“What’s his name?”
“Dr. James Reynolds.”
“Not—”
“No, no, a well-known republican doctor, one of Benjamin Rush’s men.” It was a coincidence that he had the same name as Maria’s husband. He had never thought of it as an evil omen.
“Dr. James Reynolds, Philadelphia
“Sir,
“In the summer of 1798, you attended my family in Philadelphia, as a physician. I entreat you to mention in a letter to me whether you perceived, in any person there, symptoms of a complaint which it is hardly decent to name.
“I think myself entitled to demand, as an act of justice, that you will give your opinion on the case. I choose to address you through the medium of the press, in preference to a manuscript letter by post, because I have no confidential communication to make or solicit. On this subject, I am all open.
“The secrecy and delicacy which may be required from a professional man must give way to the request of his alleged patient. I invite, I welcome, I solicit the honest assertion of the truth in this case that the Supreme Being and your own conscience dictate.
“Your most obedient servant,
“James T. Callender.”
“He’ll surely answer that,” Maria said. She had been with James when he was angry, but his face was twisted as she had not seen before.
“The doctor will never answer it. Rush won’t let him.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because it will appear in the same issue of the Recorder that reveals the true nature of Thomas Jefferson.”
“The President did not write what appeared in the Aurora, James.” Jefferson never told Callender what to write, either, when the writer vilified Washington as a traitor and Adams as a hoary incendiary. She felt it was unfair to hold one man at the top responsible for every excess of his supporters.
“He sanctioned it,” Callender said, eyes cold. “He had it in his power, with a single word, to have extinguished the volcanoes of reproach. But with that frigid indifference that forms the pride of his character, Jefferson stood neuter.”
She silently stroked his hair, knowing better than to argue with him when he was in this state.
“To charge a man as a thief,” he went on, “that causes him to pose as an adulterer, as I did Hamilton, is of itself bad enough. But when Jefferson, through his lackey Duane, charges me with an action that is much more execrable than an ordinary murder”—the bile rose in him and he choked it back—“then that is the time to wreak vengeance.”
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, not yours, she said to herself but not to him. Nobody could stop this man, estranged from his boys by a lying scandalmonger, from wreaking vengeance of his own.
Chapter 38
September 1, 1802
RICHMOND
Governor James Monroe was the firft to receive his copy of the Richmond Recorder. He read it in horror.
“It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor,” wrote Callender in the edition of that morning, “keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is Sally. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a striking though sable resemblance to those of the President himself.”
Miscegenation by the President, stated as bald fact. Was it true? Not necessarily. To Monroe’s eye, Callender’s phrase, “though sable,” suggested the boy was brown; the Governor knew that Sally Hemings’s eldest, like all her children, could easily pass for white. That meant Callender had never seen the slave he said the others called Young Tom. He read on:
“The boy is ten or twelve years of age. His mother went to France in the same vessel with Mr. Jefferson and his two daughters. The delicacy of this arrangement must strike every portion of common sensibility. What a sublime pattern for an American ambassador to place before the eyes of two young ladies!”
The Governor winced at the thought of Jefferson’s daughters reading this today. Had the savage Callender no feeling for the children of the people he slandered? He knew that the writer had at least one of the details askew: the slave Sally had gone to France later, accompanying his younger daughter as her maid. But the account was uncomfortably close enough to the truth. He judged Callender’s estimate of the boy’s age to be off by a couple of years; Young Tom, if that was what they called the slave, was about fourteen. Monroe hoped Jefferson had not entered his birth in his property records. His neighbor, with his tidy sense of history, had a tendency to record everything.
“Some years ago, the story had once or twice been hinted at in Rind’s Federalist,” wrote Callender. “At that time, we believed the surmise to be an absolute calumny.” Monroe grunted; that was when Callender was on the republican side. “One reason for our thinking so was this: A vast body of people wished to debar Mr. Jefferson from the Presidency. The establishment of this single fact would have rendered his election impossible. We reasoned that if the allegation had been true, it was sure to be ascertained and advertised by his enemies in every corner of the continent. The suppression of so decisive an enquiry shows that the Federalist party’s interest was overruled by Divine Providence.
“By this wench Sally,” Callender’s article continued, “our President has had several children. There is not an individual in the neighborhood of Charlottesville who does not believe the story, and not a few who know it.”
Monroe had often stood with Jefferson at a window on the heights of Monticello looking across the fields and down at the town of Charlottesville. Did the people there whisper about intercourse between white and black on the plantations?
Monroe, who had never struck or caressed a slave, had heard such rumors—not only about Jefferson, but from Meriwether Jones, editor of the Examiner, about John Marshall, too—and had set them aside as idle gossip. But no such gossip had ever seen public print. What drove Callender, the damnable seditionist, to publish such a libel? Granted, he had to wait for his fine to be returned, but he ultimately got his $200 from the government, and never returned the $50 advance from Jefferson. And granted, Callender could say he had been half-promised the postmastership, but he was prospering now without it. What was eating at his v?
