Treason, page 37
Once a strong rumor arose that a keelboat bringing a few casks of sugar north for sale carried gold for Wilkinson. General Wayne sent a detail to search the keelboat. Barlow knew the officer heading the detail, who told him they had opened everything but the sugar casks and had found nothing. Later they heard the gold was hidden in the sugar casks ....
So Wilkinson was a nasty man. Beyond that, little was proven. But maybe it didn’t really matter. Maybe when great issues were afloat you would never be sure and must take your position and strike your blow on instinct, and if you were wrong and failed, face that, too. There never would be easy answers.
“Johnny,” Madison said to John Graham, “what do you make of all this? Daviess’s report, this Comfort Tyler person on the Mohawk and then going downriver, all this talk about Burr with no one seeming to know anything real?”
He trusted Johnny Graham for his experience and good sense as well as his origins and frequent visits to the West. He came from Mayfield, Kentucky, on the Ohio River, and his parents were still there. He had returned from a tour in the U.S. embassy in Madrid looking younger than he probably was even then. He was Scotch-Irish in origin, or so Madison assumed from his looks; he had a shock of tawny hair and a high pink complexion so he always looked as if he’d been running somewhere, and often enough that was just what he had been doing, for he was energy personified.
Six years in Madison’s office had matured him substantially; now that Mr. Wagner was talking of leaving, Madison had Johnny in mind for chief clerk. Marriage to a very pretty young woman named Faith Cunningham had steadied him, and the arrival of their first child had matured him further. The baby was a girl, who giggled and drooled through a huge smile when Madison picked her up, quite winning his heart. Now Faith was well along on their second child. The doctors thought it had come a little too soon after the first and it didn’t seem so easy this time.
“I think there’s something to all the talk,” Johnny said.
“Think Daviess is right?”
“I don’t know about that—I’d hate to think our strongest supporters in the West are conspirators.” He paused, his features at rest, which increased his appearance of strength. “Still, I don’t know.”
“Wouldn’t surprise you unduly?”
“Not unduly, no ...” He smiled. “They’re different folks out there, you know, different from Virginians. They were Virginians until a few years ago when the mother state turned loose her west end and Kentucky was born. But they always were different.”
“That’s why they left Virginia in the first place, eh?”
Johnny laughed. “That’s about it.”
Madison filled his clay pipe and passed the tobacco jar over to Johnny. He cocked back in his chair and put his feet on the corner of his desk, pulling up sagging hose as he did so. The pewter buckle on one shoe had torn loose the week before and he had refastened it with string. Now it was coming loose again.
“All right,” Madison said. “Something is going on, we’re agreed. Suppose Daviess is more or less right in outline—Burr puts together a little army and comes downriver. Plans to seize New Orleans, maybe go on to Mexico. Would westerners, those along the river, say, welcome him?”
“If he told them his real aim was Florida and Texas they’d crown him with roses. Anyway, the army would be ready to break up anything more, wouldn’t it?”
“All this talk, but I’ve heard nothing from the army.”
Comprehension flashed over Johnny’s face. “My,” he said softly. “If the army—well, it would have to be Wilkinson. The army would never turn.”
“That’s my assumption. So suppose Wilkinson—well, suppose the whole thing, Wilkinson turns, they seize New Orleans, they go on to Mexico, which—well, I don’t know how easy—”
“Easy, if they get that far. Everyone in the West knows the Spanish empire is dying.”
“Well, if all this happened, New Orleans in conspirator’s hands, Mexico subdued and its gold mines pouring forth, they would have to have the West, wouldn’t they, to make it all viable?”
Johnny nodded and Madison cast the dice. “Could they have it? Could the people there be turned?” There was a long silence. Please God, Madison thought, let him say no, not a chance, they’re utterly loyal—
“Yes,” Johnny said, “they could be turned, if it were handled right.”
The words were such a blow that Madison knew his expression had betrayed his feelings.
