“And for my part, I will get John Marshall to attest in writing to its authenticity,” said Walker. Lee noted that Jefferson winced at that—Marshall was a longtime political rival of his—but he could not object to sharing this confidence with the Chief Justice, a Virginia neighbor who knew them all.
“And everything said in this room remains within these four walls,” agreed Lee.
Jefferson stood up and extended his hand to Walker, who clasped it with solemnity. Lee took his satisfied kinsman by the arm and left the President and his Secretary of State alone.
Jefferson slumped into one of Montpelier’s upholstered chairs and hung his head in his hands. Madison had to strain to hear his muffled voice ask, “Do you suppose Harry Lee will get that ingrate Callender to stop?”
“Monroe, before he sailed, told me that he suspected Lee was the one who stirred up the Walker story in the first place.”
“I know,” said the President. “Years ago, when he was in the Senate, Monroe told me about Hamilton’s threat to reveal it. That was during the attack for Hamilton’s connection with Mrs. Reynolds. I of course ignored the warning.”
“I presume Lee will now go back to Callender,” said Madison, “and pursuant to our agreement today, prevail on him to drop this and find something else with which to diminish your political strength. Not because Lee is an honorable man, but because it is in his interest and that of the Walkers.” Madison felt the need to add, “Thomas, you appear to be in pain.”
“This gives me great pain, my friend. If I thought that Betsey Walker countenanced the publication in the Recorder, my sensibility would cease.” He shook his head, rejecting that possibility. “But I have to assume she is as innocent in this publication now as she was in the original matter back then.”
Madison picked up a copy of the Recorder with the latest Callender harangue that had been lying on the table, and fed it into the fire.
At the firelight’s sudden brightening of the room, Jefferson looked up and watched the despised publication curl in the heat and turn to ashes. “You know how I feel about the people and the press,” he told his friend. “We’ve seen the firmness with which the people withstood the late abuses of the press, and the discernment they’ve manifested between truth and falsehood. It shows that they can be trusted to hear everything—both true and false—and to form a correct judgment between them.”
Madison nodded, aware that the disclaimer was likely to be a prelude to how Jefferson really felt about the unfair attacks on him.
“And you know, Jemmy, that I deem freedom of the press one of the essential principles of our government and consequently will shape its administration.”
“You made that clear in your Inaugural Address.”
“Then why is it, I ask myself, that when the Federalists make up not more than a tiny fraction of the nation, they command three-quarters of its newspapers?”
“Because most newspapers are vehicles for advertising and published in seaports and commercial towns,” Madison explained. “One would expect them to promote commerce with England and support the mercantile class.” He saw from Jefferson’s expression that was not what he was getting at.
“Because I thought there was not a truth on earth which I feared should be known,” Jefferson said, “I have lent myself willingly as the subject of a great experiment. That was to prove that an administration, conducting itself with integrity, cannot be battered down, even by the falsehoods of a licentious press.”
Madison nodded. “Such an experiment was needed to destroy the pretext that freedom of the press is incompatible with orderly government.”
“That is why I have never contradicted the thousands of calumnies propagated against myself.” The President rose, took up a poker, and rustled the ashes of the newspaper among the logs in the fire. “But since we have shown that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore the press to its strength by recalling it within the pale of truth.”
“And how shall we induce others to do that?” Madison knew the answer but did not want to be presumptuous.
“As you above all others know, we deny that Congress”—he emphasized the name of the legislative branch—“that Congress have a right to control the freedom of the press. We deny that.”
“ ‘Congress shall make no law abridging,’ ” Madison recited, agreeing.
“Correct. At the same time, we have asserted the right of the States, and their exclusive right, to control freedom of the press. The States have accordingly—all of them—made provisions for punishing slander.”
The rationale for his counterattack, Madison saw, was taking shape.
“We have come to a dangerous state of things,” said Jefferson, warming to the subject. “The press has been pushing its licentiousness and its lying to such a degree of prostitution as to deprive it of all credit, and it ought to be restored to its credibility by the States. A few State prosecutions of the most prominent offenders would have a wholesome effect in restoring the integrity of the presses.”
“Not a general prosecution—”
“No, no, for that would look like persecution. Instead, a selected one.” He went out into the hall, took a newspaper out of his overcoat, and put it on the table. Madison saw it was the Port Folio of Philadelphia, the literary sheet that had so delighted in foul doggerel about “sooty Sal” to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” That sheet was now turning to the Walker affair to further Callender’s predations.
“I think I’ll write a confidential note to Tom McKean,” said Jefferson.
Madison knew Pennsylvania’s McKean had unsuccessfully tried William Cobbett for libel, but later as Governor had manipulated the courts to drive Peter Porcupine out of Philadelphia and ultimately out of America. McKean, if encouraged, would not flinch from making an example of those at the forefront of this latest wave of attacks. Madison noticed that the President, after this painful personal trial, now seemed more like his normal, optimistic self.
Chapter 47
June 18, 1803
RICHMOND
“You’re as bad as Porcupine,” said Beckley, throwing down a copy of the Political Register, the weekly edited by the banished British Tory. He was now publishing his outrageous opinions in London, with editions printed in Dublin and Philadelphia; there was no escaping the man. “Cobbett has no principles either.”
Beckley watched Callender eagerly scan the latest production of his longtime rival. The Register, a few months behind the times, denounced the peace agreement between Prime Minister Pitt and Napoleon Bonaparte known as the Treaty of Amiens. To Cobbett, British attempts to appease the French Consul-for-Life would only embolden him; the newsmonger preferred a continuation of the war until Britain prevailed.
“You see?” Beckley, on his Jeffersonian mission to Callender in his printing shop, wanted to appear almost gleeful. “Porcupine was a great Tory voice when he was here. He went back home and Pitt embraced him as a fearless British patriot standing up to the Frenchified Americans. The government probably financed his new paper, and now it’s the only one being printed on both sides of the ocean. And what thanks does Pitt get?”
“Cobbett appears to be attacking Pitt’s government mercilessly,” the Scot remarked mildly, turning the page.
“You newsmongers are nothing but oppositionists.” Beckley was certain he had solved the riddle of Callender’s original betrayal. “You cannot stand to be loyal followers of your own cause. You are all sail and no ballast and you jump ship the minute it gets to port. You live only to be against.”
What made him that way? To the mind of the self-styled Librarian of Congress, the slowness of the repayment of Callender’s fine had been merely an annoyance to the editor. The denial of the deserved postmastership, concededly more infuriating, was not in itself enough to make a turncoat out of a principled republican. Not even Duane’s lie in the Aurora about the drunken editor killing his wife with a loathsome disease, though it understand
ably provoked a fierce broadside, could not explain the Scot’s sustained, passionate campaign to bring down the President.
The greatest impetus to Callender’s savage betrayal, Beckley was convinced, was the man’s innate discomfort with being on the winning side. Callender was a born resister, a hater of authority, and a rebel against anybody in power—a disloyalist in his bones who found perverse satisfaction only in tearing down great men.
Beckley came to Richmond to find out what other scandals Callender had in store, and whether he could be reasoned with before he brought a mob’s violence down on his head. That would reflect badly on the republican cause.
“Look at this, John,” the Scot said, poring over Cobbett’s lively international paper. “A French émigré editor in London is being tried for seditious libel. He dared to criticize Napoleon in his paper, L’Ambigu. Cobbett says the craven British press ought to be ashamed of themselves for not coming to the courageous émigré’s defense. Good for Porcupine, the pompous bastard, for going against the lapdogs and lickspittles that call themselves the English press. I wonder how many he sells.”
“Four thousand, and now he’s starting a French edition. They should close him down everywhere soon for trying to foment war.” Beckley came to the purpose of his visit. “James, I have been seasick for a day, sailing from Alexandria to Norfolk and then up the James River to here for one reason: to prevail on your good sense. Enough of this about ‘Luscious Sally’ and Mrs. Walker, even if you think it may be true. We’re all human, even men who later rise to the Presidency. Come back to the republican fold. Uphold the principles you believe in.”
“The first thing I believe in,” said Callender, “is that Thomas Jefferson does not have the requisite moral character to be President of the United States. If you ask a married man what he would say if his closest friend attempted to dishonor him by seducing his wife, he would declare that he did not know whether such a wretch was fittest to be hanged or drowned—but was surely not fit to be chief magistrate of the nation. I am going to prevent Jefferson’s re-election.”
“There is no accusation you can make,” Beckley stated, gorge rising, “that will have the slightest effect on his re-election.” Because Callender always insisted on fresh, specific information, he gave him some: “Your Calvinist divines with their charges of atheism and sermons about slave concubines may deny him Connecticut, and Delaware is always doubtful. But in the past three months I’ve been in almost every other state, testing the sentiment, and I tell you true—Jefferson will sweep them all.” He calculated swiftly in his head, adding, “Yes, even Massachusetts.”
“Your count has been right before,” the editor observed. “Who will run against him for the Federalists?”
“Nobody. Charles Pinckney is said to be the most likely sacrificial lamb. He won’t even run second.”
That piqued the newsmonger’s interest. “Who will get the second-highest vote?”
Beckley saw no harm in telling him what he really believed. “Not Burr. Nobody trusts him. Governor Clinton of New York will be Vice President.”
“The Old Incumbent? George Clinton is tired and sick.”
“That’s why he’ll be chosen. Jefferson wants Madison to remain Secretary of State and then succeed him in ’08. And after him it will be Monroe’s turn. That is the way it is destined to be, James, republicans all, Virginians all. There is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.”
“Is that what they sent you down here to tell me? You know what Little Jemmy calls you, don’t you? ‘The ablest clerk in America.’ They all despise you, John, those highborn Virginians, because you came here no better than a slave. That’s why, after all your work getting them elected, you were put in charge of a couple of trunks full of books.”
Beckley, seething inwardly, kept his temper. All that contained a grain of truth, of course, like so many of Callender’s barbs. By virtue of his political exertions and his experience with numbers—the “ablest clerk” had written Monroe’s analysis of Hamilton’s Treasury predations in 1792—Beckley was eminently qualified for the job he sought, Comptroller of the Treasury. But Jefferson had told Gallatin to give it to a scion of a Virginia plantation who would better grace the genteel republican court of sycophants around Jefferson. The snub rankled, but Beckley refused to let it embitter him. Politicks had lifted him out of the gutter; he recognized that not even his early service as Mayor of Richmond could help him part the Virginians’ social curtain.
After having plied Callender with sound political information, Beckley felt entitled to know the editor’s plans. Not only Madison in the national capital, but also Monroe’s eyes and ears in Richmond, the bellicose George Hay, had been pressing him to find out what other scurrilities lay in store. “No way can you affect Jefferson’s re-election,” he repeated.
“The agonies of Erebus agitate their bosoms,” said Callender. Beckley made no pretense of having had a Greek classical education; he said nothing.
“Erebus was the son of Chaos, the brother of Night,” Callender instructed. “He is the personification of darkness. The ominous presence of Erebus causes your patrons the agony they feel, John. They sent you here to find out what fresh scandals await them as my light is cast into the darkness of Jefferson’s past.”
“Admit it: there are no more scandals, James.”
“Perhaps your Great Personage will recollect a letter he wrote to his favorite nephew, Peter Carr, wherein he advises him to question the existence of a Supreme Being.”
Accusations of atheism had long been aimed at Jefferson, but had no evidence behind them other than his association with the avowedly godless Thomas Paine; to counter the rumors, the President was regularly attending church for the first time in his life. Beckley was proud to have been the first to publish Paine’s Rights of Man in America, but recently argued against Jefferson’s receiving the old radical in the President’s house because his atheism had become a political embarrassment. The existence of a document, in Jefferson’s handwriting, that suggested the President did not believe in God would fuel the anger of the religionists of New England. “You’re not serious.”
“Do not fancy that I am in jest,” said Callender, wagging a finger. “The particulars will appear in my next paper. Next, you may wish to intreat your Great Personage to recollect the message that was sent him in May 1800, by his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis.”
Captain Lewis was unreachable, far out on some exploration of the West. “What message?”
“You will die of curiosity before I tell you one more word of that episode. Or another, of the accounts of the expenditure of public money by the Executive Council.” The Scot pointed to a stack of letters in a chair by the fireplace. “Gentlemen are sending me packets of information—by hand, not through your postmaster—with the injunction that if their names are called for, they may be printed.”
Beckley swallowed to clear the dryness in his throat. “You’re giving me hints of terrible things to come, but so far I see nothing for the government to worry about.”
“You have no idea the grand harvest the Recorder of this summer will offer to the curiosity of the public,” said Callender, at last giving Beckley the information he sought. “For a subscription of a mere two dollars per annum, they will have the transcendent enjoyment of hearing as how a certain ambassador to France borrowed five hundred pounds currency of a gentlemen during our glorious Revolution. And then how he proposed to repay when Revolutionary certificates had dropped in value—but the lender would not accept a repayment of good hard Peruvian silver with rotten republican Revolutionary paste-board dollars.”
He swallowed again; that sounded specific enough to be troublesome. It went to the subject of financial dishonor, which moneyed interests in New York and Boston considered far more nefarious than enjoying the favours of a Negro concubine or dallying with a neighbor’s wife.
“And then I will correct a mistake in my story about Mrs. Walker,” said Callender, licking his t
hin lips. “I will print an apology and a correction, to protect my reputation for being scrupulously accurate.”
Beckley braced himself.
“I have written that the Great Personage put an amorous billet into the hand, or sleeve, of Mrs. Walker, even after she repelled his first obnoxious advance.” Callender shook his head and made a clucking sound in mock self-reproof. “But I have since found that the billet was wrote, and really put into the hand of another married female—not Mrs. Walker. The Walker dalliance was not an isolated episode. This lusting after other men’s wives was apparently a habit of the young Thomas Jefferson’s.”
“What proof—”
“And if this is denied—perhaps, just perhaps, the damning note can be produced, not in a copy but in the Great Personage’s most familiar handwriting.”
He was bluffing, Beckley figured; pretending to have a damning document was a familiar device of his. But what if he did have some sort of evidence—if some other woman was eager to come forward with a recollection or even an old note? How many low blows of this sort could the President absorb before the people became disgusted with their elected leader? “My God, James, you don’t know how—not just unseemly, but how dangerous all this is.”
“To the country?”
“No, you damn fool, to yourself.”
Callender seemed not to hear. “It seems ‘the Albemarle Amours’—that will be my headline—extended to another lady into whose hands Jefferson’s amorous epistle was put.” He paused, and then as an afterthought: “And then comes all the rest about the mulatto plantation, and about Sally’s previous husbands.”
Scandalmonger: A Novel Page 45
