Treason, page 21
He pushed on as hard as he could. On a moonlit night the stage might press on to the next station, going slowly against ruts and potholes invisible in the dark, to arrive at a log hut in the woods that combined tavern and stage station. Arriving, he stumbled from the stage for a supper of beans and salt pork washed down with a cup of whiskey, and slept on the puncheon floor thankful it wasn’t just dirt. He laid his head on his boots to prevent their theft and wrapped himself in the blanket he carried in a tight roll lashed to his grip. There, amidst the cries and grunts of dreaming men he dreamed himself. He was on the heights of Quebec once again storming toward victory, and the great Montgomery fell with a loud cry. Then Montgomery’s heavy body, inert, across his shoulders, he staggering toward the ladders they had scaled, finding his own legs buckling—God, the general was heavy!—and then dropping him and awakening with a cry, face wet with tears. Dreamed of Alex, his slender, handsome face drained of venom and then dissolving in a cloud of gunsmoke, a noise to awaken the dead. The dream slipping into the root of it all, the infamous tie, a voice like that of God judging him but he can’t quite hear the words and he believes or at least hopes it will be favorable but before he can straighten the tangle of the words he starts awake and listens to the sighs and groans of the poor mortals around him, and swallows hard to avoid weeping in self-pity ....
No one recognized him. No one questioned his pseudonym. In Washington and New York his face was known, but nowhere else. Probably fifty, maybe a hundred, portraits had been taken, he sitting patiently as painters of varying skills labored, but how many people had seen them? The woodcuts and gross drawings in the papers made nothing recognizable. The vice president, the duel, the death of the great Mr. H was often discussed as the hours of stage transit crept by. Mr. R. King listened dispassionately and commented no more than an occasional murmur. He booked himself through Pittsburgh and Wheeling out in the western edge of Virginia and on south, far wide of Washington, and only then did sentiment shift to favor the beleaguered vice president who had disappeared so mysteriously.
Oaks, the handsome plantation of which marriage to Joseph Alston of the South Carolina Alstons had made Theodosia the mistress, struck the exhausted traveler as little short of heaven. He slept ten hours and awakened to find his clothes washed and dried and his daughter burning with fury at the willingness of the world to condemn a man who took honor seriously and enforced respect for his name! Indeed, she supplied the fury he felt so that he could revel in it while presenting himself as accepting fate, gravely acknowledging the perfidy of man, but always in the calm manner that suggested a man of great stature.
She staged a dinner and ball, and guests came from as far as Charleston. They clustered around Burr, listening gravely to his wisdom and betraying no disapproval. Theodosia was delighted. But gradually the questions grew more pointed. What were Hamilton’s insults, how did it feel that day, what did he think when he saw Hamilton fall, how did it feel to kill the man whose design saved the national economy? A woman, near spitting—was he proud of himself?
Abruptly he realized that he was a mere object of curiosity, the man who killed Hamilton, what was he like? An object to be stared at, a dancing bear with a chain around its neck. Burr retreated to his room. He felt himself sinking again toward despair and suddenly the future loomed as impenetrable and mysterious. What would he do with himself? He wasn’t finished yet—thus the pseudonym, R. King—but now that elegant defiance of a great man challenging the world had a hollow ring. Sometimes, thinking of it all, he began to sweat and he knew it wasn’t from South Carolina heat.
More and more he thought of the West. Pittsburgh and Wheeling were its entrepôts, on the great westward flowing avenue, the Ohio River, and he had liked what he’d seen as he passed through. There was a rough, direct, openhanded—and opened-minded—attitude in which he saw he could prosper. Jim Wilkinson made the West seem the place of the future and perhaps it was. But how to approach it ...
Then the letter arrived, New Orleans to New York to South Carolina. There was no signature and the seal was unmarked wax, but he recognized Wilkinsons’s hand. It urged him to depart immediately for Washington where the writer would meet him. A careful study of the situation had convinced the writer that no legal entanglements would arise there. Indeed, the writer’s information was that the late furor in New York had subsided quite remarkably. The meeting proposed between the writer and the vice president might well be the most important move of either man’s life; let nothing keep you from being there.