Johnny gazed at him. “It’s what we were saying,” he said at last. “The people there are different. They’ve uprooted themselves from settled lives in the East—maybe not prosperous or anything, but settled. So your westerner, he’s up and moved, looking for something—adventure, gold, thievery sometimes, but something. So the idea of change doesn’t shock him. Now, he’s as patriotic as the next fellow—Spain or Britain invade us and he’ll pull down his rifle and march. The militia movement is still strong in the West, you know. I hear tell it’s losing its strength here in the East but out there Indian fighting was only a few years ago and ain’t really over yet.”
“But this would be different,” Madison said. “Not like an invasion. I mean, they’d be presented with a whole new situation. Do they accept it or do they rally themselves up and fight it?”
“Yes, sir, that’s it—the old anchors would be cut loose. They’d have prominent men behind them and it wouldn’t be like foreigners taking over. It would be more like a political turn. And if they had the river where they could seal off shipping of western produce to the world that would be—well, you know, that really is what it boils down to. The river.”
“That was my thinking.” Madison’s voice was steady now.
“Yes, sir,” Johnny said, “give them the river, control of traffic, hands on the economic windpipe of the West, assume an army no longer a focused force, add to that a steady gold supply from conquering Mexico, which would mean no taxes, no custom duties, plenty of wealth for roads and such—”
“Western people wouldn’t hold out, you think?”
“For an abstract ideal called the United States of America? Maybe not. I don’t know. If they’re any age they’ve been through one revolution already, so another might not be so outlandish. Anyway, if they joined a new country they could argue it wasn’t really revolution, couldn’t they?”
Madison sighed. “You make a painfully coherent case. I think the danger is great and I may have to send you west.”
“But—”
“I know, Faith’s confinement is coming soon and I won’t ask you to go if I can avoid it. If you must, I want Faith to come and stay at our house and let Dolley see to her. She’ll be safer than in your hands.”
“That’s kind of you, Mr. Madison, but—”
“Of course, you want to be on hand. But this is important, Johnny. If what seems to be true is true, it’s the most dangerous moment this nation has ever faced.”
“I’ll talk to Faith,” Johnny said. “Just in case.”
TWENTY-THREE
Westbound on the Ohio, fall 1806
This would solve all his problems and work his vengeance and prove what he hungered to prove once and for all, that Aron Burr was a king among men. And yet Burr had an odd, queasy feeling. It wasn’t fear—he’d known fear on the heights of Quebec after Montgomery fell with big devils in red coats coming on the run with bayonets before them like spears. He’d felt his bowels turn to water and still he’d hoisted the big man’s body onto his back and run until he dropped, redcoats so close you could smell their breath. You understand fear after that. No, this wasn’t fear. Nor was it offended patriotism—he was beyond that. He had no country. That the country he was leaving would be destroyed by his success, split and broken and nevermore as its people knew it, really didn’t matter. The country owed him repayment. You had to take what you wanted in this world; life would abuse you if you let it, and Aaron Burr was not a man to be abused. Alexander Hamilton should have understood that earlier.
He sighed. Even as he had put all this together over spring and summer he’d been torn, anxious to be gone but reluctant to go. Well, maybe it was just that he was burning his bridges. Cutting off from all he had known and plunging toward a new life that would be utterly different. The past would be forgotten but the older a man gets the more he needs a past. Aaron Burr was fifty years old and fifty is a dangerous age when all is changing and nothing is holding. As on a ship in trouble, he was taking an ax to the anchor cable. The metaphor disturbed him but he shrugged again; it did apply.
So, at last, later than he really liked, the great adventure was starting. Soon the river threading west would be too low in summer dryness to travel, snowmelt far behind them, well levels dropping daily. Everything had taken longer—pledged money to come in, recruits to get their blankets together and kiss everybody good-bye and move, gunsmiths to finish their orders, barrels of salted meat and sacks of beans actually to be gathered and shipped. It hadn’t really surprised him; he was sufficiently an old soldier to understand that taking a thousand men armed for war through settled country to the wilderness beyond would be no quick undertaking.
But now he must hurry, get on down the river while he could with days shortening and leaves ready to show color. He must anchor things at the island and get on to Kentucky and Tennessee to see the right people and pave the way, picking up more recruits with more supplies and the boats to carry them.
He found things moving well in Pittsburgh. Comfort Tyler’s first recruits had passed through and more were coming; Comfort was shifting his operations to Ohio. John Wilkins was busy gathering two thousand barrels of flour and five hundred of pork. Delivery in Natchez or here? Half and half, Burr decided, and ordered boats with canvas covers to haul what he took here. He scouted gunsmiths and placed orders. Drafts on Sam Ogden. Sammy Swartwout had passed through on his way to Wilkinson with the cipher letter that should stir the general.
You had to hand it to old Jim. The papers were full of the inexplicable advance of Spanish troops into Texas, Wilkinson ordered to rally the army and meet the enemy in the Louisiana wilderness, all of this Jim’s arranging in the first place. It was a marvel to Burr that the Spanish could put so much trust in a man who was betraying his own country—wouldn’t he betray them as well? Still, he doubted Wilkinson was the first commander to inspire an attack so that he could march heroically to repel it. But he would like to hear from Jim a little more regularly— the “I am ready!” letter was months in the past now.
His old friend George Morgan invited him to his place near Pittsburgh and inadvertently showed him how vulnerable they were at the start. He’d known George for years—they’d been at school at Princeton together—and he knew George had heavy investments in western lands included in old Spanish grants that modern government disallowed unless they were very well established. Sort of like his own Bastrop lands, not likely to hold up when new land registrars arrived. A new, more lenient government might smile on such lands, but when Burr so hinted, old George stiffened and grew cold. Burr had been careless; now George felt endangered himself, as if listening compromised him.
Burr backed off but it did point up the cold fact: any sheriff or district attorney or judge or governor or even mayor could decide that treason was afoot in his jurisdiction and slap Burr and his men into a cell to await confirmation from Washington that this expedition really was secretly sanctioned by government, which would be the end of Burr. Later, of course, it would be different. Let them seize New Orleans and take Mexico and set up a new empire, then the George Morgans of the West would come right along. Give them a touch of the lash ... but for now caution was the word as they slipped westward. He must convey his aims as patriotic without raising any impulse to look behind the surface story. It wouldn’t be easy. Wilkinson’s job wasn’t easy either, first inspiring and then combatting the Spanish invasion, then timing a descent on New Orleans. But men who had as much at stake as he and Jim had together should be in frequent contact with each other. He had made that point forcefully in the cipher letter Sammy carried.
Would George write to the president? Well, Burr had spoken in generalities about urgent needs in the West, no more. But count on Madison to put the worst construction on whatever was said. They knew by now that he was operating in the West; sooner or later they would have a man coming down the river after him. Time to be moving along ...
As the keelboat bumped the long wharf Burr saw Harman Blennerhassett’s tall, stooped figure hurrying down the path from that incredible, ridiculous, sublime mansion he had built in the wilderness for no earthly purpose but to destroy himself. He stumbled as he crossed the wharf, hand extended. Burr met him with a two-hand grasp, then threw an arm around his bony shoulders and held him hard, shaking him a little in his enthusiasm at this reunion. Harman would have wagged his tail if he’d had one. They walked around the island.
Early recruits were already here. They were grinding and sacking corn in the barn. Burr gave them a rousing little talk about what they could expect. Of course they understood there was only so much he could say, but the fact was that the Spanish were asking for trouble and Jim Wilkinson was getting ready to give it to them, and wouldn’t that spark an invasion that would take them right into the vaults of Spain?
He named the oldest a sergeant and put him in command. The tents he’d ordered had just arrived and he showed them how to shape the necessary poles, how to ditch a tent properly, the military importance of straight lines. They were among the first, he said, watching them glow with pride; they must prepare the ground for the hundreds more who were coming.
Harman sent for Dudley Woodbridge, the merchant in Marietta with whom he’d invested. When he called Margaret she appeared from an unexpected direction, moving so silently she startled them. Burr bowed; he saw in her face that she feared him. And yet, facing her level stare, he knew she wasn’t at all intimidated. For some reason, Danny Mobry popped to mind. Something similar about them. Both drawn to him, too.
They had mint juleps and Harman listened eagerly as Burr laid out the opportunities before them. He spoke elliptically, cautiously, many things not needing to be said. And again the man’s sheer devotion drew him in. Harman was like an adoring lapdog hanging on every word, nothing in the least critical. But the picture Burr drew was clear—of an Elysium lying ahead in which all problems would be solved and life would be secure and their authority would be unquestioned. They would be a new nobility; he noticed how Harman’s eyes widened and glowed at that thought. Once again Burr found himself swelling in the face of totally uncritical approval, there having been so much of the opposite in recent years. The man seemed to look on his leader as much more than just that, as sort of a god, leader and savior combined. It was hypnotic, Burr found, that loving gaze raising his own enthusiasm and confidence, and quite intoxicating; with a quiver of alarm it occurred to him that it could become addictive. But he dismissed the thought, product of too much tension. Still, especially with someone like Harman, you had to be mindful of the dangers. Over and over he reminded the lumbering Irishman that these dreams were more vulnerable at this moment than they ever would be again. Now they must gather quietly and prepare for a future that ultimately would sweep all the West under their banner. Now caution was the word.
Margaret stood and walked out, which was just as well since her stare was becoming unnerving. Damned handsome women, though. An image of her without clothes crossed his mind and he had to drag his thoughts back to Harman. He sketched the Spanish situation, the Sabine River the nominal border between Texas and Louisiana, and they had plunged across it, Wilkinson going south to drive them back. That meant Washington would welcome their own strike against Mexico’s gold. Meanwhile, New Orleans was ready. Any day now the people would seize the government, empty the banks and the customs house, take over the armories. The young men of the Mexican Association wanted Burr’s leadership on the road to Spanish gold. With Mexico’s gold in hand and the river closed, the West would swing. Had to. No choice. This was a certainty. If Washington objected— well, there wasn’t a pass in the Appalachians that Burr couldn’t defend with three hundred men and three field pieces. Not one. But any objection would be token; the forces that already wanted to shed the West were too powerful for the administration to resist for long. Behind all this, not quite said, and we will have the army.
Harman nodded, head bobbing on his long neck. “I’m ready, Aaron, I’m ready,” he whispered. It gave Burr a faintly unpleasant reminder of Wilkinson’s words, now in the ever more distant past. Over Harman’s shoulder Burr saw a shadow. Margaret. This time she had been listening.
Woodbridge appeared just then. The merchant had supplied the tents and was eager for more business. Burr ordered a hundred barrels of pork; He would have plenty of hungry men who might well run ahead of supplies. Watching his new friend, Burr said Harman would meet all costs; he saw Harman’s eager nod. Woodbridge owned a boatyard up the Muskingum River. Burr ordered fifteen shallow draft boats of the sort common on the Mohawk that could row upstream or down. Present a bill to Harman. The merchant took down the order and hurried off.
They talked into the night; Burr would be going downriver on the morrow. Harman said he was having a boat built to move his family in style; he said Margaret was already packing for the journey. Again she gave Burr that long, level look, this time with a faint smile shot with irony. An interesting woman.
The thing about Harman, Margaret saw now, was that at heart he still was an Irish lord. For all his distaste for the family title and estate, his impatience with its formalities and fear of its responsibilities, even his desperate turn to her despite scandal and outrage, beneath all he needed the trappings that had been his.
