Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase (10 page)

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Authors: David Nevin

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

BOOK: Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase
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Anthony Wayne—Mad Anthony, for his wild exploits in the Revolution—was commanding general when Wilkinson had reentered the army. Everyone knew that Wilkinson had waged a violent internal attack on Wayne, turning officers and political weight against him; only Wayne’s early death averted a showdown, whereupon Wilkinson slid into Wayne’s position slick as a greased pig.
Burr had spoken half in jest, expecting a cynical witticism in response, but Wilkinson’s little eyes went hard as stone,
his fists curled on the table. “Aaron,” he said, his voice a rasp, “mind your tongue. You’re an infant in these matters. I don’t like such talk, and I’ll destroy any man who makes it.”
Burr had a sudden understanding, very startling, that his old friend was dangerous. And then the general relaxed.
“Come, come, let’s not have such talk. I’m giving you a friend’s advice: Listen to what these Federalists say.”
“And what’s in it for you?”
Wilkinson chuckled. “In having a dear old friend as president? Oh, I’d find some advantage or other.”
“There’s talk on the street that the administration in its waning days might call out the army to set aside the election. What do you think?”
Wilkinson sat back, his expression lazy. “If it came to that, I suppose I’d have to assess my options.” He shrugged. “See what’s in it for me. But you, now … play the hand that’s being dealt you and that won’t happen.
Comprende?
”
Burr smiled. Infant in such matters he might be, but not so innocent that he would answer that question.
Burr rode the stage into Philadelphia on the evening of the day Sam Smith had expected him in the morning and met Sam the next morning, a mere twenty-four hours late. Which was all right; Colonel Burr was a presidential figure, after all. Still, when he saw Smith in the hotel lobby the next morning standing with Hichborn, whose first name he never remembered, the older man looked ready to erupt.
Smith was a burly fellow from Baltimore who’d made pots of money in business and shipping before going to Congress. He was important in Baltimore and thought he was important nationally, a faith that Burr felt ranked somewhere between illusion and delusion. He also was an inveterate busybody, which was why Burr had written him in the first place.
“Sam!” he cried, shaking the other’s hand and treating him to a big smile, probably the last to be seen this morning. He gave Hichborn a languid hand.
“Good morning, Aaron. I thought yesterday was our day—”
“Tied up in New York,” Burr said with an airy wave of his hand. Smith was lucky he was here at all.
“Anyway, you’re here, so tell me what the devil—”
“Hold it.” Burr raised a palm. The hotel was full of men. “I don’t care to have every mountebank in Philadelphia listen.” He led the way outside, found a bench warmed by a shaft of sun, sat at its center, and turned toward Sam as the bigger man sat. That left Hichborn the opposite end, facing Burr’s back, which was about where he belonged.
“Now, Aaron,” Sam said, at his most portentous, “I want to know what the devil is going on.”
“I suppose the Congress will choose a president.”
“Goddamn it! Don’t toy with me, Colonel Burr. You put me right in the middle of things with that letter. I published it and everyone heaved a sigh of relief: Good, Burr will do as he should, and since then not a word from you!”
“‘Do as he should.’ Now what does that mean?”
“What the hell do you think it means? That you should make it clear you won’t contest, that if these Federalists in Congress should manage to elect you, you would refuse to serve. Nobody voted to elect you; they voted Tom, and you were along for the ride!”
“First, Sam, you made a serious mistake in publishing a private letter.”
“Private, my foot! Don’t tell me that wasn’t intended for more than my eyes!”
“I sent it to you as a casual comment to an old friend. I regret you saw more in it. Now as to my making some more definitive statement, yes, I considered it. But I found a peculiar view that you apparently hold too. Everyone assumes I will back away. Why do they so assume? That I’m incapable? That I would be a worse president? Inferior to the Virginian? Frankly, sir, I find that insulting. Having reviewed the matter carefully, I believe it is my duty to my party and to my country to do nothing to influence the congressional decision.”
“Why, you damned fool—”
“Fool?”
