James Monroe and His Beautiful, Courageous Bride

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James Monroe is designated by Harlow Giles Unger as "America's Last Founding Father." I gather it is because he was the last sitting President who served in the Revolution and the last of a political generation that understood firsthand the struggles and debates that went into building the United States government. As a young man, he served and suffered injury in the Revolution. He was mentored in law and politics by Thomas Jefferson. While always meaning to commit himself to a lucrative law career, he devoted nearly his entire life to public service locally, nationally, and internationally. He sometimes struggled through scandal and hardship in his political posts, especially a post as a foreign minister in London and in the final years of his presidency when divisive party politics swelled. But he also helped orchestrate the Louisiana Purchase, de facto led the country through the War of 1812, and ruled over the Era of Good Feelings having unified the country politically and brought prosperity and peace (though sometimes tenuous until his Monroe Doctrine declaration).   

Young James Monroe, while an up-and-coming political bigwig, was awkward around the gentler sex, unable to attract young ladies because of his keen intellect and too-serious nature. That is until he met Elizabeth Kortright, who would go on to become his deeply devoted wife and First Lady. Elizabeth Kortright Monroe was different than previous First Ladies most notably because she was formally educated and thus attracted to Monroe's intellectual conversation and serious demeanor. She came from wealth and the city and married into the modest farm life of a sometimes lawyer, mostly financially struggling public servant. She also suffered from an often debilitating case of rheumatism, which forced her to severely limit the frequency and size of her entertaining and hostess duties in the President's Mansion. After a First Lady like Dolley Madison, who relished the role of hostess, it must have been an adjustment for the American public and social circles of Washington to have a less gregarious and socially welcoming First Lady. Most agreed that Elizabeth Monroe was a beautiful woman and an elegant and proper hostess, but some accused her of being too courtly and standoffish.   

Unger dismisses these attacks as the inaccurate descriptions of a jealous few who envied the First Lady's

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refined and expensive taste, her beauty, and her refined manners and blames these attacks as contributing to Elizabeth Monroe's relative erasure from history. But I wonder if his praise of Elizabeth Monroe as "America's most beautiful and most courageous First Lady" (4) is somewhat overstated. Yes, she was beautiful but so have been many First ladies before and since. Martha Washington and Dolley Madison were both recognized and praised as true beauties and the lovely clothes with which they adorned themselves were purchased from personal fortunes. Elizabeth Monroe's penchant for exquisitely expensive French gowns and furniture, on the other hand, did nothing to alleviate the precarious financial situation of both her husband and the government he served, which could often not afford to pay him his due salary. Yes, Elizabeth Monroe was brave: she risked her life to save General Lafayette's wife from an unknown fate in a Parisian prison and she fulfilled her duties as a politician's wife and First Lady while suffering a chronic illness. But was she more courageous than First Ladies who came before? Martha Washington resided in Revolutionary War camps to be with her husband, and Dolley Madison risked ostracization by marrying outside her faith.   

Unger attributes Elizabeth Monroe's superlative courage to her willingness to swap a cosmopolitan life in New York for modest farm life and to brave the Atlantic crossing twice to live with her husband while he served abroad. But is it braver to leave wealth and urban life for a modest farm life (while also intermittently living lavishly in Paris, London, and the nation's capital) or to bravely step up from modest means into a more sophisticated world than one previously knew, as Dolley Madison and Abigail Adams did? Abigail Adams also accompanied her husband abroad and perhaps acted equally courageously in suffering long separations from her love when she chose not to accompany him. Furthermore, future First Lady Louisa Adams would accompany her young husband abroad in his ministry to Russia–a much more isolated an unfamiliar location than Paris or London. I sometimes wonder if the Monroes' relationship was more co-dependent than courageous. Why return to suffer the fog of London if you know it aggravates your health? Does burning your wife's correspondence in a fit of intense grief after her death suggest a deeper and more intense love than choosing to treasure and save those memories for the future? All it really does is contribute to your wife's erasure from history and means that we are unlikely to ever fully understand the true character of America's fifth First Lady.  

