Washington Irving, in one of his letters, has given an amusing account of his troubles in Washington, in preparing to attend a levee given by President Madison. After a ludicrous description of his vexations, he says, he finally emerged into the blazing splendor of Mrs. Madison’s drawing-room. Here he was most graciously received, and found a crowded collection of great and little men, of ugly and old women, and beautiful young ones. Mrs. Madison, he adds, was a fine, pretty buxom dame, who had a smile and a pleasant word for everybody. Her sisters, Mrs. Cutts and Mrs. Washington, were also present on this occasion, and looked “like the merry wives of Windsor.”

Dorothy Payne, the second child of John and Mary Coles Payne, was born the 20th of May, 1772. Her mother was a daughter of William Coles, Esq., of Coles Hill; and was a lady of pleasing social manners. The family were Virginians, and though Mrs. Madison was born in the State of North Carolina, she ever prided herself on a title so dear to all its possessors: that of being a daughter of the old commonwealth. Her parents removed to Philadelphia when she was quite young, and joined the Society of Friends at that place. Here their little daughter was reared according to the strict system of the society, and by example and precept taught to ignore all those graceful accomplishments deemed so necessary in the formation of a woman’s education. Attired in the close-fitting dress of her order, she would demurely attend to the duties imposed upon her, and the wonderful undertone of sweetness in her character kept the brow serene, and the heart ever bright and hopeful. Hers was a sunny, elastic nature, even as a child; and if she was not permitted to learn the worldly arts she desired, her disposition was not soured by these restrictions, and the inner graces which afterward made her famous, blossomed and bloomed in native harmony. Nothing could conceal her beautiful character. Nor could the quaint bonnet of the Friends hide her sparkling eyes and perfectly rounded features from the admiring gaze of her young acquaintances. At the age of nineteen she was married to John Todd, a rising young lawyer of Philadelphia and a member of the Society of Friends. Her father had manumitted his slaves when he moved to the city, and Miss Payne was accustomed to a life of simplicity and plentifulness, but never to even comparative wealth. Nor was she remarkable for her literary abilities or acquired attainments; but her warm heart beamed goodness from her expressive lips and lent a fascination to her frank, earnest face. After her union with Mr. Todd, her time was spent in her modest home according to the secluded manner of her sect, and during her short married life she pursued the even tenor of her quiet way, unconscious of her rapidly unfolding beauty, or of the admiration it was exciting. Soon she was left a widow with an infant son, and made her home with her widowed mother.

The personal charms of the young widow, united as they were, with manners cordial, frank and gay, excited the admiration and awakened the kind feelings of all who came within their influence, and unaided by the extrinsic and accidental advantages of fortune or fashion, she became a general favorite, and the object not only of attention, but of serious and devoted attachment.

In October, 1794, Mrs. Todd was married to Mr. Madison, then one of the most talented members of Congress, a statesman of wealth and social position, and withal a great and good man. She had been a widow less than a year, and was at the time of her second marriage in the twenty-third year of her age. The ceremony was performed at “Harewood,” Jefferson county, Virginia, the residence of her younger sister, Lucy, the wife of George Steptoe Washington. From this time forward she lived at “Montpelier,” the rural home of Mr. Madison, until he was called again to public life. It was at this time of her life that she developed the loveliest traits of her noble character. Placed in a position where she could command resources, the warmth and generosity of her nature was displayed, not in lavish personal expenditures, but in dispensing the bounties bestowed upon her to all who came as suppliants, and in giving to her widowed mother and orphaned sisters a home. The blessings of her kindred, and the fond love of her husband, gladdened these, the first years of her married life, and her relatives and friends were made partakers of her abundance, while the tender attentions of Mr. Madison to her aged mother filled her heart to repletion. Had she not been placed in a position harmonious to her nature, it is probable that her days would have been spent in indifferent adherence to a dull routine, and the rills of her heart which bubbled and sang so gleefully in the summer of her content, never been discovered beneath the weight of circumstances. Fortunately hers was a disposition to rightfully appreciate the gifts of fortune and social consideration, and in accepting her bright future prospects, she determined to nourish the smothered generosity of her soul. Hitherto her lot had been circumscribed and the charitable desires of her heart been restrained; but when the power was given her to do good, she filled the measure of her life with the benedictions of humanity, and reigned in the affections of her friends without a rival.

Mr. Jefferson appointed Mr. Madison Secretary of State in 1801, and in April of that year he removed with his family to Washington. Here her position was in perfect accordance with her disposition, and her house was a radiating point for every acquaintance. The great secret of her success lay in the innocence which dwelt in her noble nature; and this nobleness of innocence underlaid the dignity and high-mindedness which attested an elevated nature. She drank the wine of human existence without the lees, and inhaled the perpetual breath of summer, even after the snows of winter had clogged the dull course of life. She was gifted with that which was better than Ithuriel’s spear, whose touch reveals the beauty which existed in everything, for she was humble-hearted, tolerant and sincere. Entirely free from malignant cavil, her instinctive sympathy with the good and beautiful led her to seek it in everything around her, and her life, if not devoted to the higher cultivation of the mind, developed the sunny brightness of her heart.

