A History of the American People

political and literary education in itself. Small, industrious, moderate, soft-spoken, seeing all
sides of the question, trying always to conciliate and reach the golden mean, he was a model of neo-classical self-command,' seeking a dream, as the poet Robert Frost has said,of a new land
to fulfill with people in self-control.' He had served in the House of Burgesses and in Congress,
helped draft the Virginia constitution and its Statute of Religious Freedom, assisted at the Mount
Vernon Conference, the Annapolis Convention, and the Constitutional Convention, where, more
than any other man there, he was the author of the US Constitution itself. He had written twenty-
six of the Federalist Papers and was the principal architect of the Bill of Rights. He had been a
notable leader of the Jeffersonians in Congress and had served his master as secretary of state.
He even, unlike Jefferson, had a sense of humor. When, as secretary of state, he had to entertain
the Tunisian envoy, come to Washington to negotiate on behalf of the Barbary pirates, and
granted the Arab's request for concubines for his elevenstrong party, he put down the cost as
appropriations for foreign intercourse' (Jefferson was not amused). His wife, Dorothea or Dolley (1768-1849), was a beautiful girl from North Carolina who made herself the first great Washington hostess. But Madison proved a classic illustration of Tacitus' maxim omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset. He was no good. It was a measure of Madison's executive awkwardness that, in his inaugural address, he set out his aims in a sentence he seemed unable to end and which eventually consisted of 470 words and proved difficult to read. At the reception afterwards in the F Street residence, Dolley was in ravishing beauty-'drest in a plain cambric-dress with a very long train, plain round the neck without any handkerchief, and beautiful bonnet of purple velvet, and white satin with white plumes-all dignity, grace and affability.’ Dolley, who wasvery much in Charge of the little
Man' (Madison seemed tiny, though he had a large head), finished decorating the new Executive
Mansion, spending $2,205 for knives, forks, bottle stands and andirons,' $458 for a pianoforte and $28 fora guitar.' She soon launched the White House's first 'drawingroom' receptions
which, in her day, were celebrated-the men in black or blue coat with vest, black breeches and black stockings,' the ladiesnot remarkable for anything so much as for the exposure of their
swelling breasts and bare backs." But, behind the glitter, there was endless confusion about how
America should extricate itself from a maritime clash over rights which few people on either side
of the Atlantic now understood. Madison wasted precious months, even years, in foolish
expectation that the war would end or, more likely, that the parliamentary struggles in Britain
would throw up a new ministry which would see things from America's viewpoint and scrap the
measures against neutral ships.
Actually, it was not so much the divisions in British politics which made a compromise so
difficult as the pressures and increasing sectionalism in America. It might be true, as Washington
had said in his Farewell Address, that East, West, North, and South in America had much more
in common than points of difference. But, in the short-tempered atmosphere aroused by the long
European war and its Atlantic repercussions, the differences seemed insuperable. New England
had virtually everything in common with British maritime interests. But the further south and
west you traveled the more opinion-leaders you found who wanted a showdown with Britain as
the road to expansion. Was not Canada to be had for the taking? And Florida? And the West
Indies? And this was Madison's constituency. These states had elected him in 1808, and when he
was reelected in 1812 his dependence on the South and West was even more marked. His
opponent, Clinton, carried New York (twenty-nine electoral college votes), Massachusetts
(twenty-two votes), Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and other smaller states, making
a total of eighty-nine votes. Madison had Virginia (twenty-five), Pennsylvania (twenty-five), and