But in another block, as if to deny him even these moments of pleasurable reflection, Simmons McAlester came bearing down on him. What the devil was Simmons doing in Washington? Burr hated to meet his creditors, of whom there were so many with claims for so much money. But if a man wanted to live well …
“Aaron, why didn’t you tell me?” Sim shouted before Burr could duck into an alley. “You know I don’t expect a lot of favors, but if you’d told me you’d have saved me thousands. That’s not too much to ask, is it? I’d never have invested in Mississippi trade if I’d figured the French were going to seize it—” He stepped close, a hand on Burr’s forearm, his voice sinking to a whisper. “Tell me, is there trouble? I’m hearing bad rumors, that you’re being pulled down. You know I’m always your friend, but it’s, well, disturbing to hear—”
“Oh, Sim, it’s just talk.” Burr made his voice easy. “You always hear it around politics. Who doesn’t have enemies, but they’ll pay in due time.”
McAlester nodded eagerly. “That’s the talk, Aaron.” But Burr saw the doubt in his eyes. Another danger point. A year ago McAlester would never have asked such a question. Burr had lost track of exactly how much he owed, but it certainly was in the tens of thousands. The money came so easily. They were glad to loan to a man of influence. But what if he were revealed as without influence? If they all called, it would mean debtor’s prison … and debtor’s prison would mean death.
He shook that from his mind and walked on, thinking of the women. But the Mobry woman’s reaction to Wilkinson’s name was as interesting as the look in her luminous brown
eyes. Burr would not raise again the rumors that Wilkinson was in the pay of the Spanish—he hadn’t forgotten the general’s rather frightening reaction the last time he’d done so—but he had an idea this French business was bad news for his friend.
He had ordered a fat duck and two bottles of wine for dinner at three in his rooms. He found Wilkinson waiting, fat and jowly in that ridiculous uniform. Burr glanced at his own trim form in a mirror with easy superiority, a feeling he needed.
The duck was excellent, the Madeira like honey, and soon they were well into the second bottle.
“What a good fellow you are,” Wilkinson said, holding his glass toward the light to admire the color. “Able, superb political instincts, capacious of mind, grasp of the large view—and how disgracefully they abuse you, my dear friend. As, I might add, they do me too. We are victims together.”
“Oh?” The wine was sweet on Burr’s tongue, its fumes strong in his mind. “I don’t think of you—”
“Held to this miserable rank, sir. Brigadier! When every leader of the army before was a major general. Mad Anthony Wayne, whom I succeeded, a major general.”
Of course, Burr thought, but didn’t say, Wayne had been one of the great officers of the Revolution and the period following, and Wilkinson had wormed his way into second in command and was well on his way to cutting his superior’s throat when Wayne conveniently died. It was an irony that Burr could appreciate that Wilkinson should then have stepped into his shoes.
“The rank is mine,” Wilkinson was saying, anger reddening his face, “and they deny me.” Then, as if regretting yielding to emotion, he smiled and went on, “Just as they deny you. Oh, don’t pretend, Aaron. It’s to your honor, as it is to mine, that such men should abuse us.”
“You do have a way of casting things, Jim.”
“I think about such things, sir. I care about justice, propriety,
decency. I resent its denial, to me and to a man of great worth. Is it any wonder that I dream?”
Burr sipped his wine. This was getting interesting. “Of what do you dream, my dear General?”
“Of the West. You should go there, Aaron. You would find a paradise. Full of strong people, rich fields, vast forests, a river network coursing like veins of gold, all athrob with trade for which the world hungers. Of course the French covet it. But they are fools!” He emptied his glass and refilled it. “Fools because they imagine they can bend westerners to their will. Easier to get a mule to cooperate. The western American will never be a Frenchman. But what he will be is the progenitor of a new nation.”
He smiled. “I see you’re shocked. But reflect—do present leaders have the courage to defend? I think not. They’re in thrall to Federalists, and those idiots hate and fear the West. Westerners know this. You’d be amazed at the spirit of revolt burning there—revolt against the East. It’s an empire, Aaron. And it awaits the man who has the range of vision to lead it to its natural future—independence. That man, supported by military force, can know greatness.”
Wilkinson’s lips were parted, his breathing heavy, his gaze fixed on Burr. “An empire … for remember, just down the road a thousand miles or so lies Mexico, vulnerable, defenseless, its mines pouring out their golden stream.” A long pause. “Mexico yearns to be taken as a woman hungers for a man … .”
Then he relaxed, smiling. “That, you know, not New Orleans, is the real French goal. And maybe they’ll take Mexico if more enterprising men don’t get there first.”
Did the French news discommode him? The answer came in a flash. A man who had maintained a treasonous connection with the enemy for twenty years while rising to the command of the American army would have no trouble making a French connection … indeed, he probably had done so already.
“You should go west, Aaron,” the general said. “See for
yourself. Drift downstream and absorb possibilities. Forget this French thing; it will come to naught. You should go …”
Maybe I will, Burr thought … someday. But now there were more immediate prizes at hand, and their taking infinitely more pleasurable. He intended to be president of the United States yet, and in his estimate there was naught to stop him. Doubtless Wilkinson was right that ultimately France would have its hands full in Louisiana, but nothing could stop it from taking the province initially and it was obvious that the nobleman from Virginia could not survive the loss of half the country. The election of 1804 would be wide open, and a new champion would arise. Peter Van Ness would be here in a fortnight; it was high time to start planning.
Peter Van Ness, rail thin as always, pale hair and pale eyes matching his personality—though on paper his words sparkled and sang—was nearly a week on the road from New York, jouncing through holes that sometimes seemed deep enough to swallow the stage. Burr listened until the tedium of travel became too tedious, then brought Peter to attention. It was high time that they took control of New York City again and then of the state. Let Burr sit as governor and the obvious next step would be control of the nation—the presidency.
They had a decent light supper in his rooms and then talked over cigars.
“This fellow Cheetham,” Peter said, his voice an uneasy whine, “what a scoundrel! I’m still ashamed that I—”
“Ah, Peter, you know there’s no gratitude in politics.”
Still, Cheetham’s case was startling. He was a London journalist whose string ran out in ninety-eight. He came to New York, met Van Ness, and the upshot was that Burr helped him buy a half-interest in
The Argus.
Maybe that was where some of Sim McAlester’s money went, who knew? Through 1800, Cheetham had been subservient and loyal. His coruscating denunciations of Federalists in general and
Alexander Hamilton in particular had no little to do with the victory that put that paragon of ingratitude, Mr. Jefferson, into office.
But ever since, such was his hatred of Burr, the Virginian had been pandering to old Governor Clinton, building him as the chief Democratic voice in New York. The old fool on whom senility appeared to be advancing rapidly was flaunting that damning letter from the president saying there was no opinion in New York he valued more than the governor’s. His finger always to the wind, Cheetham switched to the Clinton camp, merged the paper Burr had bought for him with Clinton’s
American Citizen,
reprinted the letter and began lauding the governor and damning Burr. He’d even written the president, and sure enough the gentleman from Virginia had responded with warm letters, letting New York know that Burr had the stature of an ant in Washington.
Burr long had refused to read Cheetham, but for months Peter had been urging response. “He’s hurting us, Aaron. My, God, it’s time we began to remind people what scum he is. Look at this.” He pulled a thick pamphlet from his bag. It was titled
A View of the Political Conduct of Aaron Burr, Vice President of the United States.
Burr thumbed it briefly—full of old charges, trying to steal the presidency, doing nothing for New York, on and on. Peter said it was vile, filled with plain lies and slippery innuendo. All to laud old Clinton and denounce Burr.
“They say Mr. Hamilton reads Cheetham religiously,” Van Ness said. “His own newspaper wouldn’t stoop to such trash, but I’ve had a dozen reports of him reading this tripe in the coffee shops—seems it’s regular entertainment at the Royalton.”
Burr digested this without comment, but it was as disturbing as anything he’d heard. Why was Alex attacking him? Of course each had attacked the other during the campaign, but that was just the nature of politics. He and Hamilton long had been friends, more or less. Never close, granted, they were quite different, but both were leading attorneys and had tried cases together. But when Burr was tied with Jefferson
and holding himself to the highest standard of conduct, Hamilton had campaigned against him among Federalists, whose votes should have put him into office. And now he was attacking again.
Was he afraid Burr would return? In a flash, Burr saw it was exactly that. There was talk that he wanted to return to public life. That meant the governor’s chair, which old Clinton certainly would vacate at the end of his term, and here came Burr ready to upset Hamilton’s fondest dreams. So maybe it was just politics, but there was a malignancy in Hamilton’s manner that was making it deeply personal. Well, if he wanted a fight, Burr was the man to give it to him!
“Tell me what you plan, Aaron,” Van Ness said. “Any future we have will be gone soon. There are terrible stories about your being out of favor—”
“Why, Peter, I expect to be elected president.”
“No! You do?”
“What’s so surprising? Don’t you see, this Louisiana business will destroy the administration. What lovely irony—Bonaparte putting Aaron Burr into office. But the French won’t be deterred. The present weak administration will fold up and whimper, and the people will tear them apart like mad dogs.”
“But the Federalists—”
“The Federalists are a spent force, Peter, impotent, frozen into old dreams. No, the people will be looking for someone—”
“Ah,” Peter said, “someone familiar but not tainted!”
“Someone,” Burr said, “who can deliver the great state of New York. So that is how we must position ourselves.”
They laid plans. Clinton must be their first target. He was allied with old Dutch money, the Livingstons, patroon of whom was the same old gaffer now in Paris about to surrender to Bonaparte and catapult Aaron Burr into office. They all were out of touch; a new wave was coming and Burr would ride its crest.
Get Cheetham’s lies answered, then start on Clinton. They needed a paper of their own and Burr must finance it. He
sighed: at least he would have something to show McAlester.
“Peter Irving wants to start a paper.”
“Irving? I don’t know him.”
“Well, you know his little brother, Washington Irving. You financed him for a while, didn’t you?”
Yes, by George, Washington Irving was one of the various writers and artists Burr had underwritten on borrowed money, acting less for them than for his own image of himself as a patron of the arts. That was an important distinction because it meant he had no reason to regret his largesse. And he remembered young Irving as a lively man with a pen.
“Good enough,” he said. “If he can promise that Washington will write for him and if you’ll give him a solid piece every week, yes, I’ll underwrite him. Tell him to get started within the month. And give us a pamphlet that will unmask Cheetham and tear that senile old governor to pieces.”
He felt a thrust of sheer joy. For too long his enemies had had their way, but now it was his turn. He clapped Peter on the shoulder. “We’ll give them no quarter, my friend!”
WASHINGTON, SUMMER 1802
Mildred Samuels was playing erratically, Dolley noticed, forgetting her turn one moment, slapping down a card the next as if each winning trick paid off some angry old debt—or hurt. She was a tall woman, deep lines in her mottled face, hair quite gray. She sat to Dolley’s right. Maggie Smith had set up two tables of whist, and the eight women playing were a cross-section of Washington society, among them Mrs. Secretary of War Dearborn; Pirette Pichon, the French
ambassador’s wife, now quite pregnant, her face pale and a bit strained; Dolley’s close friend, Hannah, married to Treasury secretary Gallatin; and Mildred Samuels, who was that rarity, a congressional wife with her husband in Washington. Silas Samuels, a ferocious Federalist, represented an upstate New York district. It was as well, Dolley thought, that the women had a rule against political talk. She noticed Mildred holding up her glass for a fourth sherry.
It was the decisive game and Dolley held the spade ace. Twice Mildred led spades and Dolley held back, letting Mildred assume her partner held the ace. At the crucial moment, she placed the crowning card on Mildred’s king, took the trick, and laid down the last five cards, all commanding diamonds.
“Oh!” Mildred slapped the table so hard the glasses shivered. Her eyes were wild. “How did you get that ace? I thought Susan had it. If you had it, why in God’s name didn’t you play it?”
“Why, Millie, it made tactical sense—”
“Tactical! You—you took
advantage
of me—”
“Really,” Dolley said, “it’s just a game—”
Play at the other table had stopped. Maggie was standing.
“A disgusting democratic trick!” Mildred shouted. “It’s just as Silas says—you can’t trust Democrats—look at the terrible mess you’ve gotten us into now. Silas says we’ll have to fight the French and it’s all your doing!”
“Millie,” Maggie said, “our rule—”
“Oh, bother the rule! Facts are facts. The Democrats are ruining this country. They’ve gone out of control just the way we knew they would. Look at that nasty Burr person trying to steal the election before you even got in office; you call that self-control? We saw what happened to democracy in France, they went crazy, and now it’s happening here. Everyone knows the French wouldn’t have dared take Louisiana when
we
were in office!”
“Mildred,” Dolley said, “don’t be an ass. They won’t take Louisiana while we’re in office either!”
“Ass, am I?” Mildred downed her glass in a gulp and
glared. “Well, you listen to me. We saw the French were the enemy years ago, and you Democrats fought everything we did. And now you’ve gotten us into this terrible mess and you won’t have the pith to fight—yes, pith, plain old backbone. You won’t stand up; everyone knows it. Everyone says the country’s ruined!”
Into the stricken silence, Maggie said, “Please … I’ll pour the coffee now …” The women sought their wraps as soon as they decently could.
Dolley hurried home with bootheels scuffing briskly on gravel walks. She shivered. All the hatred of the election was loose again. The Federalists were shouting, their papers were full of their wildest invective, the Congress in turmoil, everyone bending the crisis of the French to their own ends. Mildred Samuels was just parroting that extremist husband of hers—
we
knew all along,
we
understood the French,
we
wanted to lay down lines and challenges years ago and now nothing has changed but you’ve cut army and navy in half and what did that do but embolden Napoleon, show him we’re spineless, free him to steal our territory from under our noses. Oh, yes,
we
understood, but the people were seduced away. Now they’ll take their revenge, you’ll see, they’ll turn back to us, return control to men who know how to use it … .
The new explosion began when a merchant brig moored at Baltimore and Tobias Lear limped ashore. General Washington’s former private secretary now was the U.S. consul to Santo Domingo, and French troops had ejected him at rifle point! The storm this news started was the worse because a French trooper had smashed Lear’s knee with a musket butt when he was slow in moving, and he’d been in pain ever since. It was a diplomatic affront of the first magnitude, the sort of thing that started wars. Madison didn’t intend to let it start a war, not yet, but it made everything worse.
By the time Lear reached Washington, limping and leaning on a cane, his story was radiating up and down the East Coast. Baltimore papers hurried copies off by express to other papers
that quickly reprinted, north to Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York, south to Richmond, Charleston, Savannah. In Congress the Federalist big mules, Bayard, Gouverneur Morris, Fisher Ames, were fighting for the floor to denounce Democratic-Republicans. Madison sat in his office listening grimly to Johnny Graham’s report. Calling us weak and floundering, saying any fool could see the French intention to split us apart, strip us of the West, dominate the continent, make us a vassal state. Saying the Democrats were in thrall to the French, beholden to them, in love with their revolution, blind if not criminally uncaring of our own national rights. And so forth. That idiot Silas Samuels was braying like a jackass after a mare in heat. The Democrats weren’t even trying to respond. Chairman Randolph sent word they wanted to see some action from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
War was what they all were shouting for, enough emotion flying around to fill one of brother Shakespeare’s plays chock-a-block and plenty of posturing to go with it. But pin anyone down and he’d suddenly want to go slow. They wanted action, all right—so long as it came from
this
end of the avenue. And yes, this new French intransigence did bring war closer. Lear came hobbling into Madison’s office and told a story that was as infuriating as it was discouraging. We struggled to present reality to the French dictator, but he seemed blind—and his army seemed a little crazy.
Imagine, coming to Santo Domingo with empty larders expecting the United States to refill them on demand. There was ample American trade with Santo Domingo; but since French credit was worthless, merchants insisted on gold. Leclerc simply seized the goods—emptied warehouses at musket point, impounded American ships and cargoes. Two ship captains were imprisoned, one because he had spoken critically of the French—not there but at home in Baltimore! —the other because Leclerc thought a ship named
Santo Domingo Packet
probably was a rebel vessel. Lear, as consul, finally secured their release, but it was the vigor of his representation that had led to his expulsion.
Crazy …
Naturally American commerce to the island stopped. Meanwhile the French were finding the black rebels in their vast numbers to be formidable fighters.
“The troops are hungry, and I think frightened too,” Lear said. “There’s a fury in the blacks. Troops say it’s like nothing they saw in Italy or Austria.” Heavy foliage made fighting sudden and close. A soldier barely had time to snap off a single shot without aim before he was under a slashing machete blade that could decapitate a man in a stroke. Off-duty ranks talked constantly of finding stacks of heads, mouths stuffed with severed penises. “Worse, of course, since they took Toussaint.”
“Captured him?”
“No, no—tricked him. Told him they considered him a Frenchman like themselves and accepted his command of the island. Set up a big formal conference to honor him: and when he came in they seized him, executed his lieutenants, and shipped him off to France. He’ll die in some icy dungeon in the Alps, poor devil.”
Crazy …
“The tropics aren’t kind to Europeans,” Lear said. “Too much sun, too much rum, snakes and bugs and poisons, fevers floating on deadly night air. And the yellow fever season hasn’t even started.”
But it was more than that. Madison saw the dice rolling for a continent. The westering tide of American settlers would fix North American as American, but France aimed to block them with what Talleyrand called “a wall of brass.” Leclerc had come to seize a continent, and Madison thought this was was his opening gun. So maybe it all had a purpose, the mad flailing, seizing property, ejecting the American consul, even the casual brutalization by a trooper with a musket butt. Maybe this was Leclerc’s message, telling Americans what they could expect in Louisiana.