The power of adaptiveness was a live-giving principle in Mrs. Madison’s nature. With a desire to please, and a willingness to be pleased, she was popular in society, and was to her husband a support and friend. Washington was little more than a wilderness, when, in the spring, she commenced life there as the wife of a cabinet officer. The elements which combined to form the society of the Capital were various, and difficult to harmonize, and her situation was a delicate one to fill; yet she was loved by all parties, and embittered politicians who never met save at her hospitable board, there forgot “the thorns of public controversy under the roses of private cheerfulness.” In those days steamboats were just beginning, railroads unknown, stage-coaches extremely inconvenient, national, indeed even turnpike roads were very rare, and the journeys were mostly performed in the saddle. The daughter of one of the senators, who wished to enjoy the gayeties of the Capital, accompanied her father five hundred miles on horseback. The wife of another member not only rode fifteen hundred miles on horseback, but passed through several Indian settlements, sleeping for many nights in a tent in the woods. Mrs. Madison herself had travelled from her Virginia home by easy stages, cumbered with household furniture, and stopping on the road to visit relatives; occupying what seems to us at this day an incredible length of time to perform such a journey. Her house, after the President’s, was the resort of most company, and the cordial manners of the hostess lent a peculiar charm to the frequent parties there assembled.

Political feuds ran high, and party spirit was more virulent than ever before experienced. Washington’s administration had been a success, and in the eyes of the public, he was not included in any party, but was above them all. Yet he placed himself, when the question was of a political order, under the banner of the federal party, and was the declared advocate of the unity and force of the central power. He insured its triumph during his two terms, and let his mantle descend upon one of his most attached friends. The democratic party, desiring the rule of the majority, opposed to the preponderance of the higher classes, and to aristocratic tendencies, overcame the successor of Washington, who was defeated by Mr. Jefferson, the leader of the opposition. At the commencement of this era, Mrs. Madison appeared upon the scene, and gave to her husband that support which enhanced his popularity as a public man, and made his house the most attractive place of resort in the city. During his eight years’ life as Secretary of State, she dispensed with no niggard hand the abundant wealth she rightly prized, and the poor of the district loved her name as a household deity.

In 1810, Mr. Madison was elected President, and after Mr. Jefferson left the city, he removed to the White House. Under the former administration, Mrs. Madison had, during the absences of Mr. Jefferson’s daughters, presided at the receptions and levees, and was in every particular fitted to adorn her position as hostess of the mansion she was called to preside over. Every one in Washington felt that her watchful care and friendly interest would be in nowise diminished by her advancement to a higher position; and the magical effects of her snuff-box were as potent in one capacity as another. The forms and ceremonials which had rendered the drawing-rooms of Mrs. Washington and Mrs. Adams dull and tedious, were laid aside, and no kind of stiffness was permitted. Old friends were not forgotten, nor new ones courted; but mild and genial to all, each person felt himself the object of special attention, and all left her presence pleased and gratified with her urbanity and refinement.

Possessing a most retentive memory, she never miscalled a name, or forgot the slightest incident connected with the personal history of any one; and therefore impressed each individual with the idea of their importance in her esteem. Mrs. Madison’s sole aim was to be popular and render her husband’s administration brilliant and successful. Her field was the parlor; and with the view of reigning supreme there, she bent the energies of her mind to the one idea of accomplishment. In her thirty-seventh year she entered the White House. Still youthful in appearance, denied the cares of maternity, which destroy the bloom of beauty on the delicate faces of American women, she assumed her agreeable position with no encumbrances, no crosses, in perfect health, the possessor of great beauty of feature and form, and eminently happy in the sincere regard of her husband. Contentment crowned her lot with happiness, and the first four years of her life there must have been one continued pleasure.

With all her appreciation of admiration, she was not extravagant; her house, during the time of Mr. Jefferson’s term, was very plainly furnished, and in no way elegant. Like most Virginians, she delighted in company, and her home was the most hospitable abode in Washington. Her table was her pride; and the multiplicity of dishes, and their size, was a subject of ridicule to a foreign minister, who observed “that it was more like a harvest-home supper, than the entertainment of a Secretary of State.” She heard of this and similar remarks, and only observed with a smile, “that she thought abundance was preferable to elegance; that circumstances formed customs, and customs formed taste; and as the profusion so repugnant to foreign customs arose from the happy circumstance of the superabundance and prosperity of our country, she did not hesitate to sacrifice the delicacy of European taste for the less elegant, but more liberal fashion of Virginia.” But this time of prosperity was doomed, and war insatiate was already treading upon the shores of the Atlantic. Mr. Madison, the peace-loving, humane Executive, was compelled to declare war with Great Britain; and after a time its actual presence was felt at the National Capital. June, 1812, is memorable as the second appeal of the United States to arms, to assert once more the rights of its freemen; and for three years its fierceness was felt from Canada to New Orleans, and over the blue waters of the oceans of the world.

