Another issue in the election was the disputed territory of Oregon, which both Great Britain and the United States claimed. On this question, candidate Polk announced he was in favor of demanding the entire acreage, from the northern border of California all the way up to the fifty-fourth parallel of latitude, the southern boundary of the Russian possession of Alaska. “Fifty-four forty or fight!” was his motto.
Sarah Polk assured Caroline this was nothing but a campaign slogan. They were using it to portray Polk as a true heir of Andrew Jackson’s—who incidentally favored seizing the whole territory from perfidious Albion. Once elected, however, Sarah said they would do the sensible thing and accept the forty-ninth parallel, which had already been established as the American-Canadian border as far west as the Rocky Mountains. It does no harm to talk big and compromise, Sarah wrote. Especially if we are facing a war at the other end of the country.
Another surprise move was Polk’s announcement that he would only serve a single term. “How brilliant,” Caroline said to George. “All the disappointed candidates will rally around him now. They can tolerate the thought of waiting four years. Eight would be unbearable.”
“But does he mean it?” George said. “Remember Old Hickory swore he was only going to serve one term.”
“I think they mean it,” Caroline said, remembering the reluctance she had sensed when she and George first told James Polk he would be Jackson’s candidate.
“They?” George said. “Do you think people talk about us that way?”
“I doubt it. No one can imagine a mere woman telling a behemoth like you what to do.”
In mid-August, back in the White House with Julia, President Tyler announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and his endorsement of James K. Polk as the candidate who would bring Texas into the Union. Alexander Gardiner, Julia’s lively brother, immediately began planting stories in the New York newspapers calling for a Texas annexed by John Tyler. He persuaded Tammany Hall to produce a resolution calling for action as soon as “the voice of the people” was heard.
To accelerate his campaign, Gardiner asked George to help a genial Irishman who was looking for money to found a pro-Texas newspaper in New York. John L. O’Sullivan was already editing The Democratic Review, which published poems and stories by literary lights such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and John Greenleaf Whittier and resounding essays uniting the future glory of America to the creed of the Democratic Party.
George agreed to lend O‘Sullivan ten thousand dollars to start the New York Morning News, with the understanding that his spirited editorials and his news stories could be reprinted in the numerous papers controlled by the Stapletons in New Jersey. Senator Stapleton stumped the Garden State telling voters that it was America’s “manifest destiny”—an O’Sullivan phrase—to become a continental power. In fact, O’Sullivan was inclined to think there was no limit to America’s growth. He told Caroline he saw the southern boundary of the nation as the Isthmus of Panama and the northern one in “the regions of eternal frosts.”
In New Jersey, Senator Jeremy Biddle stumped the state for Henry Clay, insisting the annexation of Texas would be viewed by the rest of the world as a blot on America’s honor. Caroline turned O’Sullivan loose on him and supplied much of the information for his stories. The result was a portrait etched in Celtic acid.
What a contrast the two senators from New Jersey present. They are a virtual paradigm of the two political parties. Senator George Stapleton is a giant of a man, with a heart and mind that more than match his physique. Born rich, he has devoted himself to the service of the common man. That is why he is on the hustings fighting for Texas. He wants every American to have his chance to acquire some wealth. Senator Jeremy Biddle, on the other hand, is a runt. He looks like he was squashed at birth by a steam engine. In his nasal whine, he warns people annexing Texas will make the Mexicans and the English mad. Here is a coward who wants to see no one get rich but his family and their aristocratic friends. To compound the irony, not a penny of the millions in his pocket was earned by his own toil. The son of a bankrupt lawyer from Philadelphia, he married the daughter of one of the richest men in New Jersey. Ever since, Biddle has striven, like a typical Whig, to consolidate every dollar in the state into his bank accounts.
Caroline saw to it that this and similar abuse of Senator Biddle were faithfully reprinted in every New Jersey newspaper the Stapletons controlled. She was delighted to learn that Sally Stapleton Biddle was livid and had ordered Jeremy to quit politics as soon as possible. Like her aunt Angelica, she now regarded it as no profession for a gentleman.
Angelica Stapleton was still alive, immured in her town house on Beekman Street. George crossed the Hudson to pay her dutiful visits whenever he came to New Jersey, usually taking with him one or two of his sons. Senator Stapleton’s growing national fame did not change her mind about his career. She still thought he had made a colossal mistake to go anywhere near the unsavory business of vote-getting.
In mid-September, George pleaded with Caroline to pay Angelica a visit. The pace of the campaign was mounting steadily. The Whigs were pouring in money as usual, and several states, notably Pennsylvania, suddenly looked precarious. Senator Stapleton, the champion of Texas, was being invited to speak there and in New York. His ability to quote General Jackson directly made a huge impact on audiences.
