James and Dolley Madison: America's First Power Couple - Hardcover

Chadwick, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1616148357 ISBN 13: 9781616148355

Verlag: Prometheus Books, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

This revealing new portrait of James and Dolley Madison introduces the reader to America’s first power couple. Using recently uncovered troves of letters at the University of Virginia, among other sources, historian Bruce Chadwick has been able to reconstruct the details of the Madisons’ personal and political lives.

Chadwick argues that Madison was not a boring, average president, as other historians have characterized him, but a vibrant, tough leader—and a very successful commander in chief in the War of 1812.

He contends that Madison, the architect of the Constitution, owed much of his success to the political savvy of his charismatic, much younger wife, whose parties and backdoor politicking make for remarkable stories. And Dolley, through her many social skills, created the dynamic role of First Lady that we know today.

Despite their glamorous lifestyle, behind the scenes, the Madisons struggled with family drama: James and Dolley’s constant funding of their charming but sociopathic son’s misadventures ultimately led to their own financial ruin.

Blending the personal and the political, this is a fascinating profile of a couple whose life together contributed so much to the future course of our nation.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bruce Chadwick (Jersey City, NJ) is the author of twenty-eight books, most recently Lincoln for President and I Am Murdered. He is professor of history and journalism at New Jersey City University and a part-time lecturer in American Studies at Rutgers University.

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James and Dolley MADISON

AMERICA'S FIRST POWER COUPLE

By BRUCE CHADWICK

Prometheus Books

Copyright © 2014 Bruce Chadwick
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-61614-835-5

Contents

Acknowledgments, 9, 
Author's Note, 11, 
Chapter 1. Saving George Washington in a City on Fire, 13, 
Chapter 2. Opposites Attract: The Unlikely Meeting of James Madison and Dolley Todd, 33, 
Chapter 3. The Happy Groom Retires from Public Life, 43, 
Chapter 4. Return to Montpelier, 1796, 49, 
Chapter 5. Montpelier to Washington, DC: The Making of a Public Man, 61, 
Chapter 6. A New World: The Madisons Arrive in Washington, 75, 
Chapter 7. The Madisons as Social Lions, 105, 
Chapter 8. The Louisiana Purchase: America Becomes a Giant, 117, 
Chapter 9. The Veteran Secretary of State, 125, 
Chapter 10. The Battles with Britain, 133, 
Chapter 11. Mister President, 141, 
Chapter 12. A New Administration and a New Couple, 163, 
Chapter 13. The Never-Ending Dispute with Great Britain, 183, 
Chapter 14. The Ever-Changing America, 191, 
Chapter 15. War Looms Everywhere over America, 203, 
Chapter 16. The First Days of the War of 1812, 215, 
Chapter 17. The War Years: Dolley, 225, 
Chapter 18. The Early Years of the War, 243, 
Chapter 19. War: Land and Sea, 255, 
Chapter 20. The Montpelier of the President: The Summer White House, 267, 
Chapter 21. Into the War's Stretch, 277, 
Chapter 22. Home to Montpelier: Retirement, 291, 
Chapter 23. A New Life amid the Forests, 303, 
Chapter 24. Payne Todd: "The Serpent in the Garden of Eden", 317, 
Chapter 25. The Madisons: Slavery and Stormy Years, 329, 
Chapter 26. Dolley: Triumph, Tragedy, and History, 345, 
Notes, 369, 
Select Bibliography, 419, 
Index, 429, 

CHAPTER 1

SAVING GEORGE WASHINGTONIN A CITY ON FIRE

Just after sunrise on August 24, 1814, Dolley Madison stood on theroof of the White House, holding her hands steady around a spyglassin the balmy summer morning. She squinted with one eye and peeredthrough the spyglass with the other, in a vain effort to find her husband, thepresident, who was said to be riding back to the White House from an armycamp in Bladensburg, Maryland, about seven miles away, and spurring his horseto run as fast as possible down narrow dirt roads of the green countryside tomeet her. She could see from her perch atop one of the two highest buildings inthe city (the other being the still-unfinished Capitol) all of the wide thoroughfaresand the side streets of Washington, DC. They were nearly deserted; mostof the residents had fled the day before, after they read in the newspapers thatthe British Navy, with fifty-two ships in all and thousands of men, horses, andcannon, had landed in Maryland on Friday, after a brief trip up the PatuxentRiver from the nearby Chesapeake Bay, in the War of 1812.

It was a jolt; the news panicked the region. The capital attacked? Impossible.The editor of the National Intelligencer, the capital's leading newspaper, told hisreaders, "all citizens must join in the common defense."

All were surprised by the landing. The war had been winding down.Peace talks were being held. Why should the British invade the Chesapeake?Washington? And if there was an attack, everybody expected the British toassault Baltimore, not Washington. The surprised residents of the capital nowshuddered that the nightmare was about to come true, that Englishmen in theirblazing red coats, carrying their muskets and pistols and lugging dozens ofcannon behind them, would soon enter the city.

Wild rumors flew all over town. One had Dolley Madison surrendering theWhite House to the British commander and begging him not to burn the city.Another had the British torching all of the government buildings but sparingresidential homes. A third had all of the residential homes set on fire. A fourthput the British troop strength at sixteen thousand (it was closer to five thousand).Another said that the American defensive force was well over ten thousand troops(it was barely three thousand). Yet another had dozens of other enemy shipslanding at different seaports on the Maryland shore.

The rumor about the torching of the capital raised eyebrows. Nearly a yearand a half earlier, in the spring of 1813, that same rumor had floated throughWashington and made everybody nervous. Dolley Madison wrote in that springthat she had heard that the British planned to land several hundred soldiersbelow Alexandria and attack Washington from across the Potomac in boats "sothat they may be on hand to burn the President's house and offices." She toldthis to Edward Coles, who had just left as Madison's secretary. She added thatshe kept a sharpened Tunisian sword near her in the White House every dayjust in case the Redcoats did appear.

In the previous day's edition of the National Intelligencer, General R. G.Hite, the commander of the military's tenth district, put out a call for volunteertroops. "To see their capital threatened by an insolent foe who insists upondictating terms to them, after desolating their shores and sacking their cities,"he cried, "the spontaneous efforts of the people are demanded." That sameday, Washington James Blake, a physician serving as mayor of Washington,also begged for volunteers to defend the city and established a 10 p.m. curfew."Every man will come forth in this glorious cause," he said.

Dolley had become an enemy of the British, almost as much so as her husband.The feisty First Lady had sent off letter after letter to her friends in Europe thatscalded the British and their armed forces as the war droned on. "The British onour shores are stealing & destroying private property, rarely coming to battle,but when they do are always beaten.... If the war should last six months longerthe U.S. will conquer her enemies," she told a friend in Paris, writing the letter inpositive tone in case someone else read it and forwarded it to the British.

She was hated by the British army, the British diplomats and the Britishpress. British admiral Sir George Cockburn, head of the British Navy and oneof its heroes in the Napoleonic Wars, had written Dolley a letter. In it, he toldher that he planned to take the White House and have dinner there in two days.He urged her to flee because if he caught her there, the president's home wouldbe "burned over your head." An insulted Dolley replied, "I do not tremble atthis, but feel affronted that the Admiral ... should send me notes that he wouldmake his bow at my drawing room soon."

Not satisfied with his threat, the cocky Cockburn then told America'sFirst Lady that his men would capture her, put her on a boat, and take her toEngland, where she would be held hostage, imprisoned in a dark, dank jail, andthen paraded through the streets of London in disgrace as hundreds of thousandsof Brits jeered at her as her cart was hauled by.

Similar threats had been made by the British against Martha Washingtonduring the American Revolution. She paid no attention to them. Martha toldfriends that she wanted to know when she would be paraded through the streetsof London so that she could wear her best dress.

President Madison's wife of twenty years was a tiny figure on the roof ofthe President's Mansion that day. The oversized White House was one of thelargest and most impressive buildings in the country. The sprawling, twenty-three-roombuilding stood three stories high, with two upper floors reachedby outside staircases and a ground-floor level with the street. It had lengthy,covered walkways on each side of it. The building sat near the Potomac Riverin the middle of a series of tree- and shrub-filled fields with no structures onthem, making the president's home seem even larger. Pennsylvania Avenue, oneof the capital's main thoroughfares, ran past the front of it. Several chimneys,one with a huge metal lightning rod, stuck up out of the roof. All of the roomson all three floors had huge windows that overlooked the city.

President John Adams and his wife, Abigail, had moved in during the winterof 1800, when it was still incomplete. Abigail Adams complained bitterly thatthere was not enough wood to make fires and no bells to summon people, andthat she had to hang her family's washed clothing on lines in the big rooms ofthe house to dry. She wailed that there was no yard, no fence, and few completerooms. She warned her sister that she had to "keep all of this to yourself andwhen asked how I like it, say that I write you the situation is beautiful." Evenso, Abigail wrote upon leaving the home in 1801 that it was "a beautiful spot... the more I view it, the more I am delighted with it." Eight years later, whenDolley became First Lady, her husband persuaded Congress to let her refurbishthe entire interior of the building, making it as classy as any European monarch'shome.

Of course, the building had its critics, such as the teenaged daughter of apolitician who visited in 1808. "The President's House is surrounded by darkstone which looks very like the wall belonging to the state prison," she snapped.

In 1814, Washington, DC, was not a large metropolis. The 1810 censusshowed that it had just over eight thousand residents. They lived on a seriesof streets connected in a huge grid designed by Pierre L'Enfant, the Frencharchitect who laid out the town over empty meadows and chopped down forestsalong the banks of the river. Most of the streets where people lived in 1814 connectedto Pennsylvania Avenue, a very wide street filled with horses and carriagesall day long. They kicked up huge clouds of dust throughout the summermonths. Most of the homes in the town were two stories high, although somewere three. In 1814, Washington was still physically small in geography, andeveryone was just a ten-minute horseback ride from everyone else. To give iteven more distinction, L'Enfant had planted hundreds of high, green trees onthe sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. They not only gave the street a majestic look,but also served to provide extra shade and cool spots in the town, which wasoppressively hot in the summer.

L'Enfant had planned the capital with considerable help from the first president,George Washington, who wanted an imperial city whose large governmentbuildings would make it, in just a few years, one of the most admirablecapital cities in the world.

As Dolley stood on the roof of the President's Mansion that morning—alone, tiny figure—servants, on her orders, were starting to set a large table andprepare a scrumptious dinner for dozens of generals, cabinet officers, the president,and friends of the Madisons who lived in the capital. Servants hurriedfrom the kitchen and wine cellar to bring drink and food to the side tables inthe dining room. Large ice buckets were prepared for the wine bottles that wereexpected to be used that night. Sets of candles were placed at various spots onthe large table to provide light. Dolley expected all of those invited to meetthere that night. She had assured her staff, friends, and the president that shewould run the White House while the president was at the front, working withhis generals in Maryland to battle the British, who were clashing with Americanforces in nearby Bladensburg. She paid no attention to the stories in the localnewspaper that covered not only the imminent British attack at Washington butalso the war in the Great Lakes, with lengthy American death and casualty lists.

She looked forward to the dinner party, as she looked forward to all thesocial events at the White House. It was not unusual for the president's houseto host a dinner or party every night, sometimes two or three. The First Ladywould wander through each, within minutes becoming a dazzling lightning rodof attention.

Those who met Dolley never forgot her. She was "a handsome woman, talland majestic. Her manners were affable but a little affected. She has been verymuch admired and still fond of admiration. [She] loads herself in finery anddresses ... her complexion is brilliant, her neck and bosom the most beautiful Iever saw. Her face expresses nothing but good nature. There is something veryfascinating about her," wrote one woman who met her in 1808.

"[She wore] a gown of brick colored silk with a train two yards long trimmedin white. On her head she wore a small cap with a large bunch of flowers ... shemoved with much ease and grace," another woman wrote of Dolley.

Her husband, the president, was nowhere in sight, so Dolley put down thespyglass. Just one day earlier, she was on the roof of the building and watchedas panic spread through the streets of Washington when people learned thatthe British had landed and were marching toward the capital. The Americanarmy, really nothing more than a collection of badly trained militiamen, was notexpected to stop them at any of the encounters they planned in the Marylandcountryside. Thousands of Washingtonians packed up their belongings in carts,carriages, and buggies and sped out of town as fast as their horses could carrythem. They all also fled at about the same time, so their huge numbers createdtraffic jams. They were headed for Alexandria, Virginia, or Georgetown, and hadto walk or ride across the few bridges that crossed the Potomac to those destinationsfrom Washington. The people fled as individuals, couples, and entire families.Many families went in large carriages or wagons, some with their childrensitting in the backs of the wagons, waving to friends that they saw on their wayout of town. Some brought their pets with them, and others left them at home.Cats purred and dogs barked as they fled, providing the exodus of residents witha cacophony of sound. Many fled past the slave market near the capital.

Some departed in long trains of carriages, with different members of familiesand servants in each one. They looked like any other nervous horde ofrefugees leaving their hometown in any war and headed for an unknown anddangerous destination. They comprised thick crowds pouring past the WhiteHouse and the Capitol, all intent on getting as far away from the city as possible,and quickly. There was great worry that the British would seize and perhapseven burn the city to the ground.

Dolley waited, and waited, for her husband to return, long after everyoneelse had fled to safety. The hours and minutes ticked by ever so slowly. She usedthe spyglass to look north toward Bladensburg; east toward the American navalyard and its ships and warehouses; and northwest, to Georgetown. She couldnot spot him anywhere.

She had feared this day for over a month. At the end of July, she wroteHannah Gallatin, the wife of Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, that "we havebeen in a state of perturbation here for a long time—the depredations of theenemy approaching within twenty miles of the city & the disaffected, makingincessant difficulties for the Government." She was nervous. "Such a place asthis has become I cannot describe it—I wish (for my own part) we were atPhiladelphia."

She feared for the safety of her husband and herself, but not necessarilyfrom the British. Americans, unhappy with the progress of the war, which thepress had early on called "Mr. Madison's War," or lack of progress, had beenthreatening the Madisons with harm. "Among other exclamations and threats,they say if Mr. M attempts to move from this House, in case of an attack, theywill stop him and that he shall fall with it. I am not the least alarmed at thesethings, but entirely disgusted and determined to stay with him," wrote Dolley.

Back then, in late July, she never thought the day would come when she,the First Lady, and her husband, the president, would be forced to leave theWhite House and flee for their lives. Now, on the hot morning of August 24,that seemed the most likely course of action. That afternoon, Dolley Madisondid not even know where the people scheduled to dine with her were or if theywere alive. No matter where she looked on the roof with her spyglass, she sawrefugees and the landscapes of a war.

And she worried about her husband. "I am determined not to go myselfuntil I see Mr. Madison safe, so that he can accompany me, as I hear of muchhostility towards him. Disaffection stalks around us," she wrote with a chill thatday.

She had been worried all day. "Since sunrise I have been turning my spyglassin every direction, and watching with unwearied anxiety, hoping to discoverthe approach of my dear husband and his friends, but, alas, I can descryonly groups of military, wandering in all directions."

She should have been worried. Madison had joined his troops in the ruralcountryside of Maryland and had given his generals a pep talk in order toget them to defend Washington. They were surrounded by several thousandAmerican soldiers, mostly members of militia units, who seemed overwhelmedin their skirmishes with the British army. President Madison was misled bySecretary of War John Armstrong and General William Winder, who assuredhim that the British had no intention of marching on Washington. Thanks tothat view, the governor of Maryland, entrusted by the president to protect hisown state, had done little. He also had no intelligence on the British becauseneither the federal nor the state governments had bothered to set up a spynetwork. Madison, who rode about and walked through the bustling camp,greeting the soldiers, seemed bolstered by their promises and wrote a hopefulnote to his wife.

"I have passed the forenoon with the troops who are in high spirits andmake a good appearance. The reports as to the enemy have varied every hour.The last and probably truest information is that they are not very strong, andare without cavalry or artillery and of course that they are not in a conditionto strike at Washington. It is believed also that they are not about to move fromMarlboro," he said.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from James and Dolley MADISON by BRUCE CHADWICK. Copyright © 2014 Bruce Chadwick. Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Prometheus Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1616148357
• ISBN 13: 9781616148355
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 450
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar