Jefferson’s letter the same week to “Granny” Dearborn emphasized other lessons of the Battle of New Orleans—“truths,” he pronounced, “too important not to be valued.” He felt, for one, that his trust in the patriotism of the people of Louisiana was not misplaced. The city had defended itself, the militia had proven resolute, and the British were revealed to be beatable without outside assistance, something that could not have been said in 1783, after the French had come to America’s rescue in the Revolution. Moreover, Jefferson reveled, “we have officers of natural genius now starting forward from the mass.” He regarded New Orleans as a triumph of Republican politics.
Dearborn had told Jefferson that his native state of Massachusetts was now “humbled & degraded,” an acknowledgment that presented an opening for Jefferson to speak of sectional politics. “Should the state once more buckle on her republican harness,” he assured, “we shall recieve [sic] her again as a sister.” In his assessment, it was only a wayward wing of the New England tribe, which he labeled “the parricide party,” who qualified as “venal traitors”—those who would have “basely sold what their fathers had so bravely won from the same enemy.” The moralistic ex-president expected “repentance” from them as a recognition that the clearer-headed politicians who opted for embargo and took the nation to war had been correct all along.58
The peace treaty was received in Washington in the second week of February, about a week after the magnificent news from New Orleans had arrived. According to the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, no exchange of territory took place. The treaty was acceptable to nearly all, yet no one was particularly pleased with it. Henry Clay was the American peace negotiator who should have been the most disappointed in the indefinite outcome of the conflict; after all, from 1811 forward, he had forcefully called for a war of conquest. But even Clay was buoyed by the thought that the British upper crust regarded the treaty as a loss. Recent defeats were left unavenged. And the Americans had had the last word. President Madison sent the treaty to the Senate on February 15, 1815, where it was immediately ratified. Two days later he announced to the country that the war was over.59
Patriots came out of the woodwork. Recall that the contrarian Virginia Patriot had mocked Madison and Jefferson as “false prophets” in 1814. Now, from Rhode Island, the Providence Patriot put the exclamation point on Mr. Madison’s War. “The tools of royalty have never ceased prating against the imbecility and weakness of republics,” it taunted. “Where are these false prophets now? The republic is safe. Surrounded by internal traitors—a whole section of the country basely devoted to the cause of the enemy—we have entered into a conflict with one of the most powerful nations on earth; destitute of men, of money, of the munitions of war, & of military science, and yet before three years have rolled away, we have beaten and discomfited that enemy by sea and by land.” It was a hyperbolic defense of a war that should not have been waged. But that did not mute the satisfaction many Americans were feeling. The year 1815 saw a boost in morale, which did much to salvage Madison’s reputation.60
His legacy meant a great deal to Madison. Before the war had come to an end, he coordinated the production of a white paper, an official justification—“a correct and full view of the war,” as he put it to Jefferson in March 1815. Though it was for all intents and purposes Madison’s work, the ostensible author was the Pennsylvanian Alexander James Dallas, his new secretary of the treasury, known for his close ties to Gallatin. The president stopped publication once the Senate ratified the Treaty of Ghent, figuring it would be counterproductive to issue an aggressive pamphlet just when peace had been restored. He needed time to think about what to do with the several hundred copies he was sitting on.
For the much-harried war president, this was no ordinary writing. A little more than a year away from the next presidential election, he had said little publicly in his own defense. How many times he went through and evaluated the argument Dallas and he had constructed we cannot know; but the 1815 text makes plain that Madison meant to emphasize the moral component of the War of 1812 as indistinguishable from that of the American Revolution—a war that no one in America, save the late Joseph Dennie, would have seen as anything but honorable.
This was how the Madison-Dallas text read: “Great Britain has violated the laws of civilized warfare by plundering private property, by outraging female honour; by burning unprotected cities, towns, and villages, and houses; and by laying waste whole districts of an unresisting country.” Compare that to the damning language, directed at the king of England, which was contained in the Declaration of Independence: “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, … circumstances of cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages … We have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms.” In both cases, as the innocent victim of crimes against humanity, America had had little recourse but to fight back.61
Madison was naturally incensed by the destruction of the capital, especially his own abode. More from the same text: “They set fire to the edifice, which the United States had erected for the residence of the chief magistrate.” This and the other public buildings that were lost represented “progress of the arts, which America had borrowed from her parent Europe.” All had been “consigned to the flames, while British officers of high rank and command, united with their troops in riotous carousal, by the light of the burning pile.” Hurt and indignation undercut any defense of its conduct that London could dream up.
