Madison and Jefferson (137 page)

34.
Gerry to JM, July 5, 1807; J. G. Jackson to JM, July 5, 1807, in
JMP-LC.

35.
Bidwell to TJ, June 27, 1807; TJ to Bidwell, July 11, 1807; Page to TJ, July 12, 1807,
TJP-LC;
Andrew Burstein,
The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist
(Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 137–43; Ketcham, 453.

36.
See esp. TJ to JM, August 9, 11, and 16, 1807,
RL
, 3:1483, 1486;
JMB
, 2:1212; Isenberg,
Fallen Founder
, 284–85, 296. Jefferson had briefly considered a filibuster in Florida two years before.

37.
JM to TJ, September 20, 1807,
RL
, 3:1499.

38.
Sullivan to TJ, December 7, 1807,
TJP-LC;
Ketcham, 455–56; for the toast mocking Jefferson, see
Independent Chronicle
, July 27, 1807, cited in Thorp Lanier Wolford, “Democratic-Republican Reaction in Massachusetts to the Embargo of 1807,”
New England Quarterly
15 (March 1942): 42; Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson,
Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1990), 208–10.

39.
Bradford Perkins,
Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1805–1812
(Berkeley, Calif., 1961), 152–56; Gallatin to TJ, December 31, 1807,
TJP-LC.

40.
Lewis to JM, January 9, 1808,
JMP-LC.

41.
Perkins,
Prologue to War
, 168; Drew R. McCoy,
The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America
(New York, 1980), 138, 216–17.

42.
No relation to the Pinckneys of South Carolina.

43.
Monroe to John Taylor, September 10, 1810, in
Writings of James Monroe
, ed. Stanislaus M. Hamilton (New York, 1898–1903), 5:131–33.

44.
Monroe to TJ, March 22, 1808, ibid., 5:27–35.

45.
JM to Monroe, March 20, 1807,
JMP-LC;
Ammon,
James Monroe
, 254–70; Ammon, “James Monroe and the Election of 1808 in Virginia,”
William and Mary Quarterly
20 (January 1963): 40–42; Jack N. Rakove,
James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic
(New York, 1990), 142–44; Malone, 5:414.

46.
TJ to JM, March 11, 1808,
RL
, 3:1514; TJ to Taylor, January 6, 1808, cited in Malone, 5:483.

47.
National Intelligencer
, January 18 and March 23, 1808.

48.
Elsewhere, the opposition asked leading or rhetorical questions, or focused on the good and decent people who were being hurt. The merchant “sounds idle,” the
Connecticut Courant
mourned. The mechanic was “obliged to dismiss his journeymen—his customers desert him”; the farmer “finds no market for his produce.” Saddest yet was the “Poor Sailor, generous, honest, and unsuspecting.” Into what “dreadful abyss” were “our democratic rulers” about to “plunge the American people?” See
North American and Mercantile Daily Advertiser
, March 19, March 23, and July 29, 1808, including articles reprinted from the
Courant
and
Evening Post; Public Advertiser
[New York], January 7, 1808;
Salem Gazette
, February 16, 1808; Jerry W. Knudson,
Jefferson and the Press: Crucible of Liberty
(Columbia, S.C., 2006), 156.

49.
Columbian Centinel
, January 2, 1808;
Albany Gazette
, August 1 and October 3, 1808.

50.
National Intelligencer
, July 6, 1808;
City Gazette
[Charleston, S.C.], July 6, 1808.

51.
JM to TJ, August 10, 1808,
RL
, 3:1532;
New-Jersey Telescope
, November 8, 1808.

52.
Parsons,
John Quincy Adams
, 91–95;
City Gazette
[Charleston, S.C.], July 6, 1808; Leonard Baker,
John Marshall: A Life in Law
(New York, 1974), 525–26; Samuel Eliot Morison,
Harrison Gray Otis
(Boston, 1969), 300–308; Donald R. Hickey,
The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict
(Urbana, Ill., 1989), 21.

