Madison and Jefferson (22 page)

The Jefferson party left Boston on July 5, enjoying sunny skies and a smooth, brisk voyage to England, then crossing the channel to France. Other than the briefing he was to receive from Franklin and Adams in matters of public duty, one of Jefferson’s top priorities after getting settled was to scope out scientific curiosities and acquire books for himself and his most favored friend in Virginia. And instead of bothering with exchange rates and payments, Jefferson told Madison that his expenditures in Europe on Madison’s behalf would be offset by Madison’s payments for the education and boarding costs incurred by Jefferson’s fatherless nephews Peter and Samuel Carr. They would sit down and figure it all out after he returned home.
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Jefferson was delighted to have for his private secretary in Paris his protégé William Short. When his other “adoptive son,” Short’s friend (and now congressman) James Monroe, declined the offer to accompany him to Europe, Jefferson had turned to Short, whose career in Virginia politics was just getting under way. The companionable Short had taken the same road
Madison had at a similar age, serving as a member of the Governor’s Council, and Jefferson fully expected him to go the distance, just as Madison had, by joining Congress.
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At the College of William and Mary, under the wartime leadership of Reverend Madison, Short had helped to found the Phi Beta Kappa Society that survives to this day. He also was a student of Jefferson’s greatly admired law professor, George Wythe. Jefferson was his second examiner, alongside Wythe, when, in 1781, Short was granted his license to practice law. John Marshall, future chief justice of the Supreme Court and Jefferson-hater-in-chief, was another of the William and Mary band whom Jefferson and Wythe qualified for the law around this time.
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Short did not arrive in Europe until three months after Jefferson. When he did, he bore a letter from Madison. From the beginning, the young aide proved indispensable to the first-time diplomat. His conversational French was as proficient as Jefferson’s was uncertain. In addition to his linguistic talent, he was a natural charmer, if unlucky in love. Short’s modern biographer believes that the chief reason he agreed to give up on Virginia and seek a new life in France was the rejection he suffered in Richmond at the hands of a woman who was not his social equal. In France he would move to the other extreme and fall deeply in love with a married duchess.

The letter from Madison that Short carried was put in Jefferson’s hand after three subsequent Madison letters had already come by public vessels. The combined product, nearly twenty pages, much of it encoded, made for essential reading that fall. For one, Madison reported on the effort of Virginia Episcopalians to refortify the religious establishment and Patrick Henry’s exertions on their behalf. Well-publicized petitions complained about “the present state of neglect of religion and morality.”

The fight that Madison and Jefferson had long anticipated was brewing. The church faction was so nervy, Madison reported, that it should have gone down to defeat without much work. It was “preserved from a dishonourable death,” he said, “by the talents of Mr. Henry.” This elicited what has to be considered Jefferson’s most ill-tempered harangue of his competition: “While Mr. Henry lives”—the preceding three words were encoded—“another bad constitution would be formed, and saddled forever on us. What we have to do I think is devoutly to pray for his death.” The last phrase was also in code.
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In the next paragraph of his letter to Madison, Jefferson moved from venomous talk to a reembrace of manly society. Without any idea of the
length of his diplomatic tour, he updated his friendly proposal of ten months earlier: “I once hinted to you the project of seating yourself in the neighborhood of Monticello … Monroe is decided in settling there and is actually engaged in the endeavor to purchase. Short is the same. Would you but make it a ‘partie quarree’ I should believe that life still had some happiness in store for me.” Jefferson was engaged in clever wordplay when he stretched the meaning of the French
partie carrée
, a four-way unit—which ordinarily referred to two male-female couples, as in a dance. The dance he had in mind was a power move, an appeal meant to build their collective political clout in Virginia over the long term.

