In-Your-Face History

Saturday was a day off at the dig I am currently participating in at James Madison’s Montpelier, in the Piedmont country of Virginia.  Most of the volunteers my first week had either left Friday or early Saturday morning, leaving only myself, my young friend Taylor (who starts at Sweetbriar College near Lynchburg in the fall and was at the dig the same time as me last year), and three of the four resident interns at Arlington house, where we stay.  Taylor’s folks came to take her to lunch, James had lab duty, and Emily and Bobby had a cleaning-blitz to do in preparation for the next batch of volunteers, due Sunday evening.  So I took the opportunity to get out of their hair and do a little motoring in search of History and stuff.  (See ubiquitous photo essay on my Ash Lawn/Highlands visit) 

Stuff

I was, understandably in an early Presidential mood, given where I was staying and what I was doing.  There was always Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, in the hills above Charlottesville; but I have been there twice already.  The first time was when I was 16 on a road trip to Virginia with my parents and younger brother in our fabulous white VW camper bus.  My father being an architect, and my parents being the kind of parents who wanted their kids educated beyond school, a visit to T.J.’s beloved house and estate was de rigeur.  This house tour soon became legendary in my family; almost as famous as the time we were touring an old plantation mansion somewhere in the South where the nice southern lady docent informed us “now, you know, most of the best antebellum houses were built befowa the woawa.”  That still slays us even after years of retelling.  On the Monticello tour, as another nice southern lady docent had finished showing off the gadgets and clever furniture in T.J.’s study, she made the mistake of asking if anyone had any questions. Now, this was the early 1980’s, and the issue of slavery was still touchy in such places, but nonetheless my mother piped up with: “That door there in the corner, doesn’t that lead to the room where Jefferson kept his SLAVE MISTRESS SALLY HEMMINGS?”  (Needless to say, she didn’t actually shout, but it sure seemed that way).  The poor docent blushed a half dozen shades of red, hemmed and hawed, and quickly moved us along, no doubt fulminating to herself about rude busy-body Yankees.  Being 16 at the time, I of course wanted to crawl into old Tom’s clever dumbwaiter and lower myself into the basement where I would be safe from my embarrassing mother.  Looking back on that incident now,however, I feel downright proud – way to lay on some real, in-your-face history, Mom!

Incidentally, last year after I finished up my week’s dig at Montpelier, I made a T.J. pilgrimage: first, a return visit to his serenely beautiful UVa campus in Charlottesville, then to his retirement estate at Poplar Forest, outside of Lynchburg.  (I skipped Monticello last year as my wife and I had spent a day there on our trip out here seven years ago.  Besides the house tour,  we braved an enervating heat wave to take a very well done slave quarters tour.    They had clearly updated their spiel in the intervening 20 years.).  Poplar Forest was a new experience forme, and turned out to be an absolute gem of a house, relatively modest in scope and size and one of the most perfect spaces I have ever been in.  The tour started on the back lawn, where yet another nice southern lady docent pointed out the woodwork on theroof balustrades, the Chinese railings on the upper balcony and the shutterswhich, she informed us, had all originally been done by an enslaved carpenter fromMonticello called John Hemming. And she left that name sitting there and started to lead us across thelawn.  Being my mother’s son, and arude busy-body Yankee, I simply couldn’t just leave it lying there, so I caughtup to her and asked her if this John Hemmings was any relation to Thomas Jefferson’s SLAVE MISTRESS SALLY HEMMINGS?**    My family, the bane of nice southern lady docents everywhere….

(I love docents, by the way, whether they are nice southern ladies, or friendly mid-western gentlemen.  I learn a tremendous amount from them – as you will soon see – and I think they provide a valuable and underappreciated service to tourists across this great nation, many of them on a strictly volunteer basis.  Just want to get that straight.)

All of this is mere lead-up to the fact that this time around I once again decided to give the Monticello docents a break and forego a return visit for the time being.  Instead, having seen both of Jefferson’s houses, and having toured and, indeed, dug in James Madison’s Montpelier estate two years in a row now, I had one more local early President to do, the third and least known Virginia Piedmont President, James Monroe.  

The Nice Southern Gentleman Docent told us about
Monroe's nearly fatal shoulder wound at the Battle
of Trenton.  He didn't mention the finger...

Monroe was from a much more modest, though up-and-coming family, than his two mentors and predecessors Jefferson and Madison.  T.J., eager to create a congenial neighborhood around his estate filled with interesting people (namely, people who would listen appreciatively as he pontificated), encouraged both J.M.'s to buy property and build near Monticello.  Madison demurred, either because he already had his hands full with the sprawling estate he had inherited some 40 miles to the north, or he didn’t want to have to listen to Jefferson pontificating all the time.  Monroe, on the other hand, who was much more the protégé of Jefferson, bought an estate abutting Monticello, called Ash Lawn. There he built a home he called Highlands, which both evoked his Scottish heritage and at the same time distinguished the plantation from land he also bought in the valley below, some of which later became part of the University of Virginia. 

The drive from Montpelier to Ash Lawn/Highlands was simply beautiful.  You can go by blue roads, or even bluer roads; I chose the latter route, partly over gravel roads, through rolling hills and verdant horse country, and still arrived at Monroe’s place in under40 minutes.  There I toured Monroe’s surprisingly modest house, this time with a nice southern gentleman docent, and learned a lot about the least known, ‘Last Founding Father.”  He was the youngest of the FF’s – he had just begun his classes at the College of William and Mary when he interrupted his studies to serve as a young officer in the Continental Army.  He was seriously wounded at the age of 18 at the Battle of Trenton; he almost bled out but by sheer luck was saved by a total anomaly at the time: a surgeon who knew what he was doing.  After all the excitement died down, he went back to the College to finish up with a Law degree.  I also learned that James Monroe held more public offices than any other president then or since.  He served as everything from Governor of Virginia and various other state offices, to US Senator, Ambassador to France and to England and Minister to Spain, and so on.  During the War of 1812, he served President James Madison as both Secretary of State and Secretary of War (the only person to have done so). Like his friends James and Dolly Madison, Monroe’s marriage to Elizabeth Kortwright was a loving and successful life partnership: she was beautiful, smart and vivacious, and, it turns out, courageous;  her only defect was having come from a family that remained Loyalist during the Revolution.  I was fascinated to learn that the two of them were present at Napoleon Bonaparte’s infamous Self-Coronation as Emperor.  This was the very public ceremony in 1804 during which, in the presence of the Pope (who usually officiates at such events), Napoleon placed the crown on his own head, and then crowned his beloved Joséphine as well for good measure.  Talk about in-your-face History.  One wonders what the ardently republican Monroes thought about that particular spectacle.

Napoleon crowning his empress.  Note Pope Pius VII, at far right, uncharacteristically 

at loose ends during a ceremony at which he usually officiates.

James went on to follow Madison as the young nation’s fifth President, and the fourth Virginian to hold that office.*  He served two terms and was such a popular and beloved figure that he was unopposed in his re-election and won all but one electoral vote; if I recall correctly, that one vote was cast against him merely so that he would not eclipse George Washington’s unanimous re-election to a second term. Such was the general prosperity of the times (if you were an adult, white male of property, in particular) and the mellow political climate that the period of James Monroe’s presidency is known as “The Era of Good Feelings.”  Even old G.W. couldn’t boast such an enviable legacy, for, in spite of being the Hero of the Revolutionary War and Father of his Country and all that, he struggled mightily with an intensely fractious cabinet and a deeply divided, even poisonous political atmosphere during his presidency. No wonder he refused a third term….

The nice southern gentleman docent who took us through Mr. Monroe’s house was a very fast talker who primarily seemed intent on making sure we knew precisely which chairs, desks, bookcases, paintings, busts, and so on were actually James’ and Elizabeth’s.  Along the way, he did fit in some good history, I have to admit.  Among other tidbits that I hadn’t known was that, while the Monroe’s were in Paris as Ambassador (and Ambassadress), they were in the thick of the Reign of Terror.  They sprang American citizens from the clutches of the Revolutionary Tribunals – including Thomas Paine – and sent them on their way home, often at the Monroes' expense.  James acted as a sort of 18^th century Raoul Wallenberg, issuing American papers to French friends of America who had fallen afoul of the Jacobins. The most dramatic example of this involves Elizabeth Monroe and the Marquis de Lafayette’s wife, who was languishing in the notorious Plessis Prison awaiting the guillotine, a fate that had just befallen the Marquise's mother and grandmother.  While the Monroes were pondering how best to rescue the doomed woman without overly offending the French revolutionary government, Elizabeth proposed that she simply go to the prison herself and see what she could do.  And, over the protestations of her husband, who quite reasonably considered the mission dangerous in the extreme, she did just that.  La Belle Américaine, as she was known, took the Ambassadorial carriage, drove through the turbulent streets of Paris, walked through the bloodthirsty mob surrounding the prison, announced herself to the no doubt flummoxed jailers, and soon had Adrienne de Lafayette safely installed in their residence.  A few days later, the Marquis’ and Adrienne’s fourteen-year-old son, George-Washington Lafayette, similarly turned up at the Monroe’s doorstep.  James promptly issued the boy American papers under a pseudonym and put him and his tutor on a ship bound for the States and safety and the home of his godfather and namesake. 

La Belle Américaine

Lafayette himself narrowly escaped the guillotine, due in no small part to his honorary American citizenship and the urgent appeals of Monroe.  Americans today forget how important Lafayette was to this country and it’s founding.  As an impetuous young French aristocrat fired up by the ideals of the enlightenment that he had absorbed in the salons of Paris, the Marquis crossed the ocean and presented himself to George Washington in order to offer his services in the cause of Liberty. He served loyally and courageously at the general’s side throughout the War for Independence and became a sort of adoptive son to the childless Washingtons.  If the French role writ large was critical in securing American independence – after all, Louis XVI did help bankroll the Continental Army and sent a French army and navy to help win the Battle of Yorktown – the Marquis de Lafayette himself came to embody that friendship; he also personally won overt he hearts not only of the American soldiers he served with, but of the nation in general.  The genuine affection that we held towards Lafayette was most evident in the reception he received when the outgoing President Monroe invited his old comrade-in-arms to visit in 1824, on the eve of the 50^th anniversary of Independence.  All along the route of his triumphal ‘farewell tour’ he was treated like a rock star, with crowds thronging to pay him tribute and scores of towns and dozens of counties adopting his name, not to mention countless newborn sons christened in his honor.  (Anyone from Fayetteville, Louisiana? Lafayette, New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania/Ohio/Etc?).     

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier,
le Marquis de Lafayette

This part of the story is commonly told, and may even still be taught by the odd History teacher here and there.  But what isn’t so well known – in fact, what I just learned the other day on my third tour of James Madison’s Montpelier – is what the now older and wiser Marquis had to say when he sat down in private with his old comrades Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe.  The gentleman docent who took me and my fellow archaeology dig volunteers through the big house talked to us about how seriously Lafayette took his commitment to the cause of Liberty.  He actually went so far as to buy a plantation in the French West Indies with the intent of providing the enslaved workers with an education, their freedom and a portion of the land.  His plan was thwarted, alas, by events: namely the revolution that almost cost him his head.  Some forty years later, sitting down with three former presidents and fellow former revolutionaries, the Marquis de Lafayette told them a hard truth. What he said to his old friends, essentially, was this: You are virtuous men, founders of a great new nation that I love with all of my heart.  You are men who deserve a legacy of greatness in the annals of History, but that legacy will forever be tarnished if you do not do something about the slaves who cook your meals, make your beds, serve your guests, raise your children, toil in your fields, sweat in your workshops and live and bear children and die in chains on your plantations.

I can’t think of more in-your-face History than that.

_______________

*John Adams of Massachusetts, President number two, was the odd man out; his son, John Quincy Adams became the second non-Virginian and sixth President.  J.Q.A. also followed in his father’s footsteps in becoming only the second one-term president.

** Brother, it turns out.