The Thomas Jefferson Hour; #0402; James Madison

Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with our third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Today, our host Bill Crystal is speaking with Mr. Jefferson about James Madison. James Madison was Mr. Jefferson's closest friend and most political ally. The Thomas Jefferson Hour is brought to you by High Plains Public Radio and New Enlightenment Radio Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the search for truth and the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. Please join us now as our host Bill Crystal speaks with Mr. Jefferson. Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson Hour, your weekly conversation with the third president of the United States. Good day to you, Mr. Jefferson. Good day to you, my dear citizen. I hope the world has been treating you well. You ask Mr. Madison at one point to be sure that your image was protected in the future. I trust he's done his job well. My last letter to Mr. Madison was written just a few weeks before my death in 1826 and I said among other things the friendship which has subsisted between us for five decades has never known a

single moment of displeasure. Take care of me when dead. I mean he didn't mean your corpse either. I don't think did he. I was in Jefferson. I was in Monticello by slaves and by family. I was buried in the graveyard that I had laid out to long since you know I started Monticello. Next to your childhood friend. That is correct next to Dabney Carr. Dabney had died somewhere else but we had as you know made this childhood pact that whoever died first would be buried under this tree on the mountain that I called Monticello and then when the other one died whenever that occurred he would be buried next to his deepest childhood friend and Dabney died when I was elsewhere and I actually had him disinterred and brought to Monticello for rebarial and when I died in 1826 I was buried next to him and that pact was kept. Thank you Mr. Jefferson. Actually our program today is about your dear friend James Madison and you have already answered the first question that I was going to ask you. My question was how often did you

disagree and over what and you have suggested that over the course of five decades you never disagreed. There was never a fight. There was never a backing away in the friendship. There was never a time of tension. We were both gentlemen and our friendship was steady and I don't believe that either one of us ever raised his voice. I don't believe that either one of us ever said a dark word about each other or to each other. It was perfect harmony. Now we didn't always agree. We're quite different men. It seems to me you trusted his judgment better than you trusted your own at times. Indeed I did because for two reasons. First of all Mr. Madison was a was a sober man. He had very pragmatic ways of thinking about things and he did not have that capacity that was so characteristic of myself of rhetorical flights of fancy and a certain verbal extremism. So Madison was constantly anchoring me pulling me back from the empyrean into

the real world and in doing so he saved him. Empyrean sir. The empyrean is a is a celestial term from astronomy of the of the upper air you know the rarefied air and I love I love to live there. I love to speak about the ideal world and about our dream of America. John Adams said Mr. Jefferson I find that you like dreams of the future better than the history of the past. That's certainly so but Mr. Madison agreed with my politics and we had the same vision of America more or less but he believed that I sometimes lost sight of the earth and so he would gently with great graciousness pull me back down to the ground. Before we get into some of these instances perhaps you tell us how you and Mr. Madison met how your friendship developed and matured. Well I was quite a bit older than the James Madison and I was the governor of Virginia between 1780 and 1781 and he was on the council. I inherited Mr. Madison

along with a number of others from on the executive council that this time our Constitution in Virginia was a very Republican one with a small R which meant that it was very antagonistic to a strong executive branch and therefore the governor really served at the pleasure of an executive council so he was surrounded by a dozen men who really were the executive branch and the governor was the administrative agent quite similar to some of your city councils and your own time and this proved to be a poor form of of Constitution for Virginia led to a humiliation for me during the war but Mr. Madison was on that council. I had met him before you know he really first came to my attention because he was a staunch advocate for a wall of separation between church and state and he may have been a more strong advocate of a secularization of American official culture than I was and so this was an extraordinary arena of

common vision and deep principle that we shared from the beginning I met him I think first in 1776 and then when I became the governor a few years later he was on this council and I realized immediately a couple of things first of all he was an extraordinary student he was one of the great intellectuals of the revolution more I would say than myself and he was always prepared he was the kind of man you can count on as a committee man to have done all the work to have read everything to have thought through he could be counted on as the ideal member of a council. He steadied up north did he not sir? Yes you know he went up to the College of New Jersey Princeton you call it and so he was educated out he did not go to the College of William and Mary by the time he was ready to go to college the only good professor at William and Mary was gone William small my beloved mentor small had gone back to to England and in the absence of

small there was nothing there for young Jimmy Madison so he was sent by his father up to Princeton up to New Jersey and he got an extraordinary education there from Witherspoon who was a Witherspoon was a Presbyterian but he was an enlightened Presbyterian and he really brought enlightenment culture to the College of New Jersey and made the College of New Jersey the most progressive college in the United States at that time Madison studied there he was maybe even a harder student than I was and he actually broke his health and had a kind of a nervous breakdown while studying in those years first at New Jersey and then under the care of his father back in Orange my pili or he later called it. He was never a robust man to begin with no he was not a manly man he was not an outdoors man he was a great farmer I called him the best farmer in the world but he was a little man and next to you I you look like the cartoon characters and button Jeff he was tiny and you were tall and he he was

diminutive he was called a little apple John of a man by one of his critics even his wife dolly called him the great little Madison so he was a he was a tiny man and he was a doorman he dressed in black he dressed like some quaker and he spent enough time with the Presbyterians to pick that up he picked up a little durinous of spirit and he he was a hypocondriac he believed that he wrote when he was in college that he didn't expect to live more than a few more years and he was always darkly hinting even to me I mean we were friends but not friends in the sense that friends are friends in your time we were reserved friends and he would write me from time to time saying he couldn't go to Europe because of a condition that he had and it turns out he felt that he had an epileptic personality that he might have an epileptic seizure at any time I don't believe he ever had one but he had the sense and so he was very diffident and wanting constantly to retire to a stable environment and

usually back in Virginia but even if he were in Philadelphia or New York he was not an adventurer some man he was a scholar when did he distinguish himself he being Mr. Madison when did he first distinguish himself on the national stage you said you met him during the revolution in Virginia well he then became alarmed by the articles of confederation he was in this country I was not I was in Europe serving as the American minister to the court of Louis XVI in France and Madison was in this country and he was serving both in Virginia and in the national government under the articles of confederation and he came to believe that those that first Constitution of the United States was fatally flawed particularly on fiscal matters and matters of taxation but that we were not going to be able to survive the revolution with the articles of confederation and therefore they either needed to be amended severely or

replaced and he began to lobby for this he wanted more commercial power in the national government he wanted the government to be able to act with fewer impediments there was a unanimity was required on all major decisions at that time the states voted by block rather than by individual representative so he felt it was unworkable and he then formed a kind of a friendship or at least an agreement of action with Colonel Hamilton Alexander Hamilton and they were the two really that precipitated the first Annapolis convention in 1786 and of course the main one the constitutional convention in 1787 in Philadelphia and the two of them were the principal authors of the Federalist papers were they not yes you asked all mr. Madison first distinguished himself first of all he is effectively the author of the Constitution of the United States he studied assiduously to prepare and he wrote me letters in France saying mr. Jefferson

how does one prepare to write a Constitution or what does one study and I actually sent him scores literally scores of books and one one ship when I sent him 250 volumes at a single time and then I would send him the bill or he would buy things for me in Virginia but I he had entrusted me to buy classical texts for him and books on political theory and certain novels and so on works of great works of poetry and I filled those orders and I would send them back my sent him scores of books on the history of constitutions and he he dutifully studied them and mastered them took notes made briefs so when he got to the constitutional convention in May of 1787 he had a plan he would not present it he was too different and to he felt that he was too weak a a committee man a floor man so he got Edmund Randolph to present it from Virginia my cousin and this became known as the Virginia plan at the Constitutional Convention which called for a very strong central government and

the Virginia plan was was never enacted into the Constitution but it became the main skeleton of the Constitution there was a rival plan the so-called New Jersey plan which was a modest amendment to the articles of Confederation and so the New Jersey plan which was a state-based plan and the Virginia plan which was a nationalist plan competed over the summer of 1787 and finally what emerged was something in the middle but more towards the Virginia plan there would have been no Virginia plan if it hadn't been for Mr. Madison interesting he sounds like a Federalist to me sir this was his Federalist period we both knew that the states were too powerful because there could be no commercial union unless something were done and each state had a currency each state had a foreign policy each state had trade tariffs and trade regulations and so we weren't united in any meaningful sense particularly with respect to international events and trade we couldn't get credit in Dutch banks because the Dutch would say what is the United States there appears to be

a New York and a Virginia and a New Hampshire but we don't see a United States and so Madison realized and I agreed with him that that the national government needed more commercial control and authority and that there would have to be a replacement of the requisition system under the articles the national government would say we need X millions of dollars for the national budget and then that would requisition it from the states but the states would frequently not fill the requisitions so there had to be mandatory taxation and Madison and I skamed endlessly in our letters about how we could create this without really shattering the articles of Confederation and in the end he simply felt that they had to go so he then devised the Virginia plant argued for it strenuously and very actively on the floor of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia he also kept a virtually verbatim account of the debates it became the treasure of the constitutional process he kept a private for the rest of his life but he arranged that it could be published after his time when it amounts to an almost verbatim transcript of the at

least the argumentation of each of each of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention on key issues and then when that was done he was drafted by Colonel Hamilton Hamilton was also a delegate to the Constitutional Convention but he had not spent much time there and frankly his views were so obnoxious that he he had little credibility but when it came time to ratify in the key state of New York and frankly there could not have been a union of New York hadn't ratified Madison decided that the only way the Constitution for all of its faults as he saw them could be ratified where if he wrote a series of propaganda pieces newspaper pieces anticipating concerns about the new Constitution and he drafted some others he wanted Gov. Mores involved he got John J involved and then it was going to be a series of New Yorkers but Madison happened to be in town and Colonel Hamilton drafted Madison to serve as one of the essayists and Madison wrote a whole series of them and in my opinion all of the best of them but they kept this secret they

called themselves Publius after a Roman patriot who had emerged out of the post monarchical period in ancient Rome so they called this Publius or the public man public public author and they they kept their actual individual authorship secret and to this day to your day there are still debates among scholars about who wrote which because Hamilton later in his life wrote down a list of all the ones that he wrote but he was clearly lying as always and so Madison was was deprived of some of his genius by Colonel Hamilton as usual but but I knew I was getting them when they were bound I was getting them in Paris but Madison my closest friend had never told me he was doing this must have felt shy or afraid that I would condemn it but I knew that he was the author and so I we wrote these if you read them today you would be just shock that best friends would talk this way but he would say I'm sending you this very interesting volume of essays advocating the adoption of the new federal

constitution in the state of New York there was nothing about himself and then I would read it and I would say these are works of genius it's the best practical guide to our government that could ever be devised and the and the principal author I think is the greatest of them but I wouldn't say I know you're the author of this thing and you know I know you're the author of this thing and I don't know why you're pretending that you're not the author of this thing but let's just get this on the table that's not the way we worked I let him have his illusion and he let me have my counter illusion and and we we had a sense of reserve and the dignity of each other that characterized our friendship for 50 years and yet at least on one occasion you sent a letter to him allowing it was a letter really written to John Adams but you enclosed it in a letter to Mr. Madison and let him use his judgment as to what should become of it I always did this because as I said I was given to rhetorical flights and sometimes what might be called excess and furthermore this will shock anyone listening but the federalists used to blame me for my grammar they would say

that I was some kind of an anarchist in spelling grammar because I didn't conform to Dr. Johnson's principles of grammar this really offended me but it hurt my feelings too and I didn't want to give them this handle to discredit my idea so when I wrote something you press especially as president or secretary state I'd send it to Madison first and say you know look it over correct anything that it's going to raise hackles and in the obsessive grammarians and the federalist party but I also gave him and only him veto power over my pronouncements I would send him something first and then he would look it over and I would say if you think it's too much or if you think that it's wrong or if you think I should think again about what I want to say just let me know and I always in the whole course of my life accepted whatever decision Madison made even when it was counter to my own instincts and in the case in question I had been elected vice president John Adams had been elected president this was

1796 and I wrote one of my effusive letters of affection and respect Adams essentially saying that maybe we could work as a co-presidency of some sort and unite the country and that I wouldn't be an impediment to his to his administration and that the deep friendship that I felt for him that went back to 1776 was enough for me to feel the greatest happiness that he had been elected president and and so on and so forth and I sent it to Jimmy Madison for for his perusal and he said don't send that letter and so your last word really to John Adams was a was a rather bitter note and as a consequence I think Adams felt that you were an enemy rather than a friend and a supporter it cast a terrible poll over the relationship between you for the next 12 years yeah I'm not sure that it that that letter would have turned things around but I'll say this that I am naturally an affectionate man who likes to preserve friendships even in times of trouble my bent is to reconcile and harmonize and to reach out with joy and respect and to minimize difference that's

a characteristic of my personality which served me well in life I never lost a friend through any deliberate action of my own but Madison felt this was soft no he felt John Adams in the in the Hamiltonians are ruining the country and if you reach out to him and embrace him you will disarm yourself Mr. Vice President from being able to help save the country from these people and yet it's true you two didn't realize that Adams was not a Hamiltonian and he was locked in his own better struggle with Alexander Hamilton that's true but Adams was a monarchist and he was a he was an aristocrat and he was he dis and he was a he was in his most imperial period of his life during this time let me say that when he explained himself thoroughly to you you no longer felt that way Mr. Jefferson we've got to take a short break when we get back let's continue our conversation about James Madison the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities in Denver Colorado will be sponsoring an evening with John and

Abigail Adams the first political couple on February 19th 2004 please visit our website www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org for additional information again that is www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org please stay tuned we will be back in just a moment welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour Mr. Jefferson we're talking about your

dear friend James Madison today you've described his role in being the principal author of the Constitution and working with Alexander Hamilton on the federalist papers he had a role in the bill of rights too did he not a very significant role he was the active force behind the Constitution and really I would call him the philosopher or the father of the United States Constitution your Constitution which you now still use in the in the 21st century is Mr. Madison's genius now he didn't write it the actual language was drafted in the end by a committee of language and and and structure by Govinter Morris Govinter Morris the the the high-tone federalist actually wrote we the people and all the all the the beautiful pros of the Constitution of the United States but

Madison was the father of all this but after this I received copies of the new Constitution from Mr. Madison of course and from Dr. Franklin the greatest American and from George Washington the president of the Constitutional convention all dear friends of mine and I was really upset I mean deeply angry in fact that the Constitution did not contain a charter of human rights I felt that this was an outrage and I think that the argument in response to you was that they were implied right I don't believe that I think you see the average citizen is not a political theorist we all if we have we had a seminar with every American we would from natural law develop a set of human rights principles that I have a right to freedom of conscience and freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and that I'm I shouldn't be required to incriminate myself and so on these are these are natural laws that are written on the human heart but they don't come automatically to mind as one is leading his life and feeding his family so that because the average citizen is not a

political philosopher and doesn't spend much of his time thinking along these lines we need a text we need a set of texts that say these things are off limits in a free society and there are few of them in the Constitution as you know there's a prohibition on bills of a tinder or ex post facto laws and so on and so forth no can have no aristocracy no genetic aristocracy in the United States and and so on and so forth only native born citizens can be president to the United States but that wasn't enough in my view and so I wanted a clear concise charter of the rights of man and I wasn't alone most Americans did the founding fathers had considered it unnecessary and so I wrote to Madison we had a long correspondence arguing about this in a friendly way no no ranker of course and finally he was pressed by me and by other friends and by the people of Virginia and he agreed to do it and he made a pledge that if the people would

ratify the Constitution unconditionally that he would then voluntarily propose a set of amendments a bill of rights and the people did with some misgiving because of course once the Constitution were ratified Madison would have been would have been possible for him to rain egg upon that promise or to do it in a half-hearted way but he didn't in the first Congress of the United States he was not a senator he was a congressman and he almost immediately stood up and said that way I've made this pledge the people want this the people deserve this we're going to have a bill of rights and he took the lead and he wrote the bill of rights and the first ten amendments to the Constitution which in my opinion are the glory of American jurisprudence and the glory of American natural law maybe the most important document in human history that document was produced by none other than James Madison of Virginia thank you sir so you become president 18 oh one in 1801 and mr. Madison is your secretary of state

yes because I wanted harmony in my cabinet you had learned from John I've learned from the first two administrations and poor Adams you know I loved Adams I loved Adams more than I love Madison but I liked Madison much more than I liked Adams and I respected Madison more than I respected Adams but I loved John Adams because John Adams is this crabby vein but extremely candid and affectionate man there's more to love you know my my friendship with with Madison was characterized by reserve and civility and a certain detachment shared vision deep friendship but we were not the kind of people who laughed and went fishing he never lectured you he never he never lectured me when he thought that I was completely wrong as say in my proposal to tear up the Constitution every 19 years I wrote him a letter from Paris outlining this and he wrote back and said this is maybe the greatest idea in human history and you are a philosopher of the deepest sort and this is exactly what

natural law would tell us we need but mr. Jefferson because we don't live in in a in a platonic world of ideas and we live in a real world of men perhaps I could point out a small number of of difficulties in the implementation of your idea then he would go on to destroy it with a ten-point argument that just completely shattered my thinking and then he would say having said that I apologize because I realize this is the greatest idea in human history so he had that grace and he never said what Adams would have said Adams would have said this is insane you're you're you're an idiot you how could you have how could you be so pure is to propose something this ridiculous but Madison would never say this is brilliant idea my friend for for a philosophical nation but not all of us are philosophers of your stamps or so there was the difference between the bottom at any rate Madison is my closest friend and we have an identical vision and when I became president I selected my cabinet very

carefully but I knew two things Madison would be Secretary of State and Gallatin of Pennsylvania Swiss-born Albert Gallatin would be my financier at Secretary of the Treasury and he would be and I think he was greater even than Colonel Hamilton in that office it's quite natural that Madison should be your successor after you complete two terms as president of the United States in fact you did everything you could to assure that he was your successor of course because he was the first of all the Secretary of State ship was the the seat from which presidents were emerging I had been Secretary of State now he's Secretary of State the vice presidency was already kind of a non-entity that was a very dangerous path to the presidency Adams made it but he was one of the few as you know most vice presidents do not ascend to the presidency of the United States it's interesting when mr. Madison assumes the office of president he behaves in a way that I think is is uncharacteristic of an enlightened human being how might that be he gives himself over to war fever

and to expansionism he casts his eye to the north he wants Canada oh why and we don't you think we should have Canada but it would seem to me you you denying the particularly you particularly mr. Jefferson are always talking about peace as an enlightened and a great good and mr. Madison went out of his way to wage a war and of course it made him an extraordinarily popular man even though the war was badly botched and the capital was sacked there was that how do you how he was not to war man he was not a general how do you justify this chink in his in his character this is not a chink in his character in your in your your deliberately mischaracterizing mr. Madison's response here's what really happened the British had a huge navy because they were fighting a war of national survival against Bonaparte and they the the British were not as you know and you know this very well that the British were notoriously severe with their navy operatives if you if you were a young man in the navy you were

flogged you might get scurvy you were gone forever you were deprived of many comforts the the harshness was just appalling and I mean this is true and and the problem was that many British navy operatives would desert and at ports and get onto American ships because the conditions were better they weren't great but they were much much better than in these in the British Royal Navy and the problem was that how do you tell the difference between an American and a Brit at this point there were no passports at this point and so these this young man probably born in Birmingham or Southampton technically British decides to go over to American merchant ships and the British can I mean literally could not survive this war of national survival if they lost more than X percent of their of their navy personnel to American ships to desertion and so what the British would do as a matter of survival I'm giving the British the best case I

can for this as a matter of national survival the British would board stop and board our merchant ships and examine each of the men and if they found a man that they recognized as a deserter or somebody that they thought was British enough that they could get away with it they would impress him that is enslave him effectively and take him back into the British Navy where he would be beaten severely but then and maybe kept in chains but put back into that world and in doing so they were doing two things they were violating the rights of our innocent ship personnel because many of these were Americans not British and they were violating international law of stopping neutral ships trading on the on the high seas weren't doing the same thing at that time yes they were but why didn't we declare war on France well we we were angry with the French and we were here's the mistake that Madison and I made we made a secretary he a secretary state and I as president we made one terrible mistake we thought that our economy was so important that we could play off these two world powers against each other so that they would treat us better and we made it clear

that whoever treated us better first we would side with in the war until the other one treated us better so we thought we could actually leverage up their behavior by pitting them against each other and so we were at times sort of moving towards France at times moving towards Britain at times responding angrily to to French impressment which was never what it was for the English because of course a Frenchman is not an English-speaking person a sailor is a sailor but but if he's French you know it I mean there's you you don't know that it was between the damned Yankee and a Brit but you know that it was been a frog and a Brit or an American but as I understand it the French would take English semen or American semen as readily as they would take you take my point it was intolerable and so when I was president I had to choose in 187 surrender to this which is you cannot have an international trading enterprise when hostile nations board your ships and steal your personnel I could surrender to that it would be humiliation and economic catastrophe I could go to war and that's what eventually Mr. Madison did I did not want to do that for a

number of reasons or I could try a third thing a tertium quid as we say in Latin and the tertium quid was proposed to me by none other than my secretary of state James Madison who had this notion all of his life that an economic embargo was the ideal and he persuaded me on this thing I was sort of in favor of it in a way but much more reluctant than he was so we passed the embargo legislation which created a total economic embargo of all things out and all things in irrespective of where they were headed I thought this was I mean I I was always a little reluctant but I was certainly in favor of it as an alternative to number one and two which are surrender or war and it turned out to be a disaster the economy plummeted there was widespread piracy and lawlessness in order to enforce this through Albert Gallatin's Treasury Department we had to adopt virtually despotic search and seizure procedures it put me in a bad light it gave me more executive power than any president up until the Civil War it

violated all of my principles I violated the Fourth Amendment in doing this I became self-righteous about it Madison was a dog at about it it was a it was a disaster and the last act of my presidency was the repeal of the embargo on the day that I left office and as a consequence when Mr. Madison was entered the presidency he was he was very unpopular and he had to face the same issue a war a war was declared which really I think many have argued was really a war of expansion it was with the desire to take the north or to wrong it was a war of the second war of national independence because we we had to Madison finally thought war is better than all of this other stuff the English as I recall were not invading the United States until after they were crushing all sailors on the high seas thus violating international law so Madison finally decides war is preferable he's been pushed by the west it's true Henry Clay and and the western hawks largely for reasons of land expansion

are pushing for this war because the British still have a strong presence in Detroit and in the Chicago area and in the Northwest forts and they're violating our our sovereignty with their Northwest Company and Hudson's Bay Trading Company activities and they're inciting the Indians who are always peaceful otherwise to attack American families and so the western war hawks led by Henry Clay wanted war there's no question about that Madison wanted peace with vis-a-vis written in France they called it Mr. Madison's war not Mr. Clay's war he finally talks Congress into declaring war in 1812 and June but then the first thing he wanted to do and I congratulate him for this is to invade Canada and get it over with once and for all that didn't work we lost Canada we disastrous invasion of Canada bungled generals I think the general should have been hanged and a bungled campaign on the eastern seaboard but eventually didn't dolly Madison go running out of the White House with the the British didn't

with the Portrait of George Washington in her hands you know what I said about that I said that what the British did with our with the White House and the National Capitol and burning down the Library of Congress and so on would justify our torching the entire city of London to the earth an active barbarism in the 18th and early 19th century shocking that the British would behave this way you know it's interesting even though Mr. Madison went to war more or less voluntarily and super intended it terribly he left office with the highest popularity rate in the history of the American presidency and the war got better actually the we started to actually win some battles and especially after the peace had been declared the battle of New Orleans well but even before that the battles of the Great Lakes and we our inland navy got pretty good and we started to defeat the British and we were holding our own and the British had a world war going on somewhere else so they couldn't actually attend to this very significantly and finally the British realized they weren't going to get very far with this so they proposed peace and we met

them and and the treaty was a just one it was sort of restored the status quo anti-bellum the state of things before the war but but by by virtue of our survival against the world's greatest navy we had now twice defeated them in a sense and we never had any trouble with Britain again and it's living proof that by going to war a president can be popular John Adams avoided war did it heroically and was castigated James Madison did it voluntarily and was celebrated and it's probably for that reason that Adams himself said in one of his letters to you that Madison was the greatest of all presidents up to that point that was a little calling to me Madison says that he'd done more glory than all of the predecessors put together including yourself yourself me and George Washington says Madison for he said for all of his grievous faults and terrible weaknesses of character and administration and fundamentally misguided policy so he had to heap on a whole core and abuse he said for all of that he was

the better that all of you put together all of us put together that was a letter that he wrote in 1812 at the end of the war very amusing letter and of course as usual as much offensive as it was amusing but Madison became highly popular and he served out as two terms and then of course we handed it on to the junior partner of the trio James Monroe who had wound up as the secretary of state for who took your advice and settled within I shot he did live near me and I actually helped him design his place but here's the interesting thing we hadn't talked about in 1808 when I was leaving the presidency voluntarily unlike Adams Monroe was pushed forward by the radical agrarian Republicans to compete with Madison I had intended Madison to be the fourth president and Monroe would be fifth but the radicals were disenchanted with me because I was so moderate as president and you might say I was quasi Hamiltonian as president but I was quite

moderate as president I disappointed the radical Republicans you yourself said you violated the fourth amendment once or twice but they pushed forward Monroe to compete with Madison and here's how I stopped it I heard about this and I let it go on for a while and then I wrote to each one of them and I almost identical letter and I and I wrote something like I have seen with infinite sadness the possibility of an unnatural contest rising between two people both of whom I respect deeply and they stopped Monroe Monroe drew his candidacy on that letter alone that's power I think it's guilt mr. Jefferson no it's it's wonderful because then Monroe knew you'll get your chance you'll get your chance and at first he was uncooperative with with James Madison but eventually he became a secretary of state Madison retires an enormous popularity in 1816 and the fifth president is another Virginian James Monroe and the greatest Republican of them all follows Andrew Jackson the victor the butcher of New Orleans man holy

unfit for the presidency mr. Jefferson will return in just a moment and talk with Clay Jenkinson your alter ego about James Madison you have been listening to the Thomas Jefferson hour please stay tuned we will be back in just a moment welcome back to the Thomas Jefferson hour seated across from me as Clay Jenkinson who as Thomas Jefferson was getting a little bit defensive I was

not mr. Jenkins and I I certainly am only bringing these issues to the surface I'm not attempting to have a polemic behind it certainly not what issues do you bring the surface I find it interesting that this party that you know that is the party of peace waged offensive and aggressive war I mean I think the issue of impressment had been going on forever the second war of national independence also with a very serious invasion of Canada that failed utterly utterly actually as a as a commander in chief I think Madison is one of the world's worst well we survived and his popularity rose and this is what Gary Will says in a wonderful new book about this by the way Gary Willes has a short study of Madison's character before and during the presidency and the great public historian and Northwestern University history professor Gary Willes says that Madison was a man of many faults and he had a stubborn streak and he had a

real kind of a vindictive political streak that Jeffrey not even Jefferson had and that he drove Jefferson into a greater partisanship than then Jefferson wanted especially on that key letter you're talking about that Jefferson drafted for James Madison to look at before sending on to president Adams and Gary Willes at the end of this book says okay Madison had his faults but he's the only president in American history who fought a major war without violating the Bill of Rights that his record is extraordinary in his constitutionalism and that this is Lincoln didn't do this Jefferson didn't do this Johnson didn't do this Kennedy didn't do this Nixon didn't do this FDR didn't do this Wilson didn't do this but Madison did well it's hard to govern when you run out of the nation's cap well come on give the guy a break you should think that that's quite honorable I do think that's quite honorable I'm here again I'm a Paul though that the party that that wrapped itself in the rhetoric of peace and tranquility is the party that was so quick to wage offensive war listen to this

though Gary Willes page and I agree about offensive war 164 among the nation's founders only two were more important Washington and Franklin as a framer and defender of the Constitution Madison had no peer the finest part of Madison's performance as as president was his concern for preserving the Constitution is a champion of religious liberty he is equal perhaps superior to Jefferson and no one else is even in the running even if he is to be considered merely as a writer only Jefferson and Franklin were manifestly greater stylists no man could do everything for the country not even Washington Madison did more than most and did some things better than any that is quite enough that's the conclusion of Gary Willes really splendid little book James Madison published last year I must say one of the things that troubled me as I read that same conclusion though is the realization that really going to war is never an unpopular thing that that's a that's a troubling thing in my soul

these days these days of course because we are again at war and have been built you know as I think all of our listeners are now aware you are taking on the character of John Adams and may I say getting grumpier by the week but but what was Adam's view of the great little Madison he had a great deal of respect for him I think he understood that he was a wise man and I think even if it was never said in the mind of John Adams at any rate he would have seen a good deal of what was done in the fashioning of the Constitution as drawing from what he himself Adams had done in the Commonwealth Constitution in Massachusetts of the Constitution's his big book it's one of one of many big books that he wrote I think Adams would see that that Madison had used good sense in fashioning the American Constitution and would I think probably assume that he had learned from it not immotic I love that though I taught him everything I know he didn't

get it quite right buddy so I think there was a great deal of respect there and when Adams returned to the United States Jefferson still in Europe wrote a letter to Madison urging him to embrace John Adams and describing him in a in a wonderful fashion and saying I'm sure you'll love him well there's no evidence that that ever happened I don't think Madison reciprocated I think as Mr. Jefferson was saying earlier in the program the thing that he liked about Adams this sort of warts and all approach to life this humanity his humanity was something that I don't think Adams could or that Madison could truly appreciate the what's all amazing about the friendship of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to me is that their best friends there they've been called the great collaborators they formed a partnership which was the most successful political partnership of the early national period in the United States and yet I don't see any particular warmth of friendship between them I can't think of them enjoying life in the way that Adams enjoyed life on a daily basis there's a

reserve it's a it's a deep reserve and even their last letters to each other which are basically saying I love you man but they're so weak they're so they're so cautious and you know the the friendship which has subsisted between us now five decades has never known a single moment of displeasure that's pretty weak for two two old men one dying saying farewell to each other certainly then in the correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson there's a different tone at least from Adam's standpoint there's more love and more hate not from Jefferson Adams's role I mean Adams is just saying here's what I'm feeling I'll tell you how I feel but it's interesting the thing that in this one letter where he says Madison Madison is the best of presidents can you quote that yes I can the thing that is so touching and the thing that is the basis I think in Adams mind at that moment for uniting Jefferson and himself is the fact that they both have children and that Madison is childless here's what he

has to say I pity this is in 1817 he says I I pity our good brother Madison you and I have children and grandchildren and great grandchildren though they have cost us grief anxiety often vexation and sometimes humiliation yet it has been cheering to have them hovering about us and I verily believe they have contributed largely to keep us alive books cannot always expel on we I therefore pity brother Madison and especially his lady I pity him the more because notwithstanding a thousand faults and blunders his administration has acquired more glory and established more union than all his three predecessors Washington Adams and Jefferson put together that's a great letter and you know I just reminded me that that James Madison married Dolly Madison when he was 43 and she was 26 and she was a widow and she had this son and the son grew up that's I forgotten his name

John Paine Todd I think and he was a gambler and a waste role in a womanizer so here's poor James Madison this little shriveled guy he gets a stepson and the stepson is just the opposite of the spectrum of what he is and he's paying off his gambling debts and he's getting a lot of scrapes right and left that had to be some marriage and Dolly Madison weighs about three times what James Madison weighs and she would wear ostrich feathers in her hats and she would wear these one of the foreign ministers said she was just plain fat but she had this she would have this these busomy gowns and she was way over the top and was just a much larger than life figure and here's her little husband kind of sitting nearby watching this unfold this had to be quite a little domestic arena you know I love that letter that you that you quote of of Adams to Jefferson about the childless Madison but here was Jefferson's response on May 5th 1817 and you can hear this he did this did not set well this criticism of his best friend I do not entertain your apprehensions for the happiness of our brother Madison

quoting Adams in a state of retirement such a mind is his fraught with information with matter for reflection can never know on we besides there will always be work enough cut out for him to continue his active usefulness to his country for example he and Monroe the president are now here on the work of a collegiate institution to be established in our neighborhood of which they and myself are three of six visitors this if it succeeds will raise up children for mr. Madison to employ his attentions through life I say if it succeeds where we have very two essential wants in our way so Jefferson saying his children are his legacy and Jefferson defends Madison and that's as angry as Jefferson can ever get but you can see that he did not like that little jib because he twice quotes Adams back at himself you see and I don't think Adams was intending to to jib him at all he was stating something that he considered an existential fact well this this corresponded we don't want to talk about Adams and Jefferson

today but their course wants is so great because Jefferson will say something like politics is over now that myself and my protege has taken over the country and then Adams will write back a letter and he'll say take all the politicians in America put them in a bag and shake it and son of a bitch will come out no matter how you do Jefferson can't stand this kind of cynicism because Jefferson thinks utopia has come now that the federalists are gone and that they were corrupt but my guys the Republicans are honorable and speak for the country but finally Andrew Jackson comes comes into the picture and Jefferson can no longer even maintain the fiction no equanimity so Madison Jefferson Adams is quite a little group and I think Adams must have had some manner of satisfaction when after the the greatest of the Republicans and other Adams comes into the White House JQ Adams yes sir Jefferson worked actively against the election of JQ Adams and then sort of disingenuously sent a very full some letter of praise to John Adams on the election of JQ Adams in 1824 well

there's I'm glad you as the scholar will admit it to us Jefferson was disingenuous John Quincy Adams became president of the United States I think he was the sixth president he was the sixth Madison fourth Monroe fifth to 1824 then Jackson then oh no no no no no no no no it's not forgive us it's JQ and then Andy John Quincy Adams the son of John Adams the president the first father son presidential team were living through the second one now but John Adams was the second president John Quincy Adams was the sixth president and Andrew Jackson was the seventh president to the United States so let's go backwards Andrew Jackson two terms John Quincy Adams one term beginning in 1824 James Monroe two terms beginning in 1816 James Madison two terms beginning in 1888 Thomas Jefferson two terms beginning in 1800 John Adams senior one term beginning in 1796 and of course the founding father George

Washington two terms and I still have a couple of fingers left I can always use my toes who's the who's who comes after Andrew Jackson I don't know it's bad isn't it well I while I looked this up it's Martin Van Buren while I looked this up you were singing a ditty about oh 1812 that was the old let's hear it no I'm not going to see you here no one's paying me to do I will I'll gladly pay you two stay give us a give us a stanza the old Johnny Horton yeah that's here battle of new Orleans don't you remember that song no I want you to remember well it's well ahead of your time I was Janie just threw me a dollar that's enough come on give us a shot in 1814 I took my little trip along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississippi I took a little bacon I think it's we actually we took a little beans and we met the bloody British in a town called New Orleans more more we fired once more and the British kept it coming there wasn't not as many

as there was a while ago we fired once more and they began to run it down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico brilliant you're not going to get another verse that's it but it goes on I believe it's something yeah yeah he also sank the Bismarck don't you remember that the Johnny Horton no yes we got to sink the Bismarck the world depends on us I had no idea you had this hidden talent James you should have seen it what do you think John Adams would have felt if he had known that Madison was actively working against Jefferson's reconciliation with Adam you know it's funny we we talk about the cynical Adams but in a lot of ways Adams was not cynical enough if Adams could have known what his own cabinet was doing and what Jefferson and Madison were doing behind the scenes to undermine his presidency I think he would have been righteously indignant and I think what have had a reason to do so famous lost moment in American history kind of a what if moment Bill they can people can go to our website of course as always we're always eager for them to go to WWW.TH hyphen

Jefferson dot org let me recommend a couple of books on James Madison the one that I have been recommending is is relatively new Gary Will's this maybe our greatest public historian at the moment it's called James Madison very interesting somewhat I think controversial view of of Madison also Drew McCoy who's a superb scholar has written a book called The Last of the Fathers James Madison and the Republican legacy it's been out for a long time Drew McCoy the Last of the Fathers James Madison and the Republican legacy and he writes about how Madison tried among other things to keep Jefferson's reputation intact during the millification crisis that was looming in the 1830s when Southerners were using Jefferson's most radical pronouncements to protect slavery and Southern provincialism it's a brilliant book so Madison is well written about Irving Brandt wrote the famous multi-volume study of James Madison he's getting a lot of attention these days James Madison if you want to read books by James Madison he of course is

featured in the library of America series his writings and Madison also wrote the bulk of the Federalist papers and any addition of the Federalist papers will have him and the Madison Jefferson correspondence is certainly illuminating as well by Smith exactly Bill this has been fun Madison's extraordinary I think indeed indeed I didn't realize he and Jefferson were the first machine politician here we go I can we'll see you next week for another exciting edition of the Thomas Jefferson Hour good day thank you for listening to the Thomas Jefferson Hour the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities in Denver Colorado will be sponsoring John and Abigail Adams the first political couple on February 19th 2004 please check our website www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org for more information again that is www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org music for this program is provided by Stephen Swinford

Irino Nevada Janie Glow is the producer of the program and he and Anderson is the editing technician the Thomas Jefferson Hour is funded by High Plains Public Radio and New Enlightenment Radio Network and nonprofit organization dedicated to the search for truth and the tradition of Thomas Jefferson if you would like to ask mr. Jefferson a question or donate nine dollars and receive a copy of today's program on CD please call 1-800-274-1240 1-800-274-1240 we apologize but we do not provide written transcripts of our programs Thomas Jefferson is portrayed by humanity scholar and author Clay S. Stinson the host of today's program was Bill Crystal a minister of the first congregational church of Reno Nevada please check our website for information about upcoming performances www.th hyphen Jefferson dot org please join us again next week for another entertaining and historically accurate conversation through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson