CHAPTER X

THE GROWTH OF THE NATION

"It is odd enough," wrote Daniel Webster about 1830, "that the consequences of this dispute in the social and fashionable world are producing great political effects and may very probably determine who shall be successor to the present Chief Magistrate." These were ominous words; and they show, as nothing could better show, the power into which had come that which is generically termed "Society." So strong had grown its influence, so firm its hold upon the national _zeitgeist_, that it could, at least by mediate means, even dictate the nomination and consequent election of a specific candidate for the highest honor within the gift of the nation. Powerful indeed had grown the once feeble hands of the American woman.

The dispute to which Webster referred was so famous in its day and productive of such notable results upon the general history of our country that, while its heroine hardly comes within the scope of this work as being a representative American woman, it merits place here. When Andrew Jackson was inaugurated President of the United States he appointed to a seat in his cabinet, with the dignities of Secretary of War, General Eaton, a life-long friend. Unfortunately, General Eaton had married a beautiful and attractive but lowborn woman, Margaret O'Neill by maiden name and the widow of one Timberlake.

Her father had been a tavern-keeper, and it was thought that his daughter had imbibed too liberal notions during her residence under the paternal roof. So, those days being more particular in such matters than others which have succeeded them, Peggy O'Neill, as she was called endearingly or contemptuously, as the speaker happened to be friend or foe, was distinctly _persona non grata_ to the society of the capital. It declined to recognize her as one of its members; Mrs. Calhoun, wife of the vice-president, openly refused to associate with Mrs. Eaton, and Calhoun, on being appealed to, declared himself powerless to interfere, as "the quarrels of women, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, admitted of neither inquiry or explanation." Certain bachelors among the diplomatic corps, on the other hand, were delighted to honor the fair Peggy, and the affair soon developed from a skirmish into a war. The climax was reached when Mrs. Huygens, wife of the minister from Holland, on finding herself placed next to Mrs. Eaton at dinner, turned and swept from the room on the arm of her husband.

President Jackson, always combative, entered into the affair with his usual zest. He was within an ace of demanding Huygens's recall for the affront put upon Mrs. Eaton; and, though he did not carry his enthusiasm quite thus far, he espoused the cause of the lady with most militant zeal. The contest continued to rage; the cabinet was styled the "Petticoat Cabinet," and Mrs. Eaton was far-famed as Bellona, the Goddess of War. There was no surrender on either side; and at last came the state of affairs which Webster had prophetically foretold. For Mr. Van Buren, always a staunch supporter of Jackson in all ways, had warmly adopted the cause of Mrs. Eaton as his own. This lost him the position of minister to England, since Congress, with Calhoun as chairman casting the deciding vote, refused to ratify the nomination; but it gained him the presidency,--which was the fulfilment of Webster's prophecy,--as Jackson practically had the power to appoint his successor, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Van Buren's countenance and aid in the social war influenced him in his choice quite as much as, and probably far more than, the recollection of his secretary's political services to him during his campaign and term of office. So that the forces of the fair Peggy triumphed at last, though she herself gained no victory. Mr. Van Buren appointed General Eaton as Governor of Florida and, later, Minister to the Court of Madrid, and Washington society knew its apple of discord no more.

There may have been instances before this time, there certainly have been many since, when the decision of our chief legislature was influenced by the charms of a woman; but the case of Peggy O'Neill and Martin Van Buren stands as the unique instance of the selection of the president of the United States resulting from a purely feminine cause. Not only is the incident thus singular, but it is equally suggestive; it speaks trumpet-tongued of the power which had by that time been won by the social element at the national court and it illustrates the changes which had come into American society as exemplified in its highest and most typical circles.

Chronology has been neglected in order to give prominence to an instance so illustrative of the development of the power of society during the period which is now under consideration; but let us return to find the causal influences which led to such result. When the War of 1812 came to its unsatisfactory and indecisive end the city of Washington resumed its sway among social circles, and this time held its sceptre with firmer grasp. Thither flocked most of the aspirants for social fame. Not that in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other growing cities there were not women whose repute was equal to that of most of the individual leaders of Washington society, but that the latter was invested in its mass with a dignity which was wanting in unofficial circles. It was the court society of the country and thus held as representative. It was composed of concentric circles, centring in the White House and thence extending, through the wives and daughters of cabinet officials and foreign ministers, to those who hung upon the outer border and peered wistfully through the crowd for a glimpse of the sacred inner precincts. The war, though marking a period in the history of womanhood in our country, had been but an interlude in the chronicle of society, and the latter had but gathered strength and zest during its period of enforced rest.