Caroline took three-year-old Paul and journeyed to Beekman Street. Angelica greeted her with frosty politeness. She was growing gaunt but was as regal as ever. Her sister, Henrietta, had eaten herself to death two years ago. Now Angelica played whist against herself and saw no one but a half dozen old friends whose arthritis or gout made it difficult for them to leave their town houses more than once or twice a month.
“Someone told me—I think it was Sally—that you’ve paid another visit to that border ruffian, General Jackson,” Angelica said.
“Yes.”
“Is he likely to die soon? That is virtually the only hope I have for this country.”
“He’s very unwell. But he vows to stay alive until Texas joins the Union.”
“No doubt George played a part in recruiting this other ruffian from Tennessee, Polk, to run for the presidency?”
“General Jackson had far more to do with it.”
Angelica’s stare made it plain that she considered this another of Caroline’s lies. She turned to three-year-old Paul. “What will you be when you grow up?”
“I don’t know,” the little boy said.
“Not a politician, I hope,” Angelica said. “I think you should set your sights on a soldier’s career. It’s an honorable profession, though a dangerous one. Your grandfather—your father’s father—was a soldier, you know.”
“I know. Papa told me.”
“Don’t listen to your mother. She’ll make you another politician.”
“Yes, Grandmother.”
For a moment Caroline wondered if the old woman in her brooding loneliness had acquired the power to control the family’s destiny. Why did she have these flashes of fear about a spiritual world in which she did not believe? It reminded her of her bouts of anxiety about Hannah Stapleton’s hovering specter. For a moment Caroline wished she could talk to Angelica as a member of the family. Perhaps she might convince her that she was adding to the luster of the Stapleton name. Or at least convince her that her motives were unselfish. You sacrificed your love on the altar of fame. So have I. But she and Angelica were enemies forever. Such fantasies were pointless.
Finally, the campaign oratory died away and the votes began piling up. First came a dismaying surprise: New Jersey had gone for Henry Clay. Again, it was the South Jersey Quaker voters; they disliked anyone associated with that man of war, Andrew Jackson—and they were equally opposed to annexing Texas because it might start a war. A second shock: Polk had failed to carry Tennessee. But he swept the entire South, except for North Carolina, a state that tended to vote the opposite way to South Carolina on everything. Pennsy
lvania stayed in the Democratic column, and the entire election soon hinged on New York.
As usual, the Democrats piled up a solid majority in New York City. But the Whigs had an upstate political machine that was as formidable as Martin Van Buren’s operation. For three days everyone held their breath as votes from Finger Lakes hamlets and Adirondack villages trickled into Albany. John L. O’Sullivan had a team of express riders mounted and ready to carry the news to New York. At noon on the fourth day, one of these messengers pounded up to Bowood’s door with a copy of the New York Morning News. “New York Is Polk’s by 5,000 Votes!” the headline cried.
A few days later, a letter arrived from Sarah Polk.
Dearest Friend,
I trust you have forgiven me for not answering your extraordinary letter of last May in all its particulars. I thought it best to put my energies into winning the election first. With God’s mysterious providence, that has been accomplished. Now the awesome responsibility confronts us. Can we dare to go as far as you suggest? I don’t know, James’s nature is a barrier. His two defeats by Jimmy Jones were crushing disappointments that make him wary of hoping for the best, of assuming things will go right. When the news that he had won the election was sent to him by a special courier two nights ago, he told no one—not even me. He walked around for an entire day with the news in his pocket, as if he dreaded confronting it as a public fact. Yet the vision you propose is a noble one. I am ready to embrace your analysis of how slavery can ultimately be scoured from our republic by a diffusion of the blacks. But I wonder if the passions already aroused on both sides by that hateful old man, John Quincy Adams, and his counterpart in the South, John C. Calhoun, who is not as hateful but also refuses to yield an inch in the quarrel, have not already become too extreme. That leaves us with your final “dark” alternative, which fills me with sadness. I would not want James Polk—or George Stapleton—to. be remembered as men who presided over the breakup of the Union. I am still enough of a Jacksonian to regard that event with dismay. But if we come to that alternative, there will be a host of angry voices in the drama who will bear far more blame. For the time being I want you to know we are allies in heart and mind—as we have been since the day we met.
As ever,
Sarah
Almost immediately, Caroline was stricken by the most excruciating migraine headache she had ever experienced. She lay in her darkened bedroom, asking herself what the pain was trying to tell her, scribbling entries in her diary between bouts of agony. Eventually, she began to see what was tormenting her. Sarah Childress Polk had bared her soul but Caroline Kemble Stapleton’s soul still hid in that icy cave above the sunless sea. She could never confess her secret allegiance to John Sladen, her secret hope—which she knew was his hope—that the Union would collapse and the South, where he was rising to power, would pursue its own destiny. In her lost father’s name, Aaron Burr’s dark dream still had irresistible power in her soul.
