George sided with the majority, after a trip to the White House to explain to the president. Old Hickory told him if he were in George’s ancestral shoes, he would probably vote the same way. “Don’t lose any sleep over it, my young friend,” Jackson said, his mouth a grim line in his furrowed face. “I have the means to destroy the monster right here on my desk.”
“What would that be, General?” asked George.
Old Hickory picked up a pen, dipped it in an inkwell, and wrote four letters on a piece of foolscap: VETO. He gave George the paper as a souvenir.
George returned to Caroline in something close to consternation. He showed her his souvenir but forbade her to show it to anyone. The next morning, she displayed it to a wide-eyed Sarah Polk. “This will raise a storm,” Sarah said. “Possibly a hurricane.”
Later in the day, John Sladen paid Caroline one of his political visits. He told her that the House had passed the BUS recharter bill and the Senate was expected to follow suit later in the day. He was in the midst of gloating over Jackson’s humiliation when Caroline silently presented him with George’s souvenir.
Never had she seen John so flabbergasted. In the icy cavern beside her soul’s sunless sea, Caroline rejoiced. She told herself she wanted to witness the humiliation of all these males who purported to consult her, when not one of them, not even this man, placed any real value on her advice.
“It’s never been done,” Sladen said. “No president has ever vetoed an act of Congress unless he thought it was unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court has already said the BUS is constitutional. The old madman is claiming he’s an equal partner with Congress! King Andrew the First! I shudder to think of what they’ll say about this in South Carolina.”
Hurrah, Caroline silently cheered. “What’s happened to the tariff bill, by the way?” she asked.
“The tariff? Oh, the president’s bill has been moving toward a vote. I wouldn’t be surprised if it passed tomorrow.”
The next day, the distracted House and Senate, rattled by the swirling rumors that the president was going to veto the BUS recharter, passed Jackson’s original tariff bill with scarcely a word of debate. A few days later, Jackson’s veto of the BUS recharter crashed through Washington and the rest of the country. He did not merely reject Congress’s labors on behalf of Nicholas Biddle and company. He added to it a ferocious message, which called on the American people to join him in destroying a “moneyed aristocracy” that threatened their liberties.
George Stapleton, obviously a moneyed aristocrat, found himself in the stickiest dilemma of his young political life. When the Senate and the House failed to muster the two-thirds majorities needed to override the veto, the bank became the major issue of the 1832 presidential campaign. What to do? When he consulted his political partner, Caroline gave him two startling suggestions:
“Talk about the tariff instead. That’s going to become the major issue, after Jackson wins. Portray yourself as a man who pushed for lower rates, who wants peace between the North and the South. As for the BUS, tell everyone your family owns a bank and you look forward to advising the president on how to reorganize the country’s banking system after he abolishes the BUS.”
It was brilliant advice. Even Jeremy Biddle had to admit it, although he had no foreknowledge of a coming crisis over the tariff. Only Caroline had this information, thanks to John Sladen. He had gone back to Louisiana virtually guaranteeing an imminent explosion in South Carolina. On the hustings in New Jersey, George managed to sound like that rarest of politicians, a wise man and a patriot.
The “Nationals,” as the Washington Globe called the National Republicans, fought back with an avalanche of anti-Jackson cartoons and hard-hitting pamphlets financed by the BUS. One cartoon portrayed Jackson receiving a crown from Van Buren and a scepter from Satan. Another sketch, which appeared in thousands of papers, had Old Hickory in royal robes, stamping on a tattered copy of the Constitution. The Democrats responded with hickory poles, which they marched around town to attract a crowd. Next came a barbecue, fueled by kegs of beer, followed by three cheers for Jackson and the party’s campaign song.
Hurrah for the Hickory Tree!
Hurrah for the Hickory Tree!
Its branches will wave o’er tyranny’s grave
And bloom for the brave and the free.
The Jackson-Van Buren ticket swept New Jersey and almost every other state in the Union. The count in the electoral college was 219 to 49. Old Hickory carried every state in the South except one: South Carolina. The Palmetto State cast its vote for an unknown Virginia politician named Floyd. On the state level, the Union party, led by Joel Poinsett, was routed from virtually every office.
As usual, the Stapletons returned to Washington early in the fall of 1832. The president arrived at the White House around the same time, having spent the summer at the Hermitage. He promptly invited them to dinner. The Polks were on the guest list too and so was Senator Legrand. As the president kissed Caroline’s hand and complimented her on her sky-blue Paris gown, he did not seem to have a care in the world. He dismissed everyone’s congratulations on his victory by insisting it was not he but the American people who had triumphed. At the table, he seemed interested in discussing nothing more weighty than the success of some of his prize racehorses at the Nashville track.
As the main course was served, George asked Senator Legrand if John Sladen would soon be arriving in town. “He’s stopped off to see some friends in South Carolina,” the senator said in a low voice.
“I’m glad to hear some Jackson Democrat has a friend in South Carolina,” Old Hickory said, once again demonstrating his ability to conduct one conversation and listen to another one.
Caroline had the delicious sensation of being in on a political secret. She had received a letter from John Sladen explaining why he was going to South Carolina. Remembering his success at rounding up votes to reject Martin Van Buren as ambassador, Vice President Calhoun had summoned him to help rally support for South Carolina among other Southern states. With the results of the election all too clear, they saw only one course: nullification of the new tariff and defiance of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.
“What’s happening in South Carolina, General?” George Stapleton said.
“From my latest reports, it can be summed up on one word: treason!” Old Hickory said. “The nullifiers have taken control of the state government and are meditating a challenge to the tariff. I told you a while ago that situation might require a liberal use of hemp—starting with a knot around the traitorous neck of John C. Calhoun!”
Everyone goggled at George, amazed to discover he and the president had already discussed such a radical solution to South Carolina’s defiance. “I can only hope these reports are exaggerated, General,” George said.
“I can assure you they’re entirely accurate. They’re reaching me daily by navy cutter. The supporters of the Union have already met the nullifiers in a bloody brawl on Charleston’s King Street. One man had his face split open by a rock.”
Caroline almost could not believe the way fate was cooperating. with her secret wish. Across the table, she saw new respect in Sarah Polk’s eyes. Perhaps Sarah would no longer always be the advice-giver now. Perhaps Caroline Kemble Stapleton had become an equal in the Temple of Fame. But Sarah’s occasional condescension had never bothered her. Caroline the huntress was emerging from her cave of ice to strike down another quarry: her large, complacent, philosophizing husband, George Rensselaer Stapleton.
George was silent for the entire ride home in their carriage. Caroline made no attempt to converse. She was waiting for the right moment to speak. She decided it should not be in darkness. She wanted both her voice to be heard and her triumphant expression to be visible in the blazing light of every lamp in their house.
Into the front hall she strode ahead of George. In the parlor, she swiftly lit three additional lamps and turned up the one that the servants had left to guide them along the hall. George stood in the door
way, puzzled by her behavior. Caroline turned from lighting the final lamp and said, “I told you so!”
George knew exactly what she meant. He whirled and mounted the stairs. Caroline rushed to the parlor door. His broad receding back intimated she was risking the happiness of their marriage. She thought of John Sladen in South Carolina, helping John C. Calhoun and his compatriots to defy Andrew Jackson and the U.S. Constitution. Was that what she wanted in her secret soul? To be the partner of a man who shouted defiance to the entire world, indifferent to its rights and wrongs? She did not know, she did not care. Caroline only knew she had to say it once more, no matter what it cost her.
“I told you so!”
SEVEN
SHE WAS NOT BEING REASONABLE. She was being—what? A woman. Caroline found no fault with that conclusion as she lay beside her sullen husband in their marriage bed. The next day a letter arrived from John Sladen, describing the mood of South Carolina. These people are determined to defend their rights or die in the ruins. I wish I could believe they meant it. Most of them seem to think that when they issue a proclamation on November 24, nullifying the tariff act, the federal government will back down. Do you think so? What do you hear in Washington?
She told him what she had heard at the White House the night before. From the beginning of this mess you and your hero Mr. Calhoun seem to have made a habit of underestimating Andrew Jackson. It is time for you to face the real man and not the dotard you seem to insist on seeing. He is going to meet your proclamation with all the force he can muster. He will have no compunction about letting you and your friends die in the ruins.
On November 26, the resolutions of the South Carolina Nullification Convention reached Washington. The delegates declared the Federal Tariff Act of 1832 null and void as of February 1, 1833. After that date, unless the federal government agreed to revise the tariff, not a cent of money would be collected in the port of Charleston. Imports and exports would be duty-free. If the federal government attempted to collect the duties by force, South Carolina would secede and fight for its independence.
From South Carolina also came a frantic letter from John Sladen to Caroline. The ultras are in control. Vice President Calhoun made a speech at the convention, stressing that nullification was intended to be a peaceful process. He was all but ignored. They are organizing an army. All the civil and military officers of the state are required to take a test oath, declaring their support of the Ordinance of Nullification.
George came and left the house in silence for two days. Finally he lifted his eyes to her at dinner and asked through all but gritted teeth, “What do you think I should do?”
“Offer your services to General Jackson—as a peacemaker. Tell him about the speeches you made in New Jersey, urging tariff reduction. But don’t for a moment disagree with him about the use of force to answer this challenge. If you do that, you’ll lose his confidence forever.”
George nodded. The advice coincided nicely with his own instincts. “That sounds reasonable.”
“It isn’t anything of the sort. You’re not dealing with a reasonable man. You won’t find much reasonableness in South Carolina either.”
She was taking a new tone with him. She knew it was wrong. She could see it infuriated him. But she could not help it. More and more, she had began to dislike the way she was living, married to a man she did not respect and secretly in love with a man she could not acknowledge.
“You were right,” George said. “What more can I say?”
“Nothing,” Caroline said.
At the White House, Andrew Jackson grasped George’s hand and all but wept at his offer to be a voice of peace. “You understand there may be many who will call you a trimmer, a traitor to the Union,” Jackson said.
This had never occurred to George. “Not a few people want me to smash these fellows once and for all,” Jackson continued. “But it’s my native state. I understand how South Carolinians think. I have the same hot blood. You and I will know that you’re acting for the Union—just as I will be with my trumpet blasts of blood and thunder.”
