Episode 5.2 The Early Monroe Marriage

[Transcript]

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

Episode 5.2 The Early Monroe Marriage

We left off last week in 1785, when James Monroe was courting young Elizabeth Kortright. We don’t know how, exactly, Elizabeth and James met. As I pointed out last week, Harlow Giles Unger’s claim that they met at Elbridge Gerry’s wedding can’t be true. Elbridge Gerry was married in January 1786, only one month before Elizabeth and James were married. Courtships were short in those days, but not that short.

Also, we know from William Grayson’s November 1785 letter, which I also talked about last week, that Monroe had already met the Kortright sisters by then. Otherwise, they could not possibly have asked Grayson to “remember” them to James.

So, it’s clear that they didn’t meet at Elbridge Gerry’s wedding. They were both living in New York City, so we’ll just have to assume that some mutual acquaintance introduced them. Not all of Elizabeth’s friends were pleased by the match, thinking that James was not good enough for her. One called him a “not particularly attractive Congressman.”

At some point before the wedding, James wrote to his uncle Joseph Jones to tell him about his impending nuptials. Uncle Jones replied that the secrets to a successful marriage were to find a woman with “sensibility and tenderness of heart, good nature without levity, [and] a moderate share of good sense with some portion of domestic experience & economy.”

Just a few days before the wedding, Monroe wrote to James Madison, “If you visit this place shortly, I will present you to a young lady who will be adopted a citizen of Virginia in the course of this week.”

On Thursday, February 16, 1786, 17-year-old Elizabeth Kortright married 27-year-old James Monroe at her father’s home on Great Queen Street in New York City. The officiant was Benjamin Moore, the assistant rector at Trinity Church. The bride wore a brightly colored dress and the groom wore his best suit. James was 6 feet tall, and Elizabeth was only 5 feet tall. But unlike the stout Martha Washington, Elizabeth carried herself with what some called a “noble bearing” that made her seem taller. One quote from an unknown source said that Elizabeth, “had the hauteur of the born aristocrat and was something of a grande dame even in girlhood.”

After the vows, there was a reception party, and then the couple went to Long Island for a honeymoon, returning to Manhattan by the end of the month. Upon their return to Manhattan, they lived at Elizabeth’s family home. 

Just a quick note here about Elizabeth’s name. Her given name was Elizabeth, but her family, including James, called her Eliza. However, when Elizabeth and James have their first child, they’re going to name her Elizabeth and call her Eliza. Since it’s too confusing to have two Elizas, I decided to call the mother Elizabeth and the daughter Eliza. 

After returning from their honeymoon, James resumed his service in the Confederation Congress. His primary goal was to secure rights to the Mississippi, which was important not just for Virginians, but for all the settlers living on lands that were not yet states—lands where James had a considerable financial stake, owning tens of thousands of acres there. Was this a conflict of interest? Of course it was. But everyone in Congress had conflicts of interest, so it didn’t raise too many eyebrows.

The details get a little too “inside baseball” for me to want to bore you with them, but James’s main foe in the battle over freedom of navigation on the Mississippi was John Jay. Jay was responsible for negotiating with Don Diego de Gardoqui, Spain’s representative on the matter—remember, at this time, the Mississippi and all the lands on either side of it were controlled by Spain. Jay was prepared to recognize Spain’s exclusive right to use the Mississippi for 25-30 years in exchange for Spain granting the U.S. “most favored nation” status with regard to trade. This would have been highly detrimental to Southerners, but as a New Yorker, Jay didn’t much care what was detrimental to Southerners.

The Jay-Gardoqui Treaty, as it became known, caused a bit of an uproar in Congress, because Jay had exceeded the authority granted to him by Congress in negotiations. Free use of the Mississippi for the Americans had been the main goal, and Jay had conceded that point. It would be some time before this was resolved, but suffice it to say that James did his best to rein in Jay, without any success. The southern states were out-voted by the northern states in allowing Jay to continue his negotiations. It frustrated James to no end, and disillusioned him even further as to the effectiveness of the government under the Articles of Confederation. At the end of his term, he resigned from Congress.

When James’s uncle had written to him with some advice on choosing a mate that would ensure marital happiness, he also advised James that he was going to need money if he wanted to marry a society woman like Elizabeth Kortright. His exact words were “[you must] fix yourself to business to form the connection you propose to the person you mention.” Uncle Jones suggested James and Elizabeth move to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where there was a shortage of lawyers. As a bonus, Uncle Jones had just bought an investment property, so he could provide a house for them to live in, rent-free.

