Episode 4.9 President and Mrs. Madison

[Transcript]

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

Episode 4.9 President and Mrs. Madison

We ended last week with James’s inauguration as President, and before we dive into the nuts and bolts of what Dolley and James did next, I want to pause to take stock. With James’s inauguration, the still new-ish country had now had three successful, peaceful transfers of executive power, including one from the Federalists under John Adams to the Republicans under Thomas Jefferson. The country was finding its footing, and much had changed since the Revolutionary War, which was now more than 20 years in the past. I’ll begin with a long quote from Bruce Chadwick’s book James & Dolley Madison: America’s First Power Couple.

“President Madison faced a world that had changed considerably since he wrote the Constitution and lobbied to get it ratified…. Now, in the winter of 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte was wreaking havoc with his wars in Europe, the government of the Caribbean-island nation of Haiti had been overthrown in a slave revolt, the Russian oligarchy grew, and England had started to harass American shipping once more. At home, the invention of the cotton gin and the profitability of farm products had brought about a dramatic increase in slavery in the southern states. 

The size of the country had doubled with the Louisiana Purchase; two political parties now ran the country, with the Federalists in decline and the Republicans on the rise; newspapers had increased by tenfold, and many of them were controlled by Federalists and were highly critical of the Jefferson/Madison government; hundreds of political clubs of all kinds had started to appear; the Supreme Court was feeling its power; cities had exploded in population; and the Industrial Revolution had started, pitting farmers against manufacturers. Young men and women had started to leave their families and farms to find jobs in the burgeoning cities. The failed embargo had pitted many American business and interest groups against the federal government.”

In short, America, and indeed the world, in 1809 was wildly different from America in 1776 or even 1789. James clung to certain Republican ideals that were going to hamstring him as President. Ralph Ketcham describes the problem in his book, James Madison: A Biography.

“[C]ertain Republican axioms were ill-suited to the Napoleonic era. A belief in executive forebearance, fiscal predilections that abhorred debt, a faith that standing armies and navies necessarily corroded freedom, a reliance on militia, an adherence to commercial coercion, and a long-range view that America was impregnable were, however correct and virtuous by themselves, dangerous when insisted upon categorically in a world at war. Thus the Jeffersonians merely asked Congress for defense appropriations, and they tried every alternative to a regular army and to a fleet. They placed debt reduction above national defense, and they persisted in the Embargo long after both their countrymen and foreign powers had recognized its failure. 

The result was to leave the United States virtually helpless in a world it could not compel to accept its republican precepts. By learning too slowly the exigencies of power, the Republicans endangered national survival. The great miscalculation of the Jeffersonian administration, for which Madison shared general, if not direct, administrative responsibility, left a chasm between the principles it proclaimed and the power and means necessary to give them effect. The Jeffersonians’ fault was not cynicism or lust for power or infidelity to constitutional principles or partiality toward France or agrarianism or sectional bias; rather, it was a republicanism that left them disarmed in a hostile world.”

So with that out of the way, let’s dive into Dolley and James’s first term as America’s first couple. One of the first things Dolley had to work on was decorating the President’s House. Each previous president had used their own furniture for the presidential residence. Jefferson finally had all of his belongings out of the house by March 11, so the Madisons were able to move in. 

They had quite the entourage with them. Dolley’s sister Anna, her husband Richard, and their three children, James, Thomas, and Richard lived with the Madisons, and there were quarters for Payne, who was still attending school in Baltimore, and James’s private secretary, who happened to be Dolley’s second cousin Edward Coles. Additionally, Dolley’s sister Lucy and her three young sons came to live with them because her husband, George Steptoe Washington, had died in January 1809. So despite the fact that Dolley and James shared no biological children of their own, the President’s house was filled with children during Madison’s first term as president.

Fortunately, the house was large enough to accommodate everyone, plus friends and family members who came for extended stays. These visitors were primarily young ladies from James’s extended connections in Virginia—the capital was, of course, a great place to meet eligible men.

Despite the fact that the President’s House was only nine years old at this point, Congress appropriated $12,000 for repairs and improvements and another $14,000 for furnishings, decorations, and landscaping. To put that in context, that’s about $316,000 for repairs and $369,000 for funishings. Overseeing the decorating work would be Benjamin Henry Latrobe, a British-American architect who was also involved in designing the U.S. Capitol Building.

In a statement that should be ranked high on the list of most ironic comments by a former president, Jefferson advised the Madisons that Latrobe was extravagant and that “the reins must be held with a firmness that never relaxes.” This from the man who constantly exceeded his income decorating his houses in Paris and his mansion at Monticello and then died massively in debt.

Dolley had two favorite colors: golden yellow and deep crimson. She and Latrobe made good use of both in redecorating the President’s House. They focused on the two rooms that needed the most work: the ladies’ drawing room (today known as the Red Room) and the oval drawing room (which is now the Blue Room). 

Quoting from a book by Margaret Brown Klapthor about the redecorating project, “The curtains in the [ladies’ drawing] room were made of sunflower yellow damask with a valence of swags and draperies topping each window. This valence continued all around the top of the room, the stiff festoons looping up to a pole placed near the ceiling line. The fringe with which all the draperies and valances were trimmed caused a mild furor; it was made of long and short drops, silk over bits of wood, and must have enhanced the elegance of the room. In front of the fireplace, ‘on a fireboard’ beneath the mantle the same yellow damask was arranged in a fluted pattern known as a ‘rising sun.’ The furniture of the room was upholstered in bright yellow satin; the high-backed sofas and stiff chairs were elegant with no pretense of comfort. The room’s furnishings were completed with a new carpet, a few pier tables and card tables, and a fine guitar ordered expressly by Mrs. Madison.”

This does raise the question of who, exactly, was supposed to play this guitar, since there’s no mention anywhere of either Dolley or James having any musical talent whatsoever.

The oval drawing room took longer and cost more money to decorate, with Dolley and Latrobe spending extravagantly on furnishings, including more than $3000 on mirrors alone. The chairs and sofas were designed by Latrobe and crafted by John and Hugh Finlay of Baltimore. Dolley wanted silk damask for the curtains, but Latrobe informed her that none was to be found in New York or Philadelphia, so they used crimson velvet instead. Latrobe worried that the vibrant drapery overwhelmed his carefully designed furniture, but Dolley loved it.

A massive, life-size portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart was hung in the dining room. Remember this painting, because it’s going to make Dolley even more famous than she already is when we get to the War of 1812.

Latrobe also decorated an elegant carriage that was built in Philadelphia for the Madisons. It was reddish-brown on the outside and trimmed with yellow lace inside, and had a large M monogram on the doors.

For his part, James looked on approvingly as improvements were made to the grounds, which were mostly forest and pasture at the time his presidency began. Native trees, along with flowering trees and shrubs were planted in neat rows and clusters to provide screens. James also made sure to replenish the wine cellar with Madeira, port, and Champagne.

On March 31, 1809, just a few weeks after moving into the President’s House, Dolley held the first levée or drawing room reception of the Madison Administration. You’ll recall from seasons 1 and 2 that this was a formal reception hosted once a week by the president’s wife. Martha Washington and Abigail Adams had begrudgingly gone along with this suggestion by Congress, but Jefferson had done away with the levées as being too monarchical. Now they were back, but with a different look and feel.

Martha and Abigail’s levées had been extremely formal. Guests would be presented to the hostess, then take a seat, where the President would then come and greet them. There was no mingling, and it was all very structured. They were modeled on the formal court gatherings in both Britain and France, and were decidedly stuffy. Dolley, perhaps the world’s least stuffy First Lady, did away with the formality. There were no formal invitations or receiving lines, just people at a party. Dolley would circulate, greet and chat with people, and make introductions. 

Richard Côté writes in Strength and Honor: the Life of Dolley Madison, “No one was a stranger at one of her drawing rooms for more than five minutes. Every guest was treated as if he or she were a long-lost friend or close member of the family. Dolley’s extraordinary memory enabled her to make virtually anyone feel welcome, and she empathized with every problem of the human condition as if it were her own. Her tact directed her to pursue or deflect any given subject of conversation, thus defusing potential confrontations before they occurred. She was, indeed, the perfect hostess for her understated husband.”

Washington Irving, author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, attended at least one of Dolley’s drawing room receptions, writing to a friend, “Here I was most graciously received, found a crowded collection of great and little men, of ugly old women and beautiful new ones, and in ten minutes was hand and glove with half the people in the assemblage.” He also described 41-year-old Dolley as “a fine, portly, buxom dame who has a smile and a pleasant word for everybody. Her sisters, Mrs. Cutts and Mrs. Washington, are like the two merry wives of Windsor; but as to Jemmy Madison—ah! poor Jemmy!—he is but a little withered apple-John.”

