Part 10 (2/2)
Jefferson the whole coast was blockaded fro Island Sound to the ton was taken, the shores of Chesapeake Bay were harassed and raided and devastated by a blockading force, till the people were reduced almost to the condition of a conquered country Two months before the British commanders, Ross and cockburn, went up the Potomac, Mr Gallatin, as then in London, had informed the President that the fleet was to be reinforced for that very purpose; but neither he nor Congress took any effective er so iaze across the Northern border, while only five hundred regular troops, a body of untrained militia who had never heard the whistle of a bullet, and a few gunboats on the Potoainst a British fleet, a thousand ton's best regi in one direction with the secretary of war, the secretary of state, and the general in co in another, with her reticule filled with silver spoons snatched up in haste as she left the White House;[15] behind theest navy yard in the country and of all the public buildings, but one, of the capital,--these incidents are an a commentary on the early assertion that invasion was not to be apprehended
The end of this wretched hich has been foolishly called the second war of independence, came four months afterward Never was a peace so welcoland was exhausted with the long contest with Napoleon; and now, that being over, as there was no practical question to differ about with the United States, theto listen to the de classes In Areat was the universal joy that the Federalists and the Deot their differences and their hates, and wept and laughed by turns in each other's arms and kissed each other like women One party was delivered froer, there seemed only one desperate and dreaded remedy; the other was overjoyed to back out of a blunder which was the straight and broad road to national ruin Of all lad for a safe deliverance froht and want of firmness Less than two years remained to hiotten and reat prosperity to be speedily achieved in the released energies of a vigorous and industrious people He had not again to choose between differing factions of his own party, nor to carry out a policy against the will of a formidable opposition To the Federalists hardly a naress of events at home and abroad; while all immediate vital questions of difference vanished, the party in power remained in almost undisputed ascendency The most important Democratic measures it then insisted upon were a national bank and a protective tariff To the establishainst his own conviction that any provision could be found for it in the Constitution; and a tariff, both for revenue and for the protection and encouragereed with his party was the true policy
For nearly twenty years after his retirement to Montpellier--a name which, with rare exceptions, he always spelled correctly, and not in the Ae to live a watchful observer of the prosperity of his country If it ever occurred to him in his secret soul that at the period of his preeave no sign He loved rather to remember and sometimes to recall to others the part he had taken in the nurture of the young republic in the feeble days of its infancy Of his own administration and the events of that time he had much less to say than of the true interpretation of the Constitution, of the intent of its framers, and the circumstances that influenced their deliberations His voluislator and a student of fundamental law; and on that, rather than on his ability and success as the chief istrate of the nation, rests his true fah passed in retirement, were not years of leisure ”I have rarely,” he wrote in 1827, ”during the period of my public life, found my time less at my disposal than since I took , that as my powers of application necessarily decline, the demands on them proportionally decrease” Much as he wrote upon questions of an earlier period, there were no topics of the current time that did not arouse his interest
Upon the subject of slavery he thought much and wrote et rid of it was a probleh it was one he always longed to see through, it never occurred to him that the way to abolish slavery was--to abolish it How kind he was as a s bears witness ”I never,” he says, ”saw hih he had over a hundred; neither would he allow an overseer to do it” He rebuked those ere in fault; but, adds Jennings, he would ”neverit before others”
It will be re a candidate for public office he refused to follow the universal Virginian habit of ”treating” the electors To the principle which governed hih life, and his letters show the warm interest he always took in every phase of the temperance movement ”I don't think he drank a quart of brandy in his whole life,” says Jennings A single glass of as all he ever took at dinner, and this he diluted ater, when, says the same witness, ”he had hard drinkers at his table who had put away his choice , considering the times, with even the most zealous of the modern supporters of that cause; but they must be quite satisfied to know that ”for the last fifteen years of his life he drank no wine at all” Consideration for his own health, always feeble, may have led him to this abstinence; but it is rather remarkable that a o, the advanced notions which he certainly did upon this question, and that the doubt only of the possibility of enforcing laws for prohibiting the manufacture and sale of spirits see them
Social as well as moral questions he discussed with evident interest and without passion or prejudice Aside froed to that school of dehest object of human exertion is to ihts which belong to all He did not agree with Robert Owen as to methods; but neither did he reject his schemes as inevitably absurd because they were new and untried One would not gather froht that this was the notorious fanny Wright whom the world chose to consider, as its way is, a disreputable and probably wicked woes in its social relations which she thought would be a gain He gave much attention to popular education, and all the influence he could coh all the later years of his life, to the establishinia
Education, he maintained, was the true foundation of civil liberty, and on it, therefore, rested the welfare and stability of the republic It is probable that he would have drawn a line at difference of color then, simply because of the difference of condition implied by color But he o he saw his way quite clearly on a question which is a sore trial now to many tihest education cannot, he said, ”be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science” The capacity, he assuht In short, he was ready always to consider fairly questions relating to the well-being of society which since his tiitated the country; and he approached them all much in the spirit of the reformer who hopes to leave the world a little better and happier because he has lived in it
”Mr Madison, I think,” says Paul Jennings, ”was one of the best entthe personal qualities of hi were more intimate than those of any other person could be except Mrs Madison ”He was guilty,” says Hildreth, ”of the greatest political wrong and crime which it is possible for the head of a nation to coentleman, always conscientious and considerate in his personal relations to other ed the public led in party ties and supposed party obligations, his moral sense blinded by the necessities of political compromises to reach party ends It is not i estih one is that of a servant, the other that of a learned and judicious historian
Mr Madison left a legacy of ”Advice to My Country,” to be read after his death and to ”be considered as issuing from the tomb, where truth alone can be respected, and the happiness of man alone consulted” It is the lesson of his life, as he wished his countrymen to understand it
”The advice,” he said, ”nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is, that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated Let the open enearded as a Pandora with her box opened, and the disguised one as the serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise” The thoughtful reader, as he turns to the first page of this volume to recall the date of Mr Madison's death, will hardly fail to note ho the years were before these open and disguised eneainst whom he warned his countrymen, were found only in that party which he had done so much, from the time of the adoption of the Constitution, to keep in power
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 15: Paul Jennings, as a slave and the body servant of Mr
Madison, says in his _Reminiscences_: ”It has often been stated in print, that when Mrs Madison escaped froe portrait of Washi+ngton (now in one of the parlors there) and carried it off This is totally false She had no tiet it down All she carried off was the silver in her reticule, as the British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected every moment
John Suse (a Frenchraw, the President's gardener, took it down and sent it off on a wagon, with soe silver urns and such other valuables as could hastily be got hold of When the British did arrive, they ate up the very dinner, and drank the wines, etc, that I had prepared for the President's party” On a previous page he had related that: ”Mrs
Madison ordered dinner to be ready at three as usual; I set the table ht up the ale, cider, and wine, and placed theentleers were expected”]