Mrs. Presidentess is quite a courtier, desirous, as is natural & proper, of winning favour wherever she can.
—WILLIAM WOODBRIDGE, January 7, 1846
ON TUESDAY, March 4, 1845, the soon-to-be eleventh president of the United States took the oath of office in the pouring rain, in front of a record crowd. First Lady Sarah Childress Polk, dressed in a gray-and-red-striped satin gown, carried an elaborate ivory-handled fan, featuring on one side portraits of the eleven presidents, including James, and on the other a picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was a gift from James. The rain didn’t bother her any more than had that first dangerous trip to Washington. Her homecoming returned her to the center of power.1
When James K. Polk entered office he was only forty-nine years old, the nation’s youngest president. Admirers described him as “a short, slender and pleasant looking gentleman,” with excellent manners. He and Sarah had been married twenty-one years. She was now forty-two, a full eighteen years older than outgoing First Lady Julia Tyler, who the previous year had married a president thirty years her senior.2
Although Sarah was much older than Julia Tyler, she was not particularly old. When she entered the White House, the average age of First Ladies upon inauguration was a full decade older than she was at that time. With thick, curly jet-black hair, excellent posture, and a slim figure suited to the fashions of the day, Sarah Polk struck many in their circle as relatively youthful, perhaps, some intimated, because she was childless. Acquaintances plausibly described her as tall, in part because she carried herself so well, and because James was himself short. But based on her surviving clothes and shoes, she was no taller than five foot two, weighed less than a hundred pounds, and wore a size 3 shoe. “Time has dealt kindly with her charms,” noted one male acquaintance in a private letter. “She dresses with taste….If she is not handsome she is at least very prepossessing and graceful.”3
Compared to the luminous Julia Tyler, very few women could hope to pass as “handsome.” With her pale skin, translucent complexion, and feminine features, Julia personified the 1840s ideal of white female beauty. Sarah’s deep-set eyes, prominent nose, and sallow coloring, by contrast, were decidedly unfashionable. One observer described her as “a little too much the color of ‘refined gold’ in the day time, but lovely at night, in a scarlet cashmere turban trimmed in gold.” If it weren’t for her prominent teeth, one friendly observer suggested, she “would be a very handsome woman.” But if no one (other than James) considered her a great beauty, many admirers thought her beautiful. And almost everyone agreed that she was elegant and personable. One typical commentator described Sarah as “a woman of striking presence, stately and tall, perhaps a little too formal and cold, yet none the less an ornament and example.”4
She returned to a Washington badly in need of her example. It had been nearly two decades since there was a steady spousal presence in the White House. Both Jackson and Van Buren were widowers. William Henry Harrison’s wife declined to accompany her husband to his inauguration, which mattered less than it might have because he died just a month later. John Tyler became the first vice president elevated to office by the death of his predecessor, and was thereafter known as “His Accidency.” Tyler’s first wife, Letitia, was incapacitated by a stroke, and died at age fifty-one just five months into her husband’s presidency. And his second wife, Julia, was as jejune as she was lovely.5
Julia’s eight months as First Lady were not successful. Determined to have what she identified as a “Court interesting in youth and beauty,” she surrounded herself with young women, none as beautiful as she. “Wherever I go they form my train,” she reported proudly. She bought a greyhound, because she thought the Italian dog lent her an air of sophistication. She spent her mornings in bed, and afternoons distracting her husband. “Let your husband work during business hours,” her mother scolded. “Business should take the precedence of caressing.” Directing her daughter’s attention toward the filthy White House, her mother suggested alternative work. “You know how I detest a dirty house. Commence at once to look around and see that all things are orderly and tidy. This will amuse and occupy you.”6
Julia instead made Texas annexation her pet project, promising to secure votes in favor of the bill through ballroom lobbying. She invited at least fifty members of Congress to a reception at the White House, and, once they assembled, regally entered the room, as if “votes might be influenced by awe alone.” On another occasion she passed a note to a male guest at dinner that read “Texas and John Tyler.” But she was a latecomer to politics, and her efforts to win votes were clumsy, further evidence that she was not ultimately a serious person.7
Sarah was nothing if not serious, and experienced enough to blanch at Julia’s awkward political attempts. She was old enough to be Julia’s mother and happy to act her age. In contrast to the lively Julia, who loved parties and dancing, and wore opulent jewelry, Sarah might have seemed a bit dour. Soon after the election, the new First Lady let it be known that she would ban dancing, cards, and hard liquor from the White House. She and James were conspicuously absent from the Tylers’ “Grand Finale,” a going-away ball, where a reported three thousand guests drank cases of champagne, several barrels of wine, and innumerable large bowls of whiskey punch.
Sarah claimed to be unwell, but the Tylers were not alone in taking the absence of the Polks at their last party as a slight. “Imagine,” John scoffed to his wife, “the idea of her being able to follow you.” Newspaper reports did nothing to mend the rift. One admirer wrote “Mrs. President Polk” that he had read that her absence from “the large dancing party at the President’s” was “caused by indisposition.” But he wasn’t fooled. “In an instant a thought flashed through my mind,” that Sarah was not in fact ill, but rather “you have determined to abstain altogether from attending these parties, thus setting an example to the American people, worthy of the high station you occupy.”8
This was precisely her idea. When Sarah invited the muddy guests into her Columbia parlor the day Tennessee learned the result of the 1844 election, she did so with the intention of becoming an entirely new kind of First Lady. And when she forbade the Cincinnati band from playing on their route to Washington, she gave public notice that her administration would diverge from those of the past. She offered her ban on White House frivolity as evidence of her respect for high office. “Why I wouldn’t dance in the President’s house,” she told a company of ladies who inquired. “Would you?” Dancing was “undignified” and “respectful neither to the house nor to the office. How indecorous it would seem for dancing to be going on in one apartment, while in another we were conversing with dignitaries of the republic or ministers of the gospel. This unseemly juxtaposition would be likely to occur at any time, were such amusements permitted.”9
Her ban on dancing in the White House did not prevent Sarah from attending her husband’s inaugural ball at the National Theatre, dressed in an “elegant white brocaded silk” gown. The dress, a souvenir of Commodore Lawrence Kearny’s recent China expedition, provided evidence of America’s growing global reach and power. But she did not dance. And this, too, was intentional. She would set an example to the American people worthy of the high station she occupied.10
As her choice of inaugural gown made clear, Sarah Polk understood the symbolic power of her position in a manner that her predecessors had not. She entered the White House determined to use that power to promote not only her husband’s administration, but also the ideals of the Democratic Party. James’s inaugural speech left no doubt about his allegiance to Andrew Jackson’s principles and policies. He decried the evils of banks, federal spending on national infrastructure, tariffs to support American manufacturing, and governmental interference in state matters. He warned abolitionists against interfering with slavery, and offered a grand vision of territorial expansion that he would bring to fruition during his four years in office. In this Polk was one of a generation of politicians who emulated Andrew Jackson. Men who had fought with or under Jackson later rode on his coattails into high offices across the Southwest, proudly asserting their allegiance to the father of the Democratic Party. Archibald Yell had become governor of Arkansas, Sam Houston the president of the Republic of Texas, Thomas Hart Benton the senior senator from Missouri.
