Presidents of War: The Epic Story, from 1807 to Modern Times

by Michael R. Beschloss

Since the start of the Republic, Presidents of the United States have taken the American people into major wars roughly once in a generation. This book is about eight Presidents who did so, as well as Thomas Jefferson, who refused.

The framers of that document in 1787 knew that British and other European monarchs had abused their absolute authority to make war: if a regime was growing unpopular, they sometimes cited or invented a foreign danger in order to launch a war that would unite their people and expand their own power and popular esteem.

It is telling that the last time a President asked Congress to declare war was 1942. Were the Founders to come back, they would probably be astonished and chagrined to discover that, in spite of their ardent strivings, the life or death of much of the human race has now come to depend on the character of the single person who happens to be the President of the United States.

And so it had come to this. Horrified as he stood on a height above the Potomac, James Madison, the fourth President of the United States—and now, some wondered, the last?—watched his beloved Washington City as it seemed to vanish into a crimson-orange swirl of fire.

From Monticello, Thomas Jefferson wrote his successor, “I sincerely congratulate you on the change it has produced in our situation….I rejoice in it as the triumph of our forbearing and yet persevering system.”

Great Britain’s choice for Erskine’s successor made it clear that London was in no hurry to patch things up. Francis James “Copenhagen” Jackson had gained his nickname in 1807, while serving as England’s special envoy to Denmark, when he masterminded the burning of the Danish capital, which killed two hundred civilians, to seize that country’s coveted fleet. After kissing his monarch’s knuckles, Jackson sailed in the frigate l’Africaine to the United States. Several American towns burned him in effigy.

How could Erskine have tolerated listening to Madison speak, when “every third word was a declaration of war”?

He went on to claim that in any case, Madison and Smith must have been aware that Erskine was violating Canning’s instructions when they made their pact with him—a base slander against the good character of the President and Secretary of State.

With customary understatement, Madison later told Smith that he had absorbed Jackson’s “gross insinuation” with “no small degree of surprise.” Advised that the Minister had refused to retract his charge, which suggested that Britain felt free to insult any American it wanted—even the President—Madison issued Jackson’s diplomatic death warrant, ordering him informed “that no further communications will be received from you, and that the necessity of this determination will, without delay, be made known to your Government.” Copenhagen Jackson’s tenure as a functioning envoy in Washington had lasted a minuscule thirty-six days.

Writing more bluntly in the National Intelligencer was “Publius,” which may have been Madison himself. (In 1787 and 1788, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, he had employed this nom de plume while writing for The Federalist.) “Must war be prepared for?” asked Publius. “Congress alone can decide the question.” The writer insisted that he was a “friend of peace…but would blush to discourage a war in a pre-eminently just cause….If we do strike, let us strike where we can be felt.”

Feted in the ballrooms and parlors of wealthy Federalists (opponents called them “the British party in America”), Jackson invited them to overturn the spirit or even the fact of their Revolution.

Publicly humiliated by his naive mistake of vouching for the Erskine agreement, he could not easily afford to confess that he had also been duped by the French, which might give weight to the Federalists’ hoary charges that Madison and his “ventriloquist” Jefferson were in bed with France.