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from Bristol, Rhode Island, and the Ameri-can, from Salem, Massachusetts, each wonover $1 million in booty. Thomas Boyle, ofBaltimore, took his Comet into British

waters and won 40 hit-and-run skirmishes,and then outrageously declared Britain to beblockaded. Americas mosquito fleet demor-alized the Royal Navy and forced Britain toconvoy all of their trade in the AtlanticOcean.

The U.S. army, of course, needed cash fortroops and arms. Madison, as co-author ofThe Federalist Papers, was suspicious of cen-tralized power and argued persuasively forlimited government at the constitutionalconvention. He tried to avoid taxing to sup-port the war, calling it a dangerous prece-dent and a recipe for waste and a permanentbureaucracy. Instead, he worked with Con-gress and the Treasury to float about $80million in government bonds; he urged pri-vate citizens to invest in their troops, and hefunded most of the war doing that.

In an emergency bond drive in 1813, aftera series of U.S. military defeats, four immi-grants stepped up with over $9 million incash to keep their adopted country inthe fight. These menGerman-born John

Jacob Astor and David Parish, French-bornStephen Girard, and English-born AlexanderDallasrisked their wealth to defend the lib-erty they had used in building their fortunes.

White House Burned

During the war the army lost many bat-tles, and some critics have faulted Madisonfor appointing weak generals. Its true thatthe Canadians captured Detroit, defendedNiagara, and repelled American advances onCanadian soil. Then British troops, freshfrom defeating Napoleon, invaded America,burned the White House, and chased offi-cials out of Washington, D. C.

But Madison recovered well. He had at

first appointed veterans of the Revolutionary

War, men who were senior officers. They didpoorly. But by the summer of 1814, he hadyounger men in charge, and the UnitedStates lost no major battle after that.

Madison handled adversity in a way thatpreserved individual liberty. When politicalopponents attacked him for military set-backs, he never jailed them, deported them,or shut down their newspapersas didfuture war presidents. Even when hostileFederalists met to consider secession, Madi-son never interfered with their civil liberties,or those of anyone else. He asked aliens toregister, and that was it.

Fighting a constitutional war was some-times awkward and disjointed, but it ulti-mately succeeded. Madison, who had beensecond-guessed during the fighting, wascommended afterward. His decision to con-duct the war in an atmosphere of liberty hadhelped unify the nation and it proved popu-lar at the polls. His Republican Party gainedseats on the Federalists in the off-year elec-tions in 1814. Two years later, James Mon-roe, Madisons loyal secretary of state, wonthe presidency in a landslide that caused theembarrassed Federalists to virtually disbandas a political party.

In Madisons last year in office, he sup-ported a revenue tariff, not direct taxes, tohelp pay back the loyal immigrant bond-holders. Within 20 years, not only was thewar paid off but so was the entire nationaldebt. The federal government was returninga surplus to the states.

Marshall Smelser, a historian of the earlyRepublic, ably summarized Madisons warpresidency this way: Madisons conducthas brought him condemnation as a weak-ling. Actually, the father of the Constitutionwas following his conviction that policymust rise from the people through theirbranch of government. . . . It is hardly amark of weakness to take a firm view of thenature of the Constitution and to operate

from it as a principle.

Ideas on Liberty February 2003

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