And so, Elizabeth Kortright, who had never lived anywhere but the bustling metropolis of New York City, agreed to move to a small town in Virginia to be with her husband. James later wrote, “she left her state and her family and became a good Virginian.” 

In his autobiography, James wrote, “She moved with me to Virginia and has been the partner of all the toils and cares to which I have since been exposed in my public trusts abroad and at home. When the nature of these is considered, and the duties of a family devoted to the honor and interest of their country and bound to cherish economy, it will readily be conceived that her burdens and cares must have been great. It is a remark, which it would be unpardonable to withhold, that it was improbable for any female to have fulfilled all the duties of the partner of such cares, and of a wife and parent, with more attention, delicacy, and propriety than she has done.” It’s nice to know that James appreciated the sacrifice Elizabeth made in leaving her family to join him in Virginia.

The Monroes left New York on October 13, 1786. Elizabeth was already pregnant, and she worried about when she might be able to see her family again, especially because her father was ill. James was so broke at this point that his uncle sent a carriage to convey them to Fredericksburg. Uncle Jones had also sold one of James’s horses on his behalf, but it did not raise much money. Jones wrote, “Cash is so very difficult to procure, and business in general so stagnated for want of money or from some other cause that few or no payments are made. It behooves you therefore to regulate your expences to a scale of frugality and reduce them as low as can conveniently be done. I forsee no prospect of your receiving any remittance from here.”

The Monroes were not alone on their journey to Virginia. They stopped in Philadelphia along the way and picked up James Madison. Monroe enticed Madison into joining them by promising to stop and see George Washington at Mount Vernon along the way. James sat on the coach box outside, controlling the horses. Madison sat inside the coach with Elizabeth and talked sporadically, his habitual reticence not yet having been influenced by Dolley, whom he had not yet met.

When the party arrived at Mount Vernon, Elizabeth was able to enjoy a most welcome bath and a comfortable bed. Washington, Madison, and Monroe sat talking of politics and recent developments. The Annapolis Convention had been held the previous month, and as we learned in episode 4.4, not enough states attended for anything to be accomplished, other than calling for a Grand Convention to convene the following May in Philadelphia. Having attended the Annapolis Convention in person, Madison was able to apprise the other two of all that had been discussed. All three of them agreed that something needed to be done about the Articles of Confederation.

After they left Mount Vernon, they dropped off Madison in Richmond and continued on to Fredericksburg. Fortunately, the house was comfortable, and Uncle Jones had purchased some furniture on their behalf. 

The exact date is unknown, but at some point that winter, Elizabeth gave birth to their first child. Her birth year is usually listed as 1786, and there’s a reference to Elizabeth being seven months pregnant when they made the long journey from New York in October, so that suggests a December birth. The baby was a girl, and they named her Elizabeth Kortright Monroe after her mother. She was to be known as Eliza throughout her life.

James wrote to Jefferson, “Mrs. Monroe hath added a daughter to our society who tho’ noisy, contributes greatly to its amusement.” Uncle Jones wrote, “I give Mrs. Monroe joy of her safe delivery and am happy to hear she is in as good health as could be expected.”

James established a law office in Fredericksburg and spent a great deal of time riding the circuit to represent clients at various courthouses around the state. Unfortunately, as cash was still hard to come by, most of his clients paid him in pledged goods or services in exchange for his legal work. It’s hard to pay one’s bills with a bunch of IOUs.

It was also hard on the young family for James to be separated from his two Elizas so much of the time. One of Monroe’s early biographers, Harry Ammon, wrote, “the bond which united the Monroes was a remarkably close one, rendering every separation painful.”

There’s only one surviving letter from James to Elizabeth, written in April 1787. He wrote, “I hope to hear from you by the post this evening. I have the utmost anxiety that you & our little Eliza are well. … Of this I have no doubt but shall be happy to hear it from yourself. Has she grown any, and is there any perceptible alteration in her? Kiss the little babe for me & take care of yourself and her.”

Also in the spring of 1787, James was elected to the state assembly. It came with a small salary, but required him to be in Richmond. They couldn’t afford to live in Richmond as a family, so James went without his wife and daughter and shared a house with another assemblyman.

In the same letter I quoted just a minute ago, James also wrote to Elizabeth, “In future, I hope we shall be able…to avoid a separation for such a length of time. It is essential to my character here and of course to my prospect of extricating ourselves from our present embarrassments [note: he means their lack of money], that I show the public I can attend to business. … It is necessary not only that I should be faithful and honest but that they should think me so. … I am but a new character here and must cultivate all the forms and circumstances that would be necessary if I had just set out in the world, otherwise I fail. … Believe me my dear Eliza most affectionately yours.”

When the Virginia Assembly named its delegates to the Grand Convention, Monroe was not among them, as much as he would have liked to be. It was a moot point though because he simply could not have afforded to spend that much time away from his law practice doing unpaid public service work. Had it not been for the rule of secrecy surrounding the Convention debates, Madison would have been able to keep Monroe apprised of what was happening. As it was, Monroe had to wait with the rest of the country until September 1787 when the new Constitution was unveiled and presented to the Confederation Congress.

In the meantime, James, Elizabeth, and young Eliza enjoyed a quiet summer in Fredericksburg. Legal work usually slowed down during the hot, humid summers. In the autumn, James went back to Richmond to serve in that session of the Assembly, but by the end of the year, he was back to riding the court circuit.

Virginia’s ratifying convention was scheduled to be held in June 1788, and in May, James was selected as one of the delegates to the convention, which would be held in Richmond. He read through the Constitution repeatedly in order to fully understand it, and came away with the view that, “Its powers transcended the limits [I] had contemplated.” He also doubted “whether it would contribute to the interests of the union to adopt it.”

He ended up siding with Patrick Henry and other Virginians who were opposed to the Constitution. His main objection was that it lacked a Bill of Rights, but he also worried that giving the power to negotiate treaties to the executive branch would spell doom for his deeply held desire for navigation rights on the Mississippi. At the convention, Monroe was opposed by his two friends, Madison and John Marshall. As we know, in the end, Virginia voted to ratify the Constitution by a vote of 89 to 79. Monroe was one of the “no” votes. Mildly ironic that a man later elected to the presidency voted against the adoption of the document that established that office.

James Madison and James Monroe both ran for election to the new U.S. House of Representatives in the same district. It was the first, and thus far only, time that two future presidents ran against each other for a seat in Congress. Madison won, with 1,308 votes to Monroe’s 972. It did not cause any lasting discord between them. Monroe hadn’t really wanted to serve in the House, but he was goaded into running by Patrick Henry and other opponents of the Constitution. As he explained to Jefferson, “Those to whom my conduct in public life had been acceptable, pressed me to come forward in this government on its commencement…and that I might not lose an opportunity of contributing my feeble efforts, in forwarding an amendment of its defects…I yielded.”

There’s no word on how Elizabeth felt about the prospect of James joining the new government, but considering that the capital was still New York and that the legislature would be meeting there, it seems safe to assume that she would have supported the idea of her husband joining Congress. But it was not to be.

Around the time of the election, James traded some of his Kentucky land certificates for an 800-acre farm in Charlottesville. Jefferson had been pressing him for years to buy land and establish a residence in Albemarle County, and James now wrote to him, “I shall be so happy as to have you as a neighbor. … It has always been my wish to acquire property near Monticello. I have lately accomplish’d it.”

Instead of going to Congress, James resumed riding the circuit. He was also named deputy state’s attorney by the Virginia attorney general. Occasionally Elizabeth and Eliza accompanied him on his travels, but not often enough for his taste. By mid-summer 1789, the Monroes decided to sell the office in Fredericksburg and move to their Charlottesville farm. This would dramatically reduce the number of miles James had to travel on the court circuit, from 250 miles to 100 miles, allowing him to spend more time at home. The Monroes were on their Charlottesville farm when Jefferson returned from France later that year. One of Jefferson’s first stops was to see James and meet Elizabeth and Eliza.

By December of 1789, Elizabeth had fallen ill. We don’t have any details of her illness, but she was well enough by February to attend the wedding of Patsy Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. at Monticello. In March they attended the funeral of James’s cousin, William Grayson, who had been serving as one of Virginia’s two senators. James was quite nearly appointed to replace him, but the Governor’s Council chose someone else instead.

But as you may remember if you listened to the episode where I read the Constitution to you, the first class of senators was divided into three groups, and one of those groups only got to serve for two years before the seat became eligible for election again. Grayson was in that bucket, which means there was an election coming up in autumn 1790 for his seat.

Several of James’s former colleagues in the Virginia Assembly encouraged him to stand as a candidate in the election. He wrote to Jefferson that he had “at length yielded to my inclinations to suffer my name to be mention’d.” Thanks to the influence of his uncle, among other powerful Virginia political friends, James won the election.

Congress was scheduled to convene in Philadelphia on December 6 so the Monroes had to quickly relocate. Jefferson offered to find lodgings for them at his friend Mary House’s boarding house. James finished up his Virginia cases as quickly as possible, assured his clients he would be back in March when Congress recessed, and the family headed to Philadelphia.

Elizabeth was in Philadelphia only long enough to have Eliza, now about four years old, inoculated against smallpox. Once that was taken care of, she and Eliza headed for New York. No one in Elizabeth’s family had yet met Eliza, and Elizabeth hadn’t seen her father and sisters in more than four years. No doubt they had much to catch up on, but since we don’t have any of the letters she traded with James during this time, we have no way of knowing what she did while in New York.

James was no more impressed with the United States Senate than he had been with the Confederation Congress. The senators seemed more interested in getting a spot close to the fire than they did in producing any meaningful legislation. An individual could do little in the Senate—everything was done by committees, so James convinced several committees to add him to their rosters.

One of James’s first acts as senator was to vote against the proposal for a national bank. Next, he made an impassioned speech against the Senate’s rules on secrecy, but his motion to allow a public gallery in the Senate chamber was defeated 17 to 9. After accomplishing very little in his first session as a senator, James returned to Virginia with Elizabeth and Eliza. They had to stop in Baltimore for almost a week to allow Eliza to recover from some sort of illness, but they soon arrived back in Virginia where James resumed his private law practice.

And now we have to talk about the French Revolution, yet again. Given his hero-worship of Jefferson, it’s not at all surprising that James sided with Jefferson on the matter of the French Revolution. James even wrote a series of newspaper essays, published under the pseudonym Aratus, defending the Revolution. If this had been 1789, that would be understandable. But we’re in 1791 now, and the French Revolution has descended into bloody chaos. But much like Jefferson, Monroe maintained an overly romanticized view of the French Revolution. In his first essay, he wrote, “the principle upon which the French Revolution was founded is not a novel one here…in America. … Whoever owns the principles of one revolution, must cherish that of the other.”

Um, no James. We here in America do not cherish the principle of imprisoning and chopping off the heads of anyone who disagrees with us, which is what the government of France was just about to start doing. We’ll come back to this in a minute.

When Congress reconvened at the end of 1791, one of their first items of business was to confirm (or not) President Washington’s choice for minister to France. Ever since Jefferson left in the late summer of 1789, America had had no official minister to France. Washington proposed his friend Gouverneur Morris, who was already in France and had been there on private business for the past two years.

James objected to Morris, saying that his business interests would conflict with the national interests that a government minister should be tasked with. His objections were not convincing though, and Morris was confirmed by a vote of 16 to 11. This was one of the few times anyone in Congress had dared to voice opposition to George Washington, so that’s noteworthy in and of itself.

James’s uncle commended him, writing that “a spirited opposition [might convince the president to take] more caution in the selection of men for office.” And Washington wrote to Morris to let him know that his appointment had not passed unopposed and that there was a great deal of objection to his haughty ways, which he should take care in the future to reduce.

In spring 1792, the Monroes returned to Virginia again after Congress adjourned. They shared a coach with James Madison once again, but this time, Monroe rode inside the coach instead of driving it. They spent most of the journey railing against Alexander Hamilton.

Upon their return to Virginia, James was disappointed to find his Charlottesville farm not performing well. The fact is, he probably hadn’t done enough due diligence when he acquired the land. The soil was depleted and couldn’t support enough crop production to make itself profitable. He had to pay a farm manager to oversee things while he was constantly away either riding the circuit or serving in Congress. And the weather had been uncooperative for several years. Before the Monroes returned to Philadelphia in autumn 1792 for the next session of Congress, James sold his remaining Fredericksburg property, along with the farm in Charlottesville.

