Conservative Heroes
Fourteen Leaders Who Shaped America, from Jefferson to Reagan
Wilmington, Delaware
For
Grey and Liza
and the next generation
Contents
FOREWORD
Tucker’s Gift
by Amity Shlaes
INTRODUCTION
“A Faithful Band”
1. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
Founding Collaborators
2. Nathaniel Macon and John Randolph
The “Tertium Quids”
3. John C. Calhoun
“The Cast-Iron Man”
4. Grover Cleveland
Character and Courage
5. Calvin Coolidge and Andrew Mellon
Commonsense Government
6. Josiah W. Bailey
The Conservative Manifesto of 1937
7. John W. Davis
“Public Enemy Number One”
8. Robert A. Taft
“Mr. Republican”
9. William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan
The Conservative Triptych
EPILOGUE
“As Old as the Republic Itself”
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
Foreword
TUCKER’S GIFT
BY AMITY SHLAES
Years ago a junior senator decided to write a book about his predecessors. The senator belonged to the Democratic Party, as his father, also a name in politics, had done before him. Yet the senator determined that he would not produce a party tract or a partial history. He would make a study of all kinds of senators, however controversial. He would describe both Democrats and Republicans, and he would bust stereotypes. The theme the author chose was political integrity—the integrity of breaking with the pack when one’s conscience demanded it, and the more subtle integrity of personal sacrifice for the group.
The senator-author was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The book was Profiles in Courage. One disputed chapter in the book covered Robert Taft of Ohio. Taft, who had recently died, was not just any Republican. Taft was Senate majority leader, and was so associated with the GOP that he was nicknamed “Mr. Republican.” After World War II Taft had taken the deeply unpopular step of opposing the Nuremberg Trials. Taft’s critics went after him relentlessly: “his heart bled anguishedly for the criminals at Nuremberg,” a colleague commented. Yet, as Kennedy noted with admiration, Taft had stuck to his position, for the Ohio senator could not see how retroactive justice could be justice at all.
Precisely because it was so fair, Profiles in Courage won a Pulitzer Prize and became a bestseller whose relevance abides today. Taft’s challenge to retroactive justice comes up in considerations of jurisprudence regarding both suspected al-Qaeda terrorists and Saddam Hussein. Even those who cannot sanction Taft’s position can find utility in Kennedy’s book.
So will it be with Conservative Heroes, Garland Tucker’s own volume of profiles in courage. As Kennedy did, Tucker dares to choose hot topics and to depict his heroes unconventionally. Tucker, for example, reclaims Thomas Jefferson as a conservative, not a move of which today’s Jefferson-shy Grand Old Party is likely to approve. And as Kennedy did, Tucker illuminates not only his subjects’ integrity but also their flaws, even when fatal.
Another hero is John W. Davis, a figure obscured by modern history books because he argued on the side of states’ rights, and therefore against desegregation, in a companion case to 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education. Yet as Tucker shows, Davis accomplished too much to dismiss him simply as a bigot. The West Virginian determined early on to make a difference through the law: while still a student he told his peers that an attorney could be “the sentinel on the watchtower of liberty.” Over his career Davis proved not merely a jurist, but a great one: Brown was not the first but the 140th case that Davis argued before the Supreme Court. In a 1952 case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, Davis convinced even some of the progressives on the bench that the federal government’s seizure of steel-production facilities was unconstitutional.
Some readers will be surprised to find that Davis also took the initiative at many times to help blacks—and paid for that help dearly. While Davis was solicitor general in Woodrow Wilson’s administration, he defended black voting rights before the Supreme Court—and won. The Democratic Party that nominated Davis for president in 1924 was the party of the Ku Klux Klan. Yet Davis denounced the Klan explicitly over the course of the campaign, saying that the Klan “must be condemned by all those who believe, as I do, in American ideals.” In such a declaration Davis outclassed his Republican opponent, Calvin Coolidge, who remained silent on the Klan. This bold stance cost Davis support and even, some wager, the election. But Davis’s move set a new standard for decency on race in our political process.
Similar bravery was, however, demonstrated by Coolidge on a different field: fiscal policy. Today our conception of a hero president is that of an active executive, changing the country from Washington. Coolidge demonstrated a rarer kind of heroism: that of restraint, whether restraint of himself or of Congress. While in office, Coolidge vetoed the entitlements of his day, farm support and support for veterans. He allowed bills to die in recess, a move known as the pocket veto. Often he did not even comment on his own inaction.
Such behavior has often been depicted as laziness, or cruelty, or both. When Coolidge died, the commentator Dorothy Parker asked, “How can they tell?” Yet Coolidge’s refusal to grant entitlements to various groups came out of strength and a confidence that all citizens would benefit if only the government did not favor one faction.
Tucker adds value by sketching out Coolidge’s greatest campaign, a campaign to cut taxes. Together with Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Coolidge fought to restore tax rates to pre–World War I levels. This endeavor was not easy, especially because Mellon and Coolidge found an opponent in an increasingly progressive Congress. To get lawmakers to agree to lower rates even modestly, Mellon and Coolidge initially had to concede a condition they regarded as deeply offensive to American freedom: the tax authorities could publicly release the returns of top taxpayers. Yet Coolidge and Mellon persevered, managing, within a couple of years, to reverse the heinous “public returns” rule. They also successfully pressured Congress to reduce top tax rates to levels below not only those of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt but also those of Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. Today the Coolidge top tax rate of 25 percent sets the bar for Republican presidential candidates.
Marvelously, Tucker carries the tax story forward, showing how Josiah Bailey of North Carolina and other little-known skeptics, many Democrats, pressed back when the New Deal threatened to engulf the private sector. The “Conservative Manifesto” that Bailey led the group in publishing inspired small-government fans and provided the template for the Republicans’ 1994 Contract with America.
Most debated in Tucker’s roster will be John C. Calhoun, born in 1782. Like nearly all of his southern peers, Senator Calhoun supported slavery, and explicitly so. This has been enough to see him wiped out from children’s texts. Yet the omission leaves younger citizens in the dark about some valuable history. For example, Calhoun became the leading opponent of the tariff, a protectionist measure that benefited some parts of the country at the expense of others. He maintained his opposition even when it threatened his own political ambitions. In 1832 Calhoun resigned the vice presidency rather than continue to serve under President Andrew Jackson, who refused to reduce the so-called Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun’s opposition led to compromise that reduced tariff rates, benefiting all consumers and establishing the virtuous Democratic Party tradition of lower tariffs. In Profiles in Courage, and later on the presidential campaign trail in 1960, Kennedy expressed his “admiration for this great South Carolinian” and praised the “courage of Calhoun in refusing to repudiate” positions that were unpopular, or even tragically wrong. “I never know what South Carolina thinks of a measure,” Calhoun once said. “I act to the best of my judgment and according to my conscience.” Of South Carolina, Calhoun added: “If she approves, well and good. If she does not, and wishes anyone to take my place, I am ready to vacate. We are even.”
Taken together, Tucker’s profiles remind us that America is broader than we think, and that the country’s history is too subtle to force into the framework of modern progressivism. These accounts underscore two other points often skipped over. The first is that supporting states’ rights is not equivalent to supporting racism. The second is that American conservatism was not born with Fox News, as much as Tea Party opponents pretend. Our traditional respect for states’ rights and restrained government run back to the American Revolution. After all, many of our revolutionaries considered themselves the conservatives, defenders of rights once honored in England but now abused by the arbitrary George III.
Many readers resent the narrowness standard histories offer. They will welcome Conservative Heroes, which so thoughtfully draws out the full picture. This book will also broaden both college and high school syllabi.
Not all will select the same heroes Tucker does. No matter. History is “an argument without end,” wrote the historian Pieter Geyl. Tucker’s gift is to supply Americans with facts and stories that enable us to participate better in the great argument.
Amity Shlaes is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, Coolidge, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man (Graphic Edition), and The Greedy Hand: Why Taxes Drive Americans Crazy.
Introduction
“A FAITHFUL BAND”
Looking back on his early years in politics as a conservative, former secretary of war Newton D. Baker recalled, “I was one of a faithful band fighting a hopeless battle for a philosophy as old as the Republic itself.”1 That political philosophy was originally called “classical liberalism” but now more often is termed “conservatism.” For much of this country’s history, “liberalism” connoted a belief in the maximum personal freedom consistent with the maintenance of order. But twentieth-century progressives “changed the English language,” as author Amity Shlaes points out.2 With the rise of the New Deal, liberalism became synonymous with increased centralization of power in government—always justified in the name of greater equality and justice. By the second half of the twentieth century, that “faithful band” resisting the growth of government commonly went by the name “conservative,” particularly after the publication of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind (1953) and Senator Barry Goldwater’s bestseller The Conscience of a Conservative (1960).3
This book endeavors to identify and trace the development of American conservatism from the founding of the Republic into the modern era by examining the lives and writings of fourteen important figures—some lesser known than others, but all of real significance. It in no way purports to be a comprehensive survey of American history or a definitive study of the individuals included. But examining these leaders allows us to bring the foundational principles of conservatism into sharper relief and see how those principles have been put into action over time.
CONSERVATISM’S FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES
Over the past century, most historians have viewed American history through the philosophical lens of modern progressivism. These historians have lionized leaders who expanded the role of government and sought to implement programs designed to redistribute private property, control markets, and otherwise put Washington in charge.
Consider Arthur Schlesinger Jr., one of the most prominent historians of the twentieth century. Schlesinger’s sons have written of their father, “He was always in some way promoting and advancing the liberal agenda; it was his mission, purpose, and justification.”4 Schlesinger himself wrote that a liberal is one who “believes that the mitigation of economic problems will require a renewal of affirmative government to redress the market’s distortion and compensate for its failures.”5 Historian Thomas Silver, in Coolidge and the Historians, wrote: “In the hands of a historian like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., history becomes a weapon. It is wielded in the fight to advance a political cause.”6 And Schlesinger was hardly alone. Henry Steele Commager, Allan Nevins, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and many other liberal historians have shaped much of the perspective on American history.
Take, for example, the mainstream interpretation of the politics and economics surrounding the Great Depression. Nevins and Commager dismissed the Republican-dominated 1920s as “dull, bourgeois, and ruthless,” portrayed Calvin Coolidge as a do-nothing president who was subservient to business interests, declared that the “New Deal was long overdue,” and praised Franklin Roosevelt for meeting the crisis “with boldness and vigor.”7 For his part, Schlesinger hailed Roosevelt as the nation’s “savior”—a president who was always “for action, for forward motion, for the future.”8
There has, however, been a resolute minority of historians who have upheld a conservative view. This group includes writers like Paul Johnson, Clinton Rossiter, Niall Ferguson, Russell Kirk, and Amity Shlaes. In stark contrast to Nevins and Commager, Johnson hailed Coolidge as “the most internally consistent and single-minded of American presidents” and concluded that “Coolidge prosperity was huge, real, and widespread.”9 Shlaes and others have documented how the New Deal didn’t end the Great Depression but in fact prolonged and exacerbated it—how, as Shlaes put it, “government intervention helped to make the Depression Great.”10
This book is situated unabashedly in the conservative camp. It treats conservatism seriously as a political philosophy and shows how its foundational principles have remained consistent throughout American history. I believe the following five concepts have proved to be of fundamental importance:
First, conservatism is grounded in a realistic view of human nature. Conservatives believe there is nothing in human history to suggest the perfectibility of man. Though created by God in the divine image, man is a fallen creature in need of redemption. Left to his own devices, he reverts to violence, dissolution, and aggression. Patrick Henry and other Founders spoke often of “the depravity of human nature.”11 In Federalist No. 6 Alexander Hamilton warned, “Men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious.”12 This view of human nature keeps conservatives from accepting the progressive notion that mankind inevitably advances and improves. The divide between conservative and progressive worldviews was evident as early as the Founding. The American Revolution was, in fact, “a revolution not made but prevented,” as Russell Kirk put it—the American Founders saw themselves as restoring the traditional rights of Englishmen. The French Revolution, by contrast, “utterly overturned the old political and social order.”13 Kirk explained the “principal difference” between these two so-called revolutions: “The American revolutionaries in general held a biblical view of man and his bent toward sin, while the French revolutionaries in general attempted to substitute for the biblical understanding an optimistic doctrine of human goodness advanced by the philosophes of the rationalistic Enlightenment. The American view led to the Constitution of 1787; the French view, to the Terror and to a new autocracy.”14 Conservatives thus believe that the American Republic was founded not to reform human nature but rather to establish the boundaries within which human nature might flourish.
Second, because of man’s fallen nature, the primary roles of government are to establish order and preserve liberty. There is a definite tension between these roles, and the conservative would generally advocate the maximum degree of personal liberty while maintaining the most basic level of order. As we shall see, this debate began early in American history, as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other Founders argued over various elements of the Constitution. The threat of anarchy was real in the early days of the Republic, but there also loomed the fear of a repressive, centralized government. The same tension was at the heart of the dissolution of the Union during the Civil War. In the mid-twentieth century Senator Robert A. Taft practiced “the ‘Great Tradition’ of politics: maintaining justice through a healthy tension of order and freedom.”15 Conservatives have recognized the need for order but have been wary of government encroachment on personal liberty. They have refused to equate any and all changes with desirable reform. Hasty innovation and disregard for precedent are not the path to real progress.
The third canon is closely linked to the second. The conservative stops abruptly at those two primary roles of government. There is no important third role, for the scope of government is to be limited. Jefferson spoke for most of the Founders when, in his first inaugural address, he said: “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”16 The Founders feared that any governmental power that extended beyond the barest protection of liberty could itself become a threat to liberty. Jeffersonians saw local institutions as the common man’s best protection against the threat of a strong central government.
Fourth is a conviction that property rights and human rights are inseparably bound together. The Founders were well grounded in John Locke’s views on the rights of property. As Paul Johnson has written, all the Founders “derived from John Locke the notion that security of one’s property was intimately linked to one’s freedom.”17 John Adams wrote, “Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.” Hamilton concurred: “Adieu to the security of property, adieu to the security of liberty.”18 In the twentieth century John W. Davis affirmed this same truth: “The chief aim of all government is to preserve the freedom of the citizen. His control over his person, his property, his movements, his business, his desires should be restrained only so far as the public welfare imperatively demands. The world is in more danger of being governed too much than too little.”19
In a new nation forged out of the wilderness by the initiative of pioneers, there was no concept of economic equality—neither as a reality nor as a goal. Madison denounced any “equal division of property” as “improper” and “wicked.”20 In observing American democracy in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville cautioned that “democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the feeling of envy” and “awaken and foster a passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy.” Tocqueville also warned that there exists “in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”21 That is why securing property rights is so important: doing so, wrote the political scientist James Q. Wilson in the twentieth century, provides “perhaps the most powerful antidote to unfettered selfishness.”22 For the conservative, an individual should be free to strive, invest, and achieve without fear that his rewards will be seized and without envy of his neighbor’s success. As we shall see, the link between property and liberty has remained a cornerstone of conservative thought throughout American history.
Fifth, the social and political life of a community and a country depends on private virtues. The Marxist critic Granville Hicks once wrote contemptuously, “The Tory has always insisted that, if men would cultivate the individual virtues, social problems would take care of themselves.”23 There is more than a grain of truth in that. The great eighteenth-century British statesman Edmund Burke, often called the father of modern conservatism, wrote: “But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils.”24 Conservatives throughout history have believed that virtues flow from a particular culture—a culture based on Judeo-Christian virtues. As Russell Kirk wrote: “Burke does not approve of religion because it is a bulwark of order; instead, he says that mundane order is derived from, and remains a part of, divine order. Religion is not merely a convenient myth to keep popular appetites within bounds.”25 The men profiled in this book all valued this culture and its traditions. And they lived political and personal lives of civility and integrity, as even their political opponents attested.
FOURTEEN LEADERS
In the following chapters, we turn to the lives of fourteen leaders who defended and advanced the tenets of American conservatism. The story begins with the friendship and collaboration of Jefferson and Madison during the formation of the Republic and in their opposition to the Federalist program. Both men ascended to the presidency—and once in office, both partially abandoned their strict interpretations of the Constitution. Their “Old Republican” principles were carried forward in Congress by Nathaniel Macon, John Randolph, and the “Tertium Quids.” In the next generation, the torch was passed to John C. Calhoun, one of the greatest political thinkers in American history. Although basic Jeffersonian principles became hopelessly entangled in the sectional battle over slavery during this period, Calhoun’s writings and speeches on federalism versus government centralization contributed greatly to the foundation of conservatism.
With the Civil War came unparalleled centralization of power in Washington and a long period during which Jeffersonian thought was little heeded. In a backlash against big government and corruption, Grover Cleveland was elected president in 1884, returning Jeffersonian principles to power. With a combination of courage, character, and common sense, Cleveland effected conservative reforms and stood for sound money and a free market. He served two terms but ultimately lost control of his party to William Jennings Bryan and the progressives, as the country began a twenty-five-year, bipartisan love affair with progressivism.
After the exhilaration of Teddy Roosevelt’s and Woodrow Wilson’s progressive administrations, and the exhaustion of the Great War, the country returned to “normalcy” under President Warren Harding. The restoration of Jeffersonian principles began with Harding, but it accelerated when his sudden death in 1923 brought to power his vice president, Calvin Coolidge. Over the next five years, President Coolidge and his treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, reduced the size and scope of the national government, reduced the tax burden, and thus fostered the free-market conditions that produced an economic boom. Theirs was a record of principled conservative governance.
When the stock market crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression began, Coolidge’s Republican successor, Herbert Hoover, ignored conservative principles and instead turned toward government intervention. Then Franklin Roosevelt entered office and took this interventionism to unprecedented levels. The embrace of federal government power to solve all problems came to define modern liberalism. And American conservatism began to redefine itself as the alternative to modern liberalism. Defenders of limited government, federalism, free markets, and individual liberty—concepts that the New Deal had seemingly written off—resisted the extraordinary centralization of power. The conservative challenge emerged in Congress, first under Democratic leaders such as Josiah W. Bailey and then under a revival of the GOP as the conservative party led by Robert A. Taft, and before the courts with the brilliant advocacy of John W. Davis.
World War II postponed the political reckoning for the failed liberal policies of the 1930s, but the postwar period witnessed the ascendance of conservatism. First, William F. Buckley Jr. and his National Review brought vigorous conservative thought to the mainstream. Buckley influenced politicians like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and he inspired countless young people to rally around the conservative banner. By 1964, Goldwater and the conservatives had seized control of the GOP from liberal Republicans. Goldwater’s crushing loss to President Lyndon Johnson that fall led most pundits to proclaim that conservatism could never be a serious political force. But Reagan brought conservatism to commanding heights with his sweeping victory in 1980. His historic presidency “changed the trajectory of America,” as even President Barack Obama has acknowledged.
This “faithful band” has provided a rich and honorable history for twenty-first-century conservatives. In examining the lives and careers of these leaders, we honor the wisdom of Winston Churchill, who reminded us, “We cannot say ‘the past is the past’ without surrendering the future.”26
1
THOMAS JEFFERSON AND JAMES MADISON
FOUNDING COLLABORATORS
The fifty-year friendship of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison provided the basis for a political collaboration that profoundly affected the burgeoning American republic. Through the struggle for American independence, the formulation and adoption of the Constitution, the Federalist years, and the Virginia ascendancy, these two friends conferred, debated, and defined the basic tenets of constitutional conservatism; they also plotted the practical, political implementation of these principles. Their surviving correspondence numbers some 1,250 letters and provides a remarkable window into the early years of the nation. Both were products of the Virginia aristocracy—well born, well educated, and well versed in the principles of John Locke, Edmund Burke, and the English Whigs. They were in basic agreement that the two primary purposes of government were to ensure order and to preserve liberty. But they often differed on how best to achieve the necessary balance between these two often conflicting objectives.
Jefferson expressed far more confidence in democracy, local (and state) government, and the rationality of the people, while Madison tended to support the federal government’s protection against undisciplined local majorities, the inviolability of private property rights, and the restraining hand of government on the excesses of the people. They both advocated limited government, but each drew the line at a different point. Jefferson was ever the philosopher, whereas Madison more often served as the voice of practical politics. In studying their correspondence over the constitutional debate and during the Federalist period—especially over the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions—one can see two distinct political minds struggling to find common ground. Theirs proved to be not only an amiable friendship but also an extremely fruitful philosophical and political partnership. This chapter focuses on only one short period of their long collaboration (1787–1798), but it was a period that greatly affected American conservatism.
“I AM NOT A FRIEND TO A VERY ENERGETIC GOVERNMENT”
Jefferson and Madison met in 1776, when both were elected to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates. Madison, just twenty-five, was a newcomer to politics, whereas Jefferson, the elder by eight years, had spent several years in the predecessor body, the House of Burgesses, and would soon be elected governor of Virginia. There was no question initially as to who was the senior partner, but Madison’s serious, scholarly nature soon established him as coequal. By the end of Jefferson’s controversial term as governor in 1781, Madison had emerged as a leading defender of the beleaguered Jefferson. His spirited defense cemented their friendship before Jefferson’s departure in 1784 as U.S. minister to France. Both men had labored under the hopelessly ineffective Articles of Confederation and had become convinced of the need for thorough constitutional reform. Wartime improvisations were no foundation upon which to build a nation.
From Europe, Jefferson provided Madison with a steady stream of letters covering everything from the Greco-Roman theory of republican government to practical advice concerning the various thirteen American states. Meanwhile, Madison was engaged in the daily give-and-take of practical politics as a member of the Confederation Congress. He had been reelected in 1786 despite term limits that prohibited congressmen from serving more than three out of every six years. It was in the fall of 1786 that a potentially dangerous uprising of debt-ridden farmers in western Massachusetts erupted under the leadership of one Daniel Shays. After forcing the state supreme court to flee Springfield in terror, the ruffians seized control of the state arsenal. Cowering before this ragtag mob, the legislature rescinded direct taxation. The powerlessness of the Confederation was clearly exposed, and the public cry for constitutional change began to rise.
Madison wrote urgently to Jefferson seeking his assessment of Shays’s Rebellion. Jefferson responded nonchalantly that it did “not appear to threaten serious consequences,” but Madison labeled the rebellion treason and called for “vigorous actions” to put it down.1 On March 18, Madison wrote to George Washington, “It would seem that a calm has been restored [in Massachusetts].… The precautions taking by the State, however, betray a great distrust of its continuance.”2 Madison clearly viewed Shays’s Rebellion not only as an ominous sign but also as an effective argument in urging constitutional reform. Decades later he would recall that “a crisis had arrived which was to decide whether the [American] Experiment was to be a blessing to the world, or to blast forever the hopes which the republican cause had inspired.”3
In fact, Madison had already been convinced of the need for reform. Shays’s Rebellion represented only the most “recent and alarming” example of the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation. Madison had conceived the Annapolis Convention, which convened in September 1786, less than two weeks after the rebellion broke out in Massachusetts. Ostensibly called to discuss interstate trade, the Annapolis meeting quickly moved to the topic of amending the Articles of Confederation.
It was at Annapolis that Madison first began to strategize with Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was the leader of an emerging group of “federalists,” most of whom were prominent New York and Philadelphia businessmen. They had repeatedly attempted—with no success—to amend the Articles of Confederation to establish a sound, national financial structure. Although their philosophical underpinnings were different from Jefferson’s and Madison’s, the federalists became natural allies in the development and ratification of the Constitution. In February Madison wrote to Washington, “I am inclined to hope that they will gradually be concentered in the plan of a thorough reform of the existing system.”4
The Annapolis Convention produced a resolution, drafted by Madison and Hamilton, making a perspicaciously broad appeal to have delegates from all the states reconvene in Philadelphia in May “to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.”5 With this sweeping, self-proclaimed authorization, the delegations convened in Philadelphia.
After attending to several housekeeping rules, including the election of Washington as presiding officer, the delegates began serious debate on what came to be known as Madison’s “Virginia Plan.” Because Madison was a decidedly uninspiring speaker, he had asked fellow Virginian Edmund Randolph to introduce the plan.
On May 29, Randolph offered the fifteen resolutions that comprised Madison’s plan for a national government of three branches—an executive, a judiciary, and a two-house legislature. It was clear from the outset that the Virginia Plan was not a narrow revision of the old Articles but rather the creation of a significantly more robust national government. The legitimacy for this government was derived directly from the people rather than from the states—hence the carefully selected phrase “We the people.”
Once Randolph had presented the plan, Madison set to work as the recognized author and floor leader, participating extensively in the ensuing six-week debate. Madison here exhibited his penchant for thorough preparation and meticulous groundwork. In a letter to Washington some weeks before the convention, he outlined the major provisions of the plan with this introduction: “Conceiving that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcilable with their aggregate sovereignty; and that a consolidation of the whole into one simple republic would be as inexpedient as it is unattainable, I have sought for some middle ground, which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and not exclude the local authorities wherever they can be subordinately useful.” After describing the various checks and balances in his proposed national government, Madison concluded with this critical element: “To give a new System its proper validity and energy, a ratification must be obtained from the people, and not merely from the ordinary authority of the Legislatures.”6 Washington’s crucial support was forthcoming, although it was subtly delivered throughout the convention with his habitual, Olympian reticence and seeming impartiality.
As the Philadelphia convention began its serious work, Madison wrote apologetically to Jefferson that a code of silence had been adopted. Jefferson objected vigorously: “I am sorry they began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members.”7 From the outset, Madison’s Virginia Plan set the agenda for the secret debates. William Pierce, delegate from Georgia, wrote, “What is very remarkable about him is that every person seems to acknowledge his greatness. He blends together the profound politician with the Scholar.”8 Madison has thus become known to us as the “Father of the Constitution.”
In October, after adjournment of the convention, Madison penned a momentous seventeen-page letter to Jefferson with which he enclosed a copy of the Constitution. Here he provided a history of the convention, his own analysis of the Constitution, and his vision of future political life in the new republic. He reported on four central goals of the convention’s deliberations:
1. To unite a proper energy in the Executive, and a proper stability in the Legislative departments, with the essential character of Republican Government. 2. To draw a line of demarcation, which would give to the General Government every power requisite for general purposes, and leave to the States every other power. 3. To provide for the different interests of different parts of the Union. 4. To adjust the clashing pretensions of the large and small States.9
Madison then tackled the central question of limiting the role of the national government. He emphasized to Jefferson that the new federal government rested squarely “on the people”—not on the state legislatures. He also underscored the narrow limits placed on national authority. Madison’s attention to these points almost certainly indicated his suspicion that Jefferson would be concerned by the scope of the “new system.”
Jefferson was indeed concerned on that score. Writing to John Adams about his misgivings, Jefferson confessed to have found “things in it which stagger all my dispositions.”10 He clearly believed the convention had overreacted to the fear of anarchy and rebellion, and he feared the heavy hand of an overly powerful central government.
In a letter of December 20, 1787, Jefferson offered Madison his thorough analysis of the approved Constitution—its shortcomings but also its merits. In signaling his reservations, Jefferson was among the first to advocate a bill of rights “providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations.” Jefferson saw this bill of rights as “what the people are entitled to against every government on earth.” Also, he expressed concern over the failure to limit expressly the tenure of the president. Some of the federalists were advocating lifetime tenure, but Jefferson recognized potential danger and requested clarity. In addition to these two specific concerns, Jefferson underscored to Madison his underlying general suspicion of government. In classic Jeffersonian language, he prophetically warned, “I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.” Here Jefferson sought to separate Madison from his federalist allies and, in so doing, laid one of the cornerstones of American conservatism.11
12