When all was ready, a detachment of fifty sailors and marines were marched in silence up Pennsylvania Avenue, every man carrying a long pole with a ball of combustible material attached to the top of it. Arrived at the mansion, the balls were lighted, and the poles rested each against a window. At a command from their officer, the pole-bearers struck their windows simultaneously a hard blow, smashing the glass and hurling the fire-balls into the rooms with a single motion; and the little group of lookers-on beheld an outburst of flame from every part of the building at once.
At the Octagon House, where they passed some months after their return to Washington, the Madisons were surrounded by the same friends who had enjoyed the hospitalities of the President’s House before the fire. It was not, however, till they removed to the dwelling at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Nineteenth Street that Mrs. Madison was able to entertain on the scale she desired. The house was one of the most commodious in town, and for any fine function the whole of it was thrown open. This was done on the occasion of the levee of February, 1816, which was universally pronounced the most splendid witnessed in the United States up to that time. The illumination extended from garret to cellar, much of it coming from pine torches held aloft by slaves specially drilled to maintain statuesque attitudes against the walls and at the heads of staircases. Mrs. Madison’s toilet of rose-tinted satin was set off with a girdle, necklace, and bracelets of gold, and a gold-embroidered crown. It may have been this last adornment which suggested to Sir George Bagot, the new British Minister, his comment that “Mrs. Madison looks every inch a queen.” The compliment promptly spread over Washington, where for some time thereafter the President’s wife was constantly referred to as “the Queen.”
This levee was in the nature of a farewell, for on the fourth of the next month President Madison made way for his successor, James Monroe, whose inauguration was the first ever held in the open air. The innovation was due to a quarrel between the two chambers of Congress, which was then occupying its temporary quarters opposite the east grounds of the Capitol. Monroe had arranged to take the oath in the Hall of Representatives; but the Senators found fault with the seats set apart for them, the Representatives were stubborn, and a deadlock seemed imminent, when Monroe suggested as a compromise that a platform be raised in front of the building, and that the ceremony take place there, where all the people could witness it. Thus began what came to be known as “the era of good feeling.”
How class consciousness prevailed in those days is amusingly illustrated by Monroe’s resentment of the foreign conception of Americans. “People in Europe,” he had once said to the French Minister, while Secretary of State under Madison, “suppose us to be merchants occupied exclusively with pepper and ginger. They are much deceived. The immense majority of our citizens do not belong to this class, and are, as much as your Europeans, controlled by principles of honor and dignity. I never knew what trade was; the President was as much a stranger to it as I.” Perhaps it was because he knew so little about trade that he took pains to cultivate its acquaintance as soon as he became President. He made a grand tour of the new West, staying away from Washington more than four months and visiting especially the commercial centers, where he showed himself to the people as much as possible. He invited some criticism by making his tour in the buff-and-blue uniform of the Continental soldiery of forty years before, cocked hat and all; but his friends always contended that this appeal to patriotism vastly increased his popularity and went far to account for his wonderful success in his campaign for reëlection in 1820, when he captured all the electoral votes except one.
The period covered by the last few pages brought to Washington two great men, whose share in shaping the history of the United States was such as to warrant our pausing to take a closer look at them. These were Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. Clay was probably the most popular man in our public life from Washington’s time to Lincoln’s, and his legislative career was unique both in its beginning and in its ending. He came to Washington first to fill a vacancy caused by the death of a Kentucky Senator, and held this position for several months while he was still too young to be eligible under the Constitution, because nobody was disposed to inquire into the years of one who possessed so mature a mind. Both before and after this experience he served in the Kentucky legislature, where, on account of an insult received in debate, he challenged its author and “winged” him in a duel. When the Twelfth Congress was about to meet, with every prospect that John Randolph and his little coterie were going to make trouble in the House, a demand arose for a Speaker who would be able to cope with the turbulent element. Clay had just been elected a Representative, and his prowess as a duelist drew all eyes in his direction. “Harry Clay can keep Randolph in order,” declared his Kentucky neighbors, “and he is the only man who can!” On this ground, then, he was elected Speaker before he had actually taken his seat in the House. He was the first man ever thus honored; and he was, I believe, the only one who ever made two formal farewells to the Senate. The first, preliminary to his resignation in 1842, appears among the classics of American eloquence; but, as he was sent back in 1849, he had the chance, rarely accorded any one except a histrionic star, to bow himself off the stage a second time.
During the years of his greatest activity, every announcement that he was to speak made a gala day at the Capitol. “The gallery was full,” wrote Margaret Bayard Smith of one such occasion, “to a degree that endangered it; even the outer entries were thronged. The gentlemen are grown very gallant and attentive, and, as it was impossible to reach the ladies through the gallery, a new mode was invented for supplying them with oranges, etc. They tied them up in handkerchiefs, to each of which was fixed a note indicating for whom it was designed, and then fastened to a long pole. This was taken on the floor of the house and handed up to the ladies who sat in the front of the gallery. These presentations were frequent and quite amusing, even in the midst of Mr. Clay’s speech. I and the ladies near me divided what was brought with each other, and were as social as if acquainted.”
The orator who could hold his own against such a background of confusion might well take pride in his powers; but the universal testimony was that Clay’s wonderfully modulated voice and magnetic charm of personality triumphed over everything. He was so attractive a man that even Calhoun, with whom he was at swords-drawn in every forensic battle, could not forbear wringing his hand with a “God bless you!” at their final parting in the Senate chamber; and John Randolph, with whom he had clashed repeatedly and whose coat he had punctured in a duel, insisted on being carried to the Capitol, while dying, and laid on a couch where Clay was going to deliver a much-heralded speech. Possibly one of the secrets of Clay’s success in winning people was illustrated in his quarrel with Senator King of Alabama, which began on the Senate floor and led to the passage of a challenge. Friends interfered, and after some days a peace was
Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon