the battles being waged between rival editors. He had to reassemble his government. Though he and Dolley had made prior arrangements to meet in the event that they were separated, it took a full day before they found each other at a tavern on the Virginia side of the Potomac. The British, having accomplished what they came for, pulled out. Now Madison could inspect the damage and begin to deal with the conditions Washingtonians faced. He would send for Dolley when convinced that the way was clear for her return.

  On August 28, after going their separate ways for a time, Madison and Monroe returned together to the charred city. Added to the intimate circle was Richard Rush, the president’s third in a line of attorneys general. He stayed close as the short and scrawny commander in chief rode from place to place seeking information. Ferried across the Potomac, Madison was deeply angered to view the destruction all around him. He was irritated, too, by reports that came to him from residents of the District who expressed disgust with the government for its failure to stage any meaningful defense.

  The National Intelligencer, its office ravaged during the invasion, reopened with a vengeance a few days later, and reported that the British commander had confronted its editor with the “peculiar slang of the Common Sewer.” Countering the expected condemnation of Madison, the first postinvasion issue assured: “The President of the United States was not only active during the engagement but … has been personally active ever since. Everyone joins in attributing to him the greatest merit.”39

  Armstrong came under heavy fire from residents of Washington and from Congress. His effigy was etched in the walls of the burnt Capitol building, where he was shown hanging from a gallows. At this low moment, the president recommended to Armstrong that he take temporary retirement. Madison then made Monroe acting secretary of war, so that his fellow Virginian held two cabinet positions simultaneously.

  Before John Armstrong exits the narrative too abruptly, there is reason to believe that his firing may not have been quite as simple as a pro-Madison position would describe it. In June, when the D.C. militia mustered, Armstrong expressed disapproval of Madison’s choice to lead that body—indeed, it was by all accounts a poor choice. Discomfort grew. Two months later, when the nation’s capital proved indefensible, Madison and Monroe must already have been calculating that Armstrong could be made into an easy scapegoat. Better this than to leave an impression that the presidential hopeful from New York was ousted for strictly political reasons. In this alternative narrative, Armstrong was really no less competent than Madison or Monroe. It can be argued that he was simply not given enough of a chance to prove himself in the months leading up to Cockburn’s landing.40

  On the other hand, if Madison wanted to be rid of his disagreeable secretary of war, why would he have suggested only a temporary retirement from the office? Was Madison letting him down in stages, or biding his time and leaving his options open? The president’s own memorandum of their last meeting states that they parted on friendly terms. Navy Secretary William Jones, who was close by, thought differently, recapping events in great detail to Alexander Dallas in Pennsylvania. He bemoaned the lack of a response to the British landing and wrote that Armstrong’s impulse was to “divest himself of all responsibility” for the failure to protect Washington. To Jones, the story Armstrong told was built on a combination of “cunning” and “insufferable … vanity,” anything but “candour.” Armstrong’s only qualification for high office, according to Jones, was his bluster. “This man imposed himself on society without one useful, valuable quality, either social, civil or military,” he upbraided, explaining what really happened: “The President stated facts to Armstrong” and referred to a widening prejudice against him, shared “to a certain and considerable degree” by the president himself; then on grounds of “expediency,” Madison asked Armstrong to retire from his duties “until those passions had subsided.”

  This would seem to have been the gist of Madison’s temporary, or not so temporary, dismissal of Armstrong—a few words that could be interpreted in more than one way. Jones, as one of those highly prejudiced against Armstrong, concluded his statement to Dallas with the simple and dismissive “I am glad we are clear of him.” His remarks about Monroe, in the same letter, were hardly more complimentary: “He has a strong military passion but without the requisite qualifications.” If Monroe moved back to the War Department, Jones ventured, “I predict his fall … His judgement I think in most things extremely feeble.” It did not stop there. Overall, Madison’s secretary of the navy had little confidence in the cabinet. “With due humility I feel my own nakedness,” he wrote, “and perceive that the costume of my colleagues is not of the firmest texture.” At this low moment in the war, he itched to return to private life, but rather than abandon Madison, he agreed to wait until December to end his public service.41

  Whatever the ultimate truth may be, Armstrong headed for Baltimore, no longer a factor in the war. The Madisons, meanwhile, had no home and moved in with Dolley’s sister and her husband. Though James Madison had never given an indication that he possessed a military mind, he understood the necessity at this moment to show that he was in command. Aided by the pen of Attorney General Rush, he issued a presidential proclamation on September 1, in which he accused the British of a “deliberate disregard of the principles of humanity and the rules of civilized warfare” and appealed to citizens to “unite their hearts and hands” and come to the defense of “exposed and threatened places.” As they dutifully published the proclamation, Federalist newspapers took pains to agree with Admiral Cockburn that the burning of Washington was done for a particular reason and strictly in retaliation for the U.S. “conflagration and destruction of property” inside Canada; on that basis, Madison had shown “audacity” in claiming that the fault lay on one side only.

  It took all capital letters to describe Madison’s contemptible crusade: it was “A WICKED, CAUSELESS WAR,” designed only to help one political party. “Not a finger will be raised in support of Mr. Madison’s grounds of war, nor his honour,” declared the editors of the Boston Spectator. As the president ranged about the scorched city, they would hold his feet to the fire, as it were.42

  Opposition newspapers suddenly had a warehouseful of material to use against Madison and his top appointees. They would see to it that the sack of Washington d
efined his presidency. Hanson’s Federal Republican giddily interpreted the president’s mind in the wake of the British invasion. In “Little Jemmy, or Poor Madison,” the Georgetown editor assumed that the president was “terrified” lest the people realize that he and the unworthy Armstrong had “consorted together in the ruin and betrayal of the capital”; for how could such self-immolation have taken place, if not on purpose? As absurd as that sounded, the same newspaper looked for new ways to mock and found solace in song as the increasingly unpopular war continued. One particular satire, with its added allusion to Jefferson, was meant to be sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”:

  Since Madison has held the helm

  And steer’d by Jeff’s old notions,

  Afflictions dire have spread the realm,

  Now goading to commotions.

  Without money enough to wage war, it went, “Jemmy’s plans are all blank.”43

  Under the pressure he now faced, and amid the devastation, Madison, by all accounts, retained his full presence of mind. Though he did not entirely trust Monroe, under these circumstances he had to rely on him more; and Monroe’s confidence in his own abilities as a war chief filled whatever gap existed in Madison’s battle plan. One can only surmise how Madison greeted news of the successful defense of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry in September, a defense led by none other than the now sixty-two-year-old Maryland militia general (concurrently U.S. senator) Samuel Smith. In spite of past differences over Robert Smith’s performance at State and the brothers’ constant sniping at Gallatin, Smith struck Monroe as able, and the president was now letting Monroe make more war-related decisions.44