Ladies of Liberty by Cokie Roberts

Author:Cokie Roberts [Roberts, Cokie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

THE BRITISH ADMIRAL who granted passage to Theodosia Alston’s ship commanded part of a flotilla that blockaded the entire eastern seaboard. “A fleet of two English ships of 74 cannon and six frigates close the entry to the Chesapeake and Delaware and do not allow the smallest boat to pass,” Rosalie Stier Calvert advised her brother as the war heated up. “Meanwhile the country is torn apart by numerous factions and in Congress there is open talk of dissolving the union of the states.” New England was in an uproar over the war, with the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut refusing to send their militias into battle. The West took the opposite stance—demanding retribution against the British for backing Indian raids, especially after the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe, when William Henry Harrison attacked the stronghold of Tecumseh’s brother. Following that rout, Dolley Madison tried a charm offensive on the leaders of several tribes, telling a friend, “A few days ago we had 29 Indians to dinner with us, attended by 5 interpreters and the Heads of Departments.”

The American army attempted to cut off British supply lines by attacking Canada. The maneuver resulted in spectacular failure. At the end of August the president and his wife received “the melancholy tidings that Gen. Hull had surrendered Detroit, himself & the whole army to the British.” Outraged, Dolley asked her cousin, “Do you not tremble with resentment at this treacherous act?” Hull’s surrender of the Northwest army was not only treacherous to the country but dangerous to James Madison’s chances for reelection as well. The Federalists had decided to join the breakaway Republicans in nominating De Witt Clinton for president and Philadelphian Jared Ingersoll for vice president. Clinton managed to run as an antiwar candidate in the North and a supporter of a better-managed war in the South. Dolley Madison, highly suspicious of her husband’s opponent, tried to keep track of his comings and goings. “It is said that the Queen at the Palace was heard to ask what that fellow wanted here,” a Federalist congressman gossiped to his wife after DeWitt Clinton showed up at the Capitol one day.

The seemingly indefatigable Dolley also continued to wage her social campaign, particularly with the new congressmen from the West and South and with the press. “Yesterday the first drawing-room of the season was held,” young Sarah Gales Seaton wrote to her family in North Carolina in October 1812. Sarah was the sister of Joseph Gales, publisher of the National Intelligencer, and her husband, William Seaton, had just gone into business with him. “I have not yet been presented to her majesty, and it not being etiquette to appear in public until that ceremony be performed,” she stayed home. This “Republican Court” had its rules after all. Soon Sarah was a regular at the executive mansion and, like so many others, devoted to Dolley Madison: “Tis not her form, tis not her face, it is the woman altogether, whom I should wish you to see.” But it was an election year and Dolley was once again a target: “Mrs.

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