I | INTRODUCTION |
James
Madison (1751-1836), fourth president of the United States (1809-1817)
and one of its founding fathers. In a distinguished public career that covered
more than 40 years, he worked for American independence, helped to establish the
government of the new nation, and went on to participate in that government as
congressman, secretary of state, and ultimately president. Madison’s work on the
Constitution of the United States gave him his best opportunity to exercise his
great talents and is generally considered his most valuable contribution. His
intense concern for religious and intellectual freedom led him to seek the
strongest possible safeguards of individual liberty. More than any other person,
Madison can be considered responsible for making the Bill of Rights part of the
Constitution.
II | EARLY LIFE |
Madison was the eldest child of James and
Eleanor Conway Madison. He later characterized his forebears in these terms: “In
both the paternal and maternal line of ancestry [they were] planters and among
the respectable though not the most opulent class.” He was born on March 16,
1751, in the home of his maternal grandmother and stepgrandfather, on the
Rappahannock River near what is now Port Conway, Virginia. Shortly after the
christening, his mother brought him to his father’s estate in nearby Orange
County, Virginia, where he grew up. Madison later inherited his father’s estate,
Montpelier, and lived there the rest of his life.
Like most plantation children of colonial
times, young James received his earliest schooling at home, probably largely
from his grandmother, Mrs. Frances Taylor Madison. When he was about 12, he was
enrolled in the school of Donald Robertson in King and Queen County. After
“three or four years” with Robertson, he studied for “a year or two” under the
Reverend Thomas Martin and in 1769 enrolled in the College of New Jersey (now
Princeton University).
Already well prepared in the classics,
Madison concentrated on the study of history, government, and public law. He
found considerable revolutionary sentiment stirring at the college and became a
leading member, although probably not a founder as is sometimes claimed, of the
American Whig Society, a club greatly interested in discussing current public
controversies. In 1771 he received his degree and, after some months of
postgraduate study, returned home to Virginia.
From 1772 to 1775, Madison remained in his
father’s home at Montpelier in poor health, convinced that he would not have a
long life. It has been suggested that he suffered from hypochondria, a
condition in which he experienced the symptoms of a disease but none was
diagnosed. Uncertain about a career, he devoted his time to extensive reading in
literature, theology, and law. Before long a growing interest in political and
religious freedom led him into a serious study of public law and of the forms
and principles of government. He wrote a friend early in 1774 of the change in
his tastes. He used to have, he wrote, “too great a hankering after those
amusing studies. Poetry, wit, and criticism, romances, plays, etc., captivated
me much; but I begin to discover that they deserve but a small portion of a
mortal’s time, and that something more substantial, more durable, more
profitable, befits a riper age.”
III | EARLY CAREER |
By the spring of 1774, when the colonies
were deep in protest against British domination, Madison was emerging from his
long period of isolation and melancholy. He felt that his health was returning
and with it a zest for taking part in the events that were absorbing so many
able people of the time. His own position was already clear. He was committed to
republican government and to separation of the American colonies from Great
Britain.
In December 1774 Madison was elected a
member of Orange County’s committee of safety, which exercised certain
governmental functions as provided by the Continental Congress, a council of 12
of the 13 colonies. The committee was also responsible for local defense.
Madison wrote at the time: “We are very busy at present in raising men and
providing the necessaries for defending ourselves.”
In 1776 Madison was elected a delegate to
the Virginia constitutional convention. Madison later wrote that, being young
and inexperienced, he played only a small part in the proceedings. He was much
too modest, for he served on the committee that prepared a declaration of rights
and he drafted a plan of government for the new state. At this time he worked
closely with Virginia legislator Thomas Jefferson in a great effort to establish
religious freedom as a part of Virginia law. Madison wrote the article of the
declaration of rights that asserted the right of all “to the free exercise of
religion, according to the dictates of conscience.” However, it was not until
1786 that, through Madison’s leadership, the Virginia legislature enacted
Jefferson’s monumental Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom.
When the Virginia constitution went into
effect in June 1776, Madison, along with the other delegates to the convention,
became a member of the legislature, the General Assembly. The following spring,
however, he failed to be reelected by his Orange County constituents. His
refusal to indulge the people’s expectation to be wooed with whiskey for their
votes is generally blamed for Madison’s loss of the election.
A year later, although he did not seek the
office, he was returned to the assembly. In the meantime he had been appointed
to the governor’s council. Madison gained valuable experience in practical
government while he was serving on the council, although he characterized this
administrative body as being “the grave of all useful talents.”
A | Member of the Continental Congress |
In December 1779 Madison was elected to
the Continental Congress. He took his seat with the Virginia delegation in March
1780, just four days after his 29th birthday. He was not only the youngest man
in Congress but at the beginning probably the least imposing. He was slight,
reserved, and hesitant in taking the floor to speak. But these drawbacks did not
prevent his making a speedy and accurate appraisal of the condition of the
country, and after the first few months he assumed a leading role in
Congress.
In 1781 major hostilities with Britain
came to an end, and the independence of the United States was assured. However,
there was still much to be decided regarding the new nation’s form of government
and its relations with its neighbors. Madison favored strengthening the central
government by giving it the power to enforce its financial requisitions on the
states and to levy import duties. He led the fight in support of Virginia’s
claims to western territories. In negotiations with Spain over navigational
rights on the Mississippi River, he urged firmness against Spain’s demands for
control of all shipping upon it. When Madison left Philadelphia at the end of
1783, he had established himself as an able and farsighted politician.
Before leaving Congress for home, Madison
suffered a deep personal disappointment. He had fallen in love with Catherine
Floyd, the young daughter of another congressional delegate. In April 1783 he
wrote to Jefferson that he had “sufficiently ascertained her sentiments.” He
hoped to be married at the end of the year. But Miss Floyd broke the engagement,
and Madison returned to Montpelier for a solitary winter of reading and
study.
B | State Assemblyman |
In the spring of 1784 Madison again ran
for election to the Virginia assembly, and won. He served nearly three years
there, pursuing the same objectives he had fought for in Congress. He advocated
strengthening the federal government, which was an unpopular position in
Virginia, as it was in most of the states. He consistently supported measures,
at both state and national levels, that would best safeguard the rights of the
individual. Madison also continued to oppose any connection between church and
state. He wrote a brilliant objection against a proposed assessment for support
of the Anglican Church in Virginia. He succeeded not only in defeating the
assessment, but in winning passage of Jefferson’s bill for religious liberty,
which had been rejected in 1779.
Madison was also greatly concerned about
the problem of regulating commerce between the states. He was largely
responsible for calling a conference between Maryland and Virginia to discuss
navigation rules for the Potomac River, the border between the two states. The
discussions failed because other states on the river were not represented.
Madison and his supporters then proposed a resolution in the Virginia assembly
inviting all the states to meet to discuss the question of uniform commercial
regulations. The meeting was held in September 1786 in Annapolis, Maryland.
Madison saw a grave danger to national
unity in the conflicting interests that dominated the different regions and
states after the struggle against Britain. He believed that uniform rules should
be established among the states to govern trade and commercial relations, and he
felt that only the federal government could effectively enforce these rules.
Madison and many others strongly believed that the Articles of Confederation,
the legal framework under which the national government was operating, should be
amended to expand the powers of Congress. But he was pessimistic about winning
support for amending the Articles at the Annapolis Convention.
Madison attended the Annapolis Convention
as a delegate from Virginia. Only four other states sent representatives. It was
agreed to call another convention of all the states, this time to draw up a
national constitution. The Virginia assembly unanimously approved the new
convention, which was scheduled to be held in Philadelphia in May 1787, and
Madison was named one of the delegates.
In February 1787 Madison returned briefly
to Congress, primarily, he said, to preserve American access to the Mississippi
River. He did help to halt the negotiations with Spain, which had taken a
direction that would have led to the cession of American navigational rights
which the United States had on the Mississippi.
C | Father of the Constitution |
C1 | Constitutional Convention |
Madison was one of the first delegates
to arrive in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention, three weeks before
the convention opened. He came equipped with two papers he had written earlier
that spring, a Study of Ancient and Modern Confederacies; and Vices of
the Political System of the United States, drawn from his comprehensive
reading and his eleven years of experience in government. When his fellow
delegates from Virginia arrived, Madison was ready to outline for them his plan
of government.
Madison proposed a government with
strong central powers, including a national judiciary and an elected national
executive, and with authority to veto legislation of individual states.
Primarily he sought to provide the central government “with positive and
complete authority in all cases which require uniformity” and to prevent abuse
of this authority by making the government responsible to the people. He favored
a two-chamber legislature and a system of representation that would give the
larger states an influence in proportion to their size.
Madison’s ideas were presented to the
convention by Virginia’s Governor Edmund Randolph, in the so-called Virginia
Plan or Large-State Plan. The Small-State Plan, urging equal representation in
Congress for all states regardless of population, was proposed by New Jersey.
Madison became the leading spokesman for the Virginia Plan and, despite strong
opposition, for the Virginia delegation also.
The convention compromised between the
Virginia and New Jersey plans: the states would be represented according to size
in the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, but would have equal voting
power in the upper chamber, the Senate. This represented a defeat for Madison.
He feared government by a minority and foresaw that the small states would be
able to wield disproportionate power.
Madison kept a detailed journal of the
convention’s proceedings. He had been in constant attendance, and this
Journal of the Federal Convention, published in 1840, is the most
complete record of the historic meeting. “It happened,” he remarked, “that I was
not absent a single day, nor more than a fraction of an hour in any day, so that
I could not have lost a single speech unless a very short one.” His purpose was
to preserve “the history of a Constitution on which would be staked the
happiness of a people great even in its infancy, and possibly the cause of
liberty throughout the world.”
In the year following the
Constitutional Convention, Madison worked to get the new Constitution accepted.
In Congress his efforts helped defeat attempts to amend the Constitution and
speeded its referral to the states for ratification. Also, while in New York
with the Congress, Madison made plans with fellow constitutional supporters
Alexander Hamilton and John Jay for a series of articles explaining and
defending the Constitution. These were published in the newspapers with the aim
of counteracting the attacks that had been launched against the Constitution in
the nation’s press.
C2 | The Federalist |
The first of these articles, later
known collectively as The Federalist, was published in October 1787. Over
the next ten months, the first 77 of the 85 separate essays appeared in
newspapers in New York and other localities over the signature “a Citizen of New
York” and, later, “Publius.” Madison is usually credited with the authorship of
at least 26 of them.
The tenth essay of the series is
perhaps the best known of those written by Madison. In it he explains the proper
relationship of government to the many varied and conflicting interests that
characterize a democratic society, and he analyzes the origin of these
differences. He believed that political differences grew primarily out of
varying economic interests and that the basic cause of the friction among the
American states was not the differences in size but the conflicts between slave
and free states, between plantation and merchant states, between debtor and
creditor states. This view of society made Madison a forerunner of the so-called
economic-interpretation school of history that became dominant in the 20th
century. However, he believed that a strong Constitution could help to reduce
such conflicts and prevent economic exploitation.
C3 | Fight for Ratification in Virginia |
Madison had not planned to participate
in Virginia’s ratification convention. But opposition to the new Constitution
had mounted in the state, and Madison’s friends urged him to assist in the fight
for adoption. In the spring of 1788 Madison left New York for Virginia. He ran
for delegate from Orange County and was elected to the June convention.
At the convention, Madison found some
of the most powerful and most eloquent of Virginia’s statesmen opposed to the
Constitution, including Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Monroe. But, as
in Philadelphia, Madison had come well prepared. He knew every article of the
proposed Constitution and was familiar with all the arguments used against it.
When point-by-point examination of the Constitution began, Madison spoke
constantly in its defense and offered full explanations.
Though ill, Madison took the floor 35
times in the first four days of this examination. His arguments were those of
The Federalist. His manner of speaking was restrained, while that of
Patrick Henry, his chief adversary, was flamboyant. Madison spoke always to the
point, with the pertinent facts at hand.
It was Madison’s thorough acquaintance
with the affairs of Congress that overwhelmed Henry’s final attempt to block
ratification. When his opponent warned the convention that the treaty powers
under the proposed Constitution would result in the loss of the Mississippi
River to Spain, Madison replied that a majority of the states were already
committed to retaining American navigation rights. By this disclosure, Madison
reassured the delegates from the western territories of Virginia and obtained
their support for the Constitution. In the final tally the convention approved
ratification by a vote of 89 to 79.
After the convention adjourned, the
Virginia assembly returned Madison to Congress, then in its final session under
the Articles of Confederation. However, largely through the efforts of Patrick
Henry, Madison failed to win a seat in the new U.S. Senate. He thereupon ran for
election to the House of Representatives from his home district. He was opposed
by James Monroe. However, in February 1789, Madison was easily elected to the
first of the four consecutive terms that he served in the House.
D | United States Congressman |
The eight years of Madison’s service in
Congress saw the beginning of the two-party system in the United States. The
chief causes of the split between the founding fathers were relations with
Britain and differing views on the powers to be granted the federal government.
Hamilton headed the Federalist group (later the Federalist Party), mostly
Northerners, who favored accommodation with Britain and a strong central
government. Jefferson was the chief spokesman for those who opposed friendship
with Britain and sought to limit the power of the federal government. Madison
began his career in Congress as leader for Hamilton’s administrative program.
However, as Hamilton’s financial schemes became more obviously pro-Northern and
pro-industrial, Madison opposed these plans. By the end of his congressional
career, he was a leader of the anti-Federalists, or Democratic-Republican Party,
in Congress.
Madison automatically assumed a role of
leadership. In the first term of the new Congress, he introduced its first piece
of business, a measure to raise revenues for paying off the national debt. He
successfully defended the measure, which imposed a series of import taxes,
against vigorous opposition by representatives who proposed changing the measure
to benefit local interests. Madison emphasized that the import taxes were
desirable as a means of raising money, not of regulating the flow of goods. He
believed that “commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and
impolitic.”
Soon after passage of the revenue bill,
Madison advanced and fought for two other important measures in the House. The
first proposed to set up executive departments of the government. The second,
introduced on June 8, 1789, presented a series of nine amendments to strengthen
the Constitution. These were largely designed to guarantee personal liberty,
including religious freedom and freedom of the press. Madison led the debate for
his amendments and saw most of them approved. They formed, with the Tenth
Amendment, the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.
D1 | Split with the Federalists |
In the 1790 session of Congress,
Madison began to be alienated from the Federalists. He took issue with portions
of Hamilton’s plan for securing the country’s credit. He urged that any profits
made by present holders of notes or certificates of the nation’s indebtedness be
shared with the original holders of such bills, that is, those who actually
loaned the money. Otherwise, people who purchased these bills from the original
creditors could make a large profit. Madison strongly, and probably rightly,
feared the possibility of large gains to speculators who would buy the bills on
news of a federal funding. However, he was defeated on this point.
Madison also fought Hamilton’s proposal
that the federal government assume the states’ debts incurred during the
revolution. Although he had advocated a similar measure in 1783, Madison now
would not accept it. He felt that certain states, among them Virginia, that had
retired a large part of their wartime debt would be made to pay more than their
share. He also feared the consequences of concentrating financial power in one
place. But before long he conceded that “I suspect that it will yet be
unavoidable to admit the evil in some qualified shape.” The assumption bill was
soon passed. The South’s support was won by the promise, agreed to by Jefferson,
if not Madison, that the national capital would be located in the South. The
establishment of the capital in Washington, D.C., was the result of this
compromise.
The breach between Hamilton and Madison
soon widened further. When Hamilton introduced a bill to charter a national
bank, early in 1791, Madison organized and led the opposition to it. He also
objected to new tariff (import tax) measures proposed by Hamilton, always taking
the position that the Constitution did not sanction the powers that Hamilton’s
followers assumed. In fact, Hamilton’s measures hardly went beyond what Madison
himself had proposed in the Continental Congress. But now Madison feared that
Hamilton’s program would enhance the power of the North. The national spirit
that had inspired many American statesmen, including Madison, during the
revolution and the formation of the new government was beginning to yield to
regional allegiances.
D2 | Collaboration With Jefferson |
Madison’s parting with his former
Federalist friends was complete by 1792, when the second American presidential
election was held. Madison did not support John Adams for the vice presidency.
In fact, all the electoral votes of Virginia, then the largest of all the
states, were cast for an anti-Federalist candidate. From this time on, Madison
joined his political life to that of Thomas Jefferson and became openly and
bitterly critical of Hamilton and his views. Relations between President George
Washington and Madison now grew cool, though the president had regularly
consulted Madison on basic policies during his first term.
The friendship of Madison and Jefferson
was one of the most remarkable in American history. They first met in the
Virginia legislature in 1776. But, according to the unassuming Madison, this
meeting was “rendered slight by the disparity between us,” and he did not become
closely acquainted with Jefferson until 1779, when Jefferson was governor of
Virginia. From about 1782 on, they met frequently and corresponded on a wide
variety of subjects. But until 1789 they were still, wrote Madison, “for the
most part separated by different walks in public and private life.”
