James and Dolley Madison (43 page)

In a few weeks, it became apparent, too, that the impressment of American sailors at sea had stopped. Madison told everyone, again and again, that America had gone to war to stop impressment. That impressment had ended. America, therefore, achieved its single goal in the war. It had won.

All of this had its effect on Congress. The legislature took an early vote on whether or not to move the government to Philadelphia. It lost. Congressmen
voted 79 to 37 to keep the capital in Washington. They would vote again, and the final vote margin would be nine votes. In the end, it was decided to resurrect the White House and the Capitol and keep the national government in Washington. The Senate soon appropriated large funds to rebuild all of the structures that had been burned in the city. By the end of 1816, some of the Capitol had been rebuilt (it would be reoccupied in 1819), along with all of the Treasury and War offices and the Navy Yard. In September 1817, the White House was finished and President Monroe and his wife moved in.

As construction began on government buildings, Thomas Jefferson sold most of the books in his huge collection at Monticello to Congress to restart the Library of Congress. President Madison created the post of Librarian of Congress and appointed writer George Watterston the first librarian. In 1816, a group of men headed up by John Quincy Adams founded the Columbian Institute to promote the arts and sciences in the town. In 1816, more single-family homes were built in Washington than in the previous five years. Two new, large churches opened their doors, and dozens of shops opened on Pennsylvania Avenue. The population of the city grew and would double within the next few years.
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There was prosperity across the nation. The New England shipping business profits bounced back immediately as their vessels sailed the seas unimpeded by searches by the English and French. The industry's jailed sailors were released and sent home. The price of tobacco nearly tripled, and the price of cotton quadrupled. The total amount of exports from the United States jumped from $45 million in 1815 to over $68 million in 1817 and climbed higher the next year. In the two years after the war, unemployment dropped and so did the national debt. The total cost of running the federal government dropped to just $22 million a year.

Public opinion on Madison soared. He had gone from being the derided “little man in the palace” to a national hero. America had won the war, had disgraced the British at New Orleans, and once again enjoyed freedom of the seas. England would never war on the United States again. The New England secession movement died, business was better, farming was more prosperous, and Americans were happy. “Their first war with England made them independent; their second made them formidable,” wrote an editor of the
London Times
about the United States.
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The Madisons, James and Dolley, were the two most popular people in the country during the president's last two years in office.

There was one more piece of business, the ever-annoying Barbary pirates off the coast of North Africa. Madison had helped Jefferson defeat the pirates of the Barbary States in 1805, but during the War of 1812, the bandits were back on
the high seas in the Mediterranean, stopping US merchant ships and once again seizing American sailors. Madison paid little attention to the renewed war because he had to defeat the British. That war was finished. Now it was off to Tripoli to tangle with the Mediterranean pirates once more. The president sent two squadrons of warships, one under Commodore William Bainbridge in Boston and one under Commodore Stephen Decatur, a hero in both the first Barbary War and the War of 1812. Decatur's fleet was composed of the frigate USS
Guerriere
, with forty-four guns; the
Constellation
, with thirty-six guns; and the
Macedonia
, with thirty-eight guns; plus six sloops with between twelve and sixteen guns each. They encountered the pirate fleet near Gibraltar and captured two of its largest vessels. Decatur then sailed on to Algiers and threatened to attack it. The dey agreed to negotiations. Decatur returned the two ships he had captured to the dey and the dey, surprised and fearful of the large and powerful American fleet, completely capitulated. He vowed never to harass American shipping again and to release all captured US sailors plus several dozen Europeans who had been taken. The dey agreed to pay $10,000 in reparations, never to demand tribute again, and never to harass American shipping. He agreed to pretty much the same deal with British negotiators six months later. The second, and final, Barbary War was over in triumph for America, and Madison.

