Dolley by Rita Mae Brown

Author:Rita Mae Brown [Brown, Rita Mae]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: fiction
ISBN: 9780307793997
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-11T05:00:00+00:00

A steady drizzle kept the temperature down. The dust settled on the roadways, the roses turned their huge heads toward the liquid refreshment, and a young couple ran laughing between the raindrops. French John, a side of mutton heaved over his shoulder, walked toward the kitchen. His rolled-up sleeves displayed a vivid array of tattoos, gathered in most of the ports of the world.

James Madison observed the life outside his window. He envied the people their simple lives, or perhaps most lives only appeared simple but were complex on closer examination. Close examination was where Madison excelled. Never a man to jump to conclusions or rush to a decision, he enjoyed the laborious process of studying an issue thoroughly. He could be thorough without becoming lost in detail, a trait he liked in himself. However, events now moved so rapidly that he no longer had the luxury of taking his time to make a decision. This war and his Cabinet were teaching him that not making a decision is in fact making a decision, usually the wrong decision. He was going to inspect General William Winder and his troops.

James Monroe agreed to ride with him. Armstrong was worse than useless. He was dangerous. So Madison’s only course, at present, was to ignore his Secretary of War and take matters into his own hands. If the United States could survive the summer, then he would attend to Armstrong. Would Madison himself survive the summer? He used to worry about dying, but he’d seen so much of it that if he were to die now, better it be in the service of the nation he founded and loved than as an old, irritable man gabbling in a feather bed.

The only mistake he and his generation may have made was in putting the capital where they did. As a compromise between North and South, it suited neither particularly well. North and South. He’d address that issue after the war, as well.

His personal mistakes haunted him. Armstrong had been aide-de-camp to General Horatio Gates during the Revolutionary War. Armstrong enjoyed good relations with General Washington, and Madison respected the general’s judgment of men. But Gates’s other aide-de-camp, James Wilkinson, was now proved as idiotic as Armstrong, and Madison wondered if General Washington was as wise in military matters as he had assumed. The Revolutionary War was decades ago, though. These men were young then. He was young then. Or was he? James Madison, for a moment, couldn’t remember. Of course, even then there had been talk about Wilkinson, who was too close to Benedict Arnold, and Armstrong and Wilkinson were thick as thieves.

Was he an ineffectual leader, or were men naturally greedy and lazy? Madison reviewed his sorry relationship with Congress during his first and second terms. The victory of being voted more men at the beginning of the year was supplanted by the reality of having to find them and pay for them.

Could they fight the British in a large land battle? The

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.