Dolley and the rest of Washington soon learned of the fate of New Orleans. Thomas Johnson, the postmaster for New Orleans and brother-in-law of peace commissioner John Quincy Adams, wrote Dolley on January 19, 1815, to tell her the news.
“Madam, the American army in Louisiana has gained immortal glory. It has made a defense against the most valiant and fortunate troops of Europe,” he wrote with relief. Louisiana had repelled its invaders and prevented conquest.
“The eighth of January will form an epoch in the calendars of the republic,” he proclaimed, noting that General Jackson had recently reported the evacuation of the British from Louisiana. “The country is saved, the enemy vanquished and hardly a widow or an orphan whose tears damp the general joy. All is exultation and jubilee. What do we not owe a protecting Providence for this manifestation of his favor?”
Johnson offered his congratulations to Dolley “on this auspicious termination of our trials and dangers.”
Why did he write Dolley? He knew that his sister, Louisa Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams, had previously asked Dolley to secure a position for him. Johnson repaid her patronage by giving her news of the victory.
Illuminations galore lit Washington City to celebrate New Orleans. People fired rockets. Cheering throngs filled the streets of Washington, which were decorated by thousands of candles and torches to celebrate the most important triumph since Yorktown served as the last major battle of the Revolutionary War in 1780.
Also thrilled to hear the news, Senator King wrote his son Charles in England a detailed account of the Battle of New Orleans. As always, his eagle eye looked to peace: “We hope that this failure [by the British] will hasten the conclusion of peace.”
What he didn’t know, nor did anyone else in America, was that the peace commissioners had concluded their work two weeks earlier. They had signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814.
The news arrived in Washington City in mid-February. Paul Jennings, one of Madison’s most reliable servants, described the moment that the president’s household learned of the treaty: “When the news of peace arrived, we were crazy with joy. Miss Sally Coles, a cousin of Mrs. Madison, and afterwards wife of Andrew Stevenson, since minister to England, came to the head of the stairs, crying out, ‘Peace! peace!’ and told John Freeman (the butler) to serve out wine liberally to the servants and others.”
Paul joined in the celebration. “I played the President’s March on the violin, John Sioussat and some others were drunk for two days, and such another joyful time was never seen in Washington. Mr. Madison and all his Cabinet were as pleased as any, but did not show their joy in this manner.”
Senator King also kept his reserve in check. He wrote simply and happily: “We have received the treaty of peace: it will be considered by the Senate tomorrow . . . no one is authorized to expect more than the status ante bellum.”
Yet, this is what King had wanted more than anything else. The man who had opposed the war and made mischief for James Madison at every turn had changed. In the aftermath of the burning of the White House, he rose to defend his country. Madison and King now had something in common. Both could smile at peace. Both could take comfort in knowing that their country’s future was as bright as it was secure. Both knew that America had risen from the ashes as a phoenix, and the White House would soon follow.
The normally withered apple-john appearance of James Madison smiled in February 1815 as he sent copies of the peace treaty to Congress. While John Quincy Adams had written that the day they had issued the treaty, December 24, 1814, was the happiest in his life, Madison could say the same about the day he signed it, on February 17, 1815.
No longer able to sit at his desk in the green room of the White House, Madison signed the treaty in the beautiful drawing room of the Octagon. With joy flowing from his pen, he wrote a message to the American people.
“The late war,” he explained, “although reluctantly declared by Congress, had become a necessary resort to assert the rights and independence of the nation.”
Giving credit to many, Madison honored those who had contributed so much to the nation. “It has been waged with a success which is the natural result of the wisdom of the legislative councils, of the patriotism of the people, of the public spirit of the militia, and of the valor of the military and naval forces of the country.”
Recognizing the timing of peace, the man who had once seemed too deferential wrote decidedly and glowingly. “Peace, at all times a blessing, is peculiarly welcome, therefore, at a period when the causes for the war have ceased to operate, when the government has demonstrated the efficiency of its powers of defense, and when the nation can review its conduct without regret and without reproach.”
Peace hadn’t come by acquiring Canada. Peace hadn’t come through a Russian mediation. Peace had come from Madison’s determination to find it any way he could. It had come from a president who was too trusting of his aides and nearly lost the nation’s capital city. It had come from a man who had trouble getting approval for his commissioners but who took the beating and re-nominated them with renewed vigor.
But this scholarly man who had authorized a war emerged as a phoenix. He was more decisive, more in charge, more of what he needed to be. He had sent the right signals and given the right instructions. He wasn’t just one of a multitude of phoenixes that arose from the ashes of the White House. He was their leader, the pilot guiding their flight.
Madison had told Benjamin Latrobe before the fires that he had become so unpopular that the military wouldn’t hire him for engineering projects during the war. But Latrobe listened to his wife. Mary strongly encouraged him to write the president and Thomas Munroe to offer his services to rebuild.
To the president he wrote a letter on Feb. 25, 1815.
“I beg leave respectfully to offer you my services in the restoration of the public buildings in the city of Washington,” Latrobe had written to President Madison, noting that he’d devoted the best part of his life to public service and possessed the professional qualifications and experience to do the job.
The last thing Latrobe must have expected when he left Washington City in 1813 was to return, much less to ask Madison for the job of rebuilding the U.S. Capitol. He admitted as much, writing, “I am conscious that I do not deserve it—still more so, that if I do, my error has produced no advantage to myself.”
What changed in Latrobe? What motivated him to ask the president who had told him he was too unpopular to rebuild the Capitol? Perhaps he feared that Dr. Thornton would receive the job, which would have been an “implied censure,” as he called it. With his fortunes failing and his debt rising in Pittsburgh, his wife Mary had to sell a piece of furniture each month to pay the rent. Without telling him, she had written President and Mrs. Madison requesting that they consider her husband for rebuilding. Then she encouraged him to reach out to men he knew in the government and then to write the president directly.
The heartbreak over the loss of the buildings had led him to the “excusable ambition which prompts me to wish that I may restore the works which I erected.” He wanted a second chance to build. He also asked out of love. “Consideration for my family would render the situation I solicit highly desirable to me.”
When “a large packet with the President’s seal, containing a recall” arrived at the Latrobes’ Pittsburgh house, Latrobe cried as if he were a child. Madison had appointed him to rebuild the U.S. Capitol and James Hoban, the original architect and master builder, to rebuild the White House.
Mary Latrobe wrote that there was “no man in the country to name but Mr. Latrobe as filling the situation he had hitherto held.”
Where was Admiral Cockburn when news of peace arrived in America? He was in Georgia planning an attack. Though this Goliath had not been slain by an American slingshot, he had failed in his mission to defeat his enemy.
“We remained in Cumberland Island in the expectation of a reinforcement of troops, on the arrival of which i
t was the Rear Admiral’s intention to attack Savannah; but ere they made their appearance, peace had been concluded between Great Britain and the United States,” Scott explained.
The only thing for Cockburn to do now that peace had come was to go home and wait for his next assignment. Because he had not been in New Orleans and suffered defeat there, his prospects for his own professional future remained bright. After all, he was the admiral who had burned the seat of the U.S. government, as a portrait of him later showed. Though not immediate, admiral of the fleet was within his reach.
Dolley perhaps best expressed her joy about peace in a letter to Hannah: “I have rejoiced with you and for you—our glorious peace.”
President Madison had rewarded the peace commissioners with new appointments. He’d named John Quincy Adams to the top diplomatic post in England and Albert Gallatin to France. Dolley was thrilled for Hannah’s future. “I trust you are pleased with Mr. G——s appointment to France. . . . How I should like to go with you!!”
Peace had been a busy time. “Congress adjourned last night, still our house is crowded with company—in truth ever since the peace my brain has been turned with noise and bustle. Such over flowing rooms I never saw before.”
Though peace was glorious, Dolley’s best triumph and most eternal contribution as the wife of the president was yet to come.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Rise of the First Lady
Mrs. Crowninshield, the wife of the new navy secretary, was so excited to pay a call on Mrs. Madison in November 1815 that she impulsively knocked on the president’s door without giving advance notice or wearing what she considered proper attire.
“Our girls went with me. She [Dolley] lives in the same block with us. I did not alter my dress. Well, we rung at the door, the servant showed us to the room—no one there,” Mrs. Crowninshield explained, noting that the windows in the large parlor were as patriotic as could be: blue curtains with red silk fringe.
They didn’t have to wait long for Dolley. “In about two minutes the lady appeared, received us very agreeably, noticed the children much, inquired their names, because she told them she meant to be much acquainted with them.”
With her charisma shining brightly, Dolley greeted them as warmly as if she’d been expecting them for a week. As usual, Mrs. Madison’s attire caught her guest’s attention. Mrs. Crowninshield described her “white cambric gown, buttoned all the way up in front, a little strip of work along the button-holes, but ruffled around the bottom. A peach-bloom colored silk scarf with a rich border over her shoulders by her sleeves. She had a spencer of satin of the same color, and likewise a turban of gauze, all of peach bloom.”
Dolley’s hospitality also stood out: “You could not but feel at your ease in her company.”
The Crowninshields experienced in 1815 what people had encountered for years when meeting Dolley Madison. Her charisma was magnetic. Cousin Sally Coles described the phenomenon this way in a letter to Dolley: “For no heart has been able to resist you, and every tongue is eloquent in yours, and our dear Mr. Madison’s praises.”
Dolley’s love of clothing was no secret. While people noticed her fashion sense, they also admired her internal beauty. One observer said of Dolley: “’Tis here the woman who adorns the dress, and not the dress that beautifies the woman.”
This same person recognized Dolley’s unofficial queenly stature, a position of influence that Mrs. Madison couldn’t see. “I cannot conceive a female better calculated to dignify the station which she occupies in society than Mrs. Madison—amiable in private life and affable in public, she is admired and esteemed by the rich and beloved by the poor.”