53.
Brian Schoen, “Calculating the Price of Union: Republican Economic Nationalism and the Origins of Southern Sectionalism, 1790–1828,”
Journal of the Early Republic
23 (Summer 2003): 173–206; Charleston’s
City Gazette
editorialized: “If we have not
virtue to withstand a temporary embargo, how can we expect to support a war, which when once declared no person can say when and where it will end” (as republished in the
Republican Star
of Easton, Maryland, November 8, 1808). In its inaugural issue, the
Anti-Monarchist
of Edgefield, South Carolina, adhered to the administration line, while acknowledging Britain’s preponderant power: “We are reduced to this situation,” the editor explained: “submit to pay
TRIBUTE
to England, and be plundered by France, to go to
WAR
, or hold to the Embargo … France we cannot touch; and England, by her powerful navy, could soon sweep us from the ocean.”
Anti-Monarchist, and Republican Watchman
, December 14, 1808.

54.
Enquirer
, December 10 and December 20, 1808.

55.
Saunders Cragg,
George Clinton Next President, and Our Republican Institutions Rescued from Destruction
(New York, 1808), 4, 11–16; Ambler,
Thomas Ritchie: A Study in Virginia Politics
, 46–47.

56.
Virginia Argus
, January 1 and February 2, 1808; Cunningham,
Jeffersonian Republicans in Power
, 112–21; Parsons,
John Quincy Adams
, 92–93; Cheetham, reprinting a piece from the Troy, N.Y.,
Farmer’s Digest
, cited in Brant, 4:439–40.

57.
Lewis to JM, November 14, 1808,
JMP-LC.

58.
Cunningham,
Jeffersonian Republicans in Power
, 116, 273–74.

59.
“A Farmer, No. VI,”
National Intelligencer
, July 13, 1808.

60.
Virginia Argus
, February 16 and March 11, 1808. To John Taylor of Caroline, Monroe later asserted that he “never had any connection” to those who advanced his candidacy for president; and that John Randolph knew nothing about his position on foreign affairs at the time of the latter’s break with the Jefferson administration. Monroe to Taylor, September 10, 1810, in
Writings of James Monroe
, ed. Hamilton, 5:133–36. The
Richmond Enquirer
accommodated both sides. Editor Ritchie published an angry letter directed toward those who espoused Randolph’s cause. Calling their protest against the caucus vote “vapid” and “spiritless,” the column urged the partisans to drop the matter with as much “grace and decency” as they could summon. For its part, Randolph’s vanguard denied that it had any responsibility for the development of a schism within the party. It was the Madison group, their leaders said, that had withdrawn from old friends in order to hold a dishonest caucus. Those who were suppressed by that caucus were not about to forget the slight. See
Enquirer
, March 25 and October 17, 1808.

61.
Burstein,
Inner Jefferson
, 154–56, 160–61; Ammon,
James Monroe
, 271–77; Brant, 4:428–30.

62.
Virginia Argus
, March 11 and September 23, 1808;
National Intelligencer
, October 21, 1808; Federalist endorsement of Monroe in
Virginia Gazette
, similarly in the
North American and Mercantile Daily Advertiser
[Baltimore], October 21, 1808.

63.
“Richard Saunders” in
New-York Evening Post
, June 28, 1808, reprinted from
Republican Crisis
(Albany, N.Y.).

64.
Rush to Adams, September 22, 1808,
Letters of Benjamin Rush
, 2:984. Earlier Rush had told Adams that he regarded the embargo as “just,” noting that Philadelphians were not greatly hurt by it. By the end of 1808, he would come to feel, as did many other earlier supporters, that the embargo should be lifted.

65.
Leonard D. White,
The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1801–1829
(New York, 1961), chap. 24; Theodore J. Crackel,
Mr. Jefferson’s Army: Political and Social Reform of the Military Establishment, 1801–1809
(New York, 1987), esp. 178–79, stressing the loyalty of the new army to the partisan Republican agenda. Although the administrative structure was unchanged, this, of course, did not obviate the impact of the partisan press. The
National Intelligencer
, for instance, kept up its extreme language, referring to Federalists as “the enemies of liberty,” men of “jaundiced minds,” while crediting Jefferson with having preserved peace “amidst convulsions almost without parallel” (issues of May 8 and May 13, 1808).

66.
Henry S. Randall,
Life of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1858), 1:404–5.

67.
Broussard,
Southern Federalists
, 283, 286, 291.

68.
On Sheffey, see
Biographical Dictionary of the American Congress, 1774–1949
(Washington, D.C., 1950), 1802–3.

69.
Gallatin to Joseph H. Nicholson, December 29, 1808, cited in Brant, 4:473.

1.
National Intelligencer
, March 3 and March 6, 1809; Charles Henry Ambler,
Thomas Ritchie: A Study in Virginia Politics
(Richmond, 1913), 49; Margaret Bayard Smith,
The First Forty Years of Washington Society
(New York, 1906), 410. U.S. survey texts, for one, generally highlight the War Hawks’ responsibility for the War of 1812, placing Henry Clay at their head and placing President Madison more or less in the background.

2.
The full text of the address is in
PJM-PS
, 1:15–18.

3.
Madison’s letter to a spokesman for the Creek Confederacy in the autumn of 1809 was a boilerplate example of the paternalistic approach of government toward those Indians who complained about encroachment onto their lands. The president assured the Creek leader that agreed-upon borders would not be crossed, then prescribed: “You say you are poor; look at your Father, the President when he talks to you concerning this. Turn your ear to him, and believe what he says. Fence in your Lands, plow as much land as you can, raise corn & Hogs & Cattle. Learn your young Women to card & spin, & let those who are older learn to weave. You will then have food and cloathing and live comfortably. The President advises you to do this. He knows that his red Children can live well if they follow his advice.” JM to Hobohoilthle, November 6, 1809,
PJM-PS
, 2:54.

4.
Madison would meet with Paul Cuffe, a successful Quaker ship captain and son of a former slave, promising the full support of the federal government for Cuffe’s ambitious plan to colonize free blacks in Sierra Leone and to look for ways to increase trade between the United States and West Africa. With Virginia critics such as John Randolph and John Taylor watching his every move, the president was unwilling to risk anything bolder. Madison told Cuffe that he would provide government support “consistent with the Constitution.” This language suggests Madison believed slavery protected by the Constitution; he would support colonization without threatening the property or political interests of the slave states. See Cuffe to JM, June 22, 1812, in
JMP-PS
, 4:497–98. See also Elise Lemire, “
Miscegenation”: Making Race in America
(Philadelphia,
2002); and Bernard Sheehan,
Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1973).

5.
Adam Rothman,
Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South
(Cambridge, Mass., 2005), chap. 3.

6.
Smith,
First Forty Years of Washington Society
, 411–12.

7.
Martha Jefferson Randolph to TJ, February 17, 1809,
The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson
, ed. Edwin Morris Betts and James Adam Bear, Jr. (Charlottesville, Va., 1986), 382;
PTJ-RS
, 1:11–13.

8.
Robert Allen Rutland,
The Presidency of James Madison
(Lawrence, Kan., 1990), 21.

9.
Frances Few diary, cited in Ketcham, 476.

10.
Robert Allen Rutland,
James Madison: The Founding Father
(New York, 1987), 179; Smith,
First Forty Years of Washington Society
, 61.

11.
JMB
, 2:1243; account with Joseph Milligan, March 8–10, 1809,
PTJ-RS
, 1:35–37.

12.
TJ to JM, April 10, 1809,
RL
, 3:1582.

13.
William Seale,
The President’s House: A History
(Baltimore, 1986), 119–26.

14.
TJ to JM, March 17, 1809; JM to TJ, March 27, 1809,
RL
, 3:1576, 1578; TJ to Elijah Griffiths, May 28, 1809,
PTJ-RS
, 1:236–37.

15.
JMB
, 2:1244–46; Malone, 6:9, 15, 291–92.

16.
TJ to JM, March 30, 1809,
RL
, 3:1580.

17.
TJ to JM, April 10 and April 27, 1809; JM to TJ, April 24,
RL
, 3:1568, 1583, 1586–87. In alluding to Canada, Jefferson expressed his regret that the British province was not taken during the Revolution.

18.
John Chester Miller,
The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
(Charlottesville, Va., 1991), 138–41.

19.
On House results, see
PJM-PS
, 1:140n.

20.
TJ to JM, April 27, 1809,
RL
, 3:1587–88; JM to TJ, May 1, 1809,
RL
, 3:1587; JM to Lafayette, May 1, 1809,
PJM-PS
, 1:150.

21.
Blodgett to JM, ca. March 11, 1809,
PJM-PS
, 1:32–34. In June, Aaron Burr’s daughter, Theodosia, sent her own tender appeal for clemency to Dolley Madison, who replied warmly but insisted that nothing could be done. See Nancy Isenberg,
Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr
(New York, 2007), 384–85, 389.