A hybrid fellow’s forum with Holly Cowan Shulman, editor of The Dolley Madison Digital Edition from December 7, 2022. Recording available.
Presentation Overview
On September 15, 1794, Dolley Payne Todd married James Madison. She was a Quaker, the widow of a young and successful Philadelphia lawyer who had died in the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793, and the mother of a young son. He was an Anglican and a prosperous Virginia planter, a leading Republican politician in the new government of the United States, and the architect of the Constitution. Seventeen years older than she and still unmarried, he offered her security, a willingness to take on her young son, and the promise of returning to the Virginia plantation world of her youth. Although at first the couple lived in Philadelphia, still the seat of the new government, in 1797 the Madisons removed to Montpelier, the comfortable estate that belonged to James’s parents, located in Orange County in the Piedmont region of Virginia.
With her marriage to James, Dolley became the mistress of a household of enslaved servants in the City of Brotherly Love. With their abandonment of Philadelphia and return to James’ paternal home, Dolley embraced the role of a Virginia slaveowner. This talk will explore the enslaved community at Montpelier into which she moved. Who were those men, women, and children who worked the land and took care of the house in her new home? What can we find out about her relationship to them – and theirs to her? Who was this now slave-owning future First Lady?
About the Speaker: Holly C. Shulman
Shulman recently completed editing The Dolley Madison Digital Edition, the online collection of the letters and papers of Dolley Payne Todd Madison (1768-1849). She is currently working on a new book of essays and documents exploring Madison’s enslaved community, her relationship to these men, women and children, and how this Quaker by birth became a slave owner by choice.
Shulman received her BA from the University of Chicago, her MA from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. Her initial research was devoted to international propaganda and radio warfare during World War II. She has been working on Madison for the past twenty years.
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