Perhaps Benjamin Latrobe best sums it up when he describes how the guests in attendance gradually degraded: “Mrs. Madison gives drawing rooms every Wednesday. The first one was very numerously attended by none but respectable people. The Second, La La. [The third was attended by] a perfect rabble in beards and boots.”

As they had during all their years in Washington, the Madisons returned to Montpelier for some portion of the summer. They arrived in July 1809 and spent several weeks entertaining and enjoying country life. James’s mother Nelly was still alive and living at Montpelier, so James decided that the mansion needed another expansion. He and his friend William Thornton designed new wings, one for each end of the house.

At one point in August, the Madisons had as many as 23 guests at the same time, some combination of family and friends, including Margaret Bayard Smith and her husband, who stopped by after a long visit with Jefferson at Monticello. Margaret wrote, “Hospitality is the presiding genius of this house, and Mrs. Madison is kindness personified. … At this house I realized being in Virginia, Mr. Madison, plain, friendly, communicative, and unceremonious as any Virginia Planter could be—Mrs. Madison, uniting to all the elegance and polish of fashion, the unadulterated simplicity, frankness, warmth, and friendliness of her native character and her native state.”

It was good for James to be able to get away to his country retreat, because the demands of the presidency were non-stop. He even had to rush back to Washington for a quick three-day trip to consult with his cabinet about maneuvers by Britain. And his cabinet was also part of the problem.

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, James didn’t force the issue with Congress to get the cabinet he wanted. He had won an overwhelming majority of electoral college votes in the election, and most presidents would call that a mandate. His first choice for Secretary of State was Albert Gallatin, who had been Jefferson’s steadfast Secretary of the Treasury. But a group of Republican senators opposed Gallatin because he was foreign-born. (He was Swiss, in case you forgot.) So James decided to keep Gallatin at Treasury, because he would not need Senate confirmation to remain in a job he already held.

James also would have liked to put his friend James Monroe in as Secretary of State, but his advisers talked him out of it because Monroe had challenged Madison for the Republican nomination back in 1808.

Senator William Giles thought he should be Secretary of State, but James disagreed. In the end, he named Robert Smith to the post. Smith had been Secretary of the Navy under Jefferson, and his brother Samuel Smith was a powerful senator from Maryland. Robert Smith had a reputation for lazy incompetence, so it was more likely than not that with him at State, the burden of actually doing the work of Secretary of State would fall on James. Because it’s not like he had enough going on as President. The best that could be said of Robert Smith was expressed by John Randolph of Roanoke, who said, “as he can spell he ought to be preferred to Giles.” Sick burn.

I’m just going to quote Ralph Ketcham for the rest of the cabinet, because it’s a lot of name-dropping and subtle shade-throwing. Keep in mind that this is more or less the team Madison is going to have as the country goes to actual war in the near future.

“Political necessity and sectional balance seemed to force mediocrity on Madison for the rest of his cabinet. He retained Jefferson’s Attorney General, Caesar A. Rodney of Delaware, a zealous Republican who served competently but who continued a private law practice in Wilmington that kept him away from Washington for weeks and even months at a time. The War and Navy departments, insignificant offices in peacetime, and according to republican orthodoxy, not to be aggrandized under any circumstances, were allotted sectionally. 

Jefferson’s Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn, had been given a really important (and lucrative) office, collector of the port of Boston, thus making way for another New Englander, William Eustis, a physician of note and a devoted Republican, who in two terms in Congress had become a congenial part of the Washington social scene. He was, moreover, the son-in-law of New Hampshire Republican stalwart John Langdon. With these advantages he apparently did not need to have any particular talents or experience qualifying him for the War Department. For Secretary of the Navy Madison chose Paul Hamilton, a former governor of South Carolina who had neither qualifications for the post nor political connections promoting him for it. He was, it seems, simply an unobjectionable Southerner.”

I’m not sure you could come up with worse reasons for appointing people to important cabinet positions if you tried. Almost everything that goes wrong during the War of 1812, and believe me, a lot goes wrong, can be traced back to this incompetent decision-making by James in 1809.

Secretary of State Smith was especially problematic. Because his brother was a powerful senator, he felt insulated from any blowback that would result from undermining the Madison Administration. Robert Smith repeatedly passed on what should have been confidential executive branch information to his senator brother. And he also implied to both France and England that large sections of the country and Congress disagreed with Madison and his policies, giving both countries the comfortable ability to ignore and discount official administration positions.

Over the course of 1809 and 1810, Jefferson worked hard to effect a reconciliation between Madison and Monroe. Monroe seems to have regretted falling in with the Republican faction that tried to win him the presidential nomination in 1808. After dining with Monroe, Jefferson wrote to Madison, “he is sincerely cordial and I learn from several that he has quite separated himself from the junto that got possession of him.” 

“Junto” is the term used at this time to refer to small political cabals. I think this is the first time it’s come up in a quote, but it might come up again. It’s related to the word “junta” which is often used in connection with coups d’état, but for some reason the j is pronounced like a j in junto and like an h in junta. Don’t ask me why. I don't know where the word junto originally came from.

Anyway, James Monroe was elected governor of Virginia in 1811, but he only served for four months, because Madison finally fired Robert Smith and named Monroe Secretary of State in April 1811. The firing of Smith and appointing of Monroe all took place as part of a carefully orchestrated maneuver, probably planned jointly by Madison with Albert Gallatin.

Gallatin was fed up with Smith’s incompetence, so he tendered his resignation, but Madison refused it. Congress adjourned on March 3, 1811, so Madison then fired Smith and appointed Monroe to State as a recess appointment, which meant he could serve for as many as nine months without Senate confirmation. With Smith out, Gallatin was mollified, so he agreed to continue as Treasury Secretary.

Backing up just a bit to 1810, Congress passed something called Macon’s Bill No. 2. (There was also a Bill No. 1, but No. 2 replaced it, so we don’t really need to talk about No. 1.) The bill was a response to the failed Non-Intercourse Act, which of course itself was a replacement for the failed Embargo Act of 1807. Macon’s Bill No. 2 opened American trade to all countries and parties, including Britain and France, unless either Britain or France withdrew their offensive decrees. That would be the Rule of 1756 and Orders in Council for Britain and the Berlin and Milan Decrees for France. If that were to happen, then the U.S. would keep trading with the party that revoked their decree, and immediately reinstate non-intercourse with the party whose decree remained in effect.

The goal here was to play the British and the French off against each other. The U.S. hoped that France would blink first because they had less to lose, and then that the British would also revoke the Rule of 1756, because they needed trade with the U.S. more than France did. There was probably no way this was ever going to work, because America just didn’t have the leverage it thought it did. In fact, it had the opposite effect, and Napoleon issued another edict against American trade and increased his predatory actions against American sea vessels. So I guess we can call it the failed Macon’s Bill No. 2 to go along with the other failures.

I should add that I’m simplifying matters as much as possible. There was actually quite a bit of maneuvering around Macon’s Bill No. 2, including some false promises by France that Madison foolishly accepted. Because the details are mind-numbingly boring and convoluted, I’m leaving most of them out and only including what I think are the most essential points for you to understand how the U.S. and Britain end up at war with each other. If mind-numbingly boring details of foreign diplomacy and trade are in your wheelhouse, I direct you to chapter 19 of Ralph Ketcham’s Madison biography.

In November 1811 a new Congress took its seats in Washington. The elections held over the winter of 1810 to 1811 had produced a crop of “New Republicans” who were less dogmatic about traditional Republican principles like peace and frugality. A group of them came to be known as the War Hawks. When James presented his State of the Union address to Congress that winter, he accused Britain of having “hostile inflexibility [and measures having] the character as well as the effect of war on our lawful commerce.” 

As Ralph Ketcham writes, “Though Madison avoided open threats, the nation correctly understood these words as a call to gird for war. Furthermore, since France had failed to follow her ‘amiable professions’ with ‘prompt and ample’ deeds of reconciliation, Congress should keep an eye on ‘the ulterior policy of the French government.’ To face the accumulating perils, Madison recommended enlarging the army, preparing the militia, finishing the military academy, stock-piling munitions, expanding the navy, and increasing the tariff to encourage trade and manufactures vital to the national interest….[T]he costs of preparedness and war would require both new taxes and large loans.”

On that cheerful note, let’s return to Dolley, who hasn’t made an appearance in quite some time. It won’t surprise you to hear that she was mostly busy maintaining the social life of the President’s House and the President himself. Unlike the dinners and parties she orchestrated during Jefferson’s presidency, the Madison soirées were much larger. They were known around town as “squeezes,” because the guests had to squeeze in. One guest wrote of a Dolley party, “It was a great day there. The house was crowded with company from top to bottom, the chambers and every room was occupied with Ladies and Gentlemen and all descriptions of persons.”

The Madisons also continued to attend the horseraces in Washington, and James even co-owned a horse with his friend William Thornton. As the president’s wife and the queen of social society in Washington, Dolley was sent many presents. Women often bought her gifts of turbans, stockings, and dresses when they traveled. 

Millionaire John Jacob Astor (great-grandfather of the one who died on the Titanic a century later) sent Dolley rare silver fox furs, with a note reading, “The American Fur Company, an infant Establishment in this City, request, that you will be so obliging as to wear it from Motives of Patriotism, and to give encouragement to the Manufactures of our Country, by introducing and giving example, which I know your goodness will incline you to do.” Dolley Madison was the original influencer.

Dolley also became known for her reading habits. She and James had one of the largest private libraries in the country, and it wasn’t just James’s law treatises. Dolley’s sister Mary once wrote that the library at Montpelier was “not only lined with bookcases, but the center so filled with them that there was only just room enough to pass among them. Books and pamphlets were piled up everywhere, on every available chair and table.”

When friends lent Dolley books, she would return them with notes. She also had a book club with her sisters and other relatives, and she often asked friends to buy her books when they traveled abroad. 

Dolley’s parties and social engagements encouraged others to host parties as well, which the Madisons often attended. One assumes that Dolley was as vivacious and chatty at parties where she was a guest as she was at the parties she hosted herself.

In 1811 Dolley was 43, and had gained some 20 pounds due to years of constant dinners and parties, and was fading a bit in beauty. One new Congressman sniped, “I got a sight of [Mrs. Madison] today—she appears to be about 45, of coarse if not masculine features. Her eyes dark and neither large nor brilliant—her cheeks I think were painted. The whole contour of her features was dull and uninteresting, her habit is too full to be graceful. She must be considered in ruins though I could trace no evidence that she was ever lovely or beautiful. No doubt she is ambitious, and may have intellect.” 

Besides throwing constant parties, Dolley also spent her days shopping and attending to domestic duties. The Madisons had expanded the household staff at the President’s House to a team of 30, which you may recall from episode 2.13 was exactly the number Abigail Adams estimated it would require, even though she tried to get by with six. The head of the staff was a Frenchman named Jean Pierre Sioussat, whom the Madisons had apparently hired from British Ambassador Anthony Merry. And the Madisons had several of their personal slaves from Montpelier attending them at the President’s House, among them a man named Paul Jennings and a housemaid named Sukey.

In the winter of 1811 to 1812, the House passed six resolutions that clearly put the U.S. on the road to war. Among them were resolutions to increase the regular army to 10,000 men, fully outfit the Navy, and arm merchant ships. Dolley wrote to her sister, “I believe there will be war. Mr. Madison sees no end to the perplexities without it, and [Congress] seem to be going on with the preparations.”

However, these measures met some opposition in the Senate where a group of Senators put forth an underhanded scheme to undermine the increase in the size of the army. Instead of 10,000 men for three years, they pushed through a bill increasing the army by 25,000 men for five years. The problem with this was that there was no way to find 25,000 men willing to enlist for five years, and there was no way Congress would levy the taxes necessary to support such a large force. So it was a way of killing the army increase while appearing to do the opposite. This made the U.S. look incompetent and incapable of even waging war.

An even bigger problem was Congress’s refusal to augment the navy. The British navy was far and away the biggest and best in the world. Even increasing America’s navy to the size James wanted—12 ships of the line and 10 new frigates—would leave it laughably small in comparison to Britain’s. But opposition to a standing army and a navy was long-held Republican orthodoxy, and stubborn Congressmen refused to comprehend that different times call for different measures. As Ralph Ketcham puts it, “In the final vote, January 27, the most critical of the session, the navy was sunk, 62-59, by ‘Old Republicans,’ economizers, and army-conscious Western War Hawks. The war party was weakened internally and the administration, virtually without a navy, faced a war with the world’s dominant sea power.”

And on that cheery note, we’ll wrap up for today. Next week, we’ll finally get to the War of 1812, which has to be one of the worst names of all time for a war, mainly because it lasted until 1815. 

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