Episode 4.8 On the Brink of War

[Transcript]

Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.

Episode 4.8 On the Brink of War

We left off last week with Dolley finally returning to Washington after her six-month medical treatment in Philadelphia. Thankfully, the treatment eventually worked, and her knee never bothered her again.

Before we fully turn our attention back to the Washington scene, I need to backtrack and go down one more little rabbit hole, because it’s going to lay more groundwork for the War of 1812, which I swear we’ll get to, but not today.

While in Philadelphia watching over Dolley, not only was James handling State Department business, but he was also writing a treatise titled, “An Examination of the British Doctrine, Which Subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade, Not Open in Time of Peace.” Not the world’s pithiest title, I’ll grant you. But the subject matter was important. I’ll summarize as briefly as possible.

As a neutral party in the wars between France and Britain, the U.S. continued to trade with both of them and with their colonies in the West Indies. Britain had a policy called the Rule of 1756, which basically said that the ships of any neutral country trading with a country at war with Britain were subject to attack and capture by Britain. 

James’s treatise was a thorough logical debunking of the argument behind the Rule of 1756. I’m going to quote here from Ralph Ketcham’s book, James Madison: A Biography. After a survey of international law, James cited various arguments against Britain, “(1) the international law theorists rejected the Rule of 1756; (2) treaties, many signed by Britain herself, repudiated it; (3) it could not be found in the admiralty judgments of foreign nations; (4) even British courts had repeatedly ruled against it; and (5) the reasoning used by its defenders in Britain was fallacious.”

Now quoting directly from Madison’s treatise: “Finding no asylum elsewhere, it at length boldly asserts, as its true foundation, a mere superiority of force. It is right in Great Britain to capture and condemn a neutral trade with her enemies, … for the sole reason that her force is predominant at sea. And it is wrong in her enemies to capture and condemn a neutral trade with British colonies, because their maritime force is inferior to hers. The question no longer is, whether the trade be right or wrong in itself, but on which side the superiority of force lies?”

You can boil Britain’s argument down to three words: Might makes right! Not only is this position taken by Great Britain in the 1800s going to create the circumstances for war between the U.S. and Britain, but you may also recognize that this is the stance taken by the current 2026 U.S. government when it comes to places like Venezuela and Greenland. If you read the news at all, you probably know that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke out against this attitude at the 2026 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. He said that the rules-based order of the previous century was fading and that the new world order espoused by the U.S. could be summarized by a quote from ancient Greek historian Thucydides: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. This is the exact attitude struck by early 1800s Great Britain. Everything old is new again, right?

So, back to our history lesson. Despite James’s masterful logical takedown of the Rule of 1756, there was no way the British were going to let a little logic get in their way. As Ralph Ketcham puts it, “[T]he Royal Navy would not, and perhaps could not have been expected to, bow to logic and the niceties of law when the very survival of Britain depended on its violation. The plain fact was that had the claims of neutral commerce, as Madison upheld them in the Examination and in other state papers, been allowed by Britain, her only real weapon against Napoleon, the blockade of the continent he controlled, would have been rendered impotent.”

It won’t surprise you to know that James’s treatise had no effect, and did nothing to change Britain’s attitude toward attacking otherwise neutral ships if they were engaged in trade with France or its territories. Keep all this in mind as the U.S. grows closer to war with Britain in the coming years.

Now, back to Dolley. In February 1805, her son Payne turned 13, and it was high time he went to school, as opposed to continuing to be taught at home. There were no quality private schools in Washington yet, and remember, this is a time before public schools are even a thing. So Dolley and James found a private school in Baltimore that seemed promising. In December 1805, Payne was enrolled at St. Mary’s College, which was a preparatory seminary serving both Protestant and Catholic boys.

Washington was growing into a bigger and more cosmopolitan city during Jefferson’s second term as president. More wives of Congressmen came to the city with their husbands, and more women unconnected to the government made Washington their home. More shops were established, making shopping in the nation’s capital easier, and there were more entertainments, with orchestras and bands popping up. Washington was also seen as a safe city, mostly because it was too young to have the amount of crime that more established cities contended with.

Bruce Chadwick uses Richmond as an example of a crime-ridden city in his book James & Dolley Madison: America’s First Power Couple. “Richmond had been invaded by houses of ill repute, taverns, and gambling casinos, all legal at the time, and their operators preyed on local residents. There were several dozen houses of prostitution, where pretty, young women seduced men for money. The brazen prostitutes not only strolled on sidewalks to solicit business but also walked through the town’s theaters too. They plied their trade at local dance halls and casinos. …The drinking, gambling, and prostitution in Richmond brought on a crime wave, spearheaded by robbers who beat up and killed their victims on the dark streets of the city.”

