James and Dolley Madison
Page 22
One month later, the president learned from officials that the Marine Corps was broke. Federal allocations of money were not enough to cover the expenses of repairing naval ships, whose costs came in much higher than anticipated. How does a country's Marine Corps go broke, he had to wonder.18
The Madisons had sad family tragedies, too. Dolley grieved at each one. She wrote her sister about the passing of a relative that “I can scarcely write you, so sick with grief, apprehension, is my whole frame.” Then, just months before Madison took office, Dolley's mother died at the end of 1808 following a series of sudden strokes. Dolley had been very close to her mother and almost always mentioned her health in letters to family. In the spring of 1804, she added in a letter to a friend that “I have just received a long letter from Mamma, who is well.” Dolley was deeply shaken by the loss of her mother. Then, a few months later, her sister Mary, who had cared for her mother, suddenly passed away. Mary's husband wrote that the mother's death killed Mary. “The shock which her sickness and death produced upon the health and spirits of my poor sick wife has been alarming in the extreme,” wrote John Jackson to Dolley.19
The double tragedy crippled Dolley emotionally. “Eliza,” she wrote friend Eliza Collins Lee, “I cannot write ‘tho I wish to communicate everything to you; when I trace the sad events that have occurred to me, I feel as if I should die, too.”20 Later, she added that all of the love of the different women in the Payne and Madison families together could not help her overcome her grief. “What in this world can compensate for the sympathy and confidence of a mother and a sister?”21
The loss of her mother and sister drove her further into the arms of her husband, the president, for love and solace. She asked herself in a letter what could help her and then said that “nothing but that tie that binds us to a good husband, such as ours, and we ought to be satisfied.”22 Madison was there, for her, too—every day—despite all of his hard work as the president. He grieved with her for her mother and sister Mary and took care of her.
In all of her letters to her husband, Dolley expressed her deep love for him. She wrote him just after he returned to Washington in 1805, “A few hours only have passed since you left me, my beloved, and I find nothing can relieve the oppression of my mind but speaking to you in this the only way…” A few days later, she ended her letter, “Adieu my beloved. Our hearts understand each other, in fond affection thine…”23
All was not pleasant for the Madisons in Washington. Just about every week, the National Intelligencer and other local papers ran ads in which slave owners were asking area residents to catch their runaway slaves and return them to their plantations. From time to time, the Washington city sheriff would announce that he had captured runaways and was holding them in his jail so that their owners could ride to town and retrieve them. Dolley, who disliked slavery, must have flinched. Madison, who owned dozens of slaves but never liked the idea of slave ownership, must have been uncomfortable, especially since the National Intelligencer, which made money off the ads, was run by his friend Samuel Smith (Smith even worked as a middleman to reunite runaways with their masters at his newspaper office). Other ads, in all of the capital newspapers, were straight “for sale” ads to get readers to purchase slaves. Many promoted the sale of not only individual slaves but also whole families. For example, one ad featured four or five different families in one large sale of thirty-six people.24
The Madisons, and everybody else in the capital, had to read official letters in newspaper columns from Toussaint L'Ouverture, the spirited and cocky new leader of Haiti, who had led the slave revolt to kick the French out of his island country. He insisted that Haitian blacks in the United States who were enslaved had to be returned, free, to their homeland. It was “an act of piracy” to hold the free blacks from Haiti, a free country, he wrote with heated anger.25
President Madison was handcuffed by politics. One severe mistake Madison made early in his first term was to back down from fights with political opponents in forming his cabinet. He had worked well with Swiss-born Albert Gallatin in Jefferson's cabinet and wanted Gallatin to be his secretary of state. Influential Republican senators and editors urged him to give Gallatin some other job, though, because he was foreign born and too close to Jefferson. He had become the object of substantial vitriol for many. William Duane, the influential editor of the Aurora, wrote that Gallatin was guilty of duplicity and cunning and was hopelessly self-centered. “Mr. Gallatin will drag him down for no honest man can support an administration of which he is a member,” he wrote.26 Other Republicans joined him in crucifying Gallatin.
Madison worried about congressional approval of his entire cabinet, and he should not have. He won the election easily, followed a popular president, and, thanks to his wife, enjoyed the friendship of all in Washington except the most hardened Federalists. Yet he was nervous. Madison did not want to fracture his party. He decided to work with a representative cabinet with members from each region of the country, a noble, democratic idea that works on paper but rarely in practice. He turned down Senator William Giles as secretary of state and selected Robert Smith, Jefferson's secretary of the navy and the brother of Senator Samuel Smith of Maryland, whom he knew little about. He had to let Gallatin go in that post and was also barred from naming his longtime friend, James Monroe, because, his aides said, Monroe had run against him for president. Besides, he could always run the department himself if Smith was weak, he thought. No one thought much of Smith. Even Madison critic John Randolph sneered and said of Smith that “as he can spell he ought to be preferred to Giles.”27
He should have named Monroe. He and his fellow Virginian had been friends for years, and Monroe had served him well in the State Department. Monroe was a close friend of Thomas Jefferson, too. Jefferson had met Monroe during the American Revolution and in the early 1780s had taken him in as a clerk when Jefferson was the governor of Virginia. Jefferson had vouched for Monroe all of his life. Monroe had botched the election, and his relationship with Madison, because he never really thought things through. He did not realize the implications of what he did, and friends realized this. Lawyer William Wirt said of Monroe that “nature has given him a mind neither rapid nor rich, and therefore he cannot shine on a subject which is entirely new to him.”28 Wirt added, though, that once Monroe was sure what to do, he did it well. Wirt said he had “a judgment strong and clear and a habit of application which no difficulties can shake, no labours can tire.”
Political aides talked the president into ignoring Monroe because of the election squabble. His friend Jefferson had scoffed at that idea and was angry that Madison did not name Monroe. Jefferson summoned Monroe to Monticello, as his friend, and had long talks with him there. Then he cagily wrote Madison that Monroe “had dined and passed an evening with me…he is sincerely cordial and I learn from several that he has quite separated himself from the junto which had got possession of him.” He added that Monroe had split with Madison's enemy John Randolph and that “his strong and candid mind will bring him to a cordial return to his old friends after he shall have been separated a while from his present circle.” It was the start of a fervent campaign to get Monroe back into government. It was an uphill campaign because, in addition to the political miscue, Monroe had angered both James and Dolley Madison by breaking off all social contact with them during the election and had remained distant from them ever since. There were a number of letters from Jefferson to Madison over the next few months, and at any news of Monroe, Jefferson would write Madison, reminding him of his long friendship with Monroe. A year later, in the spring of 1810, he heard that Monroe had visited Washington. He fired off a note to Madison: “There appears to be the most perfect reconciliation and cordiality established towards yourself. I think him now inclined to rejoin us with zeal. The only embarrassment will be from his late friends. But I think he has the firmness of mind enough to act independently as to them.” His campaign worked.29
Jefferson had helped to he
al a rift between two friends that never should have occurred. Whether he listened to political advisers or not, Monroe should never have run against Madison and never continually suggested, right until the end of the campaign, that all he wanted to do is put two Republicans on the ballot. Nobody believed that, and the aborted short campaign made Monroe look bad in Madison's eyes.30
Monroe took the secretary of state job when it was offered for a few reasons: he knew that there was no one more qualified to hold the office; it got him back into government and renewed relationships; and it would lead to the presidency. One friend, John Taylor, told him that “our foreign relations seem to be drawing to a crisis and you ought to be in the public eye when it happens, for your own sake, independently of the services you can render your country.”31 Monroe, who had just been elected governor of Virginia three months earlier, took the job heading up the State Department right away.
The Madisons held more receptions, parties, and dances at the White House; used more food and drink; and employed more help than had their predecessors. They doubled the number of full-time servants working in the White House to thirty, led by Jean Pierre Sioussat, a Frenchman who ironically had worked for their social archenemies, the Merrys of England. A cousin, Edward Coles (as secretary) and several of their personal slaves, such as Dolley's favorites, Paul Jennings and Sukey, worked there, too. There were more elegant carriages and more horses kept in the stables out back. More and diverse guests were added to their party lists, and the important ministers of foreign countries found themselves sharing drinks with local store owners. More orchestras, each larger than the previous, were hired to provide music for dances. The circle of the Madisons’ friends grew in size and diversity, too, and more society women from all over the United States became their friends. The wives of key women from the diplomatic corps, such as the wife of Jerome Bonaparte, and the wife of James Monroe, said to be two of the most beautiful women in America, became close friends of the Madisons. Dolley expanded her practice of asking all visitors to the White House to leave their calling cards, and she kept enormous boxes of them to create guest lists for her parties. The more the merrier.
Guests regularly marveled at the wide array of different foods at the receptions. They dined on ice cream, almonds, raisins, peaches, and baskets filled to the brim with apples and pears. There were dozens of trays full of small bags of candy.32
Dolley had plenty of help in the Executive Mansion, too. Her younger sister Anna, married to Congressman Richard Cutts, lived a few blocks away. Sister Lucy, now a widow following the death of George Steptoe Washington, moved into the White House with Dolley. A dozen relatives lived in the White House from time to time, too, making it a very busy home. The three Payne sisters, dubbed “the Merry Wives of Windsor” by the social crowd, shared entertainment chores at the White House. The three, led by Dolley, now had eight years of experience as hostesses in the Jefferson administration and were used to the work. Now, in 1809, they were professionals at it. Everybody who came to a party at the White House was greeted by the First Lady and then passed around the room in smooth order. Of his first White House visit at a reception, “Here I was most graciously received,” wrote author Washington Irving, who would later write the short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.” He continued, “[I] found a crowded collection of great and little men, of ugly old women and beautiful young ones and in ten minutes was hand and glove with half the people in the assemblage.” And, like everyone, he was impressed by Dolley Madison. “Mrs. Madison is a fine, portly, buxom dame, who has a smile and pleasant word for everybody,” he said.33
At her dinner parties, Dolley made certain that her husband's talkative and charming secretary, Edward Coles, her cousin, sat across the table from her so that the two of them could keep the conversation flowing. When Coles was not there, she made certain she sat a personable wife of a guest in that seat to achieve the same purpose. Everything about Dolley's balls, parties, and dinners was carefully orchestrated.
Coles helped the Madisons in many ways, in addition to working as the president's secretary. He stayed close to the president during parties and brought him over to people Madison needed to see for political purposes, making the meeting seem very casual. Coles was sent to parties at foreign ministries to mingle with guests and pick up political news. He was asked to befriend as many important people in the capital as he could to gather information for the Madisons and to spread it for them. Some men kept Coles on their regular, once-a-week dinner list, and others had his name on their regular party list. Young Coles, aged twenty-three, also worked with Madison in patronage appointments and was befriended by many congressmen because of his power to find jobs for their friends and relatives. He met famous men, such as steamship inventor Robert Fulton, who fumed to him about his woes with the US Patent Office. Coles was “a thorough gentlemen and one of the best-natured and most kindly affectioned men it has ever been my fortune to know,” wrote William Preston, a guest at the White House, as a young man.34
The president liked Coles. He decided early on to use him as a liaison between political foes and allies in different states. He sent him on one trip to Philadelphia and another to Boston to listen to political figures and give them presidential messages. On his Boston trip, at the special behest of Madison, he even visited former president John Adams in Quincy to give him a message from his enemy, Jefferson, about the disputed election of 1800. Adams then wrote Jefferson. The two became friends, and their famous correspondence began. Later, Madison sent Coles on a sensitive mission to Russia.
All of the guests at the White House noted that the guest list had grown considerably since Madison was inaugurated and the parties were far larger than those when Jefferson was president and those at Madison's private home when he served as secretary of state. Before Madison became president, Dolly hosted two or three parties a week at their home or at the White House and attended three or four more at the homes of friends or at foreign embassies. It was not unusual to attend six or seven parties in a single week. Many residents called Dolley's White House parties her “squeezes” because of the size of the crowds (you had to “squeeze” your way in). Phoebe Morris and her brother went to a party there in 1812 when they arrived in town and were startled at the number of people in attendance, all dressed in their finest clothes. “It was a great day there. The house was crowded with company from top to bottom, the chambers and every room was occupied with Ladies and Gentlemen and all descriptions of persons,” said Phoebe.35
William Preston, who lived in the White House for a while, had the same impression. He wrote that “there was a multitude of carriages at the door. Many persons were going in and coming out, and especially many in grand regimentals. Upon entering the room there were fifteen or twenty people…around the room was a blaze of military and naval officers in brilliant uniforms.”36
Dolley's social life extended to the Washington racetrack, built by her friend the architect William Thornton. He and her husband were the co-owners of a horse named Wild Medley. Other Washingtonians owned horses, too, some of which cost them $10,000 to purchase. The racing season took place in the autumn, as in other major cities. Thousands of people gathered for the races and bet heavily on the outcomes. Many parties were held around the racetrack, where fans gathered on horseback and in carriages. Evening parties were held at the clubhouse at the racetrack, too. The Madisons thoroughly enjoyed each racing season. “The whole ground within the circus was spread over with people on horseback, stretching round full speed, to different parts of the circus, to see the race…between 3,000 and 4,000 people…black and white and yellow, of all conditions, from the President of the United States to the beggar in his rags, all ages and both sexes,” wrote one regular race goer.37
The First Lady was seen as a literary light, and authors continually sent first editions of their works to her at the White House. Writers dedicated books and poems to her. “Your character was not unknown to him. Of t
he greatness of your heart, he has heard much; but of the faculties of your mind he has heard much more. Always an admirer of intellectual worth and mental excellence, he would experience an unspeakable gratification in having an opportunity to evince the admiration he feels for your character,” wrote one poet to her of a friend.38 Writer David Warden not only dedicated his new book to the First Lady but also sent over a copy for her library. One playwright dedicated his latest drama to her.39
Her husband had been absorbed with books all of his life, but few knew of Dolley's own passion for reading. She had her own library when she was married to John Todd, and she brought all of her books with her to Montpelier. Over the years, she and her husband had expanded their library into one of the largest private libraries in the country. Her sister Mary wrote that the Montpelier library was not “only lined with bookcases, but the center so filled with them that there was only just room enough to pass among them. Books and pamphlets were piled up everywhere, on every available chair and table.”40
Dinner guests and friends were always surprised at the number of books Dolley had read at Montpelier and in the White House, in addition to all the newspapers she consumed. Dozens of people in Washington had loaned her books and had notes back from her that showed she had read them. She was, by the time she became First Lady, one of the best read people in the country. Sarah Gales Seaton, whose husband followed Samuel Smith as the coeditor of the National Intelligencer, pulled women aside at White House dinner parties to tell them about lengthy conversations she had had with Dolley about books.41