“Generous British sentiments revolted at the destruction of the American Capital: which might not have been branded with universal infamy if confined to navy yards, warlike implements, vessels of war, and even private rope-walks, if the enormity had stopped there. But no warfare can satisfy its abominable lust with impunity on libraries, public and private, halls of legislation, residences of magistrates, buildings of civil government, objects of art, seats of peace, and embodiments of rational patriotic pride. The day before the fall of Washington was one of extreme alarm: the Secretary of State wrote to the President: ‘The enemy are advanced six miles on the road to the wood-yard, and our troops are retreating, you had better remove the records.’ Then commenced the panic which was destined to grow more general the coming day. Tuesday night every clerk was busy packing and aiding in the removal of valuables. Coarse linen bags were provided, and late in the evening, after all the work was over, and the bags were hanging round the room, ready at a moment’s warning to be moved, Mr. Pleasanton, one of the clerks, procured conveyances, and crossing the Potomac, deposited them in a mill three miles off. But fearing for their safety, he determined to go farther into the interior, and the next night slept at Leesburg, a small town thirty-five miles from Washington. The light that shone against the cloudless sky revealed the fate of the city, and the doom of his charge had they delayed. Amongst the documents were the original Declaration of Independence, the Federal Constitution, and General Washington’s commission as Commander-in-chief of the Army of the Revolution, which he relinquished when he resigned it at Annapolis (found among the rubbish of a garret). Scarcely had the wagon that bore the papers crossed the wooden bridge of the Potomac, than crowds of flying fugitives, men, women and children, pressed upon it in such numbers as to render the threatened danger almost imminent. The frightened multitude swayed to and fro, seeking means of escape till night closed the horrible drama; then upon Capitol Hill appeared the red-coated soldiery of the British army. The sun sank beneath the golden sheen of fleecy clouds that floated softly over the southern horizon, but the going down of the king of day in nowise relieved the atmosphere. Dust and heat were intolerable, and a rumor that the water was poisoned rendered the sufferings of the weary soldiers painful in the extreme. For the seventh time that day a retreat was commanded, and the city troops, mortified and enraged, refused to obey. Back from the city to the heights of Georgetown was the order; but how could they leave their families, their homes and property, and march by those they were sworn to protect! Down the long, broad, and solitary avenue, past the President’s now deserted house, through Georgetown, and some as far as Tenlytown, the disorganized, demoralized remnant of the army strayed, and slept on the ground, lighted up by the fiery red glare from the burning buildings in Washington. All night they lay alarmed and distressed, while but few could steal a moment’s repose. The bursting shells in the navy yard were heard for miles, and each boom was a knell to the agonizing hearts, who knew not where their helpless ones were in this hour of horrors. When the British marched slowly into the wilderness city, by the lurid light that shot up from the blazing capitol, the population had dwindled down to a few stragglers and the slaves of the absent residents. The houses, scattered over a large space, were shut, and no sign of life was visible. The President had crossed the Potomac early in the afternoon, and Mrs. Madison had followed in another direction. The bayonets of the British guard gleamed as they filed down the avenue, and the fulminations from the navy yard saluted them as they passed. Nothing but the prayers and entreaties of the ladies, and the expostulations of the nearest residents, deterred the British General Ross from blowing up the Capitol; but he ordered it to be fired at every point, and many houses near it were consumed. A house hard by, owned by General Washington, was destroyed, which, in justice to human nature be it said, the General regretted. Not so the Admiral, who ordered the troops to fire a volley in the windows of the Capitol, and then entered to plunder. I have, indeed, to this hour (said Mr. Richard Rush, in 1855), the vivid impression upon my eye of columns of flame and smoke ascending throughout the night of the 24th of August from the Capitol, President’s house, and other public edifices, as the whole were on fire, some burning slowly, others with bursts of flame and sparks mounting high up in the dark horizon. This never can be forgotten by me, as I accompanied out of the city, on that memorable night, in 1814, President Madison, Mr. Jones, then Secretary of the Navy, General Mason, of Anacostia Island, Mr. Charles Carroll, of Bellevue, and Mr. Tench Ringgold. If at intervals the dismal sight was lost to our view, we got it again from some hill-top or eminence where we paused to look at it.”