I’m sure our friend Abigail Adams would have many things to say about the brazenness of the Richmond prostitutes—remember her description of the situations in Paris and London from season 2? She never could see America in its true light when comparing it to cities in Europe. I hate to break it to her that crime in America was now on equal footing with the cities of the Old World.

Dolley lost a number of close relatives during James’s second term as Secretary of State. In 1806, two of her nieces, both daughters of her sister Mary, died. One had been named after her. Then in 1807, her mother died. One source claims it was tuberculosis, but another says it was a stroke. None of my source materials said much about the death of Dolley’s mother. Presumably she was still living at Harewood with her daughter Lucy and Lucy’s husband, George Steptoe Washington. Harewood was near present-day Charleston, West Virginia, so although it wasn’t outrageously far from Washington or Montpelier, it was probably far enough away that Dolley did not often see her mother or sister. 

She certainly was deeply affected by the loss of her mother, writing to her best friend, Eliza Collins Lee, “When I trace the sad events that have occured to me, I feel as if I should die too. My Husband is nearly well & I have exerted all my fortitude, all my religion, in order to live for him & my son. Alass! My friend, I used to think that I could not survive the loss of my Mother…yet I am still here; & in all the bitterness of mourning striving to reconcile my heart to the greatest misfortune.”

Her misfortune continued, because in 1808, her sister Mary Payne Jackson also died, and she definitely seems to have had tuberculosis. And to top it all off, she had a wayward brother whom she was constantly trying to help. It seems that every family in this time period had at least one problem child, and John Coles Payne was the Payne family’s. 

John was 23, and his primary hobbies were gambling and drinking. He was unmarried and had no job to speak of. In 1806, James arranged for John to serve as secretary to the American consul in Tripoli, which today is the capital of Libya on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, but at this time period it was part of what were known as the Barbary states—commonly known as pirates. 

Dolley hoped that a steady job and change of scenery would help John settle down. She paid off his debts and wrote to him often. In one letter she wrote, “[I] will take every care of your interest as much as if it was my own son’s, who is by the bye, a fine fellow, & who remembers & talks of you with the tenderest affection—& indeed so do all your old acquaintances, many of them have written to you, & I truly believe that you left no enemy behind you.”

Dolley’s mention of her son in this letter is unfortunately prescient, because Payne is going to go down the same path as his uncle John, and Dolley and James will spend a fortune bailing him out of his various misdeeds.

While Dolley was dealing with all these personal losses and struggles, Madison and Jefferson were trying to figure out how to deal with the increasingly belligerent British. The two countries came dangerously close to war in June 1807 when a British ship, the H.M.S. Leopard, attacked an American frigate, the U.S.S. Chesapeake, off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia—so, clearly in American waters.

Three Americans were killed, 18 were wounded, and three were dragged off by the British and impressed into Royal Navy service. To be fair, the British did also find one actual Royal Navy deserter onboard, and they removed him, then hanged him. But the incident was an outrageous escalation of hostilities, and led to widespread calls for war by Americans of all political persuasions.

But the U.S. was woefully unprepared to wage war against anyone, let alone the British. As Bruce Chadwick outlines, “[T]he United States had a tiny navy, a small army, and little funds for military activity and could not engage the mighty British in a war. In fact, a congressman reported in 1810 that of the alleged nearly two thousand troops in New Orleans, just 950 were left—the rest had died, had deserted, or were too sick to fight. Madison learned from Naval Secretary Paul Hamilton that the navy was in no condition to fight anybody because Congress kept cutting its budget and forbid not only the building of new ships but also the repairing of old ones.” 

On July 2, the U.S. government ordered all British ships out of American harbors. James wrote to the two U.S. representatives in London, James Monroe and William Pinckney, with instructions to demand from Britain (1) a formal disavowal of the attack; (2) release of the impressed seamen; (3) punishment of the offending officers; and (4) the abolition of impressment going forward. If Britain did not agree, Monroe was to order all American vessels in British ports to head home, in preparation for war.

The Americans were all bark and no bite, and Britain knew it. Ralph Ketcham writes, “[T]heir blunt, threatening posture in Europe had received the disdain and ridicule it was bound to invite in the absence of any force to back it up.”

So instead of fighting a war they were ill-equipped for, the U.S. turned to its only real option: a trade embargo. And it wasn’t aimed only at Britain, but at France as well. Napoleon had issued something called the Berlin Decree in November 1806. It subjected any vessel trading with Britain or even stopping at a British port on its way elsewhere to seizure by the French Navy. And of course, the British Rule of 1756 was doing the same thing on the British side, making it impossible for U.S. ships to safely trade with anyone. 

The British responded to the Berlin Decree with orders that any neutral vessel trading with a European country had to first stop at a British port to get a British license for trade. And then Napoleon countered with the Milan Decree, stating that any neutral vessel that submitted to British search or regulations was subject to seizure. The Americans (and pretty much everyone else in the Western world) were stuck between a rock (the British) and a hard place (the French).

In light of all this, on December 22, 1807, Congress approved the Embargo Act of 1807. It sealed the U.S. off from the world, prohibiting trade of any kind with all nations. James was convinced that the embargo would cripple British commerce because Britain depended more on American goods than vice versa. He could not have been more wrong.

I’ll let Bruce Chadwick summarize what happened next. “To thwart the embargo, people began to smuggle British goods into the United States. The Canadian border was a sieve to trade; hundreds of small-time entrepreneurs smuggled goods over the border to Boston and other New England communities. Congressmen warned Jefferson that the only way to make the embargo work was for the federal government to become very aggressive in prosecuting people suspected of violating it. In addition to all of that, Madison had underestimated the need of America to sell its exports. The business was bigger than he thought. …

The embargo permitted “special permissions” to be granted to some shipping companies. This meant that instead of no ships sailing to Europe in 1808, more than six hundred did. Imports were viewed the same way. Dispensations for certain European goods were allowed and others were brought in with them, finding a quick market. During 1808, for example, European shipping business at the port of Philadelphia did not drop by 100 percent, as Madison predicted, but by only 25 percent. In the Caribbean, Napoleon, busy with his wars, simply ignored the embargo. British islands seemed to shrug it off and continued with their daily lives. In England, merchants had huge surpluses of cotton and other goods bought from America before the embargo went into law, so they did not suffer. 

The Spanish markets in South America opened their doors to British merchants, too, and the increase in business to South America made up for the loss of business in the United States. The embargo was a failure with other nations, too. The more Madison insisted that others understand it, the more they did not and saw it as a desperate measure by a country unwilling or unable to find other means to reach its diplomatic goals. And, no matter how often the secretary of state said that it was a practical tool, everybody saw it was a cold, political gamble and nothing less. Madison would not let it go; everybody overseas blamed its failure on him.”

It seems that only Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin had a clear-eyed view of the embargo, writing, “in every point of view, privations, sufferings, revenue, effect on the enemy, politics at home, etc., I prefer war to a permanent embargo. Governmental prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals as if he could do it better than themselves. …As to the hope that it may…induce England to treat us better, I think it entirely groundless.”

He was right, of course, but no one listened to him. 

The embargo also took on a partisan split, with Republican-leaning agricultural interests in the South more inclined to support it than Federalist-leaning mercantile interests in New England. The shipping industry was monumentally important to New England, so a trade embargo hurt them more than any other region.

And while all this was unfolding, James and Dolley left Washington for their annual summer visit to Montpelier. Except this year, Dolley became deathly ill along the journey with inflammatory rheumatism. She fainted at a party at Montpelier and spent some time in bed, recuperating. The doctor came and applied leeches, of course. We’ve made it to the 19th century, but we still haven’t made it to the age of competent medicine. Dolley wrote to Anna, “Never had I more extreme sickness & pain. …No language can give you an idea of poignancy of my misery. I was never before in such a situation.” She did recover, but had to miss out on a few social engagements that summer.

And amidst all this drama, 1808 was also an election year! In keeping with the precedent set by George Washington, Jefferson declined to stand for a third term. The Republican nominating caucus had met in January. It had long been assumed that James would succeed Jefferson to the presidency, or at least to the Republican nomination. Madison and Jefferson certainly both wished for this to be the case. But Madison was at a low point in his career because of the unpopularity of the embargo.

