James and Dolley Madison (23 page)

Yet those who knew him well saw an entirely different James Madison. To them, he was not only a brilliant man but also a man who, in small circles of people, sparkled. He told jokes and long, funny stories. He poked fun at other politicians and foreign diplomats. He may have taken a long time to come to a decision, they said, but that is only because he weighed the consequences of every issue and person involved. He was a good administrator, and those who worked for him liked him.

Some saw him as man caught between both personas. Senator William Plumer wrote that Kentucky senator John Adair, for instance, said that Madison was a superb secretary of state and adviser to Jefferson, but that when he stepped out into spotlight he was a weak an ineffective politician. “I considered Mr. Madison an honest man, but too cautious—too fearful and timid to direct the affairs of this nation,” Plumer quoted Adair as stating.
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Others saw steadfastness but reluctance. Senator Plumer wrote that Madison would make up his mind on an issue, such as the embargo, and tell everyone it was right. Then he would backtrack and say, well, I am right but what do you think? I am right, but let's not be hasty. I am right, but we should wait and see what happens later. “Something of this disposition is seen in most men, but it was a remarkable characteristic of Mr. Madison and forms the true explanation of his conduct in more than one important transaction,” Plumer lamented.
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Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin, who knew him well, shrugged his shoulders when describing the new president. “Mr. Madison is, as I always knew him, slow in taking his ground, but firm when the storm rises,” he said.
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So was he the boring, timid thinker or the bold, animated warrior? America would find out as soon as Jefferson departed and Madison moved into the White House.

Madison understood people and their motivations very well and was an excellent judge of both character and ambition. He knew what people were looking for when they talked to him, and he conducted conversations with them in such a way as to not let them know what he was really thinking about their goals. For example, he wrote his friend James Monroe in 1803 that he always cast a skeptical eye on the cantankerous longtime minister from Britain, Anthony Merry. “He appears to be an amiable man in private society, and a candid and agreeable one in public business,” he wrote Monroe. He told his friend that Merry and his wife had recently caused a stir in social circles over a snub, or a snub as they saw it, from President Jefferson at a White House dinner. Madison explained to Monroe that the Merrys made much of social troubles, but that did not affect the minister in his public responsibilities. They did, he believed, simply like to “make noise” to draw attention to themselves.

The temperamental Elizabeth Merry drove Dolley crazy. Dolley complained of Mrs. Merry's “airs” in 1805. “The other evening she came in high good humor to pass three hours with [me] when Merran [a servant] called in and mentioned that General [Turreau] and his family were walking near the house. Mrs. Merry instantly took the alarm and said they were waiting for her to depart in order to come in, seized her shawl and in spite of all I could say marched off with great dignity and more passion. You know when she chooses she can get angry with persons as well as circumstances.”
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In 1804, exasperated by her, Dolley wrote her sister, “Mrs. Merry is still the same strange lass. She hardly associates with anyone, always riding on horseback.”
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Dolley's favorite way to get back at Mrs. Merry was to shower her with gifts in order to completely confuse her.

James Madison had told Anthony Merry that James Monroe would see him on the problem of the impressment of American seaman by British ships. “His ideas appeared to be moderate and his disposition conciliatory I am not without hopes that Mr. Merry sees the business in a good degree in the same light, and that his representations will co-operate with your reasonings on it,” he said.
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Madison had no qualms in participating in schemes to bring in people who he thought might help the United States in a touchy situation or to remove people who were hindering the chances for American success. One man was Juan Morales, the former “intendant,” or mayor, of New Orleans when it was held by the Spanish. He was trouble and threatened to cause problems in the new Louisiana Territory that the United States had just purchased from France. In a private letter, Madison told William Claiborne, the new governor of Louisiana, that Morales was “a mischievous member of society” and that “his removal to some other part of the United States, where he would be unimportant
and harmless would be agreeable to the President.” He told Claiborne to charm Morales and explain to him that he would face nothing but opposition in New Orleans, but have nothing but support from all if he moved to another part of the country. It was backdoor politics at its best and showed the Madison had mastered the art of cutthroat diplomacy.
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Madison's political shrewdness was shared by his wife. One foreign diplomat said, now that she was First Lady, that she would be assaulted by flatterers and needed to be prepared for false adulation. By 1809, Dolley was not surprised by anybody or anything. She had expected false adulation for years. She had learned politics from a master, her husband, plus President Jefferson and other skilled political players. Her eight years as the “unofficial hostess” at Jefferson's White House and director of her husband's busy social life had taught her all there was to know about national politics and the social world. She was just as savvy as her husband and, like him, able to cover up her Svengali-like knowledge of politics with a happy public persona. She wrote that Madison had always warned her of political pitfalls in the public world and false friends.
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And her husband taught her to be discreet. She could talk about anything she wanted to him, and express all of her opinions to him, positive or negative, but to no one else. She followed his advice, too, and would not even confide in her beloved sister. She wrote Anna in the spring of 1804 that “there is so much I could tell you about these new French people [Napoleon's ambassador and his wife, whose marital troubles were the scandal of the year in Washington], things that could not fail to divert you, but I must forbear, and am learning to hold my tongue well.”
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The Madisons kept their friends close when they moved to the White House, and those friendships sustained them. Dolley had many friends from her days living in Philadelphia. One was Phoebe Morris, whom she knew for years, a young woman who adored her. A few months after Madison was inaugurated, Morris wrote the First Lady, “Those who formerly enjoyed the pleasure of your acquaintance, retrace the lines, features and expressions of a face and form on which they had gazed with delight; & those who have not been so favored gratify an anxious and amiable curiosity, in beholding a just resemblance of them in whose virtues they also claim an interest, as the dignified representative of our sex in very female virtue adorned with all her sex's beauty, grace and loveliness.”
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And they constantly invited family to stay with them for as long as they wanted, especially Dolley's sister Anna, who had moved away when she married Richard Cutts. Dolley was ecstatic to learn Anna was visiting in 1810. “It is almost my first wish in this world that you should be happy & well & I will certainly advance it on every way that I can. Come then, with spirits & hope. I
will have a fire made in your room and all prepared for your reception, with a sparkling bottle & warm hearts.”
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Madison had been a good secretary of state. He not only had to advise the president but also make hundreds of decisions himself on US relations with dozens of foreign nations. He kept up a brisk correspondence with US ambassadors abroad, met regularly with foreign ministers in Washington, kept up a steady stream of letters to world leaders and ministers, and ran the State Department, which, small as it was, took considerable skill and time. He was cognizant of the views of all diplomats whom he talked to, and he knew the history of their countries and the history of their relations to the United States and the political situations they found themselves in. He knew how to deal with them and understood that events and decisions of world leaders would derail the best-made plans. He knew all about previous American dealings with foreign countries and could always, in his head, figure out the motives of foreign officials. His days as secretary of state were filled with decisions on matters in the new Louisiana Territory and in dealing with Spanish officials still there. He wrote Governor Claiborne at one point that he and Jefferson wanted the governor to strike some sort of deal with the Spaniards to give them post offices, but to suggest that they might be more pleased without post offices. It was that kind of clever dealing that made Madison successful.
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In international decisions, Madison exhibited the same shrewd understanding of politics and people. When he had to recall Charles Pinckney as ambassador to Spain, he told his successor, Monroe, that he had to be very careful about what he said about Pinckney. “I could not permit myself to flatter him, and truth would not permit me to praise him. He is well off in escaping reproof for his agency has been very faulty as well as feeble. Should you find him in Madrid, he may, however, give you some clues that may be useful.”

He shrewdly added in his letter to Monroe that certain Spanish politicians ran the court, not those whom everyone believed ran it. To those people, Madison told Monroe, he had to pretend that the United States wanted a strong alliance with France in order to obtain a stronger one with Spain.

To become involved in such international political intrigue, Madison had to know his own ministers, know the foreign diplomats, have information from others on both, and use all to obtain his goals. He had to instruct his ministers on how to play their political cards as well as they could to get what he and Jefferson wanted. He also had to comb through dozens of newspapers to find out information about them. Madison was probably the best-read man in the country when he was secretary of state. He would preface his marks to many, “I have read in the newspapers…”
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He had a broad understanding, too, of the United States' place in the world and how both foreigners and Americans saw that place. It would be foolish to gain one goal at the price of losing another, greater goal. Foreign victories might be small if brought about by domestic losses. He bluntly told a Maryland man that “national degradation as the only calamity which is not greater than those of war. To avoid, if it be possible, amidst the unbridled passions which convulse other nations, both of these alternatives, is our true wisdom, as well as our solemn duty.”
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He had also done a stellar job as a political analyst for Jefferson, constantly discussing how each party and every member of it saw an issue and how the actions of all were good or bad for the Republicans. He had, in his head, complicated analysis of politics at the national, state, county, city, and even village level. He had served as a political mastermind for years and now, as he assumed the presidential office, he was better at it than ever. James Madison was, in 1809, uniquely qualified to be president, and his politically and socially savvy wife made him even more qualified.

Now that he was president, Madison remained faithful to his Republican principles, as had his predecessor. He firmly believed that the country, and its government, belonged to the people, and that the president, and his party, had to represent all of the people. That's why he hated the now quickly disappearing Federalists; he believed they served a single, small faction of the American people. He also believed that it was the government's responsibility to rule fairly and not charge off on unnecessary domestic campaigns or foreign wars in order to build power. In a speech way back in 1792, when he was a congressman, he told his countrymen that each generation should not be burdened with the costs of the mistakes of previous generations. Americans are citizens, not caretakers. He argued, too, in that era, that a big government did not have to act in a big way.
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He understood, too, after a lifetime of friendships with politicians of both parties, that human nature and personal interest governed all politics. “In all…assemblies…passion never fails to wrest the scepter from treason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian Assembly would still have been a mob,” he wrote in 1788.
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James Madison the new president was not much different than James Madison the secretary of state or the founder of the Republican Party or the congressman or the architect of the US Constitution. He was, as friends and political allies said, an even-tempered man who never became exceedingly angry and saw all, despite their station in life, as equals. He was, his secretary Edward Coles said, “the most virtuous, calm and amiable of men, possessed of the purest heart
and the best temper with which man was ever blessed.”
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Coles added that he never heard Madison “utter one petulant expression, or give way for one moment to passion or despondency…nothing could excite or ruffle him.”

These were virtues that would serve him well when the War of 1812 began and he had to serve as commander in chief and political leader of his country at the same time. Charles Francis Adams, a historian and the son of John Quincy Adams, said that “foreign war and domestic discord came together upon him in a manner that would have tried the nerves of the strongest man,” and yet he did not flinch.
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When he took office on March 4, 1809, Madison had advice from everyone. A correspondent who called himself “the old soldier” wrote just after his inauguration that it was time for tougher measures than an embargo. “[Only] if we could, for a moment, forget the insults and murders of the British and suppress our passions we should prefer this inoffensive mode of making war,” wrote one man to a Philadelphia newspaper.
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