The Wages of Fame

by Thomas Fleming

  “The wages of fame,” Caroline said. “Is that our only reward?”

  “In the White House, the wages of fame can be shared equally,” Sarah said. “I’ve talked to old men who remember the administrations of John Adams and James Madison. They left no doubt that Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison wielded as much power as their husbands, behind the scenes.”

  With long, determined strides, Sarah led Caroline up the hill to the Capitol and turned to look down Pennsylvania Avenue at the executive mansion. In the bright summer sunlight, it shimmered and glowed like a mystic vision. “It’s the summit of American fame. Why not try for it?” Sarah said.

  Inside, they were escorted to one of the couches on the Senate floor reserved for important visitors. Sarah unlocked her lap desk to resume her notetaking. “I had this designed from a larger model made for Mr. Jefferson,” she said.

  That day the Senate debate on the tariff thundered to a climax. Southern orators, particularly from South Carolina, denounced it as “the tariff of abominations.” Sarah Polk coolly added her commentary to their rhetoric. “Charleston is a city in decline. They thought they could live on their plantations and let their Negroes breed them into wealth. Instead it’s turned out to be bankruptcy. This has stirred resentment—which they naturally blame on everyone but themselves.”

  When Daniel Webster, the swarthy, dark-browed senator from Massachusetts, rose to thunder an equally violent defense of the tariff, Sarah whispered, “There you see a politician who never speaks without someone putting money in his pocket. Greed is the foremost weakness of the Yankees. The second is self-righteousness.”

  New Jersey’s two senators defended the bill, using phrases that might have come straight from Hugh Stapleton’s lips. Caroline was surprised that not a sound came from New York, where cotton mills were few and radical rich-hating Democrats like John Sladen were numerous. Surely they would join the Southerners in denunciations?

  A query to her political guide produced a political answer. “The Democrats had an emergency meeting last night and made some last-minute changes in the bill. The tariff on raw wool has been jacked up to favor New York’s upstate sheep raisers. They far outnumber New York City’s radicals. The same policy will please Ohio, Missouri, and Kentucky—wool-growing states General Jackson has to carry to win. Pennsylvania is happy, and silent, because we’ve upped the rate on imported iron.”

  Caroline began to perceive that national politics was the fine art of keeping a majority of the people happy. But she could not help noticing the tendency among Southerners to be ex- , tremely unhappy. One senator roared that if South Carolina was continually ignored this way, there would come a time when she would assert her rights at the point of a gun.

  “Virginia,” declared an agitated senator from the Old Dominion, “created this Union through the genius of her soldiers such as Washington and her statesmen such as Jefferson and Madison. She can unmake it the same way.”

  Sarah Polk leaned over and whispered, “Pay no attention. They have no place to go but General Jackson. They’d all fall on their swords before voting for John Querulous Adams.”

  On the dais, Vice President John C. Calhoun’s wrathful face suggested Sarah Polk might be dismissing the South’s anger too casually. Caroline was still a pupil and she banished the intuition for the time being. But she never forgot Calhoun’s forbidding glare as the Senate voted the Tariff of Abominations into law.

  There was another reason for the persistence of this memory. Moments before the vice president gaveled the Senate into recess, Caroline was assailed by an overwhelming nausea. She fled to the indoor toilets that were among the distinctions of the new Capitol and lost her breakfast.

  Alone in the water closet, Caroline wondered what was wrong. Was she coming down with cholera or some other dreaded disease? Or was there another, more probable explanation? It was now almost two months since her first tryst with John Sladen. She realized she had not menstruated since that disastrous day. She was so irregular, and her mingled grief, rage, and relief over the abrupt end of her affair with Sladen, followed immediately by the preparations for the wedding to George, had so distracted her, she had paid no attention to the lapse.

  Caroline did some rapid arithmetic in her head. She was liable to give birth only seven months after her wedding. What should she do?

  On the way back to the hotel, Sarah Polk talked politics. She was more than satisfied with the final disposition of the tariff bill. Her fears of negative reactions in key states had been laid to rest. The Democrats’ last-minute changes virtually guaranteed General Jackson’s election.

  “What about the story that General Jackson abducted or seduced his wife away from her first husband?” Caroline asked. “It’s made a great stir against him in some parts of the East.”

  Sarah Polk began a tense, surprisingly defensive explanation. Rachel Donelson had left her brutal, unfaithful first husband before Andrew Jackson met her. They had married in Natchez, assuming the husband had obtained a divorce in Virginia. When they discovered he had waited a full year to do this and then obtained it on the grounds of adultery, they were remarried in Tennessee. No one in Nashville considered Rachel an unfaithful wife. She was received everywhere with respect and courtesy.

  “I suppose it proves one thing. A woman can love more than one man,” Caroline said.

  “If she has command of her soul, she can deal with that misfortune.” Sarah Polk studied her so intently, Caroline thought for a moment she had penetrated her secret. “Are you ready to become a convert to General Jackson?”

  “I’m not sure it can be done, or what we’d gain from it.”

  “My congressman friend from New Jersey says he could persuade one of the candidates on the Democratic ticket to drop out of the campaign. That would give George a place to fill.”

  “What would you gain from that?”

  “George’s name would bolster our whole New Jersey ticket.”

  “What would that Democratic dropout gain?”

  “A nice job in the New York Customs House or something comparable in Europe. We intend to show no mercy to Republican officeholders. General Jackson says they’re all corrupt. He’s going to reform them out of business.”

  “You do make politics interesting,” Caroline said.

  “From a personal point of view, I’d gain a friend to whom I could speak freely. I assume you’re coming to Washington with your husband?”

  “You don’t think George can win as a Republican?”

  “I think his chances of winning as a Democrat are far better. A change of parties by someone with his lineage will do a great deal to make him a national name.”

  When Geórge returned from his session at the House of Representatives, he unnerved Caroline by complaining about the tiresome day he had spent in that chamber. “Talk about blowhards. They’ve got them by the dozen. And fanatics. The Southerners talk about the tariff as if it were boiling oil about to be poured on the heads of their wives and children. That fellow Cambreleng is with them, heart and soul, denouncing rich Northern businessmen as if they ate babies for breakfast.”

  “It’s just rhetoric, George,” Caroline said. “They have no place to go but General Jackson.”

  “I don’t understand it. How can intelligent men be against a tariff? What other crazy ideas does Jackson stand for?”

  “Reform.”

  “Reform of what? The system seems to be working pretty well, as far as I can see. The country’s prosperous.”

  “The people are tired of the old faces. They want a new leader.”

  “Whoever said the people were always right? Don’t you remember Grandfather saying without the tariff the mills would be out of business?”

  “Calm down. In American politics, in all politics, I suspect—English, French, Spanish—there’s a world of difference between what you say and what you do. General Jackson has no intention of abolishing the tariff. As a Jacksonian Democrat from New Jersey you can probably get a h
igher tariff on cotton cloth—if you go along with a lower tariff on woolens, which will only hurt New England.”

  “That’s dishonest.”

  “No it isn’t, George. It’s politics.”

  George sat down on the bed. “Where did you get these ideas?”

  “From Sarah Polk.”

  “It’s crazy. What would Grandfather say if I ran as a Democrat?”

  “We’ll talk him into it. He’s a reasonable man. Mrs. Polk says she can arrange to remove one of the Democrats who’s running against you. I think the Congressman would like that idea.”

  “I couldn’t agree to such a thing unless I was truly convinced that Jackson was the best candidate.”

  “Then there’s only one thing to do. We’ll go see the man himself.”

  “Go to Nashville? That’s almost a thousand miles away.”

  “Sarah Polk will arrange it. In ten or fifteen years, she’s going to put James Polk in the White House, George. I want you to succeed him. You can’t do. it as a National Republican. That party’s dead. The Democratic Party is about to be born. It’s the party of Young America. Where we belong.”

  George sank onto the bed “You’re amazing.”

  He was still far from convinced. Caroline decided it was necessary to risk the ultimate revelation. “I’ve got some more good news, George. I’m pregnant.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “A woman knows when it happens, George.”