“Fool!” Smith said it with such force that Burr was momentarily silenced. “They’re trying to use you to steal the damned election. Think they want you? They don’t want you. They want to tie it up so they can keep it for themselves, name a president protem, steal it!”
“They know they can’t get away with that.”
Smith gave him a speculative look. “But you think they might swing to you as more palatable somehow. Fat chance with Hamilton denouncing you right and left. How hungry you must be, willing to betray your friends.”
Trust Smith to seize such an interpretation! In fact, Burr had worked it out fully in his mind, and the news that Hamilton was attacking him only solidified his conviction. Hamilton was making himself an enemy. So be it. Burr could well live without Mr. Hamilton, and he could deal with him whenever he chose. But in this situation there certainly was no betrayal, and he said so emphatically. He stood as the very personification of honor, remaining aloof, above all interests, influencing nothing. He would answer no messages, from the Democrats or from the Federalists. That was the utterly honorable course, one he had thought out with great care.
“So what do you think will happen?” Smith asked.
“Congress must choose a president.”
“And if they choose you?”
“So be it.”
“But, Colonel Burr,” Hichborn squalled from behind him, “Who would be vice president?”
“Why, Mr. Jefferson, of course.”
He was walking rapidly down Broadway, heels hammering on brick, stick clutched so hard his hand hurt, heading toward a supper he didn’t want with a woman he couldn’t stand. Sam Smith had abused him, called him a betrayer, said he was selfish, his very conscience in question, asked if
ambition so ruled him. Sam had come dangerously close to the point of a challenge. They had parted without handshake or salutations, and Burr had returned in a white heat that hadn’t yet abated.
Ambition did not rule him! He had thought this out carefully, had seen the insult in the blithe assumption that he would immolate himself on the Virginia pyre, the decent and honorable course becoming evident, what he owed himself, after all, and Theodosia, to stand above it all, aloof, silent—honor beyond challenge that sought nothing for itself!
Ambition, they said. He was ambitious as was every man, but it didn’t blind him. His breath was ragged. That was God’s truth, but still, there was that vaulting fire within that could shake him as a terrier shakes a rat. Even now, hammering down Broadway, he felt the surging force of desire at the very thought, Aaron Burr, third president of the United States! Oh, it was there, all right, and he was a big-enough man to make that admission to himself, but control him? Not at all. He was acting with honor, propriety, decency—
A figure lurched out of an alley, an old man with a long beard; it was dark now, no one about, dim light of an oil lamp a block away. A footpad. Burr raised his stick.
But in a rolling voice that might have come from a sepulcher, the figure cried, “You’re doing wrong, boy. Wrong, wrong! I’m the Reverend Whitney. I knew your father well, admired him and loved him—him snatched off in the very prime of his life, him and your maw too—and I say to you on this night, he must be rolling in his grave! Spinning at the sight of what his son has done!”
“Get away from me, Goddamn you!” Burr cried. “Get away from me!” He hurried on at a near run, breathing in gasps, hearing the old devil shuffling behind him. Where in God’s name was that tavern where there were lights and he was expected and everyone welcomed him; but he saw he had wandered down into a dark area near the East River, no one about, and he hurried on, hearing the footsteps behind him.
How dare the old man invoke his father? Burr came from
a fine family, the best, the great preacher Jonathan Edwards his grandfather, the first Aaron Burr a minister of note who had started the college at Princeton where he and Madison had been classmates.
And his father had betrayed him. As had his mother. How dare the old devil throw his father up to him after what his father had done. There were sudden tears in his eyes. He didn’t hate his father or mother; it was just that it hurt so. And it had been years before he’d even understood what yellow fever was, how the sick miasma festered in low-lying areas and swept out to fell men and women by the score. He’d been six when they went. He’d cried himself to sleep at night for years; but sometimes he’d cried with hate too. They’d gone off and left him, except he didn’t really hate, he loved—
“Aaron Burr,” the roaring voice from behind cried, “harken to my words. You are destroying yourself. Oh, my son, I see you stepping toward perdition, wallowing in the sin of pride and ambition, betraying your heritage. You are blinded by lust for power and glory and position. Repent now, while you still can. Your father—”
It was more than Burr could stand and he whirled, stick raised, and the bearded figure stepped into an alley and was gone. Burr stared. Had the old man been there at all? Could he have been an apparition? Burr peered into the alley, saw it was empty, turned and hurried on, stick now raised as for a weapon, and the old devil’s voice echoing and reechoing against the dark and silent buildings.
