banks, and possibly he did not satisfy himself, as
he certainly did not the other side, that the weight
of the argument was against their utility. At any
rate, he fell back upon the Constitution as his
strongest position. To incorporate a bank was
not, he maintained, among the powers conferred
upon Congress. The Federalists, who were begin-
ning to recognize him as the leader of the opposi-
tion, were quite ready to accept that challenge.
" Little doubt remains," said Fisher Ames in rising
to reply, " with respect to the utility of banks."
Assuming that to be settled, — whether he meant,
or not, that such was the conclusion to be drawn
(^^^^z, ^
-^^Lyt4
SLAVERY 163
from Madison's argument on that point, — lie
addressed himself to the constitutional question.
If the iucorporation of a bank was forbidden by
the Constitution, there was an end of the matter.
If it was not forbidden, but if Congress may exer-
cise powers not expressly bestowed upon it, and if
by a bank some of the things which the federal
government had to do could be best done, it would
be not only right but wise to establish such an
agency. This was the burden of the argument of
the Federalists, and Madison and his friends had
no sufficient answer. The bill was at length passed
by a vote of thirty-nine to twenty.
But it had still to pass the ordeal of the cabinet.
The President was not disposed to rely upon his
own judgment either one way or the other. He
asked, therefore, for the written opinions of the
secretaries of the treasury and of state, Hamilton
and Jefferson, and the attorney-general, Randolph.
The same request was made to Madison, probably
more because Washington held his ability and
knowledge of constitutional law in high esteem
than because of the prominent part he had taken
in the debate. Hamilton's argument in favor of
the bill was an answer to the papers of the three
other gentlemen, and was accepted as conclusive
by the President.
CHAPTER XII
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS
Madison was a Federalist until, unfortunately,
lie drifted into the opposition. He was swept
away partly, perliaps, by the influence of personal
friends, particularly of Jefferson, and partly by the
influence of locality, — that " go-with-the-State "
doctrine, which is a harmless kind of patriotism
when kept within proper limits, but dangerous in
a mixed ofovernment like ours when unrestrained.
Had he been born in a free State it seems more
than probable that he would never have been
President ; but it is quite possible that his place
in the history of his country would have been
higher. The better part of his life was before he
became a party leader. As his career is followed
the presence of the statesman grows gradually
dimmer in the shadow of the successful politician.
In the course of the three sessions of the First
Congress the line was distinctly drawn between
the Federal and Republican (or Democratic) par-
ties. The Federalists, it was evident, had suc-
ceeded in firmly uniting thirteen separate States
into one great nation, or into what, in due time,
was sure to become a great nation. It was no
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 165
longer a loose assemblage of thirteen independent
bodies, revolving, indeed, around a central power,
but with a centrifugal motion that might at any-
time send them flying off into space, or destroy
them by collisions at various tangents. Those who
opposed the Federalists, however, had no fear of
a tendency to tangents; the danger was, as they
believed, of too much centripetal force, and that
the circling planets might fall into the central sun
and disappear altogether. Even if there were no
flying off into space, and no falling into the sun,
they had no faith in this sort of political astro-
nomy. They were unwilling to float in fixed orbits
obedient to a supreme law other than their own.
There is no need to doubt the honesty of either
party then, whatever came to pass in later years.
Nor, however, is there any more doubt now which
was the wiser. Before the end of the century the
administration of government was wrested from
the hands of those who had created the Union ;
and within fifteen years more the Federal party,
under that name, had disappeared. It would not
be quite just to say that they were opposed for no
better reason than because they were in power.
But it is quite true that the principles and the
policy of the Federalists survived the party organ-
ization ; and they not only survived, but, so far
as the opposite party was ever of service to the
country, it was when that party adopted the fed-
eral measures. It was in accordance with the
early principles of Federalism that the republic
166 JAMES MADISON
was defended and saved in the war of 1860-65 ;
as it was the principles of the Democratic state-
rights party, administered by a slaveholding oli-
garchy, that made that war inevitable.
