James and Dolley Madison

by Bruce Chadwick

  The president's wife took extra care of him, always worried that his various ailments would return under the stress of the job and what appeared to be the upcoming war. “My dear husband is overpowered with business, but is in good health,” she wrote confidently to her sister that week.49

  One thing that strengthened Dolley's morale was the stream of visitors who came to the White House to support her and her husband in the upcoming war, which now appeared certain to start. She also had letters from friends all over the world, cheering her up. One lengthy letter from Sally McKean d'Yrugo, who was now the American wife of the Spanish minister, was a particular joy. Sally told her how much she had missed her on her recent trip to Brazil and how much Americans in Brazil admired Dolley. She signed off by writing “believe me, my dear Mrs. Madison, you are an old and affectionate friend.”50

  One thing that annoyed the Madisons was the endless swirl of rumors about the British. Rumors filed the newspapers and Dolley's parties. Everybody had some information, from an irrefutable source, that such and such was happening. An example was the spring of 1813, just before the first anniversary of the conflict. Ceaseless rumors caused Dolley to worry that the British would soon be on her doorstep. “Fears and alarms circulate around me,” she wrote. “For the last week, all the city and Georgetown…have expected a visit from the enemy and were not lacking in their expression of terror and reproach.”51

  She did take solace from her husband's efforts to protect Washington. He had ordered the repair of a fort on the outskirts of town and sent five hundred regular soldiers and five hundred militia volunteers to camp on a large meadow in town, near a windmill, to protect the city and its residents if a British attack did come. It pleased her. “The twenty tents already look well in my eyes,” she said.52

  Madison's insistence on protection for the capital paid off because from time to time there were reports that a British army was marching toward Washington or sailing toward it on the Potomac. In 1813, a Thursday, for example, there was a rumor that several British warships were sailing up the river and were only fifty miles from Washington. As planned by the president, alarm guns were fired, church bells were rung, and every person in town was scurried toward an assignment. “Soldiers in every direction were mustering and in a few hours 3,000 or 4,000 troops were on their march to the fort fourteen miles distant. They were followed by carts loaded with ammunition, provisions an bagged of all kinds,” wrote Elbridge Gerry Jr., the son of Vice President Gerry, caught in the middle of it.53 Like many, Gerry Jr. wrote his name down on a list for volunteer guards to defend the town and waited for the call up, which did not come on that day.

  Throughout the war, everyone acknowledged the hard work and effervescent spirit of the First Lady. Early in the war, in November 1812, Dolley was at a ball at Tomlinson's Hotel in Washington to honor some recent US war heroes. Suddenly, Lieutenant Hamilton, the son of naval secretary Paul Hamilton, arrived, fresh from the battle of a ship he served on, captained by Stephen Decatur, which had defeated the British ship, the Macedonian. Dozens of Hamilton's friends rushed around him, music was played, and the story of the battle was told. Without warning, Hamilton walked across the room and laid the flag of the captured Macedonian at the feet of Mrs. Madison, giving the battle flag to her, something that had never been done before. Dolley did not know what to do. A friend said her face changed colors because she was so astonished. Finally, praising Hamilton and all the sailors in the war, she accepted it to great applause.54

  Mrs. Madison's influence in the war grew in the spring of 1813, after Edward Coles, Madison's personal secretary, became ill. Dolley, who was at the White House all day anyway, took over his responsibilities. This meant that she now arranged the president's appointments, decided who whom he would write letters to, met with visiting congressmen, and, most important, became privy to the all the top secrets of the war, as well as the president's private opinions of the country's military leaders. In a way, for a spring and summer she served as the assistant president.

