by Chris DeRose
Schoepf’s observations set forth the difficulties Madison would have in undertaking the serious work to be done.
On May 19, Henry Tazewell introduced in the House seven resolutions, all of which would further the national interest. One of them, for example, would have given the federal government power to regulate the export of goods to countries in the absence of a trade treaty. Tazewell’s proposals are believed to have been drawn up by Madison.37
Another issue of concern to Madison was the “revision of statutes,” first introduced by Jefferson while he served in the House. The laws of Virginia were a mess—unorganized and badly drafted. Madison supported a wholesale revision to the laws of the state so that they could be easily located, understood, and applied.38
On June 4, the clergy of the Episcopal Church petitioned to be established the state religion of Virginia. They asked to be deeded all property previously belonging to the Church of England and requested authority to regulate all spiritual matters within the Commonwealth.39 The petition was referred to the Committee on Religion, of which Madison was a member. Despite Madison’s best efforts, the committee recommended the establishment of the Episcopal Church as the state’s official religion, and a bill to that effect was introduced on June 16. The House of Delegates adjourned on June 30 without taking action.
“The friends of the measure did not choose to try their strength in the House,” Madison wrote Jefferson. “Extraordinary as such a project was, it was preserved from a dishonorable death by the talents of Mr. Henry. It lies over for another season.”40 Though Henry had urged Madison to serve in the state legislature, the two men would not be allies on the question of religious establishment in Virginia.
Meanwhile in Annapolis, before adjourning until fall, Congress set up a Committee of the States pursuant to Article IX of the Articles of Confederation, with one representative from each state to conduct the affairs of the national government during the interim. Jefferson believed that Monroe would be Virginia’s representative on the Committee. “[Monroe] wishes a correspondence with you,” he wrote Madison from Paris, “and I suppose his situation will render him a useful one to you. The scrupulousness of his honor will make you safe in the most confidential communications. A better man there cannot be.”41
As it happened, Monroe’s position on the Committee of the States in 1784 did not in fact render him useful to Madison—or to the country at large. The Committee of the States met one day and immediately adjourned until June 26.42 When they reconvened with barely the numbers needed for a quorum, some members moved to adjourn again. The majority of the Committee, not wishing to abdicate their responsibility, voted adjournment down. Committee members who did want to leave did a simple head count, realized their departure would bring the number below a quorum, and decided to go home.43 Serious members of the Committee, including Monroe, were absolutely appalled.
Thus during the summer and fall of 1784, the United States had no operative federal government. If the British had renewed hostilities or if the Spanish had declared war over the Mississippi, weeks might have been lost before a common response could be organized.
Both Madison and Monroe used their recess to travel. Monroe would finally see the Western country. He had made plans to travel north through Albany, see the Great Lakes, and return through the Ohio country. Before his new assignment to Europe, Jefferson had planned to be his travel companion.44 After arriving in New York, Monroe considered traveling to Montreal, Quebec, and perhaps Detroit. He wanted to examine the Western forts that the British had not relinquished. Monroe romanticized travel and could hardly wait to see these new places and the adventure they promised.
“It is possible I may lose my scalp,” Monroe wrote in a letter to a friend, “but if a little fighting and a great deal of running will save it, God knows they shall not be wanting and particularly the latter.” He even had romantic designs. “[T]he Indian women I am told are handsome and some of their young girls are tall, quiet, majestic, and susceptible of the influence of all powerful love. For that little villain is not contented with giving pain and torturing the feelings of those who live in the civilized world, of being the cause of routs, tumults, quarrels, ill-blood and sometimes the shedding of blood . . . he ranges also in the desert and wilderness and preys upon the heart of many a portly savage.”45
If he did meet an Indian woman, Monroe fancied, “if she did love me how could I refuse to kiss her hand, for I believe if any woman in the world gave me convincing proofs I possess her affections she would acquire mine.” In the same letter, Monroe asked about the women in Annapolis. “The ladies have not a greater admirer of their charms than myself.”
On his travels from Albany, the romantic Monroe encountered the Vaughan family and was smitten with one of the daughters. The young woman wrote to a friend about her admirer, “Poor Colonel Monroe! The man is in despair; he has written a letter [indicating that] he lost his heart on board the Albany sloop.… I fear his love did not meet with a return.... He is a member of Congress, rich, young, sensible, well read, lively, and handsome.” She appealed to the friend for advice: “[H]is being your choice will have great influence upon me, and stop me often when I might be saucily inclined, for at present he is more the object of my diversion than admiration.”46
By August 19 Monroe had traveled to Schenectady. The British were still firmly in control of their forts. Monroe heard and believed that they were receiving secret orders to maintain their posts in violation of the Treaty of Paris.47
In Schenectady, Monroe met a man named Taylor who was a successful trader with the remote Indian tribes. Taylor was taking a party west with him, and Monroe, who found the idea of leaving the beaten path with an experienced guide exciting, joined in the expedition.