Beginning about 1790, however,
Madison’s political career closely followed Jefferson’s. In their personalities
and modes of thinking they were very different, but they complemented one
another. Statesman Henry Clay said that he preferred Madison and thought him the
nation’s most distinguished political writer and, after Washington, its greatest
statesman. Clay regarded Jefferson as having greater genius; Madison, greater
judgment and common sense. He considered Jefferson “a visionary and theorist,
often betrayed by his enthusiasm into rash and imprudent and impractical
measures,” while he viewed Madison as “cool, dispassionate—practical,
safe.”
D3 | Foreign Affairs |
The antagonism between Federalists and
anti-Federalists became sharpest in the realm of foreign affairs. Like
Jefferson, Madison was sympathetic to the French Revolution (1789-1799).
Hamilton, on the other hand, mistrusted it. Throughout the wars between France
and Britain, the Federalists’ sympathies were with Britain, while those of
Jefferson and Madison were with France. In 1793 President Washington firmly
declared America’s intention of remaining neutral in the foreign war. Madison
saw this position as a “most unfortunate error” and a sign of the pro-British
tilt of the administration’s foreign policy. In a series of five letters
published in the Gazette of the United States, Madison, under the name
Helvidius, assailed Hamilton’s defense of neutrality. U.S. neutrality made it
impossible to carry out certain provisions of the U.S. treaty with France signed
during the American Revolution. Referring to Hamilton’s views, published
previously in the Gazette, Madison wrote with greater anger than was his
habit: “Several pieces...lately published...have been read with singular
pleasure and applause by the foreigners and degenerate citizens among us, who
hate our republican government and the French Revolution.”
Instead of neutrality, Madison urged a
policy of retaliation with “commercial weapons” against any interference with
American shipping and foreign commerce. Jay’s Treaty with Britain, negotiated
late in 1794 to agree on shipping rights, did not satisfy Madison. It allowed
liberal trading rights to Britain without making changes to the British
regulations that limited American trade to Britain. He opposed the legislation
necessary to implement it.
The issue of the U.S. position in the
conflict between France and Britain was to dominate much of Madison’s future
political career, first as secretary of state and later as president. However,
in his last term in Congress the Federalist Party was firmly in control, and
Madison wielded little influence. In fact, Madison did not seek reelection in
1796.
D4 | Marriage |
During his third term in Congress, at
the age of 43, Madison married a young widow, Dolley Payne Todd. Both had lived
in Philadelphia for several years and certainly knew each other, but their
friendship did not begin until the spring of 1794. Madison sought a formal
introduction, and Dolley excitedly wrote to a friend, “Thou must come to me.
Aaron Burr [then a U.S. senator] says that the great little Madison has asked to
be brought to see me this evening.” Their marriage took place on September 15 of
the same year.
Though childless, the marriage was a
happy one. Dolley was a woman of great personal warmth and social ease. She made
domestic life so attractive that Madison even contemplated permanent retirement
from politics. In fact, at the end of the congressional session in 1797, he
returned to Montpelier, intending to devote his life to farming.
But Madison’s retirement lasted only
two years, after which he was once more elected to the Virginia legislature. He
had continued to observe the affairs of government with keen and partisan
interest, and he was in frequent touch with his political friends. With
Jefferson serving as vice president and broadening the influence of the
Republican Party, as the anti-Federalists by then were known, Madison’s
involvement was unlikely to diminish.
D5 | Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions |
In 1798 Madison joined Jefferson in
opposing the Alien and Sedition Acts passed under President John Adams’s
Federalist administration. He regarded these acts, which were adopted to
restrain partisans and sympathizers of the French Revolution, as
unconstitutional and a grave threat to civil liberties. With Jefferson and other
Republicans, Madison agreed to combat the acts. He drew up the Virginia
Resolutions, condemning the Alien and Sedition Acts as infractions of the
federal government’s constitutional powers. Jefferson composed a similar though
more extreme set of resolutions, asserting that a state could refuse to apply
such laws, for the legislature of Kentucky. Both states adopted their respective
resolutions, later known as the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. But they took
no action on them, and no similar action was taken by other states.
E | Secretary of State |
When Jefferson became president in 1801,
he appointed Madison to the highest post in his Cabinet. From 1801 to 1809,
Madison served as both secretary of state and chief adviser to his old
friend.
The extent to which Madison personally
formulated American foreign policy is not clear. Jefferson generated many ideas,
and began some actions himself. For example, Jefferson, working with ambassadors
reporting directly to him, managed the Louisiana Purchase, which finally assured
the United States access to the Mississippi. Yet Madison was more than secretary
of state to the president. The two men exchanged views on all subjects and were
always in essential agreement.
When Madison took over the Department of
State, its staff numbered fewer than a dozen, and his administrative duties were
not extensive. However, the international problems confronting him were
formidable. They concerned primarily America’s relations with the warring
nations of Europe.
Since the beginning of hostilities
between France and Great Britain, American shippers had been transporting much
of the seaborne trade of those countries, particularly between Europe and the
French and British islands of the West Indies. However, Britain and France had
declared a blockade against each other’s ports. American ships headed to or from
those ports were often stopped by the British or French navy and their cargoes
confiscated. Further, sailors on American vessels were frequently removed and
forcibly inducted, or impressed, into service with the British navy
(see Impressment and Search).
While Madison was secretary of state,
both sides increased their interference with American shipping. For a variety of
reasons the British were regarded as the greater offenders, and many people in
the United States urged an aggressive policy, even to declaring war on Britain.
Others favored negotiations in the hope that an accommodation could be
reached.
In 1803 Madison began writing a series of
letters to French and, more often, British authorities, protesting against
illegal interference with American shipping. This “diplomacy by correspondence,”
though well grounded in theory and legal argument, had little effect. Madison’s
efforts were ridiculed by Congressman John Randolph of Roanoke as a “shilling
pamphlet hurled against eight hundred ships of war.” Attempts to negotiate
failed to stop the impressment of American sailors or the confiscation of
American cargoes.
Finally, still determined not to be
provoked into war, Madison and Jefferson introduced the Embargo Act of 1807,
which ordered all trade into and out of American ports to be halted. Since this
ban was difficult to enforce and in any event did not intimidate either Britain
or France, it eventually had to be abandoned. Harassment of American shipping
continued into Madison’s own administration.
IV | PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES |
A | Election of 1808 |
It was no surprise that Madison’s party
named him to succeed Jefferson. A dissident faction called the Quids opposed him
and nominated James Monroe. But Madison kept the support of all but a small
group of the Republicans and easily defeated the Federalist candidate, diplomat
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina. He received 122 electoral votes
to Pinckney’s 47. George Clinton, vice president under Jefferson, had 6 votes.
Clinton also became Madison’s vice president.
Madison was sworn into office by Chief
Justice John Marshall on March 4, 1809. A great inaugural ball, the first of its
kind, celebrated his assumption of the presidency. Though elated by his triumph
and the honor accorded him, Madison felt greatly the responsibility that had
fallen on him.
An observer wrote that Madison was
“extremely pale and trembled excessively” as he began his inaugural address,
“but soon gained confidence and spoke audibly.” His remarks reflected the
“peculiar solemnity” of the “existing period.” He stressed that “the present
situation of the world is indeed without a parallel and that of our own country
full of difficulties.” Madison’s address emphasized his ardent desire for peace,
but made it clear that he would not tolerate continued foreign interference. Its
tone foreshadowed the course he would follow in dealing with such
interference.
B | Relations With Britain and France |
The eight years of Madison’s presidency
were dominated by continuing and growing tensions between the United States and
the governments of France and Britain, and finally by open warfare with Britain.
When Madison took office, the Embargo Act of 1807 had been replaced by the
Non-Intercourse Act, which reopened trade with countries other than France and
Britain. By 1810 it was apparent to Madison that the American trade boycott was
having no effect. American ships were being seized at a greater rate, if
anything, by both countries. In May 1810, therefore, the Non-Intercourse Act was
repealed, and the United States resumed trade with both France and Britain. But
if one of them dropped its restrictions on American shipping, Madison was
authorized to again prohibit trade with the other.
C | Worsening of Relations |
U.S.-British relations deteriorated
further when the president received what he was led to regard as complete
assurance that France was renouncing its policy of intercepting American ships.
Unaware that he was being tricked by France, Madison declared in November 1810
that trade with Britain was to be halted. Although negotiations with British
ambassadors continued in hope of a peaceable settlement, they were now almost
certainly doomed to fail.
By April 1811 Madison had sufficiently
mended his relations with Monroe, his rival in the 1808 election, to obtain
Monroe’s services as secretary of state. He placed Monroe in charge of
negotiations with Britain. A number of issues were discussed, but to Madison the
crucial one was that Britain drop its restrictions on American shipping. The
talks proceeded with some success over the next year. But in his third annual
message, in November 1811, Madison asked Congress to put the United States “into
an armour and an attitude demanded by the crisis.”
War had now become likely with Britain.
This was due, however, as much to the American ambition to expand U.S. territory
into British-held lands in the West, into Canada, and into Spanish Florida as to
the controversy over shipping rights. Madison’s annexation of a part of Florida
is believed to have strengthened these ambitions. The most prominent members of
the expansionist movement were Henry Clay, then a congressman from Kentucky, and
John C. Calhoun, a congressman from South Carolina. They were the leaders of the
war hawks, as the militant expansionist and anti-British forces in Congress were
called. They accused Britain of provoking Native American attacks on American
frontier communities. In November 1811 American troops under Indiana Governor
William Henry Harrison fought the Shawnee nation at the Battle of Tippecanoe
near the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash rivers. Although Madison had
not personally authorized the use of troops, he used the occasion to rally
support in Congress for military preparations. War with Britain then became all
but certain.
In March 1812 some American ships bound
for Lisbon, Portugal, were destroyed by French frigates. But Madison’s action
against British trade interference had gathered too much momentum. “Let it not
be said,” Madison reasoned, “that the misconduct of France neutralizes in the
least that of Britain.” He made it clear that nothing but revocation of
Britain’s restrictions on trade could now alter his policy. On March 31 he was
quoted as saying “that without an accommodation with Britain Congress ought to
declare war before adjourning.”
Early in April, Madison learned that no
concession toward settlement was forthcoming from Britain. He promptly asked
Congress to place an embargo against Britain and implied that if American
grievances were not satisfied during the embargo period, stronger measures would
be employed.
C1 | Declaration of War |
Madison’s demand was interpreted as a
prelude to war. The embargo was passed promptly by Congress, and it expired on
June 1. On that date, no satisfactory solution having been offered, Madison
addressed his war message to Congress. He told Congress that “our commerce has
been plundered in every sea,” that Britain was intent on destroying American
commerce “not as supplying the wants of her enemies, which she herself supplies;
but as interfering with the monopoly which she covets for her own commerce and
navigation.” Madison also made an allusion to British participation in recent
Native American uprisings and to other “injuries and indignities ... heaped on
our country.” He also condemned the hostile acts of France, but recommended that
action on these be postponed for the moment. Madison concluded: “We behold ...
on the side of Britain a state of war against the United States, and on the side
of the United States a state of peace toward Britain.” He asked Congress to
decide whether the United States should remain at peace under these
circumstances as “a solemn question which the Constitution wisely confides to
the legislative department of the government.” On June 18 Madison signed a
declaration of war passed by both houses of Congress.
Ironically, and unknown to Madison,
Britain had in fact revoked its restrictions on American shipping on June 16.
The action had come after France’s public repeal of its decrees restricting
American trade, which had supposedly been effected more than a year before.
C2 | War of 1812 |
When the long-anticipated war with
Britain came, the United States was ill prepared. Madison’s warning to put the
nation “into an armour” had not been heeded. The president did not possess the
qualities necessary for organizing an effective war machine, and he did not
quickly enough find those who did. His attempts to take a personal role in
conducting the affairs of the War and Navy departments led only to
ridicule.
Madison’s efforts were also hampered by
opposition to the war from various quarters. The Federalists had been against
war with Britain from the start. Northerners generally showed no enthusiasm for
taking over Spanish Florida. Southerners similarly regarded a conquest of Canada
as merely adding to the strength of the North. Throughout the war the New
England states balked at contributing their financial and military share.
Northern opposition resulted in the so-called Hartford Convention, where
representatives of the northeastern states seriously discussed a separate peace
with Britain.
C3 | Election of 1812 |
The widespread lack of enthusiasm for
the war, combined with early military reverses, made the presidential election
of 1812 an especially hard-fought one. Madison was opposed by Governor De Witt
Clinton of New York. Clinton, though a Republican, drew his support from the
Federalists and from dissident members of Madison’s own party. The war was the
primary issue of the campaign. Madison was criticized for carrying on the war
and was also condemned for not pursuing it more successfully. He replied by
expressing a desire for peace but asking the country’s support in a “just and
necessary” war.
V | SECOND TERM AS PRESIDENT |
Although his support was less than in 1808,
Madison was reelected: 128 electoral votes to 89 for Clinton. Elbridge Gerry of
Massachusetts served as Madison’s vice president in his second term.
A | Progress of the War |
Meanwhile the War of 1812, which New
England Federalists bitterly called “Mr. Madison’s War,” proceeded. The U.S.
Navy fought valiantly in the first year of the war, winning several notable
victories. In 1813, however, the superior British navy captured many American
ships and prevented those remaining from leaving port.
Until 1814 American land forces had only
one victory, led by General Harrison, of Tippecanoe fame. His troops forced the
British back into Canada after they had occupied the city of Detroit. Toward the
middle of 1814 the American army began to show some competence and won several
battles. American troops successfully defended Fort McHenry, outside Baltimore,
in September of that year. That battle inspired American lawyer and poet Francis
Scott Key to write a poem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which would years later
become the national anthem. On January 8, 1815, after the war had officially
ended, General Andrew Jackson won a decisive victory over British forces at New
Orleans.
During the war, however, the British
occupied large areas of the Midwest. They also took the city of Washington and
burned the White House. On August 24, 1814, Madison joined his armies retreating
from the capital. For four days the president rode about the countryside near
Washington, endeavoring to maintain contact with the commanders of his forces.
On August 27 he returned to the capital, which had been devastated and abandoned
by the British.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 1814, Madison
had dispatched Henry Clay, along with statesmen John Quincy Adams and Albert
Gallatin, to hold peace talks with the British at Ghent (Gent), Belgium. On his
instructions they negotiated the Treaty of Ghent, which was signed on December
24, 1814. The primary concession Madison won was surrender by Britain of
American territory captured during the war.
“Mr. Madison’s War” did not accomplish its
purposes. Impressment of American sailors and the rights of neutral shipping
were not discussed in the peace treaty. No new territories were gained. But
fighting the war created among the people a new awareness of the United States
as a national entity. Madison had convinced the country that the United States
could declare war and negotiate peace with another sovereign nation, and that
American warriors and ships could hold their own against those of a great power.
Madison was widely honored for seeing the nation through this test.
B | Last Years of Madison’s Administration |
The final two years of Madison’s presidency
were marked by a growing prosperity and a spirit of expansion in the United
States. Madison himself appeared to be swept along by the nationalistic feeling
of the times. Although he persisted in a strict interpretation of federal powers
under the Constitution, he felt it appropriate now to sign into law several
pieces of legislation he had vigorously fought against in earlier years. Among
these were a bill creating a national bank and a tariff act designed to protect
American industries from foreign competition. Thus, at the end of his political
career, Madison became reconciled to some of the measures over which he and
Hamilton had so strongly differed years before.
VI | LAST YEARS |
The conclusion of his second term marked the
end of Madison’s long years of service in the federal government. In the years
that remained to him, Madison emerged from the privacy of family life in
Montpelier on only a few occasions. At the age of 78 he participated in the
Virginia convention to write a new state constitution. He also consistently
supported Jefferson’s work in founding the University of Virginia. A member of
its board until Jefferson’s death in 1826, Madison succeeded his friend as the
university’s rector. When South Carolina objected to a new tariff and threatened
to nullify it within its borders, Madison spoke out vigorously, denying that the
Constitution allowed any state to exclude itself from laws passed by the U.S.
Congress. Although the proponents of nullification based their doctrine on the
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, Madison particularly disavowed any
applicability of his own arguments in the Virginia Resolutions to the present
situation.
Madison’s final years were troubled with
chronic illness, but the quickness of his mind was unimpaired. His interest and
concern for the nation he had helped to found continued undiminished. The deaths
of Jefferson and Monroe, the longtime friends and associates of both his private
and public life, saddened his old age. During his last years, Madison was
confined to his home, where he died on June 28, 1836.
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