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Jefferson and his Colleagues, A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty
Chapter XI. President Madison Under Fire
by Johnson, Allen
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The dire calamity which Jefferson and his colleagues had for ten
years bent all their energies to avert had now befallen the young
Republic. War, with all its train of attendant evils, stalked
upon the stage, and was about to test the hearts of pacifist and
war-hawk alike. But nothing marked off the younger Republicans
more sharply from the generation to which Jefferson, Madison, and
Gallatin belonged than the positive relief with which they hailed
this break with Jeffersonian tradition. This attitude was
something quite different from the usual intrepidity of youth in
the face of danger; it was bottomed upon the conviction which
Clay expressed when he answered the question, "What are we to
gain by the war?" by saying, "What are we not to lose by peace?
Commerce, character, a nation's best treasure, honor!" Calhoun
had reached the same conclusion. The restrictive system as a
means of resistance and of obtaining redress for wrongs, he
declared to be unsuited to the genius of the American people. It
required the most arbitrary laws; it rendered government odious;
it bred discontent. War, on the other hand, strengthened the
national character, fed the flame of patriotism, and perfected
the organization of government. "Sir," he exclaimed, "I would
prefer a single Victory over the enemy by sea or land to all the
good we shall ever derive from the continuation of the
non-importation act!" The issue was thus squarely faced: the
alternative to peaceable coercion was now to be given a trial.
Scarcely less remarkable was the buoyant spirit with which these
young Republicans faced the exigencies of war. Defeat was not to
be found in their vocabulary. Clay pictured in fervent rhetoric a
victorious army dictating the terms of peace at Quebec or at
Halifax; Calhoun scouted the suggestion of unpreparedness,
declaring that in four weeks after the declaration of war the
whole of Upper and part of Lower Canada would be in our
possession; and even soberer patriots believed that the conquest
of Canada was only a matter of marching across the frontier to
Montreal or Quebec. But for that matter older heads were not much
wiser as prophets of military events. Even Jefferson assured the
President that he had never known a war entered into under more
favorable auspices, and predicted that Great Britain would surely
be stripped of all her possessions on this continent; while
Monroe seems to have anticipated a short decisive war terminating
in a satisfactory accommodation with England. As for the
President, he averred many years later that while he knew the
unprepared state of the country, "he esteemed it necessary to
throw forward the flag of the country, sure that the people would
press onward and defend it."
There is something at once humorous and pathetic in this
self-portrait of Madison throwing forward the flag of his country
and summoning his legions to follow on. Never was a man called to
lead in war who had so little of the martial in his character,
and yet so earnest a purpose to rise to the emergency. An
observer describes him, the day after war was declared, "visiting
in person--a thing never known before--all the offices of the
Departments of War and the Navy, stimulating everything in a
manner worthy of a little commander-in-chief, with his little
round hat and huge cockade." Stimulation was certainly needed in
these two departments as events proved, but attention to petty
details which should have been watched by subordinates is not the
mark of a great commander. Jefferson afterward consoled Madison
for the defeat of his armies by writing: "All you can do is to
order--execution must depend on others and failures be imputed to
them alone." Jefferson failed to perceive what Madison seems
always to have forgotten, that a commander-in-chief who appoints
and may remove his subordinates can never escape responsibility
for their failures. The President's first duty was not to
stimulate the performance of routine in the departments but to
make sure of the competence of the executive heads of those
departments.
William Eustis of Massachusetts, Secretary of War, was not
without some little military experience, having served as a
surgeon in the Revolutionary army, but he lacked every
qualification for the onerous task before him. Senator Crawford
of Georgia wrote to Monroe caustically that Eustis should have
been forming general and comprehensive arrangements for the
organization of the troops and for the prosecution of campaigns,
instead of consuming his time reading advertisements of petty
retailing merchants, to find where he could purchase one hundred
shoes or two hundred hats. Of Paul Hamilton, the Secretary of
Navy, even less could be expected, for he seems to have had
absolutely no experience to qualify him for the post. Senator
Crawford intimated that in instructing his naval officers
Hamilton impressed upon them the desirability of keeping their
superiors supplied with pineapples and other tropical fruits -an
ill-natured comment which, true or not, gives us the measure of
the man. Both Monroe and Gallatin shared the prevailing estimate
of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy and expressed
themselves without reserve to Jefferson; but the President with
characteristic indecision hesitated to purge his Cabinet of these
two incompetents, and for his want of decision he paid dearly.
The President had just left the Capital for his country place at
Montpelier toward the end of August, when the news came that
General William Hull, who had been ordered to invade Upper Canada
and begin the military promenade to Quebec, had surrendered
Detroit and his entire army without firing a gun. It was a
crushing disaster and a well-deserved rebuke for the
Administration, for whether the fault was Hull's or Eustis's, the
President had to shoulder the responsibility. His first thought
was to retrieve the defeat by commissioning Monroe to command a
fresh army for the capture of Detroit; but this proposal which
appealed strongly to Monroe had to be put aside--fortunately for
all concerned, for Monroe's desire for military glory was
probably not equalled by his capacity as a commander and the
western campaign proved incomparably more difficult than
wiseacres at Washington imagined.
What was needed, indeed, was not merely able commanders in the
field, though they were difficult enough to find. There was much
truth in Jefferson's naive remark to Madison: "The creator has
not thought proper to mark those on the forehead who are of the
stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek
them, blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense
of great losses." But neither seems to have comprehended that
their opposition to military preparedness had caused this dearth
of talent and was now forcing the Administration to select
blindfold. More pressing even than the need of tacticians was the
need of organizers of victory. The utter failure of the Niagara
campaign vacated the office of Secretary of War; and with Eustis
retired also the Secretary of the Navy. Monroe took over the
duties of the one temporarily, and William Jones, a shipowner of
Philadelphia, succeeded Hamilton.
If the President seriously intended to make Monroe Secretary of
War and the head of the General Staff, he speedily discovered
that he was powerless to do so. The Republican leaders in New
York felt too keenly Josiah Quincy's taunt about a despotic
Cabinet "composed, to all efficient purposes, of two Virginians
and a foreigner" to permit Monroe to absorb two cabinet posts. To
appease this jealousy of Virginia, Madison made an appointment
which very nearly shipwrecked his Administration: he invited
General John Armstrong of New York to become Secretary of War.
Whatever may be said of Armstrong's qualifications for the post,
his presence in the Cabinet was most inadvisable, for he did not
and could not inspire the personal confidence of either Gallatin
or Monroe. Once in office, he turned Monroe into a relentless
enemy and fairly drove Gallatin out of office in disgust by
appointing his old enemy, William Duane, editor of the Aurora, to
the post of Adjutant-General. "And Armstrong!"--said Dallas who
subsequently as Secretary of War knew whereof he spoke --"he was
the devil from the beginning, is now, and ever will be!"
The man of clearest vision in these unhappy months of 1812 was
undoubtedly Albert Gallatin. The defects of Madison as a
War-President he had long foreseen; the need of reorganizing the
Executive Departments he had pointed out as soon as war became
inevitable; and the problem of financing the war he had attacked
farsightedly, fearlessly, and without regard to political
consistency. No one watched the approach of hostilities with a
bitterer sense of blasted hopes. For ten years he had labored to
limit expenditures, sacrificing even the military and naval
establishments, that the people might be spared the burden of
needless taxes;--and within this decade he had also scaled down
the national debt one-half, so that posterity might not be
saddled with burdens not of its own choosing. And now war
threatened to undo his work. The young republic was after all not
to lead its own life, realize a unique destiny, but to tread the
old well-worn path of war, armaments, and high-handed government.
Well, he would save what he could, do his best to avert
"perpetual taxation, military establishments, and other
corrupting or anti-republican habits or institutions."
If Gallatin at first underrated the probable revenue for war
purposes, he speedily confessed his error and set before Congress
inexorably the necessity for new taxes-aye, even for an internal
tax, which he had once denounced as loudly as any Republican. For
more than a year after the declaration of war, Congress was deaf
to pleas for new sources of revenue; and it was not, indeed,
until the last year of the war that it voted the taxes which in
the long run could alone support the public credit. Meantime,
facing a depleted Treasury, Gallatin found himself reduced to a
mere "dealer of loans"--a position utterly abhorrent to him. Even
his efforts to place the loans which Congress authorized must
have failed but for the timely aid of three men whom Quincy would
have contemptuously termed foreigners, for all like Gallatin were
foreign-born--Astor, Girard, and Parish. Utterly weary of his
thankless job, Gallatin seized upon the opportunity afforded by
the Russian offer of mediation to leave the Cabinet and perhaps
to end the war by a diplomatic stroke. He asked and received an
appointment as one of the three American commissioners.
If Madison really believed that the people of the United States
would unitedly press onward and defend the flag when once he had
thrown it forward, he must have been strangely insensitive to the
disaffection in New England. Perhaps, like Jefferson in the days
of the embargo, he mistook the spirit of this opposition,
thinking that it was largely partisan clamor which could safely
be disregarded. What neither of these Virginians appreciated was
the peculiar fanatical and sectional character of this Federalist
opposition, and the extremes to which it would go. Yet abundant
evidence lay before their eyes. Thirty-four Federalist members of
the House, nearly all from New England, issued an address to
their constituents bitterly arraigning the Administration and
deploring the declaration of war; the House of Representatives of
Massachusetts, following this example, published another address,
denouncing the war as a wanton sacrifice of the best interests of
the people and imploring all good citizens to meet in town and
county assemblies to protest and to resolve not to volunteer
except for a defensive war; and a meeting of citizens of
Rockingham County, New Hampshire, adopted a memorial drafted by
young Daniel Webster, which hinted that the separation of the
States--"an event fraught with incalculable evils"--might
sometime occur on just such an occasion as this. Town after town,
and county after county, took up the hue and cry, keeping well
within the limits of constitutional opposition, it is true, but
weakening the arm of the Government just when it should have
struck the enemy effective blows.
Nor was the President without enemies in his own political
household. The Republicans of New York, always lukewarm in their
support of the Virginia Dynasty, were now bent upon preventing
his reelection. They found a shrewd and not overscrupulous leader
in DeWitt Clinton and an adroit campaign manager in Martin Van
Buren. Both belonged to that school of New York politicians of
which Burr had been master. Anything to beat Madison was their
cry. To this end they were willing to condemn the war-policy, to
promise a vigorous prosecution of the war, and even to negotiate
for peace. What made this division in the ranks of the
Republicans so serious was the willingness of the New England
Federalists to make common cause with Clinton. In September a
convention of Federalists endorsed his nomination for the
Presidency.
Under the weight of accumulating disasters, military and
political, it seemed as though Madison must go down in defeat.
Every New England State but Vermont cast its electoral votes for
Clinton; all the Middle States but Pennsylvania also supported
him; and Maryland divided its vote. Only the steadiness of the
Southern Republicans and of Pennsylvania saved Madison; a change
of twenty electoral votes would have ended the Virginia Dynasty.[*]
Now at least Madison must have realized the poignant truth which
the Federalists were never tired of repeating: he had entered
upon the war as President of a divided people.
[* In the electoral vote Madison received 128; Clinton, 89.]
Only a few months' experience was needed to convince the military
authorities at Washington that the war must be fought mainly by
volunteers. Every military consideration derived from American
history warned against this policy, it is true, but neither
Congress nor the people would entertain for an instant the
thought of conscription. Only with great reluctance and under
pressure had Congress voted to increase the regular army and to
authorize the President to raise fifty thousand volunteers. The
results of this legislation were disappointing, not to say
humiliating. The conditions of enlistment were not such as to
encourage recruiting; and even when the pay had been increased
and the term of service shortened, few able-bodied citizens would
respond. If any such desired to serve their country, they
enrolled in the State militia which the President had been
authorized to call into active service for six months.
In default of a well-disciplined regular army and an adequate
volunteer force, the Administration was forced more and more to
depend upon such quotas of militia as the States would supply.
How precarious was the hold of the national Government upon the
State forces, appeared in the first months of the war. When
called upon to supply troops to relieve the regulars in the coast
defenses, the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut flatly
refused, holding that the commanders of the State militia, and
not the President, had the power to decide when exigencies
demanded the use of the militia in the service of the United
States. In his annual message Madison termed this "a novel and
unfortunate exposition" of the Constitution, and he pointed
out--what indeed was sufficiently obvious--that if the authority
of the United States could be thus frustrated during actual war,
"they are not one nation for the purpose most of all requiring
it." But what was the President to do? Even if he, James Madison,
author of the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, could so forget his
political creed as to conceive of coercing a sovereign state,
where was the army which would do his bidding? The President was
the victim of his own political theory.
