Madison and Jefferson (93 page)

It did not take long for word to spread. New Englander Henry Dearborn, who had been Jefferson’s secretary of war, informed the ex-president in March that the “Clinton party” was stopping at nothing to defeat Madison. Then in April 1812 George Clinton died, still holding office, and more than symbolically passed the torch to the next generation. In what might be considered bad taste, the Madisons hosted a party at the President’s House just two days after the vice president’s funeral.

DeWitt Clinton’s core constituency was the Republicans (and not only New Yorkers) in Congress who opposed going to war with England. They would orchestrate his candidacy just as they had tried four years earlier to substitute his uncle for Madison at the top of the Republican ticket. “If a man of the Washington school cannot be brought forward with any success, take DeWitt Clinton,” the
Trenton Federalist
urged in August. “Take any sensible and honest American, not a Virginian of the present ruling party, and we shall do better.”

Federalists had tried a similar kind of rationalization in backing “honest” Monroe over the supposedly less reasonable Madison in 1808. It had not worked. But this time New Jersey Federalists succeeded in the same way that Aaron Burr had in 1800, taking their activism to the elections for seats in the state legislature, where presidential electors were chosen. Clinton forces not only positioned themselves to deliver the state to their candidate; they also gerrymandered New Jersey so as to deprive the state of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Madison acknowledged to Jefferson that he understood the contest with DeWitt Clinton as a referendum
on the war. He called this “the Experimentum crusis,” or critical experiment, upon which the fate of his administration would hinge. Clinton proved a formidable opponent. Although in the general election he did not pick up any states south of New Jersey, he did win in seven.
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The gerrymandering phenomenon may not have been the invention of Elbridge Gerry, precisely, but it was he whose name became most closely associated with the maneuver. The same Elbridge Gerry was now to provide the North-South balance traditionally sought in the executive, when he agreed to serve as Madison’s second-term vice president. As old John Adams wrote to Madison in May 1812, Gerry remained “one of the firmest pillars of that system which alone can save this Country from disgrace and ruin.” Recently defeated as he sought reelection as his state’s governor, Gerry was sixty-eight years old and unmistakably meant to serve as an unambitious caretaker vice president under an embattled president who wished to be on hand to see the war through.
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The lack of self-censorship in the Madison-Jefferson correspondence is more apparent at this juncture than at almost any other time. Jefferson repeatedly and optimistically urged war. Madison was less cheerful about the subject but was unrestrained in expressing anxiety about all he had unleashed.

Among his uppermost concerns was New England’s all-too-obvious resistance, which led Madison to fear that not many men would volunteer for the military. Before there were even battles to report on, he wrote Jefferson that “seditious opposition” in Massachusetts and Connecticut, with “intrigues elsewhere insidiously cooperating with it,” had “so clogged the wheels of the war that I fear the campaign will not accomplish the object of it.” With loose language, Jefferson called for different measures in different parts of the country: “A barrel of tar to each state South of the Potomac will keep all in order,” he ventured in August. “To the North they will give you more trouble. You may have to apply the rougher drastics of … hemp and confiscation”—by which he meant the hangman’s noose and the confiscation of property. This marvelous example of Jefferson’s gallows humor is a clear sign of the unguarded style he brought to his communications with Madison. His untied tongue was meant to encourage firmness, rather than literally to prescribe retaliation. He knew he could speak maliciously
because he knew that Madison, and not he, was now in charge of strategy. Meanwhile the antiwar activist John Randolph found himself the target of physical threats; one of Madison’s Virginia correspondents wrote unsympathetically that Randolph should be struck down, if not by “the vengeance of heaven” then by the “the hand of his country.”
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A series of riots broke out in Baltimore between June and August after a pro-war mob destroyed the print shop of a Federalist newspaper, the
Federal Republican.
The Virginian Henry (“Light-Horse Harry”) Lee was the editor’s friend and happened to be at the scene. The noted general and memorable eulogist of George Washington had recently emerged from prison, where he had been incarcerated for debt after poorly juggling his land investments. As his world was crumbling, Lee had asked his old friend Madison to assign him to a consular post in the Caribbean, so that he could keep the law from his door. Madison did nothing. While the used-up general sat in prison and paid off his debt to society, his hatred for Jefferson and the embargo caused him to seethe. It was Jefferson’s fate to be the focus of prying eyes and negative attention, and Madison’s better fortune to escape the harshest criticism.

Henry Lee appeared in bellicose Baltimore in the summer of 1812, for the ostensible purpose of selling his memoir of the Revolution, which he had written in prison and which revisited the charge that Governor Jefferson had failed Virginia. As a guest in the house of Alexander Contee Hanson, the
Federal Republican
’s editor, Lee sought to restrain those present from provoking the rock-throwing miscreants who clamored outside. But as the mix of boys, middle-class men, immigrant laborers, and others invaded the house, Lee defied them and was badly beaten on the head and face as a result of his courageous stand. When the militia was called out, its members decided they would not risk themselves to protect Federalists; so they stood by the pro-war mob and evinced little sympathy for the victims—or the free press. With such activity occurring, Secretary of State Monroe warned Madison that a sedition law of some kind might be needed to avert an escalation of violence. Madison was unmoved. He would not repeat the missteps of President John Adams by sacrificing civil liberties, even in a time of war.
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Two months after Congress had declared that war, the president still had no inkling of the enemy’s reaction. “We have had no information from England since the war was known there, or even, seriously suspected, by the public,” he wrote. As a result, he was having a hard time justifying any offensive. In fact, Lieutenant General Sir George Prevost, the man in charge
of Canada’s defense, learned in May that no troops would be sent from England for the foreseeable future. Henry Dearborn, who had developed the basic three-prong strategy—committing forces to the theaters of Detroit, Niagara, and Montreal—was put in charge of the planned assault on Montreal from northern New York State. He received and accepted a proposal from Prevost to cease hostilities. Madison rejected it and ordered Dearborn to prepare a northern invasion as soon as possible. He wanted Canada.
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Committed to the cause, former president Jefferson had no choice but to sit on the sidelines. He read, more than he wrote, on the subject. Enlistee Isaac Coles updated him from Buffalo, complaining that he and his fellow soldiers were getting mixed messages: either they were to hunker down in the woods without adequate supplies or launch an invasion of Canada. Coles was less than sanguine. “In truth,” he wrote, “the regulars here … are without discipline & could by no means meet an equal number of British troops—You can form no conception of the irregularity and disorder that exist in every branch of the service—every one prates & no one acts.”

Initial news from the Detroit frontier was disappointing. Michigan territorial governor William Hull, a Jefferson appointee and a colonel in the American Revolution, was given responsibility for the Northwest campaign. At the first sign of trouble, he froze, exposing his men to British-led Indian attacks. Monroe reported to Jefferson that he regarded Hull as “weak, indecisive, and pusilanimous,” but concluded: “This most disgraceful event may produce good. It will rouse the nation. We must efface the stain before we make peace, & that may give us Canada.”

Jefferson, so long mocked by the Federalists for his alleged cowardice as a Revolutionary War governor, saw events much as Monroe did. In the case of Hull, Jefferson displayed a cruel streak. “The seeing whether our untried Generals will stand proof is a very dear operation,” he observed to Madison in November. “We can tell by his plumage whether a cock is dunghill or game. But with us cowardice and courage wear the same plume.” Though he looked the part, Hull had proved to be “dunghill.” He would subsequently be tried and convicted, and his life spared only after his service in the Revolution was recalled. Whereas Jefferson preferred to have him shot “for cowardice and treachery,” Madison was willing to pardon him.
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The fiasco in the Northwest sent Madison’s administration into a tailspin. Monroe insisted that the government should not accept blame for what had happened, and he presented Madison with a better solution: send him out west. Seeing an opportunity to shine, Monroe proposed to leave
Washington, take charge of the army Hull had mismanaged, and undertake decisive action to, in Monroe’s words, “support the cause of free government.” Monroe was worried that his own reputation would suffer if the war did not go well. In his mind, military heroics would win him the presidency.

Richard Rush, son of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, was another of Madison’s confidants at this time, and his future attorney general. He endorsed Monroe’s plan and proposed bringing Jefferson out of retirement to fill the empty slot in the cabinet if Monroe were to go west. Extolling the “illustrious” and “venerable” Jefferson, Rush assured Madison that if he were to fill the position of secretary of state, “millions” would rejoice, and the administration would regain the confidence of the country. Rush informed Madison that the prominent Pennsylvania Republican Alexander James Dallas agreed with him that “the return of Mr. Jefferson to the Cabinet” was a perfect answer to the current malaise; while reluctant to see Monroe leave the president’s immediate circle, Dallas was confident that everything would work out. To Madison’s chief supporters, once Jefferson’s celebrity power was added to the administration, the public relations nightmare of Hull’s defeat would be erased from the national memory.

At first Madison backed the Monroe-Rush-Dallas plan, but then he had second thoughts: recalling Jefferson could easily be seen as a sign of desperation and weakness. At this crucial juncture in his presidency, he was unwilling to hand over the spotlight to either Monroe or Jefferson. He would press on for as long as possible without making any major personnel changes.
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Bad news continued to roll in. Hull’s defeat was followed by two more failed campaigns into Canada. The first was a crossing of troops from New York, over the Niagara River. The commander in this instance was Major General Stephen Rensselaer, a prominent Federalist with no prior military experience. Nearly 950 Americans were captured. Then Henry Dearborn, Jefferson’s secretary of war over his two terms, led a feeble attempt to take Montreal. Over sixty and rather portly, the lackluster general did not inspire confidence.

Many Americans had come to believe that simply by marching across the border, Canada would be won. These early defeats proved otherwise. The War Hawks, it had turned out, were all talk. U.S. forces had poor leadership at every level. Dearborn’s successor as secretary of war, William Eustis of Massachusetts, had witnessed battle up close; he was on the scene at the dramatic and bloody Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. But he was a
marked man now, soon to become the sacrificial lamb for the botched invasion of Canada. Rumors circulated that either James Monroe or John Armstrong should replace him.

The administration’s only reprieve came from the navy. Impressive victories at sea breathed life back into the deflated American public. The USS
Constitution
, under the command of Isaac Hull, nephew of the man who had disgraced his country in Michigan, defeated a British warship at close range 750 miles east of Boston. President Madison was rowed out to a ship anchored on the Potomac, where a celebration of the event was held before a merry crowd. Dolley Madison did her part during a second Washington gala that fall, commemorating Stephen Decatur’s victory over a British frigate east of the Canary Islands. He brought the enemy vessel home as a prize, and a navy lieutenant laid its flag at the feet of the first lady.
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Amid his heavy concerns, the president found time to read and enjoy a farce on the coming of the war, which he recommended to Jefferson. Though Madison mistook
The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan
as the work of Washington Irving, its actual author, James Kirke Paulding, was Irving’s lifelong friend, a fellow New Yorker, and himself a man of many talents. In time Paulding would come to work for President Madison, be charmed by him, visit Montpelier, and contemplate writing his biography.

The
Diverting History
was aptly titled. It found its mark by reducing global rivalry to family bickering. John Bull was the personification of England, and Brother Jonathan the predecessor of Uncle Sam. Paulding’s parable converted the Atlantic Ocean into a millpond and explained the American Revolution in comic miniature: “Squire Bull sent Jonathan to settle new lands,” only to be “handsomely rib-roasted [while] attempting to pick Jonathan’s pocket.” France was transcribed as “Frogmore,” and when John Bull tried to pick Jonathan’s pocket again, Jonathan penned him a professedly “respectful” letter: “Honoured Father, ’Sblood, wha d’ye mean, you bacon faced son of a horned cow, by telling me I shant visit Beau Napperty [Napoleon] when I please!”

As Madison gave Jefferson his copy of Paulding’s satire, he told him what to expect. “It sinks occasionally into low and local phrases, and some time forgets Allegorical character; But is in general good painting on substantial canvas.” While Madison critiqued Paulding’s “low and local” provincialism, we need to underscore that firsthand reports also attribute a taste for low humor and ribaldry to the fourth president—a style not associated with the third at any time.
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