Madison and Jefferson (138 page)

22.
Nicholas to JM, ca. March 3, 1809,
PJM-PS
, 1:10–11; TJ to Robert Smith, July 10, 1809,
PTJ-RS
, 1:340;
RL
, 3:1562, 1566; Henry S. Randall,
Life of Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1858), 3:357n; Malone, 6:30; Ketcham, 475, 481–82.

23.
National Intelligencer
, July 5 and September 6, 1809.

24.
Ketcham, 480–81; “Margaret Bayard Smith’s Account of a Visit to Monticello,”
PTJ-RS
, 1:387; TJ to JM, September 18, 1809,
RL
, 3:1603; TJ to Charles Pinckney, August 29, 1809,
PTJ-RS
, 1:475;
JMB
, 2:1247.

25.
TJ to JM, August 17 and September 12, 1809,
RL
, 3:1599–1600, 1602.

26.
For a good synthesis, see
RL
, 3:1566–73.

27.
Gallatin to JM, July 24, 1809,
PJM-PS
, 1:300. The predictably untrustworthy General James Wilkinson wrote to Madison from New Orleans of a conversation with
the Spanish governor of West Florida, who purportedly wanted the United States to absorb the territory in the wake of Napoleon’s takeover of his homeland. On the subject of British designs in Florida, the Spaniard presumed any incursion would backfire because it was destined to belong to the United States. See Wilkinson to JM, May 1, 1809,
PJM-PS
, 1:156.

28.
TJ to JM, August 17, 1809,
RL
, 3:1600.

29.
JM to TJ, August 23 and November 6, 1809; TJ to JM, August 17 and September 12, 1809,
RL
, 3:1600–1603, 1607; JM to Smith, September 15, 1809,
PJM-PS
, 1:378; Bradford Perkins,
Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1805–1812
(Berkeley, Calif., 1961), 186–87. Perkins concludes that “Canning and all England misunderstood Jeffersonianism and overestimated the amount of condescension America would tolerate.” Ibid., 222.

30.
See, for example, the
Norfolk Gazette
, issue of April 22, 1810, taking its cue from the
New York Evening Post
, in assessing Federalist turncoat John Quincy Adams as a diplomat: “his master Jefferson or Madison, or who ever is at the head of affairs.” The
Norfolk Gazette
published other personal gibes, defining Madison’s conduct in office as “passive” (issue of September 24, 1810), and insulting pro-administration editor Thomas Ritchie of the
Richmond Enquirer
, “whose name adds no more weight to paper than the ink used in writing” (February 11, 1811).

31.
James H. Broussard,
The Southern Federalists, 1800–1816
(Baton Rouge, La., 1978), 115–16; Donald R. Hickey,
The War of 1812
(Urbana, Ill., 1989), 8–9; Randall,
Life of Thomas Jefferson
, 3:125–30; Malone, 5:497–503. Randall, writing when memories of the War of 1812 were still fairly fresh, described the pressures generally felt by an agricultural and commercial people in “avoidance mode,” and a political caste hamstrung by partisan considerations and ill equipped to argue naval policy based purely on tactical expertise; Malone inexplicably states that Jefferson was “less indifferent to the navy” than Madison.

32.
Carolina Gazette
, November 7, 1809;
New Hampshire Gazette
, November 14, 1809.

33.
Cullen also reverted to unoriginal attacks on Jefferson’s wartime governorship (“more the cautious politician than the soldier”) and denied him credit for drawing up the Declaration of Independence. As to the election of 1800, Cullen more trenchantly wrote that after Burr made Jefferson’s election possible, “his scared imagination saw in the friend that helped and raised him, the rival also that might depress him.”
Memoirs of the Hon. Thomas Jefferson
(New York, 1809), 1:11, 25, 100–101, 2:320–21, 434.

34.
The Death of Washington, with some remarks on Jeffersonian & Madisonian Policy
(New York, ca. 1809). The coarsest criticism of Jefferson centered on his alleged cowardice during the Revolution.

35.
JM to the Chairman of the Republican Meeting of Washington County, Maryland, January 31, 1810; to Pinkney, May 23, 1810,
PJM-PS
, 2:215, 348.

36.
Macon’s Bill no. 1, drafted by Albert Gallatin and introduced in the House by Macon, was a version of the bill that eventually passed. It stirred up argument among Republicans, in addition to opposition from Federalists. It passed the House but died after the influential Senator Samuel Smith chopped it up and House and Senate could not agree on a compromise. Perkins,
Prologue to War
, 239–47; Robert A. Rutland,
Madison’s Alternatives: The Jeffersonian Republicans and the Coming of the War of 1812
(Philadelphia,
1975), 94–101; Reginald Horsman,
The War of 1812
(New York, 1969), 14–15; Hickey,
War of 1812
, 22–24.

37.
Rodney to JM, January 16, 1810,
PJM-PS
, 2:181–86. “I have heard our seafaring men assert that the ‘Fair American’ & the ‘Holker’ [two privateers] did more injury to the British commerce in our last war [the Revolutionary] than all our thirteen frigates, the principal part of which, were soon captured.” Ibid., 183.