In 1825, Mrs. Jackson, the wife of the hero of New Orleans, whose own place in Washington society was at first a little precarious because of some irregularity in her marriage, till the noble character of the woman silenced her detractors,--thus wrote to Mrs. Kingsley of Nashville, giving her first impressions of the capital:

"To tell you of this city, I would not do justice to the subject. The extravagance is in dressing, and running to parties; but I must say they regard the Sabbath, and attend preaching, for there are churches of every denomination and able ministers of the Gospel.... Oh, my dear friend, how shall I get through this bustle? There are not less than from fifty to one hundred persons calling in a day.... Don't be afraid of my giving way to those vain things. The Apostle says, I can do all things in Christ, who strengthened me. The play-actors sent me a letter requesting my countenance to them. No. A ticket to balls and parties. No, not one. Two dinings; several times to drink tea. Indeed, Mr. Jackson encourages me in my course."

It does not seem to have occurred to the simple piety of the writer that attendance at church may have been as much the result of fashion as of religion; but the more charitable view may be the correct one, as those were days of greater devoutness than the present, and even society maintained some of the rigid rules of old Puritan times, The little picture drawn by Mrs. Jackson is suggestive both of the social whirl of the capital and the simple ways of her who but for her untimely death might later have ruled as titular queen of the social circle. Mrs. Jackson was indeed one who might stand as a representative of much that is best in American womanhood of that day or any day. She was domestic and retiring, but by no means illiterate, as she was falsely said to be when the political fight raged high, and she was a woman, as her letters show, of the most exemplary piety and resolution in the right. Had she inhabited the White House as its mistress she might have injected anew into Washington society a tone which was beginning to be less and less dominant as time went on.

It was about the beginning of the period chosen for the subject of this chapter, the period reaching from the close of the War of 1812 to 1850, that American society, as represented in the upper classes of the womanhood of America, began to be conventional according to European standards. There were still, and continued to be, many individuals of note; but there was very little individuality in the mass. In dress, in manners, in customs, and even in thought, there was little to distinguish the American woman of the higher rank from her European sister. The birth of a national aristocracy had done its invariable work, and importation of foreign ideals and ideas had completed that work and given it direction. Certain traits, racial and national, were visible in most of the daughters of America and differentiated them from their European compeers; but they were traits which did not affect society in the mass and which were therefore individual and not social. Domesticity still held sway in the majority of American circles; the American woman was still preeminently the home goddess and the home ruler, and refused to abdicate her crown even at the call of fashion; but it must be acknowledged that she wore that crown less easily and comfortably than in earlier days. There was fast dawning the day of artificiality in the things of existence, the day when the shadow should seem greater than the substance, when the queen of the home should degenerate into the queen of the revel. There was needed some cataclysm to rescue American womanhood from the peril which she was approaching; and it was well for her that that cataclysm came at need, however terrible it may have been in the coming.

Yet even in those days the social world did not represent all that was best in American womanhood or even all that was most noteworthy. Therein alone, it is true, were to be found those whose individuality became famous; but in other fields there labored many American women who were unknown to all but those of their immediate environment, and yet whose work was of national importance. Steadily, even while the butterflies of society danced at rout and revel in the East, the western frontiers were being pushed further and further toward the great ocean that had crept round the feet of Balboa, first of white men to stand upon its shores. Kentucky was no longer "the West"; it had sent a president in Jackson, a great senator in Clay, and it was recognized as a sister state even by the proudest of its eastern fellows. But beyond the Mississippi still stretched a country which was practically a _terra incognita_, and which still awaited reclamation from the rule of the savage and the wild beast. Into this waiting region strode many a determined explorer with axe and rifle, bent on winning a home from the grasp of the wilderness; and with him went his wife to give grace to the home when it should be won and "make the wilderness blossom like a rose." They were survivals, these women, of the primitive type of American womanhood: strong, grave of countenance and bearing, caring little for pleasure or recreation, putting duty before all things in their lives as in their esteem, almost masculine in determination and courage. To their hands the rifle was more familiar than the distaff, for upon them often depended the safety of home and children when their husbands were afield or slain; yet they were feminine in many ways of the best and fitted to become the mothers of a sturdy race of warriors and tillers of the soil.

