James and Dolley Madison

by Bruce Chadwick

  31. Sarah Gales Seaton Papers, January 1814, noted in Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton of the ‘National Intelligencer’: A Biographical Sketch (Boston: James Osgood, 1871), p. 113; Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), p. 336.

  32. Allgor, Perfect Union, pp. 245–47.

  33. Anthony, Dolley Madison, p. 237.

  34. Ibid., p. 197.

  35. Margaret Bayard Smith, A Winter in Washington; or, Memoirs of the Seymour Family (New York: E. Bliss and E. White, 1824), pp. 43–44; Allgor, Perfect Union, p. 247.

  36. Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), pp. 61–63.

  CHAPTER 6. A NEW WORLD

  1. Lucia Cutts, Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, Wife of James Madison, President of the United States (1886; repr., Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1971), p. 1.

  2. National Intelligencer, March 5, 1801, and June 8, 1801.

  3. Alexandria Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer, February 28, 1800.

  4. Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 408.

  5. Maud Goodwin, Dolley Madison (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940), p. 79.

  6. Hetty Ann Barton, Diary of Hetty Ann Barton, May 1803, in Papers of Hetty Ann Barton, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  7. Mary Bagot, Exile in Yankeeland: The Journal of Mary Bagot, 1816–1819, ed. David Hosford (Washington, DC: Historical Society of Washington, DC, 1984), p. 31.

  8. US Census Bureau, 2nd–9th editions (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1800–1870).

  9. Dolley Madison, The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison, ed. David Mattern and Holly Schulman (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2003), pp. 40–41.

  10. Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 27–28.

  11. Ibid., p. 24.

  12. Richard Griswold to Mrs. Fanny Griswold, December 6, 1800, in Griswold Manuscripts, Yale University Library.

  13. Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), p. 336.

  14. Cutts, Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, 2:1; Samuel Mitchill, “Dr. Mitchill's Letters from Washington: 1801–1813,” Harper's New Monthly Magazine 58 (April 1879): 740–47.

  15. Green, Washington, p. 46.

  16. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, April 33, 1801, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, by Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian Boyd and Barbara Oberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 33:630.

  17. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, March 12, 1801, in ibid., 33:255–56.

  18. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, April 25, 1801, in ibid., 33:642.

  19. Levi Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson, April 16, 1801, in ibid., 33:596–98.

  20. Green, Washington, p. 26; James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, March 15, 1800, in The Writings of James Madison, by James Madison and Gaillard Hunt (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968), 2:155–56.

  21. Dolley Madison to Anna Thornton, May 18, 1808, in Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Holly C. Shulman (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Online Rotunda Edition, 2010–2013) (hereafter cited as DMDE).

  22. Ibid.

  23. Cutts, Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, p. 2.

  24. Ralph Ketcham, The Madisons at Montpelier: Reflections on the Founding Couple (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2009), p. 1.

  25. Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York: Viking Press, 2007), pp. 148–49.

  26. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, January 10, 1801, in The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, 1776–1826, ed. James Smith (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 2:166–70.

  27. Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), p. 646.

  28. Beckles Willson, Friendly Relations: A Narrative of Britain's Ministers and Ambassadors to America (1791–1930) (London: L. Dickson and Thompson, 1934), pp. 40–48.

  29. Joseph Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 201.

  30. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, February 28, 1801, in Smith, Republic of Letters, 2:170–72.

  31. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, February 28, 1801, in Jefferson and Boyd (ed.) and Oberg (ed.), Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 33:99–100.

  32. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, March 12, 1801, in ibid., 33:255–56; Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, June 4, 1801, in ibid., 34:256–57.

  33. Paul Jennings, A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison (Brooklyn, NY: G. C. Beadle, 1865), p. 19.

  34. Hugh Howard, Mr. and Mrs. Madison's War: America's First Couple and the Second War of Independence (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012), p. 9.

  35. James Monroe to James Madison, March 11, 1801, in The Papers of James Madison: Secretary of State Series, Presidential Series, Retirement Series, Personal Papers, ed. Robert Brugger et al. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), 1:11.

