“General Leclerc is coming then?”
“Oh no, sir, General Leclerc is dead.”
“Dead? What do you mean?”
“He died of yellow fever. You understand, do you not, that the French army in Santo Domingo has been destroyed? It doesn’t exist as a fighting force. You hadn’t heard?”
Madison’s heart was hammering. “Tell me …”
The slender officer then unfolded a disaster of such magnitude as to leave Madison stunned. First, the fighting grew worse and worse. When the French seized Toussaint and declared slavery reinstituted, every able-bodied man and many women took to the brush. Leclerc issued obscene extermination
orders. It was no quarter and no prisoners for both sides. Armed with machetes and muskets taken from the French, the rebels slowly ground the invaders down. Growing fear, fueled by constant evidence of grisly death by torture and mutilation, crushed French morale.
Did Madison know Santo Domingo? No? Dense tropics, incredibly beautiful, vivid green against vivid sky, flowers that burst from every plant in explosions of color, beauty to make the heart ache, beauty that mocked the horror. That was in the winter. But in the summer … under relentless sun, air steamy as a farmwife’s wash tubs, mosquitoes in droning clouds, a Frenchman understood what hell might be like.
Soldiers in tight uniforms pushing through heavy brush that itself snarled bayonets, listening for the slither of feet on grass that said the enemy was out there somewhere, drawing nearer, nearer, tensed for that sudden slithering rush that meant they were coming, about to burst from hiding in an insane screaming attack, swinging blades glittering in the sun—or sometimes the rush started and then stopped, the silence eerie, nothing happening, and you push on a hundred yards and it comes again, and finally you can’t trust your own senses. You hear the voodoo drums at night, and you come to believe that spirits really can leave their bodies and invade yours and eat your heart from within. You push into a clearing and find another stack of heads, and you march always with a shovel so you can bury what you find and keep the wild hogs away.
“These are my men, do you understand,” Montane cried, real tears now in his eyes at the memory, “nice young French lads, the tough old sergeant prodding them on, their eyes rolling, starting at every sound—ah, God! Your heart ached for them. Every patrol I lost a few, and they knew in advance when they set out, some wouldn’t be coming back; and they’d look at each other and not talk much because the man you talked to might be dead in an hour. Young, you see, most of them had never known love, never had a woman. Their
hands shook, they screamed at night in their dreams, and those Goddamned awful drums beating and beating through the night, their spirits come to steal your soul—”
He broke off, staring, then slumped in his chair, blinking, as if surprised to discover himself here with the chill of winter outside, so far from what haunted him.
“Forgive me, Monsieur,” he murmured. He wiped his forehead with a kerchief. “They were good boys and almost every one is dead now. Almost every one …”
And then the yellow fever came. Madison knew the fever from its visits to American cities. The great epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793 that took Dolley’s husband with seven thousand others had started, so they said, after the arrival of ships from Santo Domingo. Probably just coincidence, since it was widely understood that the cause was poisonous night air rising from fetid swamps.
It struck with such awful blinding speed, Montane was saying. You’re healthy in the morning, dying in the evening. It’s the mosquito season, droning clouds that envelop you and drink your blood till your skin is raw. The disease struck down his emaciated, exhausted, frightened young soldiers as a farmer scythes hay, laying them out faster than those who remained could bury them. Ghastly deaths. Temperature soaring, skin hot to the touch, blood seems to boil. You vomit black bile full of blood, your guts turn inside out, the lining of your stomach comes out of your throat. You’re on your knees choking and gasping for air; you try to stand and you fall into your vomit and retch again and again. Then the bowels explode, streams of foul water, fountains of slime and filth geysering, men screaming for water, their systems expelling faster than drinking can replenish, men crawling about naked, out of their heads, blind, crying for mothers and wives and stopping on hands and knees to vomit into the slime someone else left. And those of us spared trying to save them, wash them, get them water, until the best you could do was try to give them a decent death, not covered with excrement. And much of the time even that was more than you could manage. And if you sent a party down to the
stream for water to wash them, the enemy would come out of the night …
The fever spared the blacks, understand, maybe because they were used to it. It spared some of the whites too, and some who contracted it recovered. But the plain fact was that the disease started in June and by August men were dying by the hundreds. By late September, the army of twenty-five thousand was down to fewer than four thousand effective; and they crouched behind barricades, fearful the hordes would overrun them.
“But you survived.”
Montane shrugged. “Yes. I have no idea why. I prayed, of course, everyone does. But after what I saw in Santo Domingo, no, I don’t believe God watches over us. I saw too many good men, young men, praying men picked off like snapping flowers for bouquets in heaven.”
“And General Leclerc?”
“Lived long enough to know the despair of utter failure, I’m happy to say, then died in twenty-four hours covered with his own shit, not different in the end from the lowliest of his young soldiers.”
This account was ghastly, and Montane’s grief was too stark not to be real. Still, after pausing in deference to horror, Madison cut to what mattered. “What will happen now?”
Montane hesitated, then said, “I’m afraid they’ll be back. The first consul wants Louisiana, and I don’t think disaster on a faraway island will stop him.”
Well, maybe not, but it would slow him! Madison told himself that he could take no pleasure in the deaths of twenty thousand men, but the rising of his spirits that had started with the first mention of a destroyed campaign continued until they were soaring. What precious time this gave them! Napoleon would need a year to overcome this disaster and any number of things might intervene, chief among them resumption of war between Britain and France, which should carry the French dictator’s mind far from America.
He stood. “Welcome to America, Mr. Montane. In peace
we will consider you an adornment; in war we most certainly will call upon your sword.”
Actually, if war came, they would be in desperate need of trained officers. That they would give a French officer much authority in a war with France was laughable, but it was all academic: Madison intended to avert war and with this stunning news from Santo Domingo it seemed ever more possible to do so. He hurried to report to the president and then hurried home, shockingly early really, but too pleased to restrain himself. He would have clicked his heels but that it would be inappropriate to the dignity of the secretary of state.
WASHINGTON, EARLY 1803
You could feel the tension all over Washington, at least the black community could. Samuel Clark could. Slave or free alike, black folks kept their ears open, they listened to the whites, their expressions as inattentive as so many sticks of wood, which was how the white folks took them. But they knew … and it didn’t augur well for them.
War was coming. All over town Samuel heard more and more agreement on that, white men wondering why the administration didn’t say it out loud, call up the militia, get the Royal Navy to help, get
ready
, for God’s sake. The French hadn’t turned around yet, and it didn’t look like they ever would. It wasn’t Napoleon’s way to back off; everyone knew that.
So the disaster in Santo Domingo, if you wanted to put it that way, came as a mixed blessing. It would slow the
French some—but it meant the niggers had won. Oh, the French would settle it soon enough, get a new army in and clean ’em out, but it gave America a breathing spell, time to get ready and all. But the thing was, it also gave the niggers ideas. Made slaves wonder if they couldn’t do the same.
Most whites pretended they couldn’t see blacks, treated them like so much furniture. But low-class whites, one glance told you who they were and you wanted to watch out for them. They were getting more and more on edge and off balance, and sometimes they looked downright scared. And a scared white man was a white man thinking about killing you. It paid to stay out of his way. Made the whole community tense though—there was talk of a lot more floggings in slave yards, and two freedmen had been left in the woods dangling from trees. White people didn’t talk much about it, but blacks knew. Whites talked about war and how we’d have to fight the French, but they looked at blacks when they talked that way and they didn’t look good.
One day, when he’d delivered Miss Danny to the pier where Mobry vessels moored, she told him to go home and dig in the storage room for a file box marked thus and so. Two hours later he was back, the box heavy as he carried it along the pier to the shed and up the narrow steps to her office. Her door was ajar and he was ready to knock when he heard Mr. Clinch’s voice.
“Do you know,” he heard Mr. Clinch say, “those blacks in Santo Domingo, they saved America’s bacon.” He wasn’t from hereabouts, Mr. Clinch, he was from up north somewhere, New York maybe, you could hear it in his voice.
Miss Danny said something, Samuel couldn’t distinguish the words, and then Mr. Clinch said, “Yes, ma’am, the French can send a new army, but will they? War in Europe seems about to start again. I don’t know … but just think of the courage of those black men standing against the mightiest army in the world. Why, we’d have expected them to run like rabbits; but no, they took their machetes and fought and
won! We think our blacks here are passive, don’t care for ought but food and sleep, but can they be so courageous there and so different here?”
Again Miss Danny’s voice, a murmur, and Mr. Clinch laughed and said, “Well, I know, but you have to admit it’s ironic that the courage of far-away black men saves us …”
The box was heavy and Samuel had been eavesdropping too long, someone below would notice, so he knocked lightly and pushed the door open. He made haste to place his burden where Miss Danny pointed. There was a heavy silence as he hurried out.
But when he was safely back on the box of the carriage, he smiled quietly, inside, not exposing himself to watching whites, and he thought on what Mr. Clinch had said—this nation saved by the courage of black men. Slaves. Men who would fight and die to rid themselves of the French. Men like Joshua.
With a wave of exultation like nothing he thought he’d ever experienced, he thought, we won! Joshua won! He was right to go, right to risk, right to stand for freedom!
But the very thought, joyous though it was, unleashed a despair that he saw now he had been holding out on the edge of his mind for days. What had been concern and then open fear now became conviction. He would not see his brother again. Joshua was dead. He’d had no word and expected none, but he knew. It was as solid a conviction as that the sun had risen in the morning and would set in the evening. Joshua was dead. He had died doing what he’d known he must and he’d won his battle, and his life meant more than all the years an old man might live.
He’d seen his duty and he’d gone to fight.
Well, duty took many forms, didn’t it?
A dray drawn by a worn gray cut in front of him, and he had to draw the matched team back so hard the horses almost reared. A surly white man at the reins of the dray glared at him and reached under his seat for an oaken bat. Samuel occupied himself quieting the horses, and after a
while the white man clucked the gray into motion and drove away without looking back.
This was a dangerous town, more so now, and sure to be worse when the inevitable war started. The French had fought at Santo Domingo till they were mostly dead; they weren’t going to give up now. They would be back and the blacks of Santo Domingo would fight them off again; but would the whites in the lower Mississippi have that same courage? He didn’t know, and while he knew it meant a lot to Miss Danny, he didn’t really care. The question was whether low-class whites like that scoundrel in the dray would take out their fears on blacks.
They should long since have taken their little horde of escape gold and gone north, where whites didn’t hate blacks so … .
But duty takes many forms … .
Was it, then, at last, beginning to break in their direction? Madison had steeled himself for war for so long, walked the narrow tightrope of hope for so long, that he was quite unprepared for the possibility that the French might actually start listening to reason.
So as he sat in the president’s office looking at Pierre Du Pont’s letter from Paris, he felt dizzy with disbelief and joy and fear that as a magician waves his wand, it might all disappear in a flash.
Pierre said he had information that the first consul was open to the offer by the United States to
purchase
New Orleans!
Think of it! The whole island of New Orleans, which really was the city and its surrounding swamps separated from land by lakes and water courses all around, would solve the whole problem. With the city in our hands the French could do as they liked with the rest, for they could not close the river then, and that was the sine qua non of the whole crisis. If they couldn’t seal the Mississippi, our whole central section
was safe. The rest of Louisiana was mostly the terrain Meriwether Lewis would be crossing soon; we could worry later about the ownership of that vast stretch. Indeed, Madison was supremely confident that ultimately the tide of western settlers would make the continent American, since neither France nor Britain brought new homesteaders, while the flow of Americans across the Appalachians and westward was constant year by year.
He handed the letter to Albert Gallatin. The president had summoned them both. Mr. Jefferson paced the office, looking as exuberant as a boy. The room was flooded with glowing late winter sunshine, matching their moods perfectly. Albert blinked and shook his head when he came to the basic point.
Of course, Pierre Du Pont had presented this information as all his own doing, a conceit he probably believed and that Madison felt he’d earned. His advice was terse: First, abandon threats. Conciliate. No belligerence. Then petition to buy, not just the city, but the entire east bank of the river, from the Gulf of Mexico to Natchez in Mississippi territory, which included New Orleans. Foreswear any interest in terrain west of the river. Guarantee France full commercial rights. And make a serious offer, one that would command instant respect.
The Treasury secretary frowned. “Of course, Pierre doesn’t care if it breaks us. What does he propose?”
“Six million dollars.”
“Six million! More than half a year’s budget. It would shatter our finances, Mr. President.”
“Jimmy?” Tom had that easy smile; he’d already decided.
“Oh, we must do it, of course.”
“But not for six,” Albert said. “Three, even four …”
There was a long silence. Madison would sound off if necessary, but better it came from the president.
“Well,” Tom said, his face radiating amused pleasure, “I was thinking of a nice round figure—say fifty million francs how much would that be in U.S. dollars, Albert?”
In strangled voice, Albert said, “Some $9,375,000 that, I must remind you, Mr. President,
we
don’t have
!
”
“Then we must find it, Albert. Scrape it up, you know. I’ll leave the details to you, but yes, fifty million francs. That should get the Frenchman’s attention.”
He popped his hands together in infectious joy that mirrored Madison’s mood as well and cried, “We’ll drink a glass of Madeira and toast a radiant future!”
When Madison got home he broke out champagne and he had Dolley got well into a second bottle, dreaming aloud about the pleasures of life absent the threat of war.
A week later Jimmy came home in a totally different mood. The very set of his shoulders told Dolley something was wrong. He scarcely touched food and responded to the bits of gossip she offered for entertainment with flickering smiles and monosyllables. Then he said he would lie down a bit.
So she asked, and for answer he drew a letter from his shoulder case. With dismay, she recognized Mr. Livingston’s spiky handwriting on fine vellum. Jimmy went to the bedroom and she retreated to the study to sink into the corner of the sofa and open the letter.
She began reading, slowly, with frequent pauses. It was odd how the gentleman’s words drew her in so, stirring the already vivid images of Paris that so many French novels had built in her mind. Discursive as always, Mr. Livingston said he had been trying to draw attention to American demands, and she could see his tall, spare frame marching about the Paris of her imagination …
Talleyrand proves a total waste of time; Mr. Livingston suspects he has been bribed by British agents to follow his natural inclination to abuse Americans. Britain’s ends are served if the first consul’s mind remains fixed on an empire on the Mississippi instead of resuming war over Malta. Meanwhile, the supreme leader doesn’t deign to answer
missives Mr. Livingston sends directly. Marbois is friendly but paralyzed by fear he’ll make a wrong move. In desperation Mr. Livingston turns to Joseph Bonaparte, the older brother, to whom the great man may or may not listen, if he listens to anyone.
The news from Santo Domingo strikes Paris a savage blow; newspapers are edged in black; portraits of General Leclerc appear in windows swathed in black crepe. At the cathedral a memorial mass for the general and his men draws fifty thousand. Common folk weep in the streets. Of course, many are the families of the young soldiers swept away by the disease, but Mr. Livingston still is startled by the official outpouring.
That the loss of an army under ultimate orders to oppress the United States doesn’t strike Mr. Livingston as truly bad news is a thought he keeps to himself, especially when he attends a vast reception at which the first consul is expected. As always, the big room is crowded—Dolley’s imagination has clothed it in grandeur—a thousand sperm oil lamps blazing in chandeliers, double girandoles on walls between tall windows that are draped in crimson, waiters threading through the crowd with trays overhead holding flutes of champagne in rows as orderly as soldiers’ ranks, the whole room a display that offends Mr. Livingston’s democratic sensibilities … .
And then a stir, a tremor—the first consul arrives! But this time, instead of circling the room and allowing his hand to be kissed as his cold gaze flicks about, he forges straight toward Mr. Livingston, waving courtiers out of his way. He wears a black band on his arm, his face is more than stern, and Mr. Livingston sees that he is angry.
This is a man whose anger shakes the ground around him, but Mr. Livingston remains composed. He bows and says, rather gracefully, he feels, “May I express my nation’s condolences, to yourself, sir, to Madame Leclerc, to the people of France—”
But Napoleon is glaring. “Your condolences are neither needed nor desired.” His French is rapid, slurred, guttural. “I
wish to tell you, Mr. American Ambassador, do not flatter yourself that General Leclerc’s tragic demise changes anything. Nothing, sir!” Mr. Livingston notes that the first consul speaks like a barracks room sergeant when he’s angry.
Then, as if somehow the dictator feels he has lost ground in a contest of wills, he snaps, “Two points, sir. Hear them well, memorize them, take them back to your masters. First, do not disturb me further with offers to purchase Louisiana. Only spendthrifts and fools sell land, and I am neither. Sale is out of the question.
“Second, I am sending a new army immediately under General Victor. He will go with twenty thousand men to Santo Domingo and send two thousand on to take immediate possession of New Orleans—two thousand should be ample to deal with the American rabble there, including scum floating the river.”
He gestures to a heavy man standing directly behind him. “I present General Victor. He will leave within the hour for Holland where even now his army is embarking on ships heavy-laden with supplies.” He glances up at his general. “You tell him, Victor, tell him what he may expect. And then go to your men.”