These bitter revelations of 1812--the disaffection of New
England, the incapacity of two of his secretaries, the disasters
of his staff officers on the frontier, the slow recruiting, the
defiance of Massachusetts and Connecticut--almost crushed the
President. Never physically robust, he succumbed to an insidious
intermittent fever in June and was confined to his bed for weeks.
So serious was his condition that Mrs. Madison was in despair and
scarcely left his side for five long weeks. "Even now," she wrote
to Mrs. Gallatin, at the end of July, "I watch over him as I
would an infant, so precarious is his convalescence." The rumor
spread that he was not likely to survive, and politicians in
Washington began to speculate on the succession to the
Presidency.
But now and then a ray of hope shot through the gloom pervading
the White House and Capitol. The stirring victory of the
Constitution over the Guerriere in August, 1812, had almost taken
the sting out of Hull's surrender at Detroit, and other victories
at sea followed, glorious in the annals of American naval
warfare, though without decisive influence on the outcome of the
war. Of much greater significance was Perry's victory on Lake
Erie in September, 1813, which opened the way to the invasion of
Canada. This brilliant combat followed by the Battle of the
Thames cheered the President in his slow convalescence.
Encouraging, too, were the exploits of American privateers in
British waters, but none of these events seemed likely to hasten
the end of the war. Great Britain had already declined the
Russian offer of mediation.
Last day but one of the year 1813 a British schooner, the
Bramble, came into the port of Annapolis bearing an important
official letter from Lord Castlereagh to the Secretary of State.
With what eager and anxious hands Monroe broke the seal of this
letter may be readily imagined. It might contain assurances of a
desire for peace; it might indefinitely prolong the war. In truth
the letter pointed both ways. Castlereagh had declined to accept
the good offices of Russia, but he was prepared to begin direct
negotiations for peace. Meantime the war must go on--with the
chances favoring British arms, for the Bramble had also brought
the alarming news of Napoleon's defeat on the plains of Leipzig.
Now for the first time Great Britain could concentrate all her
efforts upon the campaign in North America. No wonder the
President accepted Castlereagh's offer with alacrity. To the
three commissioners sent to Russia, he added Henry Clay and
Jonathan Russell and bade them Godspeed while he nerved himself
to meet the crucial year of the war.
Had the President been fully apprized of the elaborate plans of
the British War Office, his anxieties would have been multiplied
many times. For what resources had the Government to meet
invasion on three frontiers? The Treasury was again depleted; new
loans brought in insufficient funds to meet current expenses;
recruiting was slack because the Government could not compete
with the larger bounties offered by the States; by summer the
number of effective regular troops was only twenty-seven thousand
all told. With this slender force, supplemented by State levies,
the military authorities were asked to repel invasion. The
Administration had not yet drunk the bitter dregs of the cup of
humiliation.
That some part of the invading British forces might be detailed
to attack the Capital was vaguely divined by the President and
his Cabinet; but no adequate measures had been taken for the
defense of the city when, on a fatal August day, the British army
marched upon it. The humiliating story of the battle of
Bladensburg has been told elsewhere. The disorganized mob which
had been hastily assembled to check the advance of the British
was utterly routed almost under the eyes of the President, who
with feelings not easily described found himself obliged to join
the troops fleeing through the city. No personal humiliation was
spared the President and his family. Dolly Madison, never once
doubting that the noise of battle which reached the White House
meant an American victory, stayed calmly indoors until the rush
of troops warned her of danger. She and her friends were then
swept along in the general rout. She was forced to leave her
personal effects behind, but her presence of mind saved one
treasure in the White House--a large portrait of General
Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart. That priceless portrait and
the plate were all that survived. The fleeing militiamen had
presence of mind enough to save a large quantity of the wine by
drinking it, and what was left, together with the dinner on the
table, was consumed by Admiral Cockburn and his staff. By
nightfall the White House, the Treasury, and the War Office were
in flames, and only a severe thunderstorm checked the
conflagration.[*]
[* Before passing judgment on the conduct of British officers and
men in the capital, the reader should recall the equally
indefensible outrages committed by American troops under General
Dearborn in 1813, when the Houses of Parliament and other public
buildings at York (Toronto) were pillaged and burned. See
Kingsford's "History of Canada," VIII, pp. 259-61.]
Heartsick and utterly weary, the President crossed the Potomac at
about six o'clock in the evening and started westward in a
carriage toward Montpelier. He had been in the saddle since early
morning and was nearly spent. To fatigue was added humiliation,
for he was forced to travel with a crowd of embittered fugitives
and sleep in a forlorn house by the wayside. Next morning he
overtook Mrs. Madison at an inn some sixteen miles from the
Capital. Here they passed another day of humiliation, for
refugees who had followed the same line of flight reviled the
President for betraying them and the city. At midnight, alarmed
at a report that the British were approaching, the President fled
to another miserable refuge deeper in the Virginia woods. This
fear of capture was quite unfounded, however, for the British
troops had already evacuated the city and were marching in the
opposite direction.
Two days later the President returned to the capital to collect
his Cabinet and repair his shattered Government. He found public
sentiment hot against the Administration for having failed to
protect the city. He had even to fear personal violence, but he
remained "tranquil as usual . . . though much distressed by the
dreadful event which had taken place." He was still more
distressed, however, by the insistent popular clamor for a victim
for punishment. All fingers pointed at Armstrong as the man
responsible for the capture of the city. Armstrong offered to
resign at once, but the President in distress would not hear of
resignation. He would advise only "a temporary retirement" from
the city to placate the inhabitants. So Armstrong departed, but
by the time he reached Baltimore he realized the impossibility of
his situation and sent his resignation to the President. The
victim had been offered up. At his own request Monroe was now
made Secretary of War, though he continued also to discharge the
not very heavy duties of the State Department.
It was a disillusioned group of Congressmen who gathered in
September, 1814, in special session at the President's call.
Among those who gazed sadly at the charred ruins of the Capitol
were Calhoun, Cheves, and Grundy, whose voices had been loud for
war and who had pictured their armies overrunning the British
possessions. Clay was at this moment endeavoring to avert a
humiliating surrender of American claims at Ghent. To the sting
of defeated hopes was added physical discomfort. The only public
building which had escaped the general conflagration was the Post
and Patent Office. In these cramped quarters the two houses
awaited the President's message.
A visitor from another planet would have been strangely puzzled
to make the President's words tally with the havoc wrought by the
enemy on every side. A series of achievements had given new
luster to the American arms; "the pride of our naval arms had
been amply supported"; the American people had "rushed with
enthusiasm to the scenes where danger and duty call." Not a
syllable about the disaster at Washington! Not a word about the
withdrawal of the Connecticut militia from national service, and
the refusal of the Governor of Vermont to call out the militia
just at the moment when Sir George Prevost began his invasion of
New York; not a word about the general suspension of specie
payment by all banks outside of New England; not a word about the
failure of the last loan and the imminent bankruptcy of the
Government. Only a single sentence betrayed the anxiety which was
gnawing Madison's heart: "It is not to be disguised that the
situation of our country calls for its greatest efforts." What
the situation demanded, he left his secretaries to say.
The new Secretary of War seemed to be the one member of the
Administration who was prepared to grapple with reality and who
had the courage of his convictions. While Jefferson was warning
him that it was nonsense to talk about a regular army, Monroe
told Congress flatly that no reliance could be pled in the
militia and that a permanent force of one hundred thousand men
must be raised--raised by conscription if necessary. Throwing
Virginian and Jeffersonian principles to the winds, he affirmed
the constitutional right of Congress to draft citizens. The
educational value of war must have been very great to bring
Monroe to this conclusion, but Congress had not traveled so far.
One by one Monroe's alternative plans were laid aside; and the
country, like a rudderless ship, drifted on.
An insuperable obstacle, indeed, prevented the establishment of
any efficient national army at this time. Every plan encountered
ultimately the inexorable fact that the Treasury was practically
empty and the credit of the Government gone. Secretary Campbell's
report was a confession of failure to sustain public credit. Some
seventy-four millions would be needed to carry the existing civil
and military establishments for another year, and of this sum,
vast indeed in those days, only twenty-four millions were in
sight. Where the remaining fifty millions were to be found, the
Secretary could not say. With this admission of incompetence
Campbell resigned from office. On the 9th of November his
successor, A. J. Dallas, notified holders of government
securities at Boston that the Treasury could not meet its
obligations.
It was at this crisis, when bankruptcy stared the Government in
the face, that the Legislature of Massachusetts appointed
delegates to confer with delegates from other New England
legislatures on their common grievances and dangers and to devise
means of security and defense. The Legislatures of Connecticut
and Rhode Island responded promptly by appointing delegates to
meet at Hartford on the 15th of December; and the proposed
convention seemed to receive popular indorsement in the
congressional elections, for with but two exceptions all the
Congressmen chosen were Federalists. Hot-heads were discussing
without any attempt at concealment the possibility of
reconstructing the Federal Union. A new union of the good old
Thirteen States on terms set by New England was believed to be
well within the bounds of possibility. News-sheets referred
enthusiastically to the erection of a new Federal edifice which
should exclude the Western States. Little wonder that the
harassed President in distant Washington was obsessed with the
idea that New England was on the verge of secession.
William Wirt who visited Washington at this time has left a vivid
picture of ruin and desolation:
"I went to look at the ruins of the President's house. The rooms
which you saw so richly furnished, exhibited nothing but unroofed
naked walls, cracked, defaced, and blackened with fire. I cannot
tell you what I felt as I walked amongst them . . . . I called on
the President. He looks miserably shattered and wobegone. In
short, he looked heartbroken. His mind is full of the New England
sedition. He introduced the subject, and continued to press
it--painful as it obviously was to him. I denied the
probability, even the possibility that the yeomanry of the North
could be induced to place themselves under the power and
protection of England, and diverted the conversation to another
topic; but he took the first opportunity to return to it, and
convinced me that his heart and mind were painfully full of the
subject."
What added to the President's misgivings was the secrecy in which
the members of the Hartford Convention shrouded their
deliberations. An atmosphere of conspiracy seemed to envelop all
their proceedings. That the "deliverance of New England" was at
hand was loudly proclaimed by the Federalist press. A reputable
Boston news-sheet advised the President to procure a faster horse
than he had mounted at Bladensburg, if he would escape the swift
vengeance of New England.
The report of the Hartford Convention seemed hardly commensurate
with the fears of the President or with the windy boasts of the
Federalist press. It arraigned the Administration in scathing
language, to be sure, but it did not advise secession. "The
multiplied abuses of bad administrations" did not yet justify a
severance of the Union, especially in a time of war. The manifest
defects of the Constitution were not incurable; yet the
infractions of the Constitution by the National Government had
been so deliberate, dangerous, and palpable as to put the
liberties of the people in jeopardy and to constrain the several
States to interpose their authority to protect their citizens.
The legislatures of the several States were advised to adopt
measures to protect their citizens against such unconstitutional
acts of Congress as conscription and to concert some arrangement
with the Government at Washington, whereby they jointly or
separately might undertake their own defense, and retain a
reasonable share of the proceeds of Federal taxation for that
purpose. To remedy the defects of the Constitution seven
amendments were proposed, all of which had their origin in
sectional hostility to the ascendancy of Virginia and to the
growing power of the New West. The last of these proposals was a
shot at Madison and Virginia: "nor shall the President be elected
from the same State two terms in succession." And finally, should
these applications of the States for permission to arm in their
own defense be ignored, then and in the event that peace should
not be concluded, another convention should be summoned "with
such powers and instructions as the exigency of a crisis so
momentous may require."
Massachusetts, under Federalist control, acted promptly upon
these suggestions. Three commissioners were dispatched to
Washington to effect the desired arrangements for the defense of
the State. The progress of these "three ambassadors," as they
styled themselves, was followed with curiosity if not with
apprehension. In Federalist circles there was a general belief
that an explosion was at hand. A disaster at New Orleans, which
was now threatened by a British fleet and army, would force
Madison to resign or to conclude peace. But on the road to
Washington, the ambassadors learned to their surprise that
General Andrew Jackson had decisively repulsed the British before
New Orleans, on the 8th of January, and on reaching the Capital
they were met by the news that a treaty of peace had been signed
at Ghent. Their cause was not only discredited but made
ridiculous. They and their mission were forgotten as the tension
of war times relaxed. The Virginia Dynasty was not to end with
James Madison.
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