Louisa (52 page)

John Quincy was content
:
JQA to James Tallmadge, March 12, 1824, Adams Family Letters, 1673–1954, Mss. boxes A, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA.

While the other candidates
:
Feest
,
Lukas Vischer in Washington
, 101; Louis McLane to Catherine McLane, December 19, 1817, Louis McLane Correspondence, Manuscript Division, LC; DJQA, June 4, 1819.

It was possible
:
“Mrs. Adams,”
The Huntress
, June 2, 1849; “Diary,” DLCA 2:640, 448.

Louisa once wrote
:
LCA to AA, January 11, 1818, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:444.

2

It was her campaign
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:444, 440; Margaret Bayard Smith to Jane B. Kirkpatrick, March 13, 1814,
First Forty Years of Washington Society
, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons), 96–97. For discussions of women in Washington and their indirect participation in politics, see Allgor,
Parlor Politics
; Allgor,
A Perfect Union
, 152–53; Fredrika J. Teute, “Roman Matron on the Banks of Tiber Creek: Margaret Bayard Smith and the Politicization of Spheres in the Nation's Capital,” in
A Republic for the Ages
; Jan Lewis, “Politics and the Ambivalence of the Private Sphere: Women in Early Washington, D.C.,” in
A Republic for the Ages.

John Quincy needed
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:457; Harrison Gray Otis to Sally Foster Otis, January 1, 1821, Harrison Gray Otis Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Her weekly parties
:
John W. Taylor to Jane Taylor, December 10, 1822, John W. Taylor Letters, 1859–1863, New-York Historical Society. The setup of Louisa's parties may have been something she picked up in Europe. Mary Bagot, the wife of the British minister, was struck by the practice at Mrs. Madison's levees of men clustering in the center in the middle of rooms while women hugged the walls. David Hosford and Mary Bagot, “Exile in Yankeeland: The Journal of Mary Bagot, 1816–1819,”
Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C.
51 (1984), 35.

Young women from Philadelphia,
:
Thomas H. Hubbard to Guernsey Phebe Hubbard, December 25, 1817, Thomas H. Hubbard Papers, LC; LCA to JA, December 22, 1818, AFP.

It took work
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:654; LCA to JQA, September 9, 1819, AFP; LCA dress, First Ladies Collection, Div. of Political History, Smithsonian Institution, United States National Museum.

She made do
:
LCA to JA2, August 8, 1820; “Diary,” DLCA 2:517; DJQA, June 8, 16, September 14, November 14, 1820.

Both Louisa and John Quincy
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:418; Recollections of the wife of an aide to General Jacob Brown, Moore family papers, 1751–1939, Kroch Library Rare & Manuscript Collections, Cornell University.

Not everyone admired
:
Harrison Gray Otis to Sophia Gray, November 18, 1818, Harrison Gray Otis Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; Allgor,
Parlor Politics
, 106; LCA to JA, January 8, 1819, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:556; LCA to JA, January 8, 1819, AFP.

She was not as sweet
:
Dolley Payne Madison to Sarah Coles Stevenson, ca. February 1820, in David B. Mattern and Holly C. Shulman, eds.,
The Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), 239, quoted in O'Brien,
Mrs. Adams in Winter,
121; Harrison Gray Otis to Sophia Gray, November 18, 1818, Harrison Gray Otis Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

She had to expect
:
AA to LCA, March 17, 1818, AFP.

She asked him questions
:
LCA to JA, November 5, 1821, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:486; LCA to AA, January 13, 1818, AFP.

She sometimes wrote
:
LCA to JA2, April 10, 1819, LCA to GWA, May 11, 1818, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:433

She tended to read
:
LCA to CFA, April 4, 1818, LCA to JA2, December 22, 1818, LCA to CFA, April 6, 1818, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:481.

Her reading was
:
JA to LCA, April 8, 1819, LCA to JA2, April 10, 1819, LCA to CFA, June 6, 1836, AFP.

Motherhood was her excuse
:
LCA to GWA, May 16, 1819, JA to LCA, June 11, 1819, AFP.

She was by no means
:
LCA to CFA, August 30, 1822, AFP.

Her writing strengthened
:
LCA to GWA, November 13, 1817, GWA to LCA, May 6, 1825, AFP.

So did her father-in-law
:
Quoted in Ellis,
Passionate Sage,
198; JA to LCA, April 2, 1819, January 14, 1823, AFP.

“
Write without fear
”
:
LCA to Mary Hellen, September 3, 1819, LCA to JQA, August 8, 1822, JQA to LCA, August 12, 1822, AFP.

These exchanges turned
:
For the connection to Davila, I am indebted to Robert F. Sayre, “Autobiography and the Making of America,”
Iowa Review
9 (Spring 1978): 6–7.

