For Honour's Sake Read Online Free PDF Page A

for luxury. New gowns were a constant, a carriage to whisk her about Washington absolutely essential, and the pursuit endless for all considered fashionable and necessary to maintain their proper station in the ranks of America’s elite. This placed serious strain on Madison’s meagre $5,000 salary as secretary of state that was little augmented by income from the plantation. 4
    It was not only their lifestyles and background that bound Madison and Jefferson. They were both men of the Revolution who shared its ideals and desired to build a nation anchored on the principles of liberty and individualism that had led America to revolt against king and country. The America they sought was one where the power of government was limited, taxes were minimal, and Congress represented and expressed the will of the people.
    Jefferson and Madison were grateful that Congress was not in session, and the president astutely resisted recalling it for an emergency sitting that would certainly result in rapid drafting and passage of a war bill. 5
    Jefferson urged the Virginia governor to restrain his militiamen to avoid any clash with the British. Showing restraint now, he argued, would leave Congress the freedom later to decide “whether, having taught so many other useful lessons to Europe, we may not add that of showing them that there are peaceable means of repressing injustice, by making it the interest of the aggressor to do what is just.” 6
    When the French minister to America, Gen. Louis Marie Turreau, sounded Jefferson out about whether war was imminent—something France desired—the president declared, “If the English do not give us the satisfaction we demand we will take Canada, which wants to enter the Union.” A shrewd man, Turreau recognized bluster. He reported that “the President does not want war and that Mr. Madison dreads it now still more.” 7
    In a series of meetings in rooms steaming under Washington summer heat, Madison urged Jefferson’s cabinet to react cautiously.
Leopard,
he said, had executed an order issued by Vice-Admiral Berkeley without the British government’s authorization. An immediate war declaration would be a tactical blunder because of the numerous British warships already concentrated in American waters. These ships could easily close the nation’s ports and seize its merchant ships as they returned home. Better to wait until the majority of the American merchant fleet came home in the late summer and early fall. 8
    Madison’s moderate line met strong opposition from an unexpected corner, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. Being neither native born nor of British stock, the forty-six-year-old Gallatin was an American political rarity. Born to wealthy parents in Geneva, he had emigrated to the United States in 1780, at the age of twenty, with the desire to “drink in a love for independence in the freest country of the universe.” 9 More pragmatically, Gallatin also knew there was more opportunity to make his fortune in a new country than in Geneva, where a financial clique controlled the economy.
    Gallatin ventured into the still-opening expanses of western Virginia and purchased a thousand acres on the bank of the Ohio River for 100 Virginian pounds. In partnership with a friend, Gallatin also bought warrants for 120,000 acres between the Great and Little Kanawha rivers in Virginia’s Monongalia County. Selling off some of this land left the two men comfortably prosperous. Within five years of arriving in America, Gallatin owned a farm that he named Friendship Hill, on a bluff overlooking the Monongahela River across the boundary from Virginia in western Pennsylvania. Having just attained his age of majority at twenty-five, Gallatin received a large infusion of capitalfrom his family back in Geneva that cemented his position as one of the county’s wealthiest and most educated citizens. He also married, without the