The election that would—it was hoped—peacefully alter the growing strength of the central government into something the States were willing to live with, before the dominance of the one and the independence of the others led again to violence.

Only Jefferson, Jemmy said, had the stature, and the popularity, to draw the votes of both the North and an increasingly angry South. Having avidly read every newspaper she could get her hands on for three years, Dolley had to agree with her husband. The thought of a vicious little scandalmonger like Callendar turning against Jefferson at this stage made her shiver, as if a rat had run across her flesh.



It was in Philadelphia in 1796, Jemmy’s last year in Congress, that Dolley had first encountered James Callendar.

That was the year General Washington—to Martha’s unspeakable relief—had announced that he would not seek a third term as President. That he would at last go home to Mount Vernon to stay.

It was the year that the new nation had held its first true election, between candidates who held radically different opinions about how the nation should be governed and with whom it should ally itself.