Louisa Adams

by Peter Cates

Louisa Adams

The sixth former First Lady, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams (1775-1852) was born in London, England, and was one of only two first ladies not born in the U.S., the other being Melania Trump who entered the world in 1970 in Yugoslavia.

Louisa was also born illegitimately; her mother was referred to by her grandson, the noted historian and cynic Henry Adams (1838-1918), as “one of the deeper mysteries of metaphysical theology.”

In America’s First Ladies, Christine Sadler describes Louisa as having “the delightful chore of making a parlor out of the vast East Room of the White House in which her mother-in-law had strung the family wash to dry 24 years earlier.”

Like Dolly Madison, she was quite the gracious hostess (although not the very bubbly social butterfly that Dolly was) and married to a president who preferred to be left alone in his study, more about his personality coming soon.

At first Louisa was not accepted by her mother-in-law Abigail Adams, but the older woman soon found they both had a lot in common, especially having very strong opinions which the gentlemen around them found at times unbearable, and they got along quite well.

Unlike her mother-in-law, Louisa was prone to depression and suffered from frail health.

J. Quincy Adams

I now shift the focus to Louisa’s husband John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) who served one term as president from 1825 to 1829.

By many scholars, including his detractors, Quincy Adams is considered one of the smartest to hold office with a very high IQ. Several of his predecessors recognized these qualities and he served at diplomatic posts in England, France, the Nether­lands, Prussia and Russia. In addition he was fluent in Latin, Greek, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Russian.

Socially, he could be a stiff arrogant prig and really did not enjoy being with most people, much like James Madison .

Interestingly, after leaving the White House, Q was elected by his home state of Massachusetts to the House of Representatives where his popularity was far greater than as chief executive. His arguably finest moment, as one of the handful of leaders unwaveringly opposed to slavery, was giving a speech defending the slaves who took over the Amistad ship transporting them from Africa to the United States and getting them acquitted and allowed to return to their homeland.

He served in Congress for the remainder of his life where in 1848, at the age of 81, he suffered a stroke while giving a speech in the chamber.

Q was carried into his private office where he died in the presence of his wife and others, including the Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln.

Louisa outlived her husband by four years and died of a heart attack in 1852 at the age of 77.

A few other facts:

Q and Louisa were believed to have married on the rebound, as both had suffered broken hearts in a previous relationship.

Q amassed a collection of different translations of the Bible.

While president, he bathed naked every morning at 5 a.m. in the Potomac River no matter what season of the year.

The above-mentioned grandson recounts an incident in his autobiography The Education of Henry Adams when, in sixth grade, he told his mother that he didn’t feel like going to school; whereupon grandfather, who was referred to by all his grandchildren as the President, took the lad firmly by the hand, walked him two miles to the schoolhouse never saying a word, escorted him into the classroom and sat him down at his desk.

The President then returned in the afternoon and repeated the procedure. Grandson never complained again.

Ironically, Quincy’s vice-president was South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) who was an unwavering supporter of slavery and a “White South.”

Elizabeth Monroe

by Peter Cates

First Lady Elizabeth Monroe

Former 5th First Lady Elizabeth Kortright Monroe (1768-1830) was one of the most anti-social FLs to live at the White House during her eight years (1817-1825) while her husband James Monroe (1758-1831) ushered in what was known as the Era of Good Feelings, that period of “happiness” sometimes referred to by cynical misanthropes as the Era of Good Stealings, that story for another week.

One of the most lively chapters in Christine Sadler’s 1963 America’s First Ladies concerns the quiet Mrs. Monroe:

“She was forty-eight years of age when her husband became president and she had lived in Washington as a Cabinet wife for seven years without, it was said, making neither friends nor enemies. ‘The Monroes are perfect strangers, ‘ wailed Margaret Bayard Smith, the capital city’s most ardent note taker during the period and the one most often quoted, ‘not only to me but to all the citizens.

“The story of Elizabeth is almost entirely the story of her husband, on whom she was unusually dependent. It was an arrangement which apparently suited him perfectly and which he perhaps had fostered. She was only seventeen when he married her in New York City on February 16, 1786, while he was a member of the Continental Congress. He was twenty-seven and a veteran of the Revolutionary War, with a scar to prove it, and had studied law under his idol and mentor, Thomas Jefferson. One of his Virginia colleagues in the Congress described Elizabeth as ‘the smiling little Venus’ when she and her tall husband departed for a week-long honeymoon on the outer reaches of Long Island. ”

Pres. James Monroe

One very noble deed of Mrs. Monroe occurred when her husband was George Washington’s Minister to France in 1794. Adrienne Lafayette, wife of the Marquis who had provided much help with French troops during the last years of the American Revolution, was in prison with her two daughters and awaiting execution by the guillotine (She had already lost her mother, grandmother and sister to the blade.).

