James and Dolley Madison (42 page)

The new city, just sixteen years old, already had hotels, taverns, and stores. Their owners would all go bankrupt if the federal government departed. The value of homes, large and small, would plunge; farms started up outside the capital would go out of business. The villages of Alexandria and Georgetown, which thrived as suburbs of Washington, would shrink and be ignored.

Madison would not leave Washington. He had been a congressman who, with many others, had decided years ago with President Washington that the government needed to be in its own location, in its own city, midway down the East Coast so it was central to all Americans, not just those in the northeast. The capital was going to stay on the banks of the Potomac, he told friends. His wife agreed. She did not want to leave the town where she had spent sixteen years creating a social world for the American government and made so many friends. Quietly, Dolley and her friends went to work lobbying congressmen to keep the capital in the District of Columbia.

The
National Intelligencer
resumed printing at the end of August with borrowed type. The editor joined the chorus of supporters for keeping the capital in Washington. The journalist wrote that it would be a “treacherous breach of faith” with citizens who had “laid out fortunes in the purchase of property in and about the city.” He said the very thought of the government's departure filled Washingtonians with “abhorrence and astonishment.” In a patriotic burst, he added that leaving would be “kissing the rod an enemy has wielded.”
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Dolley went to work rebuilding the vast social world that she ran in Washington prior to the attack. She believed that the re-creation of that world, with all of its parties—and all of its invitees, regardless of political party, wealth, or station in life—not only would help residents of the city get back on their feet but also would show the Brits and the world that nothing had changed in the capital and that nobody in it, drinking champagne, laughing at humorous stories, eating the best beef, or dancing to the music of large orchestras, had much time to worry about the British army and or its crude generals and ill-mannered soldiers. Dolley could not produce the social extravaganzas that became commonplace at the White House, but she could still throw a party to remember. She made up her mind to re-create the White House social world at Octagon House, with just as many events, although on a smaller scale because of the smaller size of the building. That started on September 14, less than three months after the burning of the White House. Hundreds of people wearing their finest clothes arrived in elegant carriages or on horseback, making the party, and the new start of Dolley's social season, a smashing success. All of the nighttime parties and the huge crowds they attracted spurred people to start calling Octagon House “the house of a thousand candles.” One month
later, in its final vote, Congress approved a bill to keep the nation's capital in Washington.

Dolley was back, the capital was back, and so was the United States.

The peace negotiations in Ghent dragged on through the winter months and the holiday season of 1814 . The Madisons were despondent. There was no news from Belgium, the Hartford Secession Convention was underway, and the Federalist press continued to be critical. “Madison, this man, if he deserves the name,” ranted the editor of the
Federal Republican
, had brought “dishonor, disappointment and disaster” to the country.
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In addition to all of that, the Washington, DC, area had been hit with a flu epidemic and many residents were ill.

Negotiations dragged in Belgium. The Americans did not trust the British ministers at Ghent. They dawdled and delayed while at the same time a British naval and army force sailed to New Orleans to take the city, and with it the Mississippi valley, crippling all American transportation and business in the area. Were the peace talks just a foil to cover increased British warmongering? Dolley Madison complained bitterly to a friend that “the prospect of peace appears to get darker and darker…. [Britain] will not make peace unless they are obliged to, and it is their policy [she had learned from John Quincy Adams] to protract the negotiations as long as they can.”
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Extremely worried about an attack on the Mississippi valley, Madison dispatched Andrew Jackson to defend New Orleans and sent him as much ammunition and supplies as he could. Jackson brought his regular army with him but, when in New Orleans, Madison sent him additional men from Kentucky and Tennessee. When General Jackson arrived, he heard rumors that a force of twenty-five thousand infantrymen was with the British fleet of ships that were getting closer to Louisiana. Afraid that he did still not have enough men, Jackson declared martial law, put the entire city under his personal control, and then asked for volunteers for new militia units. He took anybody who walked in the door. He even recruited the pirates of fabled buccaneer Jean LaFitte, whose men knew every inch of the bayous the British would have to march through, to help him. Added to the pirates were local merchants, citizens, teenaged boys, Frenchmen from Haiti, visiting salesmen, and freed blacks. Altogether, Jackson put together a force of just over five thousand men. He borrowed all of the cannon he could find in the area and set up a ragged mile-long line of defense near the Mississippi River between the watery swamp and the city.