  All of the letters she wrote during the war were out-and-out propaganda. For instance, she wrote her son in the summer of 1814 that “the British on our shore are stealing & destroying private property, rarely coming to battle, but when they do are always beaten…. If the war should last six months longer the United States will conquer her enemies.”55

  She also helped the president to aid Albert Gallatin, his highly trusted secretary of the treasury, whom many members of Congress never grew to like. Madison wanted to put Gallatin on a peace commission to end the war, but Congress insisted that he could not be on the peace commission and continue as secretary of treasury at the same time. Dolley wrote Gallatin's wife, “Nothing has borne so hard as the conduct of the Senate in regard to Mr. Gallatin. Mr. Astor will tell you many particulars that I ought not to write, of the desertion of some whose support we had a right to expect and of the manoeuvring of others always hostile to superior merit. We console ourselves with the hope of its terminating both in public good and Mr. Gallatin's honorable triumph.”56

  In the end, the Senate did approve Gallatin as a peace commissioner, but only after he resigned from the Madison cabinet.

  Throughout 1813 and 1814, Dolley complained to friends that the reluctance of Congress to appropriate funds for enlarging the army and navy, which Madison begged for, was going to turn tragic. She felt even worse in the spring of 1814, that after the first defeat of Napoleon in Europe the British could now turn all of their sail and cannon firepower on America in one great lunge to win the War of 1812. From the spring of 1814 into the late summer, Mrs. Madison, and others, worried about an attack at either Baltimore or Washington. Dolley and her husband dismissed “official” predictions that the British would ignore Washington and assault Baltimore in a prodigious land-and-sea operation involving several dozen warships and ten thousand troops.

  One thing Dolley refused to do was abandon her friends because of the war and politics. The premier example of this was the saucy Elizabeth “Betsy” Patterson Bonaparte, the young wife of Napoleon's twenty-year-old brother. Betsy, an American, had fallen for Jerome Bonaparte at a dance and married him shortly afterward. The two became a sensation on the Washington party circuit because Jerome was the brother of perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most feared, man in the world and Betsy showed much cleavage in her gowns when in public. Dolley had taken Betsy under her wing and befriended her when everybody else sneered at the girl.

  In 1814, as the war raged, Betsy's fortunes collapsed. Napoleon refused to recognize the marriage of his brother to Betsy, would not meet her, and, in fact, refused to permit her to enter France. He ordered his brother to leave Betsy and return home to France, where the emperor promptly married him off to an acceptable French woman. Betsy was left alone with a hefty $50,000 per year alimony support.

  Betsy fretted that the loss of all her social luster would mean an immediate ouster from the White House and Washington social circles that were run by Mrs. Madison. She had nothing to fear. Dolley, in fact, felt sorry for her. Betsy, like so many millions of others, was a victim of Napoleon's wrath. Dolley continued to invite her to all the White House dinners, receptions, and parties. Because Dolley acknowledged her, so did everyone else. It made Betsy feel better. To keep Betsy in the White House social world without her husband must have angered Napoleon, so it made Dolley feel better, too.

  Dolley kept up correspondence with old friends, too. She wrote Thomas Jefferson's daughter Martha for years after her father left the White House, and, when James Madison died, Martha was one of the first women to send condolences to Dolley.

  The war caused Dolley to become even more personal to all than she had been during her husband's first few years as president. Sarah Gales Seaton said that at wartime parties Dolley would welcome guests and then, as an extra personal touch, sit down between two or three or four of them and talk for quite a while before returning to her general duties as hostess. She persuaded musically talented
people at parties to sing or play the harp or piano in one of her drawing rooms to entertain the crowd. She also took to wearing the fashionable new flat caps at formal dinners, in addition to her turbans, shocking everyone.

  A woman at a wartime dinner, without realizing it, captured Dolley's popularity in an instant. Dolley was a queen, she said, but never displayed the personality of one, always remaining a common woman.57

  Later, when the war ended, the president asked his wife to throw one of her famous receptions to welcome the new British minister, the rather-illustrious Sir Charles Bagot, descended from Lord Henry Bolingbroke. His wife, said to be rather beautiful, was the niece of the duke of Wellington, the same duke who had just crushed Napoleon at Waterloo.

