Block going back a couple of acres, which means she owned a huge chunk of what williamsburg was. There was a lot of tragedy in Martha Washingtons life. She lost her first husband. She was raised a rich woman she was raised a rich woman and what that means in the 18th century is not what it means today. When she marries George Washington, she brings with her to mount vernon 12 house slaves, and that is really almost an unimaginable luxury. It took 10 days to travel here to valley forge from mount vernon in her carriage with her slaves and servants with her and this was a difficult journey. Marthas experience had prepared her to become the first first lady. Born in New Kent County virginia in seven 770 she was 57 years old when she and George Washington left mount vernon in service to the country. This time, their destination was new york city, selected as the nations first capital, where they began the first of their two terms as president and first lady of United States, setting important precedents for all their successors in the white house. Good evening and welcome to cspans brandnew series, first ladies influence and image. For the next year, we will spend time on personal biographies with each of the women who served in that role in the white house as a window into American History. Our first installment is Martha Washington. For the next 90 minutes, we will try to serve up the essential Martha Washington with two people who have come to know her well. President ial historian Richard Norton smith, whose biography of George Washington is called patriarch. And patricia brady, who is done a part of the of Martha Washington subtitled an american life. Why does Martha Washington matter . Patricia she was the first and she was one of the best. Those things always count. She was able to help George Washington make it through the American Revolution and then two awful terms as president. She was his helpmate, always. Susan the concept for this series was something that you championed early and were a Guiding Light into how cspan might do it. What was your thought as a historian about why studying first ladies should matter in the society we live in today . Richard first of all, we dont know enough about them as individuals. We do not know enough about them for the windows that they open upon their individual periods. Individually they are fascinating. Collectively it seems to me they , provide a way of tracing womens history and the history of the country and any number of political and other institutions as well. Ultimately, i suspect our viewers will be surprised by a lot of the information that they hear over the next year. These are surprising stories that we will be telling. Susan four Martha Washington, we went on location to a number of sites important to her biography and during the next 90 minutes, well show you the video. As always on cspan this will be , interactive and we will begin taking phone calls in a little while and tell you how you can be part of the conversation. You can join immediately by social media. If you are on twitter, you can send us a question or comment using firstladies. On facebook, we have a question posted for you of anything you would like to talk about in Martha Washingtons time or her life. We will make some of those questions in as well. We welcome your participation. We will spend the first 15 or 20 minutes on the two terms in the white house. Patricia not the white house, the president ial host right, the president ial mansion in new york city. 1789, she comes to new york city a few months behind George Washington. Start by telling us what kind of opinion the American Public had of these two people as they took this Important Role . Patricia the opinion they had began with the revolution. At that point, when martha would ride to join her husband as she did every year in the winter camps, people would just line up behind every tree and on every fence post to look at her. She said, i felt as though i were a very great somebody. She was somebody for the first time as his wife. The newspapers reported at on how important it was for him to have someone like her. They started then when they came back as president and his lady the public already had an opinion of them. They were singular characters. The other politicians were not in the same ballpark at all. Host give people a sense of how hard it was to make the basic decisions about how the new government would function including this role. Richard in fact, the decisions about what a republican or a president was are inseparable from what we would perhaps condescendingly today attribute to the east wing of the white house. For instance, would the president and first lady accept private dinner invitations . Would the president and first lady go to private funerals . What do you call a president . Indeed, what do you call his consort . The reason why these questions would seem trivial to us today matter is that each one in their own way define the nature of this new government which was, after all, to some degree, a spin off from its royal antecedents, and yet the country was split right down the middle between those who feared that it was in any way aping george iii. Then as now it is remarkable and then eyes in 200 years ago we still have a dichotomy , about what a president is. How close does a president and his wife get to us . The fact that mrs. Washington had every week a friday night reception that anyone could walk into as long as they were decently dressed, you would not find that in london. It helped to define not only her role, but, in a larger sense the access that americans would have to their president. Host staying with that thought if the only model that the , washingtons and the rest of the newfound government had were the very european monarchies they fought a revolution to distance themselves from, where did the washingtons draw other there examples from . Their examples from . Patricia they talked it out. People see washington as this strong, marble leader. He was more than a statue. He always liked to talk to his associates. That is one reason he was criticized as a general, because he liked to talk to his staff before making a decision. In government, he thought all the best minds of the country would get together, talk things through, and make the right decision, because we were the first modern republic. Now it is so hard for us to understand that there was nobody like us, so what ever they did mattered. It was important. Host lets take a snapshot of that modern republic with some basic facts out what america look like a 19 7 it in 1790. This was from the first census ever done by the new country. The census maker was Thomas Jefferson. Here are some facts and they gathered about the new United States the 13 former colonies, now the 13 initial states had a population of under 4 million. 757,000 of those are blacks, and only 9 were free. The per capita income was 437 and it was more than that before the years of war. Years of war had reduce the per capita income. If you translate that income into 2013 numbers, its 11,500. The largest cities in the country were new york, philadelphia, and boston. What should we learn about those three large cities . Richard first of all, i want to point out that two of those 13 states were not yet members of the union. Both North Carolina and rhode island held back when the rest of the union adopted the constitution. America was overwhelmingly a rural, rustic, agrarian, farmbased society. It ended at the appalachian mountains. In 1800, there were three roads that crossed. The United States was a nation in name only. It was, in fact, three distinct nations. New england, the middle states and the south. And each of them had one major city. Philadelphia was the largest city in the nation with all of 40,000 people. One of the things that Martha Washington, i think, frankly found not altogether to her , liking was the fact that she was uprooted from the agricultural, rural life at mount vernon that she knew and had been born into, that she had mastered in many ways and relished. It is only the latest chapter of her sacrifice which, in its own way, i think you could argue matches anything her husband sacrificed. Patricia thats true, she did not want to go to a city. She did not want to live in the north. She want to be home at mount vernon. But she had to be there with her husband to do what her husband wanted to do. She gave it up. The thing that made her so very unhappy was to discover that once she got there, that washington had consulted with john jay and James Madison and john adams, and they had all decided that president s could have no personal life. That any entertainment, any going to visit people, any having people in was, in fact, a public act. So they could not just go hang out with their friends or ask their friends over, and that was just for one year. The first year was terrible for her at the same time that it was pretty good for him. Jefferson had not come back from paris yet. That was probably his honeymoon with the presidency. Host let me put this quote in here to get marthas state of line. This is a quote from her. I never go to the public place. I think i am more like a state prisoner than anything else. There are certain down set for me which i must not depart from. And as i cannot do as i like, i am obstinate and stay home a great deal. Richard there is a line after that that someone should carve over the entrance to the white house. First of all, i think it goes to the heart of who this woman was and why she was the ideal first first lady. She said these code is to go to spoil but she taught that she said that the experience in her life had taught her that her happiness or misery depends upon our disposition and not our circumstances. That is a remarkably wise observation, but it is an observation distilled from a life full of tragedy. She had lost a husband. She lost all four of her children. She lost countless nieces patricia outlived all of her siblings. Richard absolutely, and then she found herself repeatedly uprooted from the life she expected. To follow george on the battlefield or a different kind of battlefield. And together, with very little precedent, they devised this new government. Host but she chose to follow him. This is the mark of a partnership. Patricia they were very much partners. He was so miserable until he could get her to join him wherever he was. I was going to say, the quote about the prisoner of state that was in the first year in new york and that was a bad year when she was still having to follow the rules of the men. When they went home to mount vernon, she worked on her husband, so that when they went to philadelphia the next year, the rules were changed. She was not a prisoner. He was also off on a monthlong tour of the northern states, attempting to unite the country. She was depressed and by herself. She was much less happy at that time than any other time really. Host once she moved to philadelphia and became happier because the restrictions were lifted, although she lived in philadelphia society, new people there. We will show you a video from philadelphia and get a sense of martha and George Washingtons life there in the second capital of the United States. It is here that Martha Washington carved out the role of what the wife of the president of United States should do. Some of the social events that Martha Washington would have been responsible for overseeing are state dinners that were held weekly on thursdays, as well as the drawing room reception that Martha Washington personally organized every friday evening. The state dinners would have been events that martha would have had to help coordinate. These took place on thursdays, every week. Just above this dining room on the second floor, was a drawing room. That is where Martha Washington held her drawing room receptions on fridays. Those events were a little more informal as compared to the state dinners found here. And George Washington was always in attendance. He probably preferred the social engagements more on friday then the events he held here in this room because they were informal in nature. The events were open to the public. Any one of social standing was welcome to attend. Most people remarked that George Washington was more at ease with his wife Martha Washington at his side. We know Martha Washington lived among a household with as many as 30 people. These included paid severance indentured servants and enslaved , people from mount vernon. One of the most wellknown was oney judge. She was the personal maid to Martha Washington. Because of the nature of her duties, it is likely she would have slept right here in the house. In that time that Martha Washington was in philadelphia oney judge runs away to claim her freedom. This was a major blow to Martha Washington. She felt very betrayed. She had promised oney judge to her granddaughter once was married. Host washingtons life in philadelphia, do you want to comment about that . Patricia i need to Say Something there which is about sappy 19th century images. The 19th century liked the idea of having an almost regal Republican Court here. There was no dais to in those rooms. There was no place where they raised above the other. Nor did she stand. She set on a sofa and guests came and met her there and walked around the room as they pleased. The idea that it was somehow so regal is so wrong. It was not. Richard it is so frustrating that anyone who has dealt with the primary sources from this period are grateful for what we have, but we are constantly hungering for more. We have countless secondhand reports from events like this, and they are unanimous. Everyone talks about what a charming conversationalist martha was. How she was always cheerful and always interested in her guests. Patricia her smile, her beautiful teeth. Not many had beautiful teeth then. Host it is also important, as we talk about her interaction with the American Public the , slaves that they brought with them we just heard the story of oney judge it is a good entry point to talk about their relationship with enslaved people. Patricia when they married, they felt the same. They had grown up in virginia. A good part of the wealth of virginia was built on the labor and persons of enslaved black people. And so, they agreed with it. At that time, washington was rather strict with his slaves. But as time went on, his views started to change. He was the only one of the Founding Fathers who freed his slaves. The rest kept them until they died. Her opinions did not change. It was unfortunate. I wanted it to be different, and i looked for i read every word i , could find. The one slave that she actually owned personally, she did not free. She left her to her grandson. The truth is, she felt it was the way society was supposed to be. Oney judge had let her down and because shed always been kind to her and she did not , understand that onie wanted to be free and learn to read and write and that she wanted to find christ in her own way. Richard in a lot of ways, it can be said of washington as it could be said of lincoln later on that he outgrew the racist culture that produced him. One major reason was because during the revolution, after having initially turned thumbs down to the idea of recruiting free blacks, the fact of the matter is that africanamericans played a vital role in the winning of the revolution. Washington saw firsthand what these people were capable of doing. He saw the courage, he saw the sacrifice they were humanized in a way that was not possible on the plantation. Life taught him a lesson very different from martha. Host washington spent the entire second term in philadelphia. Your chapter on as the torments of the second term. One of the things we so often do not learn about was about the trials of things like epidemics. Philadelphias population was more than decimated. 12 died in the early part of that epidemic. What was life like there . Patricia yellow fever is one of those diseases that one tends to think of as a southern caribbean disease. New orleans. But the east coast of United States was frequently struck with yellow fever. The yellow fever was killing people right and left. Alexander hamilton had a very bad case but survived. That was part of the torment. But the real torment for washington was to see that his friends and the men he respected, instead of coming together to make a new form of government, were falling apart into two parties. He would never have believed that jefferson and madison and hamilton would become enemies of one another and that they would be doing everything they could to keep each other out of office instead of working together. Host before we leave this section, because we will work our way back through earlier parts of her life you mentioned adams. Martha washington had a relationship with abigail adams. I was tickled to find out there was almost a sisterhood of revolutionary ladies. [laughter] can you tell us about who was in that and how did they interact . Patricia they really had a lot in common. They were both wives who were partners. They were