THE NEXT DAY, MADISON RETURNED TO THE NEW ACADEMY. HE FELT “extremely feeble,” and it was obvious to everyone. He had been apprised, of course, of all that happened in his absence. He knew he needed to reassert control and put a spine back into the formless proceedings.
That morning, he rose and named as his enemy “vague discourses” and “mere sports of fancy.” He quickly enumerated five exact grounds by which the delegates could determine whether the Constitution’s new government was, in fact, needed.
They must first ask themselves, “how far it may be necessary,” second, “how far it may be practicable,” third, “how far it may be safe,” fourth, “with respect to economy,” and fifth, “is it necessary.”1
Madison closed by conceding that experience would probably suggest that the “powerful and prevailing” influence of the states would undermine the union. But he chose to “indulge my hopes [rather] than fears,” he told the men around him, “because I flatter myself” that the amendment process would allow for a fix.2 In other words, the Constitution could remedy itself, just as the nation could. But they would have to ratify the new system first.
He closed by demanding a return to the clause-by-clause debate that had been originally agreed upon. No longer would Henry’s rambling, roundhouse arguments be allowed. The delegates would have to work through the issues, one by one.3 It was as if an adult was trying to quiet a room of squabbling children.
Henry stood and sputtered that his “at large mode,” where he could attack any issue at any time, was in fact superior to Madison’s limited mode. Madison retorted that only a “regular and progressive” discussion could function. Mason quickly rose to plead that with “so important a subject as this,” it was “impossible in the nature of things” to avoid disorganized debate. He then attacked Randolph’s use of “phantoms” to “terrify and compel us,” condemning the attorney’s “singular skill in exorcisms.”4 Madison—still feeble—stood again to demand that the assembly return to “going through the business regularly.”5
The following day, he tried to practice what he had preached. With a numbing point-by-point refutation of virtually every argument that had been advanced against the Constitution—from attacks against tax collectors to the dangers from a divided Europe—he exposed the vacuity of the anti-Federalist creed. “When we are preparing a government for posterity,” he declared, “we ought to found it on permanent principles and not on those of a temporary nature.”6 In a fell swoop, he had successfully painted Henry as both shortsighted and unpatriotic.
Sulfurous, Henry stood. Madison’s “catalogue of dangers,” he angrily charged, was “absolutely imaginary.” Henry then made an especially nasty attempt to turn the delegates against one another and all against Madison. Pointing at the Princeton-educated young man, he snapped that the “dangers of this system are real,” when “those who have no similar interests with the people of this country, are to legislate for us.” Madison, he meant, was not one of “us.”7
Henry then invoked the absent Jefferson, citing his notorious letter to Madison in which Jefferson said he hoped enough states would reject the Constitution to force the states to pass a bill of rights.8 If Jefferson wanted at least some states to reject the Constitution, Henry meant, shouldn’t Virginia follow suit? He professed sympathy with Madison’s predicament. When “men of such talents and learning,” he oozed, are “compelled to use their utmost abilities to convince themselves that there is no danger,” is it “not sufficient to make us tremble?”9
Henry then turned on Madison’s Method itself: his unerring belief in logic, the calm, cool process of his argumentation. The “sacred and lovely thing” of such rights as religion, Henry asserted, “ought not to rest on the ingenuity of logical deduction”; likewise a trial by a jury of one’s peers, “ought not to depend on constructive logical reasoning.”10
Instead of Madison’s extended republic where factions were happily balanced, Henry asked the assembly to picture the humiliated common man forced to “ask a man of influence how he is to proceed” and “for whom he must vote.”11 He painted a nation of “rich, fat federal emoluments—your rich, snug, fine, fat federal offices” demanding taxes and excises from individuals and states alike.12
And he ridiculed Madison’s notion that statesmen would inevitably surface in the new utopia, pledging that he would “never depend” on “so slender a protection as the possibility of being represented by virtuous men.”13
Madison, rising to respond, returned to the topic of his close friend Jefferson with obvious distaste. “I wish his name had never been mentioned,” he snapped, because the “delicacy of his feelings will be wounded.” With that caveat, Madison declared that Jefferson had in fact approved of the taxation clause—because it would enable the government to “carry on its operations,” because he “admire[d]” the Constitution’s many other parts, and because he was “captivated” by the two-senator solution in the Senate, which—pointing to Henry—Madison cuttingly observed, “the honorable gentleman calls the rotten part of this constitution.”14 Madison won this particular exchange—but the crowd knew the fight was far from over.