3

There was one subject
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:444; JA to LCA, December 23, 1819, AFP. For a provocative and convincing revisionist history of the Missouri Compromise, see Robert Pierce Forbes,
The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

Slaves served Louisa
:
Alison Mann, “Slavery Exacts an Impossible Price: John Quincy Adams and the Dorcas Allen Case, Washington, D.C.” (Ph.D. diss., University of New Hampshire, 2010), 117–19; Thomas H. Hubbard to Guernsey Phebe Hubbard, December 11, 1821, Thomas H. Hubbard Papers, LC; Harriet Martineau,
Retrospect of Western Travel: Volume 1
(Carlisle, MA: Applewood Books, 1838), 144. For slavery in Washington, see: William C. Allen, Henry Chase, and Robert J. Kapsch, “Building Liberty's Capital,”
American Visions
10:1 (February–March 1995): 8–15; Walter Johnson,
Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)
,
7; Don E. Fehrenbacher, “The Missouri Controversy and the Sources of Southern Sectionalism,” in
The Confederate Experience Reader
, ed. John D. Fowler (New York: Routledge, 2007), 60, 67.
:
For my discussion of the Adamses' relationships to slaves and slavery throughout this book, I am especially indebted to Mann's research.

New York, of course
:
A gradual emancipation law was passed in 1799. In 1817, New York freed slaves born before 1799—but not until 1827.

Not everyone who came
:
Jesse Torrey,
A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery in the United States
(Philadelphia: John Bioren, 1817); John Davis, “Eastman Johnson's Negro Life at the South and Urban Slavery in Washington, D.C.,”
The Art Bulletin
80:1 (March 1998): 71. See also Paul Finkelman, “Slavery in the Shadow of Liberty: The Problem of Slavery in Congress and the Nation's Capital,” in
In the Shadow of Freedom: The Politics of Slavery in the National Capital,
ed. Paul Finkelman and Donald R. Kennon (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011).

In this, he was braver
:
Memoir of John Quincy Adams,
5:210. For the Missouri Compromise, see Fehrenbacher, “The Missouri Controversy and the Sources of Southern Sectionalism”; Robert Pierce Forbes,
The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); William W. Freehling,
Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1965).

In his diary
:
Edinburgh Review
30 (June 1818): 146;
Edinburgh Review
31 (December 1818): 148; Forbes,
The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America
, 34–35.

But John Quincy
:
DJQA, February 24, 1820;
Edinburgh Review
30 (June 1818): 146;
Edinburgh Review
31 (December 1818): 148;
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams,
5:210; Forbes,
The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America
, 34–35.

Still, John Quincy
:
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams,
5:54; LCA to JQA, January 26, 1820, AFP.

She was relieved
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:481–82.

Her discomfort may
:
1820 U.S. Census, “John Quincy Adams,” Washington Ward 3, District of Columbia, accessed through Ancestry.com; Mann, “Slavery Exacts an Impossible Price,” 120.

The most likely
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:664; Wake,
Sisters of Fortune,
27; Dorothy S. Provine, ed.,
District of Columbia Free Negro Registers, 1821–1861
(Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1996), 92; Mann, “Slavery Exacts an Impossible Price,” 111–12; DJQA, January 24, 1843.

John Quincy later insisted
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:530, 482.

4

Because March 4, 1821
:
DJQA, March 5, 1821.

There were strong signs
:
Howe,
What Hath God Wrought,
92–93; Noble E. Cunningham, Jr.,
The Presidency of James Monroe
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 112–13.

That night the Adamses
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:571.

Louisa watched Elizabeth
:
LCA to Thomas Johnson, August 17, 1818, AFP; Louis McLane to Catherine McLane, January 8, 1822, Louis McLane Correspondence, Manuscript Division, LC.

She began to withdraw
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:595; LCA to JA2, June 19, 1821, AFP.

The prospects of
:
JQA to JA2, December 16, 1821, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:618.

She was in fact
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:615–16.

What drew her
:
LCA to JQA, June 25, 1822, AFP.

The health problems
:
LCA to JQA, September 16, 19, 1822, Joseph Hopkinson to LCA, January 1, 1803, AFP.

Philadelphia was no longer
:
Memoir, Autobiography, and Correspondence of Jeremiah Mason
(Kansas City, MO: Lawyers International Publishing Co., 1917), 281.

Louisa's letters to John Quincy
:
LCA to JQA, August 7, 1822, AFP. For political news and reports of visits from politicians, see, for instance, LCA to JQA, August 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 1822, AFP.

Her tone swung
:
LCA to JQA, September 9, August 18, 1822, AFP.

But it wasn't all comic
:
LCA to JQA, July 8, August 7, 1822, AFP.

He took the side
:
LCA to JQA, August 8, 1822, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 2:581.

It was not
:
“Introduction,”
Diary of Charles Francis Adams,
ed. Aida DiPace Donald and David Donald (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1964), 1:xxxi. (Hereafter, DCFA.) For an incisive look at the role of sensibility in the “social regeneration” during the American Revolution, see Sarah Knott,
Sensibility and the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

Back and forth
:
JQA to LCA, September 6, 1822, LCA to JQA, August 31, 1822, AFP.

Their union was
:
JQA to LCA, July 26, 1822, LCA to JQA, August 3, 1822, AFP.

When the subject
:
LCA to JQA, July 8, 1822, AFP.

“I have told you”
:
JQA to LCA, July 10, 1822, LCA to JQA, July 31, October 2, 1822, AFP.

Just before she
:
JQA to LCA, October 7, 1822, AFP.

The truth was different
:
Bemis,
John Quincy Adams and the Union
, 19.

One man who knew
:
DJQA, March 3, 9, 1821, July 11, 1822.

That was the story
:
JQA to LCA, October 7, 1822, AFP.

5

On New Year's Day
:
LCA to JA, January 1, 1823, AFP.

A few days later
:
Joseph Hopkinson to LCA, January 1, 1823, AFP.