38.
George Shackelford,
Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759–1848
(Lexington, Ky., 1993) 8, 129, 135, 197n; Henry Bartholomew Cox,
The Parisian American: Fulwar Skipwith of Virginia
(Washington, D.C., 1964), chaps. 1, 2, and 5; Harry Ammon,
James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity
(Charlottesville, Va., 1971), 116, 125, 208, 210, 213; JM to TJ, August 13, 1804; TJ to JM, August 18, 1804,
RL
, 2:1334, 1338; Brant, 4:219–20, 363–66; Fulwar Skipwith to TJ, March 8, 1808,
TJP-LC;
Roger G. Kennedy,
Mr. Jefferson’s Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, and the Louisiana Purchase
(New York, 2003), 178–92, 295–96n.

39.
“Notes on Jefferson’s ‘Statement’ on the Batture at New Orleans”; JM to Albert Gallatin, August 14 and August 22, 1810; to John Graham, August 24, 1810; John Graham to JM, August 20, 1810; John R. Bedford to JM (with August 5 enclosure from Bayou Sara, West Florida), August 26, 1810,
PJM-PS
, 2:475–77, 484, 498, 501–5, 508–10; William B. Hatcher,
Edward Livingston: Jeffersonian Republican and Jacksonian Democrat
(Baton Rouge, La., 1941), 92–98; Stanley Clisby Arthur,
The Story of the West Florida Rebellion
(St. Francisville, La., 1935), 35, 58, 131, 133.

40.
Arthur,
Story of West Florida Rebellion
, 95–96, 103–10, 128–29; James A. Padgett, “The West Florida Revolution of 1810, As Told in the Letters of John Rhea, Fulwar Skipwith, Reuben Kemper, and Others,”
Louisiana Historical Quarterly
21 (January 1938): 5–7, 53.

41.
Presidential Proclamation, October 27, 1810,
PJM-PS
, 2:595–96. The River Perdido translates from Spanish as “the lost river.”

42.
James G. Cusick,
The Other War of 1812: The Patriot War and the American Invasion of Spanish East Florida
(Athens, Ga., 2003), 28–37, 56–61, 67–75, 138.

43.
PJM-PS
, 3:xxvii–xxviii; George W. Erving to JM, January 29, 1811,
PJM-PS
, 3:139–41; Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr., and Gene A. Smith,
Filibusters and Expansionists: Jeffersonian Manifest Destiny, 1800–1821
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1997), 66–68; Cusick,
Other War of 1812
, 153.

44.
TJ to Eppes, January 5, 1811,
PTJ-RS
, 3:281–82. Fulwar Skipwith’s motives, largely financial, were tied to the land of opportunity he knew best. Judging by his extensive activities in France, he would not have been in West Florida had he not figured that he had some land coming to him. During his years abroad, he had failed to get rich, but he never gave up and retained the aims of the Virginians of his class. For insight into the phenomenon of elite-bred Virginians scrambling to be successful, see Jan Lewis,
The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson’s Virginia
(New York, 1983), chap. 4.

When Mathews took possession of Amelia Island off the coast of Florida in 1812, claiming Madison’s approval, Monroe, as secretary of state, found it necessary to revoke his powers and the administration disavowed his actions. There was still some hope, as Georgian William Crawford told Monroe, that a “newly constituted revolutionary government”
could be recognized, while keeping the U.S. government’s agency hidden, but that prospect quickly faded. Madison wrote Jefferson on the matter: “In E. Florida, Mathews has been playing a tragi-comedy; in the face of common sense, as well as of his instructions.” He observed nervously of Mathews: “His extravagences [
sic
] place us in the most distressing dilemma.” Clearly, Madison ended up considering Mathews’s actions foolhardy and a potential embarrassment to the administration. Crawford to Monroe, April 5, 1812; Mathews to JM, April 16, 1812,
PJM
-
PS
, 4:291–96, 326–29; JM to TJ, April 24, 1812,
RL
, 3:1694.

45.
Madison must have known how questionable his action was. Burr was put on trial not only for treason but for violating a 1794 law against filibustering. Burr and his lawyers had contended that the idea of a filibuster was legally acceptable during a time of war, and that Burr’s plan was contingent on the occurrence of a border clash between U.S. troops (led by General Wilkinson) and Spanish forces; as no conflict occurred, Burr abandoned his project. Technically, Fulwar Skipwith and the band of rebels in Baton Rouge should have been prosecuted for violating the same law against filibusters, but they went free.

46.
Eppes to JM, December 15, 1809, January 18, 1810, February 18, 1810, and January 31, 1811,
PJM-PS
, 2:135, 189, 224, 3:143; TJ to Eppes, December 7, 1810; Eppes to TJ, December 14, 1810,
PTJ-RS
, 3:244, 256.

47.
TJ to Barlow, May 3, 1802,
TJP-LC;
TJ to Barlow, April 16, 1811,
PTJ-RS
, 3:564; Andrew Burstein,
Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello
(New York, 2005), 214–16; Francis D. Cogliano,
Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy
(Charlottesville, Va., 2006).

48.
JM to TJ, July 17, 1810; TJ to JM, July 26, 1810,
RL
, 3:1640–42; John Wayles Eppes to JM, November 1, 1810,
PJM-PS
, 2:610. The theme of Madison’s memory as well as his reluctance to expose himself in partisan readings of the past is addressed at length in the pages of Drew R. McCoy,
The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy
(New York, 1989).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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