All Americans in France were under strict orders to maintain strict neutrality, even though Washington himself cherished Lafayette like a son. The Monroes decided otherwise and devised a plan.

Dressing in the finest apparel and the carriage decorated in full U.S. insignia, Elizabeth arrived at the prison with her entourage in all innocence to pay a visit to her dear friend and so charmed those powers that be that Madame Lafayette and her daughters were released from prison within a few days and given passports out of the country.

Upon the Monroes replacing the Madisons in the White House, they lived a very quiet life and pretty well shunned most Washington society, entertaining very small groups of family and friends.

Their older daughter Eliza and her husband George Hay (He was the prosecutor in the trial of Thomas Jefferson’s former vice-president Aaron Burr for treason) came to live with them at the White House and, with her mother’s blessing, she assumed most of the responsibilities for the limited social calendar in a most unfortunately arrogant manner. Furthermore, the First Lady was suffering from poor health.

Meanwhile the President had expensive tastes for finely crafted furniture from France and was granted $30,000 from Congress to decorate the newly-rebuilt White House. He also sought the most costly linen, china and silverware, running up the kind of bills which caused a previously supportive Congress to take notice.

After leaving the White House when Monroe’s Secretary of State John Quincy Adams assumed office in 1825, they retired to their country estate, Oak Hill, near Leesburg, Virginia, where Elizabeth Monroe died in 1830 at the age of 62 followed a year later by her husband at 73.

A couple of footnotes:

Elizabeth Monroe’s father served as a captain for the British during the American Revolution, a fact slyly concealed by Monroe from his family and friends.

In 1814, Monroe was riding on horseback near Baltimore Harbor when he saw several thousand British troops arriving by ship but, since nobody believed they would invade, it was too late for any advanced warning.

Dolly Madison

by Peter Cates

Former First Lady Dolley Payne Todd Madison

Former First Lady Dolley Payne Todd Madison (1768-1849) grew up under very strict Quakers in Virginia chafing at their authoritarianism, and, needless to say, would fall very, very far from that denominational tree. She was the third of eight children born to John and Mary Payne who moved the family to Philadelphia in 1783.

In 1790, Dolley married a lawyer John Todd, with whom she had two sons. It was a happy marriage but short-lived.

In 1793, a yellow fever epidemic broke out in Philadelphia. Within four months, it caused over 5,000 deaths, including those of her husband, his parents and their youngest son.

However, in 1794, Dolley was introduced to a 43-year-old Congressman, James Madison Jr., who was a very shy 5-foot 4-inch bachelor but had the help of a mutual friend, the smooth talking reprobate and later Thomas Jefferson’s vice-president Aaron Burr (Both of these gentlemen were discussed in a previous column.).

Pres. James Madison

Unlike her staid predecessors Martha Washington and Abigail Adams, Dolley was one live wire whose personality, consummate charm, flamboyant clothes and generosity of spirit would leave its imprint on the political life of the nation’s capital for decades.

Dolley knew just how to talk to people and put them at ease. While her husband preferred to be by himself in the study and had few social graces, let alone the willingness to learn any, she was the first to have bi-partisan social gatherings; she also held firm to the rule that partying and political shop talk do not mix.

James’s second term may have been made possible by Dolley’s ability to win friends and influence people.

In 1814, the British invaded Washington and burned down the White House and other buildings, but Dolley did remove the painting of George Washington and other valuables in the nick of time.

By 1815, after living in rented houses, the Madisons moved into a newly-rebuilt White House.

One very early photo exists of James and Dolly Madison during their dotage in the 1830s and of her with others towards the end of her life. A quite fascinating daguerreotype has her with the 11th President James Knox Polk and the 15th President James Buchanan at an 1849 social gathering. These can be viewed on Google.

Thomas Jefferson

by Peter Cates

Years without a first lady

Christine Sadler’s delightfully gossipy, but well-researched 1963 book America’s First Ladies tells us the following about the years of Thomas Jefferson’s occupation of the White House:

“Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and the country, too, apparently, rocked along quite well without a First Lady for the eight years beginning in March of 1801. The third President, however, did have to call on Dolly Madison, the wife of his Secretary of State [and later 4th President James Madison (1751-1836)], to ‘assist with the ladies.’

“Jefferson was a widower of nineteen years standing when he moved into the President’s house with his exotic flower plants, his fiddle, and his mockingbird so tame that it hopped up the stairs behind him to sing during his midday siesta.”

His daughter Martha Randolph did step in at times and she and her husband Congressman Thomas Mann Randolph lived with her father at the White House, as did his other daughter Maria Eppes, also married to a member of Congress, John Wayles Eppes.

Martha gave birth to five sons and seven daughters, making Jefferson the President with the most living descendants. Her oldest son Thomas Jefferson Randolph would be the joy of his grandfather during old age while the youngest, James Madison Randolph, was the first baby born in the White House. The other three boys were also named for prominent Americans.

Jefferson courted controversy because of what was perceived as his tendencies to play politics and his worldliness. Unlike Washington and John Adams, he was not a committed Christian and, when he was elected President, there were rumors of elderly women in Connecticut burying their Bibles in the backyard.

In addition, Gore Vidal’s very colorful historical novel Burr, which is told from the point of view of Jefferson’s vice-president Aaron Burr, recounts how Jeff­erson, who preferred hosting dinner parties of one to five guests, would converse about subjects of interest to the guests.

Aaron Burr

In the interest of providing context for these dinner party conversations, I need to mention the following items.

Burr was the grandson of the famous preacher Jonathan Edwards, whose sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a classic of early American literature and still frequently taught in college courses.

The vice-president was also a notorious womanizer who commented that his grandfather sought glory in heaven while he sought it on earth (Burr was tried for treason when he attempted to gather an army to invade Mexico and declare himself Emperor but was miraculously acquitted. And, of course, his most famous act of notoriety was killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel.).

Thus, when Burr himself was invited to dine with the President, Jefferson wanted to hear about Burr’s escapades with the women. In Burr’s words, “If my grandfather Jonathan Edwards was the guest, Jefferson would have been talking about the Book of Samuel.”

Jefferson also amassed a collection of 6,000 books, which became the basis of the Library of Congress.

Finally, after Abigail Adams died in 1818, her husband John Adams and Jefferson began a correspondence in which a range of subjects, including the comparisons of translations of Greek and Roman classics, would become the Adams/Jefferson Letters; pony express riders were making very quick trips on a weekly basis between Quincy, Massachusetts, where Adams lived and Monticello, Virginia.

And both men died July 4, 1826. On his death bed, John Adams expressed his hope that Jefferson was okay, not knowing that the latter had died three hours earlier.

First Lady Abigail Smith Adams

by Peter Cates

First Lady Abigail Smith Adams

Former First Lady Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818) fearlessly felt little concern about the opinions of others and was a true Massa­chusetts Puritan at heart.

Her father William Smith (1707-1783) was a Congregationalist minister in the Boston suburb of Weymouth and a man of importance there as was his father before him, while Abigail’s mother Elizabeth (1721-1775) was a Quincy.

A shy girl by nature, she was also precocious and absorbed every detail of life around her. Her father, uncle and both grandfathers allowed her to listen in whenever they had gentlemen of standing visiting. She was the little crown princess royal; her maternal grandfather John Quincy taught her about all the boats in Boston Harbor while Grandmother Quincy thoroughly educated her in the ways of the world.

Abigail read voraciously in the libraries of her father and an aunt and particularly enjoyed the plays of Shakespeare and Moliere and the Greek and Roman historians. But the family was worried that she was more interested in reading than in being a good Congregationalist Christian.

John Adams

John Adams (1735-1826) was a 27-year-old country lawyer from nearby Braintree when he first saw her in the parsonage at Weymouth and within two years they would be married before she was 20, although the family considered most lawyers then lowlifes. (Calvin Coolidge faced similar resistance 140 years later as a Northhampton lawyer courting Grace Sprague from her upper class mother but Grace also knew what she wanted in a husband.).

Abigail proved to be a wonderful help mate to her husband in the managing of their farm, finances and the rearing of children while John and his more radical fire brand cousin Samuel Adams took a pro-active role during the events leading up to and including the American Revolution and afterwards.

Hubby would serve eight years as George Washington’s vice president after various diplomatic posts abroad, and then one term as president with the duplicitous Thomas Jefferson as his own vice president. Among the many letters exchanged between Abigail and her husband were several that bordered on the endearingly very intimate, which shall remain unquoted here.

Like Martha Washington, Abigail Adams missed her husband’s inauguration and received the following account of that day in relation to George Washington in one of his letters:

“A solemn scene it was indeed, and it was made effective to me by the presence of the General, whose countenance was as serene and unclouded as the day. He seemed to me to enjoy a triumph over me. Methought I heard him say, ‘I’m fairly out and you fairly in! See which of us will be happiest.’ ”

Abigail suffered from frail health much of her life and died at the age of 74 in 1818. Her husband died at 91 on July 4, 1826, the same day as Thomas Jefferson and exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence.

Their son John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) became president in 1825 and also served a single four-year term.