First Ladies (5 page)

In seeking the reasons for Abigail's strong voice, her husband's support is not inconsequential. John's biographers found clear evidence that he discussed many important problems with her, engaged her help in drafting semi-official letters, and, in the words of historian Page Smith, treated her as “minister without portfolio.”
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It comes as no surprise that people who sought the president's approval sometimes went to his wife first. Nor did they hesitate to blame her when things went awry. After John Adams had made an unpopular appointment in his wife's absence, he wrote to inform her: “O how they lament Mrs. A's absence. … She is a good counsellor! If she had been here, Murray would never have been named or his mission instituted. This ought to gratify your vanity enough to cure you.”
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To the minority who approved of opinionated women, Abigail Adams became something of a heroine. Henrietta Liston, wife of the British minister, wrote her uncle in 1797 that she was “much pleased with Mrs. Adams, [and hoped] to acquire [her] sort of spirit in time but the thing is new to me yet.”
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Albert Gallatin's kind of disapproval was the more common response, and Abigail found herself caricatured in both song and drawing. An English ballad of the time had popularized the story of an elderly married couple, “Darby and Joan,” who were devoted to each other but woefully out of touch with their times, and Abigail was distressed to see herself and her husband referred to in print as America's “Darby and Joan.”
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None of the criticism deterred Abigail in her efforts to help John in whatever way she could. During the early years of their marriage, when he absented himself for long periods, she eased his rise in politics by her willingness and ability to raise their children, run the family farm, and keep the household solvent. After John achieved high office, she turned her managerial abilities to promoting his success, relieving him of family responsibilities and training a careful eye on expenses. She had missed his inauguration in 1797 because she was nursing his sick mother in Massachusetts, and when he complained that he needed her with him, she replied she would come as soon as she could—she would not wait for “courting.”

By the time Abigail arrived in Philadelphia in May 1797, inflation had so diminished the value of the chief executive's salary that
entertaining became a financial, as well as an emotional, burden. In her diary she noted that for the Fourth of July reception that the president traditionally gave for representatives and senators, she would have to supply “200 pounds of cake and two 1/4 casks of wine and rum.”
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True to form, she managed to save part of the president's salary while still fulfilling what she perceived as social obligations. Few of her successors would be able to do so; her loud complaints indicate, however, that she had intended to save even more.
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Demands her husband's job imposed on her time became nearly as objectionable as those on her purse. “I keep up my old Habit of rising at an early hour,” she wrote in May 1797, “[and] if I did not, I should have little command of my Time. At 5 I rise. From that time till 8 I have a few leisure hours. At 8 I breakfast, after which untill Eleven I attend to my Family arrangements.” The rest of the day was mostly First Lady work. “From 12 untill two I receive company, sometimes untill 3. We dine at that hour unless on company days which are tuesdays & thursdays. After dinner I usually ride out untill seven. I begin to feel a little more at Home and less anxiety about the ceremonious part of my duty tho by not having a drawing Room for the summer I am obliged every day to devote two Hours for the purpose of seeing company.”
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Near the end of John Adams's single term, Abigail had to oversee the transfer of the President's Palace, as it was still called by some people, to the new capital on the banks of the Potomac. In letters to her family she made little attempt to conceal her displeasure with the unformed city that she found in December 1800. Streets remained unfinished in Washington “which is [a city] only … in name,” Abigail wrote to her daughter, “[and as for neighboring Georgetown, it is] the very dirtyest Hole I ever saw for a place of any trade, or respectability of inhabitants … a quagmire after every rain.”
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Vacillating as usual between wanting the president to live in comfort and frowning on too much splendor, Congress had been stingy with appropriations for his new permanent residence, and the Adamses arrived to find the house unfinished. Not all the rooms had been plastered, “bells are wholly wanting,” Abigail complained, “and promises are all you can obtain.” When the time came for the requisite entertaining, Abigail herded her guests into the one fully furnished hall, but, understanding the political cost of appearing too critical of what had been provided, she alerted her daughter, “When asked how I like it, say that I wrote you the situation is beautiful.”
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Abigail hardly had time to settle into the Washington house before the results of the 1800 election signaled that she would have to move
out. Political parties had slowly coalesced around several themes, including matters of both domestic and international concern. Federalists tended to champion a strong central government at home and the rightness of the British cause over that of the French in the European war. Democratic-Republicans talked more about protecting the rights of the individual states and about the need to stand up for the French. In nominating John Adams for a second term, the Federalists had not been unanimous, and some of them hoped that Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, whom they had chosen as candidate for vice president, would top John Adams's votes and win the presidency, a possibility under a system that selected both officers on the same ballot. The opposition, zealously defending the common man and guarding states' rights against encroachment from the central government, ran Thomas Jefferson under the Democratic-Republican banner and selected Aaron Burr for the second spot.

The election went on for weeks because a tie in the electoral college between Jefferson and Burr threw the decision into the House of Representatives. Abigail Adams understood that her husband was out of the running but she could not bring herself to leave Washington until the final balloting on February 11, 1801, less than a month before the inauguration. Deeply disappointed but philosophical about Jefferson's victory which ended the administration she had frequently described as “ours,” she wrote to her son: “The consequences to us personally is that we retire from public life, [and] … If I did not rise with dignity, I can at least fall with ease, which is the more difficult task.”
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Nearly half a century would pass before Americans again voted into the presidency a man (James Polk) who appeared to hold such high regard for the counsel of his spouse as did John Adams. His, it should be noted, was respect resulting from experience. During their long marriage, Abigail showed both wisdom and strength, never permitting concern with domestic details to shut her off from important issues facing the country. When John was absent from Massachusetts, she kept him informed of political sentiment there, and she exchanged letters with many astute women, including Mercy Warren, the historian of the Revolution. Abigail's voicing of strong opinions after her husband became president represented no change in her behavior—she had always spoken her mind—and she demonstrated that a president's wife could, with her husband's support, move beyond a merely ceremonial role to involve herself in substantive issues.

