Madison and Jefferson

by Nancy Isenberg;Andrew Burstein

  49. Ketcham, 481–85; J.C.A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton, N.J., 1983), 50; Perkins, Prologue to War, 267–69; Frank Cassell, Merchant Congressman in the Young Republic: Samuel Smith of Maryland, 1752–1839 (Madison, Wisc., 1971), 147–53.

  50. Ketcham, 487–90; Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York, 2006), 259–62. While Madison knew that Jefferson fully approved of the administration as it was to be reconstituted, the ex-president tried to maintain civil epistolary relations with Robert Smith by pretending the problem lay beyond the feuding cabinet officers. “No one feels more painfully than I do the separation of friends,” Jefferson ventured, shifting blame onto the “Cannibal newspapers” that “harrowed up” the sensibilities of public servants on a daily basis. Smith, declaring himself “one of your old & uniform friends,” responded in kind: “I ever will retain a just sense of your dignified, liberal, frank deportment towards me.” All this was before Smith’s peevish pamphlet, of course, and marked the end of politeness. TJ to Smith, April 30, 1811; Smith to TJ, May 5, 1811, PTJ-RS, 3:595, 608; JM to TJ, July 8, 1811, RL, 3:1671; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 71–72; Stagg, “James Madison and the ‘Malcontents’: The Political Origins of the War of 1812,” William and Mary Quarterly 33 (October 1976): 574.

  51. Andrew Burstein, The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving (New York, 2007), 92–93.

  52. The malcontents were men with personal as well as political grievances—a few Pennsylvanians along with one prominent, and now disaffected, Virginia Republican: William Branch Giles. The Clintons of New York and Madison’s minister to France, John Armstrong, who returned home in the spring of 1811, added to the growing discontent. All called for increased defense expenditures, though none seemed inclined to push through higher taxes to pay for them. See John S. Pancake, “The ‘Invisibles’: A Chapter in the Opposition to the President,” Journal of Southern History 21 (February 1955): 28, 33–34; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 49–59.

  53. Eppes to TJ, March 20, 1811; TJ to Eppes, March 24, 1811, PTJ-RS, 3:473, 502. Jefferson confirmed Eppes’s opinion, noting that John Randolph had “consolidated” with the Federalists—both would be “delighted that Great Britain could conquer & reduce us again under her government.”

  54. TJ to Duane, March 28, 1811, PTJ-RS, 3:506–9.

  55. TJ to Duane, April 30, 1811, PTJ-RS, 3:593; TJ to JM, May 26, 1811, RL, 3:1669. On the divergent characters of Duane, Ritchie, and Samuel Harrison Smith of the National Intelligencer, see Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2001), 259–62. As Pasley explains, Jefferson long considered Duane a man of extremes whose passions were, in the past, politically useful; Ritchie a man of urbanity and decorum who saw clearly and could be trusted; and Smith completely subservient, a convenient tool of Jefferson’s administration.

  56. TJ to JM, April 24, 1811; JM to TJ, May 3, 1811, RL, 3:1666–68; TJ to Wirt, May 3, 1811, PTJ-RS, 3:601–3.

  57. JM to TJ, April 1, 1811; TJ to JM, April 7, 1811, RL, 3:1662–64; Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, 3:370–71. Madison’s offer to Jefferson of the cabinet position is not contained in any letter, published or unpublished, but was revealed to Randall by “an intimate friend of Mr. Madison, now [1858] living, who heard the fact from his own lips.” As for the remark about Randolph, it was not he alone whose frustrations increased with Monroe’s entry into the executive branch. Jefferson’s personal secretary in the second term, who held the same position at the outset of Madison’s administration, wrote from New York to Dolley Madison. He told of cordial, if somewhat mechanical, encounters with the families of both Smith brothers and explained: “The Smiths are said not directly to vent their spleen, but to spur on their relations & friends, many of whom are extremely abusive of the President & Col. Monroe.” Thus, Monroe would take the heat, along with Madison. See Coles to Dolley Madison, June 10, 1811, PJM-PS, 3:337.

  58. Ammon, James Monroe, 282–88; Monroe to TJ, April 3, 1811, PTJ-RS, 3:528. Ammon carefully untangles the conflicting historiography as to the terms under which Monroe accepted the position from Madison.

  59. Perkins, Prologue to War, 261–67; Ambler, Thomas Ritchie, 55–59.

  60. Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York, 1987), 8–18, quote at 8; Hickey, War of 1812, 30; James E. Lewis, Jr., The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998), 49; James G. Cusick, The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of East Florida (Athens, Ga., 2003), 24–25; Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler, “The War Hawks and the Question of Congressional Leadership in 1812,” Pacific Historical Review 45 (February 1976): 19; Ketcham, 508–9.

  61. Alexandria Gazette, July 10, 1811.

  62. Third Annual Message, November 5, 1811, PJM-PS, 4:1–5.

  63. Gerry to JM, November 17, 1811, PJM-PS, 4:23–24.

  64. JM to Adams, November 15, 1811, in PJM-PS, 4:16–17.

  65. Perkins, Prologue to War, 282–89; R. David Edmunds, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership (New York, 1984); Anthony F. C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 304–17; Jackson to Harrison, November 28, 1811, Papers of Andrew Jackson, ed. Sam B. Smith, et al. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1980–), 2:270; on U.S.-Canada situation: TJ to John Wayles Eppes, September 6, 1811, PTJ-RS, 4:133; PJM-PS, 3:xxxiii; JM to TJ, February 7, 1812, RL, 3:1687. For a good discussion of the relative weight assigned to impressment and western instability as causative factors behind the War of 1812, see Owsley and Smith, Filibusters and Expansionists, 83–85.

  66. Claiborne to JM, October 8, 1811, PJM-PS, 3:479.

  67. Hatzenbuehler, “War Hawks and Question of Congressional Leadership in 1812,” 17, 19–20; Norman K. Risjord, “1812: Conservatives, War Hawks and the Nation’s Honor,” William and Mary Quarterly 18 (April 1961): 208; Ammon, James Monroe, 301.

  68. Robert Wright of Maryland made a similar appeal, likening impressment to enslavement and affirming that the army alone could reclaim America’s patrimony—its “inheritance purchased by the blood of the fathers of the Revolution.” Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 1st sess., 441, 447–51, 456–57, 473; Jennifer Clark, “The War of 1812: American Nationalism and Rhetorical Images of Britain,” War and Society 12 (May 1994): 10.

  69. Joseph Allen to JM, [November] 23, 1811, PJM-PS, 4:3, 8, 31–33; Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 1st sess., 473, 497–99; the House plans for raising ten thousand men for the regular army and fifty thousand volunteers had been in Madison’s earlier draft for the annual message. Monroe had assured the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that the administration backed even stronger measures; see Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 84. On the significance of winning over conservative southern Republicans and Virginians such as Nelson, see Risjord, “1812: Conservatives, War Hawks and Nation’s Honor,” 197, 208; and Myron F. Wehje, “Opposition in Virginia to the War of 1812,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 78 (January 1970): 65–86.

  70. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 116.

  71. Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, 3:639–40; TJ to Rush, December 5, 1811, TJP-LC and PTJ-RS, 5:312–14; Rush to Adams, December 16, 1811; to TJ, December 17, 1811, in Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Princeton, N.J., 1951), 2:110–12. Edward Coles was accompanied on the northern excursion by his brother John.

  72. Adams to TJ, January 1, 1812; TJ to Adams, January 21, 1812, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 290–91.

  73. TJ to William Short, October 17, 1812, PTJ-RS, 5:400–401; Lucia Stanton, Free Some Day: The African-American Families of Monticello (Charlottesville, Va., 2000), 73–82; JMB, 2:1275; “Non-Congressional Distribution List for Batture Pamphlet,” PTJ-RS, 4:624�
�25.

  74. RL, 3:1620–21; TJ to JM, May 25, 1810, and October 15, 1810, RL, 3:1632, 1646–47.

  75. TJ to JM, February 19 and March 26, 1812; JM to TJ, April 3, 1812, RL, 3:1688–91; Hickey, War of 1812, 28.

  76. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 93–99; Hickey, War of 1812, 37–39; JM to TJ, March 9, 1812, RL, 3:1690.

  77. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 109–15; JM to TJ, June 22, 1812; TJ to JM, June 29, 1812, RL, 3:1698–99.

  78. JM to Richard Cutts, August 8, 1812, JM to Samuel Spring, September 6, 1812, in PJM-PS, 5:128, 280; John Marshall to Harry Heth, March 2, 1812, and Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger, May 27, 1812, as cited in Wehje, “Opposition in Virginia to War of 1812,” 77.

  79. Madison’s message to Congress, June 1, 1812, PJM-PS, 432–39; pro-war speeches by Richard M. Johnson, Peter B. Porter (chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee), Kentuckian Joseph Desha (also of the Foreign Affairs Committee), Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 1st sess., 415, 459, 488–89.

  80. [John Lowell], Perpetual War, the Policy of Mr. Madison (Boston, 1812), esp. 15–16, 69–75.