But James most clearly proved his fealty to Old Hickory when he spoke about the newfound power of the common man. “All distinctions of birth or of rank have been abolished,” he claimed, clearly oblivious to the distinctions of birth that enslaved two and a half million African Americans. “All citizens, whether native or adopted, are placed upon terms of precise equality. All are entitled to equal rights and equal protection.” As president, James promised to put the common man first.11
The First Lady delivered no inaugural address, of course, but her actions at the start of her husband’s presidency prove that she was just as committed to Jacksonian principles as her husband. Sarah’s innovation was to demonstrate Jacksonian principles as a woman. She would be anti-elitist, democratic, and thrifty, “easy without familiarity, and dignified without restraint.” This was a fairly radical change from recent precedent. Julia Tyler spoke freely about her “court.” Elizabeth Monroe and Louisa Adams embraced the aristocratic potential of the office. None of these women were particularly religious. But piety was one of Sarah Polk’s defining features. While the common man, and woman, might enjoy dancing, they would never begrudge a First Lady whose moral code was stricter than their own. Soon after Sarah arrived in Washington she joined the First Presbyterian Church, paying twenty-six dollars to rent pew 7 for a year.12
Sarah had no model to guide her on the path to embodying the female virtues of the Democracy. But she nonetheless determined to make “herself popular with all classes,” and thus a worthy partner to Young Hickory. Her attempts to revive the Jackson legacy were not lost on the public. Jackson received significant evangelical support in 1828, and many of those supporters felt cheered by the Polk election. “Gen. Jackson had the honor of having abolished the use of brandy & wine at the President’s levee,” one admirer wrote her, incorrectly. “Now let the wife of another Tennessee President have the honor of abolishing the sinful practice of dancing parties.”13 What better way to prove to the world that James was Jackson’s rightful political heir than to give that legacy female form?
There was a great deal at stake in this presidency, but twenty years in politics had left Sarah Childress Polk singularly prepared for the challenges that awaited her as First Lady. She had mastered the art of the political salon as wife of the Speaker of the House. She knew how receptions and dinners could be used to build political coalitions. As wife of the governor of Tennessee, and communications director through three gubernatorial elections, she learned the importance of “news,” and how to obtain it. Those elections had deepened the personal and political bonds between her and James and taught him the value of her advice. Now was the time to put all those skills to work in support of an agenda that would transform the nation, and the continent.
In order for that to happen, Sarah needed to reestablish her political salon, and with it a space to influence men and policy. She needed to insulate herself from routine social obligations so that she could return to her real work as James’s political partner. She had to insulate her husband from the constant demands of job seekers who plagued every president in an era when average citizens believed they had a right to enter the “people’s house” at will. And she needed to establish a public image as a woman of the people that was in many respects a complete fabrication. Only then could she fulfill both her destiny and the nation’s.
It was a tall order, but Sarah had a plan.
BUT FIRST CAME THE REDECORATING. The “Grand Finale” ball, and all the other balls only slightly less grand, left their mark on the president’s house. The Tylers vacated a White House in serious disrepair. Particularly in the staterooms, the carpets were worn bare, the wallpaper was filthy, and floorboards were stained by the errant spit of tobacco-chewing guests. When the great British author Charles Dickens visited the Tyler White House in 1842, he was horrified to find “gentlemen…so persevering and energetic” at “spitting” that he could only hope that “the Presidential housemaids” were particularly highly paid. As for the White House furniture, some of it was so badly damaged that a reporter for the New York Herald declared it “a contemptable disgrace to the nation.” He claimed the furniture was so wretched it “would be kicked out of a brothel.” The Tylers bought some new pieces to replace the worst of it, but then took their new furniture with them when they left Washington.14
It would be easy to blame Julia for not listening to her mother, or to blame champagne and whiskey punch. But true responsibility for the sad state of the White House lay with a hostile Congress, which refused to appropriate renovation funds to the “accidental” president, John Tyler, out of pure spite after he proved himself less committed to Whig ideals than either his predecessor Harrison or the Whig-controlled Congress. But after Democrats regained both the presidency and Congress in 1845, legislators happily granted $14,900 toward renovations, an enormous sum at the time. And because, as James liked to say, “Sarah directs all domestic affairs,” here, as in Nashville, decisions regarding renovations were Sarah’s to make alone.15
The new First Lady recognized a public relations opportunity when she saw one, and a chance to evince her Democratic bona fides. Her party was the party of small government, intent on limiting the scope and expense of federal intervention in the economy. Sarah could also economize. She announced that they would use only half of the appropriation Congress granted, and would refurbish only the staterooms. What better way to demonstrate her thrift and good sense? The New York Journal of Commerce reported that upholsterers left the White House “with very reduced expectations” after “the President’s lady” told them that “if the private apartments had been satisfactory to Mrs. Tyler, they would be so to herself.”16
As “new mistress of the White House,” Sarah was lauded for her simplicity and moderation in her renovations, but in fact leaving the White House in its current somewhat dilapidated shape spared her a great deal of tedious work. The Tyler family, who clearly wished they still occupied the executive mansion, declared the Polks “monstrously small people” when they heard the news.17
Another woman would have embraced the opportunity to spend the country’s money on interior decoration, particularly given the financial straits the Polks found themselves in at the start of 1845. The Polks were not rich, and James had again gone into debt during the election. Now they were faced with enormous expenditures. The president’s salary was $25,000 a year. Economists have estimated that a dollar in 1845 is worth $28 today, so the president’s annual salary was equal to $700,000. This would have been a fortune had not the president been responsible for almost all the expenses of the White House. The president paid the staff, he paid for his own meals, and he paid the expenses of guests, even at official dinners.18
The guests were never-ending. One visitor described the Polk White House as “quiet…no young people, and no children.” But there were always Polk or Childress relatives in residence. They stayed for weeks or months at a time, and Sarah made sure they were well fed. “We have the finest peaches, nectarines, grapes, melons and in great abundance,” one guest wrote home. “They grow twice as large here as they do in Tennessee.”19
But the costs incurred by visiting Polk and Childress relatives were insignificant compared to the vast sums the Polk White House devoted to political entertaining. If Sarah’s two years as First Lady of Tennessee had taught her anything, it was the value of her political salon. Early in the Polk presidency, she established a schedule of dinners and receptions that revealed how seriously she took this aspect of her job. By the middle of the second year of the Polk presidency there was a social event almost every night of the week, with the exception of Sundays. “The ‘Presidentess,’ as she is known here,” and her husband “made themselves socially accessible to an incredible degree,” wrote one admirer. They received visitors “without ceremony and without invitation” every Tuesday and Friday evening at events that attracted between twenty and two hundred guests. On Wednesday evenings the Marine Band played on the grounds of the White House, and twice a month Sarah followed those concerts with a large formal reception.20
Sarah received little help from her husband in any of this. She charmed. Visitors described her as “affable, full of conversation, easy in her address, & quite disposed to make others so.” But James’s social skills were limited. And the best that could be said for the president at such events was that he generally “preserved his equanimity, courtesy, and patience.” Given that James “was in the habit of cutting off from his sleep the hours lost” to such entertainment, it was little wonder that he was often cranky at events that frequently carried on until close to midnight.21
Indeed, Sarah’s passion for entertaining tested the stamina of the most extroverted. Less than three months after her teenaged niece Joanna Rucker arrived in Washington, Joanna admitted to a cousin that she stayed upstairs in her room during “a dinner party here last evening…as I have been to so many that I have tired.” A visiting doctor who had the pleasure of spending twenty minutes speaking to Sarah at a Tuesday afternoon “levee” found her “exceedingly affable, and agreeable in her manners, and well calculated to adorn the high station that she fills.” But he felt no need to attend her evening levee a few hours later.22
James hoped that his informal Tuesday and Friday events would spare him the necessity of further entertaining, but Sarah instituted an additional two or three dinners when Congress was in session, with the explicit purpose of “cultivat[ing] congressional support for the administration’s measures.” Mrs. Polk “presided at all state dinners” whether or not James was present, and frequently he was not.23
Nineteen-year-old Varina Davis, wife of newly elected congressman Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, found that she preferred the events hosted by Sarah. “Polk is an insignificant looking man, I don’t like his manners or anything else,” she wrote her mother after attending a dinner party for “members of Congress and the ladies of their families, numbering between 30 & 40 persons” in January 1846. She was not initially impressed by Sarah, who while “a very handsome woman is too entertaining for my liking—talks too much a la President’s wife, is too anxious to please.” But three months later she attended one of Sarah’s levees and “had quite a long chat” with the First Lady. She noted that no one at the party seemed to want to leave.24
Whether deliberately or by accident, Sarah appeared to make no pretensions to caring about the details of household management. “She said the servants knew their duties, and she did not undertake the needless task of directing them.” But her focus on conversation led to some awkwardness at the table. She once presided over a dinner with no napkins on the table, and failed to notice. On another occasion, dinner guests, including one of James’s most important allies, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, waited far too long to be fed. Benton asked Sarah if he had come at the right time. “Colonel Benton,” she responded, “have you not lived in Washington long enough to know that the cooks fix the hour for dinner?”25
Nor did she particularly care about the food. Not that it was bad; Sarah’s standards were high. Even the most exacting guests declared “her entertainment (for I believe she takes credit to herself, as indeed she has right to do, for whatever of good taste distinguishes her parties;)…elegant as well as luxurious.” The wife of one wealthy southern congressman was flabbergasted by the dinner party she attended at the White House: “We had about fifty courses it seems to me.” Guests at the Polk White House described elaborate multicourse dinners “in the French style” featuring upward of twenty separate dishes and six different wines. Sarah brought her Tennessee cook with her when she came to Washington, but paid a French chef, the son of Jefferson’s chef, eleven dollars a day to cater the dinners. She rarely ate anything herself at these receptions. Nor did James, who preferred foods he was “accustomed to” such as “corn-bread & broiled ham.”26
These formal events were expensive, and even the informal receptions required food and drink. In two weeks in January 1846, the Polk White House ran through five and a half gallons of oysters. And Sarah’s decision to ban hard liquor from the White House turned out to be a costly one. Washington, D.C., had a far more liberal attitude toward intoxicating spirits than did rural or small-town America. Whiskey was remarkably cheap in the 1840s, rum not much more expensive. Punch made from one or the other was ubiquitous at the receptions and parties of earlier administrations. (Dolley Madison won acclaim for her potent “Roman Punch” composed of rum, brandy, sugar, and lemons.) Alcoholic punch was enjoyed by both male and female guests to a degree that would have shocked most Americans.27
Sarah never touched alcohol, but realized that for most people, socializing benefited from lubrication. Wine was not only less intoxicating than whiskey, it was more decorous, and because it was an established complement to fine dining in the European style even in the 1840s, it was nonnegotiable at state dinners. One White House guest described “a rainbow” of wineglasses around each plate at a dinner held for the Supreme Court and members of the House Judiciary Committee, “pink champagne, gold sherry, green hock, madeira, the ruby port, and sauterne.” When James toasted to the health of the guests at the table, she joked about how drunk they already were: “We looked in pretty good [shape] just then.” Even the exceptionally temperate James admitted to raising a glass from time to time.28
Unfortunately, wine was a great deal more expensive than hard liquor. There was no domestic wine production in the 1840s, meaning all of it was imported, and with the exception of the distilled spirit brandy, and fortified wines like Madeira, it spoiled easily. Although the Polks hoped to economize, it would not be on beverages. Sarah never threw a party as elaborate as Julia Tyler’s “Grand Finale” ball, but the Polk White House nonetheless consumed more table wines with dinner, more champagne with dessert, and more after-dinner brandy than did any previous administration, including that of Thomas Jefferson, whose passion for wine was equaled only by his inability to economize on household expenses despite the small size of his frequent dinner parties. The Polks bought table wines by the barrel.29