Hamilton said, in the well-known Carrington
letter in the spring of 1792, that he was thor-
oughly convinced by Madison's course in the late
Congress that he, " cooperating with Mr. Jefferson,
is at the head of a faction decidedly hostile to me
and my administration, and actuated by views, in
my judgment, subversive of the principles of good
government, and dangerous to the union, peace,
and happiness of the country." At first he was
disposed to believe, because of his "previous im-
pressions of the fairness of Mr. Madison's char-
acter," that there was nothing personal or factious
in this hostility. But he soon changed his mind.
Up to the time of the meeting of the First Con-
gress there had always been perfect accord be-
tween them, and Hamilton accepted his seat in
the cabinet "under the full persuasion," he said,
" that from similarity of thinking, conspiring with
personal good-will, I should have the firm support
of Mr. Madison in the general course of my admin-
istration." But when he found in Madison his
most determined opponent, either open or covert,
in the most important measures he urged upon
Congress, — the settlement of the domestic debt,
the assumption of the debts of the States, and the
establishment of a national bank, — he was com-
pelled to seek for other than public motives for
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 167
this opposition. " It had been," he declared,
" more uniform and persevering than I have been
able to resolve into a sincere difference of opinion.
I cannot persuade myself that Mr. Madison and I,
whose politics had formerly so much the same
point of departure, should now diverge so widely
in our opinions of the measures which are proper
to be pursued."
In the letter from which these extracts are
made Jefferson and Madison are painted as al-
most equally black, though the color was laid the
thicker on Jefferson, if there was any difference.
Hamilton seemed to think that, if Jefferson was
the more malicious, Madison was the more artful.
He is accused of an attempt to get the better of
the secretary of the treasury by a trick which
was dishonorable in itself, and at the same time
an abuse of the confidence reposed in him by
"Washington. Before sending in his message at
the opening of the Second Congress the President
submitted it to Madison, who, Hamilton declares,
so altered it, by transposing a passage and by the
addition of a few words, that the President was
made to seem, unconsciously to himself, to approve
of Jefferson's proposal to establish the same unit
for coins as for weights. This would have been to
disapprove of the proposal of the secretary of the
treasury that the dollar should remain the unit
of coinage. The statement rests on Hamilton's
assertion ; and as he had forgotten the words which
made the change he complained of, and as the
168 JAMES MADISON
message was restored to its original form by the
President when its possible interpretation was
pointed out to him, it is impossible now to judge
whether Madison may not have been quite inno-
cent of the intention imputed to him. It is plain
enough, however, that Hamilton was sore and dis-
appointed at Madison's conduct, and that he was
quick to seize upon any incident that justified him
in saying, " The opinion I once entertained of the
candor and simplicity and fairness of Mr. Madi-
son's character has, I acknowledge, given way to
a decided opinion that it is one of a peculiarly
artificial and complicated kind." To justify this
opinion, and as an e\ddence of how bitter Madi-
son's political and personal enmity toward him had
become, he refers in the same letter to Madison's
relation to Freneau and his paper, " The National
Gazette." "As the coadjutor of Jefferson," he
wrote, " in the establishment of this paper, I in-
clude Mr. Madison in the consequences imputable
to it."
The story of Freneau need not be repeated here
at length, having been already told in another
volume of this series of biographies. If there were
anything in that affair, however, for which Jeffer-
son could be fairly called to account, Madison may
be held as not less responsible. When the charge
was made that he had a sinister motive in procur-
ing for Freneau a clerkship in the State Depart-
ment, and in aiding him to establish a newspaper,
Madison frankly related the facts in a letter to
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 169
Edmund Kandoli3h. He had nothing to deny
except to repel with some indignation the charge
that he had helped to establish the journal in order
that it might " sap the Constitution," or that there
was the slightest expectation or intention on his
part of any relation between the State Department
and the newspaper. Freneau was one of his col-
lege friends, a deserving man, to whom he was
attached, and whom he was glad to help. There
was nothing improper in commending one w^ell
qualified to discharge its duties for the post of
translator in a government office ; and as those
duties, for which the yearly salary was only two
hundred and fifty dollars, were light, there was no
good reason why the clerk should not find other
employment for leisure hours.
If Mr. Madison, having said this, had stopped
there, his critics would have been silenced. But
when he added that he advised his friend with
another motive besides that of helping him to
start a newspaper, then, as the expressive modern
phrase is, he "gave himself away." There is a
feeling, common even in those early and innocent
days when such things were rare, that the editor,
whose daily bread, whether it be cake or crust,
comes from the bounty of the man in office or
other place of power, — that an editor so fed, and
perhaps fattened, is only a servant bought at a
price. Madison said that to help a needy man
whom he held in high esteem was his "primary
and governing motive." But he adds: "That, as a
170 JAMES MADISON
consequential one, I entertained hopes that a free
paper . . . would be an antidote to the doctrines
and discourses circulated in favor of monarchy
and aristocracy ; would be an acceptable vehicle of
public information in many places not sufficiently
supplied with it, — this also is a certain truth."
What was this but an acknowledgment of the
essential truth of the charge brought against Jef-
ferson and himself? Not that he might not de-
voutly hope for an antidote to the poisonous doc-
trines of monarchy and aristocracy, though in very
truth the existence of any such poison was only
one of the mao^sfots which, bred in the muck of
party strife, had found a lodgment in his brain ;
not that it was not a commendable public spirit
to wish for a good newspaj^er to circulate where it
was most needed ; not that it was not a most excel-
lent thing in him to hold out a helping hand to the
friend who had been less fortunate than himself, —
but that, in helping his friend to a clerkship in a
department of the government, his motive was in
part that the possession of a public office would
enable the man to establish a party organ. That
was precisely the point of the charge which he
seems to have failed to apprehend, — that public
patronage was used at his suggestion to further
party ends.
Freneau had intended to start a newspaper
somewhere in New Jersey. AVhetlier or not that
known intention suggested that the project could
be better carried out in Philadelphia, and a clerk-
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 171
ship in the State Department would be an aid to
it, the change of plan was adopted and the clerk-
ship bestowed upon him. The paper — the first
number of which appeared five days after his ap-
pointment — was, as it was known that it would
be, an earnest defender of Jefferson and his friends,
and a formidable opponent of Hamilton and his
party. The logical conclusion was that the man,
being put in place for a purpose, was diligent in
using the opportunities the place afforded him to
fulfill the hopes of those to whom he was indebted.
Madison and Jefferson both denied, with much
heat and indignation, that they had anything to
do with the editorial conduct of the paper. No
doubt they spoke the truth. They had to draw
the line somewhere ; they drew it there ; and an
exceedingly sharp and fine line it was. For it is
plain that Freneau knew very well what he was
about and what was expected of him, and his
powerful friends knew very well that he knew it.
They could feel in him the most implicit confi-
dence as an untamed and untamable democrat, and
one, perhaps, whose gratitude would be kept alive
by the remembrance of poverty and the hope of
future favors. There was clearly no need of a
board of directors for the editorial supervision
of " The National Gazette," and it was quite safe
to deny that any existed. The fact, nevertheless,
remained that a seat had been given the editor at
Mr. Jefferson's elbow.
Three months before Madison heard that his
172 JAMES MADISON
relation to Freneau was bringing liim under pub-
lic censure, he showed an evident interest in the
" Gazette " hardly consistent with his subsequent
avowal of having nothing to do with its manage-
ment. In a letter to Jefferson he refers to the
postage on newspapers established by the bill for
the regulation of j)ost-offices, and fears that it will
prove a grievance in the loss of subscribers. He
suggests that a notice be given that the papers
" will not be put into the mail, but sent as hereto-
fore,'' meaning by that, probably, that they would
be sent under the franks of members of Congress,
or by any other chance that might offer. " Will
you," he adds, "hint this to Freneau? His sub-
scribers in this quarter seem pretty well satisfied
with the degree of regularity and safety with which
they get the papers, and highly pleased with the
paper itself." This was careful dry-nursing for
the bantling which had been provided with so com-
fortable a cradle in the State Department.
The political casuist of our time may wonder
at the importance which attached to this Freneau
affair. We are taught that " there were giants in
those days," but we may also remember that in the
modern science of " practical politics " they were
as babes and sucklings. Madison was making
good his place as a leader of the opposition hardly
second to Jefferson himself. As with Hamilton,
so with the Federalists generally, he fell more
even than Jefferson fell in their esteem. He fell
more, because he had farther to fall. No man
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 173
had been more earnest than he for a consolidated
government ; no one had shown more activity to
bring about a convention to frame a federal Con-
stitution ; and when at last that work was done,
no one, not even Hamilton himself, was more zeal-
ous to convince his countrymen that national sal-
vation depended upon union, and that union was
hopeless unless the Constitution should be adopted.
The disappointment and the shock were all the
greater when he gradually drew off from those who
had hitherto counted him as on their side. They
could not understand how he could find so much
to oppose in the legitimate administration — as
they believed it to be — of a Constitution he had
done so much to create, and the beneficent results
of which he had foreseen and foretold. Or, if
they understood him, it was on the supposition
that he had thrown his convictions and his princi-
ples to the winds, abandoned his old friends and
attached himself to new ones, from motives of
personal ambition. This, of course, may not have
been absolutely just. It is quite possible that he
did not deliberately surrender his principles, but
persuaded himself that he was as true as ever to
the Constitution. It is, nevertheless, certainly true
that the men with w^hom he was now acting were
the men who, having failed to prevent the adop-
tion of the Constitution, now aimed, by zealous
endeavors for an assumed strict construction, to
defeat the purpose for which it was framed.^
^ "I reverence the Constitution," said Fisher Ames in debate,
174 JAMES MADISON
Naturally his motives were suspected, and his
conduct narrowly watched. Jefferson's influence
over him was known to be great, and Jefferson had
had nothing to do with the framing of the Consti-
tution, had been doubtful at first of its wisdom,
and gave his assent to it at last with many doubts.
The Anti-Federal party was growing gradually
stronger in Virginia as in all the Southern States ;
most of Madison's warmest personal friends, as
well as Jefferson, were of that party. What
chance would he have in the public career he had
marked out for himself if his path and theirs led
in opposite directions ? How much he was influ-
enced by these considerations it is impossible to
tell ; perhaps he himself could not have told.
Perhaps they were not even considerations, but
only unconscious influences, which he would have
thrown behind him had he recognized them as pos-
sible motives. To others, however, whether justly
or not, they were quite sufficient to explain his
course, and, once accepted, no other explanation
was sought for. The appointment of Freneau to
office at Madison's request, followed by the almost
immediate appearance of a violent party organ,
" and I readily admit that the frequent appeal to that as a stand-
ard proceeds from a respectful attachment zo it. So far it is
a source of agreeable reflection. But I feel very different emo-
tions when I find it almost daily resorted to in questions of little
importance. When by strained and fanciful constructions it is
made an instrument of casuistry, it is to be feared it may lose
something in our minds in point of certainty, and more in point
of dignity."
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 175
edited by this clerk in Mr. Jefferson's department,
was quite enough to raise an outcry among the
Federalists ; and Madison's explanation, when it
came to be known, of his share in that business,
did not add to his reputation either for frankness
or political rectitude. Perhaps it was at first more
the seeming want of frankness that disgusted his
old friends. They could have more readily for-
given him had he openly declared that he had gone
over to the enemy, instead of professing to find in
the Constitution sufficient ground for hostility to
their measures. These constitutional scruples they
sometimes thought so thin a disguise of other mo-
tives as to be better deserving of ridicule than of
argument.
All he said and did was watched with suspicion.
In the interval between the First and Second Con-
gresses, he and Jefferson made a tour through some
of the Eastern States, as they said, for relaxation
and pleasure. But it was looked upon as a strategic
movement. Interviews between them and Living-
ston and Burr in New York were reported to Ham-
ilton as "a passionate courtship." They visited
Albany, it was said, '' under the pretext of a botani-
cal excursion," but in reality to meet with Clinton.
Botany naturally suggests agriculture, and as they
continued on their journey into New England they
were accused of " sowing tares " as they traveled.
Such treachery would have been considered as
aggravated by hypocrisy had it been known then
that on his return Mr. Madison wrote to his father
176 JAMES MADISON
from New York : " The tour I lately made with
Mr. Jefferson, of which I have given the outlines
to my brother, was a very agreeable one, and car-
ried us through interesting country, new to us
both." This was cool, if the journey really was a
political reconnoissance.
Though Mr. Madison may have been for a time
a special target for this kind of partisan rancor, it
was by no means confined to him. Jefferson had
a very pretty talent for exasperating his enemies,
and nobody could long divide with him the distinc-
tion of being the best hated man in the country.
A curious instance of it was given when the ques-
tion was discussed, both in the First and Second
Congresses, as to the successor to the presidency in
case the office should become vacant by the deaths
of both President and Vice-President. A bill was
sent down from the Senate to the House providing,
in case such a thing should ever happen, that the
president i^^'o tempore of the Senate, or, should the
Senate have no temporary president, the speaker
of the House of Kepresentatives, should succeed
to the vacant office. The House sent back the bill
with an amendment substituting the secretary of
state for the succession in the possible vacancy
instead of the presiding officers of the two houses
of Congress. Madison was very earnest for this
amendment, but the Senate rejected it, and the
House finally assented to the original bill. It was
shown in the course of the debate that according
to the doctrine of chances the office of president
FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 177
would not devolve, through the accident of death,
upon a third person oftener than once in about
eight hundred and forty years. The rejection of
the amendment naming the secretary of state as
the proper person to succeed to the presidency,
in the improbable event suj^posed, v^as neverthe-
less resented by the Eepublicans as a direct reflec-
tion upon Mr. Jefferson. Nor did the Federalists
deny it. With grim humor they seized upon the
opportunity, apparently, to announce that not with
their consent should he ever be president, even by
accident, though he should wait literally eight hun-
dred and forty years. It was a long-range shot,
but there could not have been one better aimed.
If before there had been some room for hope,
Madison's course in the Second Congress left no
doubt as to which party he had cast his lot with.
His hostility to the establishment of a bank was,
he thought, justified by what he saw at the open-
ing of the subscription books in New York, The
anxiety to get possession of the stock was not to
him an evidence of public confidence, and an argu-
ment, therefore, in favor of such an institution,
but "a mere scramble for so much public i3lun-
der." He could only see that '' stock-jobbing
drowns every other subject. The coffee-house is in
an eternal buzz with the gamblers." "It pretty
clearly appears also," he said, "in what propor-
tions the public debt lies in the country, what sort
of hands holding it, and by whom the people
of the United States are to be governed." Here,
178 JAMES MADISON
perhaps, was one cause of his hostility to Hamil-
ton's financial policy. Its immediate benefit was
for that class whose pecuniary stake in the stability
of the government was the largest. This class was
chiefly in the Northern States, where capital was in
money and was always on the lookout for safe and
profitable investment. At the South, capital was
in slaves and land, and could not be easily changed.
If the Bank and the bondholders were to exer-
cise — as he feared they would, and as he believed
that the Federalists meant they should — a con-
trolling influence over the government, it was cer-
tainly pretty apparent '' by whom the people of the
United States were to be governed." It would be
the North, not the South ; and he was a Virginian
before he was a Unionist.
Perhaps he was influenced by this consideration
when he proposed that the payment of the domes-
tic debt should be divided between those who had
originally held, and those who had acquired by
purchase, the certificates of indebtedness. The
public creditors would in that case have been
more widely distributed in different sections of the
country and among different classes. The thought,
at any rate, does not seem to have been a new one
when he saw and reported the eagerness with
which the bank stock was sought for, denounced