It was among the stories when Congress met near the ruins three weeks afterward, that the Admiral in a strain of coarse levity, mounting the Speaker’s chair, put the question, “Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned?” and when the mock resolution was declared unanimous, it was carried into effect by heaping combustibles under the furniture. The temporary wooden structure, connecting the two wings, readily kindled. Doors, chairs, the library and its contents, in an upper room of the Senate-wing, everything that would take fire, soon disappeared in sheets of flame, illuminating and consternating the environs for thirty miles around, whence the conflagration was visible. Through “the eternal Pennsylvania Avenue,” the Admiral and General led their elated troops, where but a few hours before the flying, scattered Americans, dismayed, ashamed, and disgusted, had wended their sorrowing way. The Capitol behind them was wrapt in its winding robes of flame, and on through the darkness they passed to that other house of the nation.

An aged lady lived in the nearest residence to the Presidential Mansion, and here the ruffianly Cockburn and the quiet, sad General Ross halted and ordered supper, which they ate by the light of the burning buildings. A letter written by Mrs. Madison to her sister at Mount Vernon, gives us an insight into her feelings, at this time of trial and danger.

“Dear Sister:—My husband left me yesterday morning to join General Winder. He inquired anxiously whether I had courage or firmness to remain in the President’s House until his return, on the morrow or succeeding day, and on my assurance that I had no fear but for him and the success of our army, he left me, beseeching me to take care of myself, and of the Cabinet papers, public and private. I have since received two dispatches from him written with a pencil; the last is alarming, because he desires that I should be ready at a moment’s warning to enter my carriage and leave the city; that the enemy seemed stronger than had been reported, and that it might happen that they would reach the city with intention to destroy it. * * * I am accordingly ready; I have pressed as many Cabinet papers into trunks as to fill one carriage; our private property must be sacrificed, as it is impossible to procure wagons for its transportation. I am determined not to go myself, until I see Mr. Madison safe and he can accompany me—as I hear of much hostility toward him. * * * Disaffection stalks around us. * * My friends and acquaintances are all gone, even Colonel C., with his hundred men, who were stationed as a guard in this enclosure. * * French John (a faithful domestic) with his usual activity and resolution, offers to spike the cannon at the gate, and lay a train of powder which would blow up the British, should they enter the house. To the last proposition I positively object, without being able, however, to make him understand why all advantages in war may not be taken.

“Wednesday morning, twelve o’clock.—Since sunrise I have been turning my spy-glass in every direction and watching with unwearied anxiety, hoping to discover the approach of my dear husband and his friends; but, alas! I can descry only groups of military wandering in all directions, as if there was a lack of arms, or of spirit, to fight for their own firesides!

“Three o’clock.—Will you believe it, my sister? we have had a battle or skirmish near Bladensburg, and I am still here within sound of the cannon! Mr. Madison comes not; may God protect him! Two messengers covered with dust come to bid me fly; but I wait for him. * * * At this late hour a wagon has been procured; I have had it filled with the plate and most valuable portable articles belonging to the house; whether it will reach its destination, the Bank of Maryland, or fall into the hands of British soldiery, events must determine. Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas taken out; it is done—and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York for safekeeping. And now, my dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it, by filling up the road I am directed to take. When I shall again write to you, or where I shall be to-morrow, I cannot tell!”

On the removal of the seat of government to Washington, in 1800, a magnificent portrait of General Washington, painted by Stuart partly, and completed by Winstanley, to whom President John Adams’ son-in-law, Colonel Smith, stood for the unfinished limbs and body, hung in the state dining-room. Colonel Washington Parke Custis, of Arlington, a grandson of Mrs. Washington, called at the President’s to save this picture of his illustrious grandfather, in whose house he was reared. Then, as now, it was one of the very few ornaments which adorned the White House, and at the risk of capture Mrs. Madison determined to save it. The servants of the house broke with an axe the heavy gilt frame which protected the inner one of wood, upon which the canvas was stretched, and removed, uninjured, the painting, leaving the broken fragments screwed to the wall, which had held in place the valued relic. Mrs. Madison then left the house, and the portrait was taken by Mr. Baker beyond Georgetown and placed in a secure position.

Half a century later, when the White House was undergoing a renovation, this portrait was sent, with many others subsequently added to this solitary painting, to be cleaned and the frame burnished. The artist found on examination that the canvas had never been cut, since the rusted tacks, time-worn frame, and the size compared with the original picture, was the most conclusive evidence that Mrs. Madison did not cut it out with a carving-knife, as many traditions have industriously circulated.

The frame was a large one, hanging high on the wall, and it was impossible that a lady could by mounting a table be enabled to reach any but the lower portion; then, too, in that moment of nervous alarm, the constant noise of cannon filling each heart with dread, it seems improbable that any hand, above all a woman’s, could be steady enough to cut, without ruining the canvas.

