Madison and Jefferson (107 page)

Newspapers around the country indulged in speculation but with less acrimony than in past elections. Far from the action, in Maine, editors collected their thoughts as they collected the newspapers of Boston, New York, and points south. The
Portland Advertiser
, while lauding Jackson as “the candidate of the people,” noticed “the superior popularity of Mr. Adams, above that of General Jackson, with the members of the House of Representatives.” The
Advertiser
’s editor absorbed reports in Thomas Ritchie’s
Richmond Enquirer.
Reading what he called the “Oracle of the Ancient dominion,” the New Englander sensed correctly that Virginia’s House delegation would deny Jackson.
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When the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, the fourth-place finisher, Henry Clay, was excluded from the three-person runoff, according to the rules laid down in the Constitution. Clay used his influence as longtime Speaker of the House to deliver key state delegations to Adams. And Adams, never afraid to act in accordance with the dictates of his conscience, committed a massive political error. By making the capable but controversial Clay his secretary of state, cries of a “corrupt bargain”
rang out, which pretty much assured that the stubborn sixth president would be a one-term president, as his father was before him.
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Though Madison and Jefferson were largely spectators to the 1824 election, they shared a certain defensiveness on behalf of their native state. In February 1825, as Adams’s controversial victory was broadcast through the national press, Madison wrote to Jefferson about the viability of one particular candidate for the professorship in moral philosophy at the university. The choice had to be made carefully, he said, because responsibilities included the teaching of finance; and the gentleman in question exhibited a doubtful adherence to the “Virginia Creed,” after having become “a convert to the constitutionality of canals.” It was quite unusual for Madison, not just in his retirement years but at any time, to state directly that he looked for evidence of the “Virginia Creed” when assessing a person’s political character.

The professor he was writing about was George Tucker, a three-term Virginia congressman. Whether the “Virginia Creed” had any relationship to one’s view of slavery is unclear. But Tucker had just published a novel,
The Valley of the Shenandoah
, that told of the deterioration of a Virginia plantation family and illustrated the wretchedness of slavery. When all was said and done, Madison and Jefferson agreed that it was worth taking a chance on Professor Tucker, despite the one “flaw,” as Madison referred to his position on internal improvements. His educational “fitness,” combined with a “great amiableness of temper,” helped them overcome their suspicions. From the Virginia perspective, their trust was rewarded: in 1837, Tucker published a friendly biography of Jefferson. And he remained on the university faculty until 1845.
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In 1825 the constitutional question of funding improvements to the growing nation’s transportation networks dominated Madison’s thoughts. “It seems strange,” he wrote to Jefferson, “but it is a certain fact, that there are several instances of distinguished politicians who reject the general heresies of federalism, most decidedly the amalgamating magic of the terms ‘General Welfare,’ who yet admit the authority of Congress as to roads and canals, which they squeeze out of the enumerated articles.” He was wary of
utility
, a seductive word that could be used to rationalize any departure from constitutional correctness—what he now called “Constitutional orthodoxy.” Both Madison and Jefferson felt that the current craze of canal building was a state and not a national responsibility. Using the same argument they did in opposition to federal interference with slavery in the territories, Madison feared that the popularity of a measure would
overcome any constitutional objection, even when the Constitution was impossible to misconstrue. This was why his last act as president had been to veto the popular but, to him, unconstitutional Bonus Bill. Eight years later he was hopeful that the Supreme Court would steer clear of this issue. “The will of the nation being omnipotent for right, is so for wrong also,” he opined for Jefferson.
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At the end of 1825 Madison was still on the case. Jefferson considered the matter as desperate. On Christmas Eve he wrote to Madison, enclosing a paper he had been asked to write by a neighbor who sat in the House of Delegates. It disavowed the notion that Congress had authority under the “General Welfare” clause to fund canals, and it assured skeptics at the same time of Virginians’ continuing commitment to the Union. Written, Jefferson said, as “an example of a temperate mode of opposition,” he thought it might at best “intimidate the wavering,” and at worst “delay the measure a year at least.” He wanted Madison to look it over. If Madison approved it, Jefferson would pass it on; if he frowned on it, “it shall be suppressed”; if it had merit but needed work, “make what alterations you please.” Their collaborative engine was still in operation.
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Madison thought that Jefferson’s paper, titled a “Solemn Declaration and Protest,” was too strongly worded. He was worried that Jefferson would only be adding to the animosity many northerners felt toward Virginia. But he could hardly have disapproved of Jefferson’s conclusion that a constitutional amendment was required to extend the canal-building power to the federal government. Madison himself had proposed at the Constitutional Convention a clause that would have empowered Congress to build canals.

