#5: James Monroe 1758-1831

James Monroe, it turns out, was a total blank in my memory department. Except for the famous “Monroe Doctrine,” (which I couldn’t remember that much about), he was a complete enigma. Of course, after reading about four other presidents, I was surprised to see Monroe popping up pretty continuously and it made me wonder how I could have missed him before. He’s actually present through the entire thing…the Revolution, the new nation, the government, the Presidency. Wow. He was a Founding Father that I didn’t even really know existed! Who was this diamond in the rough anyways? In anticipation, I went to the library and got The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness by Harlow Giles Unger (Da Capo Press: Philadelphia, 2009). It was newly published, not too long (around the mid-300s mark), and had gotten decent reviews on Amazon. Everything checked out. Beginning to read, I was hoping to see what colonial America was like to James Monroe, our fifth President.
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nd then I had to stop reading. In the prologue alone, I learned that the author not only thought Monroe was the Greatest President Ever but maybe the Greatest Man Ever. It was like man-love times one hundred. Ugh! According to Unger, all the other presidents up to that point (except Washington, apparently) were chopped liver when compared to the incomparable and brilliant Mr. Monroe! “Washington’s three successors—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison—were mere caretaker presidents who left the nation bankrupt, its people deeply divided, its borders under attack, its capital city in ashes” (p. 2) Yes, this was page 2. While I was not crazy about Adams, Jefferson or Madison, this bold statement by Unger really annoyed me. I’ve read about those presidents and though they had many issues, they weren’t that bad! Even Elizabeth Monroe was highlighted by Unger’s discriminating pen. “All but unknown to most Americans, Elizabeth Monroe was America’s most beautiful and most courageous First Lady” (p. 4) Did he just say that?? All in all, I found the prologue nauseating and hoped the rest of the book would be better.

It wasn’t. I will discuss the tone of the book later (and believe me, I have puh-lenty of ammo) but for right now, I’ll focus, just like Harlow Giles Unger, on James Monroe. But I have to laugh because this is how the first chapter begins “The world was awash with war when James Monroe was born in the spring of 1758” (p. 7). That sort of overdramatic crap simply oozes throughout the book and makes reading extremely difficult. What the author meant by Monroe’s world being “awash in war” was that he was born during the French and Indian War and the area in which he was born was affected by it. James was born to a middle-class family on a small farm in Virginia, where his father kept the family afloat by providing extra work in carpentry and building. James started school at the age of 11 and was 14 when his mother and father died, leaving him, the oldest son, to care for his four siblings. Thankfully there was a wealthy uncle, Joseph Jones, in the picture to take over some of the family responsibilities. With his uncle’s aid, Monroe was able to attend William and Mary to study law which was cut short when he enlisted in the Continental Army.

He was a part of the action in New York, apparently routing the British almost singlehandedly. Because of the Virginia sharpshooters, “for the first time in the war, American soldiers saw British troops fall and run. Monroe and the Virginians let out a cheer and left the encounter with a newfound swagger. The quiet boy from Monroe Creek had found his voice” (p. 23) The victory was short-lived however with a general retreat across New Jersey for the Continental army but Monroe reappeared, crossing the Delaware with Washington to land a surprise attack on the British in Trenton, NJ. Monroe was shot which left him “on the ground dying in pool of his own blood” (p. 26) but he was saved. He was promoted to Captain and an aide to Lord Stirling, where he became friends with Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette. During the Battle of Brandywine, Monroe proved extremely valuable. “Instead of firing at one or two enemy soldiers on the front line, he changed the tide of battle—maybe even the war—standing at the rear with his general, ready to ride through a hail of fire with messages and orders to and from brigade commanders or the commander in chief, shifting positions of large bodies of men” (p.28) Sheesh…that’s a lot of words basically telling us that Monroe did not actually fight in the battle but gallantly held up the rear. The Battle of Monmouth was next and would be Monroe’s last military engagement of the war.

