Political wives present a problem for biography. Insofar as Dolley Madison was a perfect helpmeet – and she did set the standard for later first ladies – she is not a subject in her own right. What did Dolley think of the War of 1812? Was there a shade of difference between her view of slavery and her husband’s? There is no way to tell because she subsumed herself in President Madison’s political program.

In “A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation” (Henry Holt, 512 pages, $30), Catherine Allgor deals with aspects of the person inside the larger historical and political context. Dolley was particularly fond of one of her sisters and worked hard at corralling family members within her political compound, so to speak. She was gracious to everyone and included her husband’s political enemies in her parties to soften the harsh rivalry between Federalists and Republicans.

Dolley (everyone seemed to call her Dolley at a time when even husbands and wives referred to each other by last name) cultivated the Willy Loman aspiration to be “well liked.” She dressed elegantly and fashionably but also wore American fabrics and made sure she did not appear to be too queen-like at the court she constructed out of her husband’s presidency.

James Madison, a rather fragile figure in comparison to Jefferson, Burr, and other robust contemporaries, needed an outgoing mate to attract a social following in the raw environs of Washington City, as it was then called. Congressmen like John Randolph brought their hunting dogs to public meetings and thought nothing of settling debates by coming to blows. By promoting a lively social scene, Dolley tempered these excesses, since even Randolph would not strike another man in a woman’s presence.

Ms. Allgor provides this background to Dolley’s triumphs with scholarly aplomb. Dolley shines among a stunning cast, especially in comparison with the shifty, rather thuggish Jefferson, who enjoyed humiliating British envoys when Madison was his secretary of state, and with the wily Henry Clay (the “Great Compromiser”), who exclaimed, “Everybody loves Mrs. Madison” – to which she rejoined, “That’s because Mrs. Madison loves everybody.”

Of course, not everyone did love Dolley, nor Dolley everyone. Malicious critics accused her of having an affair with Jefferson, though Ms. Allgor’s account gives no evidence of that. She once told a close friend, “It is one of my sources of happiness, never to desire a knowledge of other peoples’ business.” If true, of course, that sentiment would have made her a pitiful political wife. But to the contrary, she served as her husband’s spy. Her parties were intelligence-gathering activities.

Here again is where Dolley herself fades into the big picture:

Dolley’s role in the [her husband’s presidential] victory proved paramount.Though psychological effect is hard to quantify, no election can be won without it. Always a person who put on a good public face, she submerged her true feelings, presenting a serene and gracious persona to the outside world. The work of political campaigning – the weekly parties, the daily visits, and the constant entertaining – paid off.

Acrimony abounded in the Republican ranks, but Dolley knew how to assuage it. What she thought of her husband’s rivals, however, and how she learned to temper her own opinions, are unanswerable questions. Historians do not even know, Ms. Allgor points out, if Dolley kept her grievances to herself or dispatched them in her correspondence, since a considerable number of her letters were destroyed at her behest.

On one matter, though, Dolley is starkly shown. She had a cousin, Edward Coles, who served as Madison’s secretary. He was, in Ms. Allgor’s words, a “charming, intelligent, deeply thoughtful man,” and a bachelor devoted to the Madisons. Dolley said he was a “great fidget & is hard to mary.” But as Ms. Allgor points out, Coles had much to fidget about:

He did marry, years later, when he had resolved the dilemma of his life. The immorality of slavery troubled Edward Coles, and he often argued with James about it. Edward would go on to move his slaves to Illinois, free them with land of their own, and settle there himself for a time, his life a reproach to slaveholders and to his Albemarle County neighbor and friend, Thomas Jefferson.

Did Edward also quarrel with Dolley about slavery? And what did she say? Ms.Allgor evidently does not know. But it is not hard to surmise Dolley’s response to her uneasy cousin, for she had next to no ability to imagine slaves as human beings.

Ms. Allgor makes plain Dolley’s deficiency: “On occasion, [she] acknowledged emotions in enslaved people but only for the purpose of manipulation, to ensure good and dependable service.” This is an extraordinary mind-set not to be excused by the customary notion that Dolley was simply a product of her age. While furnishing the White House, for example, she employed free blacks as well as her own slaves. She could not, evidently, see that to engage the services of free men of color made a mockery of her own pretense of ownership over the lives of others. And yet, Ms. Allgor points out, the Madisons, “in direct contrast to their neighbors, also freed slaves on occasion.”

What to make of these “occasions”? Ms. Allgor rightly concludes:

Celebrated as she was for her good heart and her warm personality, Dolley seems to have been quite cold on this particular subject. This affect, along with Dolley’s refusal or inability to understand why her slaves might steal or otherwise resist, might well have stemmed from the need to distance herself from the reality of the situation and to deny her participation in it.

Indeed, without that distancing device, who knows, the polished and poised first lady might have begun to fidget.

It is in fugitive moments such as the above passage on slavery where Dolley comes alive. Fortunately, Ms. Allgor, an astute historian and biographer, makes the most of them.

crollyson@nysun.com