James Madison

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Transcriber's note:

Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. Printer's errors have been corrected and are listed at the end of the book. All other inconsistencies are as in the original.

Giants of America

The Founding Fathers

[Illustration: James Madison]

JAMES MADISON

by

SYDNEY HOWARD GAY

[Illustration: The Home of James Madison]

ARLINGTON HOUSE New Rochelle, N.Y.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE VIRGINIA MADISONS 1

II. THE YOUNG STATESMAN 15

III. IN CONGRESS 28

IV. IN THE STATE ASSEMBLY 45

V. IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 61

VI. PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 73

VII. THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 84

VIII. "THE COMPROMISES" 94

IX. ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION 110

X. THE FIRST CONGRESS 122

XI. NATIONAL FINANCES--SLAVERY 144

XII. FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 164

XIII. FRENCH POLITICS 185

XIV. HIS LATEST YEARS IN CONGRESS 207

XV. AT HOME--"RESOLUTIONS OF '98 AND '99" 225

XVI. SECRETARY OF STATE 242

XVII. THE EMBARGO 254

XVIII. MADISON AS PRESIDENT 272

XIX. WAR WITH ENGLAND 290

XX. CONCLUSION 309

INDEX 325

ILLUSTRATIONS

JAMES MADISON Frontispiece

From the painting by Sully in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

Autograph from a MS. in the New York Public Library, Lenox Building.

The vignette of "Montpelier," Madison's home at Montpelier, Va., is from a photograph. Page

CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY facing 98

From the original painting by Gilbert Stuart in the possession of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, D. D., LL. D., Charleston, S. C.

Autograph from a MS. in the New York Public Library, Lenox Building.

FISHER AMES facing 162

From the miniature painted by John Trumbull in 1792, now in the Art Gallery of Yale University.

Autograph from the Chamberlain Collection, Boston Public Library.

DOLLY P. MADISON facing 222

From a miniature in the possession of Dr. H. M. Cutts, Brookline, Mass.

Autograph from a letter kindly loaned by Dr. Cutts.

BATTLE OF LAKE ERIE facing 310

From the painting by W. H. Powell in the Capitol at Washington.

JAMES MADISON

CHAPTER I

THE VIRGINIA MADISONS

James Madison was born on March 16, 1751, at Port Conway, Virginia; he died at Montpellier, in that State, on June 28, 1836. Mr. John Quincy Adams, recalling, perhaps, the death of his own father and of Jefferson on the same Fourth of July, and that of Monroe on a subsequent anniversary of that day, may possibly have seen a generous propriety in finding some equally appropriate commemoration for the death of another Virginian President. For it was quite possible that Virginia might think him capable of an attempt to conceal, what to her mind would seem to be an obvious intention of Providence: that all the children of the "Mother of Presidents" should be no less distinguished in their deaths than in their lives--that the "other dynasty," which John Randolph was wont to talk about, should no longer pretend to an equality with them, not merely in this world, but in the manner of going out of it. At any rate, he notes the date of Madison's death, the twenty-eighth day of June, as "the anniversary of the day on which the ratification of the Convention of Virginia in 1788 had affixed the seal of James Madison as the father of the Constitution of the United States, when his earthly part sank without a struggle into the grave, and a spirit, bright as the seraphim that surround the throne of Omnipotence, ascended to the bosom of his God." There can be no doubt of the deep sincerity of this tribute, whatever question there may be of its grammatical construction and its rhetoric, and although the date is erroneous. The ratification of the Constitution of the United States by the Virginia Convention was on June 25, not on June 28. It is the misfortune of our time that we have no living great men held in such universal veneration that their dying on common days like common mortals seems quite impossible. Half a century ago, however, the propriety of such providential arrangements appears to have been recognized almost as one of the "institutions." It was the newspaper gossip of that time that a "distinguished physician" declared that he would have kept a fourth ex-President alive to die on a Fourth of July, had the illustrious sick man been under his treatment. The patient himself, had he been consulted, might, in that case, possibly have declined to have a fatal illness prolonged a week to gratify the public fondness for patriotic coincidence. But Mr. Adams's appropriation of another anniversary answered all the purpose, for that he made a mistake as to the date does not seem to have been discovered.