Montpelier

We returned to Virginia to visit James Madison's home, Montpelier (Mount Pleasant).  The introductory movie gave background on the family as well as the man.  Madison’s ancestor acquired the land via “patent” or what we consider homesteading.  Knowing the land was rich for farming, he built a home and developed it, making it legally his own.  Madison and his eleven siblings were the third generation on land.  Madison was known as the Father of the Constitution and the “Sage of Montpelier.”             

He said, “... a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people, and the benign influence of a responsible government.”

Our first tour was the Enslaved Community Tour.  Our docent told us about both of the extent of slavery and personal stories of individual slaves.  Eleven to twelve million people were forcibly removed from their African land, most taken to South America.  One half million were taken to the new land of America, making sixty percent of the people in the South slaves.  While slavery was ended in the mid-Atlantic states, it continued to thrive in the South where many of our founding father’s lived.

Our docent explained the living and work arrangements for slaves.  Farm slaves built their own shelters near where they worked and worked from “can to can’t” or dawn to dusk.  This was an example of such a home.

 House slaves worked 24/7 but had “nicer” homes so that visitors to the main house would see the prosperity of the owners. 

 Slaves skilled in crafts were hired out to other plantation owners or in town.

Our guide personalized the tour by telling stories of slaves like Billy, who went to Princeton with Madison. While there, Billy observed the freedom of northern blacks and Madison thought it would be dangerous for him to return to Montpelier where he might stir up resentments in the other slaves.  He was sold into indenture and later became a merchant agent.

Paul Jennings was a personal slave to Madison. 

He was with him during the White House years and was promised freedom.  After Madison died, Dolley needed money and, instead, Jennings was sold into indenture and resold at a loss to Senator Daniel Webster who said he had no use for him and freed him with the understanding that Paul would repay the sale price.  Jennings became a clerk, an abolitionist, and his sons fought in Civil War.  He bought house on NW L St in DC.  His great- great- great-grand-daughter, Margaret Jordan, in now on Board of Directors of Montpelier.

We next toured the home built in the Georgian style.  It is about 80% original.  (No photos allowed again).  It was built of one million bricks produced by slaves on the plantation.  The house was a duplex with his parents on one side and he, Dolley, her son and her sister on other. 

Dolley was very social and extremely popular.  She decorated their home to impress visitors and held parties to support her husband and promote his ideas.  Four kitchens prepared five meals a day with a twenty piece place setting at dinner.  Dolley was so popular Charles Pickney, Madison’s opponent for the Presidency said, “I might have had a better chance had I face Mr. Madison alone.”

Unlike Dolley, James was quiet and preferred private conversation.  Among their guests was Lafayette with whom Madison argued about the abolition of slavery. 

Madison is credited with writing the Constitution.  He was the one promoting a representative rather than federalist system.  He went to the Constitutional Convention proposing many ideas that would ultimately be included in the Bill of Rights.  Among his proposals was Freedom of Conscience which to him meant freedom of religion.

Later Madison became a congressman, Secretary of State under Jefferson and then the fourth President.  At the end of his presidency, he and Dolley returned to Virginia where they remodeled the home.

Dolley’s son lost the home due to tobacco and other crop failures as well as his own poor management.  It was sold several times.  The last owner was Marion duPont Scott, a race horse enthusiast.  She bequeathed the home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Twenty-five years after her death Dolley remained so popular her image was on cigar boxes, milk bottles, food and household products.  There is a side room in the Visitors Center with a special display of the many items bearing her image.

James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had plantations in the same part of Virginia.  While the two men were good friends, the docents of the two homes vie in touting which man made the greatest contribution to the country, a contest between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.  As the tours show, both men were remarkable in their efforts to create a new country and both were plagued by an attachment to our most evil of institutions, slavery.