There is no record of any individual heroines among these women of the pioneers of western civilization, unless it be of purely local limit, nor do we even know much of the story of these women in the mass. We hear no little of the sufferings, privations, and perils of the men who beat back the Indian from his hunting grounds, chased the grizzly bear to his lair in the Rocky Mountains, and turned barren prairie into fruitful field; but of their wives and daughters, who bore the larger share of those privations and suffered more terror in those perils, we are given no record save in the most general terms. Perhaps the chroniclers who tell in terms of admiration of the endurance and courage of the pioneers and forget to mention those of their wives unconsciously pay the latter, and womanhood through them, the greatest of homage, in taking such qualities for granted in women and, hence, too natural to call for record. However this may be, we know, from acquaintance with the general facts, that with the ever-encroaching frontier of our country's western limit of habitation there always advanced the foot of woman, braving all perils in her love for her husband, her children, and her home.

It was the presence of this gallant band, as well as their courage and endurance, which assures us of one of the most predominant traits of the most distinctive American womanhood in those days. That trait is the love of home. It was to seek a home, a habitation and spot of ground that should be their very own, that the pioneer and his wife dared the perils of the wilderness; and in this search the wife was at least as instrumental as the husband. To have a home was the ambition of every American woman of those times; and, if she could not compass this by ordinary methods, she had recourse to extraordinary ones. If she could not find a home among the habitations of her fellows, if her good man could not give to her this one desire of her heart, then she urged her husband forth into the barren fields of the unknown West, where danger and death might await them, but where at least there was promise of the home,--the Mecca of her every wish.

Toward the end of the period included in this chapter there occurred another westward movement which happily is not entirely relative to the story of American womanhood, and yet must receive mention here. The credulous followers of John Smith, the Mormon, as they are conveniently though incorrectly styled in general terminology, driven from their abodes among the more civilized of their race, sought asylum on the shores of the Great Salt Lake and there built a city to be their abiding place for ever. Somewhat later the Mormon creed boldly avowed its adherence to the theory of polygamy, in practice only at first and then in precept as well, and thus revived, even though within narrow limits, one of the oldest and furthest removed conditions that had ever environed womanhood. That such a theory should prove attractive to any woman seems to most of us a thing in itself wonderful, that it did thus prove attractive to many is a matter of history. It is true that the majority of recruits to the harems--the word is as correct as convenient--of the Mormons came from the older countries of the eastern shores of the Atlantic: Sweden sent many women to Salt Lake City, and even England furnished her quota, while the Latin countries, probably because of the prevalence of the Catholic faith in their borders, the influence of that faith being in all ways antagonistic to Mormon theories and arguments, lost but few of their daughters to the Mormon Minotaur. With these accessions to the seraglios of the Utah settlement we are less concerned; but many an American woman, by birth and rearing a child of our own land, turned from her ancient traditions to become the "wife" of a Mormon elder. Those who look upon the Mormon practice of polygamy as immoral are narrow and prejudiced, for morality is always a thing of convention and agreement; but that it was a blot upon our civilization may be admitted without cavil. At one time it became even an actual threat to the best interests of our social structure; it promised to engulf in its Charybdis some of the elements of our society which we could ill spare and to make itself felt as an influence in places where it dared not openly raise its head. Legislation--whether justifiable by the spirit of our commonwealth, or otherwise, is legitimate matter of dispute--at length intervened to banish all fear of Mormon influence and to abolish the practices which were most reprobated, and now Mormonism is shorn of its most distinctive feature and that which lent itself most readily to the cause of proselytism.

However we may condemn the tenets and practices of Mormonism, it must be admitted that the most representative women of the Mormons, in the heyday of Mormon power, were thrifty, industrious, economical, and notable workers. Moreover, though it is generally thought that among the disciples of Joseph Smith--to whose door, however, the practice of polygamy cannot be laid, for that was an addendum to the faith made by Brigham Young--women were held in slight esteem, an idea generally correct as to the mass, there were many instances of Mormon women of influence and power in the councils of the men. The adoption of polygamy as part of the creed was largely the work, if not the inspiration, of a woman who was "sealed" to Brigham Young; and the practice would never have grown to any strength, as it had many opponents among the men, had it not received the approbation and welcome of the women. Its adoption caused more than one schism in the Church of the Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons pompously style themselves, but the schismatics never received the support of more than a few of the women of the "peculiar people," and it may be broadly stated that the revival of polygamy among a civilized people was at least as much the work of women as of men.

Mormonism is doomed as a faith; but its existence will always be felt in national results. Even so limited a movement as this, when it touches matters of descent, must ever leave its traces, and the very breaking-up of such a community will have its effect of disseminating impure sources among the fountains of our nation. In this instance, woman, who has done so much for America, has brought harm to her.

As the eighteenth century approached its middle age, society in America grew more and more distinguished and less and less distinctive. It had long since lost all traces of provincialism; it was a power in itself with its glamor of aristocracy, and it even had its traditions of rank, which were not unrecognized by foreign social powers. In the earliest days of the century, on Christmas Eve, 1803, Elizabeth Patterson, of Baltimore, had been married to Jerome Bonaparte; and, though the marriage was unrecognized by the all powerful Emperor Napoleon and was thus made practically invalid, it was perfectly legitimate and noteworthy. Though Napoleon, because of the exigencies of his peculiar position, forced Jerome to renounce his young bride and marry as became his station, he himself treated Miss Patterson with consideration and even generosity, his liberality to her in the matter of a pension enabling her to make the famous retort, when Jerôme offered to provide for her after his marriage, that she "preferred being sheltered under the wing of an eagle to being suspended from the bill of a goose." She never bore any rancor to Napoleon for his actions toward her, though she strove with all her might to win her rights.

Some fifteen years later the same city of Baltimore, or, more correctly, a place contiguous to that city, now known, from its once residents, as Catonsville, gave to society the four Caton sisters, celebrated at home and abroad by the name, conferred by English admirers, of the "American Graces." They were the granddaughters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and daughters of Richard Caton, and three of them respectively married, in two cases after prior matrimonial alliances, the Marquis of Wellesley, eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington and himself a distinguished Governor-general of India and, later, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; the Marquis of Carmarthen, eldest son and finally successor of the Duke of Leeds; and Baron Stafford. These were "great matches" for the daughters of a provincial town; and it is a little singular that Louisa Caton, who became the sister-in-law of Elizabeth Bonaparte by her first marriage to William Patterson, should afterward become allied to the family of the man, in the Duke of Wellington, who was most instrumental in overthrowing the fortunes of the family to which Miss Patterson had allied herself by her marriage, and Baltimore be thus connected in its traditions with the respective leaders in the most decisive battle the modern world has ever known.

Though America was spared the adoption of the notable extravagances of European fashions, yet everywhere, in every aspect, were to be seen European conditions of society. Even the type of American woman, preserved till now in certain peculiarities of mental attitude, began to fail. There remained many individual representatives of that type, and these among our most aristocratic society; but in the mass it was not observable. To do away with such type, to lose all distinctiveness of racial attitude, was fast becoming the aim of the American society woman. This was well enough when it had to do with graces of bearing and amenities of intercourse; but it lent itself to affectations and follies as well. The wife and the mother were no longer the representative American women; the homely and the home-giving chrysalis had been cast aside, and the lustrous but useless butterfly was spreading its wings for flight. Still a country of homes in its more widely spread conditions, this was not the aspect assumed by America when it was gazed upon by foreign eyes, for these saw first the most prominent rather than the deeper facts. The capital was fast becoming more of social than of political importance, and the wives and daughters of the senators and representatives in Congress assembled at least thought of themselves, even if they were not generally considered, as being of as much importance in the march of the nation as were their husbands and fathers. The vision of the mothers of the republic, as they looked forward upon the path which they hoped to see their daughters tread as following in their own footsteps, had not been brought to pass. Not that there was failure of the best among American womanhood; taking it in the mass, it was pure and high and true. But it was wrongly directed to bring forth its best potencies, at least in its most representative, though fortunately not most characteristic, expressions; it had taken the wrong turning.