  36. Samuel Osgood to James Madison, April 24, 1801, in ibid., 1:113–14.

  37. Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, June 1804, in DMDE.

  38. Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, February 23, 1801, in Jefferson and Boyd (ed.) and Oberg (ed.), Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 33:51.

  39. Thomas Jefferson to Mann Randolph, May 14, 1801, in ibid., 34:110–11.

  40. Ibid., p. 409.

  41. Katherine Anthony, Dolley Madison: Her Life and Times (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949), p. 195.

  42. Thomas Jefferson to Carlos Martinez de Irujo, March 24, 1801, in Jefferson and Boyd (ed.) and Oberg (ed.), Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 33:430.

  43. Thomas Jefferson to T. M. Randolph Jr., November 16, 1801, in ibid., vol. 32; Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, September 18, 1801, in Writings of Albert Gallatin, by Albert Gallatin and Henry Adams (New York: Antiquarian Press, 1960), 1:55.

  44. Abigail Adams to her daughter, 1800, in Goodwin, Dolly Madison, pp. 82–83.

  45. Ibid., p. 93.

  46. Anthony, Dolley Madison, p. 196.

  47. Hetty Ann Barton, May 1803, in Papers of Hetty Ann Barton, Pennsylvania Historical Society.

  48. Edward Coles to Hugh Blair Grigsby, December 23, 1854, Virginia Historical Society, in Ketcham, James Madison, p. 407.

  49. John Quincy Adams, The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 1794–1845: American Diplomacy, and Political, Social, and Intellectual Life, from Washington to Polk, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1928), p. 37.

  50. Goodwin, Dolly Madison, p. 110.

  51. Bagot, Exile to Yankeeland, April 3, 1816, and March 27, 1816, entries.

  52. Ibid., March 9, 1817, entry.

  53. Dr. Samuel Mitchill to his wife, January 4, 1892, in Life and Letters of Dolley Madison, by Allen Clark (Washington, DC: Press of W. F. Roberts, 1914), pp. 914, 50; Samuel Mitchill Papers, Museum of City of New York.

  54. William Parker Cutler, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D. (Cincinnati, 1888), 2:154n.

  55. M. B. Smith, quoted in Clark, Life and Letters of Dolley Madison, pp. 64–65; Jeremiah Mason to Means Mason, December 12, 1813, in DMDE.

  56. Margaret Smith to Susan Smith, July 31, 1806, in Forty Years in Washington Society, by Margaret Bayard Smith, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), pp. 51–52.

  57. Dolley Madison to Anna Thornton, August 26, 1807, in DMDE.

  58. Smith, Forty Years in Washington Society, pp. 10–11.

  59. Washington Federalist, December 18, 1806; Anthony, Dolley Madison, p. 121.

  60. Anthony, Dolley Madison, p. 117.

  61. Ibid., p. 123.

  62. Madison, Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison, pp. 44–45.

  63. Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and t
he Creation of the American Nation (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), pp. 50–51.

  64. Virginia Moore, The Madisons: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), p. 169; Martha Randolph to Thomas Jefferson, October 29, 1802, in Goodwin, Dolly Madison, p. 96; Dolley Madison to James Madison, November 13, 1805, in DMDE.

  65. Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, July 8, 1805, in Dolley Madison Papers, North American Women's Letters and Diaries, digital collection, doc. 13.

  66. Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, July 16, 1804, in Anthony, Dolley Madison, p. 164.

  67. Thomas Jefferson to David Williams, January 31, 1806, in Noble E. Cunningham, The Process of Government under Jefferson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 41–44.

  68. Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, July 8, 1805, in Dolley Madison Papers, North American Women's Letters and Diaries, digital collection, doc. 13.

  69. Noel Gerson, The Velvet Glove: A Life of Dolley Madison (Nashville: Thomas and Nelson, 1975), p. 100.

  70. Ibid., p. 122.

  71. Anthony, Dolley Madison, pp. 124–25.

  72. Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, May 22, 1805, in Cutts Family Papers, Library of Congress; Moore, Madisons, p. 186; Dolley Madison to Dolley Cutts, February 10, 1835, in DMDE.

  73. T. M. Randolph to Harriet Randolph, December 7, 1804, in collection of letters of C. M. Storey, Papers of C. M. Storey, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  74. Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), p. 394.

  75. Cutts, Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, 2:10; Dolley Madison to Phoebe Morris, August 16, 1812, in DMDE.

  76. Cutts, Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, 2:10.

  77. Margaret Tinkcom, “Caviar along the Potomac: Sir Augustus John Foster's ‘Notes on the United States,’ 1804–1812,” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 8 (January 1951): 155.

  78. Isenberg, Fallen Founder, p. 235.

  79. Plumer's Memorandum, in William Plumer Papers, Library of Congress, New Hampshire State Library, p. 208.

  80. Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, June 1804, in DMDE.

  81. Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, Social Life in the Early Republic (Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott, 1903), p. 147.

  82. H. B. Smith to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, January 13, 1804, in Smith, First Forty Years of Washington Society, pp. 45–47.

  83. Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, June 1804, in DMDE.

  84. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, April 22, 1801, in Jefferson and Boyd (ed.) and Oberg (ed.), Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 33:630.

  85. William Thornton to James Madison, March 16, 1801, in Anthony, Dolley Madison, p. 111.

  86. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, January 10, 1800, in Madison and Hunt, Writings of James Madison, 2:167–70.

  87. Thomas Jefferson to Dolley Madison, May 27, 1801, in Cutts, Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, p. 28; Ketcham, James Madison, pp. 428–29.

  88. Smith, introduction to Forty Years in Washington Society, pp. vii–viii.

  89. National Intelligencer, March 9, 1800.

  90. Ibid., June 8, 1801.

  91. Ibid.

  92. Ibid., October 26, 1801.

  93. Ibid., December 6, 1802.

  94. Ibid., December 10, 1802.

  95. Moore, Madisons, p. 161.

  CHAPTER 7. THE MADISONS AS SOCIAL LIONS

  1. Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 410.

  2. Leonard White, The Jeffersonian: A Study in Administrative History (New York: Macmillan, 1951), pp. 187–88; James Madison to James Monroe, May 6, 1801, in The Writings of James Madison, by James Madison and Gaillard Hunt (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968), 6:419; James Madison to W. C. Nicholas, July 10, 1801, in Madison and Hunt, Writings of James Madison, 6:425.

  3. Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, July 8, 1805, in Dolley Madison Papers, North American Women's Letters and Diaries, digital collection, doc. 13.

  4. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 74–75; Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), p. 65.

  5. National Intelligencer, March 4, 1801.

  6. Margaret Smith to Susan Smith, March 4, 1801, in The First Forty Years of Washington Society, by Margaret Bayard Smith, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), pp. 25–26.

  7. Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, March 21, 1804, in Madison and Hunt, Writings of James Madison, 2:7–8.

  8. Willard Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), p. 548; Jefferson's Inaugural Address, in The Works of Thomas Jefferson by Paul Ford (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904), 33:139–52.

  9. Thomas Jefferson to Governor Tom McKean of Pennsylvania, July 24, 1801, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University Library; Henry Adams, History of the United States during the First Administration of James Madison (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Library of America, 1986), p. 319.

  10. Thomas Jefferson to the heads of his departments, November 6, 1801, in The Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, 1776–1826, ed. James Smith (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 2:1168.

  11. Samuel Eddy, Jona. Russell, James Turder Jr., Levi Wheaton, and Henry Smith to Thomas Jefferson, March 5, 1801, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, by Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian Boyd and Barbara Oberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 33:187–88.

  12. Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, March 7, 1801, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, by A. A. Lipscomb and A. E. Bergh (Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1903), 9:203.

  13. Ibid., 9:204.

  14. American Citizen, June 5, 1801.

  15. James Madison to Dolley Madison, November 2, 1805, in Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Holly C. Shulman (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Online Rotunda Edition, 2010–2013).

  16. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, April 27, 1809, in Smith, Republic of Letters, 3:1585–86.

  17. Letter to the Federalist and New Jersey Gazette, February 27, 1802.

  18. Alexandria Advertiser and Commercial Intelligence, December 16, 1800.

  19. Joseph Shulim, ed., The Old Dominion and Napoleon Bonaparte: A Study in American Opinion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), pp. 110–11.

  20. James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798, in The Papers of James Madison: Secretary of State Series, Presidential Series, Retirement Series, Personal Papers, ed. Robert Brugger et al. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), 17:130.

  21. Randall, Thomas Jefferson, pp. 562–63; National Intelligencer, June 8, 1801.

  22. James Madison to Charles Pinckney, October 12, 1803, in Madison and Hunt, Writings of James Madison, 7:53–60, 71–74.

  CHAPTER 8. THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE

  1. J. Christopher Herold, The Age of Napoleon (New York: American Heritage Publishing, 1963), p. 144.

  2. Thomas Jefferson, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian Boyd and Barbara Oberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950–2012), 36:21812; Joseph Shulim, ed., The Old Dominion and Napoleon Bonaparte: A Study in American Opinion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), p. 111.

  3. Richmond Examiner, May 5, 1802; Shulim, Old Dominion and Napoleon Bonaparte, p. 121.

  4. New England Palladium, April 12, 1803.

  5. Alexandria Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer, July 22, 1803, reprint of an October 19, 1802, letter from diplomat.

  6. Washington Federalist, January 28, 1808.

  7. Fawn Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), pp. 365–66; National Intelligencer, April 15, 1803, story about a February 3, 1803, letter.

  8. Willard Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), p. 566.

  9. James Madison to James Monroe, January 8, 1785, in in The Papers of James Madison: Secretary
of State Series, Presidential Series, Retirement Series, Personal Papers, ed. Robert Brugger et al. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986) (hereafter cited as PJM), 8:220.

  10. Irving Brant, James Madison (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1941–1946), 4:90.

  11. Washington Federalist, February 3, 1808; Washington Federalist, January 19, 1806.

  12. Washington Federalist, January 19, 1806.

  13. National Intelligencer, February 18, 1803.

  14. Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), pp. 210–12; Herold, Age of Napoleon, p. 144.

  15. John Quincy Adams, Lives of Celebrated Statesmen (New York: W. H. Graham, 1846), pp. 33–34.

  16. Henry Adams, John Randolph (New York: Chelsea House, 1981; Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), p. 121.

  17. Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, by A. A. Lipscomb and A. E. Bergh (Washington, DC: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1903), 7:9–17.

  18. James Madison to James Monroe, summer 1803, in The Writings of James Madison, by James Madison and Gaillard Hunt (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968), 2:183–85.

  19. Herold, Age of Napoleon, pp. 304–305.

  20. Albert Gallatin to James Madison, February 7, 1803, in Madison and Hunt, Writings of James Madison, 2:179–80.

  21. Alexandria Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer, July 27, 1803.

  22. Washington Federalist, December 3, 1806.

  23. Alexandria Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer, July 12, 1803.

  24. Jefferson's second inaugural address, in PJM, 33:134–53.

  CHAPTER 9. THE VETERAN SECRETARY OF STATE

  1. Maud Goodwin, Dolly Madison (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940), p. 112; Dolley Madison to James Madison, November 2, 1805, in Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Holly C. Shulman (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Online Rotunda Edition, 2010–2013) (hereafter cited as DMDE).

  2. Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, July 31, 1805, in DMDE; Dolley Madison to Anna Cutts, June 3, 1804, in Dolley Madison Papers, North American Women's Letters and Diaries, digital collection; Goodwin, Dolly Madison, pp. 165, 108–109; Katherine Anthony, Dolley Madison: Her Life and Times (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949), pp. 166–67.