“But, but—” Gallatin was sputtering. “Militiamen, no matter how many, against highly trained troops, blooded in
years of war, supported by countless cannon, supplied and resupplied and reinforced and—”
“We’ll need some help,” Madison said.
“Well,” Jefferson said, “this mad French dreamer has a limited future. His dream of conquering the world is too big a dream. He has absolute power, and absolute power is cruel to its holders. It first seduces and then destroys them, and sooner or later his dreams will destroy him. But meanwhile, if he presses on until we must fight or submit, then certainly, we will need help. From, to get it said, the Royal Navy.”
Madison couldn’t restrain a great sigh. He knew his face had cleared in relief. Tom had followed the same course of logic through the dark of the night to this same cold conclusion. He saw reproach in Jefferson’s eyes. You doubted me?
“The Royal Navy!” Gallatin’s voice squeaked.
“Napoleon’s days will be numbered if we join the British,” Jefferson said. “We’re already the largest neutral shipping nation in the world; together we would rule the seas. Britain would be glad to blockade the Gulf Coast while our militia cleared out the French if we were its ally in the world war.”
It all sounded cool, no raised voices, no emotional cries—the language of disaster, Madison saw, was not much different in tone from that of ordinary life. But this was disaster.
“That’s just what the Federalists want!” Gallatin cried.
Yes, exactly what those who dreamed of conservative rule by the better classes had wanted for years, war with republican France, the little United States curled up between the paws of the British lion, an end to Jeffersonian democracy.
“But it would be to British interest to keep the French out of North America,” Gallatin said.
“Well, Albert,” the president said, “they wouldn’t do it if it weren’t in their interests. But every encounter with the British over the last quarter century says they’ll make us pay.”
Madison saw this as simple logic. And payment would be to join the world war on their side, put our shipping at their disposal, bend our trade to their advantage, perhaps assume the defense of Canada to free their troops for the Continent. Our import-export duties—the government’s only source of income—would pour into empty British coffers. Our foodstuffs would flow to their armies with payment when and if and how they said.
“That’s the reality,” Jefferson said. “Underneath a little face-saving cover they would grant us.”
“So the Federalists would win after all,” Albert said.
“I assume so,” the president said. “They’ve wanted alliance with Britain against France for years. Surely they would argue that only they have the stature to bend British protection to our ends without losing our own sense of nationhood.”
“If we did what they’ve wanted all along, of course the people would turn back to them,” Madison said, “and there go our dreams—back to the old autocracy, Hamilton in the saddle again, bending the economy to serve those who have the most, aristocracy coming, monarchy in the wings.”
So defeating France by force would give us a very costly victory, but Madison felt better with the peril laid out on the table. They had decided, they were together, they could fight in lots of ways.
“Remember,” he said, “the only thing worse, more dangerous, would be not to fight. A democracy that can’t defend itself must fail by definition.” Still, he was feeling better, and he cried, “But maybe standing strong would save us, prove that freedom works. What do we argue, after all? Only that the common man has the courage, the self-discipline, the control, the collective wisdom to govern himself—that he doesn’t need rich men or aristocrats or a king to guide him—” He saw Jefferson’s smile and stopped himself, then added, “Well, soldiers of democracy must be preachers too.”
The president nodded. “Well said, Jimmy. Preachers must believe, and we must too. We set out the worst, the ultimate
disaster. But long before we come to fighting, to rallying militia, let alone appealing to the Royal Navy, we must try to head them off. So, Mr. Secretary, it’s in your hands. Take it one step at a time.”
Madison stood and squared his shoulders. “Mr. President,” he said in his most formal tone, “I will operate on this basis: We know we can drive them out and we will if we must.”
“Quite—destroy them by destroying ourselves. Bit of a bad joke, eh? So, Jimmy, I leave it in your hands.”
“I’ll need some presidential weight, I expect.”
“Oh, I’ll be available.”
Well, Madison thought as he snatched up his boots and case and bounded out into the cold morning air, at least the president was strong, no matter Dolley’s reservations. Anyway, what really lit Dolley’s anger was the feeling that Madison worked and Tom got the credit. But Madison was full ready to cede credit, for what did it matter? Dolley wanted him to be president someday, that was the core of it, and the idea was taking on a certain appeal to him at that, though his instinct told him he would never be a man to leap to saddle and lead his people. But neither he nor Tom would be president if they couldn’t handle this thing, though he knew the difference between talking a fight and fighting it. He must walk that narrow line between showing them we can win but not having to prove it, and he didn’t know if that line even existed … .
WASHINGTON, LATE DECEMBER 1801
As Madison emerged from the mansion deep in thought and hurried along the brick walk toward the little State Department building, Johnny Graham assailed him with a cheery good morning. Johnny had returned from the Madrid embassy. Finding him a bright and capable young man, Madison had pressed him into service and by now had grown fond of him. The talk with the president was reverberating and his shoulders ached from tension, but he smiled and greeted Johnny. A long road lay ahead, and he would do well to hold things in proportion.
Johnny was pegging the State Department nag to graze on the mansion lawn. Every morning he went to the stables on G Street to fetch the horse on which the nation’s diplomatic errands were run. A stalwart man still under thirty, with a shock of carroty hair and fists like hams, he’d grown up on the Ohio near Cincinnati and acquired a legal education before he found he didn’t much like the law and didn’t want to practice. Among Madison’s clerks, the Nothingarian had departed; and while he regretted losing a man with such an appellation, he had to admit it was justified. Johnny had leaped at the chance to replace the Nothingarian.
The Mississippi, for which the Ohio was the great feeder, was on Madison’s mind. It was the lure and the key. Remembering Johnny’s background, he asked what he knew of river trade and traffic.
“A good deal, actually. My uncle’s in the business—runs twenty, thirty flatboats out of Cincinnati every year. I went down with him one year.”
“That many boats, eh?”
“More going every year. Pa said in a letter they’re saying maybe five thousand hit New Orleans this year.”
“Really? So how does it work out when you get there?”
“First off, it’s a long float. You’re mighty happy to see civilization again. And the Spanish? Well, they make some trouble, but you know, my uncle has sixty, seventy men and most of ’em, the bark’s still on. They wanted, they could bump up against the handful of Spanish soldiers, take their pieces, and—well, put them someplace that my uncle describes somewhat indelicately. So the Spanish don’t push the rivermen too far.”
“But suppose they clamped down? Shut the river.”
“Shut it?” Johnny laughed. “Western folk wouldn’t tolerate that.”
Madison walked into his office pondering the image of flatboatmen with the bark still on as an element in the international equation.
He gestured the chief clerk into his office and warned him that the French move must remain a secret. Mr. Wagner hesitated, swallowed, said, “I don’t suppose we’ll be disputing it … .”
“What in the devil gives you that idea?”
“Well, it’s just that many people felt the Democrats were—”
“Captives of the French? Many people, eh?” His temper was fraying. “Federalists, you mean.” He stared at Wagner. “You’d be wise to see less of your Federalist friends.”
But with vulnerable expression Wagner said his friends—former friends—shunned him or pumped him for secrets. “I suppose you find out about people when circumstances change.”
“Probably just as well.” Madison was calmer now. In fact, he had come to depend on Wagner; but if the clerk let information slip, the hue and cry from radical Democrats would be deafening. Still, that Wagner was only learning this late in
the day that most friendship is shallow made him wonder a bit about his clerk. Madison had found many a false friend among Federalists, though he supposed that’s how they felt about him … .
“As for the French,” he said, “we favored their revolution as they had ours. But it imploded, and Napoleon jumped in and bent French hopes for a better world to his own corrupt ends.”
“Yes, sir, that’s the Federalist view.”
“No!” Madison snapped. “The Federalist view is that without controls by the better classes, democracy will degenerate into mob violence. Now that’s poppycock. All Napoleon says about democracy is that it’s always at risk and always must be guarded. As for us, we’ll maintain neutrality in the European squabbles, but we’ll tolerate no dabbling on this continent. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, you know Mr. Pichon quite well, don’t you?”
Wagner massaged his chin. “When he was here before as secretary of the French legation we were more or less counterparts, and I saw a good deal of him. Now that he’s back as chargé d’affaires it’s different.”
“Why do you think they named him just a charge, not an ambassador?”
“A mark of contempt to the host country, I would think.”
“So would I, unfortunately,” Madison said. “Now just last night Mr. Pichon denied knowledge of this Louisiana matter.” Actually, he had said he had no instructions from his government, but that amounted to denial. “Do you think he deliberately lied?”
Wagner sighed. “I’d guess his government didn’t tell him. He’s a decent fellow, always seemed honest and straightforward, as not all French diplomats are. Plain potato, really. Mrs. Pichon, too. She gives the impression of a milkmaid who’d really rather be back on her father’s farm in Provence.”
Plain potato? Well, this was the instrument through whom they must reach the strongman of the French.
Wagner cleared his throat. “Spends too much time with the Federalists though. They’ve got him thinking the Democrats
can’t survive, that the people’ll turn on ’em before long. He’s in Gouverneur Morris’s Senate office nearly daily.”
Madison sat a long time gazing out on the mansion lawn where the department nag cropped a circle. Then he told Johnny Graham to ride up to the Hill, keep an eye on Morris’s office just off the Senate floor, and hurry back when he saw Pichon go in.
“I’d like to catch him coming out of that office.”
Meriwether Lewis was in a state of wild turmoil. He saddled his horse and set out for the Capitol bearing a message binding the chairman to secrecy on the French move. Of course, the speaker was in charge, but he preferred to do business through the energetic Ways and Means chairman. This time Lewis had specific instructions from the president to place this in Mr. Randolph’s hands—personally. So much for the pale clerk.
He was barely aware of the chill morning, the big gelding frisky and rambunctious under him. He hadn’t slept the night before, burning as he was with excitement: The expedition had been broached at last! The talk at the diplomatic dinner had been especially charged, Mr. Jefferson expressing precisely what Lewis had always felt—the wondrous sense of the West beckoning like the Golden Fleece.
And he was utterly ready to go! He had armfuls of plans, charts, lists. Nothing more had been said, but it was, after all, only the next morning, and this damnable French business had intervened. Which could ruin everything. If we had to fight the bastards, of course he would revert to the army—with a command, surely, or maybe knowing Mr. J’s attitude toward favoritism, not so surely—but the expedition would be shot to hell, about like putting a charge of grape through a paper target. It would be another dream crashing against reality; wasn’t that the very nature of life?
He rode on, jaw clamped in his urgency. Yet after a couple of blocks, at Fourteenth and F Streets, he dismounted and
continued on foot, leading the gelding. The message he carried was imperative, but the clerk would keep him waiting a half hour—that seemed the way Mr. Randolph wanted it—so he might as well take a moment now.
It happened that Mr. Secretary Madison lived on F Street between Fourteenth and Thirteenth and it happened too that Miss Anna Payne lived with her sister and brother-in-law. Of course he didn’t expect to see her and he certainly didn’t intend to knock on her door, but just the sight of a window behind which she might be drinking her morning tea would be balm to a ravaged heart.
His foot still burned from the sweet contact of the night before. The erotic force of that touch amazed him—certainly he’d never considered a foot in quite such terms. And she had just
done
it.
She
had put her foot there, he had moved away in courtesy, and she had followed, she had moved and touched and rubbed, all the while talking to someone else. It was
that
that made it so devastating, the secrecy, the intimate touch hidden from the world, her conversation with someone else a sham to cover the blazing center of the whole incredible experience!
When he was before the house, only covertly glancing toward its windows, the front door opened and Anna came running down the steps. She’d seen him, come out to greet him, she’d expected him, perhaps he should have called, perhaps any gentleman would have known enough—
“Oh, hello,” she said, obviously surprised. And then, “Good morning, Captain Lewis.” She stepped right in front of him to a landau drawn by two smart grays with both its hoods rakishly down that he now saw had pulled up behind him. It held two young men and a young woman. One of the men jumped down to hand Anna up. She waved and in an instant they were gone, carriage wheels rattling against dried ruts, a little dust cloud drifting over him.
He walked on, feeling as if she’d slapped him. Still, he told himself, it wasn’t her fault, she hadn’t expected him, it meant nothing. But that old darkness was crowding the edge of his vision. He mounted and rode on.
From an upstairs window, Dolley observed this tableau. She’d been glancing out from time to time, wondering if she would see Jimmy. If the meeting with Tom went badly, he might come home to brood alone in his study. But it was late enough now so he’d be here if he were coming, so probably he’d been satisfied, meaning Tom had buckled down to it as she knew he could when he chose. Still, she’d bet a dollar to a doughnut he’d laid the main effort off on Jimmy. One more glance from the window and there were Merry and Anna. Something was going on, and she’d warrant it was Anna up to some devilment.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mr. Secretary,” Ned Thornton said. He eased his fawn-colored breeches and flicked a dust mite from a polished boot. That fine blooded mare of his was tied to the rail before the department.
“It’s always a pleasure to see His Majesty’s representative,” Madison said. Again he noticed that calm in the man, with its air of self-assurance and strength. Speaking formally, Thornton described the great pleasure that Whitehall, that august heat of the British foreign service, felt in having been able to deliver the French treaty on Louisiana to Mr. King and to have provided passage to America on a warship for Mr. King’s man. Of course, Whitehall had sent a dispatch to him on the same ship with a copy of the treaty and note of instructions.
He was to report, therefore, that Britain would look with much disfavor on the idea of French penetration of the North American continent. Should the matter come to extremes, Britain would consider taking New Orleans itself to keep it from French hands. But it felt that such action might more appropriately be taken by the United States.
Cautiously, Madison said, “Perhaps Great Britain would even lend a hand under the right circumstances.”
Thornton nodded. “I have no specific instructions, of course, but indirect commentary makes it clear that is a safe assumption.” He smiled warmly. “After all, we are locked in a death struggle with the same tyrant, who now reveals himself as the enemy of the United States as well. Our common interests”—he put delicate emphasis on the phrase—“urge that we smite him wherever and however we can.” He paused. “Of course you know that Britain looks upon the United States as a very close friend.”
“Really?” Madison asked.
Thornton colored slightly but didn’t waver. “It sees the United States as related, as is, say, a man by marriage. It would want to assist in time of trouble, and I suppose it is only natural that it would look for some degree of reciprocity.”
“Ah …”
“There are so many ways to deal with an enemy in world war terms—trade, for example, and the movement of foodstuffs and other war materiel—and then, we are both great maritime nations. Together we would command the world’s seas and none could stand against us. We feel that such a connection, Britain and the United States, would flow as easily as spring water gushing pure from the ground.”
Spring water … purity … interesting formulations. Madison gazed at the handsome envoy. There would be no help from Britain but on Britain’s terms. And what else could he expect? That was the way of nations.
“Thank you for this information,” he said. “It is most reassuring.”
Thornton did have the grace to color again. As he rose to go, Madison heard Johnny Graham arriving at a gallop.
Captain Lewis was at a small desk he had rigged in the unfinished East Room where he had partitioned a sleeping cubicle for himself in a corner; the partition’s walls of canvas fluttered when the wind blew. He was still unsettled over the encounter this morning. Afterward, the meeting with the pale clerk and Mr. Randolph had gone predictably badly. He
had restrained himself, but it had left him feeling disheveled as if nothing in his life was within his own control. Now he was laboring over the paperwork he hated. Mr. Jefferson did write his own letters as promised, but there seemed countless lists, reports, presidential directives to be written and social activities to be recorded. He was working on a list of diners at the presidential table to be sure none were slighted whom Mr. J didn’t want to slight when a slender young groom came in looking agitated.