In Dolley and James Madison: An Unlikely Love Story That Saved America, author Rodney K. Smith calls Dolley Madison the “first, first lady.” “She was really the first, first lady to live in Washington, D.C.,” he clarifies. “The first to hold weekly gatherings, the first to have an inaugural ball.” According to Smith, she even served as a sort of first lady to her husband’s predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, who was a widower by the time of his first term. “[Dolley Madison] got him out of many a pickle,” Smith says.

Kirkus Reviews praises Smith for situating Dolley Madison within a larger historical framework: “Smith furnishes a perspicacious political history of the era and its tumult, and he artfully highlights Dolley’s contributions and bravery.”

Smith is a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence and the director of the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. An academic whose expertise is law and history, Smith is also committed to increasing constitutional literacy among younger generations. His concern for the state of civility in politics led him to write a book about the Madisons, historical exemplars of courtesy. “How I wish we had a Dolley and James,” he says of today’s political scene. “They believed in the rights and respect of others. I don’t mean they tolerated [them], I mean they respected the rights of others.” 

According to Smith, the couple’s view of difference set them apart. “One of the things that made James fit so well with Dolley was he really believed he could learn from other people,” the author says. “He relished differences. They were important to him.”

Smith is all too familiar with a current complaint: “We bemoan the loss of civility.” In the story of the Madisons’ marriage, he sees an opportunity to learn from history. “It’s just a story that needs to be told in our day.” 

This is Smith’s second book about the Madisons, though the previous book, James Madison: The Father of Religious Liberty, focused primarily on the former president. While writing it, Smith realized there was too much he wanted to say about Dolley. “With footnotes it would’ve been 700 pages,” he says. But there was another reason to split the Madison project into two books: “I think when Dolley enters [into the story], you have a whole new book, because you have a whole new Madison.”

Dolley Payne was born in North Carolina in 1768, the third of nine children. The daughter of Quakers, “Dolley was an early beneficiary of a faith built on the general premise of equality for women and all races, as children of God,” writes Smith. Yet Dolley’s father owned slaves, a fact that troubled his conscience. He gradually freed the family slaves—a decision that “influenced Dolley,” writes Smith, “even though she later failed to emancipate the Madison family slaves.”

Unable to work their land sustainably, Dolley’s father moved the family to Philadelphia. Thus began a difficult chapter in Dolley’s life. Her father started a business as a “starch maker and launderer,” but the business failed. When he filed for bankruptcy, he lost his membership in the Quaker congregation.

Dolley’s marriage to John Todd Jr. brought the family a dose of much-needed happiness, as did the birth of two sons. But the marriage ended in tragedy: Todd died of yellow fever, as did their infant son, William. 

When Dolley and James met, she had already endured significant misfortune; he had suffered a painful courtship rejection. In each other they found solace from their difficult pasts. Smith writes of their meeting with vivid empathy, capturing what they would’ve seen in each other. Madison, for instance, might not have seemed like much at first:

Dolley was surely under-impressed by Madison’s physical appearance, although she may have taken note of his ruffled shirt and the general sense of presence that characterizes a famous person. In truth, Madison had his own brand of confidence and a quiet, even penetrating charisma for all who took time to get to know him.

Dolley, on the other hand, was striking:

Though years younger, she had her own definitive sense of presence and capacity to draw to her every eye in any room she graced. She was also mature beyond her years, evidencing her resilience despite the poignance of past sorrows. Madison must have wondered whether he might have hope for happiness with this vivacious and alluring young woman. What is clear is that James Madison, the great lawmaker of the new republic, had met his equal.

Smith identifies an “effervescence that Dolley brought to James’ intellectual life.” In marriage they enriched one another, creating a relationship greater than the sum of its parts. 

Smith aimed to capture this “very interesting couple” and turn their story into a widely readable book. But he also had a very particular audience in mind: “my bright granddaughters.” Everything he does, he does for them, Smith says. He likes to tell them stories, but he also feels a need to answer to them. “In many ways, we’ve left them a poorer world.”

One night, while having dinner with one of his granddaughters, Smith was struck by a comment she made on Lincoln’s views on race. It made him think about how to address the Madisons’ relationship with slavery. Only criticism would suffice. “[I] refuse to apologize for the failure of conscience on the part of the Madisons to free their slaves,” he writes in the book’s introduction, “and am deeply saddened that James never succeeded in his earnest efforts to end the abomination of slavery.”

Smith’s book proposes that both things can be true: A historically great couple can also have shameful blind spots. James Madison, in particular, gets credit for championing liberty—and for failing to enforce those freedoms for everyone. Such ironies help explain history’s looping path, lurching forward with progress, falling back in times of regression. According to Smith, many people misconstrue history as linear; he, however, describes its structure as symphonic, with patterns and cycles. “A sheet of music,” he calls it.

In writing a book about a loving partnership, Smith also drew from a personal trove of source material: his own marriage. Describing his wife, Danielle, he uses two words: “Goodness, kindness.” Smith knows he’s been lucky.

So were the Madisons. “Genuine love of the sort shared by James and Dolley,” he writes, “can be a powerful antidote to the trials that beset us, as individuals, families, and a nation.” 

Walker Rutter-Bowman is a writer and teacher living in Washington, D.C.