Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/204

170 alien and sedition laws unconstitutional, and in- vited the other states to join in the declaration. Not meeting with a favorable response, Virginia renewed these resolutions the next year. There was nothing necessarily seditious, or tending toward secession, in the Virginia resolutions ; but the atti- tude assumed in them was uncalled for on the part of any state, inasmuch as there existed, in the Fed- eral supreme court, a tribunal competent to decide upon the constitutionality of acts of congress. The Kentucky resolutions went further. They declared that our Federal constitution was a compact, to which the several states were the one party and the Federal government was the other, and each party must decide for itself as to when the com- pact was infringed, and as to the proper remedy to be adopted. When the resolutions were repeated in 1799, a clause was added, which went still fur- ther and mentioned " nullification " as the suitable remedy, and one that any state might employ. In the Virginia resolutions there was neither mention nor intention of nullification as a remedy. Mr. Madison lived to witness South Carolina's attempt at nullification in 1832, and in a very able paper, written in the last year of his life, he conclusively refuted the idea that his resolutions of 1798 afforded any justification for such an attempt, and showed that what they really contemplated was a protest on the part of all the state governments in com- mon. Doubtless such a remedy was clumsy and impracticable, and the suggestion of it does not de- serve to be ranked along with Mr. Madison's best work in constructive statesmanship ; but it cer- tainly contained no logical basis for what its author unsparingly denounced as the " twin heresies " of nullification and secession.

In 1799 Mr. Madison was again elected a mem- ber of the Virginia assembly, and in 1801, at Mr. Jefferson's urgent desire, he became secretary of state. In accepting this appointment, he entered upon a new career, in many respects different from that which he had hitherto followed. His work as a constructive statesman, which was so great as to place him in the foremost rank among the men that have built tip nations, was by this time substantial- ly completed. During the next few years the con- stitutional, questions that had hitherto occupied him played a part subordinate to that played by questions of foreign policy, and in this new sphere Mr. Madison was not, by nature or training, fitted to exercise such a controlling influence as he had formerly brought to bear in the framing of our Federal government. As secretary of state, he was an able lieutenant to Mr. Jefferson, but his genius was not that of an executive officer so much as that of a law-giver. He brought his great historical and legal learning to bear in a paper entitled " An Examination of the British Doctrine which subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade not open in the Time of Peace."' But the troubled period that followed the rupture of the treaty of Amiens was not one in which legal arguments, however masterly, counted for much in bringing angry and insolent combat- ants to terms. In the gigantic struggle between England and Napoleon the commerce of the United States was ground to pieces as between the upper and the nether millstone, and in some respects there is no chapter in American history more pain- ful for an American citizen to read. The outrage- ous affair of the " Leopard " and the " Chesapeake " was but the most flagrant of a series of wrongs and insults, against which Jefferson's embargo was doubtless an absurd and feeble protest, but per- haps at the same time pardonable as the only weapon left us in that period of national weakness. Affairs were drawing slowly toward some kind of crisis when, at the expiration of Jefferson's second term, Mr. Madison was elected president of the United States by 12.2 electoral votes against 47 for Cotesworth Pinckney, and 6 for George Clinton, who received 113 votes for the vice-presidency, and was elected to that office. The opposition of the New England states to the embargo had by this time brought about its repeal, and the substitution for it of "the act declaring non-intercourse with England and France. By this time many of the most intelligent Federalists, including John Quiney Adams, had gone over to the Republicans. In 1810 congress repealed the non-intercourse act, which, as a measure of intimidation, had proved ineffec- tual. Congress now sought to use the threat of non- intercourse as a kind of bribe, and informed Eng- land and France that if either nation would repeal its obnoxious edicts, the non-intercourse act would be revived against the other. Napoleon took prompt advantage of this, and informed Mr. Madi- son's government that he had revoked his Berlin and Milan decrees as far as American ships were concerned ; but at the same time he gave secret orders by which the decrees were to be practically enforced as harshly as ever. The lie served its purpose, and congress revived the non-intercours& act as against Great Britain alone. In 1811 hos- tilities began on sea and land, in the affair of Tip- pecanoe and of the " President " and " Little Belt." The growing desire for war was shown in the choice of Henry Clay for speaker of the house of representatives, and Mr. Madison was nominated for a second term, on condition of adopting the war policy. On 18 June, 1812, war was declared, and before the autumn election a series of re- markable naval victories had made it popular. Mr. Madison was re-elected by 128 electoral votes against 89 for DeWitt Clinton^ of New York. The one absorbing event, which filled the greater part of his second term, was the war with Great Britain, which was marked by some brilliant victories and some grave disasters, including the capture of Washington by British troops, and the flight of the government from the national capital. What- ever opinion may be held as to the character of the war and its results, there is a general agreement that its management, on the part of the United States, was feeble. Mr. Madison was essentially a- man of peace, and as the manager of a great war he was conspicuously out of his element. The his- tory of that war plays a great part in the biogra- phies of the military and naval heroes that figured in it ; it is a cardinal event in the career of Andrew Jackson or Isaac Hull. In the biography of Madi- son it is an episode which may be passed over briefly. The greatest part of his career was fin- ished before he held the highest offices ; his re- nown will rest chiefly or entirely upon what he did before the beginning of the 19th century.

After the close of his second term in 1817, Mr. Madison retired to his estate at Montpelier, where he spent nearly twenty happy years with books and friends. This sweet and tranquil old age he had well earned by services to his fellow-creatures such as it is given to but few men to render. Among the founders of our nation, his place is beside that of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Marshall ; but his part was peculiar. He was preeminently the scholar, the profound, constructive thinker, and his limitations were such as belong to that character. He was modest, quiet, and reserved in manner, small in stature, neat and refined, courteous and amiable. In rough party strife there were many who could for the moment