Poinsett said he would find a wet nurse to feed the child. “Are you still determined to take the dead wench back North with you?” he asked.
Hannibal nodded.
“We want to bury her at Great Rock Farm, where she was born—a free woman,” George said.
Poinsett winced. “Slavery’s a rotten business. But it’s not my doing, Mr. Stapleton.”
“I know that. I’m sorry,” George said. “I never realized just how rotten it was.”
“It’s no one’s doing,” Poinsett said. “It started two hundred and eleven years ago in Virginia.”
“I know that,” George said.
“I inquired because she’ll have to be embalmed. You’ll need an undertaker. A casket.”
“Thank you,” George said. “I should thank you for everything you’ve tried to do. Your hospitality—”
“It was in Andrew Jackson’s name.” Poinsett struggled to regain a semblance of his usual urbanity. “I hope you’ll tell him the situation here in South Carolina. You’re more than qualified as an expert witness now.”
THREE
WHILE GEORGE WAS CONFRONTING THIS nightmare in Charleston, Caroline was being bombarded with messages from John C. Calhoun and his wife in Washington, D.C. They were both extremely upset to learn that George had departed for South Carolina without conferring with them. Mrs. Calhoun seemed to consider it a personal affront. The vice president was more polite. He assured Caroline that he simply wished to be of service. George was on a delicate mission and Calhoun wanted to do everything in his power to help him succeed.
When George arrived home, ill from another stormy voyage, Caroline urged him to see the vice president immediately. “I will do no such thing!” George said. “That man is a menace to the Union. He’s infected the entire state of South Carolina with nullification and secession. They’re ready to start a civil war!”
He told her about the horror of the slave ship, the appalling conduct of Thomas Jefferson Glover, the slave trader. “I agree with everything you say,” Caroline said. “But calm yourself and think about this as a politician. You asked the vice president for help and then ignored him. He deserves the consideration of a visit.”
“Maybe,” George said. “But it will be after I see the president.”
The next day George reported to Andrew Jackson on what he had seen and heard in South Carolina. Old Hickory was in his second-floor White House office, enjoying an after-dinner smoke from one of his corncob pipes. The pipe was soon flung aside, the badly needed half hour of relaxation abandoned, as George told his story.
“I’ve heard some of this from Poinsett in muted tones,” the president said. “If what you tell me is true, it may be time to bring the sword and some hemp into this argument.”
“Hemp?” George said, not used to Jacksonian terminology.
“Hanging is the usual punishment for treason! We’ve got the chief traitor sitting day by day in the U.S. Senate, only a breath away from the presidency. A dose of-hemp applied to his hypocritical neck would eliminate that threat—and send a message to his confederates in Charleston!”
“Mr. President, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“I hope not too,” Jackson growled, the eruption subsiding. “But those people had better understand no one is going to nullify any bill that Andrew Jackson signs into law. As for my cowardly federal attorney in Charleston, I’m going to charge him with malfeasance in office for refusing to serve my subpoena.”
“That slave trader will never spend a day in jail. No grand jury in South Carolina will indict him.”
“Probably not. The case against him is weak. He’s not responsible for your wench’s death, strictly speaking. He may not even be responsible for kidnapping her. Only if we got him to Washington and forced him to tell us all he knows …”
The president let this unlikely possibility trail off. “Are you going to the dinner at the Indian Queen?”
“I haven’t heard of it.”
“On Jefferson’s birthday, the Democrats of Washington are having a dinner, supposedly to assure everyone that perfect peace reigns in the party. Mr. Calhoun and his friends seem to be in charge of it. Now that I’ve heard what they’re saying about me in South Carolina, I smell a rat.”
“Would you have any objection to me telling the vice president what happened down there?”
“None at all. It may wake him up to the real consequences of his infernal ideas. The man lives too much in his brain. Such men are dangerous!”
Did Jackson know he was echoing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? Probably not. But it left George more than a little uneasy as he left the White House. The next day, he met the vice president in his private office off the Senate chamber. As George told him his story, Calhoun grew more and more agitated. He broke in with violent expostulations. “These people are reducing nullification to the lowest, the worst possible denominator! I never dreamt of using it to justify the defiance of a federal subpoena.”
When George got to the discovery of Tabitha’s body and the newborn baby, the vice president’s eyes filled with tears. “Dear God. Fate seems to have arranged for you to get the worst possible impression of South Carolina.”
“I met a number of distinguished gentlemen. Many expressed moderate views. But others seem bent on total defiance of the federal government.”
“I’ll get to work immediately to damp this flame. I deeply appreciate your telling me this. Believe me, sir, I mean it with all my heart when I say that I have no desire to break up our Union. I love it to the depths of my soul. It was the joy of my youth and I hope it will be the consolation of my old age.”
George was profoundly moved. “As I’ve told you, it’s the linchpin of my political creed, Mr. Vice President.”
“My hope is that the president will join me in a firm stand for the right of a state to defend itself against an unjust majority. That is all I mean by nullification. His assent is all we need to quiet South Carolina.”
Having just heard Andrew Jackson threatening to hang this man for treason, George was so astonished, he did not know what to say. Could Calhoun not know what the president was thinking? Were he and his followers living in a dream world?
“As a man of the South, a native of South Carolina, I think he must submit to us, if he venerates Thomas Jefferson a tenth as much as he claims to do,” Calhoun continued. “We’re going to put him to the test at the Jefferson Day dinner.”
There it was again, the vice president’s assumption that Andrew Jackson, the unlearned frontiersman, had to accept John C. Calhoun, the Yale graduate and scholar of the Constitution, as the real leader of the Democratic Party.
“I hope you’ll come and show us where New Jersey stands,” Calhoun said. “Don’t let this painful difficulty with your servant throw you into Van Buren’s ranks.”
“I … I hope to attend. Unless business takes me back to New Jersey.”
At home, Caroline paced the floor, trying to help George decide what to do about the Jefferson Day dinner. A conference with Sarah Polk had revealed they too were in a quandary. Their dislike of John and Peggy Eaton had hardened into detestation. They were equally disgusted with Peggy’s oily ally, Secretary of State Martin Van Buren. But they were even more reluctant to rally to the Calhoun side after Caroline told them what George had heard in South Carolina—and in the White House.
“Perhaps mere congressmen need not give a toast,” Caroline said.
“It’s a rare opportunity to be noticed,” Sarah said in her cool calculating way.
When George left for New Jersey with Hannibal and Tabitha’s body to bury her on Great Rock Farm, Caroline sought advice from another quarter, John Sladen in New Orleans. He replied with an analysis of the situation as viewed from his adopted city and state. It was absolutely necessary to shift the focus of the argument from the Union and nullification to the real source of the quarrel: Martin Van Buren’s slimy, slithering ambition and his readiness to do anything to further it.
Calhoun had to be persuaded that a personal contest between him and Jackson would destroy him politically. A senile Jackson, drooling baby talk, would carry Louisiana against Calhoun, even if the vice president’s intellect were expanded to equal the godhead, John wrote.
Should George give a toast at the Jefferson Day dinner? Most emphatically, John wrote. It should be aimed at Van Buren. Sladen had a suggestion: “To the Union—of all honest men.” It implied that hypocrisy and intrigue could be as fatal to the Democratic Party as differences of principle.
George returned from New Jersey with a sad, subdued Hannibal. It had been a difficult trip. Hannibal had requested the pastor of the Baptist church in Middletown to officiate at the funeral on Great Rock Farm. The pastor had turned the ceremony into an abolitionist rally, replete with violent denunciations of slavery and Southerners. Reporters had swarmed around the grave, asking George’s opinion. He had deplored the way the slave trade was conducted in Washington, D.C., and said he was determined either to make it scrupulously honest or ban it from the city—an opinion he was sure Andrew Jackson shared. He stressed Jackson’s sympathy and help in their attempt to rescue Tabitha. The statement was widely reported in New Jersey and New York papers and was picked up by the Washington Globe, which printed it without comment.
Hannibal’s little daughter was thriving under the care of the female slave Mercy. She was no more than sixteen and came from a farm in Delaware. Hannibal decided to name the child Tabitha after her mother. He announced he wanted to learn the alphabet so he could read the Bible to his daughter and raise her as a Christian. Caroline said she would be delighted to teach him.
To Caroline’s dismay and George’s chagrin, the day after he returned, they were served with a lawsuit filed by a slave trader named Quinn on behalf of Thomas Jefferson Glover, demanding $400 for Mercy. Quinn had a receipt showing Glover had purchased her from him. Glover had statements from the captain of the Fortunate Pilgrim and other witnesses that George had abducted her by force. George was inclined to defy him and fight it out in court. He told James Polk and several other congressmen about it.
Two days later, Polk paid the Stapletons an after-supper visit. He had a message from President Jackson. Old Hickory did not think it was the right time to make a public issue of Tabitha’s tragedy. It would be best if George paid a compromise price for Mercy and let the story sink into oblivion. Polk was candid about the president’s reasons. “He can’t afford to seem to pick a quarrel over slavery with Calhoun on the attack.”
Caroline could see George was tempted to defy Polk and the president. “Let us think it over,” she said. “George feels deeply about this.”
Polk offered to conduct the negotiation with Quinn, who was at least as repulsive in his manners and appearance as Thomas Jefferson Glover. George thanked the Tennessean and he departed.
“I’m not going to do it,” George said. “I don’t care what anyone says, including the president.”
“George, don’t let emotion control you. You must never stop thinking, no matter how strongly you feel about something.”
George did not realize he was hearing the essence of Caroline’s creed, the words she lived by. Perhaps she herself did not realize it at this point. “I’m not sure I agree with that,” George said.
Caroline became extremely agitated. “You have a part to play in this country. Possibly a great one. Don’t throw it away over a minor matter.”
“Is it minor? Does Tabitha’s death mean that little to you?”
“It means a great deal to me personally. I mourn her as much as you. But in the grand scale of American politics, it is a minor matter. What will you gain by embarrassing the president and aligning yourself with the abolitionists? Do you want to be marked as one of them?”
“Of course not. They’re as repulsive as the slave traders.”
“If that’s what you think, then you have no choice but to consent to the president’s plan.”
Her logic was irresistible. George slowly descended from his pillar of righteousness. “You have a point.”
She sensed he might be ready to agree to something far more important. “I’ve thought about the Jefferson Day dinner. I think you should offer a toast.” She gave him John Sladen’s suggestion, without mentioning its source.
“To the union of all honest men,” George mused.
“No. To the Union—of all honest men. You should pause on the word Union just long enough to gather everyone’s attention. Then add the close. If you’re sitting near Mr. Van Buren—as I hope you will be—stare hard at him as you finish it. So everyone will have no doubt about what you mean.”
“To the Union—of all honest men.” George swept her against him. “I like it.”
The next day, George told James Polk to offer Quinn two hundred dollars for Mercy. By nightfall the deal was struck and George told Mercy she would be a free woman as soon as he filed her manumission papers with the District court. Caroline hired Mercy as a nurse for little Tabitha and for thirteen-month-old Jonathan Stapleton, who was toddling around the house, threatening to destroy everything in his path. George spoiled him shamelessly, and Harriet, their cook, was no better. Only Caroline attempted to impose some discipline, often with the flat of her hand on his bottom. He never shed a tear. Instead, he confronted her with those defiant gray eyes, which often stirred anxiety—or was it guilt?—in her soul.
At last winter yielded to Washington’s early spring. The streets turned to rivers of mud. Ladies lost their shoes in them and even men lost an occasional boot. The city buzzed with the anticipated excitement of the Jefferson Day dinner at the Indian Queen Hotel. Ladies were not invited, a policy that irked Caroline and Sarah Polk and several other congressional wives. Caroline and Sarah resolved to have supper in the hotel dining room and find a way to penetrate the ballroom where the banquet was being served when the speeches and toasts began.
