a time, in admitting new States, it was very easy to regard the Ohio River as a sort of dividing line, and to alternately admit a new Free State above it and a new Slave State below it. In this way had successively come in Louisiana (1812), Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819). But when the process reached Maine and Missouri the struggle began. Should slavery extend beyond the Ohio border into the great Louisiana purchase? Again was every aspect of the momentous question debated with ardor, Rufus King leading one side, John Randolph the other, each side invoking the traditions of the fathers, and claiming to secure the safety of the nation. "At our evening parties," says John Quincy Adams in his diary, "we hear of nothing but the Missouri question and Mr. King's speeches." The contest was ended by Mr. Clay's great effort of skill, known in history as the Missouri Compromise. The result was to admit both Maine (1820) and Missouri (1821), with a provision thenceforward excluding slavery north of the line of 36° 30', the southern boundary of Missouri. John Randolph called it "a dirty bargain," and christened those Northern men who had formed it "dough-faces"-a word which became thereafter a part of the political slang of the nation Monroe, in a private letter written about this time (Feb. 15, 1820), declared his belief that "the majority of States, of physical force, and eventually of votes in both Houses," would be ultimately "on the side of the non-slave-holding States." As a moderate Virginia slave-holder he recognized this as the probable condition of affairs. On the other hand, John Quincy Adams, strong in antislavery feeling, voted for the compromise, and afterwards expressed some misgivings about it. He held it to be all that could have been effected under the Constitution, and he shrank from risking the safety of the Union. "If the Union must be dissolved," he said, "the slavery question is precisely the question upon which it ought to break. For the present, however, this contest is laid to sleep." And it slept for many years. During two sessions of Congress the Missouri question troubled the newly found quiet of the nation, but it did not make so much as a ripple on the surface of the President's popularity. In 1820 the re-election of Monroe would have been absolutely unanimous had not one dissatisfied elector given his vote for John Quincy Adams, the tradition being that this man did not wish any other President to rival Washington in unanimity of choice. The Vice-president, Daniel D. Tompkins, was re-elected with less complete cordiality, there being fourteen votes against him in the Electoral College. Then followed the second administration of Monroe, to which was given, perhaps by the President himself, a name which has secured for the whole period a kind of peaceful eminence. It was probably fixed and made permanent by two lines in Halleck's once famous poem of "Alnwick Castle," evidently written during the poet's residence in England in 1822-23. Speaking of the change from the feudal to the commercial spirit, he says: "Tis what our President,' Monroe, Has called the era of good feeling.' It would seem from this verse that Monroe himself was credited with the authorship of the phrase; but I have been unable to find it in his published speeches or messages, and it is possible that it may be of newspaper origin, and that Halleck, writing in England, may have fathered it on the President himself. This is the more likely because even so mild a flavor of facetiousness as this was foreign to the character of Monroe. Under these soothing influences, at any rate, the nation, and especially its capital city, made some progress in the amenities and refinements of life. It was a period when the social eti quette of Washington City was going through some changes; the population was growing larger, the classes were less distinct, the social duties of high officials more onerous. The diary of John Quincy Adams records cabinet meetings devoted to such momentous questions as who should make the first call, and who should be included in the official visiting lists. Mrs. Monroe, without a cabinet council, made up her own mind to retrench some of those profuse civilities with which her predecessor had fatigued herself. Mrs. Madison, a large, portly, kindly dame, had retired from office equally regretted by the poor of Washington and by its high life; but she had gained this popularity at a severe cost. She had called on all conspicuous strangers; Mrs. Monroe intended to call on nobody. Mrs. Madison had been always ready for visitors when at home; her successor proposed not to receive them except at her regular levees. The exPresidentess had presided at her husband's dinner-parties, and had invited the wives of all the men who were to be guests; Mrs. Monroe stayed away from the dinner-parties, and so the wives were left at home. Add to this that her health was by no means strong, and it is plain that there was great ground for a spasm of unpopularity. She, however, outlived it, re-established her social relations, gave fortnightly receptions, and won much admiration, which she probably deserved. She was by birth a Miss Kortwright, of New York, a niece of General Knox, and when she accompanied her husband on his embassy to Paris she had there been known as "la belle Américaine.' She was pronounced by observers in later life to be "a most regal-looking lady," and her manners were described as "very gracious." At her final levee in the White House "her dress was superb black velvet; neck and arms bare, and beautifully formed; her hair in puffs, and dressed high on the head, and ornamented with white ostrich plumes; around her neck an ele gant pearl necklace." Her two fair daughters-her only children, Mrs. Hay and Mrs. Gouverneur-assisted at this reception. Such was the hostess, but her drawing-rooms, by all contemporary accounts, afforded a curious social medley. The welldefined gentry of the Revolutionary period was disappearing, and the higher average of dress and manners had not begun to show itself that higher average which has since been rapidly developed by the influence of railroads and newspapers, joined with much foreign travel and a great increase in wealth. It was a period when John Randolph was allowed to come to dinner-parties “in a rough, coarse, short hunting coat, with smallclothes and boots, and over his boots a pair of coarse coating leggings, tied with strings around his legs." At Presidential receptions, in the words of an eye-witness, "ambassadors and consuls, members of Congress and officers of the army and navy, greasy boots and silk stockings, Virginia buckskins and Yankee cowhides, all mingled in ill-assorted and fantastic groups." Houses in Washington had become much larger than formerly, and a similar expansion had been seen in the scale of entertainments. It is not uncommon to find records of evening parties, at which five or six hundred persons were present, filling five or six rooms. When John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, gave a reception to the newly arrived hero, General Andrew Jackson, eight rooms were opened, and there were a thousand guests. It was regarded as the finest entertainment. ever given in Washington, and showed, in the opinion of Senator Mills, of Massachusetts, "taste, elegance, and good-sense" on the part of Mrs. Adams. Elsewhere he pronounces her "a very pleasant and agreeable woman," but adds, "the Secretary has no talent to entertain a mixed company, either by conversation or manners." Other agreeable houses were that of Mr. Bagot, the British Minister, whose wife was a niece of the Duke of Wellington, and that of M. Hyde de Neuville, the French Minister, each house being opened for a weekly reception, whereas the receptions at the White House took place but once a fortnight. At these entertainments they had music, cards, and dancing-country-dances, cotillions, with an occasional Scotch reel. It was noticed with some surprise that even New England ladies would accept the hospitalities of Madame de Neuville on Saturday evenings, and would dance on what they had been educated to regard as holy time. Among the most conspicuous of these ladies was Mrs. Jonathan Russell, of Boston, full of sense and information, but charged with some eccentricities of costume; the reigning belle |