Then French John made a pun and said Washington looked like Hell with the fires out. He makes me laugh. He always makes me laugh, and he’s clever in two languages. I struggle with just one!
We’re all busy as a cat’s hair. Not a minute to rest and Sukey hasn’t complained yet or lazed about. Mirabile dictu!
Tonight is my levee night, but I will need to wait a few weeks before reinstituting my parties. It’s just as well; my eyes need a rest from the glare of diamonds.
Which reminds me, when I asked Lisel where she had hidden her fabulous jewelry, she said, “In the downspout.” When the deluge came, however, Lisel raced outside to catch her valuables as they hurtled down the spout. Fortunately, no British saw her. She prayed as she became soaked to the skin, and she said she ought to thank the British for leading her back to the religion of her childhood.
People talk of the great storm as much as they talk of the British. It was as though that wind issued from the mouth of God to blow our enemies away. And the rain stopped the fires from spreading.
I wish the good Lord would help us find our better selves, help us understand that war is not choosy about its victims. The innocent and the soldier die alike. Surely there must be a better way to settle our differences, or we can’t call ourselves civilized. If all else fails, I recommend throwing dice. Why not? It makes just as much sense as what I’ve seen and it’s far less destructive. Winner take all.
Jemmy went to bed before midnight tonight. I regard that as a miracle.
I’m tired but I can’t sleep. I lie down and my mind races. I may as well write in my diary as long as the quill and the candle hold out. Uncle Willy chirped so pitifully that I removed his cover. He’s peering at me now as though I haven’t a grain of sense and don’t know it’s too late. He wants to go to sleep, but he can’t stand the idea that I’m doing something without him.
One week ago today I fled this city at my husband’s request. Can it be that so much has happened within the span of seven days? The world has been turned upside down. I think death must be like this, in that it’s unexpected. Even if one is elderly and dying, I think it must come as a surprise. We never truly believe we will die. We know it in our heads. We don’t believe it in our hearts. I lived through this cataclysm. Others didn’t. Death is a loud call to the living. Every moment is precious to me, and on that last lurch of the dice I want to close my eyes knowing that I truly lived, that I truly thanked God for the precious gift of life by enjoying it, celebrating it, and sharing that joy.
I remember once when I was twelve, a sober age as I recall, I was pondering the great questions of life with little result. I sometimes think that sitting in the Friends’ Meeting House on those hard planks, in that silence, provoked me to such weighty thoughts. That’s the purpose of dispensing with a liturgy and a sermon, I know, but sitting there with no obvious guidance, the strangest thoughts gallop across the mind. I got it into my head that there was no purpose to life. We made up a purpose to justify our puny existences. Whether our purpose was religion or politics or even the family, it was something we grabbed because it gave us a reason for living, and since everyone else was happy to tell us how to think and act, we did not need to think of our special purpose. Soon we were so overwhelmed with work and the petty detail of living as others wished us to live, our purpose quite escaped us. Or perhaps I should say the fact that there is no purpose.
I nearly drove myself wild with this. Did I have a purpose? Was it a true one? Did I just make it up? Did I believe what someone else told me my purpose would be? Well, I knew better than to bring this up with Mother or Father. One glance would have branded me a silly fool.
After weeks of torture and barely touching my food—if I don’t eat, something is very wrong—Mother Amy asked me to her cabin. She was making candles, and I remember the tallow odor and the petals she had saved for the scents. She saved lilacs, roses, and even some lemon rinds. Lemons were rare then. One had to have an orangery to grow them or be rich to buy them. I helped her as she hummed and poured tallow into the molds.
I worked up my courage and told her of my dilemma. She listened gravely as I rambled on and even cried. Then I blurted out, “Mother Amy, why are we here?”
She put down her small ladle and said in a voice like music, “Why, Dolley, honey, we’re here for each other.”
And so we are.
Until the morrow, God willing.
D.P.M.