The world saw Madison's actions as swift and decisive, the work of the leader of a world power. The old tentativeness of America in its relationship with the Barbary States under both Jefferson and Madison was gone. There was no more threatening or diplomatic sword rattling. President Madison made up his mind to end the war and subdue the pirates and did so. He showed a fierce determination that he had never shown in his life. He was a new man.
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His view of government had changed dramatically. He was no longer firmly in the corner of the states' rights champions who feared a big and powerful federal government. Now, as his presidency wound down, James Madison had become an extraordinarily powerful and confident national leader. He had no trouble getting Congress to establish a national bank to back up American money in times of trouble. In his budget messages and State of the Union addresses, he moved further and further toward a powerful presidency, certain that the national government could do things that states could not. Only the national government could have fought the War of 1812, and only the national government had the money for national transportation, education, defense, and banking. He needed more taxes and more spending and pressed Congress for authorization on those issues. He had found that a special tax just to fight the war had worked, and it would work for presidents for hundreds of years to come.

Madison was applauded by all. Jefferson wrote him just after the war ended
to tell him that he had not only transformed the American character but also shown all of Europe, and all of the world, that the American country and people had changed forever. Historian Henry Adams, whose nine-volume work on the War of 1812 is still considered the premier account of the conflict, wrote that “in 1815, for the first time, Americans ceased to debate the path they were to follow. Not only was the unity of the nation established, but its probable divergence from older societies was also well defined…. The American, in his political character, was a new variety of man.”
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Everything had changed in America during Madison's two terms and his eight years as the secretary of state. The nation's population boomed. The total number of people living in America in 1817, when Madison retired, was about four times as great as when he wrote the Constitution. The three western states of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee had developed rapidly, and the 1820 census would show their growth from 370,000 in 1800 to 1.7 million in 1820. The country's churches had flourished and were now found all over the land, and not just in the large cities. When the revolution ended, there were forty-four newspapers in America; in the 1820s, there were more than five hundred. The one-party system that began with George Washington had folded, and there were two strong parties. Then the Federalists died and were to be replaced by the Whigs. Men's and women's fashions had changed, again and again, during his eight years in Washington and would change yet again in his retirement.

James Madison had had, in the twilight of his presidency, established a happy balance between a powerful federal government over a collection of vibrant state governments. He had moved a long way from the Madison of the mid-1790s, and so had the nation.

The president was “the
great
little Madison” at last.

As the steamship carrying the Madisons out of the nation's capital slowly slipped its moorings and began to churn along the wide Potomac, the former First Couple passed a scene they had never anticipated when they arrived in Washington sixteen long years before. Then, the brand-new capital was less than a year old. There were just three thousand or so residents and a few large, mostly uncompleted, government buildings. The center of the city was covered with wide, vacant, uneven, dirt-filled lots; rolling meadows; and soggy wetlands. Some of the streets, such as Pennsylvania Avenue, stopped somewhere out in a wet swamp. There were a few parties at the homes of the comfortably well off, some taverns, a boardinghouse or two, and long horseback or carriage rides to Georgetown and Alexandria over the Potomac.

Upon arriving at the new capital, President Jefferson had written Madison, “we shall have an agreeable society here, and not too much of it.” He was right then but wrong now. In the spring of 1817, as the Madisons stood at the rail of the ship and waved good-bye to friends, Washington was a very different place.
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Several dozen large, finished government buildings anchored both the business and residential centers of town. The Capitol and White House, burned in the war, were under reconstruction and were nearly finished. Dozens of noisy taverns filled with residents and visitors dotted the terrain. The population of the town had tripled, to nearly ten thousand people, and the city, without a newspaper in the summer of 1800, now had four. The populations of Georgetown and Alexandria had also tripled in those seventeen years.

The size of the city was much larger and far more diverse. Thousands of people moved to town to take the increasing number of federal jobs and jobs
with companies that did business with the government. Independent stores and factories hired many more workers. There were now more than a dozen busy boardinghouses and several elegant, spacious hotels lining the streets. The city's social life had exploded, with theaters and music halls now open full-time and regular troupes of entertainers performing in them. Bookstores attracted hundreds of people, several schools had been built, and national science and philosophical centers had been established.

Margaret Bayard Smith, looking back on her years at the capital, which were the same years as the Madisons', wrote:

When I first came to the city [1800], I found myself almost as much a stranger as I did twelve years ago, and when I recalled to mind the society which had so often circled round our fireside and beheld them scattered over the world, separated by the waves of the Atlantic, some by the ocean of eternity, sadness and sorrow mingled with the pleasures of recollection. Washington [now] possesses a peculiar interest and to an active, reflective and ambitious mind has more attractions than any other place in America. This interest is daily increasing and with the importance and expansion of our nation, this is the theater on which its most interesting ideas are discussed, by its ablest sons, in which the greatest characters are called to act. It is, every year, more and more the resort of strangers from every part of the union, and all foreigners of distinction who visit these states and visit this city.

