Madison and Jefferson (88 page)

Madison was less committed to the fifty-foot gunboats than Jefferson had been, but neither, as president, made a concerted study of what should be done to ensure an economically sound, militarily effective naval strategy in the period after the
Chesapeake
incident. In 1807 then-Secretary of the Navy (now Secretary of State) Robert Smith appears simply to have ratified what the president and secretary of state desired. Jefferson clearly did not wish at any time to participate in an “arms race” with Great Britain. Madison also appears to have believed that eventual U.S. expansion into Spanish Florida and western destinations required vessels equipped for service along the shallow rivers of the continent. Beyond that, privateering seemed a cost-effective solution. In sum, a British-style naval force was more than a pay-as-you-go government was willing to bear.
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The Federalists’ hectoring satires did not let up either. The later months
of 1809 saw the publication of
Memoirs of the Hon. Thomas Jefferson
, a two-volume send-up of the retired president meant to reflect equally on his hapless successor. The name of the anonymous author was exposed by the
Carolina Gazette
as one Stephen Cullen, alternately described as a “renegade Englishman,” “a foreign hireling,” and the “secret emissary” of Great Britain, who had lived in Charleston before removing to New York. “O my country!” the Republican newspaper claimed, “how art thou debased when such wretches find countenance and support from men who disgrace the name of
AMERICANS
by assuming it.” Amid the crisis of impressment, Cullen’s ability to pass for American reinforced the ambiguity of citizenship at this time of heightened Anglo-American antagonism.
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The two volumes purport to be Jefferson’s actual memoir, though it is highly unlikely that anyone read ten pages into it without getting the joke. Jefferson’s achievements were noted, and then immediately discounted. The magnificent first inaugural address was “hypocrisy,” coming from a man who stood at the head of a political sect. Jefferson then “fell upon” the Federalists and “laid aside all decency, all shame” in persecuting them. Protesting that the third president misread British policy, Cullen made the actions of the
Leopard
in firing on the
Chesapeake
appear a reasonable action. Perhaps the most lurid characterization in the mock-memoir, though, was that of the proto-Jacobins who purportedly “joined in the diabolical orgies held at the house of Jefferson.”

Moving on to Madison, Cullen found a “versatile president,” by which he meant wavering and lacking in the masculine qualities of firmness and resolve. “General Hamilton,” Cullen reminded, “declared that Mr. Madison was, during the agitation of the important question of a Constitution, far more zealous for monarchy than any other active public character in America.” It was Hamilton, not Madison, who had been so inclined in 1787; but by 1809 the Federalist narrative incorporated many such spurious charges.
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Around the same time a long poem, printed as a broadside, lamented the death of Washington and the Republican era that opened in its wake. Like Cullen’s nasty memoir, it brought up every old charge against Jefferson before turning to the new Republican president:

The partisan poet concluded that liberty was fading and would expire in Madison’s arms. How could America have gone from the sturdy Washington to the scrawny Madison in so short a time?

Of course, no Republican could ever be a Washington. Some Federalists, in the Joseph Dennie mold, had by now devised a kind of political eugenics. For them, the weak-kneed Madison was a worse incarnation—a lesser Jefferson. Politically powerless themselves, mock-poetry and song served as a kind of voodoo chant: it was meant to put a curse on Madison, the heir who lacked any part of the vitality of the foremost Federalist.

