Profiles in Character: Dolley Madison Establishes a Powerful Role for Women in Public Affairs

When 81-year-old Dolley Madison passed away on July 12, 1849 President Zachary Taylor closed all government office so members of Congress, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, military officers, and a huge public crowd could attend her funeral. There he is purported to have said “she was truly our first lady for a half-century,” the first use of that term for a presidential wife.  Her contributions had previously been recognized when she was given a seat on the floor of the House of Representatives in January 1844 and honored later that year when Samuel Morse chose her to send the first private message by telegraph.  In 1848, she presided over the laying of the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. She had known all of the first of the 12 presidents personally.

Born in 1768, as American independence was looming, she would become a chief architect of projects to help cement union among the new nation’s citizens.  In an age when women had few rights and were expected to confine themselves to the home, she nevertheless demonstrated the achievements women could bring to public life.  

Widowed at 25 (her husband and youngest son died of Yellow Fever in 1793), she married 43 year-old James Madison the next year. Their 42-year marriage (until his death in 1836) immersed her in the lives of two presidents.  She served as a “first lady” to the widowed Thomas Jefferson (1800-1808) and then to her husband during his presidency (1809-1817).

Her skills helped compensate for both men’s weaknesses.  Jefferson’s insensitivity to the demands of political protocol offended the powerful British ambassador, and his anger at Federalist Party opponents worsened relations when he barred them from dinners at the President’s House.  Madison was a warm and engaging conversationalist but floundered in large gatherings.  He was also so intent on honoring the Constitutional separation of powers that he refused to engage with members of the legislature outside the President’s House and could appear cold and unapproachable. 

Dolley in comparison excelled as a hostess and built social relationships that softened the edges of both presidents.  As described by biographer Catherine Allgor, Dolley “was famous for her ability to never forget a name, a face, or a pedigree.”   During Jefferson’s presidency, using the Madison residence on F Street in Washington, she did her best to bring people of differing interests and views together.  “In contrast to Jefferson’s carefully calibrated events, the Madisons invited men of both parties” where members of Congress, under the “sweet simplicity of Mrs. Madison’s conversation” could talk without offending each other.

Dolley fostered an atmosphere conducive to collaboration and compromise. Her husband was a great benefactor when he ran for president in 1808.  When he won over Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the loser remarked that he “was beaten by Mr. and Mrs. Madison. I might have had a better chance had I faced Mr. Madison alone.”

During Madison’s presidency, her “Wednesday nights” in the President’s House were collegial social gatherings.  At dinners she managed to convey the president’s views at table (as Allgor notes, cloaking them as her own) while freeing him to engage in the one-on-one conversations at which he excelled. She also established what would later be named the White House as an embodiment of the new American republic.  She worked with architect Henry Latrobe to design the home and furnished it with American-made furniture to signal the craftsmanship and majesty of the new nation.

To assume Dolley’s activities were purely social, however, misses other major achievements. When Jefferson could not get enough funding from Congress for what became the Lewis & Clark Expedition, Dolley worked with friends to raise more. When the British attacked the capital during the War of 1812, she insisted on removing and safeguarding the copy of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington, denying the invading army a symbolic victory when they burned the President’s House. After the war, when Congressional debates seriously considered removing the vulnerable capital from Washington, D.C., she worked successfully to prevent that.

After Madison’s death, Dolley took up the task of completing his presidential papers, which included his “Notes of the Federal Convention,” the only record of its secret debates.  The framers of the Constitution had agreed that no accounts of the Convention would become public until the last signer died.  That was James Madison.  The nation owes the existence of that invaluable record to her. 

As Allgor concludes: “[B]ecause, like other women, she was excluded from holding official power, Dolley occupied a place “above” party politics; the very picture of disinterestedness, she could unify the country.”

Her contributions did not, tragically, include freeing the enslaved people that sustained the Madisons so they could fashion their achievements.  Despite his dying wish that no enslaved families be broken up, she did not honor that.  She sold many when her own finances fell.

Photo Credit: Gilbert Stuart portrait of Dolley Madison

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