Even though the war was still raging, he returned to William and Mary to finish his degree and, in the process, became a protégé of Governor Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson appointed Monroe a colonel in the Virginia militia, giving him duties that set up a network of communication between the states. This network doesn’t seem to have helped Virginia though because a few months later the British sacked and burned the capital at Richmond.

Once the war ended, Monroe decided to join the General Assembly in Virginia, thus beginning his long political career, and almost simultaneously, was admitted to the bar. Despite these blessings, financial problems beset him, causing him to sell the farm where he grew up. It must be noted here that a lot of people were having financial troubles during this time. You see, under the Articles of Confederation, each state was able to issue its own currency, which either made currency scarce or caused serious inflation. Monroe was land-rich but money-poor.

After his stint was up with the General Assembly, Monroe was voted to Congress, where almost penniless, he moved up in with Jefferson at Annapolis. Monroe stepped out early as a champion of western expansion and the rights of the United States to western Americans. “Although he failed to score any victories in Congress, his became one of the most prominent—and ominous—voices in the nation, expostulating on issues that few state leaders had dared to face” (p. 59). In the meantime, Congress moved on up to New York City and we come to one of the “great—yet little known—love stories in early American history” (p. 4).

“The New York-born daughter of British Army Captain Lawrence Kortright, Elizabeth Kortright was stunning—a natural beauty, superbly educated, a gifted artist and musician” (p. 61). Of this “great” love story, Unger doesn’t tell us much. Monroe met Elizabeth at the wedding of Elbridge Gerry and although she was a decade younger than he, they were soon married in New York. Because he was so poor, Monroe decided to retire from public life (it didn’t pay very much) and take his new wife down to the small house purchased by his uncle in Fredericksburg, Virginia to resume his pursuit of the law. He was able to establish a lucrative law practice which was just as well, since Elizabeth gave birth to their first child, Eliza.

The new Constitution of the United States was ratified in Virginia in 1788 (opposed by Monroe) and soon after, James Madison beat Monroe in the first ever election to the House of Representatives. Monroe, instead, was elected as a Senator from Virginia and the whole family moved to Philadelphia, where the US government was stationed. Unfortunately, Unger takes this moment to give us an idea of what this would mean for Elizabeth. “She fretted that fashion trends might have passed her by and outmoded her wardrobe, but her doting husband reassured her that her beauty alone would make her the most elegant lady in Philadelphia” (p. 87). I sincerely hope that Mrs. Monroe was not too embarrassed in her old clothes.

The beginning of the French Revolution and the subsequent war between England and France forced President Washington to reevaluate each alliance and declare the United States neutral. To make American neutrality more palatable, Washington appointed James Monroe, an avowed Francophile, ambassador to France. The entire Monroe clan was excited that their new home would be in gay Paree, forgetful of the fact that a Reign of Terror was presently being carried out on that soil. Still James, Elizabeth, and little Eliza made the journey and were soon settled in the French capital. Monroe was able to use some of his popularity to see to the release of Adrienne de Lafayette (wife of the Marquis) from prison. This act would engender the good will of the Lafayettes towards the Monroes for the rest of their lives. After Jay’s Treaty (ending hostilities with England) was signed, the French bonhomie evaporated and Monroe found himself returning to the United States in some indignity. “Racked by anger and bitterness, he felt he had been deceived by two secretaries of state [Randolph and Pickering] and abandoned by the president he had revered since his boyhood [Washington]” (p. 126). But when Monroe got home, the presidency had already changed with John Adams heading up the government.
He decided to take up law again.

In 1799, Monroe was elected governor of Virginia, where he went about revamping the governor’s role in the state’s politics. He did such a good job at it (introducing a ‘state-of-the-state address’ and destroying slave rebellions) that he was reelected three times. “He now stood as America’s most brilliant state leader, having transformed the Virginia governorship into the state’s most powerful office and metamorphosed into the nations second-most-influential figure—one of two heirs apparent to President Jefferson” (p. 145). In 1802, war again loomed on the horizon and Jefferson turned to his friend, Monroe, to become a special commissioner to France. He was given instructions that he should purchase New Orleans and let the powers of Europe know that the United States was to be giving free right of trade on the Mississippi River.

