If the President seriously intended to make Monroe Secretary of War and the head of the General Staff, he speedily discovered that he was powerless to do so. The Republican leaders in New York felt too keenly Josiah Quincy's taunt about a despotic Cabinet "composed, to all efficient purposes, of two Virginians and a foreigner" to permit Monroe to absorb two cabinet posts. To appease this jealousy of Virginia, Madison made an appointment which very nearly shipwrecked his Administration: he invited General John Armstrong of New York to become Secretary of War. Whatever may be said of Armstrong's qualifications for the post, his presence in the Cabinet was most inadvisable, for he did not and could not inspire the personal confidence of either Gallatin or Monroe. Once in office, he turned Monroe into a relentless enemy and fairly drove Gallatin out of office in disgust by appointing his old enemy, William Duane, editor of the Aurora, to the post of Adjutant-General. "And Armstrong!"--said Dallas who subsequently as Secretary of War knew whereof he spoke--"he was the devil from the beginning, is now, and ever will be!"
The man of clearest vision in these unhappy months of 1812 was undoubtedly Albert Gallatin. The defects of Madison as a War-President he had long foreseen; the need of reorganizing the Executive Departments he had pointed out as soon as war became inevitable; and the problem of financing the war he had attacked farsightedly, fearlessly, and without regard to political consistency. No one watched the approach of hostilities with a bitterer sense of blasted hopes. For ten years he had labored to limit expenditures, sacrificing even the military and naval establishments, that the people might be spared the burden of needless taxes;--and within this decade he had also scaled down the national debt one-half, so that posterity might not be saddled with burdens not of its own choosing. And now war threatened to undo his work. The young republic was after all not to lead its own life, realize a unique destiny, but to tread the old well-worn path of war, armaments, and high-handed government. Well, he would save what he could, do his best to avert "perpetual taxation, military establishments, and other corrupting or anti-republican habits or institutions."