The Adams administration also demonstrated, however, that a president would be criticized by the Gallatins of the time who preferred
the model left by Martha Washington. Very early in her husband's career, Martha had set limits for herself well within the confines of domesticity. During visits to George at the front during the Revolution, she had darned the socks of other soldiers and carried them hot soup. Later, as the president's wife, she continued in a docile, supportive role. Which of the two examples became the pattern would be determined by those who followed.

Thomas Jefferson's two terms (1801–1809) offered an excellent opportunity to introduce different expectations for hostesses at the White House, as the president's residence was occasionally being called. Both Jefferson and his second-in-command, Aaron Burr, were widowers, and the new president's casual approach to etiquette suggested that little importance would be placed on entertaining. A staff could handle the mundane details, and Jefferson, extremely knowledgeable about food and wine, could evaluate their decisions. As for the ceremonial part of the office, the third president had quickly made clear that “pell mell” would prevail. He walked through the mud to his own inauguration and then returned to sit “far down” the boardinghouse table for his evening meal. Installed in the President's House (as he quickly renamed the residence), he insisted that seating be a matter of chance rather than protocol, thus diminishing the importance of rank. If both Martha Washington and Abigail Adams had voluntarily or out of a sense of loyalty to their spouses accepted a portion of the president's ceremonial tasks for themselves, Jefferson, by acting as the country's head host and protocol chief, seemed on his way to challenging the absolute necessity that a spouse be there to assume those duties.

As so often happens, a rigorously observed custom interfered. Etiquette dictated the presence of a hostess if women guests were to attend a dinner party. Showing no interest in breaking that tradition, President Jefferson asked his good friend, Dolley Madison, to “take care of the female guests expected.”
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His choice of Dolley came naturally. Jefferson's home, Monticello, was within a few miles of the Madisons' Virginia estate and in the first years of her marriage, when her husband's fame had drawn crowds of admirers, Dolley had frequently fled to the quiet of Jefferson's house to avoid the confusion at her own. James Madison's appointment as secretary of state in 1801 legitimatized her new prominence in Washington society, and she thoroughly enjoyed the elevation. She used Jefferson's two terms to assure a central role for whoever served as the president's hostess and to develop her own formidable reputation for adroitly mixing politics and parties. An older, less energetic, or more insecure woman in her
place might have hesitated to assert herself, but Dolley Madison, at thirty-two, showed no reluctance.

Dolley Madison's emergence as a superior hostess is somewhat ironic since she was raised in the Society of Friends where frivolity and extravagance had little place. From a childhood among the “plain people,” she grew to put great importance on what she wore and on having a good time, ordering her shawls and turbans from Paris and losing money at cards with considerable aplomb. Much of the change in her life can be attributed to her marriage, surely one of the most unusual unions in presidential history.

Dolley Payne Todd's marriage to James Madison had not been her first. Like Martha Washington and Martha Jefferson, she had been a widow when she wed a future president. The third-born child of failed shopkeepers in Philadelphia, Dolley had first married a young lawyer from her family's Quaker congregation. Within three years, both he and one of their young sons had died, leaving Dolley at age twenty-five to fend for herself and her remaining son. She moved back to her mother's to help run a boardinghouse. Within months, Aaron Burr introduced her to one of the most famous men in America—James Madison—who had passed age forty without taking a wife.
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Because he was several inches shorter than she but of obvious intellect and even then of enormous reputation, she immediately dubbed him the “great little Madison.”
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Shy, even sourish in public, he could be a wit in private and evidently admired a woman who could take her gaiety everywhere. Within months of their meeting and less than a year after her first husband's death, Dolley Payne Todd and James Madison were married. For the forty-odd years that they lived together, he complained if he had to be separated from his “Dolley” and she ran here and there in the service of the man she always called “Madison.”

The first woman to witness her husband's swearing in, Dolley immediately indicated her intention to play a visible role by opening her Georgetown house for a reception following the inauguration ceremony. Perhaps because the event fell on a Saturday, larger than usual crowds had come to Washington and hundreds of people lined up to sample the Madisons' punch and cake.
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The President's House would have accommodated a larger crowd, but ex-presidents did not vacate speedily in those days and Jefferson took a week to get his things together for the trip back to Monticello.

At the first inaugural ball, planned by Washington's Dancing Assembly for Long's Hotel that evening, Dolley continued to hold center stage. Heavy demand for tickets (only 400 were issued)
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led to great
confusion, and the room became so congested that someone had to break a window to provide ventilation. People stood on benches to catch a glimpse of the new president's wife, who behaved, one woman wrote glowingly, “with perfect propriety … dignity, sweetness and grace.”
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John Quincy Adams, who rarely enjoyed social gatherings and never shone at them, stood in the minority when he pronounced this party “excessive … oppressive and bad.”
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The president's official residence remained unfinished at the beginning of the Madison administration. One young visitor from New York described its exterior as appallingly grim, more suitable for a “State Prison” than anything else.
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Dolley insisted that improvements begin at once. When Congress appropriated $11,000, she spent almost one-quarter of the total on just the East Room (which Jefferson had neglected to furnish.)
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For help in her selections, she turned to Benjamin Latrobe, the English-born architect who had become President Jefferson's surveyor of public buildings.
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Fewer than eight weeks after the inauguration she was ready to show off the results at her first drawing room.