James Madison by Richard Brookhiser

Author:Richard Brookhiser
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, History, Biography, Politics
ISBN: 9780465019830
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2011-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

In Power

When James Madison first arrived in Washington in the spring of 1801, it was nowhere. The federal government had moved to its latest site in the summer and fall of 1800, but only small, stumbling steps had been taken to make the new capital a national city, or even a habitable place. The presidential mansion was a finished building, on the outside, at any rate, though the grounds were filled with the detritus of ongoing construction. The Capitol, a mile and a half away on a small hill, was just begun. There were a few boardinghouses, a handful of shops and taverns, and a scattering of private homes (many of them built on spec). The roads were unpaved paths. There was good partridge hunting on Capitol Hill, and locals grew vegetables in the Mall. Gouverneur Morris, who after a decade of high life in Europe was now a senator from New York, wrote a princess friend of his that “we want nothing here but houses, cellars, kitchens, well informed men, amiable women, and other little trifles of this kind, to make our city perfect.”

If Washington had been even grimmer, the prospect facing Madison still would have been glorious. He and his allies and their leader, Thomas Jefferson, had accomplished something brand-new in the history of the United States, rare enough in the history of the world: the peaceful ascent to the highest offices of government by one set of men replacing their opponents. The Republican sweep had been striking. Not only was Jefferson president, but Republicans held a three-to-two majority in the House (almost reversing the Federalist majority in the last Congress), and they had pulled nearly even in the Senate. The change had not been accomplished by revolutionary means: the Federalists had not crowned their heads, and the Republicans had not had to remove crowns or heads, despite the fears of both parties. But the changeover was felt to be revolutionary in fact. Jefferson considered it a second American Revolution.

For his cabinet, Jefferson turned to two Massachusetts men, Henry Dearborn (secretary of war) and Levi Lincoln (attorney general). Samuel Smith, the Baltimore congressman and merchant, preferred staying in the House to becoming secretary of the navy, so Jefferson appointed his younger brother Robert. Since the office of attorney general was a minor one in those days, and Jefferson intended to pursue a peace policy (no more chest thumping against France), these were minor appointments. For Treasury secretary he turned to the obvious Republican, Albert Gallatin. To fill the office of secretary of state, the job that he himself had held in George Washington’s cabinet, he turned to Madison.

The triumvirate of Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin was almost as brilliant as the triumvirate of Washington, Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton a decade earlier. The new trio, unlike that one, would hang together. The three great Republicans saw eye to eye. Not even ambition divided them. Gallatin could have dreamed of being president himself one day, for though he was foreign

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