When Thomas Jefferson moved his victorious Republican administration into the new capital in 1801, one of his first acts was to abolish any formal receptions, except on New Year's Day and the Fourth of July.<BR>Women like Dolley Madison and Louisa Catherine Adams, women of political families, used the unofficial, social sphere to cement the relationships that politics needed to work. They worked hard to create a space in which politics was effectively conducted. As a result, their efforts legitimated the new republic and the new capital in the eyes of European nations, whose representatives scoffed at the city's few amenities and desolate setting. Covered by the prescriptions of their gender, Washington women engaged in the dirty business of politics, which allowed their husbands to retain their republican purity.