  Their star power did not daunt Mrs. Madison. At her party, she not only invited every important politician in America but also added Chief Justice Marshall and all the members of the Supreme Court, as well as some of the peace commissioners, a bevy of senators and congressmen and several US Army generals. And, of course, on top of them all, like the voluptuous icing on the cake, there was Dolley. She dazzled everybody. Mrs. Madison wore a rose-colored satin and white felt gown whose train swept the floor behind her for several yards. She was adorned in a gold necklace and bracelets. Finally, the First Lady wore a huge turban of white velvet, trimmed with white ostrich tips and a gold, embroidered crown.

  Sir Charles Bagethot was stunned. “She looked every inch a queen,” he said.58

  The commander in chief hung maps of Canada, the Great Lakes, New England, and the Atlantic seaboard up on the walls of his office in the White House; wrote letters; signed orders; kept files; met with political figures; brought in newspaper editors; and held meetings. The War of 1812 was the very first conflict in United States history in which the civilian president donned the robes of the military leader, the commander in chief of all armed forces.

  Everything that Madison did as commander in chief set precedent. As military leader in wartime, he had to raise a large army, recruit militia units, expand the navy, get ammunition, name generals, and create a battle plan for the war. He had to assemble a war council in the White House, deal with a belligerent Federalist Party and equally disdainful Federalist newspaper editors, maintain the support of his Republican Party, gain support from the nation's clergymen, and, at the same time, pass bills, collect taxes, and run the nonmilitary side of the country. It was a daunting task.

  At the start of the war, Napoleon Bonaparte did not let up in his own campaign to search American merchant vessels and impress sailors, as he had been doing for months. Madison could not fight one war with the British and another with the French. He also could not give in and join forces with the French against the British. He wrote a fiery letter, aimed at Napoleon, and had it printed in the National Intelligencer. In it, he said that “our government will not, under any circumstances that may occur, form a political connection with France…. It is not desirable to enter the lists with the two great belligerents at once, but if England acts with wisdom, and France perseveres in her career of injustice and folly, we should not be surprised to see the attitude of the United States change toward those powers.” He sent copies of the letter to his minister in France, Joel Barlow, and told him to be ready for an American war with France if England ended its war and the French continued their hostilities toward the United States.1

  The president quickly found himself the well of all responsibility for the war. It was not a good place to be in, but Madison did not flinch. He plunged into the work of the conflict each morning and kept at it all day. Attorney General Richard Rush was surprised and impressed that Madison worked so hard. He was also pleased that Madison never gave in to British demands. He was, Rush said, “obstinate” against the British. Rush also wrote that “we have great good in him.”2

  The president also had to deal with the leaders of the Native American tribes in the Northwest Territories. They all complained bitterly about mistreatment by the American government and the local settlers in the Ohio region. Madison knew that they were right, and he also knew that if he did not resolve their problems they would side with the British in the war. He could not have the armed resistance of a half dozen tribes, with hundreds of warriors, allied against him. He also had to work with the War Hawk congressmen, led by Henry Clay, who saw the war as an opportunity to annex all of Canada in a sweeping victory. Americans had thirsted after the vast terrain of Canada for decades. They had invaded the country with the British in the French and Indian War and, on their own in the American Revolution, each time without success, but they might achieve victory in the War of 1812. It was an unintended consequence that might bring huge rewards in the future. Jefferson had doubled the size of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase, and the annexation of Canada would double it again. For years, Madison had believed that Canada would become part of the United States simply because it was next door. “When the pear is ripe, it will fall of itself,” he said. Newspapers thirsted after Canada. When the war was just a year old, the editor of the Boston Chronicle wrote that “the Canadas ought in no event be surrendered…much valuable blood has already been shed and too much treasure been expended, to permit us to indulge for a moment the idea of resigning this country.” Madison also believed, as did most Americans, that the Canadians would rather be Americans than remain British. Even British commander Isaac Brock thought that might be true. “[They] were either indifferent to what was passing or so completely American as to rejoice in the prospects of change of governments,” he said. Yet President Madison could not publicly say he wanted to grab all of Canada. After all, this was supposed to be a defensive war against England, not a glaring attack on Canada.3

  The president did not want to dampen the enthusiasm for the war anywhere, but he soon found that he had to do exactly that in the most unlikely of places: the White House. There, his energetic, highly ambitious secretary of state, James Monroe, caught war fever and asked for a battlefield command as a general. Monroe not only was the secretary of state and former governor of Virginia but also had been an officer in the American Revolution. He had enough military experience and administrative experience to act as a general. Madison did not want that, though. Monroe might make a decent general, but he was an even better secretary of state. The president did not want to lose his diplomatic skills in the crucial months ahead just so that Monroe could race off and win some battles. He also needed Monroe because the Virginian was part of his White House brain trust for economic and political matters, as well as for the war. Besides, the departure of Monroe, some in the cabinet said, would open the door to bring Thomas Jefferson back to Washington to replace him as secretary of state. What a splendid idea, his aides said. Jefferson had not only been a great president but was, they reminded Madison, a secretary of state once before, for President Washington. Much as Madison loved Jefferson, he did not believe that the third president, knee deep in his farming at Monticello, would come back. Although he would never say it, he also did not need a former president around, offering advice. The country had one president already; it did not need two. Monroe would stay in Washington and Jefferson would remain at Monticello.

  Madison had wars to fight wherever he turned, even in his own cabinet. Dr. William Eustis had been a weak secretary of war who elicited no confidence in Congress, and Madison wanted to replace him. To do so, he had to plunge into a nightmare world of intrigue and political infighting. Everybody in Washington was loathe to take the secretary of war job. It involved an enormous amount of work and the secretary seemed to be criticized from all corners of Washington. And what if America lost the conflict? What would happen to the secretary of war, who lost the war?

  Madison personally hated to see Dr. Eustis go, but he was pressured by many in the government to fire him, especially Gallatin, whom he trusted. Gallatin did not like Eustis and told the president that Eustis simply did not have the skills for the job. Madison needed a secretary of war whose “knowledge and talent
s would save millions and the necessary business would be better done,” said Gallatin.4

  Eustis had no military experience and scant administrative skills. He spent most of his time reading maps and corresponding with arms merchants and ignored the war. He supported his older generals and refused to acknowledge criticism of them by younger generals, such as Winfield Scott. He corresponded with generals in the field but never passed along their letters to Madison; he often instructed generals to write him and not the commander in chief. One congressman called Eustis “a dead weight,” and Paul Jennings, Madison's slave, said he was a “rather rough, blustering man.”5

  Madison wanted to replace Eustis with Senator William Crawford of Georgia, whom he admired, or General Henry Dearborn, but they both turned him down. Then he wanted to move Monroe from State to War but feared a congressional uprising if he did so. Then he thought about his friend Gallatin but knew that Congress despised Gallatin and would never approve him. Finally, Madison settled on John Armstrong, a former minister to France, whom nobody liked. Monroe told the president that Armstrong not only could not do the job but also was personally offensive to all who met him. Gallatin said he did not have the disposition for the job, did not have any loyalty to the administration, and might undermine the president. Madison, with no one else to turn to, went with Armstrong anyway. It would turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes he ever made.

  The president then turned to the Navy Department, where Paul Hamilton had run things inefficiently for several years. Hamilton was a friendly and loyal secretary, but he did a terrible job running the navy in peacetime and now was doing a worse job in wartime. He had been a drunk for years and, it was rumored, never stayed at the office past noon. The president and others had tried to help Hamilton but failed. “Mr. Madison and his friends tried by every means to cure him, but it was useless,” said French Minister Serrurier. Madison talked Hamilton into resigning and replaced him with William Jones, a staunch Republican whom he had tried to get to take the navy job for eleven years. Jones, a Philadelphia merchant, was not only a good administrator but, as a former sea captain, also understood the needs of the sailors in the navy. The hardworking Jones turned out to be one of Madison's best wartime appointments. The president said of him later that he was “the fittest minister who had ever been charged with the Navy Department.” Rush was relieved as much as he was pleased by the appointments. He said that is was “delightful…to all those who for months past have been agonized at the imbecility of the two departments, to think that now probably the two most able men the nation has in it…are the two men appointed.”6