This was so only of the expression, not of the nature. American womanhood still stood for all the best of its kind. Removed from the chief temptations offered by Old World conditions, it knew no taint, felt no canker at its heart. Its head was often in the wrong, but its heart never. The importation of European customs and manners, as well as of European fashions, had worked its will upon the outward bearing of the American woman; but European morals, then at a low ebb in all the Latin countries and not too high in England herself, had not yet succeeded in gaining foothold among our women. Moreover, except among the extreme devotees of the fashionable world, domesticity was still the keynote of the life of the American woman. Here is the testimony to this effect born by Fenimore Cooper, a writer whose eyes were never closed to the follies and foibles of his nation and whose pen was rather given to blame than praise:

"Foreigners are apt to say that we children of this western world do not submit to the tender emotions with the same self-abandonment as those who are born nearer to the rising sun; that our hearts are as cold and selfish as our manners; and that we live more for the lower and grovelling passions than for sentiment and the affections. Most sincerely do we wish that every charge which European jealousy and European superciliousness have brought against the American character was as false as this. That the people of this country are more restrained in the exhibition of all their emotions than those across the great waters we believe; but that the last feel the most we shall be very unwilling to allow. Most of all shall we deny that the female form contains hearts more true to all its affections, spirits more devoted to the interests of its earthly head, or an identity of existence more perfect than those with which the American wife clings to her husband. She is literally 'bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.' It is seldom that her wishes cross the limits of the domestic circle, which to her is earth itself and all that it contains which is most desirable. Her husband and children compose her little world, and beyond them and their sympathies it is rare indeed that her truant affections ever wish to stray. A part of this concentration of the American wife's existence in these domestic interests is doubtless owing to the simplicity of American life and the absence of temptation. Still, so devoted is the female heart, so true to its impulses, and so little apt to wander from house-feelings and home-duties, that the imputation to which there is allusion is just that of all others to which the wives of the Republic ought not to be subject."

This is the testimony of a man who knew his people and his time in some ways better than any other American novelist and who did not hesitate to use the cautery when he thought its application desirable. Therefore it is to be regarded as just and accurate, the more so that it contains admission of interior facts concerning which "European jealousy and European superciliousness" could find ground for blame that could not be termed carping. It was of that which is now openly and then secretly termed "the middle class" that Cooper was chiefly speaking, however, though most of his words were applicable to all classes of American society. One may doubt the actuality of the "simplicity of American life" in its more prominent expressions at that time, and the "absence of temptation," in the sense in which our author means the phrase, does not appear, since the conditions which made for such temptation in European society were to be found in that of America; but morals were then under the care of the most efficient guardian which they can know,--public opinion. Indeed, in such matters it was rather the day of prudery in America. The American woman was justly proud of her virtue, was indeed something of a catharist; and she would not tolerate the smallest departure from the rigid code which she set as the unimpeachable law in these matters. If she was extreme in this wise, at least the extremity was carried in the right direction; and American society, whatever its follies, was pure.

Nor were there wanting many of those in high places to fulfil the statements of Cooper concerning the domesticity of the American wife. In 1824, Mrs. Seaton wrote of Mrs. John C. Calhoun: "You could not fail to love and appreciate, as I do, her charming qualities: a devoted mother, a tender wife, industrious, cheerful, intelligent, with the most perfectly equable temper." Mrs. Crawford, wife of the secretary of war during Monroe's administration, openly regretted that her husband had entered public life, since the duties of the position would make inroads upon the domesticity which she valued as the dearest thing in her existence. On the other hand, these simpler tastes among so many of the higher ladies of the land did not produce lack of culture. John Randolph was no lover of women, and no believer in their entrance into the domain of politics. When on one occasion they crowded the floor as well as the gallery of the Senate to hear him pour forth the rich flood of his eloquence, and he was annoyed by some whisper, he suddenly paused in his speech, pointed his long index finger at the gallery, and demanded: "Mr. Speaker, what, pray, are all these women doing here, so out of place in this arena? Sir, they had much better be at home attending to their knitting!" Yet even John Randolph, misogynist as he was, thus wrote in 1833 t Edward Livingstone concerning the latter's acceptance of the position of minister to France: "In Mrs. Livingstone, to whom present my warmest respects, you have a most able coadjutor. _Dowdies_, dowdies won't do for European courts, Paris especially. There and at London the character of the minister's wife is almost as important as his own. It is the very place for her. There she would dazzle and charm, and surely the salons of Paris must have far greater attractions for her than the yahoos of Washington."

The last words show Randolph's estimate of Washington society in the mass; but never was there a more prejudiced or bitterer man than he of Roanoke, and his general verdict must not be implicitly accepted.