ON FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH, THE DEBATE COLLAPSED INTO A BRUTISH back and forth between Henry and Madison over the Mississippi River, with a particular bloc of voting delegates on the anvil: the men of Virginia’s Kentucky region. Many of them owned property along the river; others needed it for commercial navigation. The Kentuckians cared more deeply about the river than did anyone else and were therefore far more susceptible to his fearmongering. Even Henry admitted that most people suspected he was “scuffling for Kentucky votes”15—and proceeded to do so with gusto. He charged that a current treaty with France allowing navigation rights on the river would be abrogated by the new Constitutional Congress, stormed against the “abominable policy” and its “fatal and pernicious tendency,” and threatened that the “people of Kentucky, though weak now, will not let the president and senate take away this right.”16
For the first time, Madison openly lost his temper at Henry’s brazen manipulation of the assembly’s emotions. He rose and protested, “It is extremely disagreeable to me to enter into this discussion,” arguing that the debate would “sully the reputation of our public councils.”17 He promised flatly that Kentucky would “expect support and succor alone from a strong efficient government.”18 Randolph then stepped in. The actual politics of any cession of the river, he said, exposed Henry’s attack as a canard. A treaty to “alienate any part of the United States” would effectively declare war against the “inhabitants of the alienated part.”19 But, he continued, the nation would henceforth be bound together by its grand nexus imperii—the “consanguinity between the western people and the inhabitants of the other states.”20 The factions would not pull it apart. American sovereignty over the river was not in danger.
The clashing tempers had summoned an oppressive mood in the room. Suddenly, the rising conflict seemed to take on physical form, as a massive thunderstorm descended outside. Lightning bolts flashed hotly through the windows. Enormous sheets of rain began raking the building. Thunder crashed so loudly that nobody could hear anyone speak. The session was quickly called to a close; the delegates left to huddle and plot in small groups.21
In his room that night, Madison was deeply disturbed by the events of that day. Despite their best efforts to beat back Henry, the Kentucky bloc was in clear danger of turning against the Constitution. To Washington, he wrote that the situation “at present is less favorable” than before, the progress was “slow,” and the anti-Federalists were using the delay to “work on the local prejudices of particular sets of members.” Everything might depend on the Kentuckians, he wrote, who he thought were leaning against the Constitution. In sum, he concluded that matters were in the “most ticklish state that can be imagined,” and of the ultimate vote, “I dare not encourage much expectation that it will be on the favorable side.”22
THE NEXT DAY, AS IF THE STORM HAD BEEN A PREFACE OF HENRY’S OWN fury, he rose and lambasted Congress’s ability, under the Constitution, to raise its own pay, promising that they would “indulge themselves to the fullest extent.”23 Madison wearily rose to respond. The “universal indignation of the people,” he said, would prevent Congress from exploiting its power. In any event, there was no practical alternative. To fix their compensation at one salary—despite inflation—or to allow state governments to pay them, would be ridiculous.24 Pivoting and pivoting again, Madison relentlessly recast Henry’s attacks as politically motivated, alarmist, false—and absurd. But he could not tell with any certainty what success he was having.
The debate was steadily approaching Madison’s great topic of coercion. A large, charismatic, courteous man, Charles Clay had rarely spoken at the ratifying convention. Clay was one of three clergymen at the convention. In 1777, with the Revolutionary War reaching its heights, he had famously preached, “Cursed be he who keepeth back his sword from blood in this war.”25 But he now rose to ask why Congress should have the power of calling forth the militia (made up of citizen soldiers commanded in the states) rather than the federal standing army of professional soldiers for domestic disturbances—such as Shays’ Rebellion.
His question was ominous, perhaps the symptom of a broader underlying revolt, and Madison answered with distinct impatience. The “reasons of this power,” he retorted, were “so obvious that they would occur to most gentlemen.” If there were resistance to the execution of the laws, it “ought to be overcome.” There were two—and only two—ways to overcome such resistance: by regular military force or by the people. The military was the superior option to civil war. And the civilian militia was a superior option to a standing army.26 The militia would not be abused because—here he again drew on his practical knowledge of public opinion—it would excite the “universal indignation of the people” and focus on Congress the “general hatred and detestation of their country.”27
But Henry was not about to let Madison escape with establishing another new federal power. He rose to say he was “too jealous and suspicious to confide” in the “remote possibility” of Congress keeping the militia armed as a hedge against a standing army.28 On the question of whether “rulers might tyrannize,” he charged Madison had only responded that “they will not.” “In saying they would not,” Henry maintained, Madison had “admitted they might.”29
IN HIS ATTEMPT TO PARSE MADISON’S WORDS USING LOGIC, HENRY WAS stepping into treacherous territory. Woe to anyone who underestimates the trickster power of logic in politics. While deductive reasoning is a treasured element of classical rhetoric, crowds respond more readily to a politician’s character. They vibrate to emotions, such as anger and hope, and resonate with nationalism and hope and fear. Above all, they draw to the passions like a moth to flame. Unsurprisingly, many naturally fear that a fondness for logic will translate into weakness and even ridicule. It’s the rare leader who makes logic the foundation stone of his identity, the transparent spine of his arguments.
But logic’s power in politics stems precisely from its elegance. Logic can create its own potency, proceeding from premise to conclusion and conquering obstacles in stride. Thus the forcefulness of Madison’s Method. As Madison infused not only his arguments but his very character with logic, the assembly began to find itself drawn to his new center of gravity.
MADISON HAD SPIED AN AMBIGUITY IN HENRY’S POSITION. HE ROSE. HE declared that while Henry had laid “much stress” on the maxim that the “purse and sword ought not to be put in the same hands,” his position was “totally inapplicable.” “What is the meaning of this maxim?” he asked, plainly beleaguered. There “never was, and I say there never will be, an efficient government, in which both are not vested.” He offered that Henry could only have meant that the same member of government should not have the purse and sword.30 The real question, he told the crowd, was not whether, but in what part, of the government military power should rest.
Amid this onslaught of logic, something strange then happened: Madison took a sudden confessional turn, and he began talking about his own hopes and fears. “I profess myself,” he said, “to have had an uniform zeal for a republican government.” As if Henry’s torrent had finally breached his own rigid canals, Madison began gushing with sentiment and nostalgia. “From the first moment that my mind was capable of contemplating political subjects,” he remembered, “I never, till this moment, ceased wishing success to a well regulated republican government.” That goal, he confessed to the men—listening intently—had been “my most ardent desire.” If the “bands of the government be relaxed,” he continued fervently, “confusion will ensue. Anarchy had, and I fear ever will, produce despotism,” as well as “dissipation and licentiousness.”31
He then trailed off into a soft, contemplative tone, as if counseling himself. According to the transcriber, he “spoke so very low that he could not be distinctly heard.”32 For a moment, Madison perhaps imagined that he and the audience—perhaps even Henry—could share in the same sense of conscience that had spurred his passion for the Constitution all along. But in that, he was sorely mistaken.
HENRY, WHO HAD SPIED A NEW WEAKNESS WHEN MADISON SPOKE SO nakedly about his ambitions for the nation, shot up with an air of triumph. “Mr. Chairman,” Henry loudly announced, “It is now confessed that this is a national government! There is not a single federal feature in it.” He drove at the distinction between federal—the design of government with interlocking federal and state parts—and national—the scheme under which the states would purportedly be dissolved into a new whole. Under the Constitution, Henry said, Virginia’s government would become “but a name.” “Where are your checks?” he asked theatrically. Putting both purse and sword into the same hands, he went on—transparently relishing the opportunity to compete with Madison as a logician—was “by logical and mathematical conclusions, the description of despotism.”33
Madison burst out, “Mr. Chairman, the honorable gentleman expresses surprise that I wished to see an experiment made of a republican government, or that I would risk the happiness of my country on an experiment.” He appeared plainly incredulous. “What is the situation of this country at this moment?” he cried. “Is it not rapidly approaching anarchy?”34
Perhaps sensing that his friend was reaching the end of his rope, Randolph took over. Calling for “common sense,” he tried to refocus everyone on what the actual militia provision said.35 The militia, he explained, could only be called forth when the federal government’s civil power had failed. Moreover, the states would appoint the militia’s officers. Dispensing with those essential facts, he then went on the attack. Henry, he asserted, had “mistaken facts,” and he angrily catalogued Henry’s long list of errata.36
After George Mason rose to describe the “ignominious punishments” that Congress might deliver, Henry Lee stood to announce a damning conclusion—that Henry had raised suspicions “against possibility and not against probability.” He caustically recast Henry’s “great triumph and exultation” that the government was national, and his laughable attempt to transform himself into a logician. “The honorable gentleman is so little used to triumph on the grounds of reasoning,” he announced, “that he suffers himself to be quite captivated by the least appearance of victory.”37 Madison then rose and tried to steer the debate to its natural end, recurring to Lee’s elegant paradigm calling for probability rather than possibility. “If a possibility be the cause of objection,” he said, “we must object to every government in America.”38 Debate finally closed, with the Sunday break ahead, but with so much tension, it was hardly a respite at all.
ON MONDAY, HENRY ENTERED THE CHAMBER FULL OF FIRE. HE STOOD and assailed the federal militia power all over again. Madison stood to kill off that line of attack once and for all. He divided Henry’s argument, as per his Method, in two; the militia power, he urgently explained, could only be vested in Congress or the state government—“or there must be a division or concurrence.” Madison then marched Henry down the path of his own logic: “He is against division—It is a political monster. He will not give it to congress for fear of oppression. Is it to be vested in the state governments? If so,” he challenged, “where is the provision for general defense?” Ineluctably, he proved that Henry’s position would lead to a nightmare for the country. If America ever was attacked, he concluded, the states would “fall successfully.”39
By seizing the high ground so definitively, Madison at once sustained and quickened the Federalists’ momentum. When the fight turned toward the new district for the nation’s capital—where Congress would exercise total authority—George Mason attacked the power as too plenary. Madison tartly responded that it was “one of those parts” of the Constitution that could “speak its own praise.”40
Henry rose to predict that only the “most tyrannical and oppressive deeds” could result from the “sweeping clause.”41 “Mr. Chairman,” Madison theatrically cried, “I am astonished that the honorable member should launch out into such strong descriptions!” Every nation in the world, he declared, gave its legislature jurisdiction over its home. He expressed amazement that Henry could find “new terrors” in such a “superfluity.” In the process, he was making it seem as though it was Henry and the anti-Federalists who were the grasping, radical party in the hall.42
Henry stood defensively to state that his real concern was vesting Congress with a “supreme power of legislation” that would be “paramount to the constitution and laws of the states.”43 Melodramatically, he moved that the eighth to thirteenth articles of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights be read out loud. This was done, but it was a crucial miscalculation by Henry. Under Madison’s sway, the crowd’s appetite for the passions was waning. The Federalists—and others now becoming more sympathetic to the earnestness and factuality of their cause—must have rolled their eyes as they heard the rights for a trial, against excessive bail, for freedom of the press, against standing armies, and so on, redundantly read out.44
When it was done, George Nicholas—a well-regarded army colonel, lawyer, and legislator with a famously powerful voice and deep knowledge of legislative process45—castigated Henry for his antics: “Let him prove them to be violated” in the new Constitution.46 Henry retorted that a bill of rights could be “summed up in a few words.” Did the Constitution not include one, he sneered, because it would “consume too much paper?”47
Despite Henry’s missteps, the day was raw and uneasy, and anxiety overpowered Madison yet again. He again escaped the clashing noise and smell of the New Academy for his quiet, dark bed. That night, Madison wrote Hamilton a disarmingly candid letter. With his remove from the hall, he could think a bit more clearly, and told Hamilton he thought he had at last discerned Henry’s real strategy beneath all the bluster and bluffing and feints. It was to “spin out the Session” to delay a Virginia victory so as to force New York to vote against the Constitution. Even if they didn’t succeed in New York, Madison thought the anti-Federalists saw another alternative still: to “weary the members into an adjournment without taking any decision.” If they then succeeded in Virginia in requiring prior amendments to the Constitution, the other states would then need to reratify the Constitution—a process almost certain to fail.
He was not confident about the state of affairs in Richmond. Even if the Federalists won, he said, their majority would “not exceed three or four.” And if they lost, Kentucky—the sole target of so many of Henry’s withering assaults—“will be the cause.”
He confessed that he had relapsed that day. “My health is not good,” he pitiably complained, “and the business is wearisome beyond expression.”48
MADISON WAS ALREADY WORRIED ABOUT PATRICK HENRY; BUT WHEN HE returned to the chamber, he knew he would also have George Mason to contend with. The next week, Mason stood and ripped open what he called the Constitution’s “fatal section”—the continuation of slavery for at least another twenty years. Madison listened warily as Mason ruthlessly probed the Constitution’s ungainly compromise, its allowance of what he called a “disgraceful trade” and “infamous traffic.”49 Reassuringly motivated by conscience rather than popularity or special interests, the planter was a counterpoint to Henry—and more alarming for that very reason.
Unsteadily rising to defend the measure, Madison explained, simply, that the southern states would not have supported the Constitution if slavery had not been allowed at least for some period of time. If they had been excluded, he said, the consequences would have been “dreadful to them and to us.” But Madison did not stop at the border of political expediency. To assure his Virginian slaveholding brethren, he recounted the difficulties of recapturing slaves, and boasted that the Constitution included a clause “expressly inserted to allow owners of slaves to reclaim them.”50 He was adverting to the simple but ungainly defense of politics. Madison made these points without pride. He was not attempting to elevate Virginia on this fraught moral point. He simply wanted to drive the Constitution through the narrow gate of ratification without tearing the whole thing apart. He was aware that his defense, while compelling on political grounds, was bankrupt on the Constitution’s own aspirational moral principles, which was exactly Mason’s point. Fortunately for the Federalists, the mostly conservative men surrounding Madison were not profoundly concerned about the glaring absence of rights for enslaved men and women and children in the Constitution.
Spying an opportunity in this agita, Henry now rose and nimbly focused the delegates on a different face of the issue: the profound if liminal power the new Constitution gave Congress, as seen on the slavery issue.51 At some point, he threatened, the Constitution’s new federal government could actually “compel the southern states to liberate their negroes.” But that “property” would be “guarded,” he said, hinting at violence ahead.52
DESPITE HENRY’S PROTESTS AND RHETORICAL FLOURISHES, MADISON HAD succeeded in swaying the delegates to support a clause-by-clause debate, which they began to follow, significantly constraining the anti-Federalists’ theatrics. Like a large animal trapped in a small cage, Henry began to thrash about. Again and again, he grasped for his most provocative theme—that Congress, under the new Constitution, would become tyrannical. In a discussion of the Constitution’s Section 9, which included the right of the people to habeas corpus and against ex post facto laws, Henry charged that without a complete new bill of rights, Congress could “do every thing they are not forbidden to do.”53 He complained that Section 9 was the Constitution’s sole guarantor of any rights, and that it “alone” could never “sufficiently secure” liberties. In that case, he cried, “Every word of mine is lost.”54
Madison perhaps too exhausted, Randolph quickly stood instead. He attacked the “rhetoric of the gentleman” for having “highly coloured” the notion of empowering the new Congress with the “indefinite power of providing for the general welfare.” But the Constitution did no such thing. Every power was circumscribed. Every authority was controlling, but also controlled.55 Trying to bring the debate to a close, Randolph employed the peculiar authority of a former fence-sitter. “I would take the Constitution were it more objectionable than it is,” he asserted. He painted the nightmare of an “enterprizing man” who could “enter into the American throne”—a professed demagogue like Patrick Henry who—without the Constitution—could become a tyrant as well.56
The debate now turned to the tortuous topic of existing paper money, which would be eliminated by the new government’s rights to create new currency. On swiftly changing ground, Henry asserted that the existing paper money in circulation “must be discharged, shilling for shilling,” and complained that speculators would get it at “one for a thousand.”57 Mason then raised the fear that Congress might simply decide not to redeem certain paper money at all.58
Madison was flabbergasted by the gall of men who had enabled so much paper money to be recklessly printed in the first place. Exasperated, he rose to berate Henry’s “ingenuity.” He promised the crowd that Congress would make regulations regarding the money supply “as will be just.” Because Congress would have coercive authority over the states, he said, the states would not interfere—because they could not.59
Madison’s puissant logic again overpowered practical politics. As it turned out, the states would not always comply with his confident prediction. In the “nullification” crisis of the early nineteenth century (more on this to come in Chapter 27), states, led by South Carolina, would openly defy federal laws on the grounds of their own continued independence. But, for the moment, Madison seemed to win the argument. He convinced the crowd so decisively that Mason was left pleading plaintively that he was “still convinced of the rectitude of his former opinion.”60
As the day’s discussion plodded through remaining clauses—such as the creation of the office of vice president—it seemed that Madison had finally gained the upper hand.
But not for long.
PERHAPS AIMED AT THE BROADER GOAL MADISON SUSPECTED OF DELAYING the proceedings, Henry, Mason, and Monroe—increasingly desperate—began trying to snarl the debate in minutiae.
From the floor, Madison openly confronted them on these tactics, in point-for-point declarations of dismay expressed from the vantage point of the high ground he had indisputably earned. He was “astonished,” he said, by their dilatory tactics. He was “astonished” by Mason’s expressed concern that the Electoral College’s voting process might allow only “the five highest on the list” to elect the president, with the election therefore “entirely taken from the people.”61 He was “astonished” by Mason’s worry that the president might make treaties with the support of only a few states. If such an “atrocious” thing were to happen, he explained, the president would be impeached and convicted.62 Moreover, if a president were somehow to seduce the Senate into supporting his crimes, the faction who was not so seduced “would pronounce sentence against him.” And so the factions would balance and check each other—even within government itself—and certainly without the anti-Federalists’ antics.63
In the middle of an agonizing speech by Mason on state courts, Madison again lost his temper, snapping that Mason’s suggestion that federal courts might seize power was ludicrous and entirely unfounded within the Constitution. Undaunted, the older man clung to his theme, asserting, “I think it will destroy the state governments, whatever may have been the intention.” Madison brusquely interrupted to demand that Mason substantiate his “insinuation” that every member of the Constitutional Convention wanted to destroy the state governments. Mason retorted, “I shall never refuse to explain myself,” defensively insisting that his was “at least the opinion of many gentlemen” at the convention in Philadelphia.
But then Madison forced Mason to admit that Madison himself, in private conversations in Philadelphia (back when the men were allies), had definitely stated that he would stand by state governments. Under the younger man’s withering pressure, Mason admitted it was so. Madison, victorious, announced he was “satisfied.” He had won, yet again.64
NEVERTHELESS, THAT EVENING, THE DAY’S STRESS AND STRAIN LINGERED with Madison. Henry had not made an effort on the floor this day, but Madison felt sure he was lying in wait for renewed assaults the next day. He wrote George Washington that he was “not yet restored & extremely feeble.”65 He grumbled in a letter to Rufus King that Richmond had become “extremely disagreeable for sundry reasons,” complaining that the anti-Federalists’ strategy was calculated to “weary out the patience of the House.”66
His allies began panicking at reports of his anxiety and illness. Hamilton wrote, “[I] own I fear something from your indisposition.”67 Cyrus Griffin, also in New York, wrote, “We are all extremely uneasy at your Indisposition,” particularly when “such important matters are under deliberation.” And, he added—increasing the pressure on Madison—“We are not very sanguine” about ratification in Virginia.68
Writing a letter to his friend Tench Coxe that evening, Madison held the page with his left hand as he furiously scribbled with his right hand, his quill almost running off on the page’s right side at the end of each line, while he hurriedly hyphenated almost every word. His words were messy, his penmanship garbled and blotchy, and he mistakenly crossed the t out of the word not. He was manifesting his distraction and misery in his very handwriting. He wrote Coxe that while each party hoped for victory, the division was agonizingly close, possibly “half a dozen for a majority on either side.” “When the balance is so extremely nice, it is improper not to mingle doubts with our expectations. A few days will probably decide the matter.” He signed the letter “in haste,” and it must have been obvious to Coxe it was written that way.69
In the fog of battle, Madison had no choice but to push ahead.
FRIDAY THE TWENTIETH OPENED WITH MADISON ON THE FLOOR LOOKING watchfully out at the friends and foes arrayed around him. On the day’s topic—the congressional power to appoint federal judges—he saw a window to deliver a rousing new vision of republicanism that might, at long last, decisively capture a majority in the room.
He began by conceding that many gentlemen supposed the new Congress would do “every mischief they possibly can.” While he admitted that he did not expect the “most exalted integrity and sublime virtue” from the men in the new federal government, he proudly declared his faith notwithstanding in “this great republican principle”: that the people would have “virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom.” He then pulled back the veil on the hidden cynicism in Henry’s “self-love” doctrine. “Is there no virtue among us?” he demanded. Without virtue, he said, “We are in a wretched situation.” No “theoretical checks” could save the country. Without “virtue in the people,” even liberty itself was a “chimerical idea.”70
With the furnace of his conscience thus roaring, Madison called the assembly’s attention to a summit rising above the Constitution. He believed that the anti-Federalists were not only weakening the new nation’s politics and economics; they were embracing the nation’s defeat. He reminded them that the Constitution required “confidence” from Americans—and proceeded to use that word four times in four sentences. Recurring to the theme of his long-ago essay on inflation, he said that the “circulation of confidence” was “better than the circulation of money.” Confidence, he repeated, “produces the best effects in” justice. And it would even “raise the value of property.”71 Confidence in the federal government and in its statesmen, in other words, was the Constitution.
Henry—who had been silent for some time—jumped to his feet, clearly angered by Madison’s soliloquy. He ponderously began recollecting the “painful sensations” and “mournful recollection” of his quest against the Constitution. Madison’s faith in statesmen, he said, was the very problem. Of the notion that federal representatives would “mend every deed,”72 and that the nation could “rely on the wisdom and virtue of our rulers,”73 he snapped, “I can find no consolation in it.”74 On the prospect of trusting the legislature to appoint wise federal judges, he claimed that the Constitution recklessly left the judiciary as the sole bulwark against the “tyrannical execution of laws,” predicting if the nation were to “lose our judiciary, we must sit down, and be oppressed,”75 and adding, “If this will satisfy republican minds, there is an end of everything.”76
It was coming down to Henry’s fustian skepticism versus Madison’s logical optimism. That evening, Madison appraised the situation. He thought he had defeated Henry that day. He wrote to Hamilton that the Federalists still probably had a majority of three or four votes. If “we can weather the storm,” he wrote, “the danger” would be “pretty well over.” Even so, he refused to indulge in sanguine thoughts. There was still “a very disagreeable uncertainty in the case,” as well as a very real chance that he had miscalculated the numbers.77 But he allowed himself—like a sweet, like an indulgence—a bit more latitude writing to his father that night. The Federalists, he wrote, had become “most confident of superiority.”78
STRATEGIZING THAT SAME EVENING, THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS EVIDENTLY concluded that Madison’s optimism represented a great vulnerability for the Federalists. The next day was a Saturday. After the customary ten a.m. start time, Madison’s old friend Grayson (who had so cheerfully chided his friend from Philadelphia about his single status) rose. He declared that a conviction in the “excellency of human nature” was “invariably the argument” when the “concession of power has been in agitation.”79 In other words, you only rely on optimism when you want power yourself; the Federalists were duping the people, their politics as cynical as that which they claimed to abhor.
Madison allowed Randolph to lead the rebuttal. His friend stood and admitted that he would be the last man to hold that human nature was “just and absolutely honest.” On the contrary, he said, just the potential that man was, in pure fact, capable of virtue, was enough to validate the new Constitution.80 While formally about the judicial appointment power and about judges, the debate was ascending to the highest questions—whether, given the structural role the Constitution gave to good leaders and a just people, rights not explicitly assured would still be retained, and therefore whether the freedom of religion and other rights would be secure.81 The security of the nation, the Federalists were saying, would stem from Americans collectively rising, in the generations ahead, to realize their ideals. The anti-Federalists were left to offer a pragmatic pessimism—thin gruel for the hungry majority in the room.
AMONG THE MANY IDEAS FOR WHICH MADISON IS MOST WELL KNOWN, none probably ranks higher than his assertion in Federalist Number 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Some have equated that argument with a wholesale political philosophy of pessimism, aligning Madison with the theologian and philosopher John Calvin, who sermonized, “If we were like angels, blameless and freely able to exercise perfect self-control, we would not need rules or regulations. Why, then, do we have so many laws and statutes? Because of man’s wickedness, for he is constantly overflowing with evil; this is why a remedy is required.”82
However, the events at the ratifying convention reveal a more powerful strand of teleological optimism in Madison’s thinking—and in the country he helped design. If the government could not trust Americans to strengthen and improve the country through their own voluntary conduct, then the country’s only solution for dangerous ideas would be jail cells—as Culpeper’s had been for the Baptists in 1774. In other words, democratic freedom was not just a proposition involving the application of governmental power. It required a commitment—a faith—in the people to better themselves.
But Madison’s optimism was neither self-executing nor secret. On the contrary, it was a primary political ground on which he sought support for ratifying the Constitution. Thus, this singular application of his Method for the roiling crowd in Richmond: He had to convince them to believe in themselves, and to trust one another, to advance the country’s future.
WHEN THE SHORT SATURDAY SESSION CLOSED, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, Madison felt content. He must have contemplated with pleasure the much-needed day of rest ahead. But when Sunday came, he found he could not rest.
He confessed his remnant fears to Hamilton. Although their attacks on the judiciary “have apparently made less of an impression that was feared,” the anti-Federalists would still try to kill the Constitution with their Trojan horse—a bill of rights as a prior condition of ratification. Counting votes as always, he still thought he might win by “3 or 4” or “possibly 5 or 6 votes.” But “ordinary casualties,” he said, could still kill the ratification.
In fact, the Virginia legislature was meeting in Richmond the next day, and it had a “considerable majority” of anti-Federalists. He warned that it was another event that “ought to check our confidence.”83