Free Louisa by Louisa Thomas

Nassau Street and Frog Lane the year before, and they had already partly moved in. The house was hard to heat and drafty in winter, and smoke filled the rooms when it snowed, but it was theirs—it was home. Louisa quickly embraced it. She had her sister Catherine (“Kitty”) for company, and began to entertain once more, learning that not everyone planned to stay away. “The mere commonplace routine of every day life suits me very well,” she wrote in November. She was pregnant again but complained less frequently of illness. She had her husband home and her children back. “Once again,” she later remembered, “we were a family.”
    And then, once again, he was gone.
    He would make only a short visit to Washington, he reassured her. In January 1809, with James Madison set to be sworn into office in March, John Quincy accepted three cases before the Supreme Court—cases he was confident he would lose—and went to Washington until the court adjourned. He claimed he needed the money. Though he would never admit it, those who knew him suspected that he wanted to be in Washington when Madison was making federal appointments. John Quincy had risked and lost his political career to support the Republicans Jefferson and Madison. There might be a reward.
    Louisa and John Quincy fought just before he left. The immediate cause isn’t clear, but the arc of their correspondence suggests that she knew he was positioning himself for more than a trip to argue a case before the Supreme Court. “I forgive you though you did part with me very
cavalierly
,” she wrote.
    â€œI do not know whether I have yet
forgiven you
—” he responded. “I am sure I have not yet got over it.”
    A few weeks later she slipped on some ice, struck her back on a street curb, and miscarried. John Quincy, normally so attentive to her when she suffered a miscarriage, responded coolly, even cruelly. “As to the disappointment which we suffer from it,” he wrote, “I certainly can bear it without complaint, and you must reconcile yourself to it by the reflection how much of pain and suffering it may relieve you from.”
    She was caustic in her own letters. “It is here said you are nominated for the War Department and have accepted to walk in the steps of the God of War I make no comments,” she wrote. A week later, she told him that if he planned on staying in Washington for any longer, he should consider himself too busy to write to her again.
    On February 26 , John Quincy told Louisa to ignore “the ridiculous reports” that he was to be offered a federal appointment. “There is not the slightest foundation for any one of them.” Hardly a week later, James Madison summoned John Quincy to his office and offered himthe position of minister plenipotentiary to Russia. “How long will the mission probably continue?” John Quincy asked.
    â€œIndefinitely,” Madison answered.
    John Quincy immediately accepted.
    But the following day , the Senate rejected the nomination, saying it was “inexpedient” to send a minister to Russia. John Quincy waited two more days, until March 9, to tell Louisa of the nomination and its rejection. “I believe you will not be much disappointed, at the failure of a proposition to go to Russia.” It took no imagination to believe so.
    She might, then, have considered herself out of danger and settled. But on July 4, while listening to the Fourth of July oration at the Old South Church in Boston, John Quincy was informed that Congress had reversed course and accepted his nomination. He was the new minister plenipotentiary to Russia.
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    H E MIGHT HAVE LEFT his wife behind, as his father had done when he crossed the Atlantic, and as many diplomats did when they were posted abroad. The journey to Russia would be long and extremely dangerous. St. Petersburg would be cold, dark,