to Monroe, by a single vote, for two Southern senators voted against it.
But the two senators from North Carolina were now present, and the
majority of one was made sure of somehow.

So much was gained by gaining time, and Madison thought the passage of
the bill through the House was possible, "but attended with great
difficulties." Did he know how these difficulties were to be overcome?
"If the Potomac succeeds," he adds, "it will have resulted from a
fortuitous coincidence of circumstances which might never happen again."
What the "fortuitous coincidence" was he does not explain; but the term
was a felicitous euphuism to cover up what in the blunter political
language of our time is called "log-rolling."

The reader of this series of biographies is already familiar with
Hamilton's skillful barter of votes for the Potomac site of the capital
in exchange for votes in favor of his scheme for the assumption of the
state debts. Madison seems not to have been ignorant of the progress of
that bargain, with which Jefferson was afterward so anxious to prove
that he had nothing to do. Madison earnestly opposed the assumption of
the state debts from first to last; but, when he saw that the measure
was sure to pass the House, he wrote to Monroe: "I cannot deny that the
crisis demands a spirit of accommodation to a certain extent. If the
measure should be adopted, I shall wish it to be considered as an
unavoidable evil, and _possibly_ not the worst side of the dilemma." In
other words, he was willing to assent silently to what he believed to be
a great injustice to several of the States, provided that the bargain
should be a gain to his own State. If Hamilton and Jefferson were
sinners in this business, Madison will hardly pass for a saint.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: Eleven years afterward, when the question of prohibiting
the carrying on the slave trade from American ports came up, one John
Brown of Rhode Island said in Congress, "Our distilleries and
manufactories were all lying idle for want of an extended commerce. He
had been well informed that on those coasts [African] New England rum
was much preferred to the best Jamaica spirits, and would fetch a better
price. Why should it not be sent there, and a profitable return be made?
Why should a heavy fine and imprisonment [of slave traders] be made the
penalty for carrying on a trade so advantageous?" Sixty years later
still, there was another Brown in Providence, Rhode Islan