When Thomas Jefferson moved his victorious Republican administration into the new capital city in 1801, one of his first acts was to abolish any formal receptions, except on New Year's Day and the Fourth of July. His successful campaign for the presidency had been partially founded on the idea that his Federalist enemies had assumed dangerously aristocratic trappings--a sword for George Washington and a raised dais for Martha when she received people at social occasions--in the first capital cities of New York and Philadelphia. When the ladies of Washington City, determined to have their...