In 1836 there occurred at the capital an event which was in itself of note, as being contrary to the theories of the day, and which is yet more noteworthy as the first instance in America of a practice which in our day has become common,--the entrance of a woman into journalism. Mrs. Anne Royall founded a paper in the capital, giving it the somewhat suggestive name of the _Huntress_, and dedicated it chiefly to the promulgation of fashionable news. Thus Mrs. Royall not only became the mother of American women journalists, but absolutely the pioneer of that long line of society reporters who were to become in later days such an accepted and welcomed feature of the social world. The office of the _Huntress_ was on Capitol Hill, and the paper was published every Saturday; it was eagerly welcomed by society, which up to that time had found its doings sadly neglected in the columns of the journals. Finding the innovation received with a warmth which left no doubt of its popularity, it was adopted by Nathaniel Parker Willis in his letters to the New York _Mirror_, and by James Gordon Bennett in his correspondence to the _Courier_; but Mrs. Royall had the honor, if honor it be, of leading the new movement in journalism. Sooth to say, Mrs. Royall was more progressive than talented in such matters; her pen pictures of the chief components of Washington society showed a distressing sameness, the women whom she favored being always described as of great beauty, having faces of the classic oval, their hair raven or golden in hue, and forms that rivalled that of Venus, while the men were "giants of intellect, with penetrating eyes and expansive brows." Nor was she more restrained in her reprobation than in her admiration, or truer to fact; and John Quincy Adams, when he described her as "the virago-errant in enchanted armor," dealt with her to the full as gently as she deserved.

Her paper ran a longer course than might have been expected under the circumstances; and, in 1847, it contained an announcement which is significant both of the pride of sex in the writer and the growth of prominence among American women in certain lines, when in February of that year it announced: "Washington City has been honored with the presence of three of America's most talented authoresses: Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, Mrs. A. L. Phelps, and Mrs. Ann S. Stephens." The fame of the last named of this trio has not survived; but the names of the other two are still known, even if their works are neglected.

The administration of President Harrison brought little addition to the normal gaiety of Washington; but that of President Tyler was in some respects the most brilliant from a social standpoint that the capital had known. Mrs. Tyler's health prevented her from taking the lead in social functions; but her two daughters, Mrs. Lightfoot Jones and Mrs. Semple, admirably filled her place, aided by Mrs. Robert Tyler, the young wife of the president's son. Even a fancy-dress ball was included among the White House entertainments of that time, one being given in honor of the president's little granddaughter, Mary Fairlie Tyler, who appeared thereat as a fairy, with gossamer wings, a diamond star on her brow, and a silver wand in her hand. The ball given at the White House in 1841, in honor of the young Prince de Joinville, was another notable event in the social world. Perhaps a more truly noteworthy function there, however, was the official reception attended by Charles Dickens, who was received by President Tyler and Mrs. Semple, and who afterward spoke in warm terms of the order which was preserved by the concourse of over three thousand people who had been attracted by his fame.

Though there was now no talk of "republican simplicity," there were still some old-fashioned people who were repelled by the ever-increasing dominance of society and social interests at the capital of the nation, and who reprobated the state with which the chief executive and his family held their court. Mrs. Fremont tells us that the second Mrs. Tyler was made the object of much animadversion because "she drove four horses (finer than those of the Russian minister) and because she received seated, her armchair on a slightly raised platform, in a velvet gown with three feathers in her hair;" and certainly, though the number of feathers would seem to have no bearing upon the matter of republicanism, that raised platform is unpleasantly suggestive of the dais of a throne. The first wife of Mr. Tyler died after a residence in the presidential mansion of little more than a year, and her successor in the heart of the president and to the dignities of "the first lady of the land," Miss Julia Gardner, of New York, enjoyed but eight months of official leadership. She was greatly admired for the ease and dignity with which she wore her high honors; but that raised platform suggests that it may not have been ill for some of the still cherished institutions of our country, even in its social aspects, that she was mistress of the White House and its customs no longer than was actually the case.

The last administration during the first half century of the nineteenth of our era, that of President Taylor, was not remarkable for social innovations; but it is noteworthy for the fact that one of the prominent members of the society of the capital was the second Mrs. Jefferson Davis, who, little less than a decade later, was to abandon the sphere of her peaceful influence at Washington to share in the responsibilities of her husband as leader of a cause wholly antagonistic to the interests represented by the capital. The death of President Taylor in July, 1850, cast a gloom over the society of Washington and brings us to another era in the history of American womanhood. Greater gloom was to fall, not only upon Washington, but the whole country; and once more the leaders of society were to be forgotten in the heroines, noted or unnoted, of strife.