James Madison: A Life Reconsidered (12 page)

But Madison, like political leaders in both the North and the South, was completely capable of laying the morality of slavery aside and dealing with it simply as a fact. And thus it was that a dispassionate debate
about revenue gave rise to counting three of every five slaves and creating the three-fifths ratio that would rightly appall future generations. In one of history’s ironies, the three-fifths ratio, when later used for purposes of deciding how many representatives a state would have in Congress, would result in slave states having fewer representatives and less power than they would have had if slaves had been reckoned equal to free citizens.

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HAMILTON WAS NOT SATISFIED
with working the revenue issue solely from within Congress. He joined with others in Philadelphia who believed that the most effective way to get Congress to approve a revenue measure was to bring more pressure to bear from the army. Washington, realizing the direction he was heading, warned him: “The army . . . is a dangerous instrument to play with.” Meanwhile, at winter quarters in Newburgh, New York, John Armstrong, who had served as an aide to Horatio Gates, posted an anonymous address “To the Officers of the Army,” describing “a country that tramples upon your rights, disdains your cries and insults your distresses.” He urged officers to carry their appeal “from the justice to the fears of government.”
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So effective was the address that Washington felt obliged to speak before the officers at Newburgh in order to soothe the mutinous impulses it aroused.

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AFTER LONG DEBATE
Congress passed the impost amendment, “with the dissent of Rhode Island and the division of New York only,” Madison wrote to Jefferson. Hamilton, mercurial as ever, had caused the division, voting no, Madison explained, because he had in mind “a plan which he supposed more perfect.”
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Madison, embracing the art of the possible, composed a letter to the states urging the measure’s ratification. He wrote anonymously, as there was good reason for him to do. Opposition in Virginia was strong; the state had voted down an earlier impost; and there was no benefit to be gained from making
himself the opponents’ main target. Moreover, other states were likely to be skeptical of an appeal from a Virginian since his state had proved an unreliable ally in a previous effort. There were advantages to being a modest man, among them that ego didn’t get in the way of smart politics.

He began the letter to the states with the simple proposition that having won the war, the United States now had to pay the debts left by the war, and he listed those to whom the debts must be paid, including “that illustrious and patriotic band of fellow citizens, whose blood and whose bravery have defended the liberties of their country.” Paying such debts was not only a fiscal responsibility but a matter of acting honorably, which the country had to do or risk betraying the ideals for which the Revolution had been fought:

Let it be remembered finally that it has ever been the pride and boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature. By the blessings of the Author of these rights on the means exerted for their defense, they have prevailed against all opposition and form the basis of thirteen independent states. No instance has heretofore occurred, nor can any instance be expected hereafter to occur, in which the unadulterated forms of republican government can pretend to so fair an opportunity of justifying themselves by their fruits. In this view the citizens of the United States are responsible for the greatest trust ever confided to a political society. If justice, good faith, honor, gratitude, and all the other qualities which ennoble the character of a nation and fulfill the ends of government be the fruits of our establishments, the cause of liberty will acquire a dignity and luster which it has never yet enjoyed; and an example will be set which cannot but have the most favorable influence on the rights of mankind. If on the other side, our governments should be unfortunately blotted with the reverse of these cardinal and essential virtues, the great cause which we have engaged to vindicate will be dishonored and betrayed; the last and fairest
experiment in favor of the rights of human nature will be turned against them; and their patrons and friends exposed to be insulted and silenced by the votaries of tyranny and usurpation.
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Madison’s words traveled across the nation, soon to be supplemented and reinforced by a letter from Washington himself urging ratification of the revenue measure.

At age thirty-two, just three years after entering Congress, James Madison was becoming a leader of the new nation. Some who knew him in Virginia suspected that he was the author of the eloquent letter to the states, but even those who did not were aware of how rapidly his star was rising. One ambitious young Virginian, James Monroe, attributed Madison’s success to perseverance: “Mr. Madison I think hath acquired more reputat[io]n by a constant and laborious attendance upon Congress than he would have done had he dashed from Philadelphia here as occasion might require.” But more than diligence was involved. Madison grew as he worked, learning every day, acquiring wisdom every day, until he was recognized, in the words of French minister Luzerne, as “the man of the soundest judgment in Congress.”
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It was a happy time in Madison’s life. He had managed to persuade his friend Thomas Jefferson to leave the exile into which he had withdrawn at Monticello. The Virginia Assembly had passed a resolution to investigate Jefferson’s actions during the British invasion, and although the delegates had finally declared him blameless, their action wounded him deeply. Then his beloved wife, Martha, died, and he seemed for a time to give up on the world altogether. But Madison brought him back, offering a resolution in Congress to make him a peace negotiator in Paris. Jefferson accepted, stopping in Philadelphia on the way to Baltimore, where his ship was to depart, and staying at Madison’s boardinghouse. The two men discussed the nation’s affairs, drew up a list of books for a library for Congress, and went over the notes Madison had been taking on congressional proceedings.