Some portions of the Republican party in New England and the Middle States (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware) favored former New York governor and current Vice President George Clinton, despite his advanced age and clear physical infirmities. The Southern Republicans favored James Monroe, who was still serving the Jefferson Administration in London. Monroe had somewhat fallen out of favor with the administration after presenting in 1806 an unacceptable treaty with the British that accomplished very little. Jefferson rejected the treaty Monroe had worked hard to negotiate, which seems to have created some bad blood between them. As Ralph Ketcham writes, “Whispering campaigns pictured Monroe as having the presence, dignity, fortitude, and virility that the small, unprepossessing Madison lacked.”

But in the end, the Republican caucus in January recorded 83 votes for Madison as the presidential candidate and 79 votes for Clinton as the vice presidential candidate, out of a total of 89 members voting. Apparently the anti-Madison faction had boycotted the caucus, which seems rather self-defeating. Clinton and his supporters rejected the results of the caucus, and Clinton essentially ran both as an independent candidate for president and as the Republican candidate for vice president. Monroe’s support seems to have fizzled out.

To counter various claims that James was soft on France, prejudiced against England, and merely a meek sycophantic follower of Jefferson, the administration released over a number of months various official papers and letters of Madison’s that showed him as a dogged supporter and champion of America’s rights as a nation on equal footing with the European nations. As Ralph Ketcham puts it, “he had displayed a resourceful concern for American national interests.” 

Bruce Chadwick writes of this maneuver, “The secretary shone in the papers. He exhibited a genuine grasp not just of his office but also of the workings of the entire federal government. The papers showed him as a good boss, a fine negotiator, and a partner to the president. Most of all, though, they showed that he was tough.”

Madison handily won the election, securing 122 electoral college votes, out of a total of 175. The Federalist ticket of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Rufus King (the same ticket as in 1804) won only 47 electoral college votes. George Clinton ended up with 6 (all from New York), and James Monroe with 0. 

Also, two fun facts for you: this is apparently the only time in American history that a political party re-nominated the same ticket that had lost the previous election. And although George Clinton badly lost his independent campaign for the presidency, he was the vice presidential candidate on Madison’s ticket, so he won re-election as vice president. It was the first of two times in American history that an incumbent vice president won re-election while a new president was elected. The second time will be in 1828.

Most of Madison’s support came from the South: he won Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and of course his home state of Virginia. But he also won New Jersey and New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Most of New England was still firmly in the Federalist camp: Pinckney won Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Delaware.

Many observers attributed James’s election victory to his wife. Senator Samuel Mitchill told friends that Dolley’s ability to make James look presidential at their many parties had greatly aided his campaign. “[Madison] gives dinners and makes generous displays to the members of Congress. [Clinton] lives snug at his lodgings and keeps aloof from such captivating exhibitions. Mr. M is going greatly ahead of him.” Even the Federalist candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney later commented, “I was beaten by Mr. and Mrs. Madison. I might have had a better chance had I faced Mr. Madison alone.”

Eliza Collins Lee wrote to congratulate Dolley: “you are about to fulfill a character most dignified and respectable in society. …I feel no small degree of exultation in knowing that the mind, temper and manners of my Philadelphia Quaker friend are peculiarly fitted for the station, where hospitality and graciousness of deportment will appear conspicuously charming and conciliating.”

The official counting of electoral college ballots happened on February 8, 1809. At the same time, Congress was deciding what to do with the much reviled Embargo Act of 1807. On March 1, 1809, just a few days before James’s inauguration as president, Congress passed the Non-Intercourse Act, which essentially repealed the Embargo Act by lifting all embargoes on American shipping, except on vessels going to British or French ports. So trade could resume with all countries except for the two that had caused all the trouble in the first place. Spoiler alert: the Non-Intercourse Act is going to be about as successful as the Embargo Act was. Guess what? Repealing and replacing something isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Inauguration Day, March 4, 1809, fell on a Saturday, and the city of Washington was awakened by army and navy bands playing at dawn. Spring weather had just arrived, so thousands turned out on Pennsylvania Avenue and the Capitol grounds to watch the presidential procession. Jefferson arrived at the Capitol just before noon, followed by the Madisons a few minutes later. Not since George Washington’s second inauguration in 1793 had a president’s wife been personally present at the inauguration. It took place in the House of Representatives chamber, which was so crowded that people had to fight for seats. 

Margaret Bayard Smith wrote later, “The room was so terribly crowded that we had to stand on the benches; from this situation we had a view of the moving mass; it was nothing else. It was scarcely possible to elbow your way from one side to another, and poor Mrs. Madison was almost pressed to death, for every one crowded round her, those behind pressing on those before, and peeping over their shoulders to have a peep of her, and those who were so fortunate as to get near enough to speak to her were happy indeed. As the upper sashes of the windows could not let down, the glass was broken, to ventilate the room, the air of which had become oppressive.”

