First Ladies

by Caroli, Betty

  Near the end of John Adams’s single term, Abigail had to oversee the transfer of the President’s Palace, as it was still called by some people, to the new capital on the banks of the Potomac. In letters to her family she made little attempt to conceal her displeasure with the unformed city that she found in December 1800. Streets remained unfinished in Washington “which is [a city] only … in name,” Abigail wrote to her daughter, “[and as for neighboring Georgetown, it is] the very dirtyest Hole I ever saw for a place of any trade, or respectability of inhabitants … a quagmire after every rain.”35 Vacillating as usual between wanting the president to live in comfort and frowning on too much splendor, Congress had been stingy with appropriations for his new permanent residence, and the Adamses arrived to find the house unfinished. Not all the rooms had been plastered, “bells are wholly wanting,” Abigail complained, “and promises are all you can obtain.” When the time came for the requisite entertaining, Abigail herded her guests into the one fully furnished hall, but, understanding the political cost of appearing too critical of what had been provided, she alerted her daughter, “When asked how I like it, say that I wrote you the situation is beautiful.”36

  Abigail hardly had time to settle into the Washington house before the results of the 1800 election signaled that she would have to move out. Political parties had slowly coalesced around several themes, including matters of both domestic and international concern. Federalists tended to champion a strong central government at home and the rightness of the British cause over that of the French in the European war. Democratic-Republicans talked more about protecting the rights of the individual states and about the need to stand up for the French. In nominating John Adams for a second term, the Federalists had not been unanimous, and some of them hoped that Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, whom they had chosen as candidate for vice president, would top John Adams’s votes and win the presidency, a possibility under a system that selected both officers on the same ballot. The opposition, zealously defending the common man and guarding states’ rights against encroachment from the central government, ran Thomas Jefferson under the Democratic-Republican banner and selected Aaron Burr for the second spot.

  The election went on for weeks because a tie in the electoral college between Jefferson and Burr threw the decision into the House of Representatives. Abigail Adams understood that her husband was out of the running but she could not bring herself to leave Washington until the final balloting on February 11, 1801, less than a month before the inauguration. Deeply disappointed but philosophical about Jefferson’s victory which ended the administration she had frequently described as “ours,” she wrote to her son: “The consequences to us personally is that we retire from public life, [and] … If I did not rise with dignity, I can at least fall with ease, which is the more difficult task.”37

  Nearly half a century would pass before Americans again voted into the presidency a man (James Polk) who appeared to hold such high regard for the counsel of his spouse as did John Adams. His, it should be noted, was respect resulting from experience. During their long marriage, Abigail showed both wisdom and strength, never permitting concern with domestic details to shut her off from important issues facing the country. When John was absent from Massachusetts, she kept him informed of political sentiment there, and she exchanged letters with many astute women, including Mercy Warren, the historian of the Revolution. Abigail’s voicing of strong opinions after her husband became president represented no change in her behavior—she had always spoken her mind—and she demonstrated that a president’s wife could, with her husband’s support, move beyond a merely ceremonial role to involve herself in substantive issues.

  The Adams administration also demonstrated, however, that a president would be criticized by the Gallatins of the time who preferred the model left by Martha Washington. Very early in her husband’s career, Martha had set limits for herself well within the confines of domesticity. During visits to George at the front during the Revolution, she had darned the socks of other soldiers and carried them hot soup. Later, as the president’s wife, she continued in a docile, supportive role. Which of the two examples became the pattern would be determined by those who followed.

  Thomas Jefferson’s two terms (1801–1809) offered an excellent opportunity to introduce different expectations for hostesses at the White House, as the president’s residence was occasionally being called. Both Jefferson and his second-in-command, Aaron Burr, were widowers, and the new president’s casual approach to etiquette suggested that little importance would be placed on entertaining. A staff could handle the mundane details, and Jefferson, extremely knowledgeable about food and wine, could evaluate their decisions. As for the ceremonial part of the office, the third president had quickly made clear that “pell mell” would prevail. He walked through the mud to his own inauguration and then returned to sit “far down” the boardinghouse table for his evening meal. Installed in the President’s House (as he quickly renamed the residence), he insisted that seating be a matter of chance rather than protocol, thus diminishing the importance of rank. If both Martha Washington and Abigail Adams had voluntarily or out of a sense of loyalty to their spouses accepted a portion of the president’s ceremonial tasks for themselves, Jefferson, by acting as the country’s head host and protocol chief, seemed on his way to challenging the absolute necessity that a spouse be there to assume those duties.