After Jefferson departed for Baltimore, the two gossiped by letter. Worried about mail being intercepted, they used an agreed-upon code.
Madison commented on correspondence recently received by Congress “from 503.12.13.1” (Mr. Adams) and noted that it had mainly served as a “274.3 of 407.36.845.15,” or “display of his vanity.” Jefferson commented on Adams’s ill temper, noting that he hated “367.4.483.30” (Franklin), “25.427.6” (Jay), “816.27.1006.39” (the French), and “816.27.1004.1” (the English). “To whom will he adhere?”
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Peace negotiations with the British advanced so far that Congress suspended Jefferson’s mission to Paris, and in late February the Virginian returned to Philadelphia. He stayed at Mrs. House’s until after his mission was formally canceled in April and found the group there (he called them family) in a buoyant mood, their hearts lifted by the prospect of peace, by the promise of springtime—and by the observation that one of their own, James Madison, had fallen in love.

CATHERINE FLOYD—
or Kitty, as family and friends called her—was a pretty girl with light brown hair and dark brown eyes. In a miniature painted about the time that Jefferson noticed Madison’s interest in her, she wears her hair upswept in a sophisticated style, but her round face, which does not seem fully formed, and her languid expression mark her for the teenager she was, fifteen, soon to be sixteen, an age thought quite appropriate in the eighteenth century for a female to marry.
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Kitty had been just nine when the British took Long Island, where she and her family lived. Her father, William, had been in Philadelphia as the redcoats came ashore at Gravesend Bay, and her mother, Hannah, had taken charge. When the Floyd home was threatened, Hannah buried the family silver and fled with Kitty and her other two children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut.
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The British occupied the estate, and because Floyd had been a member of the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence, they undoubtedly took pleasure in felling his trees, killing his livestock, and making off with the family’s belongings.

Sent back to Congress in 1779, Floyd had his family join him at Mrs. House’s. By 1783, Polly, the older Floyd daughter, was being courted by Major Benjamin Tallmadge, and Kitty, the younger, by Congressman Madison.
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Thomas Jefferson, realizing that his friend was in love, immediately set out to discover the young woman’s feelings for Madison—and even to make Madison’s case. In a letter written shortly after he left Philadelphia, he reported, using code, that he had often made the romance “the subject of conversation,” even “exhortation” with Floyd and been able to convince himself “that she possessed every sentiment in your favor which you could wish.”
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Madison wrote back in code, “Before you left us, I had sufficiently ascertained her sentiments. Since your departure the affair has been pursued. Most preliminary arrangements although definitive will be postponed until the end of the year in Congress. At some period of the interval I shall probably make a visit to Virginia. The interest which your friendship takes on this occasion in my happiness is a pleasing proof that the dispositions which I feel are reciprocal.” Madison accompanied the Floyds when they left Philadelphia to return to their home on Long Island in late April 1783, riding with them to Brunswick, New Jersey. There he took his leave and returned to Philadelphia, where he waited for a letter from Kitty setting their wedding date.
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In early June, he was still planning on a trip to Virginia so that he could make arrangements for married life there, but he hadn’t heard from Kitty and was probably beginning to worry.

