“I’ll go for help,” she said, throwing back the covers. “We’ll call Mr. Rawlins.”
He stopped her. Rawlins took care of the people down to the quarters and was expert with lancet and cup. Washington knew he needed bleeding, he could feel the evil humors in his veins, but if he let Martha wander the cold house she’d be as sick as he was. He viewed this as pragmatic: Bleeding could wait and he would need her before this was over. Yet he also had an odd sense that nothing really mattered. The
suspicion that he was approaching the end was growing. They would call the doctors, but everyone knew that past a certain point doctors were helpless. He’d many times contemplated dying, doubtless everyone had, but never as an immediate prospect. Yet somehow he found the possibility not unduly disturbing.
He turned on his side and Martha held his hand in both of hers. He found that he could breathe through his nose and his throat eased a little and he slid into sleep. When he awakened he was dizzy, head whirling, and he lay very still, listening to Martha breathe. She was awake and he knew she was frightened, but there was nothing more he could say to her. He felt he was chasing something, a fragment forgotten, left undone. His mind dipped and whirled. A duty …
With an effort he remembered … he must put together a message and it must be exactly right. Recall their early enthusiasm. They were new and highly experimental, the only democracy in the world, moving on trial and error and struggling for balance. Now they must reclaim that focus. Somehow.
He lay in the dark taking careful, shallow breaths, afraid his throat would close again, asking himself if that original focus had really been so strong, since it faded when they faced real issues. It all began there, factions, clashing ambitions, rage bordering into hatred—still, he knew now that parties wouldn’t go away because it was no accident that they had arisen. They represented the great philosophical schism breaking not on personalities but on opposite answers to that question, what kind of a country were we to be? He began to shiver and a cough tore his throat. Tears in his eyes, he tried to hold to his task … as soon they came to real things the question opened.
At the time he’d had no idea that the break was at hand. He wondered: if he’d been wiser, more prescient? Well, it didn’t matter now. The problem was that they were broke, and the trouble arose in what to do about it. No nation can live long in insolvency. The trouble lay in those state bonds issued helter-skelter to finance the war and still outstanding,
interest unpaid for years. He’d passed out bales of them himself, payment to a gray-faced farmer for a dozen steers; payment to a wounded soldier for his service when real money was scarce as hen’s teeth. This debt now in the many millions undermined everything. What sayest thee, Mr. Secretary of the Treasury? Within weeks, Alex had dropped two elegant designs on the cabinet table. Whence came Alex’s financial genius? He was thirty-five, bastard son of a Scottish planter in the West Indies, his only training in finance the keeping of ledgers in an island store before he came to America. Yet overnight he had put the national economy on a sound footing—and it was only later that it became evident that he’d also torn the cover off the philosophical question.
His eyes popped open—daylight. Rawlins was standing by the bed, gazing down on him. Martha was up and dressed. He’d slept but felt no better. Rawlins was quivering with fear. He was a tall man with a permanent stoop who was uneasy among his betters. Get on with it, Mr. Rawlins, don’t be afraid—but no sound came so the general pointed emphatically at the big vein in the crook of his right arm. Lips trembling, Rawlins drew up a stool and braced the arm on his knee.
Martha watched from the end of the bed. “Not too much,” she said.
Rawlins wiped the broad blade of the lancet on his sleeve. Bracing the heel of his hand on the arm he made a swift, clean incision, clamped his thumb on the vein above the cut, put the cup in place, and let the blood run out of the instrument. The general watched the cup filling with satisfaction. He felt better already. Bleeding was just the ticket to relieve the blood of the humors that caused the trouble. He’d used it for years, swore by it.
When the cup was full, Martha said, “That’s enough.”
Anger forced open his throat. “More!”
“Yes, sir!” Rawlins placed a second cup.
“George, darling, you’ll weaken yourself.”
With a second cup gone, he nodded and Rawlins stopped the wound. He felt suddenly weak and shut his eyes.
“Are you all right?” she said.
He nodded. “Better,” he croaked. He wanted to sleep.
“Take a bit of the medicine,” she said.
His throat had closed again, but he raised himself obediently and she poured in a spoonful. With his throat closed, the mixture had no place to go and suddenly he was strangling! He lunged upward, it was in his bronchial tubes, he was choking and coughing and his throat was tearing—he blew the medicine out on the bed and fell back in a near faint, the pain in his throat as bad as anything he remembered from a wound.
“George, darling—” But he raised a hand. Please, let me sleep. She sat on the side of the bed, her warm hand stroking his face. He heard her sweet voice, “Sleep, darling.”
Yet the pain was too great—and yes, the sense of urgency. The way he felt now he doubted he’d be speaking to anyone. But somehow that made the quest more pressing, time narrowing down; he must find the answers. See that political parties won’t go away so we can’t let them destroy us. Keep them in bounds … .
But by thunder, he
still
thought Alex’s plans had been wise. First, the new nation would take over the state debts, issuing new bonds, interest to be paid by taxes. Second, it would establish a
national
bank, quite an unknown critter here. Together, the two would stabilize the national economy, provide a new source of credit and a reliable currency, and assure foreign capital that it would be safe here.
It had seemed perfect, but immediately a storm of protest had arisen from men who scented royalist tendencies and cried that the bank was just like the Bank of England, which actually was one of its strong points. The government was still in New York then, in that ungainly building that later fell down or would have if they hadn’t torn it down; the general hated inferior work, which he thought described the Democratic view. He remembered studying quarter-inch gaps in window frames as they talked. The quarrel had turned his Cabinet room into a battleground. He’d started to cut Jimmy off and then decided to let it rage. Madison and Jefferson
were an effective team. He thought Jimmy provided the hard, analytical thought, Tom the flashing ideas and flights of rhetoric.
