The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers

A fresh look at the critical role of women in the lives of the founding fathers— Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison

With his usual storytelling flair and unparalleled research, Tom Fleming examines the women who played important roles in the lives of the founding fathers. From hot tempered Mary Ball Washington to promiscuous Rachel Lavien Hamilton, the founding fathers’mothers powerfully shaped their son’s visions of domestic life. But lovers and wives played more central roles as friends and often partners in fame. We learn of the youthful Washington’s tortured love for the flirtatious Sarah Fairfax, wife of his close friend; of Franklin’s two "wives," one in London and one in Philadelphia; of Adams’s long absences that required an angry Abigail to keep home and family together for years on end; of Hamilton’s adulterous betrayal of his wife and their reconciliation; of how the brilliant Madison was jilted by a fifteen-year-old teenager and went on to marry the effervescent Dolley who made this shy man into a popular president. Jefferson’s controversial relationship to Sally Hemings is also examined with a different vision of where his heart lay.

Fleming nimbly takes us through a great deal of early American history, as his founding fathers struggle to reconcile the private and public —and often deal with a media every bit as gossip seeking and inflammatory as ours. He offers a powerful look at the challenges women faced in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. While often brilliant and articulate, the wives of the founding fathers all struggled with the dangers of frequent childbearing and the searing anxiety of infant mortality. Jefferson’s wife, Martha, died from complications following labor and so did his daughter Maria. All the more remarkable then that these women loomed so large in the lives of their husbands-- and in some cases, their country.