•   •   •

AS JUNE PROGRESSED,
reports began to circulate of troops refusing to be discharged until they were paid in full for their service—which Congress, unable to raise funds, had no ability to do. On June 21, several hundred soldiers marched with drums beating and bayonets fixed to the statehouse, where Madison was attending a session. The soldiers circled the building so no one could leave and “remained in their position,” Madison noted with considerable sangfroid, “without
offering any violence, individuals only occasionally uttering offensive words and wantonly pointing their muskets to the windows of the hall of Congress.”
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Delegates urgently requested that the executive council of Pennsylvania, meeting in the same building, call out the militia, but the council refused, and the situation grew uglier as “spirituous drink from the tippling houses adjoining began to be liberally served out to the soldiers,” Madison wrote. Delegates decided to adjourn, and as they passed through the line of soldiers, they were taunted by some, who put up “a mock obstruction,” as Madison described it. When further congressional demands for the Pennsylvania Executive Council to call out the militia were refused, Congress, meeting at night when the soldiers were in their barracks, authorized the president of Congress, Elias Boudinot, to move its meeting place. Over the next few days, as rumors began to fly that mutineers would seize the Bank of North America or kidnap delegates, Boudinot decided on Princeton as the location where Congress might better maintain “the dignity and authority of the United States.”
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Madison dutifully traveled to Princeton, but he didn’t stay long. He, who had been one of the most dependable attendees of Congress, began to miss most meetings. He told Edmund Randolph that he had to be in Philadelphia to prepare for retiring from Congress, which the Articles of Confederation required that he do after serving three consecutive years. To Jefferson he explained he had undertaken a writing project that required him to be near his papers in Philadelphia.
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And, although he didn’t say so, he was surely waiting to hear from Kitty Floyd, who was likely to direct her mail to Mrs. House’s.

The letter that finally arrived no longer exists, but from the letter Madison wrote to Jefferson after receiving it, we know that it terminated plans for a marriage at the end of the congressional session. On August 11, Madison explained, “I expected to have had the pleasure by this time of being with you in Virginia. My disappointment has proceeded from several dilatory circumstances on which I had not calculated. One of them was the uncertain state into which the object I was
then pursuing had been brought by one of those incidents to which such affairs are liable. The result has rendered the time [of] my return to Virginia less material, as the necessity of my visiting the state of New Jersey no longer exists.” Madison, distressed, had not taken time to encode the letter, and in old age he would try to obliterate what he had written. He succeeded in part, but the above can be read, and here and there other words can be discerned beneath the scribblings over, some suggesting that Madison did not yet totally despair: “For myself a delicacy to female character will impose some patience” and “hope for . . . some more propitious turn of fortune.”
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Jefferson wrote back offering sympathy: “I sincerely lament the misadventure which has happened from whatever cause it may have happened.” He seemed to acknowledge Madison’s hope that things might still work out but offered suggestions in case they didn’t: “Should it be final, however, the world still presents the same and many other resources of happiness, and you possess many within yourself. Firmness of mind and unintermitting occupations will not long leave you in pain. No event has been more contrary to my expectations, and these were founded on what I thought a good knowledge of the ground, but of all machines ours is the most complicated and inexplicable.”
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Jefferson’s advice fit with what Madison had learned after his college days, when his sudden attacks had thrown him into despair: the best remedy for gloom was an active and involved life.

One has to wonder when Madison told Kitty Floyd of his disorder. At some point he would have felt honor-bound to do so, and if he used the occasion of the trip with her family to New Jersey, the information might have turned attraction to aversion. According to Floyd family lore, Kitty sealed her final letter to Madison with a bit of rye dough, possibly some calculated message about health, since rye dough was part of a Floyd family remedy. But the gesture might simply have been impetuous, which fits with what we know of Floyd as she grew older. She married William Clarkson, a medical student who became a clergyman, and, according to her father, lived with little forethought. In a will dated 1817, the year Kitty Floyd turned fifty, her father wrote:

As to my daughter Catherine, since she was married to Mr. Clarkson, I have given them considerable sums, money and many things to keep house with, and also a tract of land, which, if they had kept it, would now be worth about seven thousand dollars, but all is spent and gone. I therefore conclude that she is not capable of taking care of property and I think it not prudent to leave any at her disposal, but I do hereby [enjoin] it upon my son Nicoll to give her seventy dollars a year after my decease during her life.

Shortly before he died in 1821, Floyd had a change of heart. In a codicil to his will, he bequeathed to Catherine “a lot of land in Deerfield No. 1” and one thousand dollars.
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Disappointed as Madison was at Catherine Floyd’s breaking off their romance, both he and posterity likely benefited. Madison had ahead of him the most consequential, history-altering years of his life, and if they were lonelier without Floyd, they were almost certainly more productive. And as grave an error as it usually is to read history backward, perhaps in this instance one might be forgiven for also observing that if he had married Catherine Floyd, there would have been no Dolley Madison.

