July 4th is one of my favorite
holidays. To begin, I’m a summer person
with a July birthday. This is always a
holiday where I can count on my kind of weather – warm! But it’s also a time for a guy like me to
reflect on what I love about my country instead of what I don’t.
What I DON’T love about my country is the way its
politicians and media-talking-heads wield their power these days. Yes, I go to the voting booth and cast my
ballots. And yes I subscribe to two
daily newspapers and watch cable news fairly frequently. But when I evaluate the performance of the lawmakers,
the investigative journalists, or the gas bags on the tube, all I can do is
lament the gulf between those power brokers and the ones I celebrate on July 4th
– the ones that most excite my patriotism. The sad thing is, most of them have been dead
for well over a hundred years.
This July 4th, my daughter Rebecca and I
headed south into the region of Virginia known as the Piedmont. Typically, when lovers of history think about
celebrating July 4th in the Piedmont, their minds immediately turn
to Monticello, the home of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence on
that date in 1776. Monticello is my
favorite spot in America, and Jefferson is my favorite American historical
figure. But yesterday, Rebecca and I
decided to leave Monticello to the casual tourists. We drove instead to two more esoteric sites
-- the homes of Jefferson’s two immediate successors in the White House, who
also happened to be two of his best friends.
Our day started at Montpelier, the home of the
nation’s fourth President, James Madison.
I heard one of the Montpelier docents refer to Madison as an
“underappreciated” President. And that
got me wondering, could that really be true?
Madison is widely known as the Father of the Constitution and is one of
the two primary authors of the Federalist Papers, the critical document used to
sell the Constitution to our fledgling Republic. Given those accomplishments, not to mention
the fact that he served for eight years as President at a time when the young
nation was at risk of foreign takeover, how can people possibly not fully
appreciate Madison?
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized
that the docent was right. Madison is
kind of a forgotten man, at least relative to his accomplishments. His visage can’t be found on any commonly
used piece of currency. There are no
legends about him that have found their way into American culture. He is not a figure who has made his way into
Hollywood productions. He’s not a war
hero. And he’s not even the central
Virginian intellectual from the early days of the Republic that people most
like to speak about. So yeah, why did we
go visit the home of this schmoe, anyway?
I’ll tell you why – because Madison is a national
treasure. He overcame severe depression to create a set
of laws that have remarkably stood the test of time. This guy was a true philosopher, whose genius
resulted not from having invented an original system of political ideas but rather
from knowing how to take the state-of-the-art political philosophies of folks like
Montesquieu and Locke and turn them into a living, breathing set of practical
applications. Do you appreciate, for
example, a government that remains religiously neutral, and that carefully
separates power between the federal government and the states as well as
between the various branches of the federal government? Thank James Madison.
Some politicians go into the occupation for the
glory. They like the cut of their own
jib – and the fact that their name is always in the paper. Madison? There’s a man, we were told at his house, who didn’t
even sit at the end of the table in his own dining room. His wife Dolly had that honor. James placed himself in the middle where he
could pick and choose the conversation in which to participate, or simply to
eavesdrop on.
One of the parts of the tour I found most
interesting was the stop in Madison’s first floor study – the place of his
death. The docent explained that one of
the doors to the study opens right up to the dining room. When Madison was an octogenarian suffering
from severe arthritis, he would lie on his bed in the study and, without seeing
the folks in the dining room, simply join in their conversation. I got the feeling that this wasn’t a vain
man. He was just someone who loved to
learn and to serve. And boy, did he ever
serve. For as much as we love
Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence or Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
and Gettysburg Address, is there another document in our National Archives more
impressive than Madison’s Constitution?
Yes, I know that Madison owned slaves. But given that he was an affluent white
Virginian, you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold that against him. He was simply behaving in that regard the way
people of his lot in life behaved. No matter how much they traded for in the
market, slaves commonly functioned as the bulk of a plantation owner’s assets;
and back then, just like today, few
people give away the bulk of their assets.
Aside from the slavery issue, the problem I had with
Madison’s house was his graveyard. It is
a beautiful little graveyard, but there was something seriously amiss. Madison’s gravestone was significantly larger
than all the others. Even Dolly’s was
dwarfed by the stone celebrating our fourth President. That didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t seem in keeping with the Madison I
love. He was a republican with a small
“r” and a democrat with a small “d.” I
wouldn’t think he’d want such a fuss made about him as an individual. Wasn’t he just Jefferson’s “little brother”? Hell, he barely won re-election in 1812 – and
look at what that year has come to symbolize – the burning of our nation’s
capital by foreign troops.
I suspect that, as Presidents go, Madison’s head didn’t
swell up. And that’s kind of why I love
him. That and the Constitution. We owe the man a lot – and a pilgrimage to
Montpelier is the least we can do.
Truth be told, Montpelier was the destination I most
looked forward to when I woke up on the morning of the 4th. But my final destination, Ashlawn-Highland,
turned out to be at least as meaningful.
If Madison was Jefferson’s little brother, Monroe was the little
brother’s, little brother. Though one
thing I learned at his home is that Monroe and Madison weren’t always good
friends. It was Jefferson who brought
these two former political opponents together; essentially, the great Jefferson
got to pick his two ideological siblings and foisted them on each other. But I get the impression that as they grew
older, both Madison and Monroe appreciated the set-up.
We don’t even have to look past the years of
Madison’s Presidency to see how much he respected Monroe during the last half
of their lives. Monroe served,
contemporaneously, as his big brother’s Secretary of State AND his Secretary of
War. I can hardly fathom how that can
be possible, but Monroe pulled it off, and went on to win two terms in the
White House, just like his older “brothers.”
The docent at Ashlawn-Highland had a couple of
agendas. First, she had to explain to visitors
who had just come down the road from the much more palatial Monticello, which
was only two miles away, that Ashlawn-Highland was still a pretty darned sweet
residence as early-19th century residences go. And second, that James Monroe needs to be
remembered as great in his own right, and not simply as one of those
non-descript Presidents like the eight who followed Andrew Jackson and preceded
Abraham Lincoln.
I listened for the docent to identify something
about Monroe that was truly unique and memorable. It wouldn’t have been hard for his
predecessors. Washington was the modern
Cincinnatus, who could have been king but opted instead to be “just” a
President. Adams was the voice of
Revolution, the little engine that could, whose force of will made sure that a
group of colonies never gave up the dream of independence. Jefferson was the quintessential Renaissance
Man, about whom it was said after JFK once assembled “the best and the
brightest” of his day, that “this was the greatest assemblage of intellect in
the White House since Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” And, as we have seen, James Madison drafted
our most prized political document – arguably the most influential secular
document since the Magna Carta.
By contrast, what the hell can we say about Monroe
that we can’t say about, for example, Millard Fillmore?
For one thing, as the docent reminded visitors to
Ashlawn-Highland, when Jefferson and Hamilton wanted someone who can “get
things done,” they called upon Monroe.
No, he wasn’t an orator. No, he
wasn’t much of a writer; as they’d say today, he was prosaic, not poetic, and
anything but quotable. But he was a
tireless public servant. And was he ever
a diplomat. I don’t mean that in the
sense of a person who speaks with the right euphemism, but rather in the sense
of knowing the wisest positions to take and the proper way to advocate them so
as to accomplish our greatest political objectives on the world stage.
Stated differently, if our society today ever truly got
sick and tired of watching Israelis and Palestinians fight over a small land
mass in the Middle East and had at our disposal a functioning time machine, I’m
thinking we might just want to summon James Monroe and whisk him off to
Jerusalem. If anyone could get that
dispute ironed out, it’s him. It’s no
coincidence that after he served as Secretaries of War/Peace and became
President, they named his tenure the “Era of Good Feeling.” When it comes to statecraft, that man just
got it.
And yet we’ve just forgotten him. Again, let’s please remedy that failure.
Before Rebecca and I left Ashlawn, we hung out on
the lawn with one of the “re-enactors” who was wearing the garb of a soldier in
the early Republic and was kind enough to show visitors what it was like to
fire one of the old early 19th century rifles. He reminded us that before we get overly
sentimental about the leaders of yesteryear, we might want to keep in mind that
the partisan squabbles back at the beginning of the 18th century
could be every bit as vicious if not more so than the political jousting we
hear about today. And he also called to
our attention that lest we invariably read the noblest of motives into the
conduct of our founding fathers, we might want to “follow the money,” for
therein lies human motivation more often than not.\
Given that this blog is called the “Empathic
Rationalist,” I suppose I should be hard-headed enough to think about the
re-enactor’s words and not romanticize the past into something utopian. But there is something about the early days
of our nation’s history, and in particular, the stories of those who led us
during those pivotal decades, that never ceases to leave me humbled and
appreciative. I can’t tell you how
difficult it was to keep my eyes dry inside those two houses – and I am a man
who doesn’t cry often. Something
overtakes me when I consider men like Madison and Monroe.
Maybe I am moved a bit by the fact that those men
remain underappreciated. But there are
many underappreciated historical figures, and I am not nearly so moved by
thinking about them. The difference is
that these men in particular grappled on a very practical basis with our
species’ fundamental questions of political philosophy, and through a
combination of luck, pluck, brains, and common sense, they showed us all THE
WAY.
At a time when one Pope is conferring sainthood on
another, in part due to his predecessor’s alleged “miracles,” I nominate two secular
figures for that same title. And the
beauty is, we don’t even have to call what they accomplished a “miracle.” We can just call it a holy land.
At a time when people are rioting in Egypt over the
birth pangs of democracy, let us not forget that the great republican
experiment known as the United States is still going strong after 237
years. No, it’s not perfect, but if we
all had the brains and the work ethic of a Madison or a Monroe, it could be
pretty damned close.
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