When Thomas Jefferson moved his Republican administration into the new capital city in 1801, one of his first acts was to abolish any formal receptions, except on specific holidays. His successful campaign for the presidency had been partially founded on the idea that his Federalist enemies had assumed dangerously aristocratic trappings. His deep suspicion of any occasion that resembled a European court caused a major problem, however: without the face-to-face relationships and networks created in society, the American experiment in government could not function. Into this conundrum, writes Catherine Allgor, stepped women like Dolley Madison and Louisa Catherine Adams, women of political families who used the unofficial, social sphere to cement the relationships that politics needed to work. Not only did they create a space in which politics was effectively conducted; their efforts legitimated the new republic and the new capital in the eyes of European nations.--From publisher description.
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