MONTPELIER, VIRGINIA, JANUARY 1801
He was a hunchback, this little man, his linen was soiled, he needed a shave, a long queue hung down his back with a twist of leather at the end, he spoke with a slight burr of Scotland in his voice, and he had lived with the Indians as a trader off and on over the years. He had no family or settled home, and he could be forty or he could be sixty. He used a half-dozen names and Madison doubted any of them were his own.
All that on the one hand. On the other, that perhaps a dozen men, all merchants of power, all Democrats, used him to carry messages and he had never been known to betray a confidence or err in what he said. He’d carried gold and letters and verbal messages too sensitive to put on paper. If a shipment disappeared he knew where to look; if bribery was afoot he could sniff it out; if threats had been made, he could arrange retaliation. ’Twas said that he’d killed or caused men to be killed, but of course there never would be a record of that, and those who employed him wouldn’t want to know. If you wanted him, you left word at one tavern or another and after a while he appeared.
Madison had never seen him nor had use for him, but he understood instantly who he was. The fellow had appeared at Montpelier; the plantation manager was ready to throw him out on appearances alone, but something in the other’s expression changed his mind and he sent the visitor on to the big house. Madison saw him in small room off the main salon. A maid named Suzanne, a slender girl with long, tapering
fingers whom Sukey was breaking in, served beef and bread with a pot of butter and a tankard of ale brewed on the plantation, giving the visitor a supercilious look.
“Nigger don’t care for me,” he said, grinning.
“Let’s say you’re an unusual visitor, Mr. Dinwiddie.”
“Dinwiddie ain’t my name. I had to tell that nosy bastard manager of yours something. You know who I am?”
“By reputation, I think so.”
“Good. That’s enough.” He cut slabs of beef with what looked like a fighting knife and stuffed them in his mouth, licking his fingers and gulping the ale.
“Now, Mr. Madison, I come from Sam Smith.” Madison wasn’t surprised. The Maryland congressman had published the letter Aaron had written, which seemed on its face to remove him from any competition for the presidency. But Madison had already concluded that Aaron had written on the first report from South Carolina before he knew there was a tie. And there had been nothing since.
The man drew a clay pipe burned nearly black, shaved plug tobacco with that big knife, turned the pipe down over a candle and filled the room with pungent smoke. Madison swallowed a need to cough. He said nothing, waiting.
“Now,” pointing with the pipe stem, “Mr. Smith wants you to know two things. First off, Burr ain’t going to step back. He met Smith in Philadelphia and seems like he said the Democrats could kiss his ass. Said in so many words he’s in it to win. Says Mr. Jefferson would make a right fine vice president.”
The effrontery! Madison knew he’d masked his fury, but his breath was short.
“The other thing is, the Feds got the bit in their teeth. They’ll back Burr to the hilt. Way it works out, Jefferson’ll have eight, Burr six, two split even and not voting.”
Sixteen states in the Union, each with one vote in the House, that vote to be decided by a majority of each state’s congressmen; Tom needed nine states to win and was one short.
“You understand, they don’t give a fiddler’s fuck for Burr.
Mr. Smith has it straight. Says they’re looking for stalemate. They’ll hold it frozen till March 4 when the current administration ends; then they’ll appoint themselves a caretaker president to run the country—run it their way.
“And you know what that means?”
Madison raised his eyebrows.
“Means you can take the Constitution to the outhouse and use it for ass-wipe. That’s all it’ll be good for.”
“I don’t really need a constitutional lecture,” Madison said.
The other grinned. “I expect that’s true. Mr. Smith says you about wrote the blamed thing. But his message is, you’d better get off your ass and take a hand in this game. Didn’t put it that way, exactly, but you get the drift. See, the boardinghouse where he lives in Washington City—Conrad and McMunn’s, you know the place? No? Well, don’t matter. Point is, Mr. Jefferson stays there too, Mr. Smith sees him every day, and he says the man won’t lift a finger in his own defense.”
Tom was adamant: He would not bargain for the presidency, would not accept it as a deal. Madison was pretty well bound by those strictures too. Still, he wasn’t running for president. He was just a citizen. Bound he might be in a public sense, but there was always the private sense too.
“You want me to carry a message back?” The fellow’s pipe had burned down, and he knocked the dottle into his plate.
“I don’t think Sam Smith expects an answer,” he said.
“I think that is an answer,” the fellow said, and he was up and gone, leaving Madison still at the table, lost in thought.
The rotten Goddamned scoundrel …
James Madison rarely cursed and disliked crude talk, but now anger greater than any he could remember swept him in waves.
Dawnlight glowed across his fields. He’d awakened long before light, saddled a big buckskin gelding himself, and
now had the horse pounding along the turnpike, the flexing rhythm beating against the waves of anger.
Burr had aimed to steal the election! Sent that miserable creature Gelston—God! he would slap Aaron’s face if he could reach him and if that led to the dueling field, he would doubleshot his pistol!
Sent Gelston to assure him they had cured the tie danger and to focus the North-South clash—all a trick. They knew electors would tend to vote for both president and vice president and that Madison would see the danger and block it. They’d set out to neutralize him, to use against him his instinct to take men as honorable until they proved otherwise. Tricked him …
He slowed the gelding, whose heavy breathing was making steam clouds in the chill air, and slowed his own racing heart. The eastern sky was taking on an orange glow. Fury was an indulgence and Madison didn’t often indulge himself, but he would not forget the corruption inherent in Burr’s act.
For it jeopardized the great democratic revolution, the turning of the nation from narrow elitism to the broad belief that free men have the capacity to govern themselves wisely. He thought it the most dangerous time since 1776. The great Federalist fear was that, as in France, the passions of free men must overcome their senses and lead to chaos. But the people had put their trust in the Democrats, said by their vote they believed free men were responsible. Not overwhelmingly, however, it was a narrow majority that had said, all right, we’ll try you once, we’ll see; but foul your nest and we’ll go back to the safe and the true because maybe, after all, free men do go out of control. We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we … .
And here was Burr spinning it into chaos before they could even start! One hungry man willing to destroy the future in his search for self-glory … .
“By God, sir,” he cried into the cold morning air, seeing Burr’s pasty face before him, “you shall not succeed!”
“De old colonel calling for you, Mr. Jimmy.”
Madison hurried to the sickroom. His father was rarely out of bed now, clearly but slowly dying. The bony old hand searched for his, clinging, the feeling of a drowning man.
“I’m going to go, Son.”
“Yes, Father.”
“I can feel it, waiting to take me. So I wanted to tell you, you must … you must …” The wavering voice faded away. Then, stronger, “Damn, I forgot.”
“About the farm, Father? You’ve given me my instructions.”
The hand tightened on his. “You must see to it, James. It’s your sustenance, your life blood, it will see you to the end … take good care of it … .”
He was asleep. Madison disengaged his hand and went back to his desk to sit there, tapping his pen knife lightly on the blotter. Another messenger had come this morning, this one from Richmond. It was time for action.
Running north from Montpelier on a rattling stage that managed to find every lurch and pothole on the dirt high road, Dolley rehearsed what she would say and to whom she should say it. She had a message to deliver—Jimmy had emphasized that. “You’re not negotiating,” he’d said, “don’t let anyone put you in that position.”
This when she had protested that women didn’t negotiate. She chuckled, remembering his response. “Do all the time in Europe. Tom says in Paris all the important messages are delivered by mistresses.”
“Oh, is that so!” she’d said, laughing. “Well, I’m not your mistress, thank you.”
And he’d said, “Mistress, lover, wife, best friend, shining light of my life, answer to my prayers, guarantor of my happiness—sweetheart, you’re everything!”
She sighed, lonely already. He was a darling man. He’d whispered, “You do brilliantly what mistresses do best,” and she had said, “You dirty dog,” and kissed him, and the evening had gone on from there.
When the stage stopped on the south bank of the Potomac across from the shining new city, she was still nervous, but she didn’t let that quiet her lively anticipation. She’d been dreaming of Washington and the role Tom had asked her to play for a long time, and now, the town drawing close as the ferry worked across the Potomac, she was there. Tom was a widower; he had asked her to serve as his official hostess at state dinners in the President’s House, and already she was planning.
Her old friend Danny Mobry awaited her on the bank, a tall, pretty woman with her face framed in black curls, wearing a brocaded gown the color of oysters. She was standing by a gleaming landau, a big black man holding the horses. As Dolley stepped ashore, Danny enveloped her in a hug.
“What a sight for sore eyes!” she cried. “Dolley, you’ll love it here—new houses started every day. Come along, we’ll have a grand—” She broke off, forehead wrinkled. “Sweetie, what’s the matter? You look downright strained.”
“No, no. Just a long trip.”
“I suppose, but no, there’s more to it than that.” She slapped her forehead. “But of course! You hardly came all the way alone just to look at houses. You’re up to something; I can see it in your face.”
“Danny, really!”
“See, I knew it! Edgy as a cat. And why not? Country’s trying to blow itself up, and Jimmy sent you to work some alchemy—”
“Danny! That’s enough now. I mean it.”
Danny bit her lip. “All right, dear. I’m sorry. Come along; we’ll tour the new capital city. And Carl and I will help if we can or stay out of your way … .”
She introduced the big coachman as Samuel Clark and said he once had been a slave on her father’s plantation. Carl
had purchased his freedom and that of his wife, who ran their household. The big man bowed and Dolley nodded, but what struck was the force of character she read in his squarish face, the authority. She was surprised and then a little ashamed because she was surprised. She didn’t pay much attention to the black people at Montpelier, except for the house servants.
Montpelier was a benign plantation, as benign as slavery could be; the old colonel and now Jimmy made sure their people were not mistreated, though she supposed the overseer did discipline when necessary and that meant flogging. It all was deeply disturbing. She’d grown up a Quaker on a slave-owning Virginia plantation. Her father had lived out his convictions, freed his slaves, and consequently had to sell the plantation, there being no white labor available in slave country. Someone else bought the land and bought slaves to work it and all went on as before. And the Paynes moved to Philadelphia and failed in business and everything collapsed … .
Inside the carriage Danny said, “I’ll tell you their story someday, Millie and Samuel. I grew up with Millie. She was my nurse from the day I was born. Just a girl herself then, eleven or twelve. I taught her to read, and don’t you think
that
kicked up a rumpus at home!” She sighed. “Now I don’t know what’ll happen; they’re so on edge here. Philadelphia was fine—it’s the center of the Quaker abolition movement—” She broke off, laughing. “Forgive me,
I
should be telling
you
about the Quakers?”
“But why? You said they were uneasy here.”
Danny gave her an odd, sharp glance. “Washington is a slave city, you know. Auctions down on the Eastern Branch couple of times a month. You see coffles, men in chains and women chained right with them. Not very attractive in a great nation’s capital, seems to me, but it doesn’t make you very popular to bring it up. But you can see that it would make free Negroes nervous, papers or no papers.”
She laughed suddenly and covered Dolley’s hand with her
own. “Enough dark talk. You’re here at last. I can’t wait to show you your new city. Oh! There’s a house just going up that you must see; I promise you’ll love it … .”
It was like coming home to encounter Danny’s exuberance again, though she’d hardly realized that her own tensions were so obvious. Still, Danny knew her very well. They’d been close for years. Dolley’s first husband had been Carl Mobry’s lawyer, and after the yellow fever it was Danny to whom Dolley had turned for comfort. And Aaron had been her friend … .

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