FOOTNOTES:
[1] Dr. Draper has kindly put into our hands the correspondence between himself and Mr. Madison, and we copy these genealogical notes in full, with the letter in which they were sent, as all that the ex-President had to say about his ancestry:—
Montpellier, February 1, 1834.
Dear Sir,—I have received your letter of December 31st, and inclose a sketch on the subject of it, made out by a member of the family.
With friendly respects,
James Madison.
"James Madison was the son of James Madison and Nelly Conway. He was born on the 5th of March, 1751 (O. S.), at Port Conway, on the Rappahannock River, where she was at the time on a visit to her mother residing there.
"His father was the son of Ambrose Madison and Frances Taylor. His mother was the daughter of Francis Conway and Rebecca Catlett.
"His paternal grandfather was the son of John Madison and Isabella Minor Todd. His paternal grandmother, the daughter of James Taylor and Martha Thompson.
"His maternal grandfather was the son of Edwin Conway and Elizabeth Thornton. His maternal grandmother, the daughter of John Catlett and ---- Gaines.
"His father was a planter, and dwelt on the estate now called Montpellier, where he died February 27, 1801, in the 78th year of his age. His mother died at the same place in 1829, February 11th, in the 98th year of her age.
"His grandfathers were also planters. It appears that his ancestors, on both sides, were not among the most wealthy of the country, but in independent and comfortable circumstances."
[2] Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574-1660, Preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, edited by W. Noel Sainsbury, Esq., etc. London, 1860.
[3] The letters to a friend, from which we have quoted, were written to William Bradford, Jr., of Philadelphia, afterward attorney-general in Washington's administration. They are given in full in The Writings of James Madison, vol. i.
[4] The members of Congress were paid, at that time, by the States they represented. Virginia allowed her delegates their family expenses, including three servants and four horses, house rent and fuel, two dollars a mile for travel, and twenty dollars a day when in attendance on Congress. The members were required to render an account quarterly of their household expenses, and the State paid them when she had any money.
[5] In some of the States slaves were reckoned as "chattels personal;" in others as "real estate."
[6] J. C. Hamilton says, in his History of the Republic, that "the motion prevailed by a vote of all the States excepting Massachusetts and Rhode Island." But his understanding of the question is in other respects incorrect,—misunderstood, one may hope, rather than misstated lest he should give credit, for what he considered a meritorious action, to Madison.
[7] For the details, so far as they can now be recalled, of this single romantic incident in Mr. Madison's life, I am indebted to Nicoll Floyd, Esq., of Moriches, Long Island, a great-grandson of General William Floyd.
[8]With how much interest Jefferson watched the progress of this controversy he showed in his letters from Paris. In February, 1786, he wrote to Madison: "I thank you for the communication of the remonstrance against the assessment. Mazzei, who is now in Holland, promised me to have it published in the Leyden Gazette. It will do us great honor. I wish it may be as much approved by our Assembly as by the wisest part of Europe." Again, in December of the same year, he says: "The Virginia Act for religious freedom has been received with infinite approbation in Europe, and propagated with enthusiasm. I do not mean by the governments, but by the individuals who compose them. It has been translated into French and Italian, has been sent to most of the courts of Europe, and has been the best evidence of the falsehood of those reports which stated us to be in anarchy. It is inserted in the Encyclopédie, and is appearing in most of the publications respecting America. In fact, it is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind had been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions!" This latter passage is characteristic, and many who do not like Jefferson will read between the lines the exultation of a man who was not always careful to draw the line between religious liberty and irreligious license.
[9] A History of the People of the United States. Vol. i. By John Bach McMaster.
[10] Those who were zealous for state rights, and opposed to a central government, called the system they wished to reëstablish a Federal System,—a confederacy of States. It was too convenient and probably too popular a term to be lost, and the other party adopted it when the new Constitution was formed. The Federalist was the name chosen for the volume in which were collected the papers, written first under the signature of "A Citizen of New York," but afterward changed to "Publius," in support of the new Constitution, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. In one of the earlier papers Mr. Hamilton refers to the Articles of Confederation, which were to be superseded, as the Federal Constitution; but in the later papers Madison is careful to refer to the proposed form of government as the Federal Constitution, and Federal soon came to be the distinguishing name of the party which first came into power under the new Constitution. Whatever may be said of Madison's other title, his right to that of father of the Federal party can hardly be disputed.
[11] Eleven years afterward, when the question of prohibiting the carrying on the slave trade from American ports came up, one John Brown of Rhode Island said in Congress, "Our distilleries and manufactories were all lying idle for want of an extended commerce. He had been well informed that on those coasts [African] New England rum was much preferred to the best Jamaica spirits, and would fetch a better price. Why should it not be sent there, and a profitable return be made? Why should a heavy fine and imprisonment [of slave traders] be made the penalty for carrying on a trade so advantageous?" Sixty years later still, there was another Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, who was a member of the Committee of the Kansas Aid Society of New England. He was about to withdraw from it for want of time to attend to its duties,—had, indeed, actually sent in his resignation,—when news came of the doings of another John Brown at Harper's Ferry. The resignation was instantly recalled, with the remark that it was not a time for Browns to seem to be backward on the question of slavery. Such is the irony of coincidence in names.
[12] The subsequent legislation on this subject is a curious exemplification of the ingenuity with which any law obnoxious to the owners of slaves was got rid of, when it was clear that it could not be defeated by force of numbers. In 1806 a final attempt was made to impose the duty of ten dollars upon slaves imported, and a resolution passed in favor of it. This was referred to a committee, with instructions to bring in a bill. A bill was reported and pushed so far as a third reading, when it was recommitted, which put it off for a year. When it next appeared it was a bill for the prohibition of the importation of slaves, in accordance with the constitutional provision that the traffic should cease in 1808. The new question, after some debate, in which there was no allusion to the tax, was postponed for further consideration. But it never again came before the House. A month later, February 13, 1807, a bill from the Senate, providing that the foreign slave trade should cease on the first day of the following January, was received and immediately concurred in, and that seems to have been silently accepted as disposing of the whole subject. No tax was ever paid; but the importation of slaves, notwithstanding the law to put an end to importation in 1808, continued at the rate, it was estimated, of about fifteen thousand a year. Probably it never ceased altogether till the beginning of the rebellion of 1860.
[13] The most serious difficulty in the way of the final suppression of the African slave trade in the present century was, that it could be carried on without molestation in American bottoms, under the American flag. The ruling power in the United States, from 1787 to 1860, was never willing that their own cruisers should meddle with the slavers, and resented as an insult to the flag the search, by the cruisers of other powers, of any vessel under the American flag, though it might be absolutely certain that she had come straight from the coast of Africa, and that her "between-decks" was crowded full of negroes to be sold as slaves in Cuba.
[14] "I reverence the Constitution," said Fisher Ames in debate, "and I readily admit that the frequent appeal to that as a standard proceeds from a respectful attachment to it. So far it is a source of agreeable reflection. But I feel very different emotions when I find it almost daily resorted to in questions of little importance. When by strained and fanciful constructions it is made an instrument of casuistry, it is to be feared it may lose something in our minds in point of certainty, and more in point of dignity."
[15] Paul Jennings, who was 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 from the White House, she cut out from the frame the large portrait of Washington (now in one of the parlors there) and carried it off. This is totally false. She had no time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to get 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 Frenchman, then doorkeeper, and still [1865] living), and Magraw, the President's gardener, took it down and sent it off on a wagon, with some large 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 myself, and brought up the ale, cider, and wine, and placed them in the coolers, as all the cabinet and several military gentlemen and strangers were expected."