Side Note: I found Unger's book to be overly laudatory of both James and Elizabeth Monroe. It didn't help that he quite frequently committed the scholarly sin of attributing thoughts and feelings to a historical person without proper documentation to back up his claims. One excerpt as an example: "Elizabeth had learned to love the beautiful rolling country around Charlottesville, but she was lonely for her family and friends in New York. . .. Her eyes sparkled at the prospects of attending balls, receptions, dinners, and theater in America's grandest city [Philadelphia]." Nary a document or primary source quoted or cited in the entire paragraph. I understand wanting to add color and narrative flow to one's prose, but it is a pet peeve of mine for such ideas to be presented with little evidence presented to back them.

Elizabeth Kortright Monroe: What I Know Going In

Nothing. I really only know that there is no full biography written of her, which apparently is at least partly because she is another whose correspondence was burned at death. I know that there is a short, 35-page booklet written about her and that that is the longest piece of writing ever produced focused specifically on Elizabeth Monroe. I know this booklet exists from a Google search; I learned it was the only real biography of her life from a fellow First-Ladies blog, "Remember the Ladies": http://rachelschmoyer.blogspot.com/. I stopped reading after learning that the blogger acquired the booklet from the gift shop at Ash-Lawn Highlands, the Monroes' home, for $4. Since I have set up a rule to not spend money to complete this project, I will not be acquiring this booklet.   

Instead, I have chosen to learn about the Monroe administration by reading Harlow Giles Unger's The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness.  

Image from Amazon

There are many pages referencing Elizabeth Kortright Monroe in the index, so hopefully I will gain some education on her life as I learn about Monroe the President. I'll definitely learn a lot by reading the book, since all I really know about James Monroe is that he lived in Virginia, not far from Jefferson and Madison, and that he is largely remembered for what we call the Monroe Doctrine, which, if I remember correctly, basically said that the United States would not tolerate further European colonization of the Americas.

Dolley Madison: Presidentress and National Heroine

The remainder of Richard N. Côté's biography of Dolley Madison was generally what I expected it to be. Dolley becomes First Lady, or since that term was not yet popular, "Presidentress," and wins over the political and social society of Washington, D.C., with her exemplary hostess skills. Even after the British burned the White House in 1814 – and Dolley bravely stayed as long as she could, saving important state documents and the portrait of Washington – Dolley worked quickly to transform their new temporary residence into a space appropriate for entertaining. After her husband's presidential terms had ended and they moved back to Montpelier, Dolley missed the entertaining but learned to appreciate the peace and quiet, while filling the residence with frequent, often long-term, guests. Dolley Madison remained a well-loved figure in the national conscious her entire life and beyond. In 1849, at the ripe old age of eighty, she was an honored guest at a "fashionable levee" of President James K. Polk and was a special guest at many of Washington's biggest events throughout her final years. 

Dolley Madison (second from right) with President James K. Polk and others in 1846 or 1847.  Photo taken from: http://potus-geeks.livejournal.com/369826.html

Unfortunately, Dolley's return to Washington after her husband's death was because of sad circumstances surrounding her son Payne and the family finances. Payne was Dolley Payne Madison's only surviving child (from her first marriage) and her blind love for him contributed to his living a less-than-productive adult life that left the Madison family to pick up the pieces behind him. Bailing out of those debts left Dolley in severe financial straits after Madison's death. She necessarily sold Montpelier and moved back to Washington where she spent much of her final years trying to convince publishers to purchase her husband's papers, thereby protecting his legacy. She failed to see their publication in her lifetime and the money that did come with their eventual sale was not nearly enough to cover her debts. She ended up selling personal possessions of value and unfortunately saw little help from people who otherwise revered her: "In her last years, few of those who had the money or positions that provided them with the greatest ability to ease her life did anything to help her. These were people who had flocked to her drawing rooms and partaken of her hospitality and generosity. Now they turned their backs" (354).   

