Like his predecessor’s second term, most of Madison’s presidency would be dominated by problems in foreign policy. Those problems would have beset him in any event, but his range of discretion would be tightly circumscribed by his and Gallatin’s devotion to Republican orthodoxy. Maintaining Jefferson’s position, Madison insisted on low government expenditures, thus on keeping only a small peacetime military establishment. When Madison’s preferred response to difficulties with Britain and/or France, economic coercion, failed to alleviate America’s diplomatic problems in the wake of the Chesapeake-Leopard Incident, he continued to insist on taking the same approach. The March 1, 1809 Non-Intercourse Act, which prohibited British and French public ships from entering American waters except when they were in extreme circumstances or on public business,14 reflected Republican policy.

  On March 17, 1809, Madison sent a lengthy letter to William Pinkney, his minister in Great Britain.15 Describing the Non-Intercourse Act as “less operative than was at one time looked for,” the president blamed Congress’s hesitance to take sterner steps on “aversion to war,… inconveniences produced by or charged on the embargo, the hope of favorable changes [that is, French victories] in Europe, the dread of civil convulsions in [New England], and the policy of permitting the discontented to be reclaimed to their duty by losses at sea.…” No doubt shaking his head as he scratched out the words, Madison concluded, “Certain it is that no measure was ever adopted by so great a proportion of any public body, which had the hearty concurrence of so small a one.…” That it expired in May, just two months away, “must produce an apparent submission to the Foreign Edicts,” he fumed, unless this law’s operation were extended or something were devised to replace it.

  The only alternative to new legislative action, Madison thought, was submission to the French and British decrees. Southerners in particular would be unlikely to tolerate this, though their exasperation with the legislatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut over first bewailing violations of sailors’ rights, then alleging that defense of those rights amounted to hostility to New England could only with difficulty be exaggerated. Madison concluded that the New England governments really favored Britain over their own country in the controversy.16 He surely did not imagine the lengths to which they would go ere his tenure ended.

  Though President Madison disliked the Non-Intercourse Act in some of its particulars, he remained convinced that economic coercion could bring one or both of the major European powers to change its policies toward the United States. He therefore received quite unreservedly the news from the new British minister in Washington, David Erskine, that the U.K.’s government wanted to change its posture toward the United States.17 In early April 1809, barely a month into Madison’s tenure, Erskine received instructions that he should extend an offer to compensate the United States for the Chesapeake-Leopard Incident and inform Washington that the Cabinet would withdraw its offensive Orders-in-Council in exchange for American consent that the Royal Navy could stop and search American ships en route to France and for the automatic cessation of enforcement of the Non-Intercourse policy against the British Empire.

  Madison convened his Cabinet at least once on this matter.18 His treasury secretary characteristically gave him the best advice, asking whether the president’s response should be silent about the fate of the British officer responsible for the attack on the American frigate or mention the matter in passing, and expressing his befuddlement at Erskine’s offer to have the Orders-in-Council cease to be operative the following week—which, given the slowness of trans-Atlantic travel, the Briton could only have offered if he knew they were going to cease to be operative in any event. Perhaps, Gallatin guessed, Erskine meant that in case the Non-Intercourse Act ceased to be operative, American ships taken under the Orders-in-Council after that date would be returned.

  Madison sloughed off the requirement that America consent to the searches, calling it “insulting,” and agreed to the rest. The following Wednesday, April 19, 1809, Madison issued a triumphant proclamation saying that the British minister had informed the U.S. Government that the condition of the Non-Intercourse Act for the restoration of American commerce with Great Britain would be met through the termination of the British Orders-in-Council on June 10, 1809, and therefore American trade with the British Empire could resume on June 11th.19

  So happy was the president that he had copies of the secretary of state’s correspondence with Erskine and the presidential proclamation sent to the governors, among others.20 He also wrote, on the day that he conceded to one correspondent his predecessor’s superiority to himself by various measures, to Jefferson with an evaluation of British motives. For one thing he guessed that the U.K. hoped to entangle America in conflict with France—a goal he thought the Federalists would try to help the British achieve. Britain likely would sidestep this obstacle, he thought, particularly as Russia was suffering under Britain’s maritime policy too; better relations with America had their appeal, but Britain needed alliance with Russia. Somehow Madison guessed that Napoleon might conclude that the Floridas ought to be turned over to the U.S.A., “which would present a dilemma not very pleasant.”21

  Jefferson answered that news of the Erskine agreement was “the source of very general joy” in and around Monticello.22 Calling the Orders-in-Council Britain’s “Algerine system” (that is, piracy), the former president held that not “any remaining morality” among Britons but “their unsteadiness under severe trial” had yielded the much-desired result, “But whencesover it comes, I rejoice in it as the triumph of our forbearing & yet persevering system.”

  Carried away with the country’s good fortune, Jefferson told Madison his administration would now be entirely peaceful, and that Napoleon “ought the more to conciliate our good will, as we can be such an obstacle to the new career opening on him in the Spanish colonies. That he would give us the Floridas,” he gushed, “to withhold intercourse with the residue of those colonies cannot be doubted.” Even this amounted to nothing, because the United States could seize Spanish Gulf Coast colonies in the first moment of a war, and “until a war they are of no particular necessity to us.” In order to ensure pacific relations with the Americans, he concluded, the French emperor surely would give up Cuba. Canada naturally falling into America’s lap in time, “we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation.…” Fortunately, he continued breathlessly, “I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self government.” In case his fancy did not strike Madison as having overcome him powerfully enough, Jefferson asserted that the Cuban outer ring of the empire for liberty would provide no problem for Republican political economists at all, because “Cuba can be defended by us without a navy”!

  Fearing a turn toward military conflict with Britain, the outgoing Congress had provided in January 1809 that the Eleventh Congress should meet for the first time not sometime between late October and early December of that year, but in late May.23 Madison happily greeted it with the news of the Erskine agreement.24 In the same vein as Jefferson had plumbed with him, President Madison began his special message to the federal legislature of May 23rd by saying that “it affords me much satisfaction to be able to communicate the commencement of a favorable change, in our foreign relations; the critical state of which induced a Session of Congress at this early period.” The Non-Intercourse Act had been met by the British government, he said, with an avowal of intention to resolve the Chesapeake matter and to withdraw the offending Orders-in-Council, and so he had announced his intention to legalize commerce with Britain on June 10th. Madison also made clear that Republican policy and disposition had yielded this, the optimal outcome. In a foreshadowing of later policy nearly always overlooked by chroniclers of his administration, Madison told Congress that it should “make such further alterations in the laws, as will more especially protect and foster the several branches of manufacture, which have been recently instituted or extended, by the laudable exertions of our Citizens.”

  Somewhat startlingly in light of his lack of information about the British government’s response to the Erskine agreement, Madison also announced that he had put such of the gunboats as he could in storage and moved to send home the one hundred thousand militiamen organized for federal service under the law of March 1808. He closed this portion of his message by hinting that Congress might move to decommission the four frigates that were to be ready for service by the end of July. The only prudent move he recommended was that Congress should provide funding for completion of the harbor fortification program the government had already undertaken—an easy task if, friction with the British really having ended, the government’s books once again returned to balance.

  Two and a half months into his first term, Madison had announced the Republican millennium. When next he wrote to Jefferson, it was to tell him that the Essex Junto (chief Federalist organization of Massachusetts, the leading Federalist state) had “[soured] towards England” and “As one proof of their present feelings … shew a marked alienation from Erskine,” all of which left them “much less disposed than heretofore to render our interests subservient to hers [that is, Britain’s].”25 But the Bay State Federalists’ discomfiture would be short-lived.

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  On June 19, Madison received information that Britain seemed to have reneged on its agreement.1 To Jefferson he wrote of the strange circumstance that the government in Whitehall seemed to have gone back on Erskine’s word by a new Order-in-Council dated April 26th, which made an odd picture when combined with Erskine’s assurances that he had authority to enter into the agreement he had struck with the Madison administration. Startlingly, Madison remained confident that his diplomatic feat would stand. (“It may be expected, I think that the B. Govt. will fulfil what its Minister has Stipulated.…”)

  That the British foreign minister, George Canning, had rejected Minister Erskine’s agreement with the U.S. Government became public knowledge in America by July 22.2 Secretary of War William Eustis, encountering Erskine in Philadelphia, noted that he still insisted he had had authority to enter into the agreement.3 President Madison, exposed to considerable embarrassment, found the entire matter no little bit infuriating, besides perplexing. “The conduct of the B. Govt. in protesting the arrangement of its Minister surprizes one in spite of all their examples of folly.” Maybe their goal was to trick the Americans into allowing their merchant fleet to head out for Britain and British possessions, and thus avail themselves of American wares, he mused, before “adopt[ing] openly a system of monopoly & piracy”—reserving the European trade to themselves and licensing their ships to seize the cargoes of American ships violating their Rule of 1756. Perhaps, on the other hand, British smugglers had persuaded His Majesty’s Government that if Americans continued to be denied access to Napoleon’s ports, smuggling would return quite a handsome profit (and considerable tax revenues) to the United Kingdom. “Such an outrage on all decency,” Madison fumed, “was never before heard of, even on the shores of Africa.”4

  There might, however, be a simpler explanation for Britain’s inexcusable perfidy. Madison had made reference during the negotiations to the imperative that George III agree to punish the admiral responsible for the Chesapeake-Leopard Incident further, as “such an example … would best comport with what is due from His Brittanic Majesty to his own honor.” Supposedly George III received the agreement Erskine had worked out positively—until he got to that.5 If so, Madison’s bold statement, uncharacteristic of him in its lack of political tact, would be among the most momentous errors ever made by a president of the United States.6

  Madison found himself in a box. Canning’s rejection of Erskine’s agreement meant that Britain had not revoked its Orders-in-Council, and yet the president had exercised his power under the Non-Intercourse Act to waive its provisions concerning American trade with the British Empire. The obvious step was to impose the act’s provisions anew by sending a circular letter to the American tax collectors, calculating on its becoming public. Yet he feared that his “power over the subject of it” ended with the revocation.7

  He could call upon Congress to revivify the law. Yet the Legislative Branch was not in session. Seeing no alternative, Madison within a couple of weeks issued a proclamation resuscitating the Non-Intercourse Act’s prohibition on trade with the British Empire.8

  Meantime the British had recalled Erskine and sent a new minister to the United States: Francis James Jackson. This notorious figure bore the moral responsibility for the British bombardment of Copenhagen, the capital of neutral Denmark, which Jackson ordered to extort the surrender by that power of its entire navy to the British. In those pre–international law days, when realpolitik guided the major powers’ behavior, this unblushing bit of criminality could be undertaken with sanguine impunity. The Madison administration, like the American public generally, could not but see replacement of Erskine for being too eager to reach an accommodation with the United States with Jackson, internationally notorious for having displayed the opposite disposition toward another neutral power, as a signal of the British Cabinet’s actual attitude toward America.

  With Madison away for the summer at the time Jackson arrived in the District of Columbia in July, Jackson fell into the British habit of hobnobbing with Federalists. This could not but turn out poorly, so far as his mission was concerned. He also seems to have misunderstood Madison’s stay in the Piedmont as an incivility to him.9 Madison rightly inferred that Jackson’s standing on ceremony—his refusal to discuss diplomatic matters prior to his formal presentation to Madison—meant that his masters back in England had not charged him with any significant task to accomplish while in America. Therefore the president decided not to press Jackson regarding his instructions. “From the character of the man, and the temper of his superiors,” Madison counseled Secretary of State Smith, “any thing beyond that politeness which explains itself, and is due to ourselves, is more likely to foster insolence than to excite liberality or good will.”10

  The Madisons and the Jacksons became acquainted at last upon the president’s return from his summer stay at Montpelier in October, at which time both of the Brits offered relatives back home biting appraisals of their opposite numbers. Minister Jackson judged the president “a plain and rather mean-looking little man,” by which he meant that Madison was not up to much, while Mrs. Jackson, of noble Prussian origin, described Dolley in aristocratic French as “une bonne grosse femme de la classe bourgeoise” before adding that she was “without distinction either in manners or appearance.” Even more cuttingly, Francis Jackson styled Dolley “fat and forty but not fair.”11

  If possible, the relationship went downhill from there.

  When Madison returned to Washington, he immediately encountered difficulty with Jackson. Secretary of State Smith met with Jackson on October 4th and October 5th, and Madison concluded from those conversations that the British had sent an emissary without the requisite authority to resolve the outstanding issues. Although not yet sure of it, the president wrote that he expected Jackson to prove “deficient in the diplomatic … instructions.”12 (Attorney General Rodney drew the same inference.)13 Madison therefore decided that further communication with Jackson would be conducted not by personal interviews followed by written messages, but exclusively via written messages. This decision was relayed to Jackson by Smith in a letter that expressed the administration’s unhappiness that the U.K. had both disavowed Erskine’s agreement and sent a new minister to Washington without an explanation of this decision.14

  Jackson’s manner turned offensive. Madison informed him that it was “more than merely inadmissible” for Jackson to accuse the Americans of having negotiated with Erskine in the knowledge that he was violating his instructions. On November 1st, Smith (or perhaps Madison) upbraided the Briton in writing, describing some of what Jackson had said as “irrelevant and improper allusions … inadmissible in the intercourse of a foreign minister with a Government that understands what it owes itself.” Finally Jackson was told by a letter of November 8th that “no further communications will be received from you.”15

  On November 11th Smith sent the American minister to the Court of St. James’s, William Pinkney, an explanation of the president’s decision to demand Jackson’s recall.16 The president informed the British ministry through his secretary that while Jackson’s behavior in Washington had been insupportably insulting, the Americans remained open to “a friendly accommodation,” which he said could be reached if Jackson’s successor brought “all the authorities and instructions requisite for the complete success of his mission.”

  Congress turned to the task of adopting some kind of replacement for the Non-Intercourse Act. Speaker of the House Nathaniel Macon, a close friend of John Randolph as well as an ally of President Madison, submitted what came to be known as “Macon’s Bill No. 1.” It provided that although British and French ships could not come into American ports, British and French goods could. After amending it, the House on March 16, 1810, rejected it.17 Secretary Smith asserted after he left the Cabinet in 1811 that Madison’s ambiguous January 3, 1810, message to Congress, which pointed only to “the necessity of precautionary measures involving expense” in response to “the conduct of foreign Powers towards the United States,” helped account for the defeat of Macon’s Bill No. 1.18

  Anyone who found that legislative effort lacking must have been completely unhappy with the follow-up, the so-called Macon’s Bill No. 2 (which despite its name was not Macon’s handiwork). Napoleon had responded to the Non-Intercourse Act by seizing American ships, and now America had adopted a policy of allowing American ships to carry the goods of both major powers while excluding both powers’ ships. In case either France or Britain resumed open trade with the United States, at that point Madison was to cut off trade with the other.19 As Madison described it, “it [put] our trade on the worst possible footing for France,” which had been swept from the seas by the Royal Navy in 1805, “but at the same time, [put] it in the option of her, to revive Non-intercourse agst. England.”20