Again, from the lips of a descendant, the assurance is given that Mrs. Madison repeatedly asserted that she did not cut it, but only lingered to see it safely removed before she stepped into her waiting carriage and was driven rapidly toward Georgetown.

First to the residence of the Secretary of the Navy, then to Belleview, and joined by the family of Mr. Jones and Mr. Carroll, she returned to town insisting that her terrified coachman should take her back toward the President’s house to look for Mr. Madison, whom she unexpectedly found near the lower bridge, attended by Mr. Monroe and Mr. Rush, who had reached the White House soon after she left it and stopped for refreshments.

It has been related that the British found a sumptuous meal smoking on the table when they reached there after dark, and that they enjoyed the iced wines and cold ham, amusing themselves with the coarse assertion that “Jemmy” ran from his bacon “to save his bacon.” The low pun found ears ready to credit and circulate it, but the porter, who died but a few years since, has repeatedly asserted that the occupants of the house had been in such constant fright that but little had been cooked, and no regular meal partaken of that day; that there was always plenty in the larder for any emergency, and a wine-cellar kept well stored, but that after the President’s party had eaten on their arrival, soon after Mrs. Madison’s departure, and given the remnants of their hasty meal to the tired, jaded soldiers of Col. Savol’s regiment, that there was nothing left.

Water was furnished the troops in buckets, and all the wine in the house given them. John Siousa, the French porter, after seeing the President and his attendants off, took the parrot belonging to Mrs. Madison to the residence of Col. Tayloe, and then returned and fastened the house securely and took the keys with him to Philadelphia. All the afternoon, parties of straggling soldiers, on their way to Georgetown, hung about the house and grounds, and vagrant negroes pilfered in spite of the efforts of the servants. Many articles were taken from the house to be secured and returned as some were, but much was never restored. The porter secreted the gold and silver mounted carbines and pistols of the Algerian minister, which are now in the Patent Office, but the revolvers belonging to the Secretary of the Treasury, which the President laid on a table, were stolen.

Gloating with revenge, at the escape of the President and his wife, “whom they wanted to show in England,” the enemy broke open the doors of the White House, and ransacked it from cellar to garret, finding nothing of value, or as objects of curiosity, save a small parcel of the pencil notes received from her husband by Mrs. Madison, while he was with the troops, which she had rolled up together and put in a table drawer. To all the rest of the contents: furniture, wines, provisions, groceries, and family stores, which cost Mr. Madison twelve thousand dollars, together with an excellent library, the torch was applied. Fire was procured at a small beer house opposite the Treasury to light the buildings with, and while the commanders were eating their evening meal at the house of Mrs. Suter, on the corner, the common soldiers, together with the negroes and thieves of all grades, were pillaging the rapidly burning buildings.

The White House was not so large or complete then as now; the East Room, which had served Mrs. Adams for a drying room, was unfurnished and unoccupied, and the front vestibule not then added, which so greatly enhances the interior of the present mansion. The House was plain, unfinished, and totally destitute of ornament, the grounds uninclosed, and materials for building purposes lying scattered about the woods which have since become the ornament of this portion of the city. Nothing but the lateness of the hour, and the storm coming on, saved the War Department. The squadron which was to have co-operated with them, failing to come, filled the officers with timorous fear, and they determined to evacuate the city the next day unless it should arrive in the meantime. For over a week the unhappy citizens of Washington had not slept or pursued the avocations of daily life. Constant rumors and frights had unnerved the stoutest hearts, and families fleeing from a foreign foe rendered the situation of those who could not leave more distressing. Every vehicle had been pressed into service, and valuables scattered over the country for safety. The city contained about eight thousand inhabitants, living at great distances, of whom not more than one-tenth remained in its limits to see the entrance and exit of the British army. Over the Long Bridge, until it was in danger of giving way, through the country into the interior of Maryland and beyond the Georgetown limits, the flying, frightened people wandered, not caring whither or how they went, so that they escaped from their remorseless foes. It was a whole week, said the aged Mrs. Suter (at whose house the intruders demanded supper), of great trouble, no one sleeping at night and the day spent in fright. After the terrors of that sad week and dreadful day, the Capitol and other buildings blazing, the ammunition in the navy yard exploding, a rain set in which in intensity and duration was scarcely ever witnessed, and which continued during the following day. A British narrator states, “that the most tremendous hurricane ever remembered by the oldest inhabitant in the place came on. Of the prodigious force of the wind, it is impossible for you to form any conception. Roofs of houses were torn off by it, and whisked into the air like sheets of paper; while the rain which accompanied it resembled the rushing of a mighty cataract, rather than the dropping of a shower. The darkness was as great as if the sun had long set and the last remains of twilight had come on, occasionally relieved by flashes of vivid lightning streaming through it, which together with the noise of the wind and the thunder, the crash of falling buildings, and the tearing of roofs as they were stripped from the walls, produced the most appalling effect I shall probably ever witness. This lasted for nearly two hours without intermission; during which time many of the houses spared by us were blown down, and thirty of our men, beside several of the inhabitants, buried beneath their ruins. Our column was as completely dispersed as if it had received a total defeat; some of the men flying for shelter behind walls and buildings, and others falling flat upon the ground to prevent themselves from being carried away by the tempest; nay, such was the violence of the wind that two pieces of cannon which stood upon the eminence, were fairly lifted from the ground and borne several yards to the rear.”

