He had, like Washington, Jefferson, and others, mastered the art of tilling his soil and rotating his crops to keep it fertile. Like Washington, he was one of the few farmers in Virginia to realize that Europe needed more and more wheat from America as the years passed, in addition to the regular amounts of tobacco. He reorganized his lands to grow more wheat and make more of a profit off it. He received good notices on his wheat and tobacco from intermediary distributors in Richmond and in London, too.23
The president was justifiably proud of his farm.
The year 1815 started with the same sad dreariness in which 1814 had ended. No peace treaty had been delivered to America from Ghent, Belgium, where diplomats had been meeting in an effort to end the conflict; British troops were rumored to be preparing a land and sea assault on New Orleans; and the Federalist press throughout the country continued to criticize President Madison for his war policies.
Added on to all of that trouble was the Hartford, Connecticut, secession convention, called by delegates from three states in New England who were intent on taking their states out of the United States in order to resume their shipping business with England and other European countries. The secession movement in New England had been growing since July 1813, when Madison almost died, when longtime Massachusetts politician Thomas Pickering wrote, “I believe an immediate separation would be a blessing to the ‘good old thirteen states.’” To spite Madison, the proponents of secession continually quoted his own persuasive essays in The Federalist that argued colonies could break away from the motherland if they had good reasons to do so. The secession movement, endorsed by many Federalist newspapers in New England, picked up steam. At Hartford the delegates voted to oppose federal orders concerning the war and said that state taxes could only go to state expenses and not to pay for the war, that the federal government could not draft New Englanders for its army, and that New England would be responsible for its own defense. They also voted to eliminate the three-fifths slave-voting clause in the Constitution and added several more inflammatory, anti-South, amendments to it. The members of the convention, held in the middle of the chilly 1814 December, sent a delegation to Washington to apprise Madison and Congress of their decision.
Madison was worried sick over the convention. He feared that if the three New England states fled the Union, so would others. He also thought the New Englanders were traitors. “You are not mistaken in viewing the conduct of the eastern states as the source of our greatest difficulties in carrying on the war; it is the greatest if not the sole inducement to the enemy to persevere in it,” he wrote.1
His secretary, Edward Coles, told him that the delegates were meeting “to hatch treason, if New England will support them in it” and that they wanted to do everything possible to cripple the country. Monroe was even angrier. He told Madison to dispatch a company of troops to Hartford and arrest everyone there for sedition. Madison, ever the moderate, decided to wait and see what the outcome of the convention turned out to be.2
Madison may have fretted over his troubles in Hartford, but he had reasons to celebrate, too. The British believed that the army attacks along the East Coast, the bombardment of Fort McHenry outside of Baltimore, and the torching of Washington, DC, would destroy American morale and end its will to fight, but they had just the opposite effect. Americans rallied around the cause, their troops, and the president in a complex blend of patriotism. First, they were furious that the British had the nerve to burn down the Capitol and the White House, which they considered a violation of all military tradition. Second, they steeled their resolve to win the war. Third, although the people at first blamed Madison for the losses in the war and especially the torching of the capital, they now reversed their opinion and saw him as a heroic figure for commanding the troops in the field and for risking his life by returning to Washington to start an immediate drive to revive the war. He refused to admit defeat and never took a step backward. Madison was not unnerved by the torching of Washington, either. He refused to flee town. He was a little man who was standing tall, and all Americans applauded him for that. Even DeWitt Clinton, who ran against him for president, stopped blaming him.
There was an extra, special, dimension to the public's view of the burning of Washington—Dolley Madison. The First Lady's saving of George Washington's portrait was seen as a heroic act because she risked being captured by the British. But there was something else. The people, like Dolley, connected the portrait of first president with the American cause in the war. The public agreed with Dolley that if the British could have destroyed that picture, they could have destroyed the United States. So she risked her life to save it, and did. That act, combined with her husband's front-lines leadership of the army in the heat of the battlefield, and his tough stance when he returned to Washington, impressed everyone. There would be no turning back now. America would not be defeated.
The Madisons had an immediate problem that was just as important as reorganizing the armed forces. The loss of the Capitol and the White House meant that the country had no housing for its government. The president tried to get the government running again as he returned to the charred corpse of the White House, now just a hulking set of walls. He had no home and no office. Senators and congressional committees had to meet in small rooms in boardinghouses, in the living rooms of private homes, or in taverns. When Congress met in full session, it had to cram itself into one of the large public rooms at Blodgett's Hotel.
Across the river in Alexandria, the British had looted a series of warehouses, carting off thousands of dollars’ worth of food and supplies. Residents of that town were terrified that the English would be back again, and soon, to attack their warehouses once more. People were depressed throughout the region. “I do not suppose the government will ever return to Washington. All those whose property was invested in that place will be reduced to poverty…the consternation about us is general, the despondency still greater,” said Margaret Bayard Smith.3
People who met the president in the days following the burning of the city found him deflated. William Wirt wrote his wife that Madison was “visibly shattered and woebegone. In short, he looks heartbroken.”4 He said Madison was furious at New Englanders who still opposed the war and had held a secession convention. Wirt said that the president felt they were “full of sedition.”
