The President's Table: Two Hundred Years of Dining and Diplomacy

By Barry H. Landau

The President's Table offers a sweeping visual history of the American Presidency as seen through Presidential entertaining from George Washington to George W. Bush.

In this lavishly illustrated history of Presidential dining, historian Barry Landau brings the backstory of the American Presidency to life. Interweaving stories of dining and diplomacy, he creates a spellbinding narrative from the early days of provincial entertaining in the capital, through the golden era of sumptuous state banquets, to the modern White House dinners of today.

With more than 300 never before seen illustrations, The President's Table provides an insightful and entertaining look at our dining habits as the nation grew through social and economic change. The book reveals the parallel growth of the United States and its Chief Executives, and the diplomatic and political interests served along with Presidential meals. The President's Table will fascinate anyone with an interest in American history and Presidential politics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9780062043627

Book preview

Part 1

The President’s House

1789–1865

George Washington

through

Abraham Lincoln

1789–1865

SALON SOCIETY TO PEOPLE’S TABLE

AT TIMES IT SEEMED AS IF THE NEW PRESIDENT’S MANSION WOULD NEVER BE BUILT. ITS ORIGINAL CONCEPTION OWED MUCH TO THE STATELY VISION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON AND HIS FAVORITE FEDERALIST ARCHITECT, PIERRE L’ENFANT, WHO HAD TRANSFORMED NEW YORK CITY’S OLD CITY HALL INTO THE NOBLE, NEOCLASSICAL FEDERAL HALL, SEAT OF THE FIRST UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF 1788. L’ENFANT SELECTED A SITE AND LAID OUT AN ENTIRE CITY ALONG THE BORDER SEPARATING MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA, NEAR THE CONFLUENCE OF THE POTOMAC AND ANACOSTIA RIVERS. UNFORTUNATELY THE GRANDIOSE, EXTRAVAGANT PROMISE OF THE NEW FEDERAL DISTRICT WAS IMPRACTICAL GIVEN CONDITIONS IN 1791 AND 1792. IT ALSO RAN COUNTER TO THE IDEALS OF REPUBLICAN SIMPLICITY CHAMPIONED BY SECRETARY OF STATE THOMAS JEFFERSON, WHO WAS GRANTED SUPERVISORY POWERS OVER COMPLETION OF THE NEW PALACE. L’ENFANT HAD A GIFT FOR MAKING ENEMIES. WHEN HE WAS DISMISSED IN EARLY 1792, NOTHING MORE THAN A CELLAR HAD BEEN EXCAVATED ON THE CHOSEN SPOT. A YEAR LATER, JAMES HOBAN, AN IRISH ARCHITECT WHO HAD RECENTLY ESTABLISHED HIMSELF IN THE UNITED STATES, WON THE COMPETITION TO BUILD THE NEW PRESIDENT’S HOUSE. EIGHT MORE YEARS WOULD DRAG BY BEFORE ANY PRESIDENT COULD EVEN CONTEMPLATE MOVING IN.

During the first sixteen months of Washington’s presidency, he and his wife Martha lived in New York City and then Philadelphia when the nation’s capital was moved there. As the new nation’s first President, Washington was intensely concerned with the formal precedents he set at social and official functions. For that reason, he never dined outside his own residence in New York City except perhaps for a meal with Governor George Clinton on the day of Washington’s triumphal arrival. After consultations with top advisors, Washington declared Tuesday his day for levees (receptions), and Thursday his day for dinner with members of Congress. Martha Washington would hold separate receptions on Fridays, while state banquets might happen on any day.

Washington employed Black Sam Fraunces, the West Indian owner of the New York tavern where Washington had bid farewell to his troops, as his steward and head of kitchen. A series of other cooks were hired in the first few years, but none of them quite worked out. Finally, the Washingtons decided to import their black slave Hercules from Mount Vernon to provide some continuity in the kitchen, although periodically they had to ship him back to Virginia to circumvent a recent Pennsylvania law that gave slaves their freedom after six months’ residence. As for the first President’s appetites, he was said to like fish particularly, and have a nostalgic fondness for Pennsylvania Dutch cooking (including Philadelphia pepper pot) from the days of his military campaigns.