Back in France, Monroe worked with American ambassador, Robert Livingston, on the possible sale of New Orleans. However, Napoleon had other plans. Frustrated with the decimation of his plans to conquer the US through New Orleans, he badly needed money and on impulse, asked if the US was willing to buy the “whole of Louisiana” (p. 159). “Three weeks after the Monroes reached Paris, Monroe and Livingston, all but ripped up their instructions and signed an agreement with Barbe-Marbois, transferring French sovereignty over Louisiana to the United States” (p. 163).

Back in the United States, Jefferson’s Embargo Act had just gone into effect and the whole nation was in an uproar. Monroe, again bitter and angry over the way his affairs were handled in Europe, decided at once to challenge James Madison in the 1808 presidential elections. His lack of money, however, made the whole idea totally unsuitable and he failed to win the nomination while James Madison indeed went on to become the President. This failure caused Monroe to retire to his house in the Virginia countryside, where he decided to become a gentleman farmer and somehow erase his debt. Gentleman farming wasn’t all it was cracked up to be so Monroe jumped at the chance to be governor of Virginia once again.

When it rains, it pours. Soon after Monroe was established as the new governor, Madison sent him a proposal where he was invited to be the very coveted Secretary of State in Madison’s cabinet. With seeming humility, Monroe accepted the high office and moved his family to the new capital, Washington City (soon to be Washington DC). His duties included meeting with the French and British ambassadors about the war in Europe, the impressment of American ships and sailors, and the closure of European ports to American goods. The situation between the US and Great Britain steadily worsened, culminating in a declaration of war on April 1, 1812, which left the United States in a precarious position—you see, the nation wasn’t ready. The army and navy were pitifully small, the United States government had no power to tax the people nor was there a Bank of the United States in which to draw funds from. Plus sections of the American population were adamantly opposed to the war, mainly in New England where trade would be affected.

Defeats followed on land but the tiny United States navy prevented a general loss with a few important wins at sea. British ships began raiding the area around the Chesapeake even going so far as to burn Alexandria, directly downriver from Washington City. The Secretary of War, Brigadier General John Armstrong, was convinced that Washington City would never be a target of the British, focusing instead head for Baltimore. His tunnel vision would lead to the capture and burning of Washington on August 24, 1814. Monroe, during these days, worked overtime and was everywhere trying to help. This next quote is classic. “He set up a camp cot to let him sleep on the job, but he never slept on the job” (p. 247) Clearly James Monroe was an early version of Chuck Norris. “He was everywhere, immersing himself in every detail of the city’s defense; all but hauling logs into the breastworks himself. He was an inspiring presence that rallied citizen spirits—bound the best of them as one to save their city from further assault” (p. 247). It just keeps getting better.

Unger allows us to assume that since Madison was a broken man after this and the rest of the American population were more akin to chickens with their heads cut off, that it was Monroe’s sheer willpower that kept total chaos from ensuing. Without his help, though, the American commissioners in Europe concluded the Treaty of Ghent with the British that upheld the status quo ante bellum (meaning that everything went back to the way it was before the war). Also without Monroe’s help, General Jackson and his rag tag army of Americans absolutely mauled the British at the Battle of New Orleans, killing over 2,000 British troops.

“The war quickly became a distant memory, as Americans happily embraced the greatest peacetime prosperity they had experienced in the more than thirty-two years since victory at Yorktown” (p. 255). Monroe then ran for President in the 1816 elections and won in a pretty hefty victory, becoming the fifth President of the United States of America. His first term began innocuously enough. Termed the “Era of Good Feelings” by a New England newspaper, Monroe was able to unite the Federalists and Republicans together for the first time. With this end in mind, Monroe decided to emulate Washington and take a tour of the nation, beginning in New England. Everything was going so well that he even abolished taxes! National improvements began with new roads and even a canal near Erie, PA. James Monroe was reelected to the presidency in a nearly unanimous decision. But this unlimited prosperity was already dying.

Two major issues occurred that contributed to the demise of the “Era of Good Feelings.” “Early in 1819, however, the nation’s first financial panic introduced some decidedly ill feelings into the Era of Good Feelings” (p.296). The Panic of 1819 was the first wedge that occurred during Monroe’s administration. The Panic was induced by a land speculation “bubble,” where investors bought and sold land in return for bank notes. However, no one checked whether the land that was sold was actually theirs to sell or not. These fraudulent land sales induced the US Government to demand that the banks back the paper notes that they were giving out, which in turn lead to thousands of bank closings and to thousands of people losing their savings.

Secondly, with the advent of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, the biggest national export became cotton and the reliance on slavery increased. Slavery might have died a natural death but cotton did not need skilled workers to grow it—any five-year-old could pick it. Thus, the issue of slavery became a very big deal and no more so then when Missouri, in 1819, asked to become a state. The crisis was averted with the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which stated that Missouri could be admitted as a slave state as long as Maine was admitted as a free state…oh and all future states below the 36/30 latitude line would be slave states, henceforth.

More bad news for Monroe was a-coming. The Secretary of the Treasury read the figures wrong and instead of a surplus, the country had a very big deficit instead. Also when he brought harmony between the political parties, Monroe was basically shooting himself in the foot. “In effect, Monroe had created political anarchy and, in doing so, he not only rendered himself politically impotent, he permitted new divisions based on personal political ambitions to form between political leaders” (p. 310). His cabinet also began to fight amongst itself while new South American countries were clamoring for recognition even while the European nations were trying to win them back. In the midst of all this though, Monroe, with the help of his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, was able to announce to Congress and to the world that the Western Hemisphere was off limits to the European powers and the United States would forcibly step in should this warning be disregarded. The famous “Monroe Doctrine” had arrived.

Monroe stepped down as President after two terms, with John Quincy Adams winning the presidency in the heated 1824 election. Monroe then moved his family back to his estate in Virginia, Oak Hill, in preparation for his retirement, only then realizing that his financial issues had never been resolved and were still waiting for him. He had to sell his other Virginian farm, some land in Kentucky, and he also had to ask Congress for all the back pay that was owed him from his diplomatic missions. He was elected to the Virginia constitutional convention which he attended with both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison but he was forced to resign due to ill health and the death of his wife, Elizabeth, in September 1829. He collapsed soon afterwards and had to be taken to New York City to live with his oldest daughter, Eliza. He died there at 73 years of age on July 4, 1831.

#4: James Madison Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about James Madison
1.) I consider James Madison our first full-time “politician.” While the other Founding Fathers had other occupations, Madison didn’t. He fell into the political life after college and never really left it, even when he tried to be a farmer. He never enlisted in the army; he was never admitted to the bar; he never traveled overseas. He was just…a politician.
2.) He was known as the Father of the Constitution. “In attending to every detail of this structure, and in being sensitive at every point to the effect of blending the various parts, Madison played his most crucial role, and earned the title later bestowed on him, Father of the Constitution” (p. 229).
3.) He singlehandedly wrote the Bill of Rights. “He sought both to give the widest possible scope to freedom of conscience and to demonstrate the diversity a republican government could safely accommodate” (p. 292).
4.) After the British burned Washington, they headed to Baltimore in an effort to destroy it as well. However, Baltimore was ready for them and this battle (the Battle of Fort McHenry) provided the backdrop for Francis Scott Key, a Washington lawyer, to write in amazement “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
5.) The United States has always been a sectionally-driven nation and yet the War of 1812 would provoke the first faint stirrings of the Civil War. As foreshadowing, the North, namely New England, threatened to cede from the union over Madison’s War of 1812 against the British. New England was extremely friendly to British trade and thought that war with England would damage their lucrative friendship. The New Englanders created the Hartford Convention that tried to call Madison to account and to warn about possible cession. The very positive end to the war destroyed the Convention and the Federalists all at once but the seeds had been sown.
6.) Fighting in the War of 1812 were many men who would later make a name for themselves. For example, Davy Crockett and Sam Houston were members of Andrew Jackson’s army in New Orleans.

Hmmm…would I recommend this book to others? It was not a bad book but I can’t say that I would. Here’s my biggest problem with this work—sheer superfluity. I understand the historian’s need to be as accurate and as detailed as possible but there is a limit that must be enforced once the author begins to move into generalizations and conjecture.

Ketcham uses these two evils immediately by filling empty holes in Madison’s childhood. In other words, the author plays god here by taking the information written by other people at the time and working it into the Madison biography. To be honest, Ketcham tells us exactly what he’s about to do. “Beyond a few old-age recollections, there is no documentation of particular events in James Madison’s youth. The story can be surmised, however, from farm records, from important events that would have affected a boy in Madison’s situation, and from what is know generally of Virginia family and plantation life in his day. Though the account thus obtained is necessarily conjectural in some of its details, something of an otherwise hidden boyhood assumes sketchy form” (p. 9).

With Ketcham’s own admission, then, I plowed through a tediously long and detailed account of someone’s youth, who may or may not be James Madison. That means I had to read a lot of “we may imagine”s or “we may suppose”s in regards to Madison’s early years. Now let me just say this, I would not have minded this tramp into the realms of unreality, but when the book is already 700 pages long and now I know why it’s 700 pages, well that makes me really upset. It feels like I’m just wasting my time here. And to make things worse, Ketcham then tries to get poetic on us. Instead of just telling us about Madison’s trip to New Jersey, he has to get descriptive. “Riding along the river [Potomac], Madison may have observed, as other travelers had, the sport of fishing hawks and bald eagles. A hawk would dive into the water and catch a fish in its talons, but then often lose its prey to an eagle that would soar down from above, frighten the hawk into dropping the fish, and then swoop below to catch the fish before it reached the water” (p. 26).
Following this narrative, Ketcham expounds on Madison’s college years, giving us a detailed account of books he might have read, the political influences swirling about the college town, and a small biography on Madison’s academic advisor, John Witherspoon. Later on, Madison becomes engaged (not to Dolley) and then consequently dumped. Ketcham has this to say on the matter. “We may imagine Madison spending anxious, lonely days of despair after hearing disturbing word from Kitty and during the absence of Congress from Princeton” (p. 110). After this book, I am heartily sick of the phrase “we may imagine.”

On the flip side, there were some aspects of the book that were great but the problem was wading through the superfluity to get to these good parts. Ketcham goes into great detail on the political side of the war, which was nice since this was a new facet of the war that I hadn’t read about yet. It was fascinating reading about all the different ways our country came together. In the end, though, the book was a highly analytic, deeply specific account of our fourth President.
I had mentioned earlier that it was difficult to find a bio on James Madison and I was curious as to what dour crime has prompted this treatment. I have come to realize that Madison’s greatest sin was simply that he was not a spectacular personage. He lacked the flair that Jefferson and later, Jackson would have. He did his job and that was that. He was not a very good judge of character so during his two terms as President, his biggest problems involved all the fighting amidst his cabinet. It was also due to his poor judgment that he would select General Armstrong to head the War department and we all know how that turned out. But Madison tried to be a good man for our country and a good President. One of his greatest successes was marrying the pretty, popular Dolley Todd who turned Washington DC and the White House into a fun place to be. Her expert hostessing helped her taciturn husband weather the political storms, and the actual battles, surrounding them.

In the end, I think it’s important to remember that we, today, are actively living out James Madison’s legacy—the United States Constitution. It was due to his ingenuity and brilliance that we have such a beautiful document. Combine that with the Bill of Rights and you have the essence that makes us citizens of one of the greatest countries on earth.

James Madison gave the best of himself to us and we should be proud that he was one of our Presidents.

#4: James Madison (1751-1836)

Trying to find a decent biography of James Madison was frustrating. My library was particularly deficient in this area but then, as I was scanning Amazon.com, I realized that there just aren’t that many great biographies, if any, of Madison. There are books about James Madison and the Bill of Rights or James Madison and the Constitution, even Dolley Madison and the United States but there just does not seem to be any definitive work on Madison. Hum. I really wondered about this circumstance.

Why didn’t anyone want to write about our fourth President? And then it got me excited—what on earth could he have done to warrant this treatment?? At the time, the only truly bad thing that I remembered about Madison was that he was the President during the burning of Washington DC. (Actually I only remembered this episode because Dolley saved the picture of George Washington.) Was this the reason that Madison wasn’t remembered fondly? Burning with curiosity, I actually bought a biography that seemed complete. I read Ralph Ketchum’s James Madison: A Biography (University of Virginia Press: Charlottesville, 1990) and even though it had 700 pages and was published in 1990, I deemed it necessary that I go to any lengths in order to get a total picture of this man. And, believe me, I’ve paid the price.

James Madison was born as one of a veritable horde of Madisons. His father was able to claim that he was a wealthy Virginian with property so that James was able to grow up in well-to-do circumstances along with many of his cousins and siblings. Later on in life, Madison’s prolific family would come in handy—it was such easy networking. Like Thomas Jefferson, Madison’s early years at Montpelier were extremely sketchy. (It makes me wonder why it takes the author 30 pages to get James to college!) Apparently James suffered from some sort of indisposition, like epileptic fits, throughout his life. He was never quite well and often sickly. We next find that Madison chose to attend the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) over the more popular William and Mary. Thus in 1768, he entered college and was exposed to greater ideas and concepts than the Virginian countryside could provide. “When Madison graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1771 he was a paragon of the well-educated scholar” (p. 45).

After moving back to Montpelier, Madison was then faced with an unpleasant fact—he had no job. He had the necessary qualities to become a lawyer but although he professed an interest, it never really excited him. What did excite him was the nascent war of independence. He was a passionate patriot and because of that he was elected to the Virginia State Legislature, to the Virginia Governor’s Council and finally to the Continental Congress. During his tenure on the governor’s council, Madison became lifelong friends with Thomas Jefferson, the Governor. When he arrived at the Continental Congress, he was found that the war was much worse than he had feared. “The revolution was much closer to defeat or collapse, apparently, than had seemed possible in Virginia, not yet a theater of war when Madison left home” (p. 101). Madison discovered that the United States was broke, that the Continental army was slowly eroding, and that their country had no credibility abroad to ask for loans or for help. “As Madison’s commitment to the revolution deepened, so too did his sense of its scope and meaning. It was not a mere matter of resisting unjust taxes, seeking religious liberty, or even avoiding debts to British merchants. At stake in one sense was the direction of future events in the Western world and the place the new United States would have in that world” (p. 101).

At the termination of the war, Madison again found himself jobless. Although he had left Congress with a reputation for being clearheaded and sound, he was unable to translate that into a gentleman farmer at Montpelier. Thankfully, politics stepped in again and he was elected this time to the Virginia Assembly. From there it was a mere stepping stone to the Federal Convention (or the Constitutional Convention) where men from all thirteen states were to convene as a backlash to the current government. Their mission? Revise the Articles of Confederation. What happened instead? They chucked the Articles and started from scratch. Almost from Day One of the Convention, they began to put together the Constitution that would be in effect today and James Madison really began to shine. He was not a flashy person or a spectacular speaker but he took meticulous notes on everything and was able to argue a point on sheer knowledge alone. His pro-central government approach is really what swung the Convention to his side and why we have such a lovely set of checks-and-balances between the branches.

His only failure, in his eyes, was the “The Great Compromise.” “The Great Compromise” is basically what we have going on today with our bicameral legislature. As good Americans, we know that the little states wanted equal representation in Congress and the big states wanted population to determine representation. The compromise, then, was that we have both. Madison, being from Virginia, thought the great compromise was completely awful and slowly his Federalist viewpoint began to change.