Mrs. Madison was angry, too, when she returned to tour the smoking ruins of her home and the other buildings on a warm June day. Her friend Margaret Bayard Smith said she was very perturbed and found it difficult to speak without tears forming in her eyes. Later, Dolley told Mary Latrobe , the wife of interior decorator Benjamin Latrobe, of the day the White House was torched, “I confess that I was so unfeminine as to be free from fear, and willing to remain in the Castle! If I could have had a cannon through every window; but alas! Those who should have placed them there fled before me and my whole heart mourned for my country.”5
The president also had to deal with the seemingly endless parade of refugees returning to the city on horseback or in wagons, heads down and just as depressed as him at what they saw. Their beautiful government buildings, including the Treasury and War Departments, destroyed, burned to the ground. The city's leading newspaper, the National Intelligencer, had been shuttered by the British and its presses wrecked. All of the books of the Library of Congress were destroyed. The roofs of both wings of the Capitol were in ashes, with charred pieces of timber sticking up out of them. The Navy Yard and the arsenal grounds were large piles of rubble. The stale smell of smoke still drifted in the hot summer air. People displayed blocks of stone with accusatory graffiti against General Winder and Secretary Armstrong strewn throughout lots. There were charcoal-etched signs everywhere critical of the government and the army. One read, “James Madison is a rascal, a coward and a fool.”6
Madison could not have found an unhappier band of people than his neighbors. At least they had housing to return to, though; he did not.
A Virginian who ro
de through town just after the attack wrote, “The appearance of our public buildings is enough to make one cut his throat, if that were a remedy. The dissolution of the Union is the theme of almost every private conversation.”7
Madison's friend William Thornton met him and James Monroe on horseback and told the president that he represented a large group of citizens who wanted Madison to dispatch a delegation to the British and surrender. The president fumed. “It would be dishonorable to send any deputation, and…we [will] defend the city to the very last,” he shouted at him, his voice full of fury.
Thornton told the president that he had no army to defend the city. Then, even angrier than Madison, James Monroe snapped at Thornton, “It the deputation moves toward the enemy, it will be repelled by the bayonet.”
A shaken Thornton turned and rode away.8
In addition to the attack, there was the fear all over the United States that Britain could now turn all of her ships, guns, and men on the country because the war against Napoleon had ended. A writer in the London press wrote that the British “talk with delight of the sending of Lord Wellington's army to the United States; they revel in the idea of burning the cities and towns, the mills and manufactories of that country; at the very least they talk of forcing Mr. Madison from his seat and new-modeling the government.”9
Around then, at his lowest point in the war, the president received an unexpected, rousing letter of support from Thomas Jefferson. “Had [General] Washington himself been now at the head of our affairs, the same event would probably have happened,” he wrote; he congratulated him on his tough stand, his leadership of the army, and his recent victories. It bolstered Madison's spirits.10
The one thing that surprised Washingtonians, and all Americans at that point, was the overall toughness and resolute, evenhanded, and calm leadership of the commander in chief. Lieutenant James Edwards said that “[Mr. M] was tranquil as usual and tho’ much distressed by the dreadful event…not dispirited,”11
Officials of the cities of Philadelphia and New York invited the beleaguered government back. Georgetown offered to lend the government its seminary building for a fee of a mere $10 a week. Local hotels wanted to become home to the government for $16 a week. One man snorted that efforts would be made by southerners to move it to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.12
The Madisons saw the efforts to move the government back to Philadelphia, and they were considerable, as not only a bad idea but also as an effort that would show Britain, and the world, that England had won its battle with Washington. That could not happen. The Madisons were intent on remaining in Washington to carry on the war, taking up residence somewhere in town. Leaving would be a sign of weakness, of defeat. It could not be done. Friends of Dolley's said she told them outside the ruins of the White House, “we shall rebuild; the enemy cannot defeat a free people.”13
Washingtonians sprang into action and came to the rescue of the president and Congress. John Tayloe, the wealthiest man in town, invited Madison and his wife to live at his home, the luxurious Octagon House, one of the biggest homes in America, until they could move back into the White House. Octagon House was a huge, elegantly decorated, three-story house at the corner of New York Avenue and Eighteenth Street that was large enough for the Madisons’ residence, government offices, and drawing rooms for receptions. They moved in right away. Madison set up an office, moved aides into the building, and resumed running both the government and the army.
Local men, led by bankers Thomas Law, John Van Ness, Daniel Carroll, and Richard Lee, met in one of Dolley's drawing rooms at Octagon House to conduct a drive to raise $500,000 to pay for new offices for Congress. A red-brick building was constructed in just six months on the site of the present-day Supreme Court to house both houses of Congress, and all offices and rooms were rented in a number of other buildings throughout town. Wealthy city residents began a building boom with the construction of new, large homes, a signal to the nation that they were sticking with the government and that the government was staying in Washington.