She added that residents of the new city, official and unofficial, unlike residents of European capitals, turned the very formal assets of the town into very informal places to make friends. Men and women spent time at the capital meeting new people each time they visited. She said that the key to the city's development into a village of friends and not just residents were the drawing-room socials hosted by Dolley Madison and others. It was there, she said, that the wide-open guest lists, with foreign ministers arriving after local merchants and duchesses after college students, made the city whole. Smith said that when she first arrived in town, just ahead of the Madisons, the socials and drawing-room parties drew only a few dozen residents. Now, a typical party attracted some three hundred guests, and far more clamored to be added to the invitations list.
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The city had been bulging in size for years, but the number of new residents really spiked when Madison's first term began in 1809. “The city is thronged with strangers,” a local resident wrote that winter. “Yesterday we saw four or five carriages-and-four come in and already two have passed this morning. I
don't know how many [women] have come from Baltimore. There are parties every night and the galleries are crowded in the morning,” she wrote.
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All of those who visited Washington had to travel down narrow, dirt roadways on slow-moving horses or in carriages and buggies whose wheels caught every bump in the road. It took three days to travel ninety miles. The country around the capital that visitors drove through, though, was beautiful, well worth the rocky ride. On mornings, it was often covered with a thick, milky fog. As the sun rose, the fog was broken and the tops of hills and the forests beneath them became visible, all dotted with streams and depressions and jutting rock ledges.

The departure of Madison in 1817 brought on the presidency of James Monroe, the third consecutive Republican president and third consecutive Virginian. He, like Madison, presided over a House and Senate where Republicans enjoyed a comfortable majority in seats. Madison never felt that the Republicans had gained power and held it simply because of their policies. He always told people the reason was also the failure of the Federalists. Many agreed with him. “[People] overlook the overbearing and vindictive spirit, the apocryphal doctrines and rash projects, which stamped on federalism its distinctive character; and which are so much in contrast with the unassuming and unvarying spirit which has marked the Republican Ascendancy,” wrote Dr. William Eustis, looking back in 1823.
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Madison had left the growing and powerful government in the hands of the man who had served him so well when he was president, just as Jefferson had left him in charge when he went back to Monticello. Madison was confident that the federal government, strengthened by the War of 1812, was a good one.

