The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers

by Thomas Fleming

Overview

In The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers from Smithsonian Books, historian Thomas Fleming, author of The Perils of Peace, offers a fresh look at the critical role of women in the lives of Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison. Fleming nimbly takes readers through a great deal of early American history, as our founding fathers struggle to reconcile the private and public–and often deal with a media every bit as gossip-seeking and inflammatory as ours today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061139130
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/09/2010
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	749,659
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Thomas Fleming is the author of more than forty books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently, The Perils of Peace. He has been the president of the Society of American Historians and of PEN American Center. Mr. Fleming is a frequent guest on C-SPAN, PBS, A&E, and the History Channel. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

Book 1 George Washington

The Agonies of Honor 3

Partner In Love and Life 19

From Great Somebody to Lady Washington 36

The Other George Washington Scandals 58

Book 2 Benjamin Franklin

The Sins of the Father 73

The Oldest Revolutionary 91

Mon Cher Papa 102

Book 3 John Adams

An Amorous Puritan Finds a Wife 125

Portia's Dubious Diplomat 141

Second Banana Blues 162

Party Of Two 177

Remembering Some Other Ladies 194

Book 4 Alexander Hamilton

Bastard Son and Wary Lover 209

The Woman in the Middle 224

Love's Secret Triumph 244

Book 5 Thomas Jefferson

Romantic Voyager 259

The Traumas of Happiness 271

Head Versus Heart 292

The Wages of Fame 309

If Jefferson Is Wrong, Is America Wrong? 328

Book 6 James Madison

A Shy Genius Makes a Conquest 355

Partners In Fame 369

How To Save a Country 388

Appendix: The Erosion of Jefferson's Image in the American Mind 409

Notes 417

Index 439

What People are Saying About This

Jay Winik

“Thomas Fleming is one of our most interesting scholars of the Revolutionary period, and in his insightful latest work he does not disappoint. Focusing on the wives and women of the founding fathers, Intimate Lives is thoroughly fresh, frequently fun, at times touching, and always fascinating. A significant achievement.”

Peter R. Henriques

“Tom Fleming is a rare combination - a fine historian and a fine writer. His assessment of George Washington’s relationships with Sally Fairfax and Martha Custis is right on target.”

Brenda Wineapple

“With his ample gifts as a novelist and his brilliant historical reach, the esteemed Thomas Fleming never disappoints...A remarkable achievement— and hard to put down.”

Editorial Reviews

Thomas Fleming is one of our most interesting scholars of the Revolutionary period, and in his insightful latest work he does not disappoint. Focusing on the wives and women of the founding fathers, Intimate Lives is thoroughly fresh, frequently fun, at times touching, and always fascinating. A significant achievement.” — Jay Winik, author of The Great Upheaval and April 1865

“With his ample gifts as a novelist and his brilliant historical reach, the esteemed Thomas Fleming never disappoints...A remarkable achievement— and hard to put down.” — Brenda Wineapple, author of WHITE HEAT: THE FRIENDSHIP OF EMILY DICKINSON AND THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

“Tom Fleming is a rare combination - a fine historian and a fine writer. His assessment of George Washington’s relationships with Sally Fairfax and Martha Custis is right on target.” — Peter R. Henriques, author of REALISTIC VISIONARY: A PORTRAIT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

This is better than any history book you’ve ever read. — Curled Up with a Good Book

From the Publisher

Tom Fleming is a rare combination - a fine historian and a fine writer. His assessment of George Washington’s relationships with Sally Fairfax and Martha Custis is right on target.

Peter R. Henriques

This is better than any history book you’ve ever read.

Curled Up with a Good Book

JFK had Marilyn Monroe, and Bill Clinton had Monica, but that doesn't mean 20th-century presidents had all the fun. "Knowing and understanding the women in their lives adds pathos and depth to the public dimensions of the founding fathers' political journeys," Thomas Fleming writes in this well-researched peek into the boudoirs of America's political architects.
—The Washington Post

Justin Moyer

In this solid, sometimes titillating account, novelist and historian Fleming (The Perils of Peace) draws parallels to today's media obsession with our leaders' sex lives. The media were obsessed at the nation's beginning, too. As president, Washington suffered torrents of abuse, sometimes personal, but his marriage to Martha remained happy, although unconvincing efforts to find affairs, illegitimate children and slave mistresses persist to this day. The most genial founding father, Benjamin Franklin, had a shockingly bad family life with a jealous wife and dreadful relations with his son. Despite his brilliance, Alexander Hamilton behaved foolishly with women, triggering America's first public sex scandal. Fleming rocks no historical boats describing John and Abigail Adams's legendary love and agrees that Dolly brought color into the life of shy, intellectual James Madison. Jefferson's wife died young, and he focused his love on the often unhappy lives of two daughters. Examining the controversy over his slave, Sally Hemings, Fleming says evidence that he fathered her children remains inconclusive. Showing the more human and sometimes unlikable sides of our founders, the author writes good history, debunking more scandal than he confirms. (Nov)

Publishers Weekly

Fleming (The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle for Survival After Yorktown) takes a peek at the personal and family lives of six key American figures—George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison—exploring their relationships with girlfriends, wives, children, extended family members, and, in some cases, extramarital lovers and quasi-lovers. Replete with assumptions and wild guesses, this book breaks no new ground in historical scholarship, merely providing general readers with an accessible overview of what has long been known to scholars—that the fallible Founding Fathers depended on the love and emotional support of family and others to achieve their personal and political goals. Jefferson and Sally Hemings garner special attention, with a tiresomely in-depth and opinionated examination of scholarly views and scientific inquiries surrounding this centuries-old controversy. The book's one redeeming chapter—a provocative psychological examination of Dolley and James Madison's marriage—is also the briefest and most underdeveloped. VERDICT Tacky and pointless, Fleming's lowbrow latest may have marginal appeal as recreational reading for undiscerning fans of early American history's most familiar faces. Students and scholars can certainly skip it.—Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia

Library Journal

Popular historian Fleming (The Perils of Peace: America's Struggle for Survival After Yorktown, 2007, etc.) takes a rosy look at the enduring marriages of Washington, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison, despite some dalliances, separations and extreme job pressure. The author is determined to restore the honor to these great men, whose lives have been dissected ceaselessly for evidence of human fallibility-especially Jefferson, whose relationship with his slave Sally Hemings probably resulted in several children. Fleming doesn't buy it, and he's holding out for the results of DNA testing. Instead he underscores Jefferson's tender devotion to Martha Skelton, who died after ten years of marriage in 1782, leaving him with only their daughter to comfort him. Washington, despite a youthful rejection, made a spectacular match in the wealthy widow Martha Custis and was put in charge of her 17,000-acre Virginia estate. The evidence shows he grew to love his sweet-tempered, practical wife, despite their inability to have children, while she found him a manly pillar of strength and a good stepfather to her children. Franklin had an "ungovernable sex drive" and married his landlord's daughter Deborah, who was then forced to raise his illegitimate son as her own. She did not accompany him to Paris as emissary, and after she died he was a great favorite of the ladies, even proposing marriage to his beloved Madame Helvetius. In the chapters on Adams and Madison, their strong wives take over the narratives with a presidential agenda of their own-Abigail Adams as a protofeminist, and Dolly Madison as an inimitable hostess. Hamilton married a rich man's daughter, flirted with hissister-in-law, indulged in a seduction by a speculator's wife and was blackmailed by the husband. He died scrambling to repair the marriage and, we are assured, racked by guilt. Applying the kid-glove treatment to his subjects, the author doesn't unearth much that hasn't been picked over before.

Kirkus Reviews

With his ample gifts as a novelist and his brilliant historical reach, the esteemed Thomas Fleming never disappoints...A remarkable achievement— and hard to put down.

Brenda Wineapple

Thomas Fleming is one of our most interesting scholars of the Revolutionary period, and in his insightful latest work he does not disappoint. Focusing on the wives and women of the founding fathers, Intimate Lives is thoroughly fresh, frequently fun, at times touching, and always fascinating. A significant achievement.

Jay Winik

Thomas Fleming examines the lives of six of the Founding Fathers of the United States: George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. The author combines private and public details of the great men. He makes them seem more mortal than in conventional accounts by focusing on their dalliances with the opposite sex, especially when not the spouse. Narrator Arthur Morey can do little to enliven quotes greater than 200 years old and expressed in the dated vocabulary of revolutionary times. Morey’s voice, soft and taciturn, fits with the writer’s didactic attention to detail, but the production is dry. Morey’s slow pace and precise diction complement a disquisition intended to inform rather than entertain. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2010 - AudioFile