Libby McNamee's Blog, page 3
December 6, 2022
Signed Books Wrapped and Mailed!
As Christmas approaches, I am happy to sign books, personalize them for your gift recipient, wrap them in a festive paper, and mail them anywhere in the USA. Huzzah! Head on over to my online store at , and I will get your order out within 24 hours, I promise! Huzzah!
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December 5, 2022
Dolley Madison’s Poem to Lafayette
Two years from now in 2024, we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Lafayette’s historic visit to the United States with his son, George Washington Motier de Lafayette. He came at the invitation of President James Monroe, our fifth president. Nicknamed the “National Guest,” he visited all 24 states in the union, some more than once, from July 1824–September 1825. All in all, he travelled over 6,000 miles. This epic series of events took place almost fifty years after the start of the American Revolution.
Celebrations of his arrival were some of the largest and most amazing ever held in America. Massive cheering crowds greeted Lafayette, and countless lavish banquets followed. For example, six-thousand ladies and gentlemen attended just one ball in New York City. In Boston, three-thousand children lined up to receive him, all wearing ribbons stamped with his miniature likeness. Many monuments were erected in his honor across the country. In addition, many parks, streets, cities and counties named themselves for him, including Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.
Voila, Dolley Madison and Lafayette, two of my favorite historical figures, become intertwined! She wrote this poem as a tribute to him on his November 1824 sojurn to Montpelier. This took place right after his visit with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. LAFAYETTE
by Dolley Madison
Born, nurtured, wedded, prized, within the pale
Of peers and princes, high in camp–at court–
He hears, in joyous youth, a wild report,
Swelling the murmurs of the Western gale,
Of a young people struggling to be free!
Straight quitting all, across the wave he flies,
Aids with his sword, wealth, blood, the high emprize!
And shares the glories of its victory.
Then comes for fifty years a high romance
Of toils, reverses, sufferings, in the cause
Of man and justice, liberty and France,
Crowned, at the last, with hope and wide applause.
Champion of Freedom! Well thy race was run!
All time shall hail thee, Europe’s noblest son!If you would like to learn more, please feel free to reach out and schedule a historical talk on “Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds.”
October 12, 2022
Dolley and James Madison’s 20th Wedding Anniversary in 1814
Dolley and James Madison chose to wed on the specific date of September 15, 1794, for a wonderfully sentimental reason. Madison’s parents married on that same day fifty-one years prior in 1743. 
However, the night of their 20th anniversary was no time to celebrate. As I discovered while researching “Dolley Madison and the War of 1812,” their special date was September 15, 1814, which just so happens to be the same day as the crucial Battle of Baltimore. Given the tumultuous times, there’s a very good chance they didn’t realize it was their anniversary until weeks months, or even the next year. They had much bigger problems on their mind, like the fate of the United States of America. Would they lose our young country to the ongoing British invasion? Only three weeks earlier on August 24, 1814, the British marched unopposed into Washington City. To our great shame, they burned our Public Buildings, including the President’s House, the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the State Department, the Supreme Court, and the Treasury. With the President’s House in ashes, the Madison had just recently rented the nearby Octagon House and moved in with little to no possessions left.This was the same night that Francis Scott Key, a Georgetown lawyer and distant cousin of Dolley, scribbled the “Star-Spangled Banner” as he watched the battle rage all night long from detention on a British prisoner-of-war ship.
However, the night of their 20th anniversary was no time to celebrate. As I discovered while researching “Dolley Madison and the War of 1812,” their special date was September 15, 1814, which just so happens to be the same day as the crucial Battle of Baltimore. Given the tumultuous times, there’s a very good chance they didn’t realize it was their anniversary until weeks months, or even the next year. They had much bigger problems on their mind, like the fate of the United States of America. Would they lose our young country to the ongoing British invasion? Only three weeks earlier on August 24, 1814, the British marched unopposed into Washington City. To our great shame, they burned our Public Buildings, including the President’s House, the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the State Department, the Supreme Court, and the Treasury. With the President’s House in ashes, the Madison had just recently rented the nearby Octagon House and moved in with little to no possessions left.This was the same night that Francis Scott Key, a Georgetown lawyer and distant cousin of Dolley, scribbled the “Star-Spangled Banner” as he watched the battle rage all night long from detention on a British prisoner-of-war ship.
September 24, 2022
The Epic Story of 1776: 25 People, 13 Colonies & 1 War
EPIC PATRIOT CAMP 2022 BOOK RELEASE!!
This summer my historical author friend, Jenny L. Cote, and I conducted a four-week online writing camp focused on writing the story of 1776. We had 25 virtual campers who each assumed the identity of an important figure from 1776, and wrote three chapters from that person’s perspective. The results were EPIC! Jenny and I fell in love with each amazing camper and had such an incredible time getting to know them and mentoring them to become stronger writers.
The book, THE EPIC STORY OF 1776: 25 PEOPLE, 13 COLONIES, AND 1 WAR has been officially released onto Amazon and Kindle Unlimited and currently ranks as the #1 New Release in Children’s Colonial American Historical Fiction! Huzzah! As you can see below, it also runs neck-and-neck with SUSANNA’S MIusanna’s Midnight Ride: The Girl Who Won the Revolutionary War within the Amazon category!
This summer my historical author friend, Jenny L. Cote, and I conducted a four-week online writing camp focused on writing the story of 1776. We had 25 virtual campers who each assumed the identity of an important figure from 1776, and wrote three chapters from that person’s perspective. The results were EPIC! Jenny and I fell in love with each amazing camper and had such an incredible time getting to know them and mentoring them to become stronger writers.
The book, THE EPIC STORY OF 1776: 25 PEOPLE, 13 COLONIES, AND 1 WAR has been officially released onto Amazon and Kindle Unlimited and currently ranks as the #1 New Release in Children’s Colonial American Historical Fiction! Huzzah! As you can see below, it also runs neck-and-neck with SUSANNA’S MIusanna’s Midnight Ride: The Girl Who Won the Revolutionary War within the Amazon category!
Dolley And James Madison’s 20th Anniversary in 1814
This year, my husband and I were blessed to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, and it was fun to take the time to reflect back on all our adventures and misadventures over the past two decades.
(****Credit for this fabulous photo goes to my talented friend, Cheryl Daniel, at Digital Yarbs who created this image using the Madisons’ life masks and Adobe Photoshop. Please check out her fabulous site at www.Yarbs.net for true likenesses of other Founding Fathers and historical figures.)
Dolley and James Madison chose to wed on the specific date of September 15, 1794, for a wonderfully sentimental reason. Madison’s parents married on that same day fifty-one years prior in 1743.
However, the night of their 20th anniversary was no time to celebrate. As I discovered while researching “Dolley Madison and the War of 1812,” their special date was September 15, 1814, which just so happens to be the same day as the crucial Battle of Baltimore.
Given the tumultuous times, there’s a very good chance they didn’t realize it was their anniversary until weeks months, or even the next year. They had much bigger problems on their mind, like the fate of the United States of America. Would they lose our young country to the ongoing British invasion?
Only three weeks earlier on August 24, 1814, the British marched unopposed into Washington City. To our great shame, they burned our Public Buildings, including the President’s House, the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the State Department, the Supreme Court, and the Treasury. With the President’s House in ashes, the Madison had just recently rented the nearby Octagon House and moved in with little to no possessions left.
This was the same night that Francis Scott Key, a Georgetown lawyer and distant cousin of Dolley, scribbled the “Star-Spangled Banner” as he watched the battle rage all night long from detention on a British prisoner-of-war ship.
(****Credit for this fabulous photo goes to my talented friend, Cheryl Daniel, at Digital Yarbs who created this image using the Madisons’ life masks and Adobe Photoshop. Please check out her fabulous site at www.Yarbs.net for true likenesses of other Founding Fathers and historical figures.)
Dolley and James Madison chose to wed on the specific date of September 15, 1794, for a wonderfully sentimental reason. Madison’s parents married on that same day fifty-one years prior in 1743.
However, the night of their 20th anniversary was no time to celebrate. As I discovered while researching “Dolley Madison and the War of 1812,” their special date was September 15, 1814, which just so happens to be the same day as the crucial Battle of Baltimore.
Given the tumultuous times, there’s a very good chance they didn’t realize it was their anniversary until weeks months, or even the next year. They had much bigger problems on their mind, like the fate of the United States of America. Would they lose our young country to the ongoing British invasion?
Only three weeks earlier on August 24, 1814, the British marched unopposed into Washington City. To our great shame, they burned our Public Buildings, including the President’s House, the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the State Department, the Supreme Court, and the Treasury. With the President’s House in ashes, the Madison had just recently rented the nearby Octagon House and moved in with little to no possessions left.
