by Chris DeRose
“Such had been the experience on this continent of requisitions, from the time of the Peace Stamps through the war.” Such experience, Madison pointed out, “proclaims the necessity of resorting for safety to the other system; the system of direct taxes which the Constitution has substituted.”
Some had argued that requisitions “ought first to be tried” in the new government, “and if they fail, that direct taxes are then to enforce them.” This argument, Madison pointed out, “admits that requisitions are not likely to be complied with voluntarily.” Favoring the power to levy direct taxes was not the same as advocating a levy of direct taxes, he pointed out. “If extraordinary aids for the public safety be not necessary,” Madison argued, “direct taxes will not be necessary.”
Without a reliable source of revenue, Madison wrote,We invite foreign attacks by showing the inability of the union to repel them: and when attacks are made, must leave the union to defend itself, if it be defended at all, as was done during the late war; by a waste of blood, a destruction of property, and outrages on private rights, unknown in any country which has credit or money to employ regular means of defense. Whilst the late war was carried on by means of impressed property, the annual expense was estimated at about twenty millions of dollars; at the same time that thousands of our brave citizens were perishing from scarcity or quality of the supplies provided in that irregular way: to say nothing of the encouragement given by such a situation to the prolongation of the war. Whereas after the General Government was enabled by pecuniary aids of France to provide supplies in a regular way, the annual expense was reduced to about eight millions of dollars, the army was well fed, the military operations went on with vigor and the blessings of peace were visibly and happily accelerated. Should another war unfortunately be our lot (and the less our ability to repel it, the more likely it is to happen), what would be the condition of the union if obliged to depend on requisitions?...[Who] could be expected to lend to a Government which depended on the punctuality of a dozen or more Governments for the means of discharging even the annual interest of the loan? No man who will candidly make the case his own, will say that he would chuse to become a creditor of a Government under such circumstances.... Or if loans could be attained at all, it could only be from usurers who would make the public pay threefold for the risk & disappointment apprehended.
In “any period since the peace . . . if Great Britain had renewed the war, or an attack had come from any other quarter, and money had become essential for the public safety... how was it to have been obtained?”
Requisitions from the states? “There is not a man acquainted with our affairs who will pretend it.”
Direct taxation, Madison believed, was not the threat to liberty that Monroe feared. It was a necessary support of the union under an effective government. And that union, and that government, were the necessary guarantees of the freedom that Americans enjoyed, that had been under constant threat in the recent war, and that had been held only precariously under the fragile Confederation government.
Perhaps the most significant debate of the race took place at the Hebron Lutheran Church in Culpepper. Like the Baptists, the Lutherans had suffered mistreatment from the state as well as in the private realm—persecution that had made them, like the Baptists, intensely interested in the political process. The Lutherans were eager to hear what their candidates for Congress had to say and usually voted as a bloc to maximize their influence. Their “vote might very probably turn the scale,” Madison thought.16 Both candidates’ presence in the pivotal county of Culpepper, and the willingness of the congregation—now completely up for grabs in this election—to vote as one, made this a crucial night in the campaign.
The site of this great and little known event is the oldest Lutheran Church in the United States still in use. (It can be reached only by driving over two miles of unpaved road from what can only charitably be called a highway. The silence outside the white church makes imaging the night of the debate a bit easier. Miles of green hills, like the one the church is nestled on, roll out to the horizon, with only the rare silo or farmhouse in sight.) Before the debate, the candidates joined in the Lutheran Church service. Afterward, they were entertained by a musical performance with two fiddles. “They are remarkably fond of music,” Madison wrote .17
The candidates and congregation then proceeded outside. Madison remembered, “When it was all over we addressed these people, and kept them standing in the snow listening to the discussion of Constitutional subjects. They stood it out very patiently—seemed to consider it a sort of fight of which they were required to be spectators.”18 Madison, the shortest man ever to serve as president, provided quite a contrast with the muscular Monroe, who stood six feet tall.
The debate probably lasted for hours, the two men who would in turn serve as President of the United States debating in the hills of Culpepper in a dark and snowy scene before an audience of rapt Lutherans and restless horses. The congregation stood silently huddled together for warmth, a great sea of black cloth coats and hats across the hill.
No notes or diary entries reflect what was said in that critical debate of the campaign. But not much imagination is necessary to fill in the dialogue for this scene. Debates in Virginia’s ratifying convention and the contemporaneous letters of both Madison and Monroe establish the arguments and even the words that may have been used by the candidates.
Madison would have clarified his position in favor of amendments, particularly one guaranteeing religious liberty—the necessity for which was almost unquestioned in Virginia. With his unequivocal support for these measures, Madison may have blurred the line between himself and Monroe and robbed the Anti-Federalists of the most potent weapon in their arsenal. But on this important issue, Monroe may have made the claim that he had supported these measures more vocally—and when Madison had opposed them.
The district was heavily Anti-Federalist, but the Federalist candidate had the stronger record. Madison was one of the few people in America whose accomplishments could be said to trump Monroe’s. Monroe needed to distinguish himself from his opponent with an issue on which voters agreed with him. Direct taxation would have provided just the vehicle he needed.