Pichon arrived wearing a haggard look, face hollowed, eyes shadowed. His wife was approaching labor and increasingly
ill. Childless himself, Madison felt an odd mix of regret for his own state and impatience with the envoy’s problems.
Perhaps that intensified anger already real as he laid out the high displeasure of the United States with General Leclerc’s outrageous violation of all diplomatic norms. Pichon, more hangdog than ever, made comforting murmurs. He said he already had written General Leclerc pointing out the grossness of his error.
“I’m sure when Mr. Lear returns there’ll be no problem.”
Madison studied the Frenchman. That wistful quality was strong in his expression. Perhaps he found himself squeezed between an aggressive leader who was willfully ignorant and his own sense of reality. Yet America’s best defense was to make that leader see that his plans must come to grief, and Madison had only two official avenues—Mr. Livingston, who couldn’t get a civil word from Talleyrand, and this sallow man with his mind pulled to his pregnant wife.
He judged a soft tone would be most effective. “Ah, Louis,” he said, “you can see this sort of thing only serves the Federalists, and they’ll never be your friends. Can’t you make your government understand that the Federalists, in the minority at the moment but very sizeable, would like nothing better than war with France, the United States tucked under the British wing? My God, Louis, isn’t that self-evident?”
He threw up his hands. “Why, even the president—and you know his underlying affection for your country—was saying the other night that if such treatment continued, it must end by making union with Britain. I believe ‘universally popular’ was the phrase he used, and I must say, I think he’s quite right.”
He made the case again—Mr. Lear’s expulsion, American merchants and ship captains abused, the constant threats and strident condemnations of American democracy made by Leclerc and his officers, the secrecy, the denials, Foreign Minister Talleyrand’s refusal of common courtesy, the coin of diplomacy, to Ambassador Livingston …
Created awful misunderstandings, he said. The idea that
France could separate western Americans from eastern was ridiculous. No chance whatsoever. Americans were one people. The real loser would be France itself. Britain would take over French island colonies the moment it united with America. Everyone understood the current lull in European war would end, and then union with Britain would be simple to arrange, with any slight embarrassment, since Democrats once had opposed it, quickly dissipating.
He leaned back in his chair, hands laced behind his head, an easy smile on his face. “You know, Louis, France made its real decision years ago. Now it should have the wisdom—dare I say courage?—to live with that decision.”
“I’m not sure I understand, sir,” Pichon said cautiously.
“Well, why did it back our revolution a quarter century ago? Because it was our friend? Many Americans assumed its motive was utterly selfless, but a man of the world such as yourself will hardly be taken in by so patent a fiction.”
Pichon didn’t answer.
“We know—and I know you’ll agree—it was in the interests of France to help us. It was obvious then that America would in time be a great power. How much better for France for America to be independent than for it to be an appendage to your deadliest enemy. Now you know we’ve grown tenfold since those days and are well on our way to realizing our potential.”
Again Pichon didn’t answer and Madison said, “You see the obvious answer to the equation, I’m sure. Having made its decision then, France now should be cultivating us, not forcing us back into Britain’s arms.”
“I suppose that is so, Mr. Secretary,” Pichon said politely.
Madison smiled. “Plain simple truth.” Yes, but would Pichon dare report the argument with its fundamental logic? Would he have the courage to make points that neither Talleyrand nor Napoleon wanted to hear?
“Mr. Yrujo, you would do well to position yourself and your nation in this matter,” Madison said. He had summoned the
Spanish ambassador peremptorily and now gave him no chance to speak. He was boiling over with Spain’s intransigence.
“Let me point out to you that Spain will continue to have great interests when we have settled this Louisiana matter. Florida, Mexico, Cuba—all will be open to question if we are to move into a state of war, a state of mad freebooting by piratical nations on this continent. I assure you, such action will not go unpunished.”
“Mr. Secretary,” Yrujo squalled, “I protest—”
“That will do, sir. You are not here to protest. You are here to be informed what to tell your government. Tell your masters that the United States is deeply displeased with Spain’s secrecy in this matter, its arrogant retrocession without information to us, consideration for us—abominable, sir. That a great nation would act so boggles the mind, calls into question whether the nation is, in fact, great.
“Remind your masters, Mr. Yrujo, that much is at stake here. Our western regions hunger for Florida, and they see no reason that Mexico should be Spanish. Is that some matter ordained from on high? I think not. So be warned, sir.”