AFTERMATH
On September 2, 1814, the British began to leave a fleeced Alexandria. It took the town fathers another day to hoist the American flag.
The British fought their way down the Potomac, and Captain James Gordon, in command, proved an imaginative foe. When he discovered his guns wouldn’t reach the American cannon on the banks of the Potomac, he weighted his ships to port. In this way the starboard guns had a high enough trajectory to reach their target. As Gordon had sixty-three naval guns to the Americans’ thirteen, it wasn’t much of a contest.
The British escaped, without further molestation, to the Chesapeake Bay.
General Samuel Smith, with thirteen thousand Regulars and militia, defended Baltimore. One thousand men were in Fort McHenry. The Americans prepared a defense of Baltimore while the British were burning Washington. They sank old ships so that the British fleet could not enter the harbor.
General Robert Ross unloaded his men fourteen miles from Baltimore and marched on the city. He met resistance from General John Strieker and his thirty-two hundred militia. The militia retreated but did not panic. The British general, Ross, was killed by a sniper in this engagement.
The British fleet bombarded Fort McHenry but were unsuccessful in subduing Baltimore by land or by sea. Baltimore remains unsubdued as any current resident can testify.
The British gave up on September 14 but remained in the Chesapeake Bay until October 14, when they sailed for Jamaica. They took with them General Ross’s body, which had been placed in a cask of rum for preservation.
During the bombardment of Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key, a Federalist from Georgetown, a rather well-liked and dreamy fellow, wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He was held hostage on a British ship during the attack. Francis Scott Key was attached to a volunteer company of artillery and had willingly boarded the enemy vessel to obtain the release of an American prisoner, only to find himself one, for his own safety. The British released him on September 14.
Earlier, Key was at the Battle of Bladensburg, but nothing in that sorry spectacle moved him to poetry.
In the North, Fort Erie was saved when General Peter B. Porter took sixteen hundred men and daringly demolished the British siege guns. The British withdrew. Losses were severe for both sides, and in early November the Americans at last relinquished the hope of conquering Canada.
The Battle of Lake Champlain, also in September, resulted in a smashing victory for the American sailors.
As men died, the peace commission in Ghent struggled to reach an accord. Clay refused to be depressed by the behavior of Lord James Gambier, Henry Goulburn, and William Adams. Often the talks stagnated. John Quincy Adams, never quite grasping Clay’s vision of the West as the nation’s future, nonetheless remained formidable in the exchanges, counterexchanges, and intrigues. When news of the burning of Washington reached England, it provoked as much shame as celebration. The British public was now sick of war and taxes. This probably had an effect on the British delegation. The Americans and British in Ghent finally signed a peace agreement on Christmas Eve 1814. Clay joked that the negotiations lasted almost as long as the war.
Although the Treaty of Ghent was not a diplomatic success by any standard, the news of this agreement reached the United States after General Andrew Jackson’s tremendous victory at New Orleans on January 8, 1815. The fighting started on December 23 and continued intermittently until the large battle on January 8. The British sustained losses of two thousand thirty-six men killed or wounded. Miraculously, the United States suffered only eight men killed and
thirteen wounded.
Andrew Jackson became a national hero, the next great American general in the public’s imagination. His career, like a cue ball in a game of pool, smashed into the careers of John Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and, most especially, Henry Clay, who was being hailed as the bearer of peace.
The Federalists did call a secret convention in December 1814 at Hartford, Connecticut, where they fell just short of calling for New England’s secession. However, Jackson’s victory, just weeks after this convention, made its outcome less alluring to its participants.
The public, starved for a great victory, unleashed a torrent of celebration, and those men who had been at Hartford realized their careers might be in jeopardy. By the time news of the peace reached America on February 14, 1815, the Hartford Convention appeared traitorous to many people.