  As so often happens, a rigorously observed custom interfered. Etiquette dictated the presence of a hostess if women guests were to attend a dinner party. Showing no interest in breaking that tradition, President Jefferson asked his good friend, Dolley Madison, to “take care of the female guests expected.”38 His choice of Dolley came naturally. Jefferson’s home, Monticello, was within a few miles of the Madisons’ Virginia estate and in the first years of her marriage, when her husband’s fame had drawn crowds of admirers, Dolley had frequently fled to the quiet of Jefferson’s house to avoid the confusion at her own. James Madison’s appointment as secretary of state in 1801 legitimatized her new prominence in Washington society, and she thoroughly enjoyed the elevation. She used Jefferson’s two terms to assure a central role for whoever served as the president’s hostess and to develop her own formidable reputation for adroitly mixing politics and parties. An older, less energetic, or more insecure woman in her place might have hesitated to assert herself, but Dolley Madison, at thirty-two, showed no reluctance.

  Dolley Madison’s emergence as a superior hostess is somewhat ironic since she was raised in the Society of Friends where frivolity and extravagance had little place. From a childhood among the “plain people,” she grew to put great importance on what she wore and on having a good time, ordering her shawls and turbans from Paris and losing money at cards with considerable aplomb. Much of the change in her life can be attributed to her marriage, surely one of the most unusual unions in presidential history.

  Dolley Payne Todd’s marriage to James Madison had not been her first. Like Martha Washington and Martha Jefferson, she had been a widow when she wed a future president. The third-born child of failed shopkeepers in Philadelphia, Dolley had first married a young lawyer from her family’s Quaker congregation. Within three years, both he and one of their young sons had died, leaving Dolley at age twenty-five to fend for herself and her remaining son. She moved back to her mother’s to help run a boardinghouse. Within months, Aaron Burr introduced her to one of the most famous men in America—James Madison—who had passed age forty without taking a wife.39 Because he was several inches shorter than she but of obvious intellect and even then of enormous reputation, she immediately dubbed him the “great little Madison.”40

  Shy, even sourish in public, he could be a wit in private and evidently admired a woman who could take her gaiety everywhere. Within months of their meeting and less than a year after her first husband’s death, Dolley Payne Todd and James Madison were married. For the forty-odd years that they lived together, he complaine
d if he had to be separated from his “Dolley” and she ran here and there in the service of the man she always called “Madison.”

  The first woman to witness her husband’s swearing in, Dolley immediately indicated her intention to play a visible role by opening her Georgetown house for a reception following the inauguration ceremony. Perhaps because the event fell on a Saturday, larger than usual crowds had come to Washington and hundreds of people lined up to sample the Madisons’ punch and cake.41 The President’s House would have accommodated a larger crowd, but ex-presidents did not vacate speedily in those days and Jefferson took a week to get his things together for the trip back to Monticello.

  At the first inaugural ball, planned by Washington’s Dancing Assembly for Long’s Hotel that evening, Dolley continued to hold center stage. Heavy demand for tickets (only 400 were issued)42 led to great confusion, and the room became so congested that someone had to break a window to provide ventilation. People stood on benches to catch a glimpse of the new president’s wife, who behaved, one woman wrote glowingly, “with perfect propriety … dignity, sweetness and grace.”43 John Quincy Adams, who rarely enjoyed social gatherings and never shone at them, stood in the minority when he pronounced this party “excessive … oppressive and bad.”44

  The president’s official residence remained unfinished at the beginning of the Madison administration. One young visitor from New York described its exterior as appallingly grim, more suitable for a “State Prison” than anything else.45 Dolley insisted that improvements begin at once. When Congress appropriated $11,000, she spent almost one-quarter of the total on just the East Room (which Jefferson had neglected to furnish.)46 For help in her selections, she turned to Benjamin Latrobe, the English-born architect who had become President Jefferson’s surveyor of public buildings.47 Fewer than eight weeks after the inauguration she was ready to show off the results at her first drawing room.

  With the public’s curiosity divided between the president and his wife, the weaknesses of one partner could be offset by the strengths of the other. James Madison, who could be appealing in private but appear disinterested around people he did not know, gained from Dolley’s ability to charm almost everyone. Washington Irving, who attended a Madison reception soon after he arrived in the capital in 1811, captured the difference when he described Dolley as “a fine, portly buxom dame who has a smile and pleasant word for everybody … but as to Jemmy Madison, ah poor Jemmy—he is but a withered little applejohn.”48 The president preferred an inconspicuous seat at the dinner table so he could avoid having to play the host, and his guests frequently went away thinking he had not even noticed them. “He had no leisure for the ladies,” one woman complained.49

  With considerable skill, Dolley Madison could pick out guests who were uncomfortable and quickly put them at ease. One young man, so confused by the acrobatics of a president’s party that he dropped his saucer and then, in desperation, stuffed his cup in his pocket, looked up to see a smiling Dolley Madison coming toward him. “The crowd is so great,” she reassured him, “that no one can avoid being jostled.”50

  But Dolley’s entertaining had its political side as well because she showed the skills of a candidate running for office, rarely forgetting a name or making an inappropriate comment. Aware of the criticism that had surrounded Abigail Adams, Dolley sought to avoid appearing an “active partisan,”51 and she showered her husband’s enemies with the same attention that she gave his friends. Frances Few, who visited the capital during Dolley’s first season, pointed to her inscrutability when she wrote: “It is impossible to know what Mrs. Madison is thinking because she tried to be all things to all men.”52 Some critics claimed that Dolley paid too much attention to other men; one White House visitor reported that the president’s wife had told an old bachelor that she was “no prude, and then held up her mouth for him to kiss.”53 A political opponent had hinted broadly during a campaign that James “had impaired” himself “by an unfortunate matrimonial connection,”54 but such attacks were rare. Dolley Madison achieved a popularity that her successors would envy for decades to come.

  The reputation resulted from more than the style of her parties. In delicate political maneuvering, she could soften a cruel dismissal. After her husband eased Robert Smith, secretary of state, out of his cabinet in 1811, she gave a dinner in Smith’s honor. When Smith failed to appear, Dolley took her sister and “called twice,” Smith wrote, “with professions of great affection.”55

  Dolley Madison’s task became more difficult as the presidential election of 1812 approached. James Madison’s first term had not been easy. Both the British and French had continued to interfere with American shipping on the Atlantic, and boundary disputes with Indians erupted frequently in the Great Lakes region. Yet James very much wanted another term and Dolley remained optimistic about his chances. As early as December 1811, she had observed that “the intrigues for President and Vice President [for the 1812 election] go on,” but she correctly predicted victory: “I think it may terminate as the last did.”56

  In the summer of 1812, James Madison declared war on Great Britain, and the election a few months later became, in part, a referendum on the incumbent’s decision to fight. Opposition Federalists in New England termed this “Mr. Madison’s War” and prepared to ship their goods through Canada. In the election, they aligned with dissidents from the president’s own Democratic-Republicans in an attempt to defeat him, and they nearly succeeded. When the results came in, James Madison had won but not by much. Had he failed to take one large state, such as Pennsylvania, his opponent, DeWitt Clinton, would have moved into the White House.

  Dolley well understood the importance of keeping discontented congressmen in line so that they would not be tempted to vote for the opponent. Six months before the election, she wrote her sister that a large number of legislators were, “all offended [with Madison] and refused to dine with him,” but a week later she had them there “in a large body.”57 James Blaine, who later tried for the presidency himself, credited Dolley with a large share in her husband’s 1812 victory. Her cheerful impartiality brought the disenchanted around, Blaine wrote, and she convinced them to stick with the incumbent.58

  James Blaine may have overstated the case (he was, of course, not an observer of the events he described), but historians who have carefully studied the Madison administration tend to agree that Dolley proved a valuable asset to her husband. In the continuing debate between a democratic chief executive and a regal one, she played both sides; and for every critic who thought she went too far on one side, she acquired an admirer on the other. One woman described approvingly how the Madisons maintained a royal setting at their parties where custom dictated that each female guest “courtesy [sic ] to ‘His Highness’ [the President] and then find a seat,”59 but a senator from Massachusetts stressed the egalitarianism at the Madisons’ parties. For his tastes, Dolley went a bit too far in implementing democracy, mixing “all classes of people … from the Minister from Russia to under clerks of the post office and the printer of a paper—greasy boots and silk stockings … [with some of the women] giving the impression of ‘high life below the stairs.’ “60 Such contrasting evaluations of Dolley Madison led one historian to conclude that she was “brilliant in the things she did not say or do.”61

  Moreover, the things she did do, even actions deemed inappropriate for her peers, merely earned her more accolades. Stained fingers left little doubt that she used snuff, not an acceptable habit for nineteenth-century ladies but one that was excused in her. “In her hands the snuffbox, seems only a gracious implement with which to charm,” one woman offered in Dolley’s defense,62 and another admirer described the snuffbox as a “perfect security from hostility as bread and salt [are] among many savage tribes.”63 Some of Dolley’s observers considered the possibility that she used cosmetics, with some deciding that she surely “painted,” while others offered evidence that her heightened color resulted from natural enthusiasm. “I do not
think it true [that she uses cosmetics],” one contemporary wrote, “I saw her color come and go at the naval ball.”64

  The desire to cultivate political support for her husband sent Dolley out visiting all the congressmen’s families who moved to Washington. The fact that she called first was important—it signaled humility in the president’s attitude toward legislators. But the number of congressmen and their aides had grown since the days of Martha Washington and Abigail Adams, and the congressional election of 1810 had brought to the capital a large, new group from the West.

  The expectation that Dolley would not only call on each family but also invite them to the President’s House imposed a large burden even on someone who thrived on playing the hostess. “We have members in abundance with their wives and daughters,” Dolley wrote to friends in Paris, “[and] I have never felt the entertainment of company oppressive until now.”65 Although often perfunctory (with Dolley leaving her carriage only long enough to drop her card on the silver tray in the front hall), the calls took her from one end of Washington’s unpaved streets to the other, consuming entire days so that she had only Sundays for herself. Yet tampering with tradition carried political risks that she understood all too well, since any family slighted might take revenge on her husband.