But the country’s unofficial Vice President—the man who privately gave orders to, and received privileged information from, the new President’s Cabinet—was Alexander Hamilton. A man who had never been elected to any office in his life.

Standing in the crowd of Philadelphians outside Congress Hall on a chilly March day in 1797, Dolley had watched Jefferson go up to take office as president of the Senate, tall and lanky in a long-tailed blue coat. And she’d smiled a little, remembering him two years earlier, when Jemmy had first brought her to Monticello. Untidy and eccentric-looking in the old clothes he wore while gardening, he strode down the front steps—that was before he’d started tearing the house apart—with his hands held out to greet his old friend. “Jemmy! I do hope you know what you’ve let yourself in for, my dear Mrs. Madison,” he’d added in his soft voice, bowing over her hand. “When you marry a Virginian, you marry his entire family and his friends—”

“—And their horses and dogs and Negroes—” Jemmy added with his dry smile.

“—in season and out, bed and board—”

“My dear Mr. Jefferson,” Dolley drew herself up with an air of assumed haughtiness and a twinkle in her eyes. “I see you mistake me for a Philadelphian. I happen to be a Virginian, born and raised. There is nothing about the feeding and housing of two dozen strangers at five minutes’ notice that I hadn’t mastered before the age of twelve.”

His eyes widened with pleasure. Instantly, it was as if they’d known one another for years. “Really? What county?”

“Hanover, if you please.”

“Good Lord! There are some quite remarkable remains of a Pamunkey Indian village on the banks of—”

“Mrs. Madison,” interposed Jemmy patiently, “please permit me to introduce my friend Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson, my wife. And I warn you, Dolley, that if you encourage Tom with the smallest query about the Indians, or fossil mammoths, or what varieties of alfalfa best grow in these mountains, you shall be kept awake until dawn with the natural history of the entire region.”

Two years after that meeting, moving through the crowd around Congress Hall, Jefferson had looked grave and collected, Dolley thought, and a little grim. The Federalists were strong in the Senate, and feelings were running so high about whether to ally with a domineering Britain or revolutionary France that there had been outbreaks of mob violence.

Even so, she thought, as she watched George Washington cross the State House yard, kingly in black velvet, with stout little gray-clad Mr. Adams bobbing in his wake, she had been aware that she was seeing something that no one in the world had ever seen before: the ruler of a nation quietly handing off power to his successor, then returning home to private life.

“No severed heads—no daggers in the dark—no rioting in the streets,” she murmured to Anna, who stood at her side. “No blood on the steps of the throne—no more fuss, really, than taking over as vestryman of the parish. Flat dull, in fact,” she added with a laugh. “Canst think of another time in history, when the transfer of rulership from one man to another did not involve someone dying?”

At her elbow, the black-clothed widow Sophie Hallam responded with a wintry smile. “We do indeed witness a remarkable event. Yet I’m sure that somewhere, Dolley, someone has died for it.”



Sophie had returned to Philadelphia in time to attend that same Christmas reception of 1796 at which Dolley had first encountered James Callendar. Across the very crowded double-parlor, the black and gray of second mourning had caught Dolley’s eye, striking in a room filled with women determined to show off their best. As she approached, Dolley saw the woman was in conversation with Aaron Burr—who stood several inches shorter—and coming close heard her voice, a wry alto like smoke and honey: “One must allow it’s an effective way to raise money: If your people are too poor to tax, send your army on a looting-expedition across the border into your neighbor’s territory.”