  “Caroline! My God—”

  George knelt beside her, kissing her hands, her arms, her neck—an ecstatic almost-Democrat, virtually on his way to Nashville to meet Andrew Jackson.

  THREE

  CONGRESS, HAVING APPROVED THE TARIFF of Abominations, adjourned so its members could go home and hurl themselves into the 1828 campaign. This enabled Sarah and James Polk to offer themselves as traveling companions to Tennessee. As they boarded a stagecoach in front of the Franklin House, the pretty daughter of the owner, Peggy O’Neale, dashed up to them. “Oh, Mrs. Polk,” she said. “I’m glad I caught you. I have a letter for Senator Eaton. Would you mind taking it to him?”

  “Not at all,” Sarah Polk said.

  “I’m much obliged,” Peggy said. “Give General Jackson my love.”

  As they rode into Maryland, Sarah gazed at the letter and said, “If I were a different sort of woman, I’d steam this open and read it. But my Presbyterian conscience won’t allow it.”

  “Well, I’m not a Presbyterian,” James Polk said, reaching for the letter.

  Sarah shoved it firmly into the bottom of her purse. “I’d still be guilty. We’ll have to allow time and circumstances to tell us the truth.”

  Sarah explained to the Stapletons that pretty Peggy was a widow; her first husband had been a naval officer who had recently died at sea. Well before his death, while he was on the bounding main, she had become much too friendly with John Henry Eaton, the senator from Tennessee. There was talk of a marriage, but Sarah opined it was too late to save her reputation.

  A day later, they rumbled west along the Great National Turnpike, one of the first “improvements” of Henry Clay’s American System—a sixty-foot-wide macadam highway that ran from Fort Cumberland in western Maryland to Columbus, Ohio. They rode in a Blue Safety Line stagecoach pulled by four strong horses, who were changed every ten miles. Rolling at a brisk pace, they passed dozens of lumbering freight wagons and hundreds of plodding Conestoga wagons crammed with Eastern Americans and recent immigrants moving west.

  Congressman Polk said over a quarter of a million people were using the road each year. If the influx continued, the West would soon equal the East and South at the polls.

  George could not restrain himself from noting it was rather ironic that the Democrats opposed the American System—when it was responsible for doubling the population of the West, where they were strongest.

  “Followers of General Jackson would oppose anything Henry Clay sponsored, even if God himself endorsed it,” Polk said.

  Sarah Polk explained why. Ten years ago, Andrew Jackson had been ordered to lead an army into Spanish-owned Florida to punish Seminole Indians and runaway slaves who had been raiding into Georgia and Alabama. He had conquered the entire colony and hanged two Englishmen who had been supplying the Indians with guns and ammunition. Both Spain and England threatened war. Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House at the time, denounced the General as a military adventurer and called for a vote of censure. But supporters of General Jackson defeated the Kentuckian’s attempt to destroy him.

  “Very early, Mr. Clay saw the General as his chief rival for the votes of the West,” Sarah said. “Men talk about issues, but a great deal of their politics is personal.”

  “Would women be any different if they had the vote?” Polk asked her.

  “Probably not,” Sarah said.

  George Stapleton entertained them with the early history of the national road, which George Washington helped British general Edward Braddock begin in 1754, en route to the bloody Indian ambush that killed the general on the site of contemporary Pittsburgh. George planned to start his verse history of the American Revolution with Washington’s exploits in that long-forgotten war. Polk playfully offered him ten dollars to become the first subscriber to his opus.

  “I think you’d be better advised to write a verse biography of General Jackson’s military career,” Sarah Polk said. “The senator we mentioned to you, John Henry Eaton, has risen to fame on a prose version of his life. It’s no great shakes in my opinion. General Jackson deserves the kind of heroic rhythms Homer produced in praise of Achilles.”

  “You make me more and more eager to meet this man,” George said. Together he and Caroline had drafted a letter to his grandfather, making their trip west seem a part of their honeymoon. Only casually, in the last line, did they mention the possibility of meeting General Jackson in Nashville.

  In two days they were in Pittsburgh, where two great rivers, the Monongahela and the Allegheny, met to form the mighty Ohio. The town was already redolent with the smoke of burning coal that in ten years would blacken the very air. They spent the night at Hart’s Tavern, where a huge painting of General Jackson hung in the taproom. The place was jammed with stevedores and riverboat men, many of whom asked the Polks to give the General their warmest regards. He had usually stopped at Hart’s on his trips to and from Washington when he was a senator from Tennessee.

  Several other Democratic congressmen were holding court in various corners of the taproom while the Stapletons and Polks ate dinner. The tavern rang with toasts in praise of General Jackson. A number of drinkers glanced suspiciously at George, whose stylish clothes differed markedly from the rough outfits favored by the men of the West—at least in this river town.

  “Who’s this, Polk?” asked one hulking keelboat man in knee-high rubber boots. “Some Philadelphia reporter on his way west to slander the General?”

  “Mr. Stapleton is running for Congress from New Jersey—on the Democratic ticket, we hope,” Polk said.

  “Doesn’t look like a Democrat to me,” the keelboater growled.

  “He’s a rich Democrat,” Polk said. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  “The hell you say!” roared the keelboat man. “He’s a Nancy if I ever saw one. Five bucks I can take him in an arm wrestle.”

  Polk glanced across the table at George, who nodded. “I’ll take the bet,” the congressman said.

  He laid five dollars on the table. The keelboat bruiser laid five dollars on top of it, pulled up a chair, and slammed his elbow on the table, his arm erect. George calmly removed his green frock coat and embroidered white vest and placed his palm in the keelboater’s hand.

  “Give the signal, Congressman,” he said.

  “Three two one—begin!” Polk said.

  A crowd had gathered around the table, nasty grins on their faces. They were looking forward to the humiliation of this Eastern swell. Caroline was dismayed. She was sure George was going to lose. She d
id not want that to happen. He might change his mind about associating with these crude nasty-tongued Democrats.

  The keelboater pushed first. The muscles in his neck bulged. He grunted like a sow in heat. George’s arm vibrated but did not move backward an inch. Then George pushed. Without making a sound, he slowly bent the keelboater’s arm back, back, back, until his knuckles touched the table. With a groan, the bruiser rolled out of his chair and crashed to the floor. The crowd roared their approval and pounded George on the back. Caroline felt a rush of delighted pride.

  Congressman Polk seized the money and hailed a passing waiter. “Rumfustians all around,” he said, gesturing to the circle of onlookers.

  In moments a dozen flagons of rumfustian were on the table. Sarah Polk ignored them. Caroline was relieved to discover women were not expected to drink this lethal mix of brandy and ale and bourbon.

  “To the democratic equality of all Americans, East and West, North and South, under the leadership of Andrew Jackson,” Polk said, raising his flagon.

  “I’ll drink to that,” said the keelboat man ruefully. “Maybe I just learned a democratic lesson.”

  Everyone downed their rumfustian. Caroline noticed James Polk took only a small sip. The keelboater and George shook hands and everyone gave them three cheers.

  Up in their room, Caroline kissed George and said, “I never dreamt I was marrying a Hercules.”

  “We played that little game all the time in the taverns around Columbia,” George said. “Johnny Sladen and Jeremy Biddle won a lot of money betting on me.”

  Caroline heard John Sladen’s name without a tremor. Had he vanished from her soul as totally as he had disappeared from her life? She hoped so. “I’m the only one who’s betting on you now,” she said, kissing George. Pittsburgh became another memorable midnight in their honeymoon’s progress.

  The next morning the Stapletons and the Polks boarded the Star of the West steamboat and headed down the Ohio to the mouth of the Cumberland River, near Paducah, Kentucky. At their numerous stops along the way, many Kentuckians boarded the boat. Not a few of them were partisans of Henry Clay. That night in the dining room, one of them, a red-faced fellow as burly as the Pittsburgh keelboat man, overheard Caroline say something to Sarah about “Mr. Polk.”