In an attempt to economize, Sarah cut the White House staff. She let the baker and the chef go, along with a steward who had worked at the White House for twenty years and a handful of other experienced domestic workers. She hired Paul Jennings, a slave who became familiar with White House protocol when he served in the Madison White House, from Dolley Madison, and hired a new white steward as well. She employed at least two of her own slaves, who moved into slave quarters in the White House basement, and contracted with free African Americans, whom she chose herself, to provide additional help when needed. And she made do with less staff by reorganizing their duties. In the process she won praise as an “admirable housekeeper,” a title that may have come as a surprise to a woman who had spent the formative years of her adult life in the orbit of her mother-in-law and in Washington boardinghouses. Bringing “order into the domestic managements” of the White House may have been gratifying, but it was also “a great deal to add to all her other duties.”30
WINNING OVER and maintaining potential allies for James was high on the list of those duties. Within months of the inauguration, Sarah started meeting privately with congressmen when they called at the White House. One of James’s first challenges in office was appeasing the different factions of the Democratic Party with his appointments. Few Democrats were more powerful than John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. Calhoun had served as secretary of state under Tyler, and hoped to continue in that position, at least until his pet project, the annexation of Texas, was consummated.31
But James had no intention of keeping Calhoun in the most powerful office in his cabinet, so he offered him the position of minister to the Court of St. James’s, in London. A disappointed and angry Calhoun declined. Sarah, who had been close friends with Floride Calhoun during the Jackson administration, encouraged John to accept the post, but to no avail. The resentment John Calhoun felt toward James was tempered by his “cordial friendship” with Sarah, and he made sure to call on her before leaving Washington once out of office. Calhoun may not have been happy with James, but thanks to Sarah, he had been at least temporarily appeased.32
Not all of the Democrats James offended during his first months in office were as easy to pacify. Before his inauguration, James made his independence from “any of the cliques” in the Democratic Party abundantly clear by disregarding advice about appointments from Martin Van Buren and other party leaders. “I do not intend, if I can avoid it, that my counsels shall be distracted by the supposed or not conflicting intents of those cliques,” he wrote to his friend Cave Johnson. “I intend to be myself President of the U.S.”33 In the month before inauguration day, he made promises to Thomas Hart Benton and other Democrats regarding Texas annexation that he appeared to have no intention of fulfilling. “He had no confid[a]nts except from calculation and for a purpose,” one contemporary noted. “His secretiveness was large, and few men could better keep their own secrets.” From the perspective of party unity, it was an inauspicious beginning.34
Sarah needed an ally of her own, a woman who understood the challenges of her position and could provide advice on the trials to come. Someone unconnected to any of the cliques James was busy alienating. Someone with social authority of her own. There was only one woman in Washington with these qualifications: Dolley Madison, the doyenne of parlor politics.
Seventy-seven-year-old Dolley Madison was still a fixture in Washington, long after the demise of her husband and the First Party System within which he operated. Madison’s successors in the White House were expected to call on the “Dowager Queen,” as she was known, and they did. Everyone of importance who came to Washington paid their “respects to one whom every body delights to honor.” But almost no one did so as quickly, or as sincerely, as Sarah Polk.35
The Polks called on Madison as soon as they arrived in Washington for James’s inauguration, and let it be known that Dolley had a standing invitation to all cabinet dinners and “entertainments” held at the Polk White House. She was a regular guest as well at presidential outings. Two months after entering office, James and Sarah requested “Mrs. Madison’s company on a visit to Mount Vernon on tomorrow. Will Mrs. M. take a seat in their carriage? The party will consist of half a dozen friends.”36
Even had she been wealthy, instead of nearly destitute after repeatedly paying the debts of a ne’er-do-well son, Dolley Madison would have been unlikely to dismiss the Polks’ hospitality. She became a frequent visitor to the White House, and could depend on James escorting her to the table, in a sign of his particular respect. Previous First Ladies might have been miffed by this arrangement, but Sarah understood the political importance of ceremony, and followed behind them, not the least upset.37
It was certainly good public relations to pay homage to Madison, but the relationship wasn’t only for show. Despite a thirty-five-year age difference, Madison became First Lady Sarah Polk’s closest female companion in Washington. They made a natural team. Dolley was about the same age as Sarah’s mother, and happy to relive her White House glory days. Dolley, like Sarah, had served for a time as her husband’s private secretary, although in Dolley’s case it was long after James Madison left the White House. Sarah found her a valuable and discreet confidante. The two women exchanged small favors: Dolley supplied Sarah with her autograph when a Polk acquaintance expressed interest in a memento from the founding generation, and Sarah was happy to meet friends and relations of Dolley’s who wished an introduction to the current First Lady. Sarah helped relieve Dolley’s financial distress when she hired Paul Jennings, with Jennings’s wages paid directly to Dolley. When Jennings almost immediately thereafter left Washington, D.C., for several weeks without leave, Dolley worried that he would lose his position, and she would lose his wages. But Sarah made no complaint about the absence, or the transaction.38
They exchanged gifts as well. Dolley assured Sarah that her “gratitude for” a “magnificent present” from Sarah was “comeensurate with its size—& my taste.” As soon as Dolley was freed from “an acking head” she would meet her and tell her in person “how highly I estimate the prize from your kindness & how affectionately I am always yours.” Not that Sarah likely needed evidence. Dolley was remarkably affectionate with the younger woman, playfully referring to Sarah in front of other people as “a lover as we all know of the fine Arts & every thing else that is good.” She considered Sarah Polk her “sweet friend.”39
Sarah in turn made her adoration of Madison publicly visible by adopting the older woman’s signature headwear, the turban, and by appearing in public with Madison as frequently as possible. Many of these appearances were charitable in nature. As First Lady, Sarah might not make butter, but it was nonetheless the hope of her constituents that she would “feed the poor and clothe the naked,” as Leonard Jones of Kentucky had suggested. Four months after inauguration day the two First Ladies were scheduled to meet with “many little children,” for which Dolley believed Sarah “entitled to a premium of unlulling breezes for the delight you will occasion.”40