Briefly, I have to say that Côté's biography of Madison is one of the best I've read so far. It presented a relatively swift moving story that provided both context and personal details without reading like merely a narration of Madison's letters (which is how the biography of Abigail Adams read like at times). With such a massive collection of sources to work with, that is no easy feat. While I might have wanted more about the intimate relationship of Dolley and James and how Dolley might have influenced James Madison in a political sense, I would not hesitate to recommend the book.

Dolley Madison's Quaker Upbringing

One thing I did not know about Dolley Madison before reading Côté's biography is that she was born and raised a Quaker. Dolley's mother, Mary Coles Payne, was raised Quaker but was disowned by her Meeting when she married a non-Quaker. Dolley's father, John Payne, converted to Quakerism to marry Mary Coles, and both Mary and John were officially accepted into the Cedar Creek Monthly Meeting eight months after their wedding. Both Dolley's parents were devout Quakers who were active in whatever Meeting of which they were members (they moved around a few times during Dolley's youth), and Dolley and her siblings were birthright Quakers.   

But Dolley and her family had a complicated relationship with the Quaker faith. Because Quakers believe all people to be equal in the eyes of God, they, as a group, were famously anti-slavery. Yet the Payne family owned slaves. Côté mentions this fact many times but frustratingly does not explain why or how they owned slaves and remained in good standing with the Society of Friends until several dozen pages into the biography. Finally, he tells us that the slaves were inheritance and that it was illegal to emancipate slaves in colonial Virginia. In testament to his devotion to the Quaker faith and principles, however, John Payne freed his slaves soon after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He was a leader in this regard, but it cost him dearly. Giving up the free labor of his slaves meant that John Payne struggled to remain solvent as a farmer. He eventually gave up his farm to try to make it as a starch manufacturer in Philadelphia, but he failed to build a stable business. Indeed, when his business went bankrupt John Payne was disowned by the Friends for insolvency.   

Moving to Philadelphia had a definite influence on Dolley Payne's character and Quaker ideals as she came of age. While Philadelphia was the center of American Quakerism, it was also early America's most cosmopolitan and worldly city. Dolley continued to follow the Society of Friends' custom of plain dress, but she learned to appreciate, even love the more fashionable attire she saw on the streets. While her first marriage was to a fellow Quaker – John Todd, who died a few years later in Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic – Dolley had seen enough of her Quaker friends disowned by the Friends in order to marry outside the faith that she also chose disownment to marry the Episcopalian James Madison. 

source: http://ushistoryimages.com/colonial-fashion.shtm

Dolley would have grown up wearing the modest fashions of the Quaker tradition, but after marrying James Madison began wearing the more fashionably low-cut attire of the time with impunity.

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/5302

With her marriage to James Madison, Dolley quickly adapted to the more worldly duties and expectations of her new position while making use of those traits of her Quaker upbringing that proved most useful. She embraced fashionable and glamorous attire while in public but continued to dress modestly in private. She called upon the Quaker tradition of and equal and classless society to gain social self-confidence and become the easy and welcoming hostess she became known as. And while she would have learned as a young Quaker farm girl to treat workers kindly and became noted for that as a hostess, she chose not to embrace her father's bravery and leadership on the anti-slavery front. Dolley had seemingly no problem keeping slaves at Montpelier. 

Dolley Madison's Quaker background was a key building block of the life that would make her one of America's most well-loved first ladies. As Richard N. Côté states, "During her farm girl days, [Dolley Madison] learned the solid, practical, virtuous things that became the core of her character. In later years, her high-fashion clothes and sophisticated social life attracted great attention, but it was her unpretentious, unaffected country values, not her elegant dresses, that saw her through the hard times, inspired her to great courage, and endeared her to the nation" (49).