The Madisons at Montpelier: Reflections on the Founding Couple

Postscript: Dolley Madison, 1836–1849

postscript Dolley Madison, 1836–1849 Dolley madison spent the summer after her husband’s death at Montpelier, responding to visits and letters of condolence and pursuing publication of the already gathered and edited volumes of James’s papers. She made an unfortunate decision to put this publication largely in the hands of undependable Payne Todd, who failed to negotiate a contract with any commercial publishers, despite spending months traveling to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston seeking one. Hoping to realize $100,000 from the publication, a royalty no publisher seemed willing to guarantee or even discuss, Dolley instead sold three volumes of papers— including the Notes on the Debates of the Constitutional Convention—to Congress in 1837 for $30,000. She was thus able to honor the bequests of her husband’s will but was left with only $9,000 for her livelihood. With Payne Todd as disinclined and ill-suited as ever to manage or even live at Montpelier, which was in decline anyhow as a prosperous plantation, and most of her friends and close relatives living in Washington, Dolley decided in November 1837 to move there, at least for the cooler months each year when Congress was normally in session—“the season.” She moved into the house on Lafayette Square the Madisons had owned for nearly twenty years, in which the Cuttses had lived. It was Dolley’s home for the rest of her life. She resumed at once her role as “First Lady Emeritus,” receiving a host of visitors and more invitations than she could possibly accept. She was present at every important Washington social occasion. Financial worries, including the continued mismanagement of the Montpelier estate, though, compelled Dolley to move back there for the summer of 1838, and again in the summer of 1839 178 the madisons at montpelier where she stayed, this time, through the summer of 1841. But all was in disarray. Dolley Cutts had died, and brother John C. Payne had moved to Kentucky with his family, leaving his twenty-year-old daughter Annie to live with Dolley Madison as her adopted daughter. Payne Todd, as dissipated , unreliable, but emotionally dependent on his mother as ever, was often at Montpelier. He spent most of his time building and enlarging his eccentric quarters, Toddsberth (designed to suit his mother, Payne said) over the Southwest Mountains behind Montpelier, and hoping to strike it rich with a gold mine or a marble quarry; neither materialized. Some of Toddsberth, including valuable furnishings, artworks, and papers from Montpelier, burned in 1841. Meanwhile, Montpelier, ill managed by a series of incompetent and dishonest overseers, became more and more a financial burden. Dolley was forced to continue her husband’s practice of selling off parts of it, sometimes including slaves, to neighbors or speculators to raise cash. She spent the 1841–42 winter in Washington negotiating with friends, relatives, and officials and visiting Edward Coles in Philadelphia and John Jacob Astor in New York in desperate efforts to rescue her sinking finances. Dolley returned to Montpelier in September 1842 for the last time. She began negotiations with Henry Moncure, a merchant from Richmond, for the sale of the estate, many slaves included. Quarrels and legal battles with Payne Todd and heirs of William Madison, who had died in 1843, prolonged negotiations, but Dolley, certain she could no longer afford to keep Montpelier and anxious to resume her life in Washington, left for good in December 1843. Nearly bankrupt, she settled in Washington as the new year began. The sale of Montpelier to Moncure was completed in August 1844. Payne Todd remained at partially ruined Toddsberth, attempting to maintain solvency by managing, ineptly, a few hundred acres and about thirty slaves left him after the final sale of Montpelier. More furnishings, books, and works of art had been carted to Toddsberth as Moncure took possession of the Montpelier mansion. The books were stored on shelves and the papers in a wooden desk or flat chest, supposedly to be safe for Dolley’s examination and disposal, but she probably never saw them again. Dolley was pleased to be again living in Washington, more or less comfortably, but still in desperate financial straits. Disheartened again with efforts at commercial publication of her husband’s remaining papers, postscript 179 which included dozens of important letters from Washington himself, as well as other items of immense historical value, she took up again...