Madison in Philadelphia
There is a phrase much used in diplomacy and politics, sometimes attributed to Lord Palmerston, sometimes to Cicero.
In politics, there are no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only accommodations.
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| Lord Palmerston |
Regardless of who coined the adage, it is difficult to imagine stone-faced George Washington listening with approval. It is nevertheless generally held to be the central truth of modern politics, and James Madison was our first modern politician. The only American scholar of politics and political history available to Washington who therefore depended on him for advice, Madison eventually evolved into a practicing politician. An evolution in the core beliefs of both these men, based on their new political experiences seems to explain the slow transformation of the original friendship of these two allied Virginia plantation owners, into coolness bordering on hostility. On one level, their disagreements may be seen as responses to their new roles: Washington was in absolute charge of the executive department, while Madison constantly needed to mould his personal views to accommodate the collective viewpoint of the legislative body. It seems possible neither man realized this would become a common experience. On another level it seems possible to view the two of them as having differing reactions to the Industrial Revolution. Although they were both Virginia plantation owners, Washington's wartime experience had carried him into the far corners of the new nation, his role as Chief Executive put him into a cosmopolitan circle with a wider appreciation of new transformative economic forces. Of the two, he was better able to understand what Hamilton was talking about, better able to appreciate that the strength of a nation has an economic base rather than a military one. The mythology of the era has Alexander Hamilton in combat with James Madison, with Washington in the middle but eventually siding with Hamilton. That's true enough, but the greater truth is that these individuals were cast as the symbols of the changing beliefs of the country. It must be conjectured the high adventure of creating a new form of government held the two together, even as many things turned out to be unanticipated. Washington seems more dismayed by gradually perceiving some unwelcome imperatives of the Constitution, while Madison simply set about to make the most of them. Washington believed in character, a personality based on steadfastness, courage and determination. Adaptability, yes, flexibility, no.
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| James Madison |
The organizing principle of every legislature, congress, or parliament is that each member has one vote and therefore is the equal of every other member. Washington understood leaders would emerge, able to persuade others. What he did not anticipate was that some would acquire the power to compel obedience. Unofficial ways to acquire power over colleagues differ among legislatures, but have certain recurring features.
 Vote-swapping. 
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The press of business usually requires a division of labor into committees, who soon acquire special expertise. A chairman is selected to handle routine matters, and to negotiate compromises with overlapping committees; the chairman acquires power. Members differ in their degree of interest in a topic; those who have little interest in any particular outcome have an opportunity to trade their vote for assistance in another matter of much greater concern to them; why not? From this evolves the strategy of striving to discover what each voter wants most of all; offering assistance on that favorite topic is the first step in enlisting later support on some other issue. If he wants your help badly enough, he may even vote against something he really favors. If he wants to be chairman of a committee important to his interest, it may even be possible to force him to vote for something he privately hates. Vote-swapping is the fundamental currency of legislative trading, and it is sometimes a loathsome business. But just try to imagine George Washington swapping votes to become chairman of a committee, or to enact an appropriation; it couldn't happen.
One suspects it did happen, at least once. Washington badly wanted the nation's capitol to be across the Potomac river from his plantation. Indeed, he wanted the Potomac River to be the main commercial highway of the nation to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. He never said he wanted the nation's capital to be named after him, but he did not dissent a great deal, either. When there was quibbling about the location of the White House, the old surveyor went there himself and laid it out with a surveyor's transit. Washington wanted Virginia to be the biggest most important state in the union; three of the first four presidents were Virginians. And so, when Hamilton and Jefferson negotiated the Compromise of 1790, everyone knew what Washington's feelings were. The revolutionary debts of Virginia became federally assumed, in return for relocating the capital from the banks of the Delaware to the banks of the Potomac. Robert Morris was fit to be tied. Washington stood aloof and uninvolved. Anyone who has ever been involved in one of these compromises knows that some participants see nothing wrong with it, while others hate themselves for having anything to do with it. In fact, the legislators who are most offended by vote-swapping are the ones who once somehow got unwillingly dragged into it, and never entirely forgave themselves. Natural politicians like Madison, however, are irked by those who criticize such a natural and effective process, whose successes are everywhere to be noted. While no one can read the minds of these two founding fathers, there seems little doubt they were on different sides of this enduring division in the personality types of people in public office, and therefore heading for a collision when a sufficiently major issue arose.
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The genius of the evolving American form of government was to leave land ownership in private hands, while creating a new power center in banking and finance.
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The issue was major, all right. It was the question of whether this proud new nation was going to join the Industrial Revolution, for all its smoke and crowding, greed and striving. Or whether it was going to sweep majestically along with the romantic movement of the day, the happy farmer and the noble savage, spreading out on a bountiful endless continent. To some extent, this was an echo of the French Revolution which so enthralled Madison's best friend Thomas Jefferson, drawing on the conflict between England and France in our own rather recent revolution. Great Britain was a century ahead of France in the Industrial Revolution, which originated north of Manchester where William Penn's Quakers came from. Yes, factories were sort of polluting and crowded, certainly enough to get Marx and Engels excited. But there was another undeniable truth: England was richer, was acquiring a world empire, had a bigger navy, and was soon to beat Napoleon at Waterloo. It was rather easy to prove to George Washington that an economically strong nation was likely to be militarily strong as well. Eventually, the point would be brought home to Robert E. Lee. American tourists in Europe today echo the sentiment when they chose an itinerary: no churches, and no museums, please.
Still another historical curiosity emerges from this ten years of Philadelphia as the nation's capital, which is really our national epic poem, waiting for its Homer to write it. Just about everybody at the Convention agreed the national government had to be strengthened; the state legislatures were going to ruin us. Madison, representing the views of the landowner aristocracy, was also afraid the national government could get too strong and ruin them by disturbing private property ownership. Hamilton didn't care about land, he cared about money; he wouldn't mind a King if one was necessary to get things done. It should be remembered that feudalism was largely based on the king's right to reassign land ownership in return for military support. The genius of the evolving American form of government was to leave land ownership in private hands, while creating a new power center in banking and finance. So it eventually evolved that Madison and his friends from Appalachia wanted to limit the powers of the national government strictly to those few areas where we needed them strong; enumerated powers were the result. The Federalists following Hamilton, stretched enumerated power as far as it would reach with extra "implied" powers. If you were to defend the nation, you needed a navy; eventually, it would be implied you needed an air force, maybe atom bombs. Increasing Federalism was the driving force of the Republican Party down to the time of Franklin Roosevelt, indeed down to the moment when the Philadelphian Owen Roberts tipped the Supreme Court majority in favor of eliminating the commerce clause. Since that time, the Republican descendants of Alexander Hamilton have sought to shrink and restrain the federal powers and bureaucracy, while the political descendants of James Madison have sought to populate Virginia with civil servants up to and beyond the Piedmont. Both Madison and Hamilton must be turning in the grave about the way this topic evolved. But the power being struggled for is all commercial power; ownership control of land remains off the political table. Perhaps the day will come when fresh land stops seeming unlimited, making monopoly control of it seem more threatening. More likely, the agricultural economy will nearly vanish, taking its power struggles along with it.
(1548)
