Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 24
James Madison to Tench Coxe

Dear Sir

New York

Jany. 3d. 1788

I have been favored with yours of the 28 Ult. and thank you for the paper which it inclosed.(1) Your arguments appear to me to place the subject to which they relate in its true light*, and must be satisfactory to the writer himself whom they oppose, if he can suspend for a moment his preconceived opinions. But whether they should have any effect or not on him, they will unquestionably be of service in Virginia, and probably in the other Southern States. Col. Hamilton has read the paper with equal pleasure & approbation with myself. He seems to think that the Farmers of New York are in no danger of being infected with an improper jealousy of a sacrifice of their interests to a partiality for commerce or navigation. Connecticut is more likely perhaps to be awake to suspicions of that sort; and it will be well to counteract them every where by candid and judicious explanations. I propose to send a copy of yours to S. Carolina by the first conveyance; and to put another into the hands of some Gentleman who corresponds with Georgia if I can find one. I have no correspondent in that State.

I never till very lately received an answer from Virga. on the subject of your former observations in support of the fOEdl Constitution. I find now that the three first letters were published at Richmond in a pamphlet with one or two other little pieces, and that they had a very valuable effect. The 4th was circulated in the Newspapers, not having arrived in time to be put into the pamphlet.(2)

We have received no information of very late date or of a satisfactory nature from Europe. The London Head in the paper of this morning which I inclose, mentions a circumstance which leads to some new reflections on the situation of the Dutch.(3)

I have no intelligence from the States Eastward of this worth adding. The elections in Massts. must by this time authorize a pretty good estimate of the two parties with regard to the plan of the Convention, but I am not yet possessed of theconjectures on the subject. It seems that both Mr. Gerry who opposed the plan in Convention, and Mr. Dana who followed the example in Congs. are left out of the returns from their respective districts. Perhaps the enmity of the former may not only be embittered, but rendered more active and successful by this disappointment. On the floor of the Convention he could only have urged bad arguments, which might be answered & exposed by good ones. Without doors he will be able not only to urge them without opposition, but to insinuate that he could say much more, had he not been deprived of a hearing by the machinations of those who were afraid of being confronted.
The post from the South being not yet come in I can not give you any Richmond News. The last I received was a continuation of the evidences of an increasing opposition to the new Government. The Characters which head it account fully for the change of opinions.
With very great esteem & regard I am Dr Sir, Yr Obedt. & very hble servt., Js. Madison Jr

RC (DLC: Madison Papers). Madison, Papers (Rutland), 10:349--;50.
1 See ibid., pp. 347--;48. Enclosure not found, but apparently the December 28 issue of the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer containing Coxe's first essay under the pseudonym "An American" which was a reply to Richard Henry Lee's October 16 letter to Gov. Edmund Randolph reprinted in the Pennsylvania Packet of December 20. See Lee to Elbridge Gerry, September 29, 1787, note. For the context of this Madison-Coxe exchange, see Doc. Hist. of Ratif., 15:165--;77. For Coxe's enthusiastic and tireless defense of the proposed Constitution under several pseudonyms, including both "An American" and "An American Citizen," see Jacob E. Cooke, Tench Coxe and the Early Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), pp. 109--;31.
2 The "three first letters" that Coxe had written as "An American Citizen" had appeared in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer September 26--;29 and were reprinted in the New York Packet in mid-October. Madison had sent the essays to Joseph Jones in Richmond where they were reprinted in the Virginia Independent Chronicle of November 7. These pieces were included in the pamphlet to which Madison refers that was published in Richmond in mid-November but has not survived. The fourth essay appeared in the Virginia Independent Chronicle of November 21 and was incorporated, together with the first three, in a pamphlet published December 15 and entitled Various Extracts on the Foederal Government, Proposed by the Convention Held at Philadelphia (Richmond, 1787). See Evans, Am. Bibliography, no. 20,824. Madison, of course, was unaware of the appearance of the second pamphlet. For Coxe's essays and the pamphlet anthologies published in Virginia, see Doc. Hist. of Ratif., 13:247--;52, 264--;66, 272--;73, 431--;37, 14:447--;48. The essays were later collected and published under the title An Examination of the Constitution for the United States of America (Philadelphia, 1788), for which see Evans, Am. Bibliography, no. 21,028.
3 The New York Daily Advertiser of this day had reported under a London heading dated October 23 that King Frederick William II of Prussia had demanded that the Dutch pay the expenses of the Prussian troops occupying Amsterdam.

* - And here are two examples of the articles which Mr. Madison states “place the subject to which they relate in its true light”. And, which apparently “Col. Hamilton has read the paper with equal pleasure & approbation”:

"The power of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for THE POWERS OF THE SWORD ARE IN THE HANDS OF THE YEOMANRY OF AMERICA FROM SIXTEEN TO SIXTY. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared to any possible army must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are these militia? [A]re they not ourselves. Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American. . . . [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."

- Tenche Coxe, using the pseudonym "a Pennsylvanian", Feb. 20, 1788, Pennsylvania Gazette.

"Whereas civil-rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."

- Tenche Coxe, 'Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution' using the Pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1.