It has been Mrs. Madison’s personal goal for decades to construct a monument blending “stupendousness with elegance, and…of such magnitude and beauty as to be an object of pride to the American people.” Under Madison’s leadership, the nation would honor George Washington with a monument “like him in whose honor it is to be constructed, unparalleled in the world.” But political infighting and debt thwarted the project until Sarah Childress Polk became the monument’s salvation. With the fund-raising abilities of a popular First Lady behind it, the dream of the great marble obelisk to Washington at last found physical form. President Polk laid the monument’s cornerstone in a media event orchestrated by Sarah, designed to link the current president to the father of the country.41
Sarah made Dolley’s Washington Monument a reality, but what Dolley provided Sarah with was far more valuable. Few obligations for the wife of a Washington politician were more time-consuming than that of “calling” on other women. The practice, a bedrock of English upper-class etiquette, prescribed a series of brief visits during which individuals would leave cards engraved with their names at the homes of those they wished to become acquainted with. Those receiving the cards had three options. They could ignore the overture. They could return the visit, and leave their own card, complete with specific times during which they were willing to receive the caller. Or they could make a personal visit, which was never to last more than fifteen minutes or to diverge from a few set topics. The practice of leaving calling cards was designed to separate desirable from undesirable companions.42
In Washington, D.C., calling was a political act. Both women and men established communication, opened up lines of dialogue, and pursed job opportunities through the etiquette of the call. The only person immune from the requirement to return a call was the president.43
His wife, however, was not so lucky. Since no one was more in demand than the president’s lady, or more liable to ruffle feathers by a gaffe, the pressure of making visits and returning calls was intense. Dolley Madison, who called on every new congressman upon his arrival in Washington, regretted that she had instituted the practice. It became, according to one observer, a “torture, which she felt very severely, but from which, having begun the practice, she never found an opportunity of receding.” Louisa Adams described the etiquette of leaving and returning calling cards as a “perpetual slavery to which I seem to be doomed.” She marveled that “all the ladies appear to think that they must visit me about once a week so that I have no sooner got through [making return calls] than I am compelled to begin again.”44
Sarah knew the burdens of Washington etiquette better than most women in her position, and she understood that James could hardly be the independent president he desired without her constant assistance. So she conceived of a radical solution. She would invite teenage nieces to visit for as long as they wished, and leave the work of returning an endless round of social calls to them. Joanna Rucker, Susan Childress Rucker’s daughter and Sarah’s eldest niece, arrived in 1845 and stayed two years. Sister Jane’s daughter Sally Walker kept Joanna company for five months in 1846. Joanna’s sister, Sarah Polk Rucker, took Joanna’s place in the summer of 1848, along with Virginia Hays, the daughter of James’s sister Ophelia. These last two nieces stayed with James and Sarah until the close of the Polk presidential term.45
One historian has suggested that Sarah “seemed to relish…prolonged visits by nieces—doubtless to compensate for the lack of children of her own.” But Sarah had spent two childless decades engrossed in politics, without revealing any need to compensate. Having finally reached the pinnacle of political success, is it likely she would start expressing remorse for the very condition that enabled her to get there? Indeed, Sarah’s closest friends recognized that children were peripheral to her world. John Catron, who Sarah admitted was “well acquainted with my tastes,” said to her that “you are not the one, Madame, to have the charge of a little child; you, who have always been absorbed in political and social affairs.”46
Sarah loved her nieces, lavished them with gifts, and was generally indulgent of their whims. They, in turn, adored her. They shared stories with one another about her. They wrote to her for advice. They asked her to send them things. Aunt Sarah was no doubt the most fabulous, cosmopolitan, powerful woman any of them would ever know. The nieces who had the good fortune to visit her in Washington realized how lucky they were. “Aunt Sarah has just left my room she is fat and well,” Joanna wrote fondly to her grandmother Elizabeth Childress, a year into the Polk presidency. True, Aunt Sarah’s ban on dancing left her niece “more conspicuous than any young lady at a party on account of not dancing, as this is a dancing community.” But Joanna otherwise declared her time in the White House “the happiest of my life….My uncle and Aunt have acted the part of parents and I sometimes fear they have been too indulgent,” she confessed at the close of her almost two-year stay.47
But Sarah also needed them in the White House. She had no time for visiting with ladies. So when women called on her, they were frequently met by “two or three sallow Tennessee nieces.” And it was virtually always Joanna Rucker, or Sally, or Virginia, or Sarah Polk Rucker who returned their visit in Sarah’s stead. “I sometimes get homesick,” Joanna wrote a cousin back in Tennessee in the fall of 1845, “but I have not had much time to remain so long. I am kept busy returning calls as Aunt Sarah never visits.” Oftentimes Joanna spent the entire afternoon returning “visits for the house as well as those made on ourselves.” She left the house at noon and did not expect to get home before dinner.48
While this practice was certainly better than leaving a social debt unpaid, no one believed the First Lady’s niece was her legitimate social surrogate. The ladies of Washington turned to Dolley for vindication. They asked her, “Now Mrs. Madison, we leave it to you; don’t you think so young a lady as Mrs. Polk ought to return visits, and come to see us as she used to do” when James was in Congress? “Did you not return calls and make visits when you were in the White House”? But Dolley’s allegiance to Sarah trumped the rules of etiquette. “Yes, my children, I did,” she told them. “But one parlor would then contain all who came to my receptions….Now there are so many people in the city that is an impossibility to return the calls that are made on the President’s household.”49
SARAH MADE GOOD USE of the time that might have gone to calls as she resumed her accustomed role as James’s unofficial communications director and secretary. Before entering office, James had hired Sister Jane’s twenty-nine-year-old son, Knox Walker, as his personal secretary: Knox held this post for all four years of the presidency. James paid Knox out of his own pocket, clerical help being yet another unreimbursed expense of the presidency. He also paid for the upkeep, including food, for Knox’s wife, Augusta, the two children who moved with them into the White House, and the two additional children Augusta gave birth to while Polk was in office. They were a happy addition to White House family life. Sarah cared enough about the family to make a christening gown, using extraordinarily fine lace, for one of the new babies.50
Knox had a nice hand, but his work ethic left something to be desired, and far too often his absences left James responsible for “having to perform the duties of secretary as well as President.” Sarah’s experience makes clear just how difficult it was to meet James’s standards. The president was tireless, incredibly exacting, and rarely if ever offered thanks. When Knox left town on a “thoughtless & inexcusable” pleasure trip to Annapolis, James vented to his diary. “In truth he is too fond of spending his time in fashionable & light society, and does not give that close & systematic attention to business which is necessary to give himself reputation and high standing in the estimation of the more solid & better part of the community. This I have observed for some months with great regret.”51
So it is not surprising that, as with the Tennessee gubernatorial campaigns, it was Sarah and not Knox whom James preferred to turn to for assistance. When the Polks moved into the White House they set up a shared office in the upstairs oval room, in the family quarters. After the business of the soirees and dinners concluded, they transitioned to the quieter but no less taxing labors of the office. Sarah worked her way through the day’s newspapers, marking the articles James needed to read, while James answered correspondence and reviewed the productions of secretaries, clerks, and diplomats.52
The work, for both of them, was relentless. Andrew Jackson established the precedent of replacing officeholders at the start of a new presidency. The spoils system provided a marvelous way to reward the party faithful, but left a new president inundated with requests for employment. Supplicants appeared at the White House by the dozens, confident that as American citizens they had a right to walk into the White House, the “people’s house,” and ask the people’s president directly for a job. And remarkably enough, most of them were able to do exactly that. During the first months of his presidency, James spent most of the day turning away job seekers.
Sarah ran interference in the best way she could, greeting visitors at the base of the grand staircase, listening to their concerns, and, when possible, informing them that the president was not available. Those who did not appear in person sent plaintive inquiries by mail. They wrote to James, of course, in great numbers. But they also wrote to Sarah. John Grigg, a former chaplain of the navy, came directly to the White House to ask for a job, but after being introduced to Sarah felt it was “too delicate” a matter to ask her for another chaplaincy in front of the other visitors to the White House. So he wrote her to ask in a letter.53
The men who wrote Sarah inevitably excused their appeal on the grounds of shared Christianity. Out-of-work “faithful” Christians with large families claimed that their Democratic beliefs prevented them from gaining employment.54 A fellow Presbyterian involved in building a new church hoped for “the collectorship of Washington City, worth 7 or 800 dollars per Annum” for himself or his son. An employee of the New York customhouse worried about being replaced “felt almost tempted to tear up” his letter to the First Lady, because he was “fearful you might find it intrusive, but remembering that we are bound by the same faith & united in the same communion, I am encouraged to address you.” They were generally wise enough to assert their Democratic bona fides as well. A candidate for washing the White House linens was “a good Democrat, which is the best recommendation any one can possess.”55
Many more letters came from women. Some requested “charity” from Sarah, for a position in “her” sphere. Widowed and deserted women hoped to become seamstresses or dressmakers in order to support themselves. Some wrote simply asking for money. But women wrote in greater numbers for jobs for their husbands, brothers, and sons. They addressed Sarah, in many cases, because they believed that an appeal by a woman was less likely to transcend “female delicacy or discretion” when addressed to the First Lady than to her husband. Mary Houston of Indiana appealed to “those fine feelings which can alone be found in the female heart,” and lobbied for a position for her husband without his knowledge, “because his proud spirit could ill brook” it. It’s unclear if she knew how much Sarah valued her own education when she added that a clerkship would not only repay her husband’s devotion to the Indiana Democratic Party, but also put it in her “power to give an only Daughter the parents best blessing; a good education.”56
Mary Throckmorton addressed the First Lady as “My dear Mrs. Polk,” but seemed to conflate the president and his wife. “I apply to you my dear friend feeling confident our dear President will provide for us,” she wrote. The widowed C. C. came to the White House hoping to secure a naval position for her son. She listened “with much pleasure” to Sarah’s “just and liberal comments upon patronage” and “female influence,” but Sarah turned her away before she could speak to the president in person due to “arrangements necessary to” James’s “comfort and recreation.” Writing directly to Sarah, she asked “too whom can a female go with so much propriety, as to a Wife for interception with her husband”?57
Sylvia Glover of Roxbury, Connecticut, excused her imposition on the grounds of democracy. It was “the freedom which our political institutions give to all” that explained why a “poor cottage girl” felt free to write to the First Lady. Caroline Brewerton dismissed her “overstep” when she wrote Sarah to gain admission to West Point for her son. She recognized that letters of appeal were a “social privilege of friendship,” but argued, rather eloquently, that the president and First Lady were, by virtue of their position, friends of the people. “The characters of the Rulers of our land, and of those closely connected to them, soon become the property of the nation,” she wrote. The public nature of Sarah’s position allowed Caroline Brewerton not only to imagine herself friends with Sarah, but to treat her as such.58
What many of these letters made clear was that Americans were suffering, and they believed the Polks could help them. Although the economy had supposedly fully recovered from the Panic of 1837 by the time James took office, there were a great many men, still out of work, who would be hard pressed to believe it. Sarah’s charitable contributions, including headlining a “Ball for the Benefit of the Poor” at Carusi’s Hall and donating liberally to religious organizations, were widely praised. But the public imagined she might do more, for the nation, but also, perhaps, for individuals.59
HAD SARAH BEEN IGNORANT of the sufferings of women and families before entering office, she could hardly remain so after reading the day’s mail. Few of the letters she received were more moving than the neatly penned three-page appeal from E. Ellicott, of Lewistown, Pennsylvania. Her husband, Lewistown’s postmaster, was a “good man,” a member of the Methodist Church, and a Democrat, but in danger of losing his position to two “warm politicians, with warm adherents,” one of whom was rich, the other without a family to support, and neither of whom “stand high, in point of Christian character.” Her family, by contrast, was large, poor, and totally dependent on income derived from her husband’s position as postmaster. Ellicott clearly had wavered over whether to write Sarah, adding an addendum that “if you are not inclined to favor my suit I pray you…let not this attempt to serve my poor husband be injurious to his interests.” But she also suspected that the “trials and difficulties of a particular nature” she faced entitled her to Sarah’s sympathy, as well as “the sympathy, of every female, that can feel.”
