This next update is dedicated to the courteous, knowledgeable and sexy staff of Gadsby's Tavern Museum.
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When the War of 1812 ended, the Madison administration had a little less than two years left and no political capital to speak of.
In spite of that, it was not entirely idle. In September of 1816 the President ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin surveying northeastern Mississippi Territory and western Alabama, charting the future course of the T&T canal. In January of 1816 the President signed the bill that outlined the Second Bank of the United States, to stabilize the currency and help pay off various debts. (As early as April of 1814, Madison had acknowledged the need for a national bank, but the urgency of the need had not become clear until Bloody May and its aftermath.) On some issues, such as the Northern Louisiana Question (see Chapter 4) or the persistent land disputes with the Cherokee and Choctaw, Madison chose not to take a position, considering these matters best resolved by Congress and the states. But for the most part, he continued carrying on his duties just as he had before the war and its disastrous end…
Meanwhile, in every city and town, the talk was all of what the next president should do. Should the militias be placed under federal authority? Should the army and navy be built up? How would all this be paid for? Everyone seemed to have an idea, and as Congress spent most of the latter half of ’15 out of session, they got an earful of the ideas of their constituents. John Sergeant, then a freshman representative from Pennsylvania and a former Federalist, described the election that put him in office as “like running in front of a stampede shouting ‘Follow me!’”…
When the high officials of Congress and the Madison administration arrived in Alexandria that March, they faced a very different party than the one that had caucused four years ago — and some of them were better prepared than others to turn the situation to their advantage.
Andrea Fessler, Rise of the Dead Rose
March 14, 1816
Alexandria, D.C.
4:15 p.m.
The punch bowl was hot, and filled the air with the smell of lemon, cinnamon and rum. James Monroe pressed his chilled hands against the side of the bowl, letting its warmth soak through his palms and fingers, and looked around the room. This year, it seemed, everyone who was anyone in politics had come to the Democratic-Republican caucus in Alexandria, in spite of the appalling weather, and regardless of whether or not they were actually congressmen.
For that matter, not all of them were Republicans. Monroe had seen a lot of Federalists in town, talking to the delegates. (The Federalists had spoken against the war — in fact, if one took the Hartford Convention at all seriously they had honestly considered secession. One might expect them to feel vindicated that the war had turned out so badly. Yet from what Monroe had heard, their party had effectively disbanded.)
And if you had to be in Alexandria in what was alleged to be March but felt like January, just about the best place to be was the taproom of Gadsby’s Tavern, in front of a steaming bowl of hot rum-punch with a couple of fellow Virginians, Senator James Barbour and Representative John Randolph of Roanoke. Better still, neither of them was wearing one of those strange cockades Monroe had been seeing around town (mostly on the hats and coats of the younger men), so he wouldn’t have to show his ignorance by asking what they signified.
Men couldn’t share a bowl of rum-punch without sharing at least a little conversation, but the three had confined themselves to pleasantries and a little talk of their families. Monroe struggled to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound like "so who’s going to be the next president?" (To which the only possible answer was "if you have to ask, it probably won’t be you.")
Monroe would have been the natural successor to Madison. Unfortunately, over the past two years he had served as both Secretary of War and now Secretary of State. No one exactly blamed him for the disasters that had befallen the republic in precisely those areas, but under the circumstances it was understandable that he was under a cloud. But Will Crawford, the likeliest alternative to him, was telling everyone he did not wish to be nominated this year. Now, the caucus was like a five-act play whose plot he’d long since lost the thread of but which he still had to keep watching. At this point, anything could happen.
“It frightens me, how angry the people have become,” said Barbour at last. “From what I hear, my own constituents are less riled than most. That seems hard to believe.”
Monroe could only nod. If he’d had a Spanish real for every time someone had stopped him on the street and asked him what he was going to do about Those Dreadful British, he could have bought New Orleans back.
“It’s not as thought we were ever in any danger of subjugation,” said Randolph.
Monroe nodded again. Wellington didn’t try to conquer us outright, he thought. He knew if he did, every man who could carry a gun would rise up to fight him. Never mind our army and navy — that was our true national defense. We thought it would be enough. We were wrong. We were wrong and now we don’t know what to do.
Randolph turned. “I say, John,” he said to a man in his early thirties, younger than Randolph himself.
“Yes?” Monroe had seen this man before. He was Representative Calhoun of South Carolina.
“What are those… curious decorations?” He pointed to the cockade on the hat tucked under Calhoun’s arm. It was, to Monroe’s eye, a dismal shade of faded purple even in natural sunlight, and looked worse by the light of lamps or candles. At last, thought Monroe, who had been waiting for someone else to ask this question.
For his part, Calhoun looked as though he’d been waiting for someone to ask him.
“This color is called ‘Republican Purple,’” he said proudly. “It is a symbol of national unity — Mr. Stabler, the apothecary who invented it, says it’s made up of the colors of the flag blended together in their proper proportions. We wear them to show our solidarity in this time of national crisis.”
“To me it looks rather like a wilted rose, but each to his own,” said Randolph.
Calhoun’s nostrils flared. His already fanatical face looked… more fanatical. Monroe stood up and lifted a hand in a calm-down gesture, trying not to display any sign of agreement with Randolph’s sentiment.
“No need for a quarrel over this,” he said. “It’s almost time for the speech anyway.” John Quincy Adams, son of the former president and lately returned from London, was scheduled to deliver some sort of address upstairs. Word had gotten around that he would have something important to say. (The ballroom in the hotel next door would have held more people, but it wasn’t quite somber enough for the occasion.)
Calhoun turned his back without another word and headed for the door. This bit of unconscious rudeness, directed at Monroe as much as Randolph, was yet another clue that whatever way the vote went, it wouldn’t be his way.
By this time, everyone else in the taproom was rising to their feet. In the hall, Monroe saw so many people coming in through the front door that it never had a chance to close, letting in a steady stream of cold air. Everyone seemed to want to hear what Quincy Adams had to say. (And why not? Did anyone else have any answers?)
The stairwell was narrow, and it took a little while for everyone to get up there. Monroe found himself standing in the hall next to William Henry Harrison, who was all too recognizable — the backblast from a Congreve at Roxbury had cost him his left eye and scarred that side of his face with powder burns. The ex-general was listening to Rep. Hardin of Kentucky, who was saying something about not conceding “one millimeter more” to British demands. (Along with Republican Purple, the younger DRP members seemed to have recently developed a peculiar fondness for the new system of measurement that had come out of France. It was “modern,” it was “advanced” and “scientific”… to Monroe it seemed wholly unnatural and ahistoric, but the French liked it and the British had no use for it, and apparently that was enough.)
The assembly room on the second floor of Gadsby’s Tavern could hold as many as three hundred people if they stood crowded together tightly enough, as they were doing now. Monroe saw the former presidents Jefferson and Adams standing side by side, both quite elderly but still sharp. The former Federalist, Senator Rufus King of New York, was at Adams’ right hand, his bald head framed by tufts of gingery hair. He was wearing a purple cockade on his wrist. In fact, at least a third of the people in this room, not all of them young men, had one of those things on or about their person somewhere.
A podium had been set up in the corner near the door. Already at the podium was Dan Tompkins, the governor of New York State. He was wearing a suit he must have borrowed from somebody, as it didn’t fit properly and everyone knew he’d bankrupted himself paying bills for the state militia out of his own pocket. The left sleeve hung empty — he had lost an arm below the elbow at Third Sackett’s Harbor.
Tompkins showed no inclination to speak, but stood there waiting, a box of cockades at his feet. It occurred to Monroe, at this point, to wonder how long the former president’s son had been planning this occasion, and how many others had joined him.
After a few more minutes, two men marched up the stairs and entered the room. The first was John Quincy Adams himself, bald and grim-looking. The cockade on the collar of his black coat looked oddly festive. Apart from nodding a little in his father’s direction, he walked up to the podium without acknowledging anyone else. There was probably a Bible on his person somewhere.
The second man, to Monroe’s utter astonishment, was Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives, also with a cockade on his collar. He and Quincy Adams had famously rubbed each other the wrong way at Ghent. Yet here he was, blond hair gleaming in the light of the chandelier, catching everyone’s eye, smiling and nodding, seemingly the opposite of the stern and unsociable Adams.
Quincy Adams stood at the podium, Clay and Tompkins behind him, straight-backed and stern-faced in postures of rectitude that, in Clay’s case, suited him not at all. The political implications of all these goings-on were easy to see. Tompkins represented New York State, while Clay represented the west and some of the south. What Quincy Adams was trying to show was that support for whatever it was he was proposing extended beyond New England.
Then Adams began to speak.
“My fellow Americans,” he said. “My friends and countrymen. Before we turn to the solemn business at hand, let us in our hearts acknowledge the Universal Giver of All Good, by whose beneficence our beloved nation has passed through darker times than this.” There was a long moment of silence.
“We know that without the blessing of Divine Providence our best efforts on behalf of our people will not be adequate; yet in all cases our best efforts are required of us. This is of particular import here, in Alexandria now, where we are assembled not merely to choose a candidate for the presidency, but to chart a course for the future — a course that we pray will lead our beloved republic out of the difficult straits in which we presently find ourselves.
“We have long known that the crowned heads of the earth — in particular those who pride themselves on their lineage rather than on their accomplishments — despise our government and its democratic and republican ideals.” Monroe had to admire the way Adams exempted the late Napoleon and France’s current crew of regents from this criticism without actually mentioning them by name.
“We have seen how the Crown impressed our seamen, seizing them like enslaved Africans from their life and work and dragging them into a fight not their own. We have seen how the British chose to make war on us, sacking and burning our coastal towns like so many Barbary pirates — even destroying our very capital merely for the sake of the doing. Henry and I witnessed at Ghent how the King’s ministers of state sent their lowest underlings to treat with us, and we heard the extravagant and importunate demands they made.” Behind him, Clay nodded.
“Now we have all tasted the full measure of their contempt. Having at last signed a peace treaty negotiated in good faith, His Majesty George III and his ministers tore it into pieces the very instant they thought they could gain an advantage by doing so. Then they sent the best of their cutthroats across the seas to wring a different agreement out of us by force.”
And there it was. Quincy Adams had just put his finger on the very reason the Federalists were in town, flaunting those hideous cockades and trying to pretend they couldn’t so much as find Hartford on a map. It wasn’t the defeat that stung — it was the insult. New Englanders, Southerners and westerners alike felt it.
The British had signed the Treaty of Ghent, and then broken it right away… because they could. Wellington’s “treaty” had been less cruel than it might have been, but if the Prince Regent and Lord Liverpool decided to wipe their fundaments with that one as well and to annex a few more square miles of American soil, who was going to stop them? If they decided to return to impressing sailors, or to just steal whole ships as they had stolen the Danish fleet at Copenhagen not ten years ago, who would stand up for the people and their property?
“And why should they not?” Adams continued, twisting the knife a little. “When they can take from us what they will without fear, what check have they on their appetites, save their own dubious consciences?” He stopped and drew a breath.
“Since then, until last autumn, I served as ambassador to the Court of St. James. I shall tell you what they think of us in three words — they do not. Our French allies hold the bulk of their attention. As to us, they have not the least notion of why we ever went to war against them in the first place, nor any curiosity to learn. If they consider the matter at all, it is only to congratulate themselves on having ‘put us in our place’.
“Which in some cases is apparently the grave. In April of last year, as many of you have heard, American prisoners of war — merchant seamen, for the most part — were massacred out of hand at Dartmoor Prison. His Majesty’s government disavowed responsibility.” What is he trying to do — start a riot? Monroe thought.
“What, then, is to be done? The easiest thing to do would be to do nothing, to answer the wrath of our people by counseling them to patience, to accept the indignity as weak nations must and move on with the business of state.
“If we do this, the passage of time will ease our current sense of outrage. If we do this, we may comfort ourselves with the thought that if our government lacks the power to protect us, it also lacks the power to tyrannize over us.” This was an argument that a good many people in this room, and especially John Randolph, would have agreed with.
“But if we do this, before long we shall know a tyranny of a different sort. We shall have a government that responds to the will of its people only when it dares, one that out of sheer necessity obeys the commands of the King of England as surely as if its members had been appointed by him and drew salaries from his treasury. We shall not, in any meaningful sense, have a republic any longer.
“I say this in bitterness — no weak and helpless nation can call itself a republic. Not while it has a strong neighbor with a mind to dictate terms.” The room was silent. No one cried out in protest. No one even muttered. But Monroe was sure he could feel the rage and hate radiating off the listeners like heat from one of the late Mr. Franklin’s stoves.
“There is hope,” said Adams. “There is a way forward. By the grace of Divine Providence there is a path to true freedom, but it requires great courage. Not the courage of the battlefield, of which Americans (many in this very room) have already shown a sufficiency, but courage of another kind. We must have the courage to trust one another, to overcome our ingrained fear of the very institutions we have built to enable us to rule ourselves…”
Monroe could already see where this was headed. A bigger army and navy, with wartime conscription “if necessary.” State militias fully subordinated to the federal army. Schools to train officers for the army and navy. Canals dug across the south, to replace the lost outlet on the Mississippi. More and better roads. Tariffs and taxes to pay for all this.
Sure enough, this was the plan Quincy Adams proposed. As he spoke, Monroe admired the way he wove the Federalist advocacy of internal improvements into the Democratic-Republican agenda. And truth to tell, there were a good many of Adams’ ideas, such as support for domestic manufacture that he favored. It would mean a rise in the power of Washington at the expense of the states, but at this point there seemed to be no way to avoid that. He had some questions about the constitutionality of internal improvements at the federal level, but a carefully worded amendment should safely resolve that issue. And from the expressions and sounds of approval that the crowd in the room made, few people had even as many reservations as Monroe.
Few, but not none. Out of the corner of his eye, Monroe saw John Randolph stalk out of the room and down the stairs. What would you have us do, if not what he proposes? Monroe wished he could ask the man. How do you answer his reasoning? Adams simply went on with his speech.
“It may seem impossible, now,” Adams continued, “that our republic should ever have the strength to resent such insults as have been given to it. But let us remember that a journey of a thousand mi— kilometers begins with a single step.
“In the past generation, our territory has expanded and our population has more than doubled. With war and hunger in Europe, many more immigrants will come to our shores in search of peace and freedom. As we grow in numbers, so shall we also grow in industry and finance, which are the bone and blood that sustain any modern military force. One day — perhaps not in my lifetime, but one day — we will have the strength to defend our own against the British Empire, or any other power that cares to try us. It remains for us to make our government fit to employ such strength.
“Yes, this work must be undertaken with care and forethought. The greater the power wielded by the people’s representatives in this district, the surer must be their accountability. The rights of the people must be kept safe and secure, and they shall.
“Indeed, if we do our work correctly they shall be all the safer. We do not fear the strength of the horse that pulls our plow, nor the ferocity of the dog that guards our gate at night. Rather, we cherish these qualities, so long as these creatures are governed by our will. So shall the newfound might of our government be at the service of our will.
“What I propose, then, is not a revolutionary change by any means. It is simply the next step in the long process that began forty years ago this coming summer — the process by which we, the people of the United States, take charge of our common destiny.”
There was a long moment of silence.
Then, as one, the men in the room began to applaud.
“ADAMS FOR PRESIDENT!” someone shouted.
“QUINCY ADAMS FOR PRESIDENT!” shouted someone else, more precisely. Out of the corner of his eye Monroe saw that it was Congressman Webster of New Hampshire, a young ex-Federalist who not two years before had made a name for himself with his eloquent speech denouncing the very concept of conscription. Up at the podium, Clay was lighting a cigar.
Monroe was a moderate man by nature. The emotions in the room — in the nation as a whole — frightened him a little. He knew that it was at just such a moment as this that the Israelites had forsaken the godly rule of the judges and appealed to Samuel for a king. It was in such a dark hour that the Romans had cast aside their republic and embraced the false glories of empire. What he had never understood until now was that there was a reason men made such foolish choices. If a Saul, or a Caesar, or a Napoleon came before the people right now, they would follow him and never look back, he thought. And one may yet come, if we cling too hard to the status quo. Thank God, for now, we have this man instead. He is no tyrant in the making.
The listeners were already gathering in front of the podium. Everyone who didn’t have a cockade, it seemed, was getting one now. Monroe worked his way through the crowd, summoning the will to say what he had to say. Finally, he stood in front of Adams.
“I shall withdraw my name from consideration directly, and endorse you for the presidency in my place,” he said. There. It was that easy.
“Thank you,” said Adams. “That is most gracious of you, but you needn’t withdraw entirely. It occurs to me that even now, sectional loyalties remain strong enough that it might be wise for me to have a Virginian on the ticket.”
Tompkins extended the box of cockades. Adams reached down and pinned one onto Monroe’s lapel.
Its sounds like Monroe won't have much of a future, unless Adams GENUINELY values his opinion and he helps Adams run the country from the Vice Presidency. I'm surprised Webster was the one who shouted. He never laughed, rarely smiled, and its a little shocking to see him get so, whats the right word, involved as an audience member. 