Back to the French Revolution for a moment. I need to mention something that’s going to become relevant later. As the French republican government became more paranoid and bellicose, they began to imprison and execute anyone who disagreed with the more extreme factions of the government. This included the Marquis de Lafayette, who was a hero of the American Revolution, and who was trying to bring the same small r republican government to his country. 

In August 1792, he was named an enemy of the state. He fled the country but was promptly captured and imprisoned in Austria. His wife, Adrienne de Lafayette, her sisters, her mother, and her grandmother were all eventually imprisoned and sentenced to death. The three Lafayette children were hidden by the servants and escaped capture. As I said, this will become relevant to our story later. But for now, as an example of how naive and gullible Monroe was, he wrote that Lafayette’s imprisonment was unhappy and regrettable but that, “There can be no doubt that the general sentiment of America is favorable to the French revolution.”

Meanwhile, Gouverneur Morris was making no friends as minister to France. He called the French Constitution a “wretched piece of paper,” and said that the government was “good for nothing in France.” The French government would later write to President Washington demanding Morris’s recall for provoking “great distrust” among the French. Washington did recall Morris, and would later appoint James to replace him.

But before we get to that, we have to discuss James’s involvement in the scandal that would eventually bring down Alexander Hamilton—the Maria Reynolds Affair, as it became known. (As we’ve discussed before, the name Maria was generally pronounced like Mariah but spelled like Maria, not with an H like Mariah. Historians believe that Maria Reynolds’s name was probably pronounced Mariah. Because America started out as English territory, this was the English way to pronounce the name. In the mid-1800s, as more immigrants from Continental Europe arrived, the name started to be pronounced as Maria, and so the spelling with the h at the end was adopted by anyone who wished to keep the old English pronunciation.)

If you’ve seen the musical Hamilton, you’re probably familiar with some of these details. Jefferson and his fellow Republicans were obsessed with getting Hamilton out of the government. To that end, they were willing to believe any scrap of a rumor of misconduct that fell into their hands. 

During the autumn of 1792, as Congress reconvened in Philadelphia, Congressman Monroe was approached by a man named John Beckley, who was the clerk of Congress. Beckley claimed that Hamilton was using government funds to speculate in land. At the same time, Congressman Peter Muhlenberg was surprised to find out that a former clerk of his named Jacob Clingman had been arrested for fraud, along with a man named James Reynolds. Clingman claimed that Reynolds had told him that Hamilton had paid Reynolds with federal funds and given him insider information with which to speculate in various investments.

Muhlenberg, Monroe, and a third Congressman, Abraham Venable, formed a committee to investigate. After compiling what they thought was highly damning information against Hamilton, they decided that before taking the dossier to President Washington, they should confront Hamilton and at least hear his side of the story. On December 15, 1792, they did just that.

Much to their surprise and discomfort, Hamilton confessed, not to misusing federal funds, but to having an affair and using his own personal money to pay off James Reynolds, who was blackmailing him. Hamilton went into such detail about the affair that the three Congressmen “requested Mr. Hamilton to desist from exhibiting further proofs” and declared that “the affair had no relation to official duties. … The explanation was entirely satisfactory.”

The Congressmen left, but Hamilton stewed. A few days later, he asked them to send him copies of all the papers they had shown him. Monroe sent them with a note that read, “Everything you desire shall be most strictly complied with.”

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Monroe asked John Beckley to transcribe the copies because of his pristine handwriting. Beckley was a rabid Republican, and he almost certainly made a copy for himself, to use to discredit Hamilton behind his back. It also seems that Monroe gave a copy of the dossier to Jefferson. He claimed that he never broke his word to Hamilton that he would keep the affair private, but later admitted that he had “deposited the papers with a friend,” and it’s more likely than not that the friend in question was Jefferson. 

There’s no question that Jefferson and Madison both soon learned about Hamilton’s confession to the affair, but whether they heard it from Monroe, from Beckley, or from both is unknown. What is known is that Hamilton hated Monroe with a vehemence that can only be attributable to Hamilton’s belief that Monroe betrayed his confidence. When the affair later became public knowledge (due to Hamilton publishing it himself, I might add), his wife, later widow, Eliza, also blamed James Monroe.

And on that cheerful note, we’ll wrap up for this week. Next week we’ll travel to France with the Monroes as James takes up his new diplomatic position.

Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me, and the music is by Matt Dull. Please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if that’s where you listen. Thanks!