James gave a short, ten-minute inaugural address, in which he pledged continued neutrality in foreign wars and reiterated his commitment to the usual Republican principles. One woman who was in the gallery wrote that James was “extremely pale and trembled excessively when he first began to speak, but [he] soon gained confidence and spoke audibly.”

After the oath of office was administered, the presidential party proceeded to walk down a prearranged route to the Madison’s residence on F Street, because Jefferson had not yet moved out of the President’s House. Margaret Bayard Smith reported, 

“The street was full of carriages and people, and we had to wait near half an hour, before we could get in—the house was completely filled, parlours, entry, drawing room and bed room. Near the door of the drawing room Mr. and Mrs. Madison stood to receive their company. She looked extremely beautiful, was drest in a plain cambrick-dress with a very long train, plain around the neck without any handkerchief, and beautiful bonnet of purple velvet, and white satin with white plumes. She was all dignity, grace, and affability. Mr. Madison shook my hand with all the cordiality of an old acquaintance.”

James was dressed in his traditional black, but he did allow for some style by wearing an ivory six-button vest, embellished with an embroidered vine-and-flower garland that ran down the lapels and across the waist. And I just want to point out here that while James’s outfit was made in America—Connecticut, to be exact—Dolley’s had been imported from Paris. Embargo be damned.

After the visitors finally departed, the Madisons rested and changed for the inaugural ball to be held later in the evening. Bruce Chadwick claims that this was the first inaugural ball, but that’s not technically true. Alexander Hamilton’s wife Eliza left a detailed recollection of attending a ball thrown at the time of George Washington’s first inauguration. It was held eight days after the actual inauguration, though, so Madison’s inaugural ball was the first to be held the same day as the inauguration. You should know by now that I like my technicalities. 

For the ball, Dolley had changed into a pale, buff-colored velvet dress, and another elaborate bonnet with feathers and bird of paradise blooms protruding from the top. She also wore a necklace, bracelet, and earrings of pearl. And even though she was now the President’s wife, she still refused to cover her cleavage with a demure handkerchief. One of her friends had even sent her a present just before the inauguration. The note read, “Accept and wear for the sake of the donor the enclosed Handkerchief; it claims no other Merit than being thought worthy of my Valuable friend Mrs. Madison, of shading her lovely bosom from the admiration and gaze of the Vulgar.” Mrs. Madison was not persuaded.

The ball and dinner were held at Long’s Hotel in Washington, and right away, observers could see that the Madison Administration was not going to just be more of the Jefferson Administration. You’ll recall the diplomatic kerfuffle Jefferson sparked by refusing to follow long-held diplomatic protocols. Well, this administration would be different.

Ralph Ketcham describes the scene: “One of the managers of the ball escorted [Dolley into the ball], and the President came in with Anna Cutts. Mindful of etiquette troubles during Jefferson’s presidency, the managers very carefully had French Minister Turreau, ‘in all the splendor of gold and diamonds,’ escort Dolley to dinner, and the English minister, David Erskine, her sister. Mrs. Robert Smith, resentful of the precedence given to Anna Cutts, came next and with Madison sat across the crescent-shaped table from the First Lady.”

Quick note here: although Ketcham uses the term First Lady, it still hadn’t come into use yet.

One minor difficulty arose when the ball managers presented the first dance to Dolley. You’ll remember that as a Quaker, Dolley never learned to dance, because it was forbidden. When the Commandant of Washington Navy Yard approached her for the dance, she whispered, “I do not dance.” So he graciously approached Dolley’s sister Anna for the honor of the first dance. I do wonder, but don’t actually know, if this is the only inaugural ball where the President and First Lady did not dance with each other. I also wonder why Anna, who also was raised as a Quaker, knew how to dance, but Dolley never bothered to learn. I'll never know the answer to that one.

James was exhausted by the day and all the pomp and circumstance. One guest remarked that by mid-evening, the President was “spiritless and exhausted, [with] a most woe begone face, and looking as if he could scarcely stand.” Dolley and James left the party early, but the band played and the guests danced, at least until midnight.

Next week, we’ll dive into the first term of James Madison’s presidency. And hey, we might even get to the War of 1812! Just kidding. But we will get there in two weeks, I promise.

Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me, and the music is by Matt Dull.