“If Duane sees this account,” wrote Callender, “he will not prate any more.” The Governor nodded; that must be it. William Duane in the Aurora, answering Callender’s charges of support from Jefferson, had gone to the extreme of accusing his former colleague of killing his wife by infecting her with a venereal disease. Monroe had instructed Beckley to tell Duane to put a shot across Callender’s bow, but had intended nothing so severe. Duane should have known better than to provoke a man like Callender into an unreasoning rage. He forced himself to read on:
“And do you know how all those republican printers of biographical in formation will be upon this point? Mute! Mute! Yes, very Mute! Behold the favorite, the firstborn of republicanism!” exclaimed Callender. “The pinnacle of all that is good and great! In the open consummation of an act that tends to subvert the policy, the happiness, and even the existence of this country!” Monroe shook his head; now the man was getting hysterical. “ ’Tis supposed that, at the time when Mr. Jefferson wrote so smartly concerning Negroes, and when he endeavored so much to belittle the African race, he had no expectation that the Chief Magistrate of the United States was to be the ringleader in showing that his opinion was erroneous; or that he should choose an African flock whereupon he was to engraft his own descendants.”
Today it was the talk of Richmond; in a few days, the gossip would be all over the country. Hamilton’s New York Evening Post would spread its slander throughout that city, much as it had been a Northern sounding-board for Callender’s claim that Jefferson paid for his repeated assaults in print on Washington and Adams. And the vicious Scot had made no attempt to conceal his political purpose: “We hear that our young Mulatto, the President’s son, begins to give himself a great number of airs of importance in Charlottesville, and the neighborhood
,” he wrote. “Jefferson, we presume, cannot, and Madison shall not, if we can help it, be the next President. The republicans must make haste and look about them.”
Monroe pursed his lips. If Jefferson became so disgusted at this calumny that he left public life, to whom would republicans turn? Madison would be Jefferson’s choice, though he would be wiser to support Monroe. Albert Gallatin might find backing, but Virginians would not want the Chief Magistrate to be a Pennsylvanian and a foreigner. The most likely contender for Jefferson’s mantle would be the Vice President, Aaron Burr. Monroe returned to reality: low gossip must not determine the course of America’s history.
Prominently displayed on page 3, the page that most readers turned to first, was a poem in Negro dialect reprinted from the Port Folio. That a Philadelphia literary publication, with the gentry as its readership, hinted at the same rumor lent credence to the Recorder’s article.
This had to be dealt with. The Governor sent for George Hay, now a widower with an interest in Monroe’s daughter Hortense, to direct him to find the mulatto “Young Tom.” If such a slave existed, Hay was to spirit him northward, essentially freeing him but not with any damning documentation of birth. Jefferson would probably object to the loss of a property worth several hundred dollars but Monroe would persuade him that it could not be avoided.
What if other slaves in Monticello were redheaded and bore a resemblance to the master? Monroe decided that Hay’s bachelor companion, Peter Carr, was the natural choice to be designated as the progenitor: he was Jefferson’s blood nephew, lived at Monticello, could be seen at all the “black dances” and was a notorious consort of beauteous black prostitutes. With such a philandering reputation, Carr could be assumed to have dallied with every comely quadroon on the estate.
Then Monroe sent for Meriwether Jones of the Examiner.
“Come forth thou hideous and fateful mortal,” strained the editor of the rival newspaper to the editor of the Recorder. “Thou clot-hearted Scot. Thou art a thief.”
Monroe ran his eye past Jones’s empty fulminations down to the denial that would have the merit of plausibility. “That this servant woman has a child is true. But that it is Mr. Jefferson’s or that the connection exists, which Callender mentions, is false. I call upon him for evidence.”
That was a stupid suggestion. Callender was sure to take up the challenge. Monroe cursed all journalists, friend and foe alike. First Duane, instructed to assail Callender in the Aurora for simple thievery of fine mahogany furniture, plunges ahead into allegations of Callender’s infecting his wife with sexual disease, sure to provoke the most salacious response. Now here was the Examiner calling for Callender to produce fresh evidence of Jefferson’s black progeny. What if he could? That, Monroe knew, was a favorite trick of the Scot’s—to hold back information until the story was denied, or until he was challenged, and then to launch a fresh at-tack in response, offering new slander with pious regret, as if only to demonstrate his innocence.
“Is it strange that a servant of Mr. Jefferson’s at a house where so many strangers resort,” asked the defending editor, “who is daily engaged in the ordinary vocations of the family, like thousands of others, should have a mulatto child? Certainly not! Mr. Jefferson has been a Bachelor for more than twenty years. Not a spot tarnished his widowed character until this frightful sea calf Callender, in his wild frenzy, thought proper to throw his phlegm at him.”
Monroe assumed Callender would not welcome the prospect of physical violence, unlike his former Federalist counterpart, the sturdy and combative Cobbett. Though his frame was hard and wiry, Callender had suffered at least one thrashing and had let it be known he was ready to flee from another. Monroe looked in the Examiner for the anticipated dire warning to Callender, which came at the end of Jones’s overheated defense.
“Are you not afraid, Callender, that some avenging fire will consume your body as well as your soul? Stand aghast thou brute, thy deserts will yet o’ertake thee.”