The Taylor party, now including Monroe, entered Ontario at Fort Oswego, journeyed along the eastern coast of the lake, and traveled to Fort Niagara, where Monroe received an unusual invitation to dinner.48 On account of that invitation, Monroe would narrowly escape death a second time.
Colonel Arent DePeyster, the British commander of the Fort, was eager to meet Monroe, the young member of Congress and veteran of the recent war. DePeyster was hospitable, and the two men, meeting to enjoy a hot meal in a heated room, probably discussed their experiences in the war and the interesting state of affairs both in Europe and in America.49
During the course of their conversations, DePeyster tried to convince Monroe to change his travel plans. The British governor of Detroit had been embittered by his imprisonment by Governor Jefferson at Williamsburg during the war. DePeyster warned his new Virginian friend that he risked becoming the object of retaliation if he traveled west with the Taylor party.50
Monroe, young and headstrong, at first resisted DePeyster’s warning. Monroe had fought the British at close quarters and lived to tell about it. He did not want to give up the rest of the journey that he had waited so long to take and was looking forward to so eagerly. But Monroe continued to dine with DePeyster throughout his stay in Niagara, and eventually the colonel was able to convince Monroe to take his advice. He persuaded Monroe to travel by the eastern side of Lake Erie to the Allegheny River and from there to Pittsburgh and safety. DePeyster even sent a detachment of Indians who had come under his influence with Monroe to protect him.51
And at the ferry’s landing in Pittsburgh, Monroe was greeted with shocking news. Taylor’s party had been massacred. They had unknowingly made camp near an Indian village. The party went to sleep in the quiet wilderness of the frontier, but apparently the residents of the village mistook their intentions. During the night, the Indians killed them one after another, leaving only two survivors.52 The news must have shocked Monroe. The happy group of explorers with whom he had traveled, who had been alive just days ago, were dead. And but for DePeyster’s persistent warnings, Monroe would almost certainly have died with them. Once again, a small twist of fate had kept Monroe alive. “This narrow escape from destruction,” he later wrote, “fo
rming an interesting incident in Mr. Monroe’s life, it is thought not improper to notice it.”53
Madison had traveled north during the recess, too. In Baltimore, he ran into the Marquis de Lafayette, who wanted him to accompany his party to Fort Stanwix by way of Boston. Stanwix would be the site for a historic treaty with the Indians, and the marquis was eager to be a witness. The staid Madison was not used to being the center of attention, but as members of Lafayette’s party, he and his comrades were made much of throughout their travels. Madison sent news articles about their journey to Jefferson in Europe, asking that they be republished in France to show the allies how much Americans valued French support.54 Lafayette was lionized throughout the states by Americans well aware that independence would never have been won without French help.
The group took a barge up the North River and visited the Oneida Indian nation. At Fort Stanwix Madison learned of Monroe’s journeys ahead of him; he wrote Jefferson that “Colonel Monroe had passed Oswego when last heard of and was likely to execute his plan.”55
The next session of the Confederation Congress met in Trenton on the first day of November, 1784, with Monroe present. His last visit to that town had been in secret, in the early hours of the morning in December of 1776, with the war for independence in the balance. It was here, on the road to Trenton, that Monroe had first cheated death. Arriving in the same town to serve in Congress, he knew there was much to be done before the fruits of the soldiers’ and patriots’ sacrifices would be secure.
Congress attained a quorum on November 30, and America had a government again five months after the ignoble end of the Committee of the States. Monroe had seen and learned much during the recess. He had viewed the incredible beauty of Niagara Falls but had also observed the dangers under which the new nation was operating. The British were keeping their forts and working closely with the Indians.56 Their reason, he learned, was that the colonies were out of compliance with the terms of the peace treaty.
The peace had called for Americans to repay the British the debts they had incurred before the war. But the states were not complying. Virginia had passed a law, championed by Patrick Henry, preventing the use of state courts for the collection of debts to the British. Without a national court system, British creditors were without legal recourse.57 Monroe chaired a committee that examined the issue and condemned the British for violating Article VII of the treaty regarding posts and fortifications.58
Monroe and his friend and old fellow student John Mercer had brought new youthful energy to the Virginia delegation in Congress. But they were facing the same intractable problems that Madison had wrestled with for years. From Congress Mercer wrote Madison, who was in Richmond for the fall session of the House of Delegates, “In my judgment, there never was a crisis, threatening an event [outcome] more unfavorable to the happiness of the United States, than the present. Those repellent qualities the seeds of which are abundantly sown in the discordant manners and sentiments of the different states, have produced great heats and animosities in Congress now no longer under the restraint imposed by the war.”
Europeans believed that America was “verging fast towards anarchy and confusion,” and Americans in Europe were asking whether their country had anything resembling a government at all.59 Mercer was not finished delivering bad news. Several states had not even considered paying their requisitions for 1784. In other cases, legislatures had taken up the issue only to formally decline to pay. “I believe no other plan, short of divine wisdom, and not protected by the providence of God, would meet the unanimous concurrence of these states . . . a year’s interest will soon be due in Europe . . . without a shilling to pay.”60
During Madison’s jaunt with Lafayette, the Frenchman had let him know that Spain was determined to deny America the use of the Mississippi. 61 Madison’s first initiative during the October session of the House of Delegates was a resolution instructing Virginia’s delegation in Congress on the issue. The first part of Madison’s proposal had to do with American settlers who were acting lawlessly against the Spanish. Congress, Madison proposed, should pass a law allowing extradition for citizens who committed crimes against other nations, lest they provoke the Spanish into a war.
The second part of Madison’s proposal resolved, “It is essential to the prosperity and happiness of the western inhabitants of this Commonwealth, to enjoy the right of navigating the river Mississippi to the sea, and that the delegates representing this state in Congress, ought to be instructed to move that honorable body to give directions . . . to forward negotiations to obtain that end, without loss of time.”62 Based on these instructions, Monroe, Mercer, and the rest of the congressional delegation passed a resolution appointing a Minister to Spain to ensure the free navigation of the river.
In addition to the problem of the Mississippi, Madison passed some of the very first veterans’ legislation introduced in America, awarding a Virginia state pension “to all regular or militia officers and soldiers who have been wounded or otherwise disabled in the service of their country” in an amount deemed appropriate by the governor and Council.63
There was serious work to be done, little of which was being addressed either in Congress or in the Virginia legislature. For both Madison and Monroe the vacation was over, and they struggled mightily in their respective roles to take care of their country’s business. Madison would refer to this time in the legislature as “the tedious session” on no fewer than three separate occasions.64 Monroe surely felt the same way about his fruitless session in Congress, a weak and detested body wholly unequal to the great tasks before it.
It was during this time of great frustration that the two statesmen found common cause and a sympathetic ally and friend—in each other.
Chapter Six
MADISON AND MONROE
“I beg of you to write me weekly and give me your opinion upon these and every other subject which you think worthy of my attention.”
—JAMES MONROE
“I wish much to throw our correspondence into a more regular course.”
—JAMES MADISON
By the autumn of 1784, Madison and Monroe had heard of one another often from their many close mutual friends, but they had yet to establish a friendship. Jefferson was an intimate of each man, he was eager to have both relocate near Monticello, and earlier that year he had suggested a confidential correspondence between the two men. Madison was also very close to Monroe’s uncle Joseph Jones, with whom he had served in the Convention of 1776 and in Congress, even living with him in the ten-foot-square room in Princeton. Madison had also previously corresponded with John Mercer, Monroe’s best friend from college and the war.
Madison and Monroe may even have met the previous June, while they were both members of the “Constitutional Society,” the purpose of which was “preserving and handing down to posterity, those pure and sacred principles of liberty . . . from the happy event of the late glorious revolution... by giving free and frequent information to the mass of people, both of the nature of them, and of the measures which may be adopted by their several component parts.”1
This illustrious group, which included Madison, Monroe, Edmund Randolph, Joseph Jones, and Patrick Henry, among others, was dedicated to such measures as “the surest mode to secure republican systems of government from lapsing into tyranny.” Unfortunately, recorded minutes are extant only from the Constitutional Society’s first meeting. If Madison and Monroe did make one another’s acquaintance as members of the Constitutional Society, the records of the meeting have been lost.
It wasn’t until November 7, 1784, when he was back from his nearly fatal trip west and waiting for Congress to convene in Trenton, New Jersey, that Congressman James Monroe penned his first letter to Delegate James Madison. Seated at his desk, quill in hand and inkwell before him, Monroe could not have known that he was commencing a correspondence that would last for five decades, establish one of the great friendships of his life, and play a role in the founding
of the United States under the Constitution.
“Dear Sir,” he began, “I enclose you a cipher which will put some cover on our correspondence.” By accident or avarice, it was too easy for letters to fall into the wrong hands. Cryptography to allow for communications of a personal or politically sensitive nature was a common practice of the time. The cipher Monroe sent was a separate document containing ninety-nine words, each corresponding to a number. They included “Thomas Jefferson,” “John Adams,” and the kings of Spain and France, as well as “war,” “peace,” “defense,” “prepare,” and “states.” Using this code, the two correspondents could communicate freely about the sensitive matters they were addressing in their work. Monroe reported that only five states were present in Congress, a fact which came as absolutely no surprise to Madison.2
Before even receiving a reply, Monroe sent a second more detailed letter to Madison. “I beg of you to write me weekly and give me your opinion upon these and every other subject which you think worthy of my attention,” he wrote. Monroe, who was twenty-six—seven years Madison’s junior—was hoping to learn everything he could from his new friend.
Monroe’s second letter told of an incident involving a high-ranking French diplomat peacefully going about his business on a street in Philadelphia. A French citizen, upset with some decision of his government, decided that the best way to express his frustration was to approach the diplomat and punch him in the face. This case of common assault soon became an international affair, with the French demanding custody of the attacker. The offender was punished severely, with a two hundred-dollar fine and a two-year prison sentence, but the French insisted that they should be able to mete out justice themselves. Monroe also shared what he had learned of the western defenses and Indian policy and lamented what had happened to the Committee of the States.3