Both James Madison 's Montpelier estate and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns it, have experienced what appear to be odd, precipitous shake-ups. Meanwhile, another National Trust property, Oatlands in Leesburg, Virginia, has filed suit against the organization and against a number of its board members individually.

All of this comes in the wake of a well-publicized takeover of Montpelier by left-wing activists who say they are acting in the name of descendants of Montpelier’s former slaves, even though they are at odds with the most prominent group of proven descendants. In the midst of the controversy, Montpelier’s financial situation became precarious , according to board documents and numerous other communications.

As Montpelier’s finances began looking grim, then-National Trust President Paul Edmondson, who had helped engineer the “woke” takeover of Montpelier, unexpectedly announced that he would step down “in the spring,” albeit with no mention of any connection to the fourth president’s estate.

The timeline, however, sped up and became interesting. On Feb. 2, the board of Oatlands , a separate property, sued the National Trust as a whole and up to seventeen of its board members individually by name, including then-board Chairman Jay Clemens and new Chairwoman Martha Nelson. A later column will explore the specifics of the complaint, which appears to involve a question of fiduciary duty.

One week later, sooner than many had expected and sooner than “the spring,” Clemens sent a message to the National Trust board saying that Edmondson would leave by March 3, with Clemens himself stepping down as board chairman in order to serve as interim president of the National Trust.

At Montpelier, meanwhile, more seemingly odd things were happening. Elizabeth Chew, a longtime top staff member and an outspoken supporter of the coup against the former regime, had taken over last summer as interim president (the top hired position). Staff turnover throughout 2022 had been extensive, with both the positions of chief financial officer and human resources director being consolidated with other positions in what internally were described as cost-cutting moves. In late February, however, Chew herself stepped down as interim president, returning to her former department, now upgraded as “Director of Museum Programs and Chief Curator.” Now, while the Montpelier trustees continue to search for a permanent staff president, the interim reins (and reign) will devolve onto a “Co-Leadership team.”

Strange as it may sound to have an interim co-leadership team to replace an interim president, several observers expressed even more surprise to me at the particular people chosen. One, Krista Costello, has indeed served in capacities at Montpelier for 17 years, until recently as what was described to me as essentially Chew’s executive assistant, styled as chief of staff. The second, Katie Crawford-Lackey, was appointed just last fall to lead Montpelier’s once prominent but recently moribund Center for the Constitution after joining the staff in 2021.

Crawford, a 2020 Ph.D. recipient from Middle Tennessee State University, did not appear to have vast prior experience related to the Constitution or the founding era. Before arriving at Montpelier, she had co-edited a three-volume book series described by one reviewer as “cutting-edge scholarship on queer communities in the United States, placed within the very helpful context of thinking about historic preservation and interpretation.”

The third volume, for example, is titled Identities and Place and subtitled “Changing Labels and Intersectional Communities of LGBTQ and Two-Spirit People in the United States.”

Whatever is going on at Montpelier and the National Trust and with a broader, left-wing march into control of American museums, colleges, and other cultural institutions, maybe the Oatlands suit represents the first stirrings of a backlash.

Perhaps a more organized effort is needed, such as one that became notably active last year in Great Britain because of parallel concerns about left-wing politicization. Called Restore Trust (referring to the National Trust in the United Kingdom, a separate but similar organization to the National Trust for Historic Preservation here in the U.S.), the British group includes members “from across the political spectrum” who want the once venerable British institution again to concentrate on preservation, not on “modish, divisive ideologies.”

Either way, the shake-ups at the National Trust on our side of the Atlantic and at Montpelier merit close attention.