I have had fourteen children—have been nursing thirty years—as I still have a babe a few months old—and I am now forty seven—with a family of nine children still to provide for daily—surely dear lady I may claim your sympathy and friendship. Every woman preserves influence in her own sphere, and as the great God, in his infinite wisdom, has in his providence, located you to your present high station—no doubt it is, that you may have it in your favor to do the most good.
Her husband had no idea she had written to the White House. “He would think it a vain and romantic effort, but lady I am not romantic,” she assured Sarah. “I have seen to much of the sober realities of life to be so.” Like many women, including Jane Walker, E. Ellicott had been blessed with more children than she could handle. But Jane was rich, and E. Ellicott destitute, and that made all the difference. Virtuous, hardworking Americans without “special” connections: these were the people that the Democratic Party claimed to represent and fight for.60
Both the men and the women who wrote to Sarah seemed to assume that she either had the power to employ help herself or that she had “influence” enough over James to secure employment for the virtuous. John Childress, who never underestimated his sister’s power (in 1839 he had suggested that she plant a story in a Democratic paper about a corrupt Whig politician), wrote her requesting a clerkship for a party stalwart from Murfreesboro. He had no doubt that she could procure the position, and wrote that “although it may be considered as [outside] the range of your duties, I think you can without much impropriety interfere in his behalf with the head of some of the Departments, for so small a favor.”61
There’s a good deal of evidence that office seekers were correct about Sarah’s power. James gave Sarah’s cousin Thomas a place in the Mobile customhouse, noting in his letter to Thomas that the appointment was “most gratifying” to Sarah. After Sarah lobbied for a position for the husband of a good friend, James complied, adding in his letter to the lucky recipient that he had “informed Mrs. Polk of the assignment, who is much delighted with it.” Nor was Sarah’s power to influence appointments limited to the president. She wrote Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft to request the appointment of a friend’s son as midshipman. Bancroft made the appointment, and did so, he told her, with “pleasure.”62
DURING THE FIRST YEAR of the Polk presidency, Sarah established a grueling social schedule designed to advance James’s agenda, employed resident nieces and the social authority of Dolley Madison to free herself from the tyranny of social calls, helped James negotiate the demands of office seekers, and successfully sidestepped the labor of properly redecorating the White House in a manner that supported the Democratic values of thrift and simplicity. She faced one final challenge in 1845: establishing a public image as the female incarnation of Jacksonian principles, despite having had an upbringing, education, and marriage that were anything but common.
Late in her life, Sarah Polk claimed never to have known what it was like to go without beautiful things. From her “earliest recollection she had been dressed in silks and satins of delicate texture, in beautiful designs and colors.” Her many years in Washington, where social women were expected to be properly turned out for every occasion, had done nothing to tame her love of shopping. “I imagine you are all getting ready for Congress,” an envious Tennessee relative wrote her. “How many bonnets, dresses, & etc. are made and ordered for Congress”? Another correctly took it “for granted that you like to hear about the fashions, tis said to be a natural failing of our sex.”63
As a representative of the common man, and common woman, Sarah could hardly dress like an aristocrat, though as a First Lady she couldn’t risk being seen as common. In keeping with her Democratic persona, she made sure that her dress was always “simple, chaste and elegant.” Noted a British visitor to the White House, “She has excellent taste in dress, and both in the morning and the evening preserves the subdued but elegant costume which characterizes the Lady.”64 Another described her as “very handsome, very dignified,” and “quietly gracious.”65
But few fashion statements are as exacting as to be always “modest, yet commanding in appearance,” and in walking this line Sarah spent outrageous sums on her clothing.66 She made regular purchases from a variety of merchants, a few for single items, like the $30 black cloth coat ($840 today) she purchased in August 1845, or the two pairs of boots she bought from separate shoemakers in October 1845 (one with cork soles, one without). Other merchants took elaborate orders from Mrs. Polk. Clagett and Company, who billed by the month, provided a regular supply of white kid gloves and new scarves (one described as “silver blonde”). In six months Clagett billed her $122 ($3,416 today). James was also well turned out. Tucker and Sons, tailors, billed him $100 for a black French cloth and doeskin coat, a satin vest, and two $25 beaver hats with cases.
