James Madison: A Life Reconsidered (24 page)

Madison’s hand was also evident in the sole legislative measure the president mentioned, amendments to the Constitution, which had now become a priority for Madison. Washington spoke of amendments in a way that fit with Madison’s thinking, expressing confidence that Congress would “carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government” and at the same time have “reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen and a regard for the public harmony.”

After the inauguration, Madison wrote the House of Representatives’ formal response to Washington’s speech, and he soon heard from the president, who wanted him to take yet another step. “Notwithstanding the conviction I am under of the labor which is imposed upon you by
public
individuals as well as public bodies,” Washington wrote, tacitly admitting that he owed his inaugural address to Madison, “yet as you have began, so I would wish you to finish the good work in a short reply to the address of the House of Representatives.” Madison wrote Washington’s reply to the House address (which he had written in response to the president’s address, which he had ghostwritten), and twelve days later, again at the president’s request, he wrote Washington’s response to the Senate as well.
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Never again in the history of the United States would any politician’s voice reverberate as Madison’s did in the early days of the Republic.

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BY THE TIME OF
Washington’s inaugural, the House of Representatives had been in operation nearly a month. It had been the new government during that time and would continue to be until the executive branch could be filled out and the judiciary branch created. The members met in the airy, first-floor, octagonal chamber of Federal Hall, and it was there, under a coved ceiling that stretched upward forty feet and more, that they elected Frederick Muhlenberg, a Lutheran pastor from
Pennsylvania, to be their Speaker. From the beginning, however, they recognized Madison as their leader, “our first man,” as one of his colleagues wrote.
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Madison introduced the first piece of business: raising revenue. He suggested that the basis be the Impost of 1783, which he had written, and proposed duties to be placed on imported items such as spirituous liquors and sugar. Now that the United States had “recovered from the state of imbecility” that had made it unable to pay its debts, he said, the country needed “to revive those principles of honor and honesty that have too long lain dormant.”
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But as is inevitably the case in representative government, the high purpose of the legislation quickly devolved into a debate over details as congressmen fought for the interests of their constituents. The battle over molasses was particularly fierce, with Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, an intense and brilliant man, pointing out that a duty would hurt not only his state’s distilleries, which used molasses to manufacture rum, but its fisheries, which traded fish for rum. It would even harm the poor, he said, who used molasses as a sweetener. This last claim was too much for Madison, who responded by pointing out that Virginia’s imports were three times those of Massachusetts. Many of those imports were necessary for the poor and would be subject to tariffs—which meant that Virginians had even more reason than citizens of Massachusetts to lament their lot. His point was that partial interests had to be put aside in order to support the general government, which had been “instituted for the protection of all.”
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The House passed the tariff bill—but not until the duty on molasses had been reduced.

Fisher Ames seemed to be fascinated with Madison and described him in several letters he sent back home. In one he wrote:

He derives from nature an excellent understanding . . . , but I think he excels in the quality of judgment. He is possessed of a sound judgment, which perceives truth with great clearness and can trace it through the mazes of debate without losing it. He is admirable for this inestimable talent. As a reasoner, he is
remarkably perspicuous and methodical. He is a studious man, devoted to public business and a thorough master of almost every public question that can arise or he will spare no pains to become so, if he happens to be in want of information.

Ames knew whereof he spoke. Madison had compared the laws of all the states in preparation for the debate on revenue and collected information on what the various states imported and exported. But for all Madison’s hard work, Ames, a man not easy to content, found him wanting. “He is probably deficient in that fervor and vigor of character which you will expect in a great man,” he wrote. Ames thought him “too much of a book politician” and “too much attached to his theories.”
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Ames, who favored an emotional oratorical style, might have been reacting to Madison’s plain way of speaking. Madison made no attempt to practice oratory, which, given how often he spoke—124 times in the first session of the new Congress alone, more than twice any other member—was probably a mercy for all involved. His unadorned rhetoric had served him quite well thus far, including in the battle with Patrick Henry at the Virginia ratifying convention. His lack of artifice conveyed sincerity and underscored the importance of the ideas he was presenting rather than distracting from them.
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AFTER THE TARIFF BILL
was passed, Madison began the work of building out the executive branch. He proposed the formation of the Departments of State, Treasury, and War. The heads of these departments were to be “appointed by the president by and with the advice and consent of the Senate”—and, according to Madison’s motion, “to be removable by the president.” This last provision, which was not in the Constitution, led to the first debate in Congress about the meaning of that document, and Madison was at the center of it. “I think it absolutely necessary that the president should have the power of removing from office,” he said, and his view prevailed.
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Despite Ames’s observation that Madison was too fixed on his
theories, Madison listened to the congressional debate and learned from it. He found a point made by Egbert Benson of New York particularly telling. Since the power of removal was not in the Constitution, said Benson, Madison’s proposal looked as though it were a grant of power from Congress. Benson suggested that the motion be worded so as to assume the president had the power of removal—and Madison agreed. It was an approach he would remember when he sat down to compose a bill of rights.

A matter on which Madison was less flexible was whether tariff and tonnage fees ought to be different for nations such as France, with which the United States had commercial treaty agreements, than they were for nations such as Great Britain, with which the United States did not. Madison was fixed on the notion that there should be a distinction, in part because France had been America’s crucial ally in the war against the British, but more because he wanted Britain to change what he called “her monopolizing regulations.” Since the Revolution, American ships had not been allowed to trade in the British West Indies, nor could they carry anything except American goods to England. Madison argued that such policies “bound us in commercial manacles and very nearly defeated the object of our independence.”
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Madison was of the view that America could achieve an alteration in British navigation laws because Britain needed the food and raw materials that the United States exported more than the United States needed the manufactured products of Britain. Madison’s language, as he made this case in a letter to Jefferson, was revealing in the way that it cast the agricultural products that America produced as “essential” and the products of English factories as “superfluities or poisons.” Madison, like Jefferson, had long had a vision of America as a young, vigorous, and virtuous land where independent farmers reaped the bounty of the soil, producing necessities rather than manufacturing luxuries. It was an image fitting for a country in which the vast majority of people drew their living from the land, and it would play an important role in debates about the direction of the new government. In 1789, Congress was not persuaded, however, and in the end passed
tariff and tonnage measures giving American goods and ships an advantage but making no distinction among other nations.
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IN THE FIRST SESSION
of the First Congress, the Senate took the lead in establishing a federal court system. The Judiciary Act of 1789 provided for district courts, circuit courts of appeal, and a chief justice and five associate justices for the Supreme Court. But the pace of the Senate scarcely matched that of the House. William Maclay, an exceedingly slender Pennsylvania senator with deep worry lines between his brows, noted in the journal he kept, “We used to stay in the Senate chamber till about 2 o’clock, whether we did anything or not, by way of keeping up the appearance of business. But even this we seem to be got over.”
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Perhaps because of the light press of business, the Senate spent weeks debating the question of titles. Senators, and particularly the president of the Senate, John Adams, were eager to have Washington called “Excellency,” “Elective Highness,” or even “
His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of the Rights of the Same,
” and they continued to press the matter even after the House rejected elevated titles. Madison soothed his thoroughly irritated colleagues by praising them for their republican instincts and even persuaded them to treat the other body courteously, appointing still another committee to decline Senate suggestions. After the Senate had finally given up, Madison reported to Jefferson that “J. Adams espoused the cause of titles with great earnestness.” Jefferson responded, “The president’s title as proposed by the Senate was the most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard of.” He was reminded, he wrote, of what Benjamin Franklin had once said of Adams, that he was “always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes absolutely mad.”
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Washington was said to favor a majestic title, just as he favored a stately presentation of himself at his Tuesday receptions, or levees. Wearing black velvet, a long sword in a white polished-leather scabbard, and—the latest in fashion—yellow gloves, he bowed to visitors one by one as they approached him. Madison noted, however, that the
president did have his limits when it came to grand behavior. At one levee, as folding doors were thrown open to admit him into the room, Washington’s assistant, David Humphreys, announced, “The President of the United States,” in what Madison called “a loud and pompous voice.” Reported Madison, “The effect was the more ludicrous as not more than five or six gentlemen had assembled.” Washington threw Humphreys a look, which, Madison said in later years, “he could more easily remember than describe.”
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SHORTLY BEFORE
the House adjourned for the day on Monday, May 4, 1789, Madison gave notice that in three weeks he “intended to bring on the subject of amendments to the Constitution.”
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His most immediate purpose was to undercut a proposal that he knew was coming from Theodorick Bland, his old nemesis, once handsome, but grown corpulent now. The next day, Bland presented Virginia’s call for a convention of all the states to consider amendments to the Constitution. After Madison pointed out that the Constitution required applications from two-thirds of the states before Congress could act, Virginia’s application was tabled. The next day, a New York congressman presented that state’s application for a second convention, and it too was tabled.

Madison hoped that by introducing amendments in Congress—the second way that the Constitution provided for change—he could take away the rationale for a second convention while at the same time making a conciliatory gesture to those whom he called “well-meaning opponents.”
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He also had a campaign promise to keep. He had told Virginia voters that the First Congress should recommend amendments to the states for ratification, and he had to make sure that happened. Thus it was that over the next weeks as he was debating tariffs, titles, and offices in the executive branch, he was also sifting through the more than two hundred amendments that had been proposed by various state ratifying conventions. He put aside those that would change the governmental framework the Constitution provided and concentrated on those aimed at securing rights.

While Madison was sorting out amendments, he was also worrying about his mother. He told Eliza Trist that he sent to the post office for his mail “with the most serious apprehensions.” He also told her that Theodorick Bland had received “a melancholy memento of mortality”: “After experiencing for several weeks occasional sensations very disagreeable, he was suddenly attacked with either an apoplectic, epileptic, or paralytic stroke under which he would have expired if the lancet had not been instantly applied. He remained senseless for some time. After a few hours, however, his mind became right, and he is at present in a manner well, but not without the disquietude incident to the nature of such attacks and the bare possibility of relapses.”
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Madison’s description seems to come from someone who knew well how unsettling it was to experience such an attack—and to be aware that another could follow.

Few of Madison’s fellow congressmen shared his urgency to proceed with amendments, and he agreed to two delays in order to finish the revenue measure. Finally, on June 8, saying that he felt “bound in honor and in duty,” he moved that the House go into the committee of the whole so that he could present his proposals. He was met by a hail of objections, not only from Antifederalists, but from Federalist congressmen, who said there were more important matters and that the Constitution hadn’t been in effect long enough to consider changes to it. Madison pressed ahead, arguing that he wanted only to introduce the amendments and did not expect an immediate decision. Roger Sherman grumpily observed that Connecticut had ratified the Constitution by a large majority, wanted the government it set forth, and had no desire for amendments. Why, then, interrupt crucial work to discuss them? he asked.
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