Opening a New Door on History

The 18th-Century Virginia plantations were more than just farms with grand homes on them. They often served as hospices of the day. George Washington once wrote that his Mount Vernon could be “compared to a well-resorted tavern, as scarcely any strangers who are going from north to south or from south to north do not spend a day or two at it.” The strangers, of course, were in addition to the many visitors who came by invitation to exchange news and to talk of the problems and promise facing the newly independent United States of America.

So it was also at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Monroe’s Ash Lawn, up in the Piedmont country of Virginia at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Americans can visit these places and view them much as they were in the Founders’ days, when men like Washington and Jefferson practiced the arts of agriculture and mechanics and debated political philosophy.

And now James Madison’s home, Montpelier, will be open to the public for the first time in a century and a half. Sold by a bankrupt Dolley Madison eight years after the fourth President’s death in 1836, Montpelier was owned and occupied by members of the Du Pont family until 1983, when it was left by Marion du Pont Scott to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Montpelier will be reopened on March 16, the anniversary of Madison’s birth in 1751. The event is particularly appropriate in this bicentennial year of the U.S. Constitution because of the critical role that Madison played in drafting the document and campaigning for its ratification.

It will be some time, however, before Montpelier resembles the plantation house of Madison’s day. At present it is a 55-room, 33,000-square-foot empty house located on 2,700 acres of land. The size of the house was doubled by the Du Ponts, and the painstaking research that will precede the actual restoration work may take a decade, said Dory Twitchell, assistant director of the project. In the interim, the visitors will tour rooms, see slide shows about the Madisons and their plantation life and hear lectures about how the National Trust will go about the restoration work.

The spartan aspect of Mount Vernon and the homey feeling of Monticello seem to reflect the personalities of Washington and Jefferson. It will be intriguing to see what Montpelier ultimately will tell visitors about Madison. For now, the vastness of so many empty rooms seems to overwhelm the image of this short, frail, soft-spoken and sometimes dour man. Ah, except for his intellect, which was capable of filling any expanse.