Dinner time in the early years of the Republic was usually three or four in the afternoon. The meals were typically composed of three bountiful courses. The first and second featured at least a dozen different dishes brought to the table simultaneously; soup and fish or shellfish were usually included in the first, while game and desserts were part of the second. Tablecloths and glassware were changed between the first and second courses and removed entirely for the third course, which consisted mostly of an assortment of fruits and nuts. The company was almost exclusively men, although Martha Washington sometimes joined them as wife of the host, as did occasionally other women.

Extended silences and often stiff formality were typical of the levees, republican adaptations of similar European ceremonies in which courtiers presented themselves to their aristocratic superiors. In this manner, President Washington would establish himself in front of the fireplace. As officials or diplomats were announced, they took their places in a circular receiving line. The President would approach each man, bow slightly (shaking hands was considered too familiar), make a few remarks, and return to his place of honor. Here he continued standing until an aide signaled. One by one, each man would then approach the President, bow, and leave the room. The central room in the future Presidential residence (today’s Blue Room) is thought to have been given an oval shape so that such circular levees could be more graciously accommodated.

GEORGE WASHINGTON GROUPING|

Two dinner invitations, bookplate, and portrait. The blank invitation in the center dates from the 1790s and was probably created shortly after the capital city was moved to Philadelphia. The invitation at the bottom, presumably for a stag dinner, was sent on a Monday, for a dinner to take place on Thursday. Benjamin Bourne was a four-term Congressman from Rhode Island. Both invitations use a typeface called James II, used for official documents and meant to project a stately hand. Washington’s book plate is simply engraved in Latin with his personal motto, Exitus Acta Probat—the result justifies the deed—with a blind-embossed paneled border. The portrait is from the Presidential collection of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. To this day, the Bureau assigns their highly skilled artists to create portraits of each President.

Social events hosted by Washington’s Vice President and successor, John Adams, were less elaborate than Washington’s. Adams’s Puritan heritage, the plainer cuisine of his native New England, and his lack of fortune and slaves led to meals with fewer and more basic dishes: Indian pudding, mutton, veal, peas, fried oysters, cabbage pudding, and gooseberry fool. Almost all descriptions of more fanciful repasts in Adams’s extensive writings concern meals at which he was a guest, not the host.

Great Seal of the United States and original key to the President’s House. The seal shown is a steel engraving die based on the die of 1782, designed by the Secretary of the Continental Congress, Charles Thomson, and probably cut in Philadelphia by Robert Scot, former engraver for the State of Virginia. The key was formerly the property of Irwin Hood (Ike) Hoover, for many years Chief Usher at the White House.

When they moved to Washington City, a city only so in name, according to Abigail Adams, the Adamses felt obliged to stage several major receptions and offer as much other hospitality as they could—although they received no allowance for doing so, had few servants, and little money. The immense, unfinished mansion lay in the middle of a weed-infested, rubble-strewn expanse of mud and grass. The Presidential couple had to make do with a single service staircase and an outdoor privy. Mrs. Adams hung her laundry in the huge parlor that would eventually become the East Room. Members of Congress arrived in a rainy downpour at the end of November, 1800 for the first congressional reception ever, held in the great entrance hall. Refreshments were prepared and served by John and Esther Briesler, the Adamses’ longtime servants. On January 1, 1801, President Adams held a New Year’s Day reception at the President’s House—inaugurating a tradition that would hold for well over a century. By then, the Federalist Adams had learned the disappointing results of the 1800 election, and knew he would be vacating the castle, as his wife Abigail called it, only four months after moving in.

Early 19th-century invitations to attend Washington’s birthday celebrations. The larger invitation, simply folded, was typical of the period, when imported paper was still very expensive. The invitation to a Military Ball at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Hotel is at bottom. The stylish floral border became common by the 1830s and 1840s, even on such military invitations. Using Washington’s birthday on February 22 as the occasion for a fancy ball was common for many decades after his death.

Thomas Jefferson was the beneficiary of the republican revolution of 1800 that spelled the eventual demise of the Federalists and their pseudo-monarchical pretensions. Although he’d played a major role in the building of the new mansion, which some had already nicknamed the White House, Jefferson was indifferent or even hostile to the grandiosity and design of the building. Although he had dined there with the Adamses, he did not bother to inspect the mansion until after his inauguration. Jefferson himself, a distinguished architect, quickly set about making the changes he felt necessary for the home of a republican President—installing water closets, letting go of Washington’s fancy carriages, and abolishing altogether the formal levee.

Jefferson set up a spacious office in part of what is today’s State Dining Room. The adjacent room, today’s Red Room (used by the Adamses as an eating parlor), became a formal sitting room. Jefferson was the forerunner of a tradition when he used blue upholstery in the oval saloon, today’s Blue Room (but it was Martin Van Buren who later introduced the full blue décor). The heart of Jefferson’s entertaining took place in today’s Green Room, at informal dinner parties for a dozen or so guests. Jefferson used a set of five dumbwaiters—small tables with shelves—from which he and four designated guests could themselves serve the food and wine. In this way no eavesdropping servants could hinder the free flow of conversation. The discussions were convivial, provocative, and all parties, being carefully chosen by Jefferson for each occasion, partook in them. The widower Jefferson relied on these evenings for his social life; except when one of his daughters or the Secretary of State’s wife Dolley Madison was on hand, most were stag affairs. John Adams wrote later: I dined in a large company once or twice a week. Jefferson dined a dozen every day.

JOHN ADAMS GROUPING | The invitation is printed in the small format (3 by 4½ inches) used by Washington in the style of the period, with the details handwritten. The reverse of the invitation is marked President Adams, in pencil, while the accompanying envelope bears the free frank of the President, and the designation of his private secretary. Adams gave several dinner parties in the new President’s mansion in Washington during January of 1801, but since no year is given, this invitation might also be to a dinner at the Philadelphia residence where he lived for the first three and a half years of his term. The dark blue Staffordshire cup plate at bottom depicts an early view of the President’s House in Washington City. The Adams portrait: Lives & Portraits of the Presidents (New York, 1873).

THOMAS JEFFERSON GROUPING | The transferware image on the cup is of Jefferson’s home, Monticello. One of the two dinner invitations bears the date January 24, 1793 and specifies a small party of friends, while the other, a blank invitation, is enclosed in an oval. The first invitation would have been for a dinner in Philadelphia near the end of Jefferson’s term as Washington’s Secretary of State. The Jefferson portrait: Lives & Portraits of the Presidents.

Jefferson, who mistrusted most women, did not regret doing without the ladies, but he could not altogether avoid more formal dinner parties with mixed company. These were held in the large room across from his office, in the mansion’s northwest corner. The presence of servants was again held to a minimum, this time by the use of a series of circular shelves through one wall on which food could be rotated in and out. Washington hostess Margaret Bayard Smith, a guest at these events, characterized Jefferson’s dinners as republican simplicity…united to Epicurean delicacy.

As revolutionary America’s minister to France, Jefferson had traveled extensively in that country and developed a familiarity and fondness for its people and its cuisine—especially the wine and desserts. While he was President, Jefferson took an active part in doing the marketing for dinners, accompanying his French steward Etienne Lemaire to food stalls in Georgetown. The main dishes from one Jeffersonian menu of 1802 were described by Congressman Manasseh Cutler of Massachusetts as consisting of rice soup, round of beef, turkey, mutton, ham, loin of veal, cutlets of mutton, fried eggs, fried beef, and a pie called macaroni, while the desserts included ice cream in a crumbly crust and a pudding white as milk or curd, very porous and light, covered with cream sauce—very fine.

Under President James Madison and his wife Dolley, protocol guidelines for President’s House entertaining were soon institutionalized into an ethos of republican manners. The Madisons had already been the premier couple in Washington society during Jefferson’s reign: their F Street salons offered a more open, mixed-sex gathering place for officials, diplomats, and well-connected Washington families. Tall, buxom, extroverted, and seventeen years younger than the President, Dolley was the fiery center of attention at almost all social gatherings, while her introspective husband stood quietly in a corner, weighing in with a few critical words to his select interlocutors.

Madison’s quiet, subtle intelligence was strengthened by his forthright, capable, and popular wife. In the President’s House, Mrs. Madison continued the secretarial duties she’d already performed for her husband for fifteen years, single-handedly created the role of Executive Mansion hostess, and became a serious political partner as well. Dolley Madison, who has often been called "the first First Lady, extended the social season to include December, and hosted more formal dinners than anyone before or since. At these dinners, she usually steered the conversation herself, liberating her husband to play the understated role that fitted him so well. Like Jefferson, she began to supplement the natural abundance of local game and fish with French sauces and seasonings. At the same time, she invited the wives of leading families to submit recipes for use at the mansion, helping to create the beginnings of an American table."

During Madison’s presidency, Jefferson’s office became the State Dining Room. The parlor to its immediate east (today’s Red Room) was redecorated in sunflower yellow, with sofas and chairs to match, and outfitted with a piano, a guitar, and a portrait of Dolley. It served as the First Lady’s principal receiving room. One room over, the more formal elliptical saloon was redecorated in the Grecian style with cream wallpaper. Together, this three-room suite with its interconnecting doors became the stage for Dolley’s legendary Wednesday night drawing rooms. The regularity and open admissions of the salons made them the most popular social event in town. Crowds of two and three hundred typically populated her weekly Wednesday evening squeezes, giving rise to a new kind of mixed society: one in which officeholders and diplomats of formal rank mixed easily with trades-people and boarding house landladies. On the table in the dining room could be found meats, cakes, syrups, wines, coffee, the special ice cream for which Mrs. Madison was known, and whiskey punch—this latter to attract those politicians who might otherwise spend the evening at a local tavern. To avoid the kind of diplomatic confusion that had plagued Jefferson, Dolley hired the British Ambassador Anthony Merry’s steward, French John Sioussat, to become master of ceremonies at the mansion.

This brilliant social whirlwind went up in flames during the summer of 1814. For more than a decade England and France had been caught up in an ongoing series of Napoleonic wars. Periodically these conflicts wreaked havoc on American trade and shipping. Jefferson had switched sides several times, but toward the end of Madison’s first term, sentiment had been aroused strongly against the British on account of their policy of impressing American sailors and their refusal to recognize neutral shipping. Led by southern Congressmen bent on reasserting American honor, the United States had declared war on England in the summer of 1812. Initially nothing much happened other than a few battles on the Great Lakes and some American forays into Canada. During one of these the Yankees burned the legislative and governor’s houses in York (now Toronto). In August of 1814, the British arrived in the Chesapeake Bay, landed at the mouth of the Patuxent River, and were rumored to be approaching Washington from the south, bent on reprisal.

On the afternoon of August 24, while her husband was off getting a report on the situation, Dolley and the servants prepared the table for a large dinner. By three she received word that British troops had routed the Americans in Bladensburg, Maryland, and were approaching the capital. Dolley, afraid that her husband might fall into the hands of the enemy, had hesitated to leave, but now she had no choice. Insisting first that the portrait of Washington in the State Dining Room be salvaged, she set off by carriage for Georgetown and nearby Maryland. British sailors entered the President’s Mansion later that evening, having first set fire to the Capitol building. While their officers sat down to polish off the feast left behind, the seamen piled up furniture, broke out windows, and scattered oil-soaked balls of rags in all the rooms. The blaze from the burning Capitol and Executive Mansion illuminated the sky for miles around.

DECEMBER 12, 1816 | Acknowledgment of President and Mrs. Madison’s invitation comes from Mr. and Mrs. Stearns, and the envelope in which it was delivered, is addressed simply The President. Paper in the early days of the Republic was scarce and expensive; the Stearnses evidently tore the paper in half to create an envelope, as the two pieces match perfectly. Watermark on the stationery and envelope: Ruse & Turners, 1815.

The British quickly evacuated Washington, but the four and a half months that followed were bitter, lonely ones for the President and Mrs. Madison. Many blamed them for fleeing and allowing the destruction of the two most visible symbols of the young republic. The Madisons moved into temporary quarters at the Octagon House, the former residence of the French Ambassador, and there, in November, Dolley started up her Wednesday evening drawing rooms and formal dinners once again. The spirit was gone, however, and the gatherings were dreary. Many guests sent regrets or failed to show up. Then, in early February of 1815, details arrived of Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British in New Orleans on January 8, and the mood reversed itself into one of celebration. Although a peace treaty had already been signed on Christmas Eve, the Battle of New Orleans had transformed Mr. Madison’s War—derided until then by Federalists as an unnecessary, humiliating folly—into a glorious reaffirmation of American independence.

The victorious conclusion of the war sealed the 1816 election for James Monroe, another Revolutionary War Virginia Republican, and spelled the beginning of the end for the Federalists and their pro-British, secessionist tendencies. Victory also put an end to talk about moving the capital to somewhere beyond the Appalachians—and insured that the President’s House would now be rebuilt.

Nothing but a shell of the old building remained. Nonetheless, the reconstruction presented to Congress emphasized the renewal aspects of the project rather than the extensive demolition that was in fact largely undertaken. President Monroe urged the utmost speed in completing the work. In a heady but transitory era of good feelings, Monroe had been elected by a nearly unanimous electoral vote. He wanted the mansion ready, as a symbol of Presidential power and national unity. To ratchet up the deadline pressure, Monroe announced that he would not even settle in the capital until he could move into the rebuilt residence, setting October of 1817 as the deadline. Corners were cut during the accelerated reconstruction. These shortcuts created structural weaknesses that would force another complete interior rebuilding more than a century later.

The Monroes did move into the Executive Mansion during October of 1817, and on New Year’s Day, 1818, they held the first public reception in the Executive Mansion since the burning. In truth, however, the interior rebuilding was not finished. Whenever the house had to be used for social occasions during the next two years, screens and makeshift stage scenery was employed to cover up the ongoing renovation work.

The Monroes had played an important diplomatic role in France during Washington’s administration. The taste in furniture, decoration, clothes, and dining that they brought to the refurbished Executive Mansion was thoroughly French (although Elizabeth Monroe claimed that she took her recipe for oyster loaves—a prototypically early–19th century American dish—directly from Martha Washington). During the Monroe administration, both the Green Room and the East Room acquired their permanent names, while the State Dining Room became home to the long, elevated mirror centerpiece set in ornate bronze, known as the Monroe Plateau, which is still in use at White House dinners today.

JAMES MONROE GROUPING | The stemmed cup is from a French Empire dinner service with gilt decoration used by the Monroes while they were living at Octagon House, after the President’s House was burned by the British. It depicts two women, one holding a staff topped with a horn of plenty; the other, stalks of wheat. The signed period silhouettes are of Elizabeth and James Monroe along with his portrait from the Bureau of Engraving.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS GROUPING | Invitation to tea from Mrs. Adams, while her husband was serving as Secretary of State. This general invitation was for Tuesdays beginning the 17th of December; note the evening hour of seven thirty. Mrs. Plumer was the wife of New Hampshire Congressman William Plumer Jr. The watermark on the invitation shows the insignia feathers of the Prince of Wales, and J & M 1819. The Adams portrait: Bureau of Engraving.

Redecoration aside, President Monroe’s social ambitions were never realized. He was shy. His wife Elizabeth was beautiful but aloof, and in response to the ill health she faced during these years, she retreated. Neither she nor her snobby daughter Eliza courted society during Monroe’s years as President, and except for receptions on major public days like the Fourth of July, the beautifully refinished Executive Mansion remained an eerily quiet place.

Despite a temporary economic setback during the Panic of 1819, the country had been expanding at an enormous rate since the advent of the steamboat and the settlement of the Midwest. Commercial prosperity and expansion created new political interests as well as divisions within the reigning Democratic-Republican Party. The bitter political disputes buried during Monroe’s first term soon arose in a new guise: that of populist Democrats who represented the interests of the new settlers and the forgotten common man against the eastern establishment.

A movement for political equality (among white men) doomed any attempt to enforce the good taste and distinctions of society. This movement was symbolized by the emergence of Andrew Jackson in the election of 1824. The hero of New Orleans and the Seminole War was in fact narrowly defeated by John Quincy Adams in balloting that was forced into the House of Representatives. Adams’s minority status forced him to surround himself with Jacksonians, however, and many of these actively worked against him making his four years little more than a brief, and unhappy, interregnum. The stuffy patrician and his migraine-plagued wife dutifully entertained—most notably during an Executive Mansion visit from the Marquis de Lafayette and his entourage in September of 1825—but with little enthusiasm or glamour.

When Andrew Jackson’s inaugural day finally arrived in March of 1829, the people, who had felt excluded for so long, arrived in huge throngs at the doors of the President’s Mansion for the ritual reception. Insufficient preparations had been made for the numbers that arrived, and at one point the crowd became so large that President Jackson was pushed against one wall, panting for air, and had to escape through a window.

The ruckus of that first day was atypical of Jackson’s receptions over the years, although some heavy drinking on the part of the common folk—after the important people had vanished—became customary. Jackson was relatively elderly when he took office (a few days shy of sixty-two); he was also still mourning the recent death of his beloved wife Rachel. He was also in poor health—so much so that in his later years he received guests sitting in one of Monroe’s golden chairs.

During Jackson’s presidency, the old cow house near Jefferson’s West Wing was replaced by two milk houses that supplied the considerable dairy needs of the Executive Mansion kitchen. French dishes were largely displaced by standard country cooking—beef, fish, wild turkey, partridge, canvasback duck, chicken, tongue, and that ubiquitous standard of later Presidential menus, sweetbreads. Sherry, Madeira, Champagne, and wine were poured liberally, and Jackson’s sweet tooth was satisfied by Joseph Boulanger, a G Street restaurateur from Belgium famous for his fine confections, who assumed most of the duties of steward. The most notable public feast of the Jackson era took place a few weeks before the President left office. On Washington’s Birthday, 1837, President Jackson invited both Congressmen and the public at large to help themselves to the 1,400-pound wheel of Cheddar cheese that had graced the entrance hall of the Executive Mansion for two years. This gift from Jackson supporters in Oswego County, New York, was polished off in a couple of hours, although the cheesy odor is said to have remained for much of his successor’s term.

President’s House plate of the Jackson era by Jacksons Warranted, showing the Presidential mansion in Washington. The back stamp reads: The/President’s House/Washington. John and Job Jackson were makers of Staffordshire china, whose American Views depicted notable buildings of the era and were offered to the American markets in a variety of colors.

In American cities, the first real restaurants started appearing in the 1830s. Usually they mixed standard American food such as oysters and roast turkey with Parisian specialties like Ballon de Mouton à la tomate. The use of menus was also soon adopted, especially as the costs of paper and printing decreased, while the cuisine they described was promoted in countless cookbooks purchased by fashionable house holds everywhere, starting with Eliza Leslie’s 1832 classic adaptation Domestic French Cookery. It soon became an item of snob appeal to use French terms for food; affluent Americans began to hire their own French cooks or take their native ones to France to get instruction.

ANDREW JACKSON GROUPING | The invitation on the upper left, to dinner on Thursday, January 25, 1838, was sent to John Jones Milligan, Delaware Congressman. It was understood that dinner was at The President’s House. The invitation at the bottom, February 23, 1819, extended by the Mayor, Aldermen and Commonality of the City of New York, was for a testimonial dinner in honor of Major General Andrew Jackson—the hero of New Orleans—accompanied by the blue ticket of admission. Jackson portrait: Lives & Portraits of the Presidents.

While the trans-Appalachian common man may have set the political tone of the nation in the new Jacksonian era, its social and economic center of gravity had moved to New York. Here, in 1837, at Delmonico’s Restaurant, the samples and trappings of French cooking offered in select house holds and some cities were transmuted into a full-fledged landmark of French cuisine. Run by a French-speaking family from Switzerland, Delmonico’s offered continental food only. Its menu was printed in French, side by side with an exact translation in English. Many other hotels and restaurants followed suit, and before long the term Delmonico was added to the name of many recipes and dishes.

In the Executive Mansion, appropriately enough, a New Yorker had succeeded the aging hero from Tennessee. Martin Van Buren, the son of a Hudson Valley farmer and tavern keeper, had early aligned himself with the Jacksonians. An astute politician with sophisticated tastes, he paid a high political price for his Machiavellian reputation, lack of the common touch, and the lingering effects of an 1837 bank panic.

JUNE 8, 1843 | Menu for a Reception Dinner in honor of President Tyler in Baltimore. When Charles Dickens stayed at Barnum’s Hotel in 1842, he called it the most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had any experience in the United States. This long silk menu is the earliest example of its kind, as menus themselves had only recently been adopted after being introduced at Delmonico’s in New York City. Printer: Murphy.

In the 1840 election, his Whig opponents successfully painted him as a royalist in disguise, decrying his weakness for French food and contrasting it with their candidate William Henry Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe, who was said to live on raw beef and salt. Van Buren had discontinued the serving of food and whiskey punch at receptions, in an attempt to discourage the crowded carousing that typified many of Jackson’s public receptions. One campaign poem boasted that Harrison would never do such a thing:

No banquets he’ll give à la mode de Paris

No wines of great price on his board you will see

But sirloin and Bacon and hard Cider Too

Shall be the plain fare of Old Tippecanoe.

Indeed, the few dinners that President Harrison actually hosted have been characterized as regular hard cider affair[s].

Harrison died only a month after his inauguration, however, and his Vice-Presidential successor John Tyler, a Virginian selected for regional balance, turned out to be as smart a host as Van Buren ever was. According to William Seale, Tyler’s dinners were very formal, with from 30 to 40 covers, and noted the chandeliers, candlesticks, and mirrored plateau glowed with sometimes a hundred candles. Most significantly, the food was presented French style, using many separate courses—instead of the older tradition of twice laying out an entire cornucopia of dishes on the table. Philip Hone, a Whig and former Mayor of New York, did not welcome such change: One does not know how to choose, because you are ignorant of what is coming next, or whether anything is coming.

Tyler had run on the Whig ticket only because he opposed Jackson’s nationalist ideology, and so quickly fell out of favor with his own party in Congress that an incensed Whig mob once marched on the Executive Mansion. Perhaps to mollify northern skepticism about being a southerner and a self-proclaimed states-righter, Tyler embarked on a goodwill tour through the Northeast in the summer of 1843. The object was to commemorate the new Bunker Hill Monument just erected on Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, outside of Boston.

Such monument building was typical of the antebellum period. In Washington in 1848, near the end of the administration of James K. Polk, none other than Dolley Madison presided over the laying of the cornerstone of an obelisk that was to become the Washington Monument, the tallest structure in Washington. Dolley, who in 1837 had moved into her sister’s town house across from the Executive Mansion on Lafayette Square, remained a major social figure in Washington during the Van Buren years—her cousin Angelica Singleton had even married the President’s eldest son, and served as official Executive Mansion hostess. During Polk’s term Dolley once again claimed that honor.

MARTIN VAN BUREN GROUPING | Top left: August 1, 1839 invitation to meet the Chief Magistrate on the 10th instant (tenth of the current month) during his visit to Troy, just north of his hometown of Kinderhook, NY, with no mention of a specific locale; in place of a stamp, the invitation, when folded, served as