Passed by Congress in 1810, Macon’s Bill No. 2 was one of many actions designed to force Great Britain and France to recognize the rights of neutral countries on the high seas in time of war. It grew out of the Non-Importation Act of
1806, which forbade merchants in the United States from importing specific British goods, and the embargo of
1807, which prohibited all international TRADE to and from U. S. ports. President Thomas Jefferson approved these measures under the mistaken impression that the United States possessed sufficient economic leverage to persuade Britain and France to stop interfering with the nation’s trade in the midst of wars between those two countries, but the acts succeeded only in ruining many U. S. merchants.
Congress ended the effort to break Britain and France economically when it passed Macon’s Bill No. 2, which
Took its name from Nathaniel Macon, a member of the House of Representative from North Carolina who ironically opposed it. The bill reopened trade with both Britain and France in spite of their continued interference. It provided, however, that if one country stopped its interference, the United States would trade with that country to the exclusion of the other. Like previous efforts to influence French and British policy, this bill also failed. When France indicated it was going to repeal its restrictions on trade in the Cadore Letter, the United States, following Macon’s Bill No. 2, stopped trade with Britain. This action helped to precipitate the War of 1812 (1812-15).
See also foreign affairs.
—Lance Janda
Madison, Dolley Payne Todd (1768-1849) first lady Dolley Madison, the wife of James Madison and fashionable Washington hostess, was born on May 20, 1768 in Piedmont, North Carolina. Dolley Payne was one of eight children of Quaker parents Mary Coles and John Payne. Three years after Dolley’s birth, the family moved to her mother’s family estate, Cole Hill Plantation in Hanover County, Virginia. After the conclusion of the Revolutionary War (1775-83), Dolley’s father, in accordance with those members of the Quaker faith advocating emancipation, freed his slaves and moved the family to Philadelphia. It was in Philadelphia that Dolley married her first husband, John Todd in January 1790.
John Todd, a successful lawyer in Philadelphia, and Dolley Payne Todd shared only a few years of happiness, highlighted by the births of two sons, John Payne Todd, born in 1790, and William Temple Todd, born in 1792. In 1793 yellow fever struck the city of Philadelphia killing more than 5,000 people (see also disease AND epidemics). For Dolley Todd the toll of the plague proved acute. Her husband, in-laws, and son William died within one week’s time. Although the Payne family no longer resided in Philadelphia, Dolley decided to stay in the city with her surviving son, John Payne Todd (called Payne), where she was surrounded by friends. In the spring of 1794, one friend, Aaron Burr, was asked by Congressman James Madison to introduce him to the vivacious widow, and, by September of the same year, Dolley married the representative from Virginia.
The Madisons resided in Philadelphia, living within the domestic circle occupied by visits from her siblings and her son Payne; the couple remained childless. With the success of the Federalist Party and election of John Adams to the presidency in 1796, James Madison retired from politics, and he and Dolley moved to the Madison family plantation, Montpelier, in Orange County, Virginia. The retirement proved brief. In 1801 President Thomas Jef-
Dolley Madison (Library of Congress)
FERSON appointed James Madison as secretary of state, and the Madisons moved to the nation’s new capital, WASHINGTON, D. C. Jefferson was their good friend, and their first residence in the city was in the president’s house. During this time, Dolley Madison acted as the unofficial “first lady” for Jefferson who was himself a widower, initiating a public role she held for over 16 years, through Jefferson’s two terms (1801-09) and her husband’s presidency (1809-17).
With the election of James Madison to the presidency, the Madisons moved back into the president’s house, and aided by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Dolley undertook to decorate the home. The result was a social space that was the talk of the town. Mrs. Madison’s “drawing room,” especially on Wednesday night, became the place to be in Washington. Dolley accentuated her image as a hostess through clothing; her grand and colorful costumes, highly influenced by French fashion, commanded attention. Admirers called her “Queen Dolly” and her “crown” of choice was the fashionable turban. During the War of 1812 (1812-15), the British captured Washington, D. C. in 1814, burning the public buildings of the capital, including the president’s house. It was due to Dolley’s efforts that the portrait of George Washington was saved. When the couple returned to the capital, Dolley resumed her work as first lady. In 1817, with the election of James Monroe as president, James Madison permanently retired from politics. The couple left Washington, and although Dolley missed the society she found in Washington, visitors flocked to their plantation in Virginia.
Further reading: Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation
(New York: Henry Holt, 2006);-, Parlor Politics: In
Which the Ladies of Washington Help Guild a City and a Government (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000); Lewis L. Gould, ed., American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacy (New York: Garland, 1996).
—Christine Coalwell
Madison, James (1751-1836) fourth U. S. president Born into a prominent Virginia family, and a leading founding father, James Madison, was a member of the SECOND Continental Congress, an architect of the United States Constitution, a close ally of Thomas Jefferson in the formation of the Democratic-Republican Party, a secretary of state, and president during the War of 1812 (1812-15).
In 1762 Madison began his education under the tutelage of the Presbyterian minister Donald Robertson of King and Queen County, Virginia. After five years with Robertson, he returned to his family home at Montpelier, where he studied for the next two years with the Reverend Thomas Martin. In 1769 Madison attended the College of New Jersey (present-day Princeton University), where he studied under the Reverend John Witherspoon, a prominent classical scholar and staunch Whig. Madison graduated in the fall of 1771, but he remained in Princeton to read law under Witherspoon’s direction.
By the spring of 1772, Madison later remembered, he was “under very early and strong impressions in favor of liberty both civil and religious.” In the years prior to the Revolutionary War (1775-83), when provincial committees of safety formed to prepare for war with Great Britain, Madison and his father joined the local Orange County organization; in 1774, when members of the Baptist community were imprisoned in the neighboring county of Culpepper, Madison denounced the suppression of their freedom.
Two years later, Orange County elected Madison to the Virginia convention in Williamsburg. There, Madison supported Virginia’s formal declaration of independence. Soon thereafter, Madison became a member of the committee to prepare a Declaration of Rights and plan of government. In committee, Madison suggested the disestablishment of the state church, and although this proved too progressive, the legislature did adopt Madison’s amendment entitling “all men” the right to “free exercise of religion.” In October 1776 he first met Thomas Jefferson, who, having recently returned from the Congress, was anxious to contribute to the forming of Virginia’s new government. They served together on several committees, including the committee on religion; the “great collaboration” of Madison and Jefferson, however, was yet to begin.
Madison, who did not win reelection as a legislative delegate, soon returned to Williamsburg as a member of Virginia’s Executive Council and served under Governors Patrick Henry and Jefferson. In 1779 he became a delegate to the Continental Congress and, in March 1780, left Virginia for Philadelphia. When Madison arrived, the nation still awaited unanimous state ratification of the Articles of Confederation. At this time Madison helped to persuade large states to cede their western lands, thus opening the way for states such as Maryland to ratify the articles. The western territories, Maryland argued, were the common property of the confederation and the federal government should control the proceeds of public sale of the land.
Another major difficulty for the Continental Congress was financing the war. Since Congress did not possess the power to impose taxes, it remained dependent on the states. In 1781 Congress established federal departments of finance, war, and foreign affairs. Robert Morris headed finance and undertook to set up an efficient method of supplying the troops, while several members of Congress, including Madison, sought additional French aid to rescue the southern states from British occupation. At the close of Madison’s first year in Congress, he began to recognize the value of a more energetic government.
Madison turned his attention to the problem of national finance. Working to help Congress in the transition to a peacetime government, he lobbied for an amendment to the Articles of Confederation authorizing a 5 percent duty on imports, which would generate the revenue necessary to operate government and repay accumulated wartime debts. Many congressmen, however, opposed a more central authority and the amendment failed to pass. Madison left Congress in November 1783, having served four years in that body. Already an authority on federal affairs, he now studied the problems of ancient confederacies.
Madison returned to represent Orange County in the Virginia House of Delegates in April 1784. In June he persuaded the legislature to appoint a commission to negotiate Virginia’s right to navigate the Potomac River. After the commission successfully completed its task, Representative John Taylor of Caroline suggested, with the urging of Madison, that delegates from the various states convene to consider a uniform system of commercial regulations. In January 1786 Virginia sent out a national request for delegates to meet in Annapolis in September. Although only five states sent representatives, the Annapolis Convention recommended that another meeting occur in Philadelphia in order “to render the Constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.”
In the meantime, Madison pursued religious liberty in Virginia. Madison guided through the state legislature Jefferson’s “Act for Establishing Religious Freedom,” which secured, as the preamble states, “that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.” Jefferson cheered “the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.” The Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom would be a precursor of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In April 1787 Madison published “Vices of the Political System of the United States” in which he forcefully argued for a stronger national government. Madison outlined 11 “vices” that included not only the failure of the states to comply with the requisitions from Congress for taxes but also encroachments on federal authority and trespasses by the states on the rights of other states. Perhaps the most vicious “vices” in Madison’s mind, however, concerned the “multiplicity” and “mutability” of state laws. Madison complained that there was a “luxuriancy of legislation” and that the “short period of independency has filled as many pages” of new laws “as the century which preceded it.” Compounding this problem was the fact that “We daily see laws repealed or superseded, before any trial can have been made of their merits: and even before a knowledge of them can have reached the remoter districts within which they were to operate.” This “instability becomes a snare” complicating business and trade. From Madison’s perspective “the multiplicity and mutability of laws prove a want of wisdom” that could be corrected only by a more stable government on the national level in which “the purist and noblest characters” would govern.
That summer Madison headed for Pennsylvania to attend the Constitutional Convention. In Philadelphia, the delegates decided not to revise or amend to the Articles of Confederation but to draft a new constitution, voting on May 30 that “a national Government ought to be established.” Madison declared, “We are laying the foundation of a great empire.” Although the deliberations were kept secret, Madison took notes of the convention’s transactions, which were published posthumously and provide the only full record of the proceedings.
For four months the delegates deliberated on the nature of a sound republic. Madison recognized that the new central government must possess the power necessary to operate efficiently. Edmund Randolph proposed Madison’s “Virginia Plan,” which recommended an entirely new form of government with an executive, a judiciary, and a bicameral legislature. The Virginia Plan backed proportional representation in the bicameral legislature—a plan that representatives from the larger states supported; smaller states, however, backed New Jersey’s plan for equal representation. Roger Sherman’s “Connecticut Compromise” finally decided the issue; states would have representation based on population in the House of Representatives, while in the Senate they would be represented equally. Yet, who would be represented? Madison said that it would be “wrong to admit... the idea that there could be property in men.” Southerners wished to count slaves when determining representation in the House, a proposition that some northerners viewed as an outrage. The “Great Compromise” was the settlement reached; slaves would count as three-fifths of a person. Madison referred to slavery as a “blot” or a “stain” and worried that this compromise might later jeopardize the Constitution. On September 17, 1787, the final document was signed. The framers of the Constitution in Article VII imparted the power of ratification to individual state conventions. Madison called this procedure “the highest source of authority.”
Madison, a fervent advocate of the Constitution, believed that the success or failure of the document “would decide for ever the fate of republican government.” A complex and innovative document, the Constitution did not excite unqualified approval. Supporters of the Constitution called themselves Federalists, and opponents were ANTI-Federalists. Before returning to Virginia, Madison worked with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to produce 77 essays, written under the pseudonym “Publius,” to explain and defend the new system against the anti-Federalists’ charges. Along with the publication of the Federalist Papers, Madison led the campaign for ratieication of the Constitution in Virginia.
Running against James Monroe and promising that, if elected, he would work to add a bill of rights to the Constitution, Madison won a seat in the House of Representatives. He wanted the first Congress to provide “additional guards in favour of liberty.” “I should be unwilling to see a door opened for a re-consideration of the whole structure of the government,” Madison wrote, “[b]ut I do wish to see a door opened to consider, so far as to incorporate those provisions for the security of rights.” On June 8, 1789, Madison in Congress proposed the adoption of a bill of rights. Altogether a dozen amendments would be proposed, 10 of which were ratified.
While framing the Constitution, Madison worked in harmony with George Washington and Hamilton. Political discord, however, arose under the new federal government. When Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton advanced a series of controversial proposals in 1791, Madison led the resistance. For Washington and Hamilton, their former collaborator’s opposition was a shocking blow both personally and politically. Siding with Secretary of State Jefferson, Madison viewed Hamilton’s plan as a threat to liberty and one that went beyond those authorized in the Constitution. By rallying opposition against Hamilton, Madison and Jefferson—the acknowledged leaders of the movement— began to organize a factional alliance that they described as Democratic-Republican.
Jefferson resigned from Washington’s administration in 1793, leaving Madison as the leader of the loosely organized Democratic-Republicans. Partisan strife heated up during the political campaign of 1796, which resulted in the election of John Adams of the Federalist Party as president; Jefferson was elected vice president. In 1797, after Congress adjourned, Madison, having declined reelection, left Philadelphia for Montpelier.
Madison did not return to Montpelier alone. In the 1780s, Madison had fallen in love with Catherine “Kitty” Floyd. Although she accepted his proposal, within months she broke off the engagement. In 1794 Madison was more fortunate. He had his friend Aaron Burr introduce him to Dolley Payne Todd (Dolley Madison), a beautiful
James Madison (Library of Congress)
And vivacious widow. The couple married that September. Dolley would earn enduring fame as a Washington hostess for both Jefferson and Madison.
Madison’s retirement from politics proved brief. In opposition to Adams’s Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), Madison drafted the Virginia Resolutions. (Jefferson wrote similar resolves for Kentucky’s legislature.) The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions questioned the federal government’s right to exercise powers not delegated to it by the Constitution and helped to establish the states’ rights theory of government.
Jefferson was elected president in 1801 (see also election Of i8oo) and named Madison his secretary of state. The Madisons moved to the nation’s new capital, Washington, D. C., where they would live for the next 16 years. For the duration of Jefferson’s presidency (1801-09), Madison served as secretary of state and the president’s most trusted adviser. In the election of 1808, Madison won 122 of 173 possible electoral votes, and on Saturday, March 4, 1809, he was inaugurated the fourth president of the United States.
At Madison’s inaugural ball, departing President Jefferson was asked why he seemed so happy and Madison so serious and sad. His reply was that “I have the burthen off my shoulders, while he has now got it on his.” Madison inherited a crisis; France and Britain were seizing U. S. merchant vessels and the British were impressing American seamen into naval service. Efforts to use trade to force Great Britain to respect the United States failed. Impotent to protect the nation’s ships and men, and with the War Hawks in Congress pressing for a fight, Madison asked Congress to declare war against Great Britain on June 1, 1812.
After the declaration of war, Madison easily won reelection. However, Madison was not a dynamic war leader, and for two-and-one-half years, the United States stumbled through the War of 1812. The U. S. military was, with few exceptions, badly led, underfinanced, and poorly trained. In the summer of 1814, Madison watched as one of his officers, commanding twice the number of troops as the opponent, fled almost without firing a shot. The British then marched into Washington, where they burned a number of buildings, including the executive mansion. When Madison returned to Washington, however, he received news of the British defeat at the Battle of Baltimore (September 12-14, 1814). On Christmas Eve 1814, the war ended in stalemate with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. Despite the pathetic prosecution of the war, and the fact that the peace agreement addressed none of the outstanding issues that had provoked the conflict, Madison proclaimed victory when he sent the treaty to Congress. Denying reality, Madison congratulated the country “upon an event which is highly honorable to the nation” that “terminates with peculiar felicity a campaign signalized by the most brilliant of successes.” He praised ”the wisdom of the Legislative Councils”—even though they had seldom raised enough money to support the war—“the patriotism of the people”—despite the fact that many had traded with the enemy and that the Federalist Party flirted with secession—“the public spirit of the militia”—regardless of their often refusing to leave their own states and an abysmal military record—and the “valor of the military and naval forces”—ignoring the burning of Washington and the fact that by the end of the war hardly a naval ship could get to sea because of the British blockade.
For much of the rest of his administration, Madison sought to build on the rising nationalism evident at the end of the war and redress the nation’s shortcomings. Thus Madison signed into law a bill that created a Second Bank of the United States to stabilize national finances, but he vetoed the Bonus Bill, which would have used money paid by the Second Bank of the United States for Internal improvements.
In 1817, after Monroe assumed the presidency, Madison retired to Montpelier. Together with Jefferson and Monroe, he worked to establish the University of Virginia (1819) and served as its second rector (1826-36) after Jefferson’s death. “Having outlived so many of my contemporaries,” he said, “I ought not to forget that I may be thought to have outlived my self.” He was the last of the “founders” and died at the age of 85 on June 28, 1836. He is buried in the family cemetery at Montpelier. Dolley Madison would inherit his papers, most particularly his notes from the Constitutional Convention, which she published as Madison directed. While she received most of the proceeds, Madison earmarked some of the funds for various causes, particularly education. He also bequeathed $2,000 to the American Colonization Society. Although a lifetime slave owner, Madison held an unyielding commitment to abolishing slavery in the United States. He made no provision in his will, however, for his nearly 100 slaves. On August 12, 1844, Dolley Madison sold the Montpelier estate, including its enslaved workforce, to Henry Moncure.
In 1834, two years before his death, Madison wrote “Advice to My Country” not to be read, “till I am no more.” He wrote that “the advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.” He professed an “inexhaustible faith that a well-founded commonwealth might be immortal.” Today James Madison is remembered as the “Father of the Constitution.”
See also political parties; republicanism.
Further reading: Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1971); Drew R. McCoy, The Last of the Fathers: James Madison and the Republican Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
—Christine Coalwell
World History