Once again targeting the South with special vengeance, the invaders of 1814 had incited the slaves to revolt. As the pamphlet tells it: “In a formal proclamation issued by the commander in chief of his Britannic majesty’s squadrons …, the slaves of the American planters were invited to join the British standard, in a covert phraseology, that afforded but a slight veil for the real design … But even the negroes seem, in contempt, or disgust, to have resisted the solicitation; no rebellion or massacre ensued.” In other words, the British professed to care about the lives of America’s slaves, when all they really wanted was to provoke violence and allow the chips to fall where they may. To achieve the same effect, the analogous section of the Declaration of Independence had cited “domestic insurrections” and “merciless Indian savages.” But whereas the frontier of 1776 described an ever-present danger, in the Madison-Dallas narrative’s far-fetched defense of the southern way of life, the slaves were able to see through the British ruse and remain at peace with their masters.62
There was evidently something very personal and cathartic for Madison in seeing this pamphlet through production. By invoking “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” the Declaration of Independence had been directed to a “candid world.” Similarly, in writing Jefferson about the unpublished paper, Madison labeled it an “Exposé” meant as an antidote to “misstatements which had poisoned the opinion of the world.” As he originally conceived it, the pamphlet was to have been released in “the usual demiofficial form”; he explained that he had since given much thought to its reception in a postwar environment. He had toyed with the idea of issuing it with a prefatory explanation that it had been written prior to receipt of the peace treaty.
Madison must have had an inkling of how Jefferson would respond, when he wrote coyly: “I have thought a perusal of it might amuse an hour of your leisure.” He asked that the enclosed sample be returned to him (in Washington) or put in safekeeping, where it would be “in no danger of escaping.” He was explicit in saying that he wished the abortive pamphlet retained for its value to future historians; but he felt it was no longer prudent to issue it: “You will observe, from the plan and cast of the work, that it was meant for the eye of the British people, and of our own, as well as for that of the Neutral world.” In other words, for every imaginable audience: present opinion makers and posterity alike. Yet he had withheld it.63
Within days Jefferson wrote back. He fully appreciated Madison’s need to have history told “right,” for that was hi
s fear every bit as it was Madison’s. He worried—and would long continue to worry—that the history of the 1790s, and of his own administration, would be told to his detriment. He wanted the world to see Madison’s pamphlet sooner rather than later: “I have read it with great pleasure, but with irresistible desire that it should be published. The reasons in favor of this are so strong, and those against it so easily gotten over … 1. We need it in Europe. They have totally mistaken our character … 2. It is necessary for the people of England, who have been deceived as to the causes and conduct of the war … 3. It is necessary for our own people, who … have been so plied with false facts and false views by the federalists.” If some of the “roughnesses” in the text were “rubbed down” to give the appearance of moderation, and a “soothing” postscript added to mollify the British people, who were no longer America’s enemy, then he believed the whole should be printed and liberally distributed. In fact, he urged, “Mr. Gallatin could have it translated into French.” Publication went forward the following month.64
The Federalist Alexandria Gazette could not accept that the United States was any better off for having gone through the war. In a squib titled “Impromptu,” a mock-conversation between Madison and Monroe was recorded:
Says Jemmy Madison to James Monroe,
I’ve flogged the British rascals Jim, by Jo,
Have you so, says he? And after all what’s gain’d?
What by your war, good sir, have you obtain’d?65
For a moment, when reports arrived of Napoleon’s escape from exile and return to France, Madison and Jefferson fretted that the United States would have to face a new wave of uncertainty in balancing its policies toward England and France. Monroe expressed doubts that America’s maritime shipping would be respected in any new Anglo-French conflict, and as the president wrapped up a visit to Monticello in late April, Monroe warned him that England would be tempted to restart impressment and blockade. To Jefferson, Monroe wrote similarly: “We have treaties with none, and not much kindness to be expected from any.” But Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 brought finality to the question, allowing the Madison-Jefferson exchange to focus again on less troubling matters.66
“As Ever Became a Great Man”
Was the war a failure? Coming into office, Madison had been forced to confront the fact that the United States was unprepared to engage in war. He had had to make adjustments, and he privately recognized how much he had to learn. Few were willing to rise or fall along with a president’s decisions. The proverb is apropos: it was lonely at the top.
One who knew this firsthand would have seemed a most unlikely supporter of the war president. In January 1814, rather than write directly to Madison, John Adams sent a letter to Richard Rush with the understanding that its contents would be shared. The second president encouraged the fourth with reminders of how the Revolution had been won despite the immensity of debts outstanding, a Congress chased out of Philadelphia by British troops, and a commanding general who was on the run—not to mention a long list of incompetent generals who had to be eased out of their commands.
Madison may have hoped, in 1812, that a declaration of war would force the British into making diplomatic concessions. In this case, the president’s strategy would have amounted to a masterful bluff. It is more likely, though, that Madison wanted to fulfill a long-held desire to secure national economic sovereignty. For him, a “common sovereignty on the high seas” was as essential as territorial sovereignty. The embargo having failed, war remained the only way to obtain any leverage. Otherwise, the United States was destined to become the permanent pawn of England’s empire.67
Although Jefferson’s fiscal conservatism kept voters happy and suited a young republic, it led to miserable shortages in funding and bureaucratic inefficiency in wartime. Along with a strong navy, the United States required an overhaul of its financial system. The answer was direct taxes and a British-style national bank. Madison understood these things and turned his back on the Republican ideology of the 1790s. But it took him time to get there.