Throughout the letter, which was written in direct terms with few of the usual embellishments of courtesy, there was a distinct tone of command. It didn’t occur to the vice president that once he might have resented such a tone; now, scarcely noticing, he responded warmly to a strong voice. He would leave in the morning.
Ambassador and Mrs. August Merry, Britain’s new representative in the United States, had an instant collision with the new democracy as practiced by Mr. Jefferson. This went right to the heart of democratic realities, Madison felt. Every man with equal voice, equal vote— and here came Mr. Merry, who regarded such ideas as heresy. The Briton had been awaited with anticipation but proved to be pompous, humorless, quarrelsome, and in thrall to his wife. Toujours Gai, indeed.
But what really unhinged things was the president’s pell-mell practice at state dinners. No more seating by rank, no more gentlemen assigned to dinner partners. No, when dinner was announced everyone was to escort to table the woman closest to him, and as for seating, first come, first served. Laggards sat at the foot of the table—and Mr. Merry, unprepared since Thornton had gone off to England without explaining the custom, wound up with Mrs. Merry at the bottom of the table— the place of lowest rank for the ambassador who considered himself the ranking figure in the diplomatic community by the strength of his nation. Madison could see that both were enraged, and since Tom was very sensitive to individuals and their emotions, of course he could see it too. It struck Madison between soup and meat that Thornton had not told his replacement of this custom in retaliation for some sort of slight. Merry gave offense on every side by his obvious sense of superiority.
Yet by every account it was Mrs. Merry’s rage that soon had the two nations at diplomatic swords’ points, the Merrys’ refusing social invitations from Democrats while lavishing attention to Federalists. The ambassador, who aside from pique demonstrated a certain competence despite his dull manner, might have been willing to declare a truce but his wife never. Madison wrote frequent dispatches to Monroe in London explaining each new twist lest Merry use it to assert American attacks on Britain. “I blush at having to put so much trash on paper,” he told Monroe.
All their enemies perceived—and enjoyed—what they saw as the administration’s disarray. Jaycee Barlow returned from the Hill in a state of obvious agitation. When Madison asked, he said he had stopped in the rotunda for a hot cruller and noticed Mr. Pickering talking to young Mr. Adams. Jaycee said he immediately turned his back as he stepped closer to eavesdrop.
“Well, sir, that scoundrel Mr. Pickering, and I don’t care if he was secretary of state, his views are downright pernicious, yes, sir. Well, anyway, he’s ranting away and what he says goes this way. Maybe not in exact words, you know, but he says, ‘Think about it.’ To Adams, you see. ‘Think about it. For the first time ever Britain honors us with a full ranked ambassador. Sends a fine man, outstanding, brilliant, reasoned, just. Anthony Merry, cream of the diplomatic corps! And with a fine lady, handsome and cultured and rich. Damned rich. You should see her diamonds! An ornament to our fair city, if one can choke down laughter for such a term for this crossroads. And this puerile president insults both of them with such force as to make an international incident! What do you think of that?’
“Well, sir, Adams, he don’t seem to think a lot about it. He talked like he’d been an ambassador himself.”
“He was. Ten years in Europe, under his father.”
Barlow nodded. “That would explain it. He talked a lot but seemed to be saying that the reason for diplomatic customs was that everyone would know where they stood, how to act, what to expect and what to perform, thus avoiding diplomatic fo—fo—”
“Faux pas.”
“That’s it, yes, sir. Anyway, Mr. Pickering said that he was taking every opportunity to tell Mr. Merry that he was right in all particulars and the Democrats were barbarians.”
He thanked Jaycee. He wasn’t sure he’d have eavesdropped himself but he was glad Jaycee had done so. Still, that was just Federalist talk that was not to be dismissed entirely but was somewhat discountable. But criticism was boiling. Madison was allowed no doubt of that. Two days later he was strolling down a Capitol corridor when John Randolph came bounding out of an office with those damned dogs.
The gaunt chairman reared back in mock astonishment. “Mr. Madison! Lowering yourself to go among the plebeians who merely make up the heart and guts and core of your party, which simple truth you and your high and mighty leader fail to understand. But now you’ve gone too far—”
“Sir?”
“This insult to Britain’s ambassador, what is its purpose, sir?” The dogs draped themselves on the floor.
Madison stared at him. “My word, you who are always prating on the idea that we are too little democratic, too close to Federalists, you question the democratic principle of pell-mell, of first come, first served?”
“Don’t try to fob me off, sir,” Randolph shouted, voice going shrill. His dogs leaped up and glared at Madison. “This clearly is a plot. Insult Merry, he will report the abuse he receives, and in London they’ll play tit for tat against Mr. Monroe. You are setting that fine man up for failure, we can see that, you will throw rocks in his path wherever you can, don’t think we don’t understand that.”
“Oh, John,” Madison said, and walked off, as the chairman shouted behind him, “We are watching, sir. We have our eye on you, we know your plans. Beware, sir . . .”
Madison returned to his office and spent an hour composing a message to Mr. Merry explaining that the president had no authority to discipline the mayor of Philadelphia whatever he said, and anyway, Mr. Merry should read newspapers with caution.
On the way home he paused at the mansion to find the president glowering over the report of a congressman who’d come for tea and related what Mrs. Merry was said to have said about Virginia manners in a gathering of Federalist wives. The president snapped that he could tell that woman with her vulgar diamonds a proper thing or two but it would be beneath his dignity, at which Madison said yes, wouldn’t it, at which the president gave him a sharp look, and on that note he walked home.
There, in slippers and loose clothes, a cup of warm and mildly alcoholic punch in hand, he described these vexatious encounters to Dolley only to have her exclaim that it was all perfectly ridiculous.
“Exactly,” he said. “People can be quite unbelievable.”
“I meant the president,” she said. “This pell-mell business. Really, Jimmy, I know the point of it, but what trouble it causes and all for what really is just a metaphor. Tom should find some other way.”
But he stiffened at that and she broke off. He simply would not tolerate criticism of the president. It was too dangerous—once you let it start where would it end? Her remark rankled through the evening but was it really true? Obviously the new democracy was vulnerable in a dangerous world, the suction of a vast war dragging them toward the vortex, the Royal Navy abusing them, their own radicals undermining, their minister in London more fretful every day, Federalists constantly on the attach, this obscene talk of splitting the nation, New Orleans throbbing with discontent—given all this, could a metaphor that made the point of what really mattered about democracy be such a bad idea?
What did the new democracy really mean, after all? The Federalists had started bending the Constitution toward those they considered the best people, meaning the wise and the good, by whom they inevitably meant those properly rewarded with material goods by a beneficial God for their wisdom and goodness. Those times were past now and Madison intended to keep it that way.
Surely the only democracy in the world was a lonely beacon of hope. The French effort had destroyed itself. America stood as the solitary ideal, threatened on every side. If they made many false moves their own people would lose faith and turn back toward what the world had always been, the common man in thrall to those with the energy or intellect or opportunity or heritage to seize control. If Americans ever decided their safety depended on such a turn, they would make it. That was what freedom meant, after all. So, was a metaphor that reminded everyone of these principles so unfortunate?
Late that night, Dolley in her nightgown, covers drawn to her chin against cool night air coming through a window opened a sliver, and he standing by the bed in his nightshirt, his legs getting cold, about to sneeze, he reminded her of these things, which she knew as well as he did. Then, satisfied, he slid into bed beside her and was asleep as his eyes closed.
James Monroe was a big man, a stalwart Virginian, master of extensive lands, which he, like his friend Jefferson, farmed with scientific intensity. He was at home on horseback, handy with a bird gun, and sometimes it seemed a little odd that he had made his mark not in private but in public life, as diplomat representing his country in Europe and as governor of Virginia. He had fought in the Revolution, doing better than well, he had to admit that, though of course it was the sort of thing you left to others to say. Leading troops into a hail of gunfire taught you the value of seriousness, and Mr. Monroe was a serious man. He was minister to France during the thunder of the Revolution there, and by God, that taught you some things too, and gave you reason to be serious. Came home and ran the state of Virginia with backbiting scoundrels in the wings who didn’t have to face the fire but were free with their criticisms. Back to France to secure the Louisiana Purchase with Mr. Livingston nattering on that that magnificent bargain resulted from his two years of effort, Monroe a man of too much dignity to respond to such carping but owing it to his own image of himself to let it be known quietly that it was the weight of his name that swung the deal. And now here he was in London, ambassador to Britain, replacing the old Federalist, Rufus King, who had stayed on for Jefferson’s first term, and here was little James Madison yapping after him like a terrier. Monroe long had known that Madison was a bit of a noodle and good old Tom could have been doing something else when he named him secretary of state. So here was Madison displaying his ignorance in a series of instructions that ran against the grain of all reality.
Madison had never been abroad, that was the trouble, and Tom hadn’t been abroad for a decade now, so naturally they were behind on the trends and thrusts of Europe on which Mr. Monroe was fully up-to-date. These instructions, for example. On a Sunday afternoon at the residence he sat in his deep chair tapping them with a long index figure and explaining to Elizabeth that they were idiotic. Seemed to say that impressment was everything when in fact impressment seemed a small matter these days compared with issues of trade and this abominable Rule of 1756 and this Essex foolishness under which the British Navy was seizing American ships right and left.
“But James,” his wife said, “impressment does anger a lot of people. Cousin Harry told me he’s lost twenty men off his ships in the last few years. So maybe at home it’s bigger—”
“Your cousin Harry ...” Monroe let his contempt for the said Harry seep through his tone. She flushed but didn’t respond. “No, trade issues must be where we stand or fall. I’ll just have to educate Mr. Madison.”
“Oh, James, you always think you’re right and you think everyone should see things as you see them.”
“Well,” he snapped, irritation growing, “I usually am, too.”
“I think Mr. Randolph’s letters upset you. That business where they want you to fail.”
“Hah! Randolph is a very good friend, I’ve known him for years, brilliant man, you know. But I don’t take everything he says as right. He can be extreme. But there’s usually a grain of truth—well, this situation with Madison will bear watching, that’s all. I’ll be the first to notice if he really is undermining me. He’s terribly hungry to succeed Tom, everyone knows that.”
“I think you see yourself as a more likely figure to succeed Tom.”
He stared at her. “I seek nothing, Elizabeth. But you know I always am ready to serve my country.”
Four days before Congress reconvened Aaron Burr arrived in Washington. He went to Mrs. Simpson’s boardinghouse and found to his pleasure that his old suite was vacant. He took it immediately—a suite fitted his view of himself—and queried the War Department to learn that General Wilkinson was expected to arrive at any moment. He left a message and then stayed quietly in his quarters, reading and thinking, taking a daily constitutional walk where he was not likely to be seen.
FOURTEEN
Washington, December 1804
The second session of the Eighth Congress was coming to order. Dolley Madison was in the Ladies’ Gallery suspended above the hubbub on the Senate floor. Attendance at the Congress for great debates or on ceremonial days had become favored entertainment in this village capital that offered little frivolity. Hannah Gallatin had accompanied Dolley and Dorcas Dearborn sat nearby. Maggie Smith and Danny Mobry, one behind the other, were whispering and laughing. A year had passed since the transfer of New Orleans but Danny still got a hollow look around the eyes when she talked of the furious discontent of the people in New Orleans. Far from learning to like their new country, they seemed ever more bitter and extreme. Would they ever settle into being Americans?