At that same time, Dolley was asked to become an official at the City Orphan Asylum. She brought friends along to serve on the board and went to work raising money and running the asylum. She saw it not only as a good deed but also, given the timing, as a way to let the rest of the nation know that she and her influential friends were staying in Washington; that the capital would bounce back; that the British had merely burned down buildings, not a city; and that Americans could stick together, no matter what, and fight on.
The president went right back to running the government and the army. Secretary of War John Armstrong was forced to resign; Madison appointed James Monroe to take his place as the temporary secretary of war. The army was quickly reorganized by Monroe and was ready to fight again in just days.
There were calls from many politicians to move the nation's capital but others were against the idea.
The new city, just sixteen years old, already had hotels, taverns, and stores. Their owners would all go bankrupt if the federal government departed. The value of homes, large and small, would plunge; farms started up outside the capital would go out of business. The villages of Alexandria and Georgetown, which thrived as suburbs of Washington, would shrink and be ignored.
Madison would not leave Washington. He had been a congressman who, with many others, had decided years ago with President Washington that the government needed to be in its own location, in its own city, midway down the East Coast so it was central to all Americans, not just those in the northeast. The capital was going to stay on the banks of the Potomac, he told friends. His wife agreed. She did not want to leave the town where she had spent sixteen years creating a social world for the American government and made so many friends. Quietly, Dolley and her friends went to work lobbying congressmen to keep the capital in the District of Columbia.
The National Intelligencer resumed printing at the end of August with borrowed type. The editor joined the chorus of supporters for keeping the capital in Washington. The journalist wrote that it would be a “treacherous breach of faith” with citizens who had “laid out fortunes in the purchase of property in and about the city.” He said the very thought of the government's departure filled Washingtonians with “abhorrence and astonishment.” In a patriotic burst, he added that leaving would be “kissing the rod an enemy has wielded.”14
Dolley went to work rebuilding the vast social world that she ran in Washington prior to the attack. She believed that the re-creation of that world, with all of its parties—and all of its invitees, regardless of political party, wealth, or station in life—not only would help residents of the city get back on their feet but also would show the Brits and the world that nothing had changed in the capital and that nobody in it, drinking champagne, laughing at humorous stories, eating the best beef, or dancing to the music of large orchestras, had much time to worry about the British army and or its crude generals and ill-mannered soldiers. Dolley could not produce the social extravaganzas that became commonplace at the White House, but she could still throw a party to remember. She made up her mind to re-create the White House social world at Octagon House, with just as many events, although on a smaller scale because of the smaller size of the building. That started on September 14, less than three months after the burning of the White House. Hundreds of people wearing their finest clothes arrived in elegant carriages or on horseback, making the party, and the new start of Dolley's social season, a smashing success. All of the nighttime parties and the huge crowds they attracted spurred people to start calling Octagon House “the house of a thousand candles.” One month later, in its final vote, Congress approved a bill to keep the nation's capital in Washington.
Dolley was back, the capital was back, and so was the United States.
The peace negotiations in Ghent dragged on through the winter months and the holiday season of 1814 . The Madisons were despondent. There was no news from Belgium, the Hartford Secession Convention was underway,
and the Federalist press continued to be critical. “Madison, this man, if he deserves the name,” ranted the editor of the Federal Republican, had brought “dishonor, disappointment and disaster” to the country.15
In addition to all of that, the Washington, DC, area had been hit with a flu epidemic and many residents were ill.
Negotiations dragged in Belgium. The Americans did not trust the British ministers at Ghent. They dawdled and delayed while at the same time a British naval and army force sailed to New Orleans to take the city, and with it the Mississippi valley, crippling all American transportation and business in the area. Were the peace talks just a foil to cover increased British warmongering? Dolley Madison complained bitterly to a friend that “the prospect of peace appears to get darker and darker…. [Britain] will not make peace unless they are obliged to, and it is their policy [she had learned from John Quincy Adams] to protract the negotiations as long as they can.”16
Extremely worried about an attack on the Mississippi valley, Madison dispatched Andrew Jackson to defend New Orleans and sent him as much ammunition and supplies as he could. Jackson brought his regular army with him but, when in New Orleans, Madison sent him additional men from Kentucky and Tennessee. When General Jackson arrived, he heard rumors that a force of twenty-five thousand infantrymen was with the British fleet of ships that were getting closer to Louisiana. Afraid that he did still not have enough men, Jackson declared martial law, put the entire city under his personal control, and then asked for volunteers for new militia units. He took anybody who walked in the door. He even recruited the pirates of fabled buccaneer Jean LaFitte, whose men knew every inch of the bayous the British would have to march through, to help him. Added to the pirates were local merchants, citizens, teenaged boys, Frenchmen from Haiti, visiting salesmen, and freed blacks. Altogether, Jackson put together a force of just over five thousand men. He borrowed all of the cannon he could find in the area and set up a ragged mile-long line of defense near the Mississippi River between the watery swamp and the city.
James and Dolley Madison Page 36