Vulnerability to being taxed by a national government made up of representatives from distant and alien places was potentially terrifying. After all, the Revolution had begun over this very issue. Religious minorities such as the Lutherans, who had paid taxes in the past to support the established denomination and in recent years had been threatened again by the prospect of the general assessment to support the Episcopal Church may have had a special fear of direct taxation by the new national government.
The Culpepper County citizens assembled at this dissenting place of worship were a key voting bloc in Virginia’s 5th District. And the two candidates who faced these voters were ideally suited to put before them the best possible arguments for and against the new system of government that the U.S. Constitution had brought into effect. These swing voters had the power to decide which man would go to Congress. And the election of Madison or Monroe in that district could very well mean the difference between the survival of the United States under the Constitution, or its dissolution at the hands of a second, Anti-Federalist convention.
After the debate candidates and crowd dispersed into the cold darkness, considering carefully what had been said that evening. Madison, who probably made it to Montpelier to bed, but in any case had a long ride ahead of him after the debate, suffered frostbite on his nose that night. Even in old age he would remember this night to others, jokingly pointing to the left side of his nose, where he said he carried his only battle scars.19
After the hours riding to the event, greeting the congregants, attending the church service and the musical performance, and debating one another, Madison and Monroe must have been exhausted. After more hours traveling, a fire was surely a welcome relief from the deep chill, and a bed with blankets a greater one still.
Madison and Mo
nroe had made a long and hard journey together to this point in the campaign. In a very few days, they would know which one of them would go on to Congress, leaving the other behind.
Chapter Fifteen
THE FEDERALIST ENDGAME
“It is an event which I am convinced would not have taken place a fortnight sooner, had it been then tried, and I am equally convinced, that had you stayed away, it would not have happened at all.”1
—EDWARD CARRINGTON
Court Days were some of the most important events on the campaign schedule for both Monroe and Madison. A Court Day was a set day of the month, different in each county, when lawyers and judges tried civil and criminal cases. “At a very early period, as far back as tradition or historical sketch carries us, country court day has been a day of interest to the people of Virginia.”2
The historical antecedent to the primetime legal drama—appealing to Americans’ fascination with trials and criminal justice—Court Days also “served the purposes of club, exchange, political assemblage, muster and social meeting time.”3 They were a “holiday for all the country side . . . from all directions came in people on horseback, in wagons, and afoot.”4 People gathered to see friends and acquaintances, “collect a note or give one, to make a contract or cancel one, to arrange a religious meeting or barbecue, to trade horses or to exchange views concerning the latest philosophy, to make speeches or to listen to them,” or “find the people who were in any way related” to the exciting case at hand.5
Virginia county boundaries were drawn so that no courthouse was more than a half day’s travel away for any resident of the county. People who lived farthest from the courthouse often left home the day before and stayed the night with friends to be sure to arrive no later than 9:00 a.m., when the festivities began. Court Days also included entertainments unrelated to the law, such as markets and county fairs. “Cheap John” vendors would sell soap, razors, cheap jewelry, clocks, and handkerchiefs, while patent medicine men would sell potions to “cure all the ills human flesh was heir to.” Merchants set up tables on the courthouse lawn, selling every imaginable item, including livestock, tobacco, fruits, as well as “gingerbread, molasses, cakes, pies, apples, chestnuts.” The alcohol flowed freely during Court Day, with taverns full of drunken revelers and owners of alcohol carts making a tidy profit. Fist fights were common, some spontaneous and some organized, with prizes to awarded to “winners” who ended the fight with fewer broken bones than their adversaries.6
On the important Orange County Court Day at which Madison and Monroe were to debate, Madison’s cousin Francis Taylor was in attendance along with his father and brother. Like many of the other attendees, Taylor—having acquired a spyglass, keg of oysters, and ream of brown paper—was more occupied with his personal business than with the debate. He wrote that he “saw Col. Madison Jr. and Mr. Monroe, the candidates for Member of Congress.” But he also loaned someone a dollar to settle a debt and arranged for a tailor to sew him a new pair of breeches.7
This was the circus atmosphere Madison and Monroe had to contend with. But the compensating advantage was that during Court Day in Orange and other counties, the two candidates had the opportunity to address hundreds—perhaps over a thousand voters. Their debates weren’t limited to thirty-second or minute-long sound bites, as some debates today are; instead, they involved the two candidates explaining and justifying their views for hours.
The day after the Orange County debate, Madison wrote a widely read letter, later published in the Fredericksburg Virginia Herald as an “Extract of a letter from the Honorable James Madison Jr., to his friend in this county.” The recipient, an unknown resident of Spotsylvania, must have been a good friend to Madison. He arranged for the letter to be printed in the Herald on January 29, two days after it was written. In the letter Madison continued to emphasize his support for amendments. He had no hope of actually winning Spotsylvania County, Monroe’s home turf. But with the county carrying roughly 10 percent of the overall vote, Madison could not afford to lose there by too large a margin. Monroe had debated Madison at Court Day in Orange County, Madison’s home, for the same reason.
The Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer picked up a hint that the Federalist efforts to neutralize the amendments issue had succeeded. A “gentleman from Virginia” wrote that the amendments controversy between the two parties had entirely subsided, “it being agreed on all hands that a bill of rights” was necessary “so as to fix the liberties of the people on the most safe and permanent foundation.” The remaining issue between the parties, the Virginia gentleman noted, was the direct tax.
On Thursday, January 29, Monroe arrived in Culpepper County, where he would work tirelessly in the final days of the election.
In the final hours of the race, both candidates were exhausted from anxiety and overexertion. Madison and Monroe both knew that the stakes were high, and neither could be sure what the outcome of the election would be.
February 2 was Election Day. It had finally come.
The election was conducted by county sheriffs (ordinarily the most senior justices of the peace who had not yet served in that capacity). Sheriffs would in turn appoint clerks to assist them. Voters would enter the courthouse, approach the sheriff or one of his clerks, and announce their vote for Congress, which would be faithfully recorded in a poll book, under the tally for their preferred candidate.
Although law prevented the election from lasting more than one day, some sheriffs kept the polls open for as many as three. The weather had been miserable, with freezing winds and low temperatures. Traveling to vote was difficult, and the extended deadline for voters allowed many people to participate in the election who otherwise would not have been able to cast their votes.
The secret ballot seems so fundamental today that few can imagine voting in any other matter. If surveyed, most Americas would probably say that such a right is guaranteed by the Constitution. The secret ballot makes voter intimidation more difficult by allowing people the right to exercise their vote without the knowledge of their friends, family, employers, or their labor unions. It was not until Grover Cleveland’s comeback in 1892, however, that all states guaranteed a secret ballot to general election voters. To this day the constitution of West Virginia allows voters the right, if they choose, to vote orally and openly. And that famous quadrennial exercise in American democracy known as the Iowa Caucuses still requires people to advocate publicly for their candidate of choice. So it was in this election.
Since his first defeat at the hands of Charles Porter, Madison had believed that a secret ballot was the only method of ensuring a fair election, 8 but voters had not yet secured this right. On February 2, 1789, until the polls closed, voters walked into the courthouse and announced their vote by calling out either “Madison” or “Monroe.” Among those voting in other Virginia districts was George Washington, who traveled to his county courthouse and voted for Richard Bland Lee for Congress.
Then as now, Election Day was a punishing marathon for the candidates and their supporters. As today, volunteers went to the homes of voters identified as supporting their candidate, or perhaps those they thought were persuadable, and brought them to the polling place.
Some of Madison’s supporters used wagons to offer voters a more comfortable ride to the polls, and perhaps Monroe’s followed suit. At one polling place, the “get out the vote” efforts of Madison’s team ran into an unexpected setback. An elderly voter was brought a great distance to cast his ballot for Madison. When the sheriff asked him his preference, the old man asked, “Who was Jemmy Monroe?” The sheriff indicated that someone else could better answer that question, pointing to Monroe himself, who was present campaigning for votes. This humorous happenstance excited the crowd in the courthouse, and the voter spoke for a moment with the candidate.
After speaking with Monroe, the old man announced his preference to the crowd, and the reason why. He had once been a young immigrant to Virginia, and while very poor, had been
befriended and helped by the candidate’s father, Spence Monroe. The old man turned to the sheriff and asked him to record his vote for “Jemmy Monroe.”9
When the polls closed, each sheriff went to the courthouse door and proclaimed the candidate with the highest number of votes in the county. The clerks signed their names in the poll book and took an oath certifying accuracy. Election fraud was taken seriously, and officials who engaged in any sort of tampering were stiffly punished, with a fine of two hundred pounds per offense.
It would take some time before the final results of the election were known. The 5th was a district of eight counties, and communications were slow. The tallies trickled out, with various newspapers publishing incomplete results as the days went by.
The sheriffs took the poll books from their counties to the Albemarle Courthouse, as it was the first county named in the election statute. On February 10, the sheriffs met in Albemarle to certify the results. Edmund Randolph and Jesse Taylor, brother of Francis Taylor and cousin to James Madison, rode to Albemarle to be the first to learn who had won.
Just a few years before, the Albemarle Courthouse had been the Capitol of Virginia, as the British invaders pushed the government farther and farther west. It was here that Jefferson and the legislature had been minutes away from capture.
But in February of 1789 it seemed hardly imaginable that such an event had happened at this very place not eight years earlier. America was independent, and at peace. And the county sheriffs were certifying the results of the very first election to Congress in what would become the greatest republic in the history of the world.
The sheriffs were paid ten shillings for the day of travel and three pence per mile. Once together they would open their poll books and engage in “faithful addition and comparison.” In the event of a tie vote, the sheriffs were obligated to vote among themselves to decide the winner. For the 5th Congressional District in 1789, no tie breaking would be necessary. The results would be announced from the steps and posted to the door.