For years, everything she had done in the White House was for James, not for herself, except for indulgence in fashion. Early on, William Lee, a U.S. commercial agent in Bordeaux, had sent Mrs. Madison fineries from France after his wife had gone shopping for her. Recognizing Dolley’s character, Lee invoked a blessing on her: “That you may long live the queen of the people’s hearts.”
Lee also had prophetically praised President Madison: “His administration will tend more to the formation of a national character and to the consolidating our independence than any that have preceded it and posterity will do him justice.”
After the fire, Madison had done just that. With the war complete and peace sealed, the president could go on with life and conclude his term in harmony.
Dolley spent her remaining time as the president’s wife doing something no other president’s wife had yet done. In doing so, the queen of hearts became a first lady.
About a month later, during Christmas week, the entire Crowninshield family visited the Madisons. This time Dolley introduced Mrs. Crowninshield’s daughters to their special pet. According to Mrs. Crowninshield, “She had the parrot brought in for the girls, and he ran after Mary to catch her feet. She screamed and jumped into a chair and pulled hold of Mrs. Madison. We had quite a frolic there.”
Just prior to the British invasion the previous year, French John had rescued the bird by taking it from the White House to Octagon. Dolley kept this macaw in the corner window of their new residence at the Seven Buildings, where they had moved after concluding the Octagon’s entertaining space was awkward.
The species’ brightly colored feathers appropriately make it a symbol of vitality and health. No wonder it attracted the attention of local children, who would gather in front of the window to watch the bird’s feedings.
Perhaps seeing children squeezing in front of the window had given Dolley an idea. Or maybe she came to the decision by riding the streets of Washington and seeing poverty in the faces of children and orphans on the cobblestones.
Perhaps the words of previous letters she’d received had affected on her. In July 1813, Mason Lock Weems, famous for perpetrating the myth that George Washington cut down a cherry tree as a child and refused to lie about it, sought a favor from Dolley.
“As I know of no lady who has so large an interest at stake in this country as Mrs. Madison has, nor any who holds so distinguished a place in it,” Weems flattered in an attempt to seek her patronage for reprinting a book about women in the Bible.
Weems understood her unofficial power. He continued, saying, “It is certainly no adulation, Honor’d Madam to say that you are one of the ‘favor’d few’ who to do good need but to will it.”
He also knew the source of her power stemmed from her charisma and social skills, which gave her an unparalleled ability to influence others. “The elevation of your rank, together with the charm of your benevolent spirit and polish’d manners diffused so widely as they are by the members of the national legislature and the brilliant crowds that attend your levees give you an influence which no other lady can pretend to especially among the fair sex of our country.”
Also that same month, Dolley had received a letter from Lucy Rumney, a wife and mother of four from Georgetown. She was troubled by her husband’s impulsive choices: “My husband is a soldier. He enlisted while under the influence of liquor, and not aware of the evil that he was going to bring upon his family. We are poor and dependant on our daily labor, and principally on him, for subsistence.”
Mrs. Rumney then explained that her husband had deserted on more than one occasion and was facing court-martial that would affect his life. She told Dolley, “You, Madam can feel—I cannot express—the grief and misery in which the danger of my husband plunges me, and those of my children who are capable of estimating their loss!”
Her words were as touching as they were desperate. “Think of the wretchedness of a wife and a mother from a husband and the father of her children is just about to be torn forever.”
Dolley very well understood what it was like when life took a husband from a wife and a father from his children.
Maybe now in 1815 she worried about the children of men who had died in the war, knowing especially that a woman couldn’t easily make a living after her husband died.
However s
he came to the decision, starting an orphanage showed that Dolley viewed her role as more than just an opportunity to entertain and host parties for her husband, even if those opportunities had changed the culture in Washington. She could do much more with her role. This Quaker could do something long lasting, eternal. The newspaper first printed notification of it in a call to action led by Mrs. Madison in October 1815: “The ladies of the county of Washington are requested to meet at the hall of the House of Representatives this day at 11 o’clock for the purpose of joining an association to provide an asylum for destitute orphans.”
The writer of the article, likely Dolley or one of the other ladies involved, explained that these orphans were placed by Providence under the protection of society. “It is hoped that the ladies, will show their interest that they take in the fate of these destitute and forsaken children, by their great zeal and humanity, in endeavoring to supply them, as far as in their power, the place of deceased parents.”
The newspaper described the importance of caring for these children. “A nobler object cannot engage the sympathy of our females—when we reflect, too, on how uncertain are all human possessions, we know not, but that we may be providing a respectable and comfortable asylum to our descendents.”
The orphanage was also born of faith. Ministers in the area had often preached charity sermons in the previous years that called on women to spin, weave, and provide clothing for the local poor. Sometimes these sermons were advertised in advance, such as a charity sermon delivered at a Methodist Church. The notification for this 1815 meeting about the orphanage used a passage from Ecclesiastes to explain the eternal value of conducting charitable work: “‘Cast your bread upon the waters and after many days it shall return to you.’ It is therefore hoped that there will be a full and punctual attendance; particularly by, those ladies who have already subscribed to that institution.”
The Burning of the White House Page 33