One of the biggest changes in America during Madison's years in office was the tidal wave of European immigrants arriving daily at American seaports. Many Americans were concerned that the new arrivals, hundreds of thousands of them, would take American jobs and reshape American character. Madison was not one of them. He welcomed the new arrivals and saw them as a way to build American spirit. In 1794, he had introduced a bill to allow immigrants to move to America with a wait of only five years before they could become citizens (they had to pledge loyalty to the Constitution). Ever since then, throughout the battles over the Alien and Sedition Acts, he had championed the immigrants.
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The political world of the United States and its immigrants had changed substantially from the day Madison first went to the Continental Congress in 1780 as a young man. Now there were two major political parties, a self-imposed two-term limit on the presidency, a large Congress with two houses, a functioning Supreme Court, and a new national capital. This ever-changing
political landscape was heralded by Madison. He had predicted this altered scenery back in 1787. “The [people] have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation and the lessons of their own experience. Posterity will be indebted for the possession and the world for the example of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theater.”
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The steamship trip out of Washington was a pleasant one. The boat was jammed with well-wishers. Madison and his wife were eager to get back to Montpelier. James Paulding, who accompanied him on the trip, was astonished at the buoyancy of the chief executive as he headed into retirement. Paulding said he “was as playful as a child, talked and jested with everybody on board…[like] a school boy on a long vacation.”
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As they sailed down the Potomac, they saw small villages on each side of the river rising up over the slopes of meadows and out of forests, indicative of the tremendous population explosion the country had experienced during Madison's sixteen years as secretary of state and president. When James Madison went to Congress for the first time in 1779, America had just over two million people. The population of the country had increased dramatically, and by the time he left office the country had over eight million residents, quadruple the number that lived within its borders when the revolution began. New York, which had just over ten thousand residents during the revolution, had nearly one hundred thousand when Madison left office, edging past Philadelphia (92,000) to become the nation's most crowded city (Baltimore was third and Boston was fourth).
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President Madison was so popular, and so politically acclaimed, that when he left office, John Quincy Adams, soon to be president himself, told Madison that he could have won a third term easily and won it with huge support from the Federalists. He wrote that “such is the state of minds here, that had Mr. Madison been a candidate, he would probably have had the votes of Massachusetts and consequently of all New England.”
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The Madisons had been packing for weeks and had sent off a long train of wagons containing their possessions to Montpelier before they boarded the boat. After they left the ship, they traveled southwest to Orange Court House by carriage, cheered on by all of the people they met on the way. When the Madisons arrived home at Montpelier, riding up that long, gorgeous entry road from the highway, Dolly found a letter from her friend Eliza Collins Lee. In it, Lee congratulated her and welcomed her to retirement among the trees and fields of her beloved Montpelier. “On this day eight years ago, I wrote to congratulate you on the joyful event that placed you in the highest station our country can
bestow. I then enjoyed the proudest feelings, that my friend of my youth, who never had forsaken me, should be thus distinguished, and so peculiarly fitted for it…talents such as yours were never intended to remain inactive,” she wrote, reminding Dolley of her great success as First Lady. “You will retire from the tumult and fatigue of public life to your favorite retreat in Orange County and will carry with you principles and manners not to be put off with the robe of state.” A Supreme Court Justice, William Johnson Jr., wrote Dolley,“[You] carry with you to your retirement the blessings of all who ever knew you…you may long enjoy every blessing that heaven bestows to the meritorious.”
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It was a warm welcome-home present and she cherished it. There were many letters from friends in Washington wishing her well in retirement and thanking her profusely for her friendship. One was from Lucia Kantzow, a diplomat's wife, who wrote that “the kindness I received, and the happiness I found, in making your acquaintance with the respect & gratitude I feel towards you, and your husband, is impossible [to describe].”
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She put all such letters in her desk drawers and then, with her husband, plunged into the work of running the house and the four farms that made up their plantation.

Each morning, after breakfast with Dolley and whoever was visiting, Madison walked to the stables, had a servant saddle up a horse, and then began a long ride through his plantations, the soft breezes in his face, riding partially for exercise, partially for the fun of it, and mostly to check with slaves and overseers on work projects and crop harvests. His rides were usually pleasant, but sometimes they were not. James Paulding went riding with him one day in 1818. “We rode to a distant part of the estate bordering on the Rapidan River…a ferocious stream, and subject to occasional inundations. There had been a very heavy shower the day before; the river had overflowed its banks and covered two or three acres of fine meadow with gravel some inches deep, so that it was completely spoiled,” said Paulding.
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Madison visited his aging mother Nelly each midafternoon and spent an hour or so talking to her. Nelly, who was rarely sick, lived to be ninety-seven years old. Her son added the north wing of the house to provide her with extra living space. Nelly kept to herself and had her own slave staff to care for her.

Nelly Madison kept busy all of her life. She knitted constantly and spent long hours reading books. “My eyes, thanks be to God, have not failed me yet, and I read most part of the day. But in other respects I am feeble and helpless,” she told one visitor when she was in her nineties.
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She always told guests at Montpelier how much she was grateful to the care that her son and daughter-in-law gave her. “I owe everything to her,” she said to
Margaret Bayard Smith, pointing to Dolley, who was sitting nearby in her room “She is
my
mother now, and tenderly cares for all my wants.”
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Back home at Montpelier in the summers of the 1830s, Dolley made light of the recession, her sagging plantation business, and her son. She was chipper when she wrote lifelong friend Anthony Morris one summer, “We are all in high health, and looking on promising crops, flocks and herds as well as on the world of fashion around us. My great nephew & niece with a pair of neighbors being pleased to get married since our return has brought about more than our usual gaiety. I gave them in unison a large party of two or three days continuance, before and after which Anna and Payne went the rounds as bridesmaid and Best Man.”
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