After all the changes to the Constitution occurred, the delegates’ job was still not done. Nine out of thirteen states then needed to ratify the Constitution to put it into effect. So Madison and the other delegates fanned out around the country to promote their work and to make sure that it garnered the majority of votes. To aid this process, Madison teamed up with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton to write The Federalist Papers. “Thus in late October 1787, Hamilton, Jay, and Madison undertook what became the authoritative commentary on the Constitution and the best-known work of political theory ever written in the United States” (p. 239). The Federalist Papers were a direct rebuttal of the arguments that were being used against the Constitution and yet the means for every man to understand what the new constitution entailed. Through mainly James Madison’s hard work, the Constitution of the United States was ratified in 1788 which led to the first elections to Congress where Madison beat out James Monroe to a seat in the House of Representatives.

After six years as a Representative, James Madison married Dolley Payne Todd, a lovely Quaker widow from Philadelphia, and decided to retire from Congress to try gentleman farming at Montpelier once more. Sadly, being a farmer was just not meant for him. With the accession of his good friend, Thomas Jefferson, to the presidency, James was called upon to lead the nation, instead, as Secretary of State. As Secretary, Madison faced a number of obstacles. He had to revamp the entire administrative network because the State Department, during this time, handled a lot of domestic issues as well. He also had to be every inch a diplomat confronting the war in Europe, the uprising in Santo Domingo, rumors that Napoleon would invade the US, Spain threatening to invade the US, the British impressing US sailors, the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase, political infighting and the privations of the Embargo Act.

Even though Jefferson’s second term as president was little short of a disaster, it was still widely known in Republican circles that James Madison was the heir apparent. Accordingly, James Madison became the fourth President of the United States on March, 4, 1809, with George Clinton from New York as the Vice President. Almost immediately, Madison was faced with dire information; both France and England had stepped up violations against American shipping. These instances and many others would continue long into Madison’s second term as President as well. “Overshadowing the social season, the frustrations of preparing for war, and presidential politics, however, was the steady deterioration of relations with both belligerents” (p. 523). By June 1, 1812, Madison, soon to be elected to a second term, had sent his Declaration of War to Congress naming Great Britain the primary belligerent in the coming conflict.

The War of 1812 began on a high note with some victories in the Northwest Territory (Michigan/New York) but soon, the British regained the momentum. The United States Army was losing every encounter and the nation itself slid slowly into gloom. And for good reason—the “army” was a skeleton crew, headed by generals from the Revolutionary War, the navy was even smaller, there was no money in the Treasury and since Jefferson had let the charter on the Bank of the United States lapse, there was no money to borrow. Not to mention, the war was extremely unpopular, leading New England to grumble about ceding from the union. On top of all that, Madison simply could not find anyone to be Secretary of War, finally stumbling on General Armstrong. The only light at the end of the tunnel was some hefty victories by, unaccountably, the tiny US Navy.

In 1813, the British, under General Cockburn, started harassing Americans increasingly close to Washington DC. Unfortunately, Armstrong declared that the Baltimore, not Washington, was the destination of the British and, going against Madison’s request, positioned his troops accordingly. It was then too late to defend the capitol once it was apparent that the British were heading there directly. On August 24, 1814, James Madison had to watch from the Virginia side of the Potomac as his house, the White House, and the Capitol Buildings burned to the ground. A few days later he was back in Washington and with the help of Secretary of State, James Monroe, and Attorney General, Richard Rush, Madison was able to get a semblance of the government back into working order once more. Peace negotiations were already in progress in Ghent, Belguim and though the war was officially over by the end of 1814, the Battle of New Orleans and the victory of General Andrew Jackson put the seal of success on the American’s side.

“The return of peace, the collapse of domestic defiance of the government, and the revived popularity of the administration, enabled the presidential family to look forward to the end of nearly four years of being chained to duty” (p. 599) Due to their constant condemnation of the President and the war in general, the Federal Party disappeared almost entirely after the Treaty of Ghent was signed and this meant an almost unimpeded victory for James Monroe, as the fifth President of the United States.

James Madison and his family moved back to Montpelier for his final retirement. “The need to make a living, as well as Madison’s agrarian convictions about the good life, require him to remain an active farmer” (p. 621). He was elected President of the Agricultural Society of Albemarle (County), was on the Board of Visitors to the University of Virginia, and was elected as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention. He died on June 28, 1836 at Montpelier in Virginia.