James Madison

James Madison

When Thomas Jefferson announced his retirement, his secretary of state and the

'Father of the Constitution,' James Madison, was easily elected the fourth

president of the United States, continuing the Virginia dynasty. He inherited a mess.

The economy was struggling, he essentially had a war on two fronts and

the political system was in shambles. Sounds like the kind of problems modern

presidents have had to deal with.

First, let's go back - back to the beginning. Native Americans had lived

up and down the East Coast until Europeans came. Ever since that time, they'd been pushed steadily westward

into conflict with whites and each other. They had been safe beyond the

Proclamation Line after 1763, but then the 1783 Treaty of Paris delivered all of

that land into American hands, and white settlers poured in.

It seemed there was nowhere safe for many tribes to go. Native Americans found themselves

faced with a dilemma: join 'em or beat 'em? Madison had taken office when a group based in present-day Indiana finally decided to try and beat 'em.

A Shawnee leader named Tecumseh and his brother (who was commonly called

'The Prophet') organized a social network to revive native religion, resist

all white ways and oppose the U.S. government. They believed they would gain a northwest state for themselves.

After building Prophetstown at the junction of the Tippecanoe and Wabash

Rivers, they began attacking settlements.

The governor of the newly created Indiana Territory was General (and

future president) William Henry Harrison. After learning that the British were supplying money and weapons to

Tecumseh, Harrison attacked and destroyed Prophetstown at the Battle of Tippecanoe. However, the resistance and

attacks on settlements continued on as part of the broader War of 1812 until

Tecumseh himself was killed.

Madison's Trouble in the EastThe War of 1812 is kind of a black hole in American history. Most people know that it happened, but not many people

seem to know anything about it. So let's start with some big things: Two future presidents were heroes of the War of 1812. The White House was burned

down. America's national anthem, the 'Star-Spangled Banner', was written

during one of its battles.

And, it's why the Native Americans ended up west of the Mississippi

River. If you can accept that these events make the War of 1812 worth

understanding, maybe you can believe that this so-called 'second

war of independence' is when Britain finally acknowledged that

the United States had grown up and moved out, so to speak.

Since taking office, Madison had been trying to maintain U.S.

neutrality in the Napoleonic Wars. But Britain seemed determined to drag its former colonies into war. Congress lifted the Embargo Act

of 1807, but then Britain interfered to keep America from

trading with France.

More importantly, the British navy had a desertion problem. Many

sailors who had been pressed into service jumped ship as soon as they

had the chance, so for years the British fleet had been stopping

American ships to search for their deserters, sometimes pressing

American citizens into service to boot.

The trade restrictions and impressment controversy were

frustrating, but each of them alone wasn't really enough for President Madison to want to declare war on

Britain. But then you add in the fact that Britain had been helping the Indians fight on the frontier, and

together all of these factors were just a little too much for some people.

The so-called 'War Hawks' in Congress convinced President

Madison to declare war in June 1812. Federalists in the Northeast

strongly opposed the war, but they didn't have enough clout to keep the President from being

reelected that year.

Fighting the War of 1812President Madison hadn't really

been prepared for a prolonged war. He was under the delusion that with Britain at war with France, the state

militias could easily capture Canada, and a treaty would quickly follow. But Britain had its own army

and navy, plus the coalition under Tecumseh and Canadian troops.

The invasion of Canada was a total failure. But three battles in 1813 did

help the U.S. get control of the western frontier. First, William Henry Harrison secured Detroit and finally defeated Tecumseh in the same fight. Then Commodore Oliver Perry captured an entire

British naval squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie.

Farther south, General (and another future president)

Andrew Jackson defeated the Creek nation in 1814, subduing

the Indian resistance. It wasn't a moment too soon for the

Americans, since the war in the East was about to get a lot more

difficult.

Britain's Royal Navy had finally run Napoleon out of town and put

France in its place. Now they turned all of their attention to fighting America. The British

navy waged fierce war at sea, and troops poured into the East Coast,

fighting costly battles against weak American militia forces.

They set fire to Washington, D.C., including the Capitol building and the White House. Thankfully, most

of the city was saved by a freak rainstorm, and the president's wife, Dolly Madison, had the foresight to rescue some treasured items from

their home, including George Washington's portrait and possibly an original copy of the Constitution.

Next, the British navy tried to capture the strategic city of Baltimore, blasting

Ft. McHenry all day and most of the night. An American lawyer named

Francis Scott Key had crossed enemy lines to negotiate a prisoner exchange and was being held on a British ship throughout the battle. He watched

intently, but when the barrage stopped, it was too dark for him to see whose flag

was flying over the fort.

Had the British barrage stopped because the walls had been

breached, or had they given up? He wouldn't be able to tell until dawn. When he saw an American flag in the morning, he was inspired to

write a poem, which was later set to music, and the first verse became

America's national anthem in 1916.

Ending the War of 1812Three events began to unfold

simultaneously. Leaders on both sides could see that neither side had much to gain by continuing the war, so diplomats in Ghent (called Belgium today) started

talking peace. But few people in America knew about that.

Federalists in New England, who had opposed the war from the

beginning, met to discuss seceding from the Union. They planned to

form a new nation and negotiate a favorable peace treaty with

Britain on their own. Also, at the same time, a British fleet was heading toward New Orleans.

The first of these parties to conclude their business were the diplomats in

Ghent. They reached an agreement on Christmas Eve 1814, and the Treaty of

Ghent essentially returned everything to the way it had been before the war

started. Britain abandoned their Indian allies once again but did pay the U.S.

government for a number of slaves who had escaped to Canada.

But news traveled slowly from Europe to America back then, and the British threw everything they had at New

Orleans, intending to seize control of the Mississippi River. Andrew Jackson

mounted a seemingly miraculous defense with a force made up of state militia, pirates, free blacks and a few regular army soldiers. He killed the British

general in charge and won the Battle of New Orleans.

News of the victory reached Washington about the same time that news of the Treaty of Ghent

arrived, and as it just so happened, that was exactly when the New

England Federalists were about to deliver their secession demands to the President. That was the end of the Federalist Party in America.

Congress ratified the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 1815. Despite heavy casualties and

gaining basically nothing, the U.S. felt they had defended themselves in

a second war of independence against Britain, boosting American self-confidence and nationalism. An 'Era of Good Feelings' was about to

begin.

The Era of Good FeelingsDespite enduring a total naval blockade and heavy losses, many Americans felt

that the nation had won the War of 1812. General Andrew Jackson's ragtag force

of free blacks, pirates and militia defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans after the Treaty of Ghent was

signed, but Americans didn't know that at the time.

It certainly appeared that Jackson's heroic victory, on the

heels of Britain's failed invasion of Baltimore, had forced the British to

surrender. Federalists who had intended to secede New England in

protest over the war were thoroughly discredited and their party gone for good from federal

politics.

Once America was done fighting the British, it could turn its attention to an old

problem: Barbary Pirates. Though Jefferson had trounced them a decade

earlier, the American military had been kind of busy during the War of 1812, and

this left merchant ships in the Mediterranean vulnerable once again. The

pirates were back to their old tricks of capturing cargo and crew, holding them for ransom or selling them into slavery.

So when the War of 1812 was over, Madison dispatched the navy back to the

North African Coast for the Second Barbary War, which lasted about two weeks. The U.S. navy captured every

Algerian ship it encountered, and by the time they had reached Algiers, threatened to destroy the city if all Christian captives (both American and European) were not

immediately released and the value of seized cargo wasn't reimbursed.

The treaty signed onboard an American ship in 1815 ended

America's pirate problem in the Mediterranean for good. By

outward appearances, there was consensus in politics, improvement in the economy and peace abroad. It was the beginning of the Era of

Good Feelings.

Madison's Economic ReformsOf course, things aren't always as good

as they seem. The Democratic-Republicans might have been the only

viable political party on a national level, but the nation was actually deeply

divided over several issues, especially its finances. At first, President Madison wanted to keep going down the road

Jefferson had taken, undoing some of Hamilton's economic policies.

For example, the Democratic-Republicans had totally opposed the Bank of the United States. Madison

allowed the Bank's 20-year charter to expire during his first term, and he

refused to sign a bill that reauthorized it. The party had believed that a national bank was unconstitutional and that it

threatened to concentrate financial power with the elite at the expense of

yeoman farmers.

But then came the War of 1812, and Madison realized just how difficult it was to finance a war without a national bank, so he finally signed a bill chartering the Second Bank of the United

States, which helped stabilize the economy.

America's economic system today is so interwoven with the Federal Reserve

that it's difficult to conceive of the nation without a national bank. But Madison's

next two moves are a little easier to imagine: taxes and highways. Madison announced his support for Speaker of

the House Henry Clay's American System, which included a protective

tariff and several internal improvements.

The tariff was designed to encourage the purchase of

domestic goods and was only approved for three years. The internal improvements were

roads and canals that Madison said would 'bind more closely

together the various parts of our extended confederacy.'

Now today, some people seem to like taking the scenic route. But most of the time, if you need to just get somewhere efficiently, you take the interstate, right? And you probably know that

before there were interstates and airplanes, people took trains.

We take for granted that the federal government pays for this kind of internal

improvement, but many, many Americans back then thought this was a massive overreach of power, and internal

improvements became one of the most divisive political issues of the 19th

century. But for the time being, things seemed pretty good for Americans - as

long as they were white.

Subduing MinoritiesWhen President Madison first took office, he promoted a view of Native Americans that was sort of childlike: 'They might be savages, but it's only because they don't

know any better. So we have to help them.' To his credit, Madison met with

representatives of many nations on several occasions and actually ordered the Army at one point to protect their lands

from encroaching settlers.

But this only lasted until the Battle of Tippecanoe, part of the western conflict leading up to the War of

1812. After that, Native Americans in the Midwest were forced off

their land and pushed even farther west. Farther south, a British fort

in Florida had been offered to displaced Native Americans.

When they refused it, the fort was occupied by fugitive slaves. Though this was British land, the U.S. government

was concerned that the so-called 'Negro Fort' would encourage more slaves to

escape south. So in 1816, the army provoked the fort, and after a garrison fired a cannon, the army destroyed the

fort and most of the families inside.