Crown of a first lady historians of america, so starting with dr. Barbara perry. And while dr. Perry is walking up here. It should be noted that she just came out today with an article. In the publication the hill on first ladies in war and as as barbara said she she was inspired by the association. And she is the gerald bayless professor and director of president ial studies the university of virginias miller center. And currently serves on the board which we are very honored the board of directors of the White House Historical association. Joining her on stage our panelist. Dr. Diana carlin professor emerit of communications and many have called her the queen of communications at Saint Louis University and then we have dr. Catherine al gore who made a very fabulous statement earlier today in the session the president of the massachusetts historical society. And dr. Stacy cordary, which i understand is a british way to pronounce it and she is dennis and didnt denison von johnson endowed chair of Theodore Roosevelt honors leadership studies at dickinson state university. This is an incredible panel and as stuart has always advised us. We have a responsibility here. To inspire to encourage and to teach and i think with this panel you will get an abundance of material. Thank you so much. Well, welcome everyone to this panel on first ladies. Thank you teresa for that very nice introduction. Thank you to stuart and to anita for this amazing summit here in dallas that weve all been waiting. So to participate in and attend and to be in person you and the team at the White House Historical association have done amazing work as you always do and many thanks to my colleagues here all of whos work has inspired mine over the years. So im very grateful to them. So as teresa said were going to be looking at first ladies today and thinking about their influence on their president husbands. Were going to be thinking about when they promote change and sometimes we talked about when they have not been in favor of change which we can decide might be a good or a bad thing. Let me start id like the last panel when we said lets do a flash poll. How many of you either work in the field the first ladies or where you work has some connection with first ladies or you just are a first lady aficionado. Lets see a show of hands great. Well, this is super we welcome you all and and for those of you who dont we hope to spread the word about first ladies and flare particularly as well as the White House Historical association all of its good work in this field. So we wanted to start with a pretty basic question and that is how did the position of first ladies come to be . Thats not in the constitution as the president ial position is an offices and its an unelected position as we know. So how did it start and im going to turn to my first two colleagues to my left here to diana who is writing a book about all first ladies a textbook and you might tell us a little bit about that today and we want to start with the very first first ladies, and i also want to turn as well to Catherine Al Gore because shes a specialist on the founding first ladies as well in particularly Dolly Madison, so let me turn to diana first. Well, i dont think you can really study the presidency without studying the first ladies now, im biased but i believe that and it really started because this has been a partnership from the beginning. When Martha Washington arrived in new york a couple months after the president had arrived she was greeted with by the president in a barge. He then in new jersey wrote her over to the shore in new york. She was greeted with a gun salute and people were yelling long live lady washington and when she arrived she found out she already had a schedule. They they realize that because our president is both head of government and head of state that there would be events that needed to be planned with dignitaries that he needed to have these members of congress there and that they needed to host them and so nobody was better than martha at that because shed been doing it for years. So she had a schedule she had restrictions and so it was a twoperson career from the very beginning and she had abigail at her side and let catherine talk a little bit more about that. But martha definitely understood the concept of soft power. And that has been something that has been a trend for first ladies to use all the way through since the beginning. So the beginning was that martha really was a partner as she had been with the president all through their marriage and through his years during the revolutionary war where she would go to the camps the winter camps every year and would assist him and try to keep morell up and organize sewing circles and that type of thing, but it was a partnership it still is and so the two go together. She was not called first lady that didnt really happen until later in the 19th century. She was called lady washington, which was the term that was given to her by some of the revolutionary war soldiers. They even had a Lady Washingtons brigade and that was sort of the vestige of the british past that she was also an example of what a southern lady would be. So that was the beginning. I just think its really striking. So in other venues, ive actually said the Dolly Madison was the first first lady and im prepared found that but the truth is youre right right from the beginning Martha Washington is getting the message. But whats also true again . Theres an intentionality from her so she begins dressing a certain way and she along with George Washington and alexander hamilton. Maybe john jay. They start communicating about the kinds of ceremonies. That would be proper for a new republic. Because of course at that time they got a real tight kind of like lane to stay in. The american colonists had rebelled against the monarchy they were going to create the world anew the world turned upside down antimonarchical antiking antiroyalties all going to be new. Except when it came to ruling they realized that the only vocabulary of power they had was monarchical and aristotle and so how are they going to cut that and so we have these moments in the historical record where George Washington is wondering exactly how many pairs of matched horses is enough to convey his authority pulling his carriage the and how much would be like too much . I think the answer was three pair but the same thing with martha, how would she dress that would convey a sense to the outsiders who are not sure this America Thing was going to work and the new americans who are not sure this american thing was going to work that they were being ruled properly and well and they came up with ceremonies that tried to combine a kind of almost democratic energy. I think with you know, some some kind of vestige of royalty and thats why i think lady washington and Dolly Madison is going to be lady, but shes else would be queen dolly. Yes. Yes. So thoughts about we cant leave the founding. Weve certainly need to get to more of Dolly Madison. But abigail adams, we always cite her letter to her husband about the Constitutional Convention about dont forget the ladies when they were putting together the constitution but of course in a way they did but any thoughts about abigail and and john adams and and moving into the white house. Well, yes, and there are the first couple to move into the white house. Nobody stayed terribly long. They werent impressed. I think abigail in some ways embodies another part of the partnership that diana is talking about she really wasnt interested in what they would call presiding. So she adopted marthas innovations and ceremonies rather dutifully, but the role that abigail played was really that of advisor. She really was her husbands closest. Sir, and in the spirit of republican virtue, thats small our republican virtue john adams made the terrible decision not to change his cabinet. So he ended up the cabinet full of lets just called them traders all working behind his back so he would have always relied on abigail but in that particular circumstance, she really was his very closest advisor and thats fascinating that youre mentioning that catherine because really coming up to modern first ladies and contemporary first ladies in terms of personnel issues. We know for example that nancy reagan so important on issues of personnel never afraid to tell her husband that person should go that persons not good for you. So it clearly starts at the very beginning in that kind of advisory capacity. So before we come back to dolly, let me turn to my colleague stacy and we did a panel some months ago in the midst of the pandemic when we were always online and doing these great panels for the White House Historical associ. And for flair and stacy came up with a set of i guess you would call them roadmaps or criteria. Just how do we know if a first lady is being influential . How do we know that at the time if we do know it what are some of the sign posts that we might see and then afterwards how do we know what what are some of the signals that a first is being influential . Well, these are many of these go back to the very earliest first ladies as you two have discussed. And some of it is common sensical did has she achieved what she said she would achieve in some cases and on the other end of the scale as we have the sienna first ladies poll. So just like we take a sounding of what americans think about how well theyre president s succeeding. How weird is the first lady stand in that as well . We look at how her relationship with her husband seems to succeed or fail how any cause she might espouse supports her husbands programs. There are a number of ways that we i think try to decide what whether first lady successful or not. It gets tricky when you try to really put a number on it because so many of these causes are causes that are continued from first lady who proceeded them and and sometimes the the country changes so much that that causes get abandoned because Something Else comes in their place. Well, it seems to me that one of the things that we mentioned about Martha Washington. And again, well lead us into dolly is the concept of soft power and i am a pseudo historian. Im really trained as a political scientist. So we like to think in terms of power and how power is used and defining power and typically political scientists and others. Will define soft power as diplomatic power diplomacy cultural exchanges, and we know that first ladies certainly have excelled at that. So lets think in those terms in lynn. Lets turn to dolly in that you called it catherine when we were First Talking this unofficial role because again, this is a position that that is given to this woman. Whos the spouse of the president simply because shes the spouse of the president. Yeah, and i mean i at some point somebodys going to ask the very rude question. Why should we care about first lady and one of the things is that by studying first ladies the same way studying women their words their work their lives. We learn things we would not have known about and it cannot just be a record of contributions but constitutions and that it can change the narrative and maybe one of the things thats going to do for you political scientists. Is to change that word soft power which sounds soft and not powerful because it may be this thing. Were calling soft power might be the power studying first. Ladies brings out the study of the every day for instance the power of the everyday the power of material in different ways. So to address your question quite directly and using the roadmap you gave us shes good on this one James Madisons major issue that he had to solve was the question of unity. This was alluded to i think earlier in the day, but this was the time when the United States of america was referred to in the plural. The United States are right because nobody was sure this republican experiment was going to hold nobody the outsiders from europe looking with john just die and the people the new americans themselves. And James Madison believed in unity, and he believed and he worried because he didnt think that enough unified the coldblooded new englanders and the hot blooded virginians and he saw this group of people who were so very different and he said, you know, we dont have what he called veneration but history like we dont even have history. We dont have blood. We barely have a language and sometimes it will shake yet that we all understood each other, but we had to have unity so in theory, he understood unity. He didnt have the appetite, but if you think of it in that way and then you look at all the Dolly Madison did in helping to found and cement washington dc is the capital and finally save it when you look at the parties where she brought people together in the room and made them behave. So they got to know each others human beings. Her role is the charismatic figure using her dress and her parties. All of that can be seen as fulfilling this role of unity and you might say unity which is an emotional or a psychological state is quote soft power but in the end, its what got the United States of america into the singular through the war and off really often to democracy. And if you havent read catherines book on the madisons marriage, its a its a Perfect Union. Correct the title. Well, its a Perfect Union because i do think james and dolly were perfectly matched different in a political but also proof union because as historians we always think what is the concatenation of person and circumstance and if the American Revolution had never happened, i guess dolly would have just been a virginia gentry wife who through great parties by the way, but she rose to those circumstances and just to get back to you use the word unofficial and again, this is i think shows us something important when i studied earlier republic and and i did read a little blue signs. I figured out that for politics to happen. You need two spheres and one is official and one is unofficial and the officials fair you all know. Its the speeches and the legislator legislation and the peace treaties and all of that. Its the product of politics, but then theres got to be a process. Theres got to be a place. Where people can get together and they can propose things. They might not propose in the official spotlight the glare of the spotlight they have to be able to negotiate. They also have to get to know each other as human beings. And that is the unofficial sphere and because that takes place in peoples homes, and its social events women are disproportionately represented in that sphere, but you need both of those. And if somebody asked me, you know sometimes whats wrong with washington, which i dont like to come out on contemporary things. Its the lack of the unofficial sphere. Theres no place where men and women can get together and understand that though you and i might have a very different idea of the public good. We do share a commitment to the public good and so again by studying first ladies, thats where you see the power of that and and and note the absence of it when when its gone. Right . Well, i think the importance of dolly also is that she not only did this for her husband, but dolly then tutored several other first lady who came after her, you know after James Madison died. She moved back to washington and she helped court a lot, but i think about sarah pope and you know james pope probably the most successful oneterm president. Weve had ran on four parts of a platform and accomplished all of them. He knew his health wasnt in great shape, so he didnt run for a second term, but sarah spent a lot of time learning from dolly. Well, she really set the tone for i mean decades. Yeah, Eleanor Roosevelt being the exception that proved the rule but mrs. Kennedy, i love that. She didnt like the idea of redecorating the white house a lot of people say dolly redecorated the white house, but what she did was restructure it in a way that mrs. Kennedy would have proved by this is amazing that before dollys white house, which is called the executive mansion and it would only be during her tenure where it would get that familiar loving nickname the white house there was no place in the in the capital city where all the men of government could get together. Let alone their families let alone visiting diplomats. Let alone visiting americans let alone anybody it was so what dolly did was she took that executive mansion and she turned it in to a center for entertaining where everybody in town would show up and they did and she threw weekly parties and they were as regular and as grueling as they sound but they became an independent and indispensable part of the washington political machine. And its in those parties. I can tend that these people learn to Work Together in a bipartisan ways going towards something they didnt even know is going to happen, which is that this one Party Republic was going to turn into a twoparty democracy. You know, were certainly still in in the earliest days of this office. But stacey focuses on the early 20th century first ladies, and so lets turn to her and thoughts about how the role had changed was it has it been changing. Did it change did the civil war for example change it as we get closer than into the gilded age and then the 20th century before we talk about change. I think its worth pointing out that what dr. Algar has been describing is the consistent through the through the centuries. Edith roosevelt for example provided a space where Theodore Roosevelt could meet together with booker t, washington that was not something it could have happened. Just anywhere in washington dc, you know so that space that first ladies and first families in general have provided for gathering americans across the po