Mr. Jefferson named his own successor. Of the three Democratic candidates, Madison, Monroe, and George Clinton, he preferred Madison now, and urged Monroe to wait patiently as next in succession. Beyond two lives he did not, perhaps, think proper to dictate; and, besides, Clinton was not a Virginian. What little opposition there was to Madison in his own party came from those who feared that he was too thoroughly identified with Jefferson's policy to untie the knot in which the foreign relations of the country had become entangled. Of the 175 electoral votes, however, he received 122; but that was fewer by 39 than had been cast for Jefferson four years before. Of the New England States, Vermont alone gave him its votes, changing places with Rhode Island, which had wheeled into line again with the Federalists.

During the winter of 1808-9, after Madison's election but before his inauguration, he had quietly conferred with Erskine, the British minister at Washington, upon the condition of affairs. Much was hoped from these conferences; but the[273] end which they helped to bring about was the reverse of what was hoped for. Could Madison have had his way, he would probably have preferred that Congress should have left untouched at that session the questions of embargo and non-intercourse; for the tone of the debates and the tendency of legislation naturally led the English ministry to doubt the assurances which Erskine gave that these proceedings did not truly represent the friendly disposition of the incoming President. In answer to those representations, however, there came in April from Canning, the foreign secretary, certain propositions which were so presented by Erskine, and so received by the administration, as to promise a settlement of all differences between the two governments. Erskine was a young man, anxious very likely for distinction; but a laudable ambition to be of service in a good cause made him over-zealous. He exceeded the letter of his instructions, while keeping, as he thought, to their spirit. Probably he mistook their spirit in assuming that his government cared more to secure a settlement of existing difficulties than for the precise terms and minor details by which it should be reached. At any rate, he agreed that Great Britain would withdraw her orders in council provided the United States would maintain the non-intercourse acts against France so long as the Berlin and Milan decrees remained in force. This being secured, he did not insist upon two other conditions—partly because it was represented to[274] him that they would need some action by Congress, and partly because he believed that the essential point was gained by an agreement on the part of the United States to enforce non-intercourse against France while her decrees were unrepealed. These other conditions were, first, that the United States should cease to insist upon the right to carry on in time of war the colonial trade of a belligerent which had not been open in time of peace to neutrals; and, second, the acknowledgment that British men-of-war might rightfully seize American merchant vessels when transgressing the non-intercourse laws against France. He also proposed a settlement of the Chesapeake question, but omitted to say, as Canning had instructed him to say, that some provision would be made, as an act of generosity and not of right, for the wives and children of the men who were killed on board that ship. But when that settlement was accepted by the administration, he failed to resent some reflections from Robert Smith, the secretary of state, on the conduct of Great Britain in that affair, which Canning, when he heard of them, thought should have been resented and their recall demanded, or the negotiation stopped.

On the terms, however, as Erskine chose to present them, an agreement was reached, and the President issued a proclamation repealing the acts of embargo and non-intercourse as against Great Britain and her colonies after June 10. On that day more than a thousand ships, loaded and riding[275] at anchor in all the principal ports in anxious readiness for the signal for flight, spread their wings, like a flock of long-imprisoned birds, and flew out to sea. There was an almost universal shout of gratitude to the new President, who, in the first three months of his administration, had banished the fear of war abroad, and at home was sweeping away involuntary idleness, want, and ominous discontent. Madison had known something of popularity during his long career; but never before had he felt the exultation of riding upon the very crest of a mighty wave of popular applause. But it was one of those waves that collapse suddenly into a surprising flatness. Canning repudiated all that Erskine had done and immediately recalled him. The ships that had gone to sea, under the sanction of the President's proclamation, were permitted by an order in council to complete their voyages unmolested; but otherwise all commerce was once more brought to a standstill. It would have been easier to bear some fresh misfortune than to be compelled to struggle again with calamities so well understood and which it was hoped had been left behind forever. Gallatin had been retained in the Treasury Department and was the President's chief adviser, and the two were now accused of having been either imbecile or treacherous. It was openly said that they had led the young minister to agree to an arrangement which they knew his government would not sanction. But they could hardly[276] have been so foolish as to make a bargain with the certainty that it would stand only so long as a ship could go and come across the Atlantic. Nobody understood better than Madison how grateful a reconciliation with England would be to a large proportion of the people, and nobody was more disappointed that the negotiations came to worse than nothing, inasmuch as their failure led to new embarrassments.

He said with some bitterness, in a letter to Jefferson, early in August: "You will see by the instructions to Erskine, as published by Canning, that the latter was as much determined that there should be no adjustment as the former was that there should be one." He was unjust to Canning; the real fault was with Erskine, and with him only because his zeal outran his judgment. In another letter to Jefferson, the President says: "Erskine is in a ticklish situation with his government. I suspect he will not be able to defend himself against the charges of exceeding his instructions, notwithstanding the appeal he makes to sundry others not published. But he will make out a strong case against Canning, and be able to avail himself much of the absurdity and evident inadmissibility of the articles disregarded by him." Possibly Mr. Erskine considered that his government would approve of his not urging these points too earnestly, inasmuch as the other side refrained from insisting upon the abandonment of impressment of seamen on board American ships. But Mr. Madison's[277] indignation must have covered up a good deal of mortification. He could hardly have been without the sensation of one hoisted by his own petard. It was only two years since Mr. Jefferson, with his approval, had rejected the Monroe-Pinkney treaty because instructions had not been literally complied with. Mr. Canning, in following that example, could have pleaded, had he chosen, much the stronger justification, under the circumstances of the two cases; and Mr. Madison could not fail to remember, without being reminded of it, when this agreement was thrown back in his face, that he had been willing to accept it without any protection of the rights of American seamen, the want of which was the ostensible reason for rejecting the Monroe-Pinkney treaty.

However, the administration was now compelled to meet anew the old difficulties which the Erskine agreement had failed to dispose of. The President's first duty was to issue a second proclamation, recalling the previous one which had sent to sea every American ship in port. They could all come back, if they would, to be made fast again at their wharves, till the recurrent tides at last should ripple in and out of their open seams, and their yards and masts drop piecemeal upon the rotting decks. But many never came back, preferring rather the risk of being sunk or burned at sea, which happened to not a few, or of capture and confiscation by the belligerents whose laws they defied. Erskine was followed by a new[278] ambassador from England, Mr. Jackson. His mission, however, had no other result than to widen the breach between the two nations. A controversy almost immediately arose between the minister and Mr. Smith, the secretary of state,—or rather Mr. Madison himself, who, as he complained at a later period, did most of Smith's work as well as his own,—touching the arrangement with Erskine. Jackson intimated, or was understood as intimating, that the administration must have known the precise terms on which Erskine was empowered to treat with the government of the United States; and when a denial was made with a good deal of emphasis on the part of the administration, the insinuation was repeated almost as a direct charge. Of course there could be but one conclusion to correspondence of this sort; further communication with Jackson was declined and his recall asked for.

It was plain enough in the latter months of Jefferson's administration, to himself as well as to everybody else, that the embargo had not only failed to bring the belligerents to terms abroad, but that it had added greatly to the distress at home. That the measure was a failure, Madison himself acknowledged in one of his retrospective letters written in the retirement of Montpellier, sixteen years afterward. It was meant, he said in that letter, as an experimental measure, preferable to naked submission or to war at a time when war was inexpedient. It failed, he added, "because[279] the government did not sufficiently distrust those in a certain quarter whose successful violation of the law led to the general discontent, which called for its repeal." That is to say, the government relied too confidently upon the submission of New England; was too ready to believe that her merchants would not let their ships slip quietly out to sea whenever they could evade the officers of the customs, nor slip in to land a cargo at some unfrequented place where there was no custom-house. "The patriotic fishermen of Marblehead," he says, "at one time offered their services;" and he regrets they were not sent out as privateers to seize these contraband ships as prizes, and to "carry them into ports where the tribunals would enforce the law." Apparently there was not a reasonable doubt in his mind whether such tribunals could be found in any port along the coast of New England. It is also rather more than doubtful—even assuming that there was much of the kind of patriotism which he says existed in Marblehead—how long, had the government offered commissions to private citizens to prey upon their neighbors, the embargo would have been respected at all east of Long Island Sound. But this was the afterthought of 1826. Madison's policy in 1809-10 was rather to conciliate than provoke "those in a certain quarter." He could not command entire unanimity even in his own party. Congress passed the winter in vain efforts to find some common ground, not merely for Democrats and Federalists, but for the[280] Democrats alone. Various measures were proposed to meet the critical condition of the country. Some were too radical; some not radical enough; and none were so acceptable that it was not easy to form combinations for their defeat. All were agreed that the non-importation act must be got rid of; but the difficulty was to find a way to be rid of it so that the nation should at once maintain its dignity, assert its rights, and escape a war. The President would have preferred that all British and French ships be excluded from American ports, and that importations from both countries should be prohibited except in American vessels; and a bill to this effect was one of several that was defeated in the course of the session. But at last, in May (1810), an act was passed excluding only the men-of-war of both nations, but suspending the non-importation act for three months after the adjournment of Congress. The President was then authorized, when the three months were passed, to declare the act again in force against either Great Britain or France, should the commercial orders or decrees o............