of the United States in support of a despotism that aimed at the
subjugation of all Europe; he threw a fresh obstacle in the way of that
power to which Europe could chiefly look to resist a common enemy; and
he did both under the pretense that the just complaints of the United
States were greater against one of these powers than against the other.
He declared war mainly to redress a wrong which ceased to exist before a
blow was struck; he then rejected an offer of peace because another
wrong was still persisted in; but finally, of his own motion, he
accepted a treaty in which the assumed cause of war was not even alluded
to.

That Mr. Madison was not a good war President, either by training or by
temperament, was, if it may be said of any man, his misfortune rather
than his fault. But it was his fault rather than his misfortune that he
permitted himself to be dragged in a day into a line of conduct which
the sober judgment of years had disapproved. He is usually and most
justly regarded as a man of great amiability of character; of
unquestionable integrity in all the purely personal relations of life;
of more than ordinary intellectual ability of a solid, though not
brilliant, quality; and a diligent student of the science of government,
the practice of which he made a profession. But he was better fitted by
nature for a legislator than for executive office, and his fame would
have been more spotless, though his position would have been less
exalted, had his life been exclusively devoted to that branch of
government for which he was best fitted. It was not merely that for the
sake of the Presidency he plunged the country into an unnecessary war;
but when it was on his hands he neither knew what to do with it himself
nor how to choose the right men who did know.

It is our amiable weakness--if one may venture to say so of the American
people--that all our geese are swans, or rather eagles; that we are apt
to mistake notoriety for reputation; that it is the popular belief of
the larger number that he who, no matter how, has reached a
distinguished position, is by virtue of that fact a great and good man.
This is not less true, in a measure, of Mr. Madison than of some other
men who have been Presidents, and of still more who have thought that
they deserved to be. But, if that false estimate surrounds his name,
there is a strong undercurrent of opinion, common among those whose
business or whose pleasure it is to look ben