  81. Broussard, Southern Federalists, 1800–1816, 136–38.

  82. TJ to Rush, August 17, 1811, PTJ-RS, 4:87–88.

  83. Dearborn to TJ, March 10, 1812, PTJ-RS, 4:544–45; Carl E. Prince, New Jersey’s Jeffersonian Republicans: The Genesis of an Early American Party Machine, 1789–1817 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1967), 176–79; JM to TJ, October 14, 1812, RL, 3:1705; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 111; Ketcham, 520.

  84. Adams to JM, May 12, 1812, PJM-PS, 4:405.

  85. JM to TJ, August 17, 1812; TJ to JM, June 29, 1812, RL, 3:1698–99, 1702–3; William Pope to JM, July 10, 1812; Monroe to JM, August 4, 1812, PJM-PS, 5:4, 114–15; Wehje, “Opposition in Virginia to the War of 1812,” 83; Hickey, War of 1812, 56–67.

  86. Charles Royster, Light-Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the American Revolution (New York, 1981), 156–85. Madison authorized Monroe to issue a directive (July 7, 1812) from the State Department requesting all British subjects living in the United States to report their names, occupations, and places of residence to U.S. marshals, and to indicate whether they had applied to become naturalized citizens. See PJM-PS, 5:42.

  87. JM to TJ, August 17, 1812, RL, 3:1702–3; Jon Latimer, 1812: War with America (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), 42–45, 52–57; Hickey, War of 1812, 80–88, 283; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 190–207.

  88. Coles to TJ, October 24, 1812, PTJ-RS, 5:410–11; JM to TJ, October 14, 1812; TJ to JM, November 6, 1812, RL, 3:1705, 1707; Monroe to TJ, August 31, 1812, TJP-LC; Milo Quaife, “General William Hull and his Critics,” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 47 (1938): 168–82.

  89. Monroe to JM, September 2 and September 4, 1812; Rush to JM, September 4, 1812; JM to William Eustis, September 5, 1812; JM to Monroe, September 5, 1812, JMP-PS, 5:252–53, 267–70; Dallas to Rush, September 19, 1812, George M. Dallas Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  90. Monroe to JM, September 6, 1812; an unidentified correspondent to JM, October 10, 1812, PJM-PS, 5:281, 416–17; Hickey, War of 1812, 86–90, 93–99; Ketcham, 553–54.

  91. JM to TJ, October 14, 1812, RL, 3:1706; Burstein, The Original Knickerbocker, 96–97; Ketcham, 511–12.

  92. Ketcham, 520–21; Peterson, Great Triumvirate, 39.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Road Out of War, 1813–1816

  1. Federal Republican, January 18, 1813, reprinting poem in Connecticut Mirror, January 1, 1813.

  2. C. Edward Skeen, John Armstrong, Jr., 1758–1843: A Biography (Syracuse, N.Y., 1981), esp. chap. 7; J.C.A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton, N.J., 1983), 57–61, 103–4, 240–41, 280–81; Reginald Horsman, The War of 1812 (New York, 1969), 89; Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812 (Urbana, Ill., 1989), 106; Armstrong to JM, May 6, 1810, PJM-PS, 2:332–33. Armstrong was accused of speculating in Florida land while negotiating on behalf of the United States for the purchase of the Floridas. Madison and Jefferson discounted all such accusations. The Quaker letter was to Ambrose Spencer, a prominent New York politician and lifelong friend who, though married to DeWitt Clinton’s sister, abandoned Clinton around the time Armstrong did.

  3. Eustis to JM, December 3, 1812, JMP-PS, 5:477; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 278; Madison’s “Review of a Statement Attributed to General John Armstrong” (1814), JMP-LC. Despite being abrasive, Armstrong could also flatter, as he did in a letter to Madison in 1812, when he was obviously fishing for the cabinet appointment. He offered “ardent thanks, for that Wisdom and Magnanimity, that have marked all your proceedings, as the Chief Magistrate of this flourishing and Extensive Continent Since yr. Inauguration to yr. Station.” Armstrong to JM, October 26, 1812, PJM-PS, 5:412.

  4. Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 2nd sess., 549, 563, 566, 579; John Randolph to Josiah Quincy, August 30, 1813, in Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts (Boston, 1869), 335. When Monroe first proposed taking command of the army in the West, he assumed he could keep his job (allowing Comptroller of the Treasury Richard Rush to act as interim secretary of state); or else become secretary of war while leading the army and finding someone like Jefferson as his replacement at State. See Monroe to JM, September 2, 1812, Richard Rush to JM, September 4, 1812, PJM-PS, 5:252–53, 267–68. Monroe’s son-in law, George Hay, advised him that he should not command the army and act as secretary of war at the same time. See Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 278–81.

  5. Quincy referred to patronage seekers from his region as men who “suck at the money-distilling breasts of the Treasury” and “toads that live upon the vapor of the palace and swallow the spittle of great men at levees.” See Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 2nd sess., 550, 580, 600; for Dolley Madison’s drawing-room gatherings, see Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics (Charlottesville, Va., 2000), 60–61, 72, 75–82; David B. Mattern and Holly C. Shulman, The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison (Charlottesville, Va., 2003), 95–101.

  6. Using phony praise, Hanson slighted Dolley as one “predominantly distinguished throughout the United States for her transcendent virtues, and above all, for her inflexible morality, her exemplary sobriety, and her conjugal fidelity.” See “Literary Notice,” Georgetown Federal Republican, January 15, 1813. The Federal Republican reprinted Josiah Quincy’s speech on January 22 and 25, 1813. Though Irving Brant noted Hanson’s article and Catherine Allgor mentions it (incorrectly placing it in her chapter on the 1808 election), both miss the Corinna allusion. See Brant, 6:135; and Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the New Nation (New York, 2006), 133; for Dolley attending Pinkney’s courtroom performances, see Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society (New York, 1906), 96–97.

  7. On the law aimed at Pinkney, see Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 2nd sess., 766, 2024; Pinkney to JM, January 24, 1814; JM to Pinkney, January 29, 1814, JMP-LC; also “Modern Sodom,” Federal Republican, December 30, 1813. For other attacks on Pinkney and Mrs. Madison, see “The Virtuous Cabinet” and “The Drawing Room,” in Federal Republican, February 10 and February 19, 1813; the issue of January 29, 1813, criticizes Pinkney, Monroe, and Dolley Madison for her alleged use of federal monies for personal indulgences (i.e., dresses and jewelry). For Pinkney’s reputation as a brilliant lawyer, a dandy in appearance, and a man of questionable morals, see Robert Ireland, The Legal Career of William Pinkney, 1760–1822 (New York, 1976); and Ireland, “William Pinkney: A Revision and Re-Emphasis,” American Journal of Legal History 14 (July 1970): 235–37.

  8. JM to Hamilton, December 31, 1812, JMP-PS, 5:334–35; Brant, 6:125–26. Hamilton did not leave quietly. He circulated rumors that Madison had altered his published letter of resignation so it appeared that Hamilton had voluntarily resigned. See “Paul Hamilton,” Concord Gazette, January 26, 1813; JM to Dearborn, October 7, 1812, JMP-LC; Hickey, War of 1812, 113, 127–28; Edward K. Eckert, The Navy in the War of 1812 (Gainesville, Fla., 1973), 16–17, 3
0–31, 51, 58–59, 71–72, 75–77; Eckert, “William Jones: Mr. Madison’s Secretary of the Navy,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 96 (April 1972): 167–82; and Eckert, “Early Reform in the Navy Department,” American Neptune 33 (1973): 233–38. As an opium trader, see contract with “Young Tom,” a buyer in Canton, September 3, 1805; and for Jones’s strong opposition to impressment, see Edward Carrington to Jones, October 15, 1805, both in William Jones Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  9. In his annual address Madison stated: “The enterprising spirit which has characterized our naval force, and its success, both in restraining insults and depredations on our coasts, and in reprisals on our enemy, will not fail to recommend an enlargement of it.” Annals of Congress, 12th Cong., 2nd sess., 15; William Jones to five of his captains, on U.S. naval inferiority, February 22, 1812, cited in Eckert, Navy in War of 1812, 20–21. Brant, 6:39; Gallatin to James W. Nicholson, May 13, 1812, Gallatin Papers, Library of Congress.

  10. For Madison’s support of the navy during the Revolution, see JM to TJ, April 16, 1781, RL, 1:187; Eckert, Navy in War of 1812, 24–26; TJ to JM, May 21, 1813; JM to TJ, June 6, 1813; TJ to JM, June 21, 1813, RL, 3:1712, 1720–21, 1722–25; Jones to Lloyd Jones, February 27, 1813, William Jones Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Editor Hanson’s attack on the gunboats is in “Gunboats-Ahoy!,” Federal Republican, February 19, 1813.

  11. Skeen, John Armstrong, 127–31; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 310–11; Eckert, Navy in War of 1812, 40–41, 51, 56–58.

  12. Gallatin to JM, March 5, 1812; Astor to Gallatin, February 6 and February 14, 1813, Gallatin Papers, Library of Congress; for Madison’s earlier view on speculators, see JM to TJ, July 10 and August 8, 1791, in RL, 1:698, 708; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 298–99.

  13. The Centinel [Salem, N.Y.], February 11, 1813; Centinel of Freedom [Newark, N.J.], January 26, 1813; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 299–301.