This was the same night that Francis Scott Key, a Georgetown lawyer and distant cousin of Dolley, scribbled the “Star-Spangled Banner” as he watched the battle rage all night long from detention on a British prisoner-of-war ship.
September 2, 2022
Epic Patriot Camp
This summer my historical author friend, Jenny L. Cote, and I conducted a four-week online writing camp focused on writing the story of 1776. We had 25 virtual campers who each assumed the identity of am important figure from 1776, and write three chapters from that person’s perspective. The results were EPIC! Jenny and I fell in love with each amazing camper and had such an incredible time getting to know them and mentoring them to become stronger writers. Our book will be released this fall! Stay tuned for more details. For the meantime, here is the cover as well as two book trailers made by two fabulous campers. HUZZAH!
TRAILER 1 | TRAILER 2
TRAILER 1 | TRAILER 2
August 30, 2022
Happy 1st Birthday to “Dolley Madison and the War of 1812”
Happy 1st Birthday to “Dolley Madison and the War of 1812”
Dolley Madison and the War of 1812 was born an entire year ago, hard to believe! What a privilege it has been to entertain readers and audiences with stories about America’s First First Lady! She was much, much more than a phenomenal hostess-with-the-mostess! Hip hip huzza for the Presidentess!
I would so appreciate your review of Dolley Madison and the War of 1812 on Amazon if you have a chance. It’s a huge help for authors, especially independent ones like me!
The official birthday for the book is on August 24, a significant date in American history that no one cares to recall. To our great shame, on that day in 1814, now 208 years ago, the British entered Washington City with no resistance whatsoever. They proceeded to burn our public buildings–including the Capitol, the State Department, the Treasury, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the President’s House.
As the British advanced toward Washington City, Dolley was among the very last to flee. She waited until the last possible moment, ignoring several desperate pleas from the mayor to get to safety. She knew her evacuation would come as a massive blow to the American morale, so she wanted to avoid it as long as possible. Even when she resigned herself to leave, she delayed her departure even longer, risking imminent apprehension by the enemy. She had to save the life-sized portrait of General Washington. She could not tolerate it falling into British hands and paraded through the streets of London.
Thanks to her heroism, the portrait hangs today in the East Room of the White House. In the parlor next door, Dolley’s portrait hangs in the parlor next door with a view overlooking General Washington’s portrait. As the story goes, curators positioned her there so she could keep an eye on it.
May 24, 2022
Happy 254th Birthday, Dolley Madison!
Let’s hear it for the Birthday Girl! Dolley Payne Todd Madison turns 254 years young on May 20. The U.S. Postal Service issued this stamp on her 212th birthday in 1980.
She was the fourth of eight children born to her devout Quaker parents. She was just thirteen when the Patriots won the Battle of Yorktown. When the war officially ended in 1783, Dolley’s father freed their slaves in accordance with his religious beliefs. Then the family moved to the Philadelphia where he opened a starch business.
When I first learned of this, I was skeptical. Running a starch company doesn’t sound very lucrative, does it? Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t. Dolley’s father went bankrupt, and the Quakers cast him out of the Society of Friends. (Some friends, huh?) However, the church interpreted his bankruptcy as a sign of disapproval from God. So, the poor man took to his bed for two years. As he lay dying of depression, he asked Dolley to marry an up-and-coming Quaker lawyer, John Todd. Dolley happily obliged and soon gave birth to two sons.
However, the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 soon swept through Philadelphia, devastating the city. Dolley’s husband and infant son died within hours of each other, as well as her in-laws. She and her older son Payne also were quite sick but managed to recover. So, at the young age of 25, Dolley Todd became a widow and moved into the boardinghouse that her mother ran to keep the family solvent.
Suitors soon lined up outside the boarding house for Dolley. At that time Philadelphia served as our Capital while Washington City was under construction. Congressman James Madison from Virginia noticed her on the street and asked his friend and her boarder, Senator Aaron Burr, to introduce them. Dolley and James were married in less than a year. The rest, as they say, is history!
April 8, 2022
What’s a “War Hawk?”
What’s a “War Hawk”?Waaaaaay back in the day while studying at Georgetown and then Catholic Law School, I spent many a night at the Hawk ‘n’ Dove on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol. However, the historical significance of its name was lost on me for years—that is, until I started researching for Dolley Madison and the War of 1812.
Still in its infancy, America was extremely polarized over the prospect of war against Great Britain in the years leading to the War of 1812. The brassy Congressmen who fiercely advocated for the war earned their nickname as the “War Hawks.” They hailed from the deep South and the new Western states.
Henry Clay of Kentucky, the youngest Speaker of the House in history, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina led this faction of the Republican Party (with no connection to the current GOP.) They used every opportunity to demand that President Madison declare war on Great Britain in our “Second war of Independence.” This would be the first time that America would declare on a foreign country.In contrast, the “Doves” came from the Federalist Party. They hailed from the New England states and made their livelihood in the shipping industry. Led by Daniel Webster of New Hampshire, they opposed the prospect of war just as bitterly. They feared a war would decimate their economy just like the earlier unsuccessful embargo imposed by former President Jefferson and James Madison as his Secretary of State. When war was finally declared, it passed by the slimmest margin in history without one Federalist vote in favor. The Doves closed their shops and schools, hung their flags at half-mast, and tolled funeral bells. In sharp contrast, the War Hawks and fellow Republicans hosted parades, shot fireworks, and cheered in the streets. Ready or not, the war was on!
Still in its infancy, America was extremely polarized over the prospect of war against Great Britain in the years leading to the War of 1812. The brassy Congressmen who fiercely advocated for the war earned their nickname as the “War Hawks.” They hailed from the deep South and the new Western states.
Henry Clay of Kentucky, the youngest Speaker of the House in history, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina led this faction of the Republican Party (with no connection to the current GOP.) They used every opportunity to demand that President Madison declare war on Great Britain in our “Second war of Independence.” This would be the first time that America would declare on a foreign country.In contrast, the “Doves” came from the Federalist Party. They hailed from the New England states and made their livelihood in the shipping industry. Led by Daniel Webster of New Hampshire, they opposed the prospect of war just as bitterly. They feared a war would decimate their economy just like the earlier unsuccessful embargo imposed by former President Jefferson and James Madison as his Secretary of State. When war was finally declared, it passed by the slimmest margin in history without one Federalist vote in favor. The Doves closed their shops and schools, hung their flags at half-mast, and tolled funeral bells. In sharp contrast, the War Hawks and fellow Republicans hosted parades, shot fireworks, and cheered in the streets. Ready or not, the war was on!
March 25, 2022
The Early Days of “Washington City”
Nowadays Washington, DC, is renowned for its gridlock, along with many other more positive attributes. However, when James Madison was sworn in as our fourth president on March 4, 1809, “Washington City” was its name. Its nickname was “Wilderness City” for good reason. Dolley Madison had her work cut out for her when she moved in!
Back then, people would joke that Washington City consisted of “streets with no buildings, and buildings with no streets.” How true that was! When the Madisons first moved there in 1801 for Mr. Madison to serve as Thomas Jefferson’s Secretary of State, their address was simply Six Buildings. Yes, it was distinctive just that six buildings stood together on a road with no name. Kilns, brickyards, and lumber were much more abundant.Here is the unfinished President’s House without a fence, lawn, or any embellishments. John Adams was the first president to live there but only for four months, and his wife Abigail got lost in the woods on her way there from Baltimore. His successor, President Jefferson, would often answer the front door himself wearing his slippers with holes in the toe.
Below is our unfinished Capitol without its iconic dome. We couldn’t afford one. The two wings of Congress were separate buildings connected by wooden planks to cover the mud. This also served as Congressional outhouse. There was very little housing, so the Congressmen could not bring their families with them. Instead, they shared rooms in dilapidated boardinghouses within walking distance and argued about politics.
Back then, people would joke that Washington City consisted of “streets with no buildings, and buildings with no streets.” How true that was! When the Madisons first moved there in 1801 for Mr. Madison to serve as Thomas Jefferson’s Secretary of State, their address was simply Six Buildings. Yes, it was distinctive just that six buildings stood together on a road with no name. Kilns, brickyards, and lumber were much more abundant.Here is the unfinished President’s House without a fence, lawn, or any embellishments. John Adams was the first president to live there but only for four months, and his wife Abigail got lost in the woods on her way there from Baltimore. His successor, President Jefferson, would often answer the front door himself wearing his slippers with holes in the toe.Below is our unfinished Capitol without its iconic dome. We couldn’t afford one. The two wings of Congress were separate buildings connected by wooden planks to cover the mud. This also served as Congressional outhouse. There was very little housing, so the Congressmen could not bring their families with them. Instead, they shared rooms in dilapidated boardinghouses within walking distance and argued about politics.