They listened as Alex presented the first leg, the bonds, and then Jimmy’s icy question, “What about the original holders?”
“What about them?” Alex had a way of hunching his head down into his shoulders when he saw a fight coming.
Jimmy glanced at the general. “The original holders, mostly your soldiers, sir, plus the shoemaker and the gunsmith and the farmer who took these bonds for services; they haven’t been able to save their certificates. Had to sell them off for what they could get in hard times. And who was buying? Speculators, paying as little as a tenth of the face value. Now, Alex, you know that perfectly well.”
“Of course.”
“Then for God’s sake, take them into account! Give them some of the payment.”
“Track them all down? Spend years when we’re sinking right now? That’s a baseless idea, all bleeding heart. Point is not to rescue little men but to save the country!”
The general remembered Jimmy’s voice going flat, and he’d seen this would get no easier. “I see a plot,” Jimmy said, “a design to give vast windfall profits to men who literally stole from the little people who supported the war …”
A little later the bank produced an equal fight. Alex envisioned it as a treasury binding private capital to government. As the official repository for government money, its bills would be as good as gold, and we would have stable money at last. It would be tax-supported, but 80 percent would be owned privately.
“Privately? By whom?” Again, Jimmy moving to the attack.
The general remembered Alex’s sharp, glinting glance, suspicious, a bit too surprised that anyone would be dull enough to ask, a manner that had reduced many antagonists
to silence. Then in a rush, “Who do you think, Jimmy? Men who have money, naturally. They’re the ones we need.”
“But won’t they shape policies of this bank of yours to suit their own ends? To the detriment of the common citizen?”
Something feral in Alex’s expression, lips pulled back on his teeth. “Certainly—that’s the point! Take care of people with money, and they’ll take care of the country. Give them a financial stake in the country’s success and it’ll succeed.” The general had seen immediately that the great question was opening. He’d sat back and let it unfold.
Alex pointed a quivering finger at Jimmy. “You know why? Because money is the real power in any country.”
“No, sir! The people are the real power.”
“My foot, they are! Men are creatures of self-interest. Damned little happens for love of country—save love talk for the bedroom, for God’s sake. Money is what drives any country.”
That was Alex, harsh, cutting, contemptuous of opposition. It made him effective, but it was a weakness too; someday he might pay for that arrogance.
“You’re planning a cheat on the people,” Jefferson said slowly. “Brutalize little men who have no recourse. It’s a hoax to reduce honest American yeomen to serfs of the wealthy.”
Their intensity shook the general a little. There was the division defined. What should government be? Tom and Jimmy said policies should help all citizens and especially the poor, since the rich took care of themselves. But Alex was rewarding the rich at the expense of the poor.
“General? General? Can you hear me?” Familiar voice, hand tugging his. He came swimming up from very deep under, Jimmy’s words still loud in his mind, and opened his eyes to see Jim Craik at his bedside. Ah … good old Craik would know what to do. The very sight of the worn lines in Craik’s cheeks swept him back to the forests of Kentucky in the French and Indian affair when they’d been together under
Braddock, he the regimental colonel, Craik regimental surgeon. The doctor had been a new graduate in medicine from Pennsylvania Hospital, and he’d cared for his patients with the same loyal intensity that Washington gave his men.
The general’s voice was a croak. “Bleed me,” he said. He saw Jim had the cup in his hand.
“Mr. Rawlins already bled him,” Martha said. He heard the uncertainty in her voice. “Two cups.”
He tried to speak but nothing came out and he had a moment of panic, it was like awakening in a coffin, hearing voices outside but unable to say—with a convulsive effort that tore his throat, he ground out the words, “Bleed me,” coupled with a command stare that told Jim Craik to get on with it! He could feel the evil humors circulating in his blood, affecting every part of his body, making him heavy and strained, blood rotten and useless. Drain it off and ease the pressure.
Not, actually, that he thought it would do much good. Doctors soothed more than they really helped. If they were caring, you felt better. Of course they did help sometimes, but he’d seen too many gut-shot solders die in agony while Craik watched, seen the benevolent pus that Craik sought in wounds and amputations turn into cascades that overwhelmed the patient.
Craik wiping the blade on a handkerchief, making the neat incision, blood running into his cup, ah … felt better already. Probably transitory, but welcome. He thought he was coming to the end and now, watching Jim wet his lips nervously, he thought the doctor was of the same opinion. He shut his eyes, suddenly desperately weak, felt he was whirling and whirling down into depths. He heard Martha’s tremulous voice, realized Jim had stopped the blood, started to protest and was gone.
He’d had the key just before they’d awakened him, a grip on what it all meant. It had been oddly comforting. He’d been sitting at his camp desk with the long, white plume graceful in his hand, judgment taking hold with iron certainty.
He dug into his mind. He’d had hold of it there … .
Yes, yes, that was it! Alex insisting money is what powers any country; Jimmy leaping up in angry outrage. The fight wasn’t about the bank or the bonds or any of the details. It was about who we were as a people. What did we care about, believe in?
Alex and most of his Federalist brethren wanted a tight, contained, carefully controlled government in the hands of the ruling few, everyone else taking orders. He would shape all policies to bind men of money power closer and hold little men in their places—limit their vote, reduce their capacity to rise, keep them subservient, make them glad to be of service at low wages to those who counted.
Jimmy and Tom wanted a diffuse government in which states were strong and the common man’s voice ranked with that of the gentry. If the government were to be skewed, let it be toward the poor and the helpless.
Alex said Great Britain’s system was the best in the world. Tom and Jimmy saw the British as oppressors and were sure Alex aimed at monarchy in America. That charge drove Alex wild. His slender face, handsome as a Greek statue, would go white and strained with ugly red blotches, all beauty vanished.