From the beginning, America’s offensive war was flawed. It was, in effect, a filibuster disguised as a defensive war, justified on the faulty premise that the British would hand over Canada much as Napoleon had relinquished the Louisiana Territory. But the British were not the French. They resented American politicians’ braggadocio and were prepared to give the British public what it wanted—that is, to give the United States a good drubbing.
The War Hawks may have plotted their crusade as yet another land grab, justifying military aggression in the name of national honor. But the war quickly devolved into a family soap opera, in which the estranged parent and bratty child lost the ability to negotiate peaceably. They issued warnings. They pressured. They crowed. Theirs was a war that revisited family secrets and opened up old family wounds. The English torched the nation’s capital mainly to humiliate the president—and perhaps more than one president. For in reducing Washington the city, they were symbolically reducing Washington the general who had reduced Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. Madison was made to appear a befuddled executive, unable to defend his hearth and home. In a fitting way, his escape from Rear Admiral Cockburn was a rerun of Jefferson’s flight from Monticello, as the cowardly governor of Virginia.
Madison lacked swagger, let alone a military reputation. He did not know how to rally the public or mobilize enough regulars. That is why he needed so badly to win over New England. Though he never took a hard line against governors who refused to send their militias to the front, neither did he give them any leeway to work out an honorable compromise with the government. New Englanders backed the U.S. Navy, but that was as far as they went. With his mishandling of the so-called John Henry plot, Madison alienated many New Englanders before the war had even begun, trying to make them appear as traitors. Playing the “sectional card” backfired.68
For the war to have succeeded, Madison needed more than propaganda. He needed a just cause, such as an attack on the United States. The impressment issue lacked the symbolic resonance to rally support for a prolonged war. Secretary of the Navy William Jones seems to have come up with a more likely scenario: if U.S. ships had refused to allow the British to search their crews and impress their sailors, forcing both sides to resort to arms, then the war might have risen to a higher moral station in the public’s imagination. A series of “Chesapeake Affairs” might have made the conflict more of a national crisis.69
Another problem was that the United States was fighting two wars. One was initiated by westerners in a scheme to subdue the Indians. It was a frontier war, really nothing more than a filibuster to obtain desired land still lodged in hostile hands. The western theater had little to do with actual grievances against the British. The British were blamed for encouraging Indian atrocities during the war, but that did not move many residents along the East Coast. The other war, the one Madison cared about most deeply, stemmed from a diplomatic conflict with Great Britain over control of the high seas, which mattered more in the older, more politically savvy parts of the republic. Attempting to forge two different national threats into one grand narrative, the Madison administration convinced too few that there was a coherent logic behind the War of 1812.70
Another problem for Madison was that he was no Jefferson when it came to writing emotional texts. As a litterateur, he had no finesse. The War Hawks, with their overblown rhetoric, had greater influence over the narrative of war, but their rhetoric was out of touch with the actual military or fiscal strength of the government. The proud declaration of war may have secured Madison’s reelection, but a meaningful victory remained beyond his grasp. In the end, he failed to secure free trade or the acknowledgment of sovereignty on the high seas. Impressment ended when England and France stopped going to war, not because of anything Madison did.
Did he oversee a losing war? It is closer to the truth to say that Madison shook off a near defeat and ultimately survived the w
ar. He disciplined his unruly cabinet. He gradually dislodged the congressional malcontents. He moved the federal government toward fiscal stability by turning away from the Virginia model and being more receptive to his Pennsylvanian advisers. Forced to learn lessons the hard way, he emerged intact. One thing can be said about James Madison: He was a political survivor.
Pennsylvania senator Jonathan Roberts may have captured Madison’s survival instincts best when he described a series of 1814 visits. Though they met two or three times a week that year, and Roberts typically brought “gloomy forebodings” to the president’s desk, he observed nonetheless: “I found him cheerful, he look’d through the pass’d [sic for past], and passing events; as ever became a great man.” Was greatness simply a refusal to cave in to pressure in the midst of war? Or was it something more: an ability to see the bigger picture? The pettiness of personal rivalries that plagued his administration would have overwhelmed a less supple mind. Suffice it to say that if the war failed in its projected goals, that failure did not completely tarnish Madison’s reputation.71
“The Sun Itself Is Not Without Spots”
It was a time to rebuild. Jefferson had volunteered to replenish all that was lost when the Library of Congress burned, by selling his Monticello library if the members of Congress were so inclined. For decades he had scoured Europe and America for titles and collections on subjects ranging from architecture to zoology. Some dated back to the seventeenth century. He possessed accounts of voyages encompassing every corner of the globe; atlases and travelogues in English, French, Spanish, and Italian; an array of dictionaries and encyclopedias; ecclesiastical histories in Latin; dozens of volumes on British history and an equal number on classical antiquity; and studies of jurisprudence, moral philosophy, gardening, mathematics, surgical manuals, literary criticism, and epic poetry.
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