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MADISON LEFT PHILADELPHIA,
a former congressman now, but his interest in politics was undiminished. On the way to Montpelier, he stopped at Gunston Hall, George Mason’s elegant home on the Potomac, and as he visited with Mason, probably near the fireplace in the gray-painted parlor, he sounded him out on the looming issues of the day. He found Mason to be less opposed to the impost than he had expected and also surprisingly “sound and ripe” on the matter of revising the Virginia Constitution. But when it came to bolstering the national government, Mason was dragging his feet. “His [he]terodoxy,” Madison wrote to Jefferson, “lay chiefly in being too little impressed with either the necessity or the proper means of preserving the confederacy.”
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Madison had a course of study in mind, but his return to Montpelier, where he had not been for nearly four years, inspired an outpouring of Piedmont hospitality that kept him from settling into it. As January snow deepened and drifted, making neighborly visits impossible, he finally had time to read, but now he didn’t have the books he needed. The volumes he had shipped from Philadelphia were held up at Fredericksburg, and he could not avail himself of the library at Monticello, which Jefferson had given him permission to use, because the caretaker and the keys were in Richmond. Determined to keep busy, he read Sir Edward Coke’s
Commentary upon Littleton,
one of the few law books on Montpelier’s shelves. It was an enormously influential exposition of common law but dry and difficult. Madison leavened his law study with an excursion into science, making calculations on the heat of the earth’s core. He believed that he was expanding on a theory of the French naturalist the comte de Buffon, but in the absence of books he was depending on what Jefferson had told him about Buffon’s theory—and, as Jefferson later confessed, he hadn’t gotten it quite right.
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Over the next few years, as Madison sought the “unintermitting occupations” that Jefferson had said would provide him solace, he produced detailed descriptions of some of the smaller quadrupeds found at Montpelier, including a woodchuck, a mole, and a weasel, and sent them to Jefferson to help his friend disprove one of Buffon’s most irritating theories—that American animals had degenerated so that there were fewer species and smaller specimens than in Europe. He kept records of when rain fell, cherry trees blossomed, and wild geese flew northward. He also had “a little itch to gain a smattering in chemistry,” he told Jefferson, asking him to send him two chemistry boxes, as well as a pedometer, a pocket compass that could be carried like a watch, and a telescope that fit into a walking cane.
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During these years, Madison would also serve with great distinction in the Virginia Assembly; travel extensively, though never outside the United States; and try to figure out a way to earn a living rather than being dependent on his father. But through all these activities, he would remain intensely focused on the question that his service in Congress
had raised time and again: How can a union of states function effectively? A letter to Jefferson, in which he asked his friend to keep an eye out for “rare and valuable books,” makes clear that one place he intended to look for answers was in the failures and successes of the past. “You know tolerably well the objects of my curiosity,” he wrote. “I will only particularize my wish of whatever may throw light on the general constitution and droit public of the several confederacies which have existed. . . . The operations of our own must render all such lights of consequence.”
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IN APRIL 1784,
with the poplar trees leafing out, Madison left Montpelier in a chaise driven by his brother William and headed for Richmond, where the Virginia Assembly met. As a result of the peace treaty that the United States had concluded with Britain in September 1783, states were more reluctant than ever to provide financial support to the central government. Thus even though Madison knew that participating in the legislature would be “noxious” to his historical study of constitutions, he had agreed to serve, hoping to convince his fellow delegates of the peril the country was in and persuade them to lead the way in rescuing “the Union and the blessings of liberty staked on it.”
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Montpelier was also short on the intellectual companionship he had grown used to, and he looked forward to seeing old friends such as Edmund Randolph. He must have been gratified upon his arrival in Richmond by the way he was looked to for leadership. “The assembly . . . have formed great hopes of Mr. Madison,” wrote Jefferson’s protégé William Short. “He is already resorted to as a general of whom much has been preconceived to his advantage,” Edmund Randolph observed.
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Richmond, the capital of the commonwealth for four years, had foul and muddy streets and fewer than two hundred houses. Many who came to the capital for the assembly stayed in inns such as the one run by Serafino Formicola, who rented beds packed together in two rooms on his tavern’s second story. While some legislators, lobbyists, and various hangers-on tried to catch a few hours of sleep in the crowded
rooms, others wandered through eating and drinking. There was no possibility of “withdrawing apart . . . from the noisy, disturbing, or curious crowd,” a German traveler reported, unless one rented “a private apartment”—which Madison almost surely did, if not at Formicola’s, perhaps at City Tavern on Main Street.
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He had letters to write, legislation to draft, plans to formulate—tasks nearly impossible to accomplish in a dormitory.