The War of 1812 broke the back of the Federalist Party. Daniel Webster prudently did not run for a second term in Congress from New Hampshire but moved to Boston, where he acquired wealth by serving the wealthy as a lawyer. He then reentered Congress and became a leader of the Whig Party, a forerunner in many respects of our current Republican Party. He was elected to the Senate in 1827. Like a moth to the flame, he flew near the presidency in his middle age but fell to earth, wings scorched.
This, too, happened to Clay, who made an implacable enemy in Andrew Jackson. The machinations of this hatred are worthy of a separate book. The daggers were drawn during Jackson’s first run at the presidency in 1824. Clay controlled a bloc of votes, which he threw to John Quincy Adams. Whether he had actually promised those votes to Jackson is still a subject of debate. Whatever was said in smoky rooms and on outdoor walks has evaporated. The hatred of Jackson for Clay did not evaporate.
When Jackson was inaugurated as President of the United States in 1829, Clay had his hands full. The Star of the West was constantly tarnished by Jackson’s minions, who were intent on destroying Clay, now in the Senate.
Clay survived and remained a power but never became President.
Calhoun’s genius blistered in the service of slavery. His works are worth reading today because his extraordinary mind still impresses. But his defense of slavery cost him the presidency also, even though he was Vice President under John Quincy Adams. He, too, became a senator and remained politically powerful throughout his life, a magnificent if mutilated relic.
John Randolph reentered politics after the War of 1812 and rose to new heights of spite. His March 30, 1826, speech in the Senate remains the nadir of vituperation in Congress, much of this directed at Henry Clay. They fought a duel on April 8 on the Virginia side of the Potomac—at ten paces. In the first round both men missed. Dueling is governed by etiquette. The contest was over, but Clay insisted on a second round and fired through Randolph’s coat, although the rail-thin Lynchburg man was untouched. Randolph fired in the air, then shook Clay’s hand and told the startled man that he owed him a coat.
This duel did not help Clay’s image even as it proved his courage. Everyone knew Randolph was erratic, which is a euphemism. Now Clay looked like a hothead. He should have known better than to aim a pistol at John Randolph.
When Randolph died in 1833 at age fifty-nine, he was buried facing west to keep an eye on Henry Clay—or so he told his friends before departing his extraordinary but ravaged life.
John Armstrong announced his resignation from the post of Secretary of War by writing a hot letter to the Baltimore Patriot and Evening Advertiser. He spent the remainder of his life contending that he was made the scapegoat of the war in order to advance Monroe to the presidency.
Commodore Joshua Barney survived his wound but never totally recovered. He retired from the Navy in early 1815 with a pension of six hundred dollars per year.
In May 1815, Madison asked Barney to carry dispatches to the peace commissioners still in Europe. This he did despite his chronic pain. On his return he applied for a consulship because he needed the money such a post could bring, but he was turned down. In light of Barney’s services to his nation, this rejection was unconscionable.
Joshua Barney died in October 1818. The British bullet, still in his leg, was removed and sent to his oldest son, William, as Barney wished. As he was traveling when he died, his grave is in an Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, cemetery. The city of Pittsburgh, where he died, gave him a hero’s funeral. They gave him more than the United States government ever did.
DeWitt Clinton finally got his canal; the Erie Canal was completed in 1825. He was another man—a fascinating personality—who remained pivotal all his life despite attempts to curb his power. Clinton proved what we now take as common knowledge: controlling New York State is a position of tremendous power.
Immediately after the war Madison faced a national debt of $81,487,846 plus some odd cents. This was a crushing sum, but he attacked it. Unfortunately, the effects of this debt extended beyond his presidency.
He was more than happy to leave office when James Monroe defeated Rufus King in 1816 and became President.
James Madison retired to Montpelier, where he constantly gave of himself to his community and his friends. He helped Thomas Jefferson build the University of Virginia, truly the great love of Jefferson’s life.
Madison remained an innovative farmer and was much admired by other men of agriculture. He continued to participate in politics as a kind of professor emeritus: his responses to the doctrine of nullification (states can nullify any act of the federal government that offends them) remain a clear statement of the purpose of the Constitution. In his advanced years he began to fear civil war between the North and the South.
Mother Madison lived, although a confirmed hypochondriac, to the glorious age of ninety-seven, dying February 11, 1829. Nell Conway Madison clearly impressed everyone who knew her with her force of character. It would appear that Mother Madison did not suffer fools gladly in her near century of life.
She loved Dolley and was always grateful that her adored son had married so wisely, even if Dolley came to the altar an impoverished widow. During her day this was a gratifyingly liberal attitude because marriage was serious business and ought to enlarge one’s estate. Mother Madison wished only for James to be happy.
He was.
James Madison left this earth on June 28, 1836, his mind quite clear. He was eighty-five. Sukey and Paul Jennings, who had married, were there, as well as a servant named Nelly.
Dolley had been with him every waking moment when he began to fail in the late spring. That day she had stepped out, and he chose this moment to die, possibly because he knew she couldn’t bear to see him die. She’d seen so much death in her life. Sukey and Nelly tried to get Madison to eat. He put the food in his mouth but didn’t swallow. Nelly asked him if anything was wrong, and he replied, “Nothing, my dear, but a change of mind.” Then he dropped his head.
Dolley was a strong sixty-eight years old when the man she loved was buried in a black walnut casket made from trees at Montpelier. A huge crowd attended the fourth President’s funeral, and she conducted herself with the warmth and dignity for which she was justly famous.
Little Dickey had died in October 1815—hard to bear, but harder still was the loss of her sister Anna Cutts on August 14, 1832.
Fate was not through with Dolley Payne Madison. Her son, who should have been the comfort of her life, found his solace in dissipation. He bounced in and out of jail for debt. Once a luminous, handsome youth, he became bloated, a caricature of his former self. Dolley did not know that friends around her, including Richard Cutts, were lending Payne money and did not press when he welshed on his debts. Some people said even James Monroe, out of affection for Dolley, had lent the man money. Those not close to Dolley did not forgive Payne, hence his visits to jail.
James Madison had paid Payne’s debts. He had been paying Payne’s debts for decades. Knowing that Dolley probably couldn’t bear the truth about Payne, who was her Achilles heel, he hid everything from his wife regarding this.
; Time told the tale because after James’s death, Dolley discovered, slowly, that she had no money. She owned Montpelier and a house on Lafayette Square in the District of Columbia.
Dolley lacked James’s great gift for farming.
In 1842 she mortgaged the Washington house to John Jacob Astor. In November of that year she sold some of Montpelier’s lands to a Richmond businessman. The Cutts-Madison house, as the Lafayette Square house is now known, is still standing today.
Payne was no help nor was her brother John, who was drinking heavily again.
Despite her troubles, her need to sell her husband’s papers for money, she did not lose her delight in life.
On January 8, 1844, Congress granted Dolley, now viewed as the heroine of the burning of Washington, a permanent seat in Congressional Hall by the House of Representatives.
The winter after Washington was burned, Dolley had worked tirelessly to restore social life, to raise money to rebuild the city, and to renew the people’s faith in their government. Dolley and Marcia Burnes van Ness, a wealthy citizen, created an orphanage for the homeless children of Washington. She made clothes for the children and gave her own money and a cow to the orphanage.
The Capitol had been rebuilt by this time at a cost of $687,126. Reconstruction was completed in 1819. Consequent modifications, however, continued until 1826.
The cost of rebuilding the presidential mansion was great as well. Between September 30, 1816, and October 1, 1817, the accounts for expenditures to rebuild the public edifices indicate that almost $120,000 was spent on the president’s house, compared to only $104,000 spent on the Capitol’s reconstruction during this same period. After 1901 the presidential residence became known as the White House by executive order of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Dolley’s activities, plus her courage when the British invaded and her saving Washington’s portrait, made her a legend not only in her own country but throughout Europe as well.
Unfortunately, in those days former Presidents and their wives received no stipend from the government for their past services.
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