The Cabinet

As President Madison began to form his cabinet, he found that political divisions and a dearth of talent constrained his choices. Powerful political brokers in New York constrained him to accept George Clinton as his vice president during the first term, though Clinton had run simultaneously as president against Madison, picking up a few electoral votes in New York. Jefferson’s Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin, was Madison’s strongest and most competent ally in the cabinet. Madison wanted to nominate him as secretary of state, but a contingent of Senate Republicans and Federalists opposed the idea. To placate powerful forces in his divided party, Madison had to settle for Robert Smith, Jefferson’s less than stellar secretary of the navy. Gallatin would remain in the Treasury Department. The oft-inebriated Paul Hamilton took Smith’s position in the Navy Department. Caesar Rodney stayed on as attorney general. With personal connections more extensive than military experience, William Eustis became secretary of war. Perhaps a president more adept at managing competing egos could have assembled a more competent cabinet, but Madison was stuck with subpar subordinates.

The deficiencies continued into his second term. Republicans had nominated Elbridge Gerry as vice president. Though capable enough, Gerry was hardly known for steadfastness. As a Republican in New England, he had little inclination or political motive to take a hard stance on Republican priorities. Indeed, he may be seen as the first vice presidential pick meant to balance the ticket. In any event, vice presidents had even less involvement in administration affairs during the early republic than they do now, so Gerry’s long experience in public life contributed little to the cabinet.

Madison did find a reason to dismiss Smith and replace him with James Monroe, who would succeed Madison to the presidency. Even so, Monroe spent much of his time quarreling with Secretary of War John Armstrong, an influential but controversial figure, dating to when he had encouraged mutiny in US ranks during the Revolutionary War. Few of the other replacements improved the cabinet much, as several competent but hardly towering figures slipped in and out of the treasury, war, and navy departments.

Change and Continuity

During Madison’s first presidential term, foreign and domestic affairs overlapped in ways that they rarely have since. Indeed, since the outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1793, foreign relations had consumed the national conversation and driven domestic politics in ways scarcely imaginable now. Other wartime periods have drawn the nation’s attention across the seas, but none in such an intense manner for such a sustained period of time as the early national era.

Not even slavery would arise as a major domestic wedge until the Missouri Crisis, several years after Madison’s presidency. When Madison had to deal with the issue, it was usually in an international context, such as conducting hostilities against Spanish Florida as a haven for runaway slaves or enforcing the government’s recent prohibition on the transatlantic slave trade. Madison certainly had a domestic vision of an agrarian United States that contrasted with the industrializing and commercial ideals of Federalists. But at each turn, that vision clashed headlong with international politics, making his domestic and foreign agendas difficult to distinguish.

Even the Second Bank of the United States, Madison’s signature domestic attainment, was the product of the War of 1812. The bank’s charter had expired in 1812. Its proponents had attempted to renew it, but an anti-bank coalition moved against it and defeated its renewal. Madison had opposed the bank since his nemesis Hamilton had proposed it during the First Congress. As president, though, Madison found it difficult to wage war without a viable source of loans or credit, which the bank had provided while it existed. In 1816, recognizing the bank’s utility, Madison supported its recharter and signed it into law. He conceded that the bank had become so ingrained into US finances and so long accepted as constitutional by successive Congresses and the citizenry that it had in effect become constitutional by precedent.

Despite signing the bank’s recharter into law, Madison remained wary of sweeping implied powers in the US Constitution. During his presidency, a growing number of congressmen from both parties advocated federal funding for internal improvements, what today would be called infrastructure. Madison advocated their vision of federal money spent on canals, bridges, and national roads that would link the various parts of the union, but he insisted that such funding required an amendment to the Constitution. When Congress passed an internal improvements bill without a constitutional amendment, Madison vetoed it just before he left office. Madison was practical enough to recognize when he needed to bend to events but principled enough to stem change when in his power.