The executive branch closely monitored news out of Europe, but it was in Congress that headlines were made. The 1809–10 winter session witnessed vigorous debate in both houses over England and France, America’s commercial life, and national honor. What he read irritated Madison, who wrote at the end of January to a group of Maryland Republicans that national unity was the only means of securing respect for “our National character & rights.” If foreigners were encouraged by “internal discords & distrusts,” then safety, honor, and the national interest would all be endangered. To William Pinkney, still trying to negotiate with the British, Madison blamed Congress for its “passive spirit” and predicted a pendulum shift in the next session when it became clear that Britain would respond only to measures that had bite: “Every new occasion seems to countenance the belief, that there lurks in the British Cabinet, a hostile feeling towards this Country, which will never be eradicated … but by some dreadful pressure from external or internal causes.”
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Madison wrote to Pinkney just as Congress repealed the Non-Intercourse Act and replaced it with Macon’s Bill no. 2, named after North Carolina Republican Nathaniel Macon. This clever but ultimately inconclusive piece of legislation was designed to exert psychological pressure on England and France by restarting formal trade between the United States
and the two belligerents in anticipation of the Europeans’ removal of restrictions against the United States. It did so while stipulating that Washington was prepared to reimpose sanctions on whichever of the two would not comply or attacked neutral commerce. The French responded with what turned out to be a hollow gesture: announcing an intention to abide by Macon no. 2 and requesting that the Madison administration do its part by reinvoking nonintercourse with Britain. Madison, who did not expect London to rescind the Orders in Council to begin with, and who had written Pinkney that he was “equally distrustful” of France, fell for Napoleon’s gambit nonetheless and played into French hands.
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If there was one piece of communication that mirrored the state of Madison’s mind during these months, it was that which he received from his attorney general, Caesar A. Rodney of Delaware. The son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Rodney had come to Jefferson’s attention in 1802, after winning a seat in the House. He actively supported Jefferson’s effort to impeach Justice Samuel Chase. Upon Rodney’s defeat at the polls, Jefferson appointed him attorney general, and he retained that position when Madison became president.

Rodney’s supportive letter was more the work of a stirring essayist than that of a legal adviser. “We live in an age without precedent in history,” he wrote, “a solitary neutral, amid a warring world.” International law had come to be irrelevant in the face of “arbitrary orders & decrees of the belligerents.” He condemned a world that would force America to stand alone on principle: “It is in this unexampled state of things, that we are struggling to preserve the moral rule of action.” For Rodney, the choice was clear and there was no turning back: “If we unsheathe our sword, I am most decidedly for selecting our foe … England is our old & inveterate enemy. She has done us more injury. The impressment of our seamen alone is worse than all we have sustained from France.” For this attorney general, it was worth plunging the nation into war just to protect the doctrine of neutral rights. He too believed strongly in the efficacy of privateers as a counterforce to the all-powerful Royal Navy.
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At this point President Madison finally proved himself an unabashed expansionist. To demonstrate, we must begin by asking a seemingly obfuscating question: Who was the Virginian Fulwar Skipwith, and how did he become, ever so briefly, the head of government of an independent republic in North America? In 1810 Skipwith had lived in the neighborhood of Baton Rouge, then a part of West Florida, for only one year when he emerged as the beneficiary of a rebellion against Spanish rule.

In more ways than one, the West Florida Republic foreshadowed that of the Republic of Texas a quarter-century later—including the symbol on its flag, a lone star. The difference between the two minirepublics was Mexican independence from Spain, which occurred well after the West Florida events and long before Texas separated itself. Also of historical note, the ordinarily aggressive president Andrew Jackson proved reluctant, in 1836, to trigger war with Mexico by annexing Texas (annexation did not occur until 1845); and the ordinarily law-abiding James Madison, the president of the United States in 1810, did not wish to wait nine years to annex Spanish territory.

Fulwar Skipwith was well known within the Madison-Jefferson circle. As a young attorney, courting his future wife, Jefferson had been friendly with the Skipwith clan. Patty Jefferson’s half sister married Henry Skipwith, and when Jefferson became an executor of the estate of Patty’s father, he carried on an extensive correspondence with Henry over their common problems as inheritors of John Wayles’s debt. Jefferson most likely came to know his legal protégé and secretary in Paris, William Short, through the Skipwiths: Fulwar was William’s cousin and confidant, Henry his uncle, and they all had financial dealings.

In the mid-1780s, when Jefferson and Short went to Paris, Fulwar Skipwith went to London as a representative of Virginia tobacco merchants, placing clients’ tobacco on the market and overseeing shipments. Jefferson relied on him for occasional favors. More important, when James Monroe sailed to Paris in 1794, at the behest of President Washington, Skipwith accompanied him as secretary of the legation. He remained in Paris for several years after Monroe returned home, rising to U.S. consul general. When Monroe sailed again to France to assist Robert Livingston in managing the Louisiana Purchase, Skipwith was his main contact. An insider to the negotiations, Skipwith was clear when it came to U.S. designs on the Floridas. He understood that no precise delimitation of West Florida’s boundary was ever made, though Monroe had requested it of the French.

Skipwith had a temper. He tangled with Robert Livingston, whose personal honor was wounded as a result of Skipwith’s actions—the consul general, technically Livingston’s subordinate, engaged in discussions with the French to which Livingston was not immediately privy, and wrote to then–Secretary of State Madison on his own. Livingston responded by reducing Skipwith’s salary. Madison was concerned enough about the incident to raise it with President Jefferson.

In 1806 a new round of discussions over the future of West Florida took
place in Paris between U.S. representatives and Napoleon. Skipwith was front and center. So was special envoy James Monroe, with whom he again cooperated closely. The pair found themselves equally at odds with Robert Livingston and John Armstrong, who were not only New Yorkers but also brothers-in-law. In succeeding Livingston as U.S. minister, the notoriously prickly Armstrong questioned Skipwith’s financial ethics. This occasioned Monroe, at the start of 1809, to attest to Skipwith’s “perfect integrity and patriotism.” The Virginians were sticking together.
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With his knack for irritating important people, Fulwar Skipwith relocated to West Florida later that year. But before his removal to Baton Rouge, he paid a visit to the State Department in Washington, and we must presume he called on the president. As he was establishing himself as a Louisiana cotton planter and making himself known to his neighbors, it is unclear whether he was in communication with Madison or Monroe. Were they at all surprised, in November 1810, when Skipwith was named governor of the newly self-proclaimed West Florida Republic? It appears not. But if no paper trail exists to suggest that Madison directed Skipwith to do anything, the events that occurred did eventually play into the president’s hands.

In the months leading up to the West Florida takeover, Madison and Jefferson were both giving considerable attention to the politically stressed, militarily vital region where Skipwith had gone. West Florida was a prize oft-mentioned, a prize yet to be won; and New Orleans was an obvious target for an invader, if war were to occur. At the same time Jefferson necessarily brought President Madison in on his nasty little legal battle with Edward Livingston over ownership of the batture, disputed land on the fringes of the Crescent City. Back in 1803, when he was mayor of New York and his brother was in Paris, one of Livingston’s clerks had misused government funds and left a shortfall in the tens of thousands of dollars. Additionally, Edward Livingston was one of five legal scholars to offer advice to the Spanish minister, a business that placed him at odds with the Jefferson administration. At the time Madison and Gallatin urged Jefferson to hold Livingston accountable, and to prosecute him, if feasible, under a law barring ordinary citizens from entering into diplomacy.

The disgraced mayor arrived in Louisiana not long afterward (allegedly with only $100 in cash) and rebuilt his career and reputation in no time flat. Flash-forward to1810, when he interrupted the third president’s retirement by bringing suit against him, because, as president, Jefferson had contended that some valuable batture land Livingston had purchased for
himself was public and not private property. The politics of land was, as always in early America, a tangled web.

The situation gets even more complicated. As a longtime supporter of fellow New Yorker Aaron Burr, Edward Livingston bore little sympathy toward Governor Claiborne of the Territory of Orleans, the native Virginian whom Jefferson had appointed and whom Madison left in charge of territorial politics. In May 1810 Claiborne made the long trip to Washington in order to meet with Madison. Not surprisingly, then, Madison reflected the southern governor’s perspective when referring to the anti-Claiborne faction as a “combination” whose aims were not entirely clear. New Yorkers versus Virginians.