Washington, and the nation, waited breathlessly for Andrew Jackson to speak. His first statement was his annual message to Congress. He did not say a word about the nullifiers. He recommended a further lowering of the tariff and called for action against the Bank of the United States.
Many people were aghast. George met John Quincy Adams in the Capitol rotunda. “Has the president surrendered to the nullifiers? His message sounded to me like the dissolution of the Union,” the ex-president said. “You must speak to him in your grandfather’s name, in the name of Washington!”
George calmed the agitated old man. “Wait a day or two.”
On December 10, 1832, Washington, D.C., and the nation reverberated with Andrew Jackson’s “Proclamation on Nullification.” It branded the doctrine a “practical absurdity, contradictory to the Constitution, incompatible with the Union.” The right of secession was even more categorically denied. “The Constitution forms a government, not a league. To say that any state may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say the United States is not a nation.”
Finally came the ultimate trumpet blast. “Fellow citizens of my native state, let me admonish you, I have no discretionary power on this subject. Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent the execution of the laws deceived you. Their object is disunion. Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the heads of the instigators of the act be dreadful consequences.”
Seldom before in American history had a president’s words achieved such total unanimity. State legislatures, North and South, rushed to congratulate Old Hickory and offer him thousands of volunteers. Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams jointly guaranteed him New England’s support. George Stapleton rose in the Senate to pledge “the men of the Middle States” to the president’s call to arms—and to ask, rhetorically, why New York had yet to be heard from.
No one realized George was acting as Andrew Jackson’s agent here. At another White House meeting, Old Hickory had shown George a temporizing letter from Martin Van Buren, urging Jackson to show restraint and caution, warning him Virginia might be offended by his categorical rejection of the right to secede. The president said he was showing George the letter because he would not be shocked by it. His opinion of Van Buren was already low.
“Help me get him up to the mark,” the old warrior said. George could only marvel at the General’s mastery of the art of politics.
In South Carolina, a forlorn John Sladen reported to Caroline that the network of Southern sympathizers he had been struggling to create had been swept away by Jackson’s proclamation like a cobweb before a housekeeper’s broom. South Carolina stood alone against the obloquy and denunciations of the entire country. John C. Calhoun had plunged into a pit of political infamy deeper than anything Aaron Burr had ever known. North and South, newspapers excoriated him as a traitor second only to Judas Iscariot.
In the Senate, George Stapleton rose to recommend a drastic reduction in the tariff. Simultaneously, the White House introduced a bill authorizing the president to use force to suppress a rebellion in South Carolina. Old Hickory was using the carrot and the stick. But there was no doubt about his readiness to use the stick. He showed George a letter he had just scrawled to Joel Poinsett: “If So. Carolina opposes the execution of the revenue laws with an armed force, I will in ten or fifteen days have in Charleston ten or fifteen thousand well-organized troops and twenty thousand or thirty in their interior. I can if need be, God forbid, march two hundred thousand men in forty days to quell any and every insurrection.”
Jackson showed George another letter in which he ferociously rebuked Martin Van Buren. The Little Magician’s creature, the New York legislature, had finally produced a resolution of support, but it was so pale, Jackson had been disgusted by it. “Your policy,” he told his new vice president, “would destroy all confidence in our government both at home
and abroad.”
While Washington held its breath and the days marched inexorably toward the February 1 deadline set by the South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification, George’s tariff bill was ambushed by an alternative bill proposed by Henry Clay, who was eager to fish in troubled waters in the hope of a prize catch that would give him a running start for the presidential campaign of 1836. As the senators squabbled, into the chamber stalked a figure who looked more like an apparition than a real man: John C. Calhoun.
Coldly, he presented his credentials to the senator who was sitting as president pro tempore of the Senate. (Martin Van Buren would not be sworn in as vice president and new Senate presiding officer until March 4, 1833.) Calhoun announced he had resigned as vice president and had been elected senator by the South Carolina legislature, replacing Senator Robert Young Hayne. In a brief, grim speech, he said he was here to defend his state’s right to nullify the tariff—peacefully.
At 3600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Caroline Stapleton was talking to John Sladen. “Calhoun’s courage awes me,” he said. “He knows that if hostilities break out in South Carolina, the president is very likely to arrest him for treason. But this cause has become his life. Never before have I seen someone who lives his thoughts, who’ll stake his very existence on his convictions. We must get George to support him.”
“I’ve already taken care of that.” Caroline told John how she had sent George to the president with his offer to play peacemaker.
John was ecstatic. “You anticipate my thoughts now. How wonderful.”
How wonderful, and how sad, Caroline thought as she gazed at her secret lover. Never could their love be consummated in the way that other lovers, from Hero and Leander to Héloïse and Abelard to Tristan and Isolde, had made immortal. Perhaps they were living a new myth here. Were the acolytes of the Temple of Fame bound by a peculiar code of honor to the man to whose elevation they had dedicated their lives? Like the vestal virgins of ancient Rome, was their influence dependent on a bizarre chastity, which transcended the wayward wanderings of their hearts?
The Wages of Fame Page 27