This second storm, which was most terrifying to the British, unaccustomed as they were to the grand forests and heavy rains of America, was, if possible, more destructive than the one of the night before. It commenced about one o’clock in the afternoon, and was so awful to the troops that they neglected to fire the post-office, and Congress was thereby saved the necessity of being driven to Georgetown or Philadelphia, when it again met in three weeks. After an occupation of twenty-nine hours, the British withdrew and Washington was evacuated.

Mrs. Madison, after meeting her husband, accompanied him to the banks of the Potomac, where one small boat was kept ready—of the many others all sunk or removed but that one—to transport the President, Mr. Monroe, Mr. Rush, Mr. Mason, and Mr. Carroll to the Virginia shore. The boat was too small to carry all at once, so that several trips were necessary; and as the shades of night set in upon them, they looked like departing spirits leaving the world behind, to be ferried over an inevitable Styx. Bidding them adieu as the last one entered the frail bark, Mrs. Madison returned to her friends at Georgetown, but agreeably to her husband’s orders, she started on to a more secure retreat. The roads were so blocked with wagons that their progress was very slow, and they left their carriages and walked to relieve their anxiety. Crowds of soldiers, panic-stricken, were retracing their steps to the remnant of troops with General Winder. Families, with their conveyances loaded down with household goods, moved slowly forward, amid the tumult, while the coming darkness increased the general alarm. Long after dark, the party accompanying Mrs. Madison reached the residence of Mr. Love, on the Virginia side of the Potomac, where they begged the privilege of remaining all night. There was little need of beds for that agitated band of frightened women, and the night was passed by some in tears; by Mrs. Madison in sitting by an open window, gazing back upon the weird and fantastic flames as they met and lapped in the far distance.

Smothered rumbling noises started the listening ear, as ever and anon some huge edifice or wing of a building fell. The head of the house was away with the troops, and his wife was ill and alone with her servants, but the sudden visit of so many strangers was no check to the hospitality of the hostess. Every sofa and available substitute was brought into requisition, and all rendered comfortable. Sleep was banished from all eyes, even had any been inclined to repose. The clanking, clattering noise of several hundred disorderly cavalrymen around the house kept every one awake, while all felt the desolate weariness of the night to be but a harbinger of the coming day. “What must have been the feelings of the occupants of that house that summer night, we of the present day cannot realize,” writes an eminent historian in 1842; but those who had not “fallen asleep” when the summer of 1862 came upon us, endured similar hours of anguish, which seared their hearts forever. No scene of horror was enacted in or about Washington in that week of excitement that was not repeatedly paralleled in the sad years of our civil war.

Long before day, the sleepless caravan, with Mrs. Madison at the head, started forward to the place appointed for a meeting with Mr. Madison. Consternation was at its uttermost: the whole region filled with frightened people, terrified scouts roaming about and spreading alarm that the enemy were coming from Washington and Alexandria, and that there was safety nowhere. As the day wore on, in which the British were plundering and burning Washington, the storm that sent terror to their superstitious bosoms overtook the tired refugees. But the elemental war, with its bolts of thunder and zigzag lightning penetrating the darkened recesses of the forest, caused no feeling so insupportable as the flying rumor that the negroes were in revolt, and maddened with drink and promised liberty, were roaming in numbers, committing every excess, worse than those at Hampton the year before. As the day gradually drew to a close, the faint and drenched companions of Mrs. Madison reached the appointed place, sixteen miles from Washington. But the President was not there, and here occurred one of those disagreeable scenes that are a disgrace to the name of humanity, and which, be it said to the shame of her sex, are oftener the acts of woman than of man. Crowds of persons from Washington occupied the tavern, and the women declared that the wife of him who had brought war upon the country, should not find shelter with them, its innocent victims. Jaded and exhausted from constant travel and want of sleep, the devoted band about Mrs. Madison waited in the rain, urging the tavern-keeper to give them an apartment until the President should arrive. The furious storm grew louder, the sky, lowering before, was black as night now, and a tornado of tropical fury set in which spread desolation for many miles around. Women who had repeatedly enjoyed the hospitalities of the White House, been admitted with kind cordiality to drawing-rooms and dinings, now vied with the wife of the landlord in denouncing vehemently the inclination of the men present to admit the Presidential party. Embittered by their real and imaginary wrongs, they lost all sense of honor and refinement, and stood in their true colors before the lady who never for one moment forgot the dignity becoming her station. She preferred exposure to the storm to contention; but the escort with her, indignant at the contemptible conduct of the rude persons within, obliged the ungracious occupants to open the doors. The old tavern stood in the midst of an apple orchard laden with ripening fruit, and hardly had the travellers left their carriages when the hurricane dashed the apples, in several instances the entire trees, with fearful strength against the house. Mrs. Madison spread the lunch she had prepared the day before at the White House, and in silence, interrupted only by her inquiries for the welfare of her attendants, they ate their damp food and smothered the intense disgust they felt for families who only the day before they deemed firm friends. The hours dragged slowly on, and the anxious wife looked in vain for her absent husband. Did she, in that hour of grief and humiliation, think of her illustrious predecessors who had endured like her the black ingratitude of the women of her country? Had she forgotten that the ladies of Philadelphia, in 1776, refused Mrs. Washington similar attention, and treated with scorn the wife of the Commander-in-chief, who was using every human endeavor to organize and establish a continental army? Or did it recur to her that a time would come when, like Mrs. Washington, she would again, through the brightening prospects of peace, receive the flattering adulation of those very persons, and the respect and admiration of the more cultivated throughout the land? Did she think of that strong, resolute “Portia” of the Revolution who, in her modest home near the sea, denied and scorned the report that her husband had deserted to the British, yet who patiently submitted to the averted looks, and silent reproaches of those whom she thought her friends, and waited for the storm to blow over, and truth once more to triumph? Philadelphia was a great distance then from the coast of Massachusetts, and mails were brought only at rare intervals, but with her strong faith she trusted in her husband’s honor and felt that it was not betrayed. Time corrected the false rumor, but her heart had been deeply wounded, and it never forgot, if it forgave, the conduct of many who, in her hour of trial, turned against her.

Nervous and impatient, Mrs. Madison waited in her inhospitable quarters for the President’s coming; and as night came on, her mind was relieved by seeing him approaching, accompanied by the friends with whom she left him the night before. He was careworn and hungry, and after devouring the remnants of her scanty meal, sought the repose he so needed. “That uneasy and humiliating repose, not the last of Mr. Madison’s degradations, was, however, the turning point of his fortunes; for while he slept, Ross hastily and clandestinely evacuated Washington, victor and vanquished alike victims of, and fugitives from, imagined perils.” But the terrified citizens knew not that the British were impotent, and dismayed at the non-appearance of their fleet. Every crash of thunder was to them a source of alarm, and its rumblings in the distant clouds the imagined noise of approaching troops. Toward midnight, a courier, breathless from fatigue and excitement, warned the President that the enemy were coming, and he was compelled to pass the rest of that miserable night in a hovel in the distant woods, with the boughs sobbing and sighing their requiem around him, and the last efforts of the storm expending itself in moans, while the wind swept through the tall trees. The atmosphere was cooled by the great and prolonged storm, but all nature seemed to weep from exhaustion, and the stillness of the closing hours of the night were in marked contrast to the roar and din of the preceding twenty-four hours.

Mrs. Madison was warned by her husband to use a disguise, and leaving her carriage and companions, procure another conveyance and fly farther. Attended by a nephew of Judge Duvall, she set out accompanied by one soldier, and at the dawn of day left the inhospitable inn where the most unhappy night of her life had been passed. Her carriage and four horses were left with her friends, and a substitute obtained from a gentleman of Georgetown. Soon tidings reached her that Washington was evacuated, and retracing her steps, she reached, after a weary ride, the Long Bridge, which had been burned at both ends. Here the officer in charge positively refused to let an unknown woman cross in a carriage in his only remaining boat. No alternative was left her but to send for him and explain who she was, when she was driven in her carriage upon the dangerous little raft, which bore her nearer home. Reaching Washington, so disguised that no one knew her, in a strange carriage, she found her former home in ruins, and the noblest buildings reduced to blackened heaps of smoking timber. Desolation met her on every side, and the deserted streets were as quiet as the depths of the forest through which she had passed. Fortunately her sister, Mrs. Cutts, lived in the city, and she repaired there to await Mr. Madison’s return. “The memory of the burning of Washington,” says another, “cannot be obliterated. The subject is inseparable from the great international principles and usages. It never can be thought of by an American, and ought not to be thought of by an enlightened Englishman, but in conjunction with the deplorable and reprehensible scenes it recalls. It was no trophy of war for a great nation. History cannot so record it. Our infant metropolis at that time had the aspect of merely a straggling village, but for the size and beauty of its public buildings. Its scattered population scarcely numbered eight thousand; it had no fortresses or sign of any; not a cannon was mounted.”

Late in the morning, news reached the President at his hiding-place in the hovel, that the enemy were retreating to their shipping—and he, too, turned his steps toward the capital, and found his wife before him. He rented the house called the Octagon, owned by Colonel Tayloe, where his family passed the winter, and where he signed the treaty of peace.

It was situated on the northeast corner of New York Avenue and Eighteenth street. He afterward removed to the northwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Nineteenth street, where he resided until the President’s House was repaired. This house had been previously occupied by the Treasury Department. On F street, in a house between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, now numbered 246, Mr. and Mrs. Madison lived when he was Secretary of State. All three of these residences still remain.

At the last New Year’s Reception held by President Madison, he was dressed in a full suit of cloth of American manufacture, made of the wool of merinoes raised in the United States.

“An old citizen has informed me,” says Mr. Gobright, in his “Men and Things at Washington,” “that the levee of Mr. Madison, in February, 1816, was remembered for years as the most brilliant ever held up to that date in the Executive Mansion. The Justices of the Supreme Court were present in their gowns, at the head of whom was Chief-Justice Marshall. The Peace Commissioners to Ghent—Gallatin, Bayard, Clay and Russell—were in the company. Mr. Adams alone was absent. The levee was additionally brilliant—the heroes of the war of 1812, Major-Generals Brown, Gaines, Scott and Ripley, with their aides, all in full dress, forming an attractive feature. The return of peace had restored the kindest feeling at home and abroad. The Federalists and Democrats of both Houses of Congress, party politicians, citizens and strangers were brought together as friends, to be thankful for the present, and to look forward with delight to the great future. The most notable feature of the evening was the magnificent display of the Diplomatic Corps, prominent in which was Sir Charles Bagot, special ambassador from our late enemy, Great Britain. It was on this occasion that Mr. Bagot made the remark, that Mrs. Madison ‘looked every inch a queen.’ The only incident of a disagreeable character was the coolness toward the French minister (who was very popular with the Republicans) by the Representatives of the Holy Alliance. Mrs. Madison, like Mr. Clay, was very fond of snuff. The lady offered him a pinch from her splendid box, which the gentleman accepted with the grace for which he was distinguished. Mrs. Madison put her hand into her pocket, and pulling out a bandanna handkerchief, said, ‘Mr. Clay, this is for rough work,’ at the same time applying it at the proper place; ‘and this,’ producing a fine lace handkerchief from another pocket, ‘is my polisher.’ She suited the actions to the words, removing from her nose the remaining grains of snuff.”

Mrs. Madison at this time was represented as being a very gay lady, with much rouge on her cheeks, and always appearing in a turban. She was fond of bright colors and the elegances of the toilet; yet she generally wore inexpensive clothing, preserving always the neatness of a Quaker, with the elegance of a lady of taste.

Two plain ladies from the West, passing through Washington, determined to see Mrs. Madison; but as they reached there late at night, and were to leave early next day, they were much puzzled to know how the feat should be performed. Meeting in the street an old gentleman next morning, they timidly approached and asked him to show them the way to the President’s House. Being an old acquaintance of Mrs. Madison, he took pleasure in conducting the strangers to the White House. The President’s family were at breakfast when the party arrived, but Mrs. Madison good-naturedly went in to be seen by the curious old ladies, who were evidently much astonished to find so august a personage in a plain dark dress, with a linen handkerchief pinned about her neck. Her friendly welcome soon put them at ease, and rising to leave, after a visit never to be forgotten, one of them said, “P’rhaps you wouldn’t mind if I jest kissed you, to tell my gals about.” Mrs. Madison, not to be outdone by her guest’s politeness, gracefully saluted each of the delighted old ladies, who adjusted their spectacles, and, with evident admiration, departed.

Mr. Madison was a silent, grave man, whose nature was relieved by a vein of quiet good humor, which in his moments of relaxation gave an inexpressible charm to his presence. A statesman of vast mind and research, he could not always descend to the graceful little accomplishments which were so attractive to many ladies, and hence he was not so universally admired by the fair sex as his charming wife was by the gentlemen; but nothing gave him more pleasant satisfaction than to feel that Mrs. Madison could do credit to both in the drawing-room, and he was willing to be banished to his cabinet.

When Mr. Madison was attending Congress in 1783, he became attached to an interesting and accomplished young lady, daughter of an old friend of Mr. Jefferson, who was a co-signer with him of the Declaration of Independence.^[7] This attachment, which promised at one time the most auspicious result, terminated at last in disappointment. The following extract of a letter addressed to him on the occasion by Mr. Jefferson, is given because of its connection with an event which is never without importance in the life of a man of virtuous sensibilities, and as affording a touching proof of the intimate and fraternal sympathies which united the two friends.