Washington [356]
Appearances could be deceiving with James Madison. However professorial in manner, he was the largest slaveholder in Orange County, Virginia, and his fragile health masked a fanatic determination. Never a pushover in political debates, he plumbed every subject to the bottom and was invariably the best-prepared person in the room. To prepare for the revision of the Articles of Confederation, he plowed through an entire “literary cargo” of books that Jefferson forwarded from Paris.32 For a young man, he possessed extensive legislative experience, first as an effective member of Congress and now as a member of the Virginia assembly. A skillful legislator, secretive and canny, he exerted his influence in mysteriously indirect ways. Political foes who underrated James Madison did so at their peril.
In September 1786, Madison attended a conference in Annapolis ostensibly devoted to interstate commerce. Here commissioners from five states discussed ways to resolve the trade disputes roiling the country. The Annapolis conference determined that the only way to cure trade disputes was to perform radical surgery on the Articles of Confederation. One of the commissioners, Alexander Hamilton, drafted a bold communiqué calling upon the thirteen states to send delegates to a convention in Philadelphia in May 1787 that would “render the constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the union.”33 Two days after the Annapolis meeting, Edmund Randolph, head of the Virginia delegation, arrived at Mount Vernon to brief Washington, who fully endorsed Hamilton’s appeal. In late October Madison, accompanied by James Monroe, spent another three days at Mount Vernon and found common ground with Washington as they dissected the Articles of Confederation. Clearly Madison, Monroe, and Randolph were trying to cajole Washington from retirement and enlist him in the growing movement to reform the political structure. He was slowly being swept up in a swelling tide that he would find difficult to resist.
As Washington considered his future role, an outbreak of violence in rural Massachusetts sharpened the reform debate. If ever American history had a useful crisis, it occurred in western Massachusetts in the autumn of 1786. To retire a heavy debt load, the state had boosted land taxes and thereby provoked the wrath of farmers, many of whom lost their land in foreclosures. Led by Daniel Shays, a militia captain during the war, thousands of rebels, heaving pitchforks, swarmed into rural courthouses to menace judges and block foreclosures. Invoking the Revolution’s militant spirit, many donned old uniforms from the Continental Army. When they threatened to march on the army arsenal in Springfield, Congress rushed Henry Knox to the scene to supervise defensive measures. Henry Lee sent Washington an alarming report about the rebels’ plans to subvert state government, abolish debt, and redistribute property: “In one word, my dear General, we are all in dire apprehension that a beginning of anarchy, with all its calamities, has approached.” Citizens appealed to Washington to go to Massachusetts, saying his steadying presence would “bring them back to peace and reconciliation.”34
The events in Massachusetts struck the law-abiding Washington with horror, and the pitch of his letters instantly rose in intensity. “But for God’s sake, tell me, what is the cause of all these commotions?” he asked David Humphreys. If there were legitimate grievances, why had they not been redressed? If it was merely a case of licentiousness, why didn’t the government step in at once? “Commotions