James and Dolley Madison

by Bruce Chadwick

  Americans were not afraid of the British.

  Mrs. Madison was a radical patriot throughout the war, never giving an inch of compromise in her support of her husband. One night, her friend Mrs. William Thornton stood within earshot of Dolley and Secretary of State Monroe. The pair were standing in front of a window, watching a small regiment of army troops march down the street. “I wish we had ten thousand of them,” said the First Lady, and an angry Monroe answered that “they [the English] are all damned Rascals from the highest to the lowest.”

  “I wish we could sink them all to the bottomless pit,” Dolley answered.

  “She was absolutely violent against the English,” wrote Thornton later.45

  Nobody explained the success of the war better than Madison contemporary Daniel Barnard after the president's death. Barnard said that the war was waged “to compel the enemy to forego his injurious practices, not for the price of forcing him to a formal recognition of our doctrines, or to a formal promise of good behavior in the future, but to teach him that we understood our rights if he did not; that, hold what opinions he would, the actual violation of these rights would no longer be tolerated and that the practices of which we complained must cease now and cease forever; and that henceforward our security should be found not in any concessions on his part if he chose to withhold them, but in the promptness with which the good right arm of a brave and gallant nation should be bared to do battle for justice and the right, in the name and by the strength of the God of armies.”46

  During the War of 1812, all remained the same at the White House. The First Lady went out of her way keep the social life of the capital running at full speed, uninterrupted by the conflict, a war that, after all, was very far away. She continued the pace of hosting dinners, parties, receptions, and balls; living with relatives; shopping with friends; attending concerts; receiving visitors daily at the White House; serving as her husband's public relations director; and, as always, being the best-dressed woman in America. Dolley said good-bye to two young women from Virginia who had stayed with her that winter and reminded both that the parties never stopped at the White House, war or no war. They left, she bragged to a friend, “after having their heads turned with gaiety beau. Last night we were all at the Russian Minister's party which was brilliant, and pleasant.”

  She ended the letter with a note that a good friend of hers would visit her on his return to her city. The “good friend”? It was Judge Story, who as a congressman just a few years before had been critical of Dolley. Now he, like all who started out critical of the First Lady, was in her complete confidence.1

  Dolley maintained two worlds in Washington, one with the war and the other without it. She insisted that the social life of the White House and the city continue unabated, and then, on her own, in the daytime, spent time on war matters with her friends and husband. The nonstop parties at the White House and embassies assured all that the United States was not hurt at all by the conflict with England, that it would soon emerge from it victorious.

  Dolley prided herself on increasing the number of attractive women at White House parties. “Miss Hay is to be in the city soon, as well as Madame Bonaparte & a multitude of beauties,” she wrote her friend Phoebe Morris with pride. She conducted polls with young women she knew to determine whom everybody thought was the best looking woman at parties. She evaluated two women for a friend and then decided that they were both winners in the unofficial beauty contest. “You thought Miss Mayo less beautiful than Miss Caton. I think she has rather the advantage in this, but Miss C. excels in grace,” Dolley decided.2

  Dolley even wrote friends in Paris to buy expensive hats and dresses for her. “As you have everything and we have nothing, I will ask the favor of you to send me by a safe vessel large headdresses, a few flowers, feathers, gloves and stockings, black and white, and any other pretty things…draw upon my husband for the amount,” she wrote Mrs. Joel Barlow, who lived in Paris with her diplomat husband.3

  Mrs. Barlow complied, poking her head into all the high-end women's clothing shops in Paris and putting together a collection so vast and expensive that the shipping costs alone were over $2,000. She sent Dolley dresses, shoes, hats, and plenty of turbans. The First Lady did not know it, but she had an entire wartime ensemble. One of those dresses she wore at the 1815 White House New Year's Day party, just before word of the peace treaty and the victory at New Orleans arrived. She dazzled the crowd. She wore a robe of rose-colored satin, trimmed with ermine; with gold chains and clasps around her waist and arms; and with a white, satin turban upon her head, with a tiara of white ostrich plumes. “The towering feathers and excessive throng distinctly pointed her station wherever she moved,” said Mrs. Seaton. Just two weeks earlier, she appeared at a ball, dressed in a sky-blue, striped, velvet dress, with a white turban adorned with emeralds and gold-and-white feathers. Two weeks prior to that, she hosted a reception at which she wore a white, cambric gown, buttoned up to the neck and ruffled around the bottom. She wore a peach-colored silk scarf over her shoulders, and the whole ensemble was topped off by a peach-colored turban.4

  She bought all the elegant dresses she could find and encouraged everyone she knew in Washington to throw more parties. She told friends how much she anticipated the start of the racing season at the end of October 1812 and all of its social functions, and she wrote with delight to a friend that the Hamiltons had given an elegant ball at the Navy Yard. “They danced til morning,” she wrote to a friend. She was pleased, too, she told all, that the French minister was not letting the war bother him. He was paving the road to his embassy. “[He] intends to frolick continually,” she said.5

  Why did she spend so lavishly and entertain so heartily while the country was at war? Public appearance. Dolley wanted all of Washington, all of America, to know that the president had no fear of England. Life would roll along as usual, parties and visits, as it always had. The war would be won by America. Nothing had changed. Nothing would. Everybody in America might have been nervous about the conflict, but not the First Lady nor the president.

