James Madison - United States Secretary of State 1801–1809

United States Secretary of State 1801–1809

When Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated as president in 1801, he named Madison to be his secretary of state. At the start of his term, Madison was a party to the United States Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which the doctrine of judicial review was asserted by the high Court, much to the annoyance of the Jeffersonians who did not want a powerful federalist judiciary. The main challenge to the Jefferson Administration was maintaining neutrality during the Napoleonic Wars. Throughout Jefferson's presidency, much of Europe was at war, at first between France and Austria. After the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, where France decisively defeated the Austrian Hapsburgs, the conflict transformed into a grinding war between France and Britain.

Shortly before Jefferson's election, Napoleon had seized power from the hapless French Directory, which had recently mismanaged France's finances in unsuccessful wars and had lost control of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) after a slave rebellion. Beginning in 1802, Napoleon sent more than 20,000 troops to try to restore slavery on the island, as its colonial sugar cane plantations had been the chief revenue producer for France in the New World. The warfare went badly and the troops were further decimated by yellow fever. Napoleon gave up on thoughts of restoring the empire and sold the Louisiana territory to Madison and Jefferson in 1803. Later that year, the 7,000 surviving French troops were withdrawn from the island, and in 1804 Haiti declared its independence as the second republic in the western hemisphere.

Many contemporaries and later historians, such as Ron Chernow, noted that Madison and President Jefferson ignored their "strict construction" view of the Constitution to take advantage of the purchase opportunity. Jefferson would have preferred to have a constitutional amendment authorizing the purchase, but did not have time nor was he required to do so. The Senate quickly ratified the treaty that completed the purchase. The House, with equal alacrity, passed enabling legislation. With the wars raging in Europe, Madison tried to maintain American neutrality, and insisted on the legal rights of the U.S. as a neutral under international law.

Neither London nor Paris showed much respect, however, and the situation deteriorated during Jefferson's second term. After Napoleon achieved victory at Austerlitz over his enemies in continental Europe, he became more aggressive and tried to starve Britain into submission with an embargo that was economically ruinous to both sides. Madison and Jefferson had also decided on an embargo to punish Britain and France, which forbade American trade with any foreign nation. The embargo failed in the United States just as it did in France, and caused massive hardships up and down the seaboard, which depended on foreign trade. The Federalists made a comeback in the Northeast by attacking the embargo, which was allowed to expire just as Jefferson was leaving office.