September 6, 1802
WASHINGTON , D .C .
“It’s all that maniac Duane’s fault,” Beckley told Madison. “I knew it the minute I saw that diatribe of his about Callender killing his wife with a shameful disease. It’s not true, you know—I spoke to the doctor in Philadelphia, and he said it was the yellow fever. He bled her and the treatment failed. I made certain he would not answer Callender’s open letter demanding exoneration.” That had been easy because the man was a protégé of Dr. Benjamin Rush and feared losing a prestigious appointment. “It was Duane’s slander about the dead woman that set Callender off. I could have restrained him otherwise, but not after that.”
The Secretary of State showed his concern about the effect of this incredible charge of fathering slaves on Jefferson’s daughters, Maria and Patsy.
“It’s awful,” Beckley agreed. He said nothing about the effect of Duane’s vengeance on Callender’s sons because he did not want to appear to be giving the turncoat scoundrel a decent motive for his revenge. He assumed that Madison and Monroe had known for years about Jefferson’s living arrangements. The President’s wife died when he was not yet forty, and as the story went, on her deathbed he pledged not to remarry. Rather than burn, Beckley assumed, Jefferson kept his solemn promise and took as his bedmate the nubile fourteen-year-old maid of his youngest daughter.
Jefferson’s choice of this particular female slave as his partner struck Beckley as quite understandable. Sally Hemings, he knew from Monroe, was the offspring of Jefferson’s wife’s father, John Wayles, and one of his mulatto slaves. That made Sally the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife, dead these twenty years. “Dusky Sally,” as Callender was now calling her, was a quadroon, one-fourth Negro, her skin almost completely white; graceful and gentle, she closely resembled her half-sister. What could be more natural? Perhaps there was something in the Bible that would justify that.
Beckley had heard in Richmond that Sally was also “a good breedin’ woman,” productive of healthy children, which had to secretly please Jefferson, who enjoyed being surrounded by offspring. There was a practical aspect as well, known to every plantation owner who impregnated his household slave women: the brood was destined to become valuable property, worth nearly $400 a head when trained to household service. Some flippant poetaster in the Boston Gazette had written a lyric about this to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” that was now on too many children’s lips. None of this, Beckley knew, could be admitted. Callender had to be personally discredited and his charges not only denied but denounced. But not by the President.
“I recommend that the President not dignify it with a denial,” he told Madison.
“He won’t. Long ago he told me he would never answer the calumnies of the newspapers, for while he should be answering one, twenty new ones would be invented.” The angry denials and cries of “scurrility” were to come from the newly respectable republican press. “Where is Callender getting this?” Madison asked. “Is he making it up out of the whole cloth?”
Beckley assumed that Callender must have spoken to some of the highborn Virginians jealous of Jefferson, as well as some of the talkative dealers in slaves. He was also nearly certain that Madison, a frequent visitor to Monticello, was aware of his lifelong friend’s living arrangements. Beckley passed along a counter-rumor: “Jones of the Examiner tells me that ‘General Barbecue’ has been seen at the office of the Recorder recently.”
Madison frowned. “Isn’t that the sobriquet of John Marshall?”
“Jones says there is some person behind the curtain who directs the operation of the Recorder,” Beckley reported. “He means Chief Justice Marshall, as you know, who attends just about every barbecue and picnic in the State of Virginia.” Beckley wished Madison would do more of that to maintain touch with the people. “Jones claims that the influence of this ‘General of the barbecues’ is connected to the influence of Hamilton in New York. The Examiner believes that Marshall has been furnishing Callender with matter for detraction, and jo
ined wits with him to bring forth the information about Sally.”
Madison shook his head and refused to believe it. Beckley didn’t quite believe it either, but felt he had to give Madison some countervailing rumor to take to Jefferson. The Clerk of the House, who was also now styling himself “Librarian of Congress,” drew out of his pouch a copy of the current Examiner. “At Governor Monroe’s suggestion, Jones denounced Callender two weeks ago, but now I fear the attack grows feeble. You must remember that Callender excoriated his rival at the Examiner for having an African mistress, which explains this. It’s a defense we could do without.” He handed the Secretary of State the paper folded to the relevant page:
“That this servant woman Sally has a child is true,” admitted Jones. “But in gentlemen’s houses everywhere, we know that the virtue of unfortunate slaves is assailed with impunity. Having no defender, they yield most frequently. Is it strange therefore, that a servant of Mr. Jefferson’s at a home where so many strangers resort, should have a mulatto child? Certainly not.”
Madison read it and closed his eyes in pain. Beckley said he would suggest to Monroe that he have the Examiner drop entirely the subject of anyone’s use of slave women at Monticello.
Chapter 39
October 11, 1802
RICHMOND
Maria’s long strides took her from Dr. Mathew’s houfe to the offices of the Richmond Recorder in ten minutes. Before another installment appeared in the press, she wanted to see what Callender was writing about the scandal that had all the doctor’s patients gossiping.
Delighted by her midweek visit to his office, Callender pushed toward her the pages filled with his tight scribbling. She read it all, standing.
Scandalmonger: A Novel Page 39