  Those who met her in those years were impressed and surprised at her appearance. One woman later wrote of her in those tension-filled years, “I can see her now. As we entered [the room], she was crossing the crowded vestibule, conducted by two fair girls, one on each side. She surrendered herself to their sprightly guidance with her benign sweetness. Her hair hung in ringlets on each side of her face, surrounded by the snowy folds of her unvarying turban, ornamented on one side by a few heads of green wheat. She may have worn jewels, but if she did they were so eclipsed by her inherent charms as to be unnoticed.”6

  Her husband worked harder than ever when the year 1813 began. He was consumed by the war and madder at Great Britain as each day, and each battle, went by. He told Congress that England's sea policies were “a system which, at once, [were] violating the rights of other nations and resting on a mass of forgery and perjury unknown to other times” and that it was “distinguished by the deformity of its features and the depravity of its character.”7

  Later that winter, Madison, seeing the war clearly as always, offered a succinct analysis of the fighting to friend John Nicholas. He told him that the United States should have entered the war with a large army and a powerful navy, but had not. Then they had lost early battles of Canada when General William Hull surrendered his army. “The decisive importance of this [a strong army] has always been well understood, but until the first prospect ceased, other means of attaining it were repressed by certain difficulties in carrying them into effect,” he said, and he added that as commander in chief he had to veto several radical measures to assault Canada again. In his letter to Nicholas, and in letters to others, Madison exhibited a keen sense of what could be done and what could not.8

  He paid equal attention to his regular army and militia units and, to do so, was in touch with people all over the country, not just in Washington. He was half commander in chief, half cheerleader. For exa
mple, in the late summer of 1813, he wrote a Kentucky man, “If any doubt had ever existed of the patriotism or bravery of the citizens of Kentucky, it would have been turned into an admiration of both by the tests to which the war has put them. Nor could any who are acquainted with your history and character wish the military services of your fellow citizens to be under better direction than yours.”9

  By the end of 1813, Madison had accrued as much military knowledge as his generals and secretary of war. He sent careful and detailed analyses of the war and the movements of both sides to all and understood why each side was operating the way it was. He could have been a general himself by that time.10

  He had disappointing messages from his commanders all spring. General Henry Dearborn wrote him that his army was at a standstill because little of its equipment had arrived from the quartermaster's corps. Who was in charge of the quartermaster corps, the section of the army that issued supplies? It was Dearborn himself. He not only shrugged off his failures but also said he could not even do the job. “It is beyond my power,” he told Madison.11

  The president was happy to have Russia mediate the conflict but did not see much hope. He told William Plumer, a former Federalist senator from New Hampshire who had switched parties and was now the Republican governor of New Hampshire in April 1813, that only England could end the war. “Whether or not we are to have peace this year depends upon the enemy; our disposition & terms being known to everybody.” He added that there would be no cease-fire “unless the B. govt. should entertain views & hopes with respect to this country.”12

  It seemed like every day someone in Congress or an important person in the government sent him lengthy letters full of diplomatic and military advice. They were all well-intentioned, but, requiring responses, did little more than take up the valuable time of the president.13

  President Madison worked tirelessly on the war, staying at the office seven days a week and often each night, too. The stress on him rose dramatically by the middle of June 1813. The army and navy had suffered significant losses, and press criticism of the war had grown. Congress balked at the administration's plea for more money for the war and demanded a lengthy explanation of its supervision by the president. His frail body could not take the burden of the work and pressure, and he became very ill, wracked with a high fever, along with the return of the general weakness that had annoyed him all of his life. His doctors, not knowing what to do, merely prescribed quinine and plenty of rest. Dolley was not satisfied. She put the president to bed, monitored his care, gave him his quinine, washed him, dressed him, and nursed him twenty-four hours a day. She was terrified that he was going to die. The First Lady did not tell anyone of her fears, though, in order to prevent panic. A president dying at the height of a war? How would power be transferred to the vice president for the first time in history? Would the enemy step up the offensive to take advantage of a shaken country?

  Others broadcast the bad news, though. One of the first to discover how sick Madison had become was new congressman Noah Webster of Massachusetts. He had visited the White House to give Madison paperwork from Congress and thought the president was very sick. “I did not like his looks any better than his Administration,” he said. Later, Webster was back again, and Madison looked worse. This time he was in bed, under the covers, drenched in sweat, Dolley at his side. Webster came back a few days later and reported that “Madison still sick…I went…to the Palace to present the resolutions. The President was in his bed sick of a fever his night cap on his head, his wife attending him.” On June 19, Webster was back a third time and was surprised that Madison had taken a bad turn. “He is worse today,” he wrote.14

  The president's close friend, Monroe, asked politicians to stay away from the White House until Madison was better and told friends that he seemed stricken with a fever that would not go away. He knew how ill the president had often felt and that the chief executive had not been away from the White House for more than two weeks in two entire years because of the war. He was physically and emotionally battered and very vulnerable to illness.

  The deathwatch began. Various resolutions of near-condolence were offered in the House and Senate. The National Intelligencer started to print daily health reports on the president. Republican newspapers wrote about him as if he were dead already. Former president John Adams, in Massachusetts, told friends that he heard Madison had just four months to live. “His death, in the circumstances in which the Republic is placed, would be a veritable national calamity,” said French minister M. Serrurier.

  The Federalist newspapers were sure Madison was going to die and lamented that his vice president, Elbridge Gerry, would make a poor replacement. Some speculated that the aging Gerry would die, too, and that Henry Clay would somehow wind up in charge. Some called for an immediate change in the Constitution to produce a better successor.15

  At this point, in the middle of June, in an extraordinary move and angry with everybody, the First Lady shut the bedroom door and cancelled all White House functions. She did not permit anybody, not even the vice president or cabinet members, to see Madison while he recovered. He remained bedridden for three entire weeks; not even close friend Monroe could get in to see him. Numerous friends wrote her, begging for information about the president, but she refused to answer any of those letters, keeping her husband's condition very secretive. He was under the care of his wife and only his wife. The rumors now escalated. Had the president died? Was he incapacitated? If so, who was acting as president? Who was in charge? Was Dolley running the war? The country?16

  It was the high-water mark of Madison's life. He had feared an illness just like this since he was a young man, certain that it would kill him. If he did not die, he would surely be incapacitated. He would have to stop work, whatever that work was, and permanently retire to Montpelier. This was doomsday.

  But it was not. Madison fought his illness, with his wife's assistance. He did not die, did not permit himself to become incapacitated, and never, as far as can be ascertained, thought about resigning as president. What decisions Dolley made, or did not make, for him in those dark weeks remained a mystery. Madison recovered and went back to work in early July. He did not work full-time, and he did not look well, but he worked. His health was not completely recovered until the middle of July. Those weeks were as hard on Mrs. Madison as they were on him. “Now that I see him get well I feel as if I might die myself from fatigue,” she said.17

  The president's illness came just a year after Dolley's sister Anna went through a health crisis herself. In the spring of 1812, Anna was suffering from depression of some sort. She wrote her sister that she was miserable and felt alienated from her husband and family. Dolley, alarmed as always when it came to the well-being of her sisters, wrote a very sympathetic note to her. She said her sickness “causes me more grief than I can speak” and told her that “your constant indisposition, your low spirits, everything that disturbs you never fails to vibrate through all my heart. I flatter myself that you were healthy & happy. Without health, we enjoy nothing. Your estimable husband, lovely children fail to yield you that sweet peace which we ought only to seek for in this world.”18 Then Dolley asked Anna to come and visit her at the White House. There, she knew, she could cheer her up.

  In the weeks after Madison's emergence from his bedroom, letters arrived at the White House from well-wishers all over America. Jefferson released a sigh of relief. “If the prayers of millions have been of avail, they have been poured forth with the deepest anxiety,” he wrote. Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey was one of many who wrote that Madison had become such a skilled commander in chief that his death would have caused the collapse of the army. “I almost tremble, sir, when I think of the contentions, division & disasters to which your sudden removal at the critical period must have exposed us and have frequently thanked heaven for yet longer sparing your life to us.”19

  The nation's first presidential crisis had been averted, not by luck but by the desire of
Madison to beat his sickness and by his wife's determination to keep him alive.

  Throughout his sickness, and the conflict with England, Dolley worried constantly about national affairs. “[We are] in the mist of business & anxiety, anxious for the fate of the war,” she wrote in the fall of 1812.20

  At that same time, the Madisons lost their private secretary, Edward Coles. He had become ill, and they sent him to their physician, Dr. Physick, in Philadelphia, for treatment. Coles spent the fall and winter of 1812–1813 in Philadelphia, recovering. Dolley told him that she and the president missed him. “You will soon be well in spite of yourself. We indulge this pleasing hope in addition to that of your remaining with us to the last…there are none who feel a more affectionate interest in you than Mr. Madison and myself…your leaving us [would be] a misfortune.”21

  She wrote friends that Madison's illness made her sick, but there were many other times as First Lady that Dolley fell ill. For instance, she wrote Edward Coles in the summer of 1811 that “I have been extremely ill. I am just now recovering from three weeks’ confinement during which I was most carefully nursed.” In June 1811, she was confined to bed (with a “dangerous and severe illness”) and was nursed back to health by Hannah Gallatin and a cousin. In the summer of 1812, she fell ill yet again, writing a friend that “for the last 10 days I have been very sick, so much so that I could not write or do anything. I am yet in my chamber.”22

  Dolley labored through her husband's crisis, and the war, with her own political and emotional grit, but she also had the love and support of her friends, who constantly picked up her spirits when they saw her or wrote letters of encouragement. Phoebe Morris was one. She wrote Dolley in the year leading up to the war that “I can love no other person as I now love you. In the moment of my separation from you tears were my only language. My affection for you is a sensation new to my heart; it differs from that love I feel for many of my young friends; it is more pure, it is more refined.” Dolley wrote her back and told her that “I have wept over your charming letter” and added that she and the president cherished their friendship with her and her family.23