Madison and Jefferson (84 page)

The reality was that the aging George Clinton was a stand-in for his thirty-nine-year-old nephew DeWitt Clinton, mayor of New York for the past four years. It was he who pulled the strings. Four years later, in fact, DeWitt Clinton would nearly succeed in unseating President Madison. But at this moment, if he lacked national stature, the younger Clinton did not lack guile. Morgan Lewis thought he saw credible evidence of this when New York State’s presidential electors were about to be chosen. He warned Madison that DeWitt was changing the “game” so that Republicans—all of whom wanted a New Yorker on the ticket—could have their choice between his uncle George for president or, if a Virginian was at the top of the ticket, DeWitt himself as vice president.

Convinced that once he was elected, Madison would know how to handle “the federalists and British apologists” who gnawed at him, Lewis issued a warning of Shakespearean dimensions in case Madison still thought it possible to make an arrangement with DeWitt Clinton: “Those who approach and assail you under the disguise of friendship will be most to be dreaded. A vice president certainly has great opportunities for intrigue … Be assured I know his Character well. He is mischievous, intrigueing, impatient of a Superior, and attached to nothing in this world but himself.” Morgan Lewis was obsessed with the Clintons. But he would prove prescient.
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After the Republican caucus, John Randolph’s men circulated a carefully worded dissent: “We … protest against the nomination of James Madison, as we believe him to be unfit to fill the office of President in the
present juncture of our affairs.” A number of Clintonians added their signatures to the document. William Duane, editor of the nationally influential Philadelphia paper
Aurora
, initially supported George Clinton; he now switched over to Madison’s side.
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The administration paper, the
National Intelligencer
, maintained a steady stream of articles lavishly praising Madison. “The page of history glows with the achievements of the hero who has fought,” it pronounced, “but its brightest effulgence beams around the individual who ranks as the founder of a fundamental system, which adjusts for ages the limits of power and its application to the varied and complicated wants of man.” According to the
Intelligencer
, Madison’s consistent performance guaranteed that he would “pursue the straight line of honest policy, without being led astray by the false lights of sinister ambition.”

The easiest way to promote Madison’s candidacy was to enlarge upon his painstaking work at the Constitutional Convention, which the
Intelligencer
did with its accustomed flamboyance: “Every eye was fixed on Madison … The task was Herculean; but it was performed with zeal and dignity.” In this rendering, his energetic mind was supported by “candor and moderation”; and in subduing passions, he symbolized the “calmness and sobriety” that the emerging nation needed in 1787. The editor of the
Intelligencer
did not want to hear of Madison’s defeats in Philadelphia—all that mattered was the legend.
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Not since Monroe lost to Madison in the election for a House seat in 1789 had the two been so visibly pitted against each other. This time, of course, the presidency was at stake. Madison and Monroe were careful not to say anything publicly, and none of the newspapers promoting Madison criticized Monroe at any time. The
Argus
clarified: “Being sincerely convinced (as we have always been) of the exalted merit of Col.
Monroe
, we shall not attempt to detract from it in the least; but we wish to know in what respects he excels Mr.
Madison
? Does he possess greater natural talents? More learning?” This was a direct response to the friends of Monroe who were, according to the
Argus
, parsing words in their effort to find “an essential and radical distinction” between the two by elevating Monroe above Madison in terms of his “purity of principles” and “patriotism.” One who signed his contribution “An American of ’76” wrote that it was not Monroe but Monroe’s supporters who were inventing the division between them by accusing Madison of having subverted Monroe’s diplomatic mission, setting Monroe up for failure. Monroe, the writer assured, could not possibly have been complicit in any underhanded attack on Madison.
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There was a real possibility of confusion at the polls. The adoption of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804 now provided separate slates for president and vice president. Clintonians could vote for Clinton on the presidential slate and choose someone else for vice president, while the Madisonians were expected to vote for Clinton as their vice-presidential choice. Morgan Lewis’s dreaded scenario could arise if the Republicans were not careful.

Monroe himself remained torn. He wanted to be president, but he did not wish to create bad blood that might permanently deny him the office he aspired to. In a piece designed for the newspapers that he penned but ultimately did not send, he said he did not think of himself as a candidate for president but would serve if his fellow citizens went so far as to elect him. President Jefferson, with evident discomfort, wrote to him: “I see with infinite grief a contest arising between yourself and another, who have been very dear to each other, and equally so to me.” Insisting that he was maintaining perfect neutrality—it was to be a “sacred observance” for him, owing to their long association—Jefferson was nonetheless disturbed that “painful impressions” remained on Monroe’s mind that could tear apart critical friendships. He urged him not to believe the malicious messages that he knew Monroe was receiving from third parties, which did more than hint at the lame duck president’s partiality toward Madison. “I feel no passion, I take no part, I express no sentiment,” Jefferson wrote. He was being truthful only insofar as party regulars had already acted to secure the succession in the manner Jefferson preferred. His will was being enacted without his having to say or do more.

Jefferson and Monroe were kindred spirits. Both had lost a father at an early age, had raised daughters but no sons, and nurtured a healthy appetite for political revenge. Both had been tapped by President Washington to serve the nation (Jefferson in the cabinet and Monroe as an envoy); and both had lost Washington’s confidence owing, they believed, to the machinations of Hamilton. Monroe was, without exaggeration, Jefferson’s protégé, his career overseen by his mentor ever since 1780, when he read the law under then-Governor Jefferson’s watchful eye.

Jefferson used delicacy whenever he wrote to Monroe, a pose he rarely found necessary when he wrote to Madison. In the early months of 1808, Jefferson assured Monroe that Madison and he were equal in his esteem, “two principal pillars of my happiness.” But even with the exiting president’s effort to reunite them, Madison and Monroe refrained from interacting. When Madison visited Monticello that summer, he did not go the
extra mile, literally, to see Monroe at home; nor did Jefferson extend Monroe an invitation to join them on the mountaintop. Bad feelings lingered.
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As the election neared, the language used by interested friends of the Republican competitors remained sharp. Some Federalists sought the role of spoiler by suggesting that Jefferson’s partiality for his secretary of state was a form of tampering with the election process. When Federalists in Richmond met to endorse Monroe, they took extreme positions, claiming that Madison was under French influence and Monroe under British. According to their extended logic, Madison had abandoned the principles of George Washington, whereas Monroe, conciliatory toward Federalists during his governorship (1799–1802), was long known for his honesty and could be counted on to act with restraint. As the
Virginia Gazette
reported: “We have no fears of his marking out the federalists as a political sect
upon whom he shall have vengeance!!
” In joining a brand of Federalist to a brand of Republican, the Monroe phenomenon constituted a fairly unique event in American history, a function of minority fears and prejudices on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
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With all parties acknowledging the near certainty of Republican victory at the polls, one Federalist adopted as his nom de plume “Richard Saunders,” the folksy alter ego of Benjamin Franklin in his long-running annual (1732–57),
Poor Richard’s Almanack
. Weighing in on Jefferson’s presidency, “Saunders” opened with feigned praise for the first inaugural and its call for unity: “I declare I would have given Thomas Jefferson the best calf on my farm for speaking such good words, had he come and asked for it. But talking is one thing, and acting another.”

For “Saunders,” James Monroe’s unappreciated exertions abroad constituted the only harmony seeking in Jefferson’s eight years. For all his sincerity and hard work, Monroe had been “blackguarded” by his supposed friends. At this point, “Saunders” surmised, the Jay Treaty had to look good, even to Republicans. As to the ill-conceived embargo, he pretended to be confused, mock-innocently addressing the Republicans: “The French want money, said Madison, and they must have it; John Randolph heard him say these very words … And now Bonaparte says we must go to war with England; and if Madison or Clinton or any of your leaders get to be president, to war we shall go.”
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As the year of embargo progressed, even Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, a moderate Republican who had initially favored the measure, was ready to throw up his hands. He wrote to a favorite correspondent, ex-
president John Adams: “Could the absurdities in principle and conduct of our two great parties for the last 12 years be laid before the world in a candid and dispassionate manner, we should be ashamed to call ourselves
MEN.
The disputes of children about their nuts and gingerbread have less folly and wickedness in them.”
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Dr. Rush could only offer a diagnosis; he knew of no cure for America’s political ills, beyond suturing the rupture between two old Revolutionaries who were his friends. It was his desire to restore the friendship of Adams and Jefferson, an historic mission he would embark on once Jefferson left office and Madison inherited the problems of the presidency.

The coolness that subsisted between Madison and Monroe cast a pall over the presidential transition. Though the Jefferson administration ended poorly, as a whole it did not resemble the picture of anarchy and atheism painted by the advocates of order and firmness eight years earlier. Until the embargo was instituted, opposition congressmen recognized the methodical and responsible approaches that the president and his cabinet took to issues of administration and economy. Though Federalists were removed from office for political reasons, no members of the despised “mobocracy” were elevated to federal office. Hot issues such as the Samuel Chase trial reminded Federalists that Jefferson had an obnoxious agenda and they needed to be wary of him. But in spite of core disagreements, Jefferson and Madison and Gallatin ultimately did little to upset the structure the Federalists had put in place.
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At a later period Madison was fond of telling one particular joke to demonstrate Jefferson’s disarming manner as president. A new congressman who had been led to expect a man of rigid opinions walked away from a meeting with him saying, “He is the most pliable
great
man I ever met with.” Owning that Jefferson was persuaded by his argument on a political subject, he boasted to his friends: “I verily believe I could change his mind on almost any point.” The joke, as Madison related it, was that the new congressman had in fact been converted to Jefferson’s side of the issue without even knowing it.
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Until the embargo went into effect, all sections of the Union had thriving economies. By the end of Jefferson’s two terms, weakened northern
Federalists were left with much to protest. Southern Federalists were equally nervous and even less visible. The number of their party’s newspapers in the South had declined from sixteen in 1800 to twelve in 1808. In the same region during the same period, Republican papers grew in number from thirteen to twenty-three. Perhaps owing to the disastrous embargo policy, four new southern Federalist papers raised enough funds to go into business between January 1808 and January 1809. Still, the Republican Party was in the ascendant. Every southern state legislature remained in Republican hands. As the historian James Broussard sees it, “It would not be an exaggeration to say that without its vigorous partisan editors, the southern Federalist Party would scarcely have existed at all.”
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Once Monroe enthusiasts saw their chances shrink, the election of 1808 became anticlimactic. The character of Virginia’s congressional delegation remained Republican, of course, yet pockets of resistance remained. Both northern and southern districts of Virginia voted in Federalists in 1808, among them one Daniel Sheffey of Wytheville, in the southwest portion of the state. Sheffey began his career as a shoemaker’s apprentice (an atypical Federalist profile); he worked his way up by studying the classics and the law and entered Congress at age thirty-nine, in 1809. The invective-hurling John Randolph was known to refer to Sheffey as “the shoemaker” when they disagreed on the floor of the House.
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Randolph of Roanoke was not about to scale back on the fury of his speeches or the provocations in his letters; he would remain newsworthy for another quarter century. But the time of his being considered a leader, or even a legitimate critic in national affairs, was past, save for his usefulness to Federalists, who could count on his vote in opposition to war measures. Henceforth the defective philosopher would be portrayed in caricature: the obstructionist as entertainer.

Nationally, the Federalists ran Charles Cotesworth Pinckney again. He did little better against Madison than he had done four years before against the incumbent Jefferson. The South Carolinian was not even able to win his home state, and though George Clinton siphoned off 6 of New York’s 19 electoral votes, Madison still received 122 of the 169 electoral votes cast.