What concerned him was Jefferson’s reference to the “sister states” as “co-parties” to the constitutional compact. These terms were dangerously close to the extreme states’ rights language that supported a state’s right to nullify acts of Congress. Jefferson also used the inflammatory words
usurpation
and
degeneracy
when he referred to the increased use of federal power—language that Madison, the more cautious constitutionalist, would never have approved. Language one might expect to find in a Jefferson production was missing here: he did not mention “majority will,” presumably because the majority will was now united against him. As Madison picked apart the proposed document, he showed Jefferson how it could do more harm than good.

Unbeknownst to Jefferson, Madison had already been asked by Ritchie,
of the
Richmond Enquirer
, to prepare a like paper. The state legislature was in session, and as much as Jefferson’s local delegate was feeling anxious, the politically savvy editor wanted to reach as many decision makers as he could. Madison sent Jefferson what he had sent Ritchie, a carefully outlined brief designed to aid the legislature in deciding what to do (and what not to do) to express Virginia’s opposition to federally funded roads and canals. “All power in human hands is liable to be abused,” he wrote epigrammatically. But if Virginia was free to exercise its right to call attention to a constitutional violation, that was all it could do.

For supporters of internal improvements, the federal government had every right to appropriate funds, just as, in regulating foreign commerce, Congress was authorized to deepen harbors and establish roads to assist in developing trade with Indians. Madison was not prepared to go back to the Virginia Resolutions, where the threat posed by the Alien and Sedition Acts struck him as a “deliberate, palpable, and dangerous” extension of federal power. The present issue did not rise to that level of danger; nor could it be described in dire terms.

His opposition was intellectually rooted, though of more than intellectual interest. But if he saw eye to eye with Jefferson on internal improvements, he still recognized that his state was on the losing side of this particular battle and should acquiesce. One thing had not changed: Virginians were still trapped in their inherited sense of bigness, as much as they were in 1776 and 1787; they were poised to defend against a tyranny that was unlikely ever to present itself.

Madison concluded his letter to Thomas Ritchie with a humble admission: “I find myself every day more indisposed, and, as may be presumed, less fit, for reappearance on the political Arena.” He was accepting of the shift that was under way.
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In his letter to Lafayette on the Missouri question in 1820, Madison had written that if the Frenchman ever paid a visit to Montpelier, he would find “as zealous a farmer, tho not so well cultivated a farm as [Lafayette’s estate] Lagrange presents.” Madison, who had never made an ocean voyage, knew he was too old to give it a whirl. Nor did he expect the marquis, now in his sixties, to find his way back to Virginia. He wrote, without expectation: “I
may infer from a comparison of our ages a better chance of your crossing the Atlantic than of mine.” Lafayette had not set foot in America since 1784.
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As it happened, Madison and Jefferson would twice more be able to cast their eyes on their old friend. In advance of the fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution, Congress and President Monroe had invited Lafayette to return to the United States to see how it had grown, and how beloved he still was. It was no exaggeration. During his thirteen-month tour, from August 1824 to September 1825, the last surviving commander of Continental Army troops grabbed headlines week after week. Accompanied by his son, George Washington Lafayette, he was heralded everywhere as “the nation’s guest.” In spite of the wear and tear on his aging frame, he obligingly visited every one of the twenty-four states.

Plainly dressed, with ample belly and undistinguished features, Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette was, all the same, an icon. Mothers presented their children to him, that he might confer his blessing; adulatory crowds spontaneously formed wherever he was spotted. Young ladies competed to set flower wreaths upon his head; balls were held and toasts drunk. In Newburgh, New York, citizens impulsively took to the streets in protest when it was learned that Lafayette was to shorten his stay and depart at night, before they could glimpse him.
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In mid-October 1824 the marquis was joined by Chief Justice Marshall and other notables at the Yorktown battlefield. From there he traveled west to Richmond, where he was again feted and where, in his aide’s words, he witnessed “those bursts of frank and hearty merriment so distinctive of the inhabitants of Virginia.” Finally the general was able to satisfy his desire to see Monticello, riding up the mountain in early November and embracing his host outside the columned home. Eyewitnesses were moved to tears. Jefferson took “the nation’s guest” to the university, largely completed but for some of the brickwork and plastering of interior rooms. At the banquet staged at the unfinished Rotunda, Lafayette sat between Jefferson and Madison, the latter of whom toasted the Frenchman with memorable words: “To liberty, with virtue for her guest, and gratitude for the feast.” Jefferson, protesting that his voice was too weak to be heard, had his prepared remarks read aloud by someone else.

Departing Monticello, Lafayette rode on to Montpelier, where the Madisons proved themselves ideal hosts. “Mr. Madison at the time of our visit was seventy-four years of age,” recorded Lafayette’s aide, Auguste Levasseur, “but his well preserved frame contained a youthful soul full of
sensibility.” Despite the “severity” of his outward appearance, “all the impressions of his heart are rapidly depicted in his features, and his conversation is usually animated with a gentle gaiety.” At both Monticello and Montpelier—Lafayette stayed for several days at each—the subject of slavery came up more than once in conversation. Lafayette did not hold Madison and Jefferson personally responsible for the persistence of slavery; but he did not disguise his discomfort and, in his evening conversations with Madison’s planter neighbors, voiced disgust that such a class of men could so easily condemn their fellow human beings to lives unfree and degraded.
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Once he had finished touring the interior states, Lafayette returned to Virginia in the late summer of 1825, before sailing back to France. Madison accompanied him through the Virginia countryside to Monticello, and Monroe, still in office when Lafayette first landed and now an ex-president, joined them there. Over the intervening months Jefferson had become quite frail and was confined to the house. Their visit took on a woefully expectant air. “I shall not attempt to depict the sadness which prevailed at this cruel separation,” wrote Levasseur.
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The University of Virginia opened in May 1825. The curriculum of Jefferson and Madison was broader than that offered by older American colleges. For several years now the pair had scoured the national book market for seed texts to fill the shelves of the university’s library. The faculty, largely imported from Great Britain, was meant to train a native corps of professors who would eventually succeed them. Among these men was a young professor of medicine, Robley Dunglison, who became Jefferson’s personal physician as he went into decline.

In September 1825, shortly after Lafayette’s departure, Jefferson informed Madison: “The state of my health renders it perfectly certain that I shall not be able to attend the next meeting of the [Board of] Visitors
at the University.
” And so he called for the meeting to take place at Monticello. Madison was his designated successor as rector of the university, just as he had been preselected to succeed Jefferson in the presidency.
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Even in the first year of the school’s operation, the students who came together in Charlottesville had more on their minds than an education. The ailing Jefferson had worries beyond those of finance and general administration. He may have delighted in having the faculty wives join their husbands for dinner at Monticello, but if he allowed himself to think his job of extending enlightened society was finished, events soon proved otherwise. Liquor, gambling, tobacco, and weapons were all prohibited on the grounds; but the students were not well behaved, and Jefferson himself
reckoned that one-third could be best described as “idle ramblers.” At length it became clear that alcohol had been smuggled into students’ rooms, when someone launched a bottle through a window. Two professors were physically harassed, one of them hit by a rock. It was night when this occurred; the offenders stole away, and no student could be found to betray his classmates. A few days later the students were assembled, and with the eminent founders Madison and Jefferson both present, the culprits came clean.