The president’s hats may have been of the finest quality, but both their cost and their magnificence were dwarfed by the extravagant fabric Sarah regularly purchased for her gowns. She loved rich colors: royal blue, emerald green, and claret. She spent $25 for fourteen yards of “changeable” Chinese silk in February 1845, $24 for nineteen yards of less expensive changeable silk, and $22 for fifteen yards of black lace in September 1845. In December 1845 alone, she spent $41 for fifteen yards of velvet, $25 for embroidered silk, $22 on ten yards of plain silk, another $20 for two headdresses, a tassel, a satin scarf, and a very expensive feather ($4.50). That same month she paid her free black maid and seamstress, Teresa, $22 to convert those precious fabrics into dresses and capes with simple, elegant cuts that impressed wealthy and discerning women as “handsome and tastefull.” During a single month, in which the White House heating bill came to less than $6, and the two gallons of oysters they served the day after Christmas cost only $3, Sarah Polk spent $132 (the equivalent of $3,700 today) on her personal wardrobe.67
Her tastes were decidedly European. In the summer of 1847 she spent nearly $450 ($12,600 today) on one order of dresses from Paris, made-to-order extravagances by one of the best-known couturieres of the day, while also keeping Teresa busy making more dresses. News that Sarah had “sent to Paris for your wardrobe” made it all the way back to Tennessee. She ordered hats from the purveyor to the queen of France, and had American diplomats in Europe send her items from Paris, billed to James.68
Monday was shopping day, the day that, as Sarah jokingly referred to it, her “purse” took “the consumption.” She, Teresa, and any young female relatives in residence took a tour of Washington’s fashionable specialty stores, lingering over the cashmere and silks at Pennsylvania Avenue’s Walter Harper & Co. “The Spring fashions are beginning to be the topic with the ladies, and the Avenue is filled with ladies in their new hats and robes,” her niece wrote after one outing. Things Sarah wanted but could not find in Washington, she asked William Corcoran, a Washington banker and art collector who was a close Polk family friend, to buy for her in New York City. “He is very rich,” Sarah’s niece wrote, “has all of Uncle Sam’s money.” A wealthy Polk sister-in-law in New York supplemented Corcoran’s purchases. They were reimbursed for their purchases.69
Sarah’s most obvious fashion concession to Democratic simplicity was her jewelry. In the place of gems, which were considered too ostentatious and aristocratic for the First Lady of the world’s great democracy, Sarah wore cameos and jewelry of coral and paste, “giant stone breastpins,” in the opinion of those with more refined tastes. And she made sure her nieces were adorned likewise. She wound long strings of cut jet around the waist of her dress and around her neck. Julia Tyler loved showing off her “full set of diamonds” in the evening, but was outshone by the wife of the Russian minister, a frequent dinner guest at the Polk White House, who sported “fifty-thousand dollars worth of diamonds…head-dress and necklace and bracelets of immense magnitude.”70
Sarah’s favorite piece of jewelry couldn’t be more different. At public occasions she favored a cameo portrait of her husband. James had the piece made by a New York jeweler for $12. Wearing that cameo allowed Sarah to demonstrate her fidelity to both her husband and to the country he led. Long before the advent of the campaign button, Sarah found the opportunity to make personal decoration a political statement.71
Sarah found other opportunities to promote the values of her party and establish her Democratic credentials. She made a public effort to acknowledge common citizens at the weekly receptions she opened to the public, particularly if they were elderly. On the Fourth of July 1846, she approached an “old man, supported by a long cane, and dressed in humble garb.” After speaking to him with her trademark “kindly sympathy,” she directed that the “venerable visitor should be treated with special respect.” She also requested that the White House gardener stop cutting roses for her because “the public did not have the privilege of plucking the flowers” and “I did not desire this distinction to be made between myself and others.”72
Taken as a whole, Sarah’s attempts to mold both White House entertaining and her public image to conform with the ideals of Jacksonian democracy were remarkably successful. “We have seen few women that have developed more of the genuine republican characteristics of the American lady,” wrote one visitor. “She has her admirers not only in the highest, but in the humblest walks of life. The poor know her for her benevolence; the rich for the plainness of her equipage, the church for her consistency; the unfortunate for her charities.”73
And the public loved her. Admirers sent her oranges from Florida and grapes from the Cape Fear River. An Ohio man wrote the president in order to learn the First Lady’s “Christian” name, “as I have a daughter whom I wish to name after her.” The Nashville Union noted that although politicians differed about the “merit of Mr. Polk’s administration, there can be no difference as respects that of his lady, in her department of the Presidential mansion.” John Catron agreed. “All sides seem to vie in vaunting you,” he wrote a few months after they entered office. “If this keeps on through the four years, [it] will stilt you up to so giddy a height that you may incure more danger in getting down than in climbing up.” Three months after the Polks entered office, “a female in the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island” made the news with a particular form of flattery. She “fancies herself Mrs. James K. Polk. She has erected herself a throne, seated upon which she graciously receives visitors, when assured they do not seek for office.”74
This is not to say that everyone approved of Sarah’s Democratic pretensions, or the elevated tenor of her gatherings. Some in Washington missed the wild entertainments of the Tyler presidency, the rum punches, dancing, and parties that left the White House worse for wear. Less than a year into her retirement, Julia Tyler noted, with ill-disguised pleasure, “I don’t see or hear that Mrs. Polk is making any sensation in Washington.” But Julia and Sarah had very different understandings of sensation. Author Lydia Sigourney, who dined with the Polks at the White House, had a good sense of Sarah’s ambition. “Intelligent, refined, unaffected, affable, courteous, and above all, pious,” she wrote admiringly, “thou art not for the fashions of these times.”75
Sarah’s success creating a unique and appealing public persona was not her only innovation as First Lady. Political salons, whether in Paris or Washington, were defined by elevated conversation between men and women. But increasingly in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, wealthy Anglo-Americans declared that men and women should have space apart after dinner, so that women would not be bothered with cigar smoke, brandy drinking, or the coarse language that might ensue as a result of the cigars and brandy. A safe space for women to gather offered a physical manifestation of the ideal of separate spheres, and in time became one of the hallmarks of Victorian socializing. Sarah was the first to establish such a space for White House dinner guests, in the Red Room. She outfitted it with a “marvelous” piano built expressly for the room. Sarah did not herself play the instrument. She had every intention of taking lessons when she and James first moved to Washington in the 1820s, but given the demands of her social schedule, she never seemed to find the time. Guests said that she liked to invite visitors to gather around the piano and sing Methodist hymns.76
This was highly decorous of the First Lady. But according to at least one report, Sarah was likely to leave her female guests to their own devices and to disappear into the parlor. “Knowing much of political affairs she found pleasure in the society of gentlemen.” And preferring to converse with men, “she was always in the parlor with Mr. Polk.” This was not the only time Sarah Childress Polk would pay homage to female difference while flouting that difference herself. With her political salon and Democratic public persona established, Mrs. Presidentess turned her attention to matters that were better accomplished in the parlor with Mr. Polk than in the room with the piano.77