THE YEAR 1785 BECAME ONE OF ACTION. IN THE SUMMER, MADISON traveled to Williamsburg and defeated Henry’s religious assessment with his Memorial and Remonstrance to friends, and it began spreading like wildfire, ultimately leading to the defeat of Henry’s bill, as described in the introduction to this volume. In the fall, he returned to the sweeping project he had first proposed to Henry in their coffeehouse conversation a year earlier: the radical overhaul of Virginia’s own laws.
Virginia’s statutory laws were littered with medieval punishments and ancient commercial ideas. A decade earlier, Jefferson had launched a herculean effort to replace Virginia’s Code. Under his pressure, Virginia’s legislature had created a committee that recommended over a hundred changes, but Speaker Benjamin Harrison, no friend of enlightenment legislation, thwarted the plan. When Jefferson left for France, his reform effort floundered.
Now, Madison saw an opportunity to bring the project back to life. Entering the autumn session of the General Assembly, he launched a new campaign for reform, startling everyone with its speed and force. What was about to come was a rehearsal for his role in the Constitutional Convention and an object lesson in the profound power of his Method. Standing in his way were familiar foes of reform—the conservatives who thought any change to criminal law would only coddle criminals, the landed gentry who believed modernizing commercial regulations would threaten their pocketbooks, the narrow-minded who were hostile to rationalizing Virginia’s government. Madison needed to overcome all of them. And so he turned to his Method.
Find passion in your conscience. Focus on the idea, not the man. Develop multiple and independent lines of attack. Embrace impatience. Establish a competitive advantage through preparation. Conquer bad ideas by dividing them. Master your opponent as you master yourself. Push the state to the highest version of itself. Govern the passions.
On October 31, 1785, he rose on the floor and introduced, in sequence, one hundred and eighteen bills. He began, fittingly, with an Act for Religious Freedom.1 “Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free,” he read, all attempts to influence the mind by “temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations,” would only “beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness,” and were a “departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion.”
With Henry in the governor’s seat, safely lacking a vote, the General Assembly declared that no man could be compelled to frequent or support “any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever” or be “enforced restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods” or otherwise suffer “on account of his religious opinions or beliefs.” The bill provided the state with sweeping power to enforce this right, concluding, “All men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion.”
He dug the deepest foundation possible under the bill, declaring that any act later passed to repeal the Act, or even to “narrow its operation” would itself be “an infringement of natural right.”2 In other words, any limitation on the freedom of conscience would henceforth not be a crime against the government, but against human nature and against God. He would later boast to Jefferson that “I flatter myself” that the bill had “extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.”3
He moved on to his other bills, which ranged from modernizing the standard of care for the insane, to giving the criminally accused the right to a trial of their peers, to creating the position of lieutenant governor in case the governor died or left office.
Of his 118 bills, the legislature passed a stunning 36—in less than three weeks. The other delegates regarded Madison with awe. Archibald Stuart wrote a colleague, “Can you suppose it possible that Madison should shine with more than usual splendor [in] this Assembly. It is sir not only possible but a fact. He has astonished mankind & has by means perfectly constitutional become almost a Dictator upon all subjects that the House have not so far prejudged as to shut their Ears from Reason & armed their minds from Conviction.”4
Madison’s preparation, his conviction, and his self-mastery lent him a bracing confidence. Although reform had been “assailed on all sides,” he told Monroe in early December, “I think the main principle of it will finally triumph over all opposition.”5 Madison’s impatience was palpable in a letter he sent Monroe on December 17, lamenting that his progress had only been halted by the “waste of time produced by the inveterate and prolix opposition of its adversaries & the approach of Christmas.”6 Under his barrage, conservatives in the House stood their ground on one major measure—to remove the death penalty for many crimes.7
But while others were awed by his apparent progress, Madison was deeply frustrated by the actual lack of it. After the conclusion of the legislative session, it turned out that though dozens of the bills passed, they did not implement much change at all. By the “proper criterion,” he told Monroe dismissively, “no Session has perhaps afforded less ground for applause.” The whole enterprise, he thought, cast shame on his state. “I am glad to find that Virginia has merit where you are,” he told his friend, “and should be more so if I saw greater reason for it.”8 The following year, when it was clear that the legislature was going to undermine most of the paper victories with patchwork amendments, contradictions, and different dates of effectiveness, he was left to lambast the embarrassing “incoherence of the whole.”9 Going into the fight, he realized, he had underestimated the strength of the stubborn status quo.10
That problem continued to plague the federal government as well. In February 1786, three years after his stem-winder for the forced contribution in Philadelphia, he was enraged by the fact that Congress still hadn’t finished the job. And the states were stuck as well; New York and Georgia had not complied with Congress’s 1783 demand that they pass enabling legislation for the impost. A feeble Congress had been “earnestly recommending” to the remaining states that they take the impost bill “into their immediate Consideration.”11
And so it was perfectly natural that, when Monroe asked Madison for his thoughts on the overarching “Question of policy”—whether they should “correct the vices of the Confederation” by “recommendation gradually as it moves along, or by a Convention,” Madison told him emphatically that the answer lay on the most radical path. Congress’s attempts had “miscarried,” he said, because of the “impotency of the federal system.” He found it impossible to “remain skeptical” about the need for “infusing more energy into it.” His conclusion was inescapable: “Let a Convention then be tried.”12
The nation must overhaul itself. He began to prepare.
SURROUNDED BY THE DOZENS OF BOOKS FROM JEFFERSON, MADISON searched for clues of how to govern the passions that had plagued the United States since the Revolution.
He plunged into a confederation that had been founded in Greece in 1522 BC to protect a union of cities from the terrorizing raids of barbarians. Like the American states, he learned, each of those cities would send two deputies to spring and fall central meetings. Those deputies were bound by oath to defend the union, and to avenge anyone who harmed the temple of Delphos. They enjoyed other federal powers, such as commissioning a federal military general with “full powers to carry their decrees into execution.”
But what most interested Madison wasn’t what tied the Greek cities together, but what drove them apart. Just as in America, the Greeks’ main problem was their lack of measures to prevent the strong from preying on the weak. The “Deputies of the strongest Cities,” he learned, too often “awed and corrupted those of the weaker,” and so the powerful cities almost always won in disputes.
Radiating outward, that inequity infected foreign policy—the great example being Sparta’s conquest of Athens, which the large cities supported. The confederation, sapped by the constant battle of weak against strong, was easily conquered by Philip II of Macedon. Later, the confederacy succumbed to the Roman Empire. Had the confederation been “stricter,” Madison wrote, she might have been able to stop the “vast projects” of Rome.13 The lesson was that the American states’ squabbling, like that of the Greeks, could destroy the country itself.
Plowing further into his library, he unearthed yet more startling parallels. In early Switzerland, he found several disparate communities had organized themselves to defend against invasion by the Austrians. One deputy from each would attend an annual meeting of a diet. Each canton also had its own diet, just as in the United States.
The forces that ripped the Swiss confederacy apart resembled America’s. The cantons, he observed, were only “so many independent Commonwealths in strict alliance.” Each canton individually maintained its own ambassadors, money, and treaties. Any canton could call on the others for its defense, but the union had no common treasury, troops, currency, or court. All this, Madison discovered, resulted in a “perpetual defensive engagement agst. external attacks, and internal troubles.” The older cantons claimed superiority over the younger ones, leading to inequitable common decisions. As in America, the mess stemmed from four great factors: the radically different sizes of the cantons, their different governing systems, their intolerance of religious differences, and the union’s overall weakness. And so their mutual obligations, meant to serve as “a Cement,” instead became “occasions of quarrels”—just as in the thirteen American colonies.
He continued to accumulate evidence that the fallen classical confederacies strikingly mirrored the American states—that their ancient disease had infected America. But with conscience, conviction, and coercion, he believed America could channel the passions.
AS DESPERATELY AS HE TRIED TO CRACK THE NATION’S PROBLEMS, HE WAS straining just as hard to resolve his continuing professional dilemma. Under great financial pressure, Madison embarked on a real estate speculation with Monroe that can best be described as loony. Both Madison and Monroe had separately visited the Mohawk River in upper New York and had been “equally charmed” by it. A tributary of the Hudson River, the Mohawk wound gracefully through upper New York, flowing through lovely rock outcroppings and gentle stands of clustered trees, opening to fill a gorgeous valley. George Washington had purchased land there, and during a visit by Madison to Mount Vernon, advised his young friend that if he had “money to spare and was disposed to deal in land,” the valley was “the very Spot which his fancy had selected of all the U.S.”14
Madison saw an opportunity to get rich quick. He hatched a plan with Monroe to purchase land for development. The two men bought a small parcel to anchor the project. But they were both too cash poor to drive the project themselves; they needed investors. In August 1786, Madison awkwardly approached Jefferson with the business proposition in a letter he mailed to Paris (written in cipher, of course). He not only proposed that Jefferson be their major investor; he asked him to recruit French speculators who would take advantage of favorable exchange rates. But he was far from his comfort zone. He admitted defensively that he was conveying the idea “freely because we trust that if it does not meet your sanction you will as freely tell us so.” He asked Jefferson to invest “say, four or five thousand louis more or less.” He urged Jefferson to take advantage of America’s mad currency situation. Because specie was currently scarce in America, the land was incredibly cheap, but as the specie was “this child of extravagance,” he told Jefferson, it would become “the parent of economy.” That, in turn, would give the investors their “due share of the universal medium”—of wealth.15
But Jefferson had no interest in Madison’s clearly speculative scheme. When he wrote back, he was several months late and apologetic but firm. He would not invest. He explained that he likely could not secure any French government funds because investors were already enjoying greater returns in France. And while there was the possibility of finding “monied men” who might take the risk—and while Jefferson gamely said he would “be attentive to propose to them this plan”—he was careful to say, “I consider it’s success however as only possible, not probable.”16
Madison must have read Jefferson’s letter with embarrassment. Just two weeks before, Madison had painfully apologized to Monroe for being unable to pay him back some loans. Madison, humiliated by his poverty, had thanked Monroe for his “goodness on the occasion,” which he confessed “only makes me the more uneasy at imposing on it.”17
Madison’s anxiety about money, his lack of vocation, his eternal bachelorhood—all his various incompetencies—seemed to be uniting against him. He escaped, again, to statecraft.