George begged Caroline to let him call a doctor. But she shook her head and took nothing for her pain but a little laudanum. On the third night she drifted into a shallow sleep. Suddenly she was on the underground river, drifting past caves of ice on frowning cliffs. In the mouth of each cave there was a woman’s face. She did not recognize any of them at first. Then she realized one of them as Catalyntie Van Vorst Stapleton. Beside her was a black woman, who reached out to Caroline with pleading hands. Beside her was Caroline’s grandmother, Kate Stapleton Rawdon. “Why don’t you understand?” she called as Caroline drifted past. Near her was the face of a woman she had seen in a portrait at Kemble Manor—another Caroline Kemble, Kate’s aunt. Finally there was a face Caroline recognized—and feared. Hannah Cosway Stapleton. What was this saint doing in the icy caves of the underground heart? Was she telling Caroline that every woman had a secret love she was forced to surrender? Or a secret wish that she had been forced to abandon? Was this part of woman’s fate?
Caroline woke up. Downstairs, the grandfather clock bonged three times. She thought of Hugh Stapleton and wished she had not betrayed him. But it was necessary. Why couldn’t people accept the way necessity drove the heart and the head? She got up, threw a wool robe around her shoulders, and descended to the library. She lit a lamp and gazed at Hannah Cosway Stapleton’s portrait. Again she noticed the hint of pain in the eyes. But the mouth was so gentle, so serene. Was that the real woman or simply the way the painter, a man, saw her?
The night wind sighed through Bowood’s maple trees. Suddenly Caroline heard a voice. Oh, my dear girl, I fear for thy salvation. It was a whisper almost as subtle as the wind. But she heard it. Who could have said it? It had to be inside her aching head. Oh, my dear girl, I fear for thy salvation. There it was again.
Caroline remembered its source, the Congressman telling the story of Hannah’s Quaker mother saying it to her, when she saw her accumulation of fashionable gowns in her New York town house. The Congressman had told it as a joke. But this whisper was no joke.
Caroline fled back to her bedroom. What did that word salvation mean? The soul was saved—from what? From damnation? If she did not believe in hell or heaven, was that word irrelevant? Or was there damnation in this world, a fate harsher than her worst fears could foresee? And salvation—could that be a happiness that seemed impossible now?
Caroline knew exactly what that happiness was. The courage to tell Sarah Childress Polk the whole truth. The courage to repudiate the snide question John Sladen had asked: Is she manageable? Perhaps the moment would come somewhere in the next four tumultuous years. Sarah had crossed the threshold. She was about to enter the temple of American fame. Caroline would be there too, closer than any other person; yes, closer than James Knox Polk.
Perhaps the whole truth would become a necessity at some point in their journey. Perhaps it would be told with bitterness, anger, despair. Or received with those desolating emotions. Perhaps the truth was Caroline Kemble Stapleton’s damnation. What a terrible thought.
TWELVE
UNQUESTIONABLY, IT WAS THE MOST brilliant party in the forty-five-year history of the White House. Never had the aging mansion contained so many dresses in the latest Paris fashion, or so many diamond and pearl necklaces, pins, bracelets, and earrings. At the center of the whirling throng on the. dance floor was Julia Gardiner Tyler in gleaming white satin with a matching cape and headdress embroidered with silver. She gazed adoringly at her dancing partner, stumpy Senator Felix Grundy, of Tennessee, and talked to him about only one topic: Texas.
On the sideline in a gown that was calculatedly less splendid than the first lady’s, Caroline Kemble Stapleton gazed with complacent approval on the glittering scene. Beside her, President John Tyler beamed and said, “Now no one can say I’m a man without a party.”
Caroline was the invisible manager of this event. It was one of a dozen affairs Julia Gardiner Tyler had staged after consulting with her to assemble the guest lists—always with an eye to sustain the bill to annex Texas, which was working its way through both houses of Congress.
Not since Andrew Jackson’s departure had the mansion itself looked so good. Louis Quinze chairs that had not been touched since the Monroe administration had been restored to their original pristine condition. The East Room’s walls gleamed with fresh paint. New draperies saluted the eye everywhere. The cash for all this splendor had come, not from Congress, which still collectively loathed John Tyler and his vetoes, but from the Gardiner fortune.
After four years of Martin Van Buren’s bachelor’s hall and eight previous years in which Andrew Jackson made do with a series of substitute hostesses, and the empty year of mourning following the death of the first Mrs. Tyler, Washington was aching for a first lady who could reign. Caroline had given Julia a motto: “The grand or nothing.” Since they had only three months on which to operate on this lame-duck Congress before James Polk’s inauguration, it was absolutely necessary to dazzle them.
The grand style suited Julia perfectly. She had the looks a
nd the inclination to reign, dazzle, daze, amaze, astound, awe, and overwhelm. John L. O‘Sullivan and Frank W. Thomas of the New York Herald were enlisted to supply adjectives. Thomas, hoping for a job for his drunken friend Edgar Allan Poe, