IN THE LAST exhausted days of Jefferson's second term, when Congress
was struggling with the repeal of the Embargo, when the faithful Jeffer-
sonians were reeling under attacks by Randolph, by half their Northern
friends, and by the revived Federalists, Josiah Quincy ^* of Massachusetts
wrote: " Jefferson is a host; and if the wand of that magician is not
broken, he will yet defeat the attempt." The magician was tired. He was
discouraged by failure. He no longer waved a wand; from the moment
the election was decided he refused responsibility and put the whole bur-
den of policy-making on his unhappy successor.

Nobody could accuse James Madison of being a host, or a magician.
He was a learned and industrious man who knew everything about gov-
ernment except how to govern. At the Constitutional Convention he was
a hero; in the Executive Mansion ^** he was almost a nonentity. As a result
of his weakness, the weakness of the Republican theory was displayed.
Now that there was no magician and no wand, the Administration could
no longer make policy; the Congress attempted to take over that task and
almost ruined the country in the process of proving that such was not its
function. The first step was to deny Madison the excellent Secretary of
State whom he had chosen, and to foist upon him a nonentity. John
Quincy Adams, who had resigned as United States Senator from Mas-
sachusetts the previous year, left an account of this episode.

Madison, he wrote,

had wished and intended to appoint Mr. Gallatin, who had been Secre-
tary of the Treasury during the whole of Jefferson's Administration, to

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