The British fleet finally reached New Orleans. They attacked on December 28 with a 6,000-man army, but were beaten back. On January 1, 1815, they began an artillery barrage of the American position but were driven back again by American cannonading that destroyed a dozen of their guns. Then, on January 8, just after dawn, the British began their main assault. In true British tradition, they began to march slowly through the bayou, long red lines of men sloshing their way through the waist-high reeds and grass in the swamp. Their army endured a long series of miscues that morning. Needed long, wooden ladders had been left behind; maps were found unworthy; a dam the Redcoats built to help them transport wagons collapsed. Their leaders knew nothing of the territory they had to move through. Their one advantage was the weather. An early-morning fog covered their movements as they slowly advanced. Then, suddenly, around 8 a.m., the fog lifted. The British army was within range, the Americans had coordinates from the pirates, and Jackson's cannon exploded, cutting them down. The pirates, black freedmen, and townspeople opened up with their muskets, firing at will as quickly as they could reload. Thick clouds of smoke rose from all of the discharges of muskets, pistols, and cannon. British troops, so used to fighting on sunlit, flat, open meadows, bumbled and stumbled through the thick terrain and were confused. The barrage from the American line, with soldiers encouraged by Jackson riding his horse back and forth and shouting orders, was thunderous and nonstop. When one part of the line of cannon ended its fire, a second part of the line opened up. It was an incredibly professional performance by a mostly amateur army. The carnage was terrible. One seasoned British soldier, a veteran of the European wars, said the Americans unleashed on them “the most murderous [fire he] ever beheld.”
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The British had over seven hundred killed and a total of two thousand dead, wounded, and missing—a full one third of their army. It was one of the biggest and most embarrassing defeats in British history. The Redcoats were wiped out quickly and lost most of their top generals and officers, leaving the infantry all alone without leadership and direction. The cannon fire increased. The Redcoats fled at 8:30 a.m. and were fired upon until they were out of range. Jackson had not only defended and saved New Orleans but also scored a great historic triumph over the British, last seen running for their lives through the swamp in a shameful retreat. “[Fire] from our guns and our musquetry opened on them with such irresistible effect…leaving the ground strewn with dead and dying…a spectacle of carnage,” wrote New Orleans postmaster Thomas Johnson, who was there, in a letter to Dolley. And, Johnson added, “the British have evacuated the country. The city is in a ferment of delight. The country is saved, the enemy vanquished…general joy.”
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It was a victory that was lauded from one end of the United States to the other, whose importance resonated throughout the world, and, later, resonated throughout history via newspapers articles, poems, books, movies, plays, and television shows.

Prior to the battle of New Orleans, ministers of Great Britain and the United States were locked in talks to end the war. The Americans had had enough of a war they only entered into in order to end British impressment of sailors and searches of ships. England, finished with its wars against the now-exiled Napoleon, did not want to continue the struggle, especially since witnessing the resiliency of Madison and his government after the burning of Washington. President Madison had made it clear, in quickly reorganizing his government and making plans to rebuild the capital, that he was tougher than people believed. Under Madison, the Americans would never quit, and the British would never win. The ministers finally reached a peace agreement.

Madison, friends said, looked anxious and worried. Dolley, though, a friend wrote, held up the public-relations front at the Octagon House quite well. A friend wrote that “Mrs. Madison [was] as blooming as a country lass.”
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A copy of the peace treaty arrived and was taken by courier to Washington on February 14, 1815, and crowds gathered as the rider carrying the finalized treaty made his way to the president's office at Octagon House. Hundreds of people waited outside. Acting out of sheer instinct, Dolley flung open the doors to her home and invited all in as her husband and the cabinet went over the treaty line by line in their makeshift cabinet room. Congressmen and senators arrived soon after the initial crowd was let into the home, followed by members of the Supreme Court and various government offices and newspaper people. As the hours went by, the crowd grew. Drinks flowed, music was played, and Dolley moved throughout the party like a professional organizer, like the Dolley of her White House days, talking to everyone and helping all to get ready to celebrate the new treaty.

The treaty did not cede to the United States any part of Canada, award reparations for the burned capital, or provide monetary awards of any kind. The 1756 British Orders of Council, a thorny issue for years, had been abandoned when the war began and was no longer an issue. The document did not end impressment, although the ministers, and Madison, agreed that it had to end since the Napoleonic Wars were now finished. What Madison was left with, really, was a draw, but he, his wife, and others, did not see it that way. They saw it as a huge public-relations victory. Guests at the party waited and waited, and then Dolley's cousin Sarah “Sally” Coles, who had been standing outside the cabinet-room door all night, walked into the main ballroom, a smile spreading on her face, and,
all eyes on her, shouted “Peace! Peace!” Servant/slave Paul Jennings picked up a violin and struck up “The President's March,” more drinks were brought around, and everyone who had crammed into the home cheered lustily.
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Dolley was elated. “The most conspicuous person in the room…was Mrs. Madison herself, then in the meridian of life and queenly beauty. No one could doubt who beheld the radiance of joy which lighted up her countenance and diffused its beam all around that all uncertainly was at an end and the government of the country had in very truth passed from gloom to glory. With a grace all her own, to her visitors she reciprocated heartfelt congratulations upon the glorious and happy change in the aspects or public affairs,” wrote one man who was there.
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The president and his cabinet then appeared at the party, dignified and somber. Paul Jennings, who had been with them in the cabinet room earlier, wrote, though, that “Mr. Madison and all his cabinet were as pleased as any, but did not show their joy in this manner.”
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The entire country celebrated along with the Madisons and their friends in Washington. Americans combined Jackson's victory at New Orleans with news of the peace treaty into a huge psychological and public-relations victory. The United States had defeated the British Navy several times on the Great Lakes and in the Atlantic, crushed its army at New Orleans, held up against a ferocious naval bombardment at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, and survived the attack on Washington. Its men, shaky at first, had become veteran soldiers and won the war. The president, learning military skills as he went along, had become a hands-on commander in chief, a tough leader.

Everyone remembered, too, that throughout the conflict Madison had remained firm and was never shaken by any of the many defeats in the war or the tide of public opinion against him, even the betrayal of friends such as William Thornton. He was a rock. Pennsylvania senator Jonathan Roberts visited him the night before the peace treaty arrived, at a time when everyone was certain the war was over, and found him alone in the Octagon House. Madison greeted him warmly. “The self-command, and greatness of mind, I witnessed on this occasion was in entire accordance with what I have before stated of the President, when to me things looked so dark,” he said.
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