JUNE 22, 1786, BEGAN FOGGY BUT GRADUALLY CLEARED. THE ENSLAVED MEN and women at Montpelier brought fresh strawberries to Madison’s table.18 His quiet time was about to end. He left for the convention Congress had called in Annapolis to somehow resolve the catastrophic commercial disputes among the states. Without addressing the broader structural issues of federal power, he suspected the convention was a fool’s errand. He was determined not to waste a good trip.
He was only due in Annapolis in September. That was over two months away, and he plotted a sinuous journey to his destination. His itinerary took him far north before coming back south, including visits with friends in Winchester, Harpers Ferry, and Philadelphia, where he stayed about ten days, then New York, where he remained for about three weeks, and then, finally, Princeton, where he visited John Witherspoon.
When he arrived in Princeton, after all his conversations along the way, his mood had become noticeably grim. He vented a litany of woes in a letter he sent to his brother Ambrose: “No money comes into the public treasury, trade is on a wretched footing, and the States are running mad after paper money.”19 Greeting his old student in the little town, it must have been immediately clear to Witherspoon that young Madison had reached his brink. Madison openly confessed his fears about the fatal weakness of the union and urgently presented his conclusion that a new federal constitution was required. Witherspoon, probably perceiving in the present Congress the same infuriating intolerance of the Moderates decades earlier in Scotland, saw the subject “in its proper light,” according to Madison. He signed up and promised that he would speak freely when an “opportunity offers.”20
In September, Madison stepped off his coach in Annapolis, feeling pessimistic at best. But there was a silver lining. As he had recently written Jefferson, Annapolis—when it failed—could ultimately lead to a “Plenipotentiary Convention for amending the Confederation.” But though his “wishes are in favor of such an event,” he told his friend, the odds were that Annapolis would generate only a handful of narrow commercial reforms. Indeed, he confessed to Jefferson (in cipher), “To speak the truth I almost despair even of this.”21
Annapolis was instructive in the way of many rehearsals—as practice against disaster. For that is what it became. Although the meeting was taking place in Maryland, that state’s delegates, believing the convention was transgressing on the powers of Congress, boycotted the convention. Connecticut also refused to attend. South Carolina and Georgia’s delegates argued that the event would be redundant and pointless because prior agreements focused on commerce, and also did not come.22 Madison was not exempt from the squabbling; Rufus King criticized him for going to Annapolis without an attempt to “discover or propose any other plan” than a commercial one.23
On September 5, as the convention began, Madison billed Virginia for a dinner where large quantities of wine, punch, and porter were served—a boozy way to enter a conclave destined to fail.24 Madison has had a long reputation for sobriety. As Paul Jennings, his White House slave, later wrote, “He was temperate in his habits. I don’t think he drank a quart of brandy in his whole life” and recalled that at “hearty dinners,” Madison had “invariably but one glass of wine.” When “hard drinkers” were making numerous toasts at his table, Jennings remembered, his master would “just touch the glass to his lips, or dilute it with water, as they pushed.”25
Madison’s self-control was legendary—and perhaps, at times, a legend. Might it be that he indulged in times of intense stress? Only the flies on the wall of that Annapolis restaurant know, but it’s possible that the drinks he bought that evening were not only for others.
Hungover or not, his head must have hurt the next day as he watched the convention begin to unravel almost as quickly as it had started. The eastern states’ delegates, already angry at having to travel to Annapolis and impatient to return home, departed abruptly, destroying the required quorum. In cipher, Madison snarled to Jefferson that their “regard for their private characters” prevailed over “their public duty”—almost the worst sin he could imagine.26
LIKE A FUSE, THE ANNAPOLIS EXERCISE WOULD PROVE VALUABLE ONLY IN burning out. The only positive thing the gathering produced was a recommendation for a true convention on the entire federal problem—on “extending the revision of the federal System to all its defects.” At long last, there would be a constitutional convention, and it would meet in Philadelphia on May 2, 1787.27
Madison returned home, intent on planning for what he knew would be an epochal gathering. But just when it seemed to him that the fragile nation could not bear any more strain, he learned with panic about a political earthquake in New England.