The newspapers were thick with speculation over what the president would say about nullification and the Union. Columns of densely packed print pointed out he had repeatedly declared himself a states’ rights man and deplored a federal government with the power to menace liberty. The. pro-Calhoun papers seemed to be preaching sermons to the president, virtually telling him he had no choice but to submit to party doctrine. The Globe, on the other hand, denounced nullification as a gross violation of the great democratic principle of majority rule and reprinted editorials from other papers, not a few from the South, echoing this sentiment.
The great day, April 13, 1830, arrived in a burst of spring sunshine. George rehearsed his toast to Caroline’s satisfaction a dozen times. Sarah Polk warmly approved it. But she had counseled James Polk to remain silent. He was launching a campaign to become Speaker of the House of Representatives. He could not afford to offend anyone in the party if he hoped to achieve this ambitious goal. Caroline asked Sarah if she would ask one of the managers of the banquet to seat George close to Martin Van Buren. With a devilish, un-Presbyterian smile, Sarah said she would try.
By now Caroline was eight months pregnant. But she did not allow that to deter her from witnessing this climactic event. Sarah Polk had done her utmost to find out what the president was going to say—and failed. Her best friend inside the White House, Emily Donelson, had gone home to Tennessee rather than serve as a hostess when Peggy Eaton came to dinner. That quarrel still bubbled and seethed beneath the surface of the political confrontation at the Indian Queen.
Sarah’s diligence on another front had been rewarded. She discovered the ballroom of the Indian Queen Hotel was two stories high and had a number of boxes on the second floor that would overlook the banquet. The manager of the hotel had assured her it would be easy to arrange for them to occupy one of these vantage points when the verbal fireworks began.
At noon on the great day, Caroline was trying to decide which dress to wear when Josephine Parks knocked on her bedroom door. “Mr. Sladen is downstairs.”
Caroline was stunned—and for a mo
ment, embarrassed. Somehow she did not want him to see her carrying George’s child. It was a primitive, instinctive reaction that she quickly brushed aside. She greeted him in the front parlor with a smile. “What a delightful surprise!”
“I thought it was simpler to come ahead than to write. There’s been a special election to replace the congressman from the third district, who resigned and has since died of cancer. With some help from Senator Legrand, I’ve won the seat.”
“Wonderful!”
Did she mean that? Did she want this man in Washington? Yes, the rational Caroline angrily told the side of her soul from which her primary feelings rose. What better moment for John to come? Her ballooned shape virtually proclaimed her identity as Mrs. George Rensselaer Stapleton.
“Has Clothilde come with you?”
“No. She’s pregnant too. Not in the best of health, I’m sorry to say. Whereas you look positively glorious. There must be some Indian blood in you. You look ready to give birth and hoe corn on the same day.”
“Are you going to the great banquet tonight?”
“Senator Legrand says there’s not a ticket left.”
“You can come with Sarah Polk and me. We’re planning to spy on these all-powerful males from a ballroom box.”
So it was arranged. John joined them at the Indian Queen at 5 P.M. Did the huge painting of Pocahontas that hung over the hotel’s front door remind him of their evening at the Bowery Theater? He did not mention it. Instead he entertained them with tales of Louisiana life—the opulent plantations on the rivers and bayous, New Orleans with its splendid opera house and theaters and the exotic women who lived on its back streets, the quadroons and octoroons who became the mistresses of the men who made millions. on the Cotton Exchange. Sarah Polk claimed to be shocked, but she was as fascinated as Caroline.
As they finished supper in the dining room, the manager rushed to their table to report Senator Hayne of South Carolina had begun the night’s first speech. They hurried upstairs to the box, which had a curtain on two sides that shielded them from the eyes of the diners on the floor below them. Caroline noticed shadowy faces in several other boxes. One of them, she was certain, was Peggy O’Neale Eaton.
The Wages of Fame Page 22