Concerning bonds of love and friendship, with or without political overtones, Jefferson was emotionally demanding and a hard bargainer. Either Madison told him he felt isolated at Montpelier, or Jefferson had convinced himself that this was the case. He drew on their personal affinity and asked whether it did not mean more to Madison than financial gain through some distant land speculation: “Agreeable society is the first essential in constituting the happiness and of course the value of our existence,” he wrote, extending his plea, “and it is a circumstance worthy great attention when we are making first our choice of a residence. Weigh well the value of this against the difference in pecuniary interest, and ask yourself which will add most to the sum of your felicity through life.” And then the final push: “I think weighing them in this balance, your decision will be favourable to all our prayers.” As a man who discounted the power of prayer, Jefferson did not rely on faith but instead on emotional persuasion. Sharpening his point, he urged Madison to spend five months in France: “You shall find with me a room, bed and plate, if you will do me the favor to become of the family.”

Owing to the lag time in overseas mail, Madison’s reply did not arrive for nearly six months. He reminded Jefferson that he was eager for treatises on “the antient or modern federal republics, on the law of Nations, and the history natural and political of the New World.” To this he added a request for a “portable glass” (pocket telescope) to enliven his solitary walks in the neighborhood of Montpelier. Only at the end of the letter did he address the matter of travel, begging off the invitation to visit Paris: “It would break in upon a course of reading which if I neglect now I shall probably never resume.” There was a second rationale: “I have some reason also to suspect that crossing the sea would be unfriendly to a singular disease of my constitution.” Madison’s postscript listed several notable deaths and
ended with a question that might have been commonplace at the time and now seems precious: “What has become of the subterraneous City discovered in Siberia?”
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Jefferson’s bed and plate proposal had been turned down, and his “partie quarree” was stalled. But he would have fresh ideas to report on as he became immersed in French culture and saw more of the country.

As Jefferson was crossing the ocean one way, the American Revolution’s beloved benefactor, the Marquis de Lafayette, had arranged his own return to the United States. Without either of them knowing it, they were on the high seas together and reached land at nearly the same time.

Though he was just twenty-six, Lafayette was making his third crossing since the beginning of the Revolution. The immensely wealthy young aristocrat possessed a fund of honor and determination as well as land and connections. Supremely self-confident, he had sought a letter from Washington in 1783 that he expected would lead to his inclusion in ratification proceedings related to the Anglo-American peace treaty. Lafayette’s ambition was of concern to diplomat John Adams, and even Washington was not entirely comfortable with the idea of a Frenchman representing the new nation. At the same time no one wished to dampen the spirit of the brave marquis, who continued to act as a useful liaison in political and commercial matters affecting France and America.
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Landing in New York in mid-1784, Lafayette headed south as quickly as he could to pay a visit to George Washington at Mount Vernon. Everywhere he went, he was banqueted. Returning north, he chanced to meet James Madison in Baltimore. The Virginian, who feared the perils of a voyage to France, responded nevertheless to an invitation from Lafayette to accompany him to Philadelphia and from there to central New York State, where the Frenchman was to help in negotiating an agreement with Indian tribes that had remained loyal to the British during the Revolution. The Iroquois retained warm recollections of the French from years of friendly intercourse, and they knew a great deal about Lafayette’s exploits during the American Revolution. This is how Lafayette finally got his wish and a private citizen of a foreign nation came to represent the United States in an authoritative treaty.

The land-hugging Madison, who would never even see the burgeoning
West, experienced horrible seasickness as they sailed up the Hudson to Albany. Back on solid ground, the party was met by the Marquis de Barbé-Marbois of the French legation in Philadelphia, the instigator of Jefferson’s soon-to-be-published
Notes on Virginia.
Arriving among the Indians, Madison heard several refer to young Lafayette improbably as “my father.” The treaty was concluded. It secured long-term peace, while unevenly dividing lands between the tribes and the U.S. government.

Madison and Lafayette grew close as they were roughing it in the woodlands. Afterward Madison wrote to Jefferson about their time together and marveled at the Frenchman’s ability to interact with Indians. The friendly Oneidas claimed that it was Lafayette’s words to them during the war that had kept them from allying with the losing side. In Madison’s view, Lafayette was “as sincere an American as any Frenchman can be; one … whose future friendship prudence requires us to cultivate.” The Virginian was particularly struck by the strong stand Lafayette took against the institution of slavery. Said Madison charitably, “It is a proof of his humanity.” Forty years later, after the two presidents had been long retired to their respective plantations, sustained by slave labor, Lafayette would still be pursuing an argument with them about America’s greatest failing.

When he wrote of Lafayette to Jefferson, Madison was blunt about the Frenchman’s less attractive but equally pronounced traits, especially his vanity. It was the same quality that had caused Madison to be repelled by John Adams. But it had to be said that Adams never curried favor from anyone, and Lafayette, Madison concluded, had “a strong thirst of praise and popularity.” Reading Madison’s letter, Jefferson agreed with his friend’s assessment: “I take him to be of unmeasured ambition but that the means he uses are virtuous.” To which Madison answered that he since had “further opportunities of penetrating [Lafayette’s] character.” His “foibles” had not disappeared, but his positive traits were that much more in evidence. He was power-hungry, but he wished to apply power to right ends. And crucially, “his disposition is naturally warm and affectionate and his attachment to the United States unquestionable.” Madison was telling Jefferson that once Lafayette returned to France, the American minister should make good use of him. The two were clearly on the same page. “I am persuaded,” Jefferson wrote next, “that a gift of lands by the state of Virginia to the Marquis de la fayette would give a good opinion here of our character.” Without knowing the full extent of what was brewing in France, he added intriguingly that Lafayette might have a future need to find refuge in America.
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While keeping company with the marquis, a hardy traveler not easily deterred, Madison was obliged to endure chilly nights and high winds, as well as long hours sitting and observing ceremony. Though weather-beaten at the end of it all, he emerged from his northern trek attracted to land offerings in the Mohawk region of New York; he now saw investment opportunities there as the best means to secure his fortune. Though a national figure, he was still hopelessly dependent on his father, who had just given him 560 acres of Montpelier land. More to the point, he was a professional politician uninterested in establishing a private law practice.

At this point Madison invited fellow Virginians Monroe and Jefferson to invest in upstate New York along with him. To Monroe, he wrote: “My private opinion is that the vacant land in that part of America opens the surest field of speculation of any in the U.S.” To the investment-shy Jefferson, he phrased his appeal a bit differently: “There can certainly be no impropriety in your taking just means of bettering your fortune.” But Jefferson continued to find speculation in northern land unappetizing, and he refused to let go of his hope that Madison would buy property and settle near Monticello. No matter what he said, though, he could not convince Madison to do as Monroe was doing. Short, the other member of Jefferson’s imagined “partie quarree,” would end up investing elsewhere.

While away in France, Jefferson did not know that Madison was focusing his attention on land speculation nearly as much as he was reading up on the law. His father and two brothers, Ambrose and William, had purchased sixteen thousand acres in Kentucky while James, Jr., was serving in Congress; now the ex-congressman wanted to make up for lost time. It was risky business, he well knew, because in the midst of a fluctuating economy most people borrowed on credit in order to buy land.

His gaze was northward first, westward second. One reason the Mohawk Valley appealed to him was that onetime surveyor George Washington assured him it was a good investment. During 1784–85, in the wake of Lafayette’s tour, Madison made repeated visits to the retired commander at his Mount Vernon estate, and the two graduated from a proper and respectful acquaintance to a warm and affectionate friendship. Accepting Washington’s advice, Madison prepared to take the plunge with his cash-poor friend Monroe. They resolved to buy one thousand acres located between what would soon become the towns of Utica and Rome; but they could not settle their finances in a timely way and subsequently decided to wait until they could travel there together. In mid-1785 Madison let his friend Edmund Randolph in on the scheme, saying that he planned to take
up Monroe on his invitation to join him for “a ramble of curiosity.” One thing or another prevented them from carrying out their plan. Later, the two did invest on a very small scale. While Madison remained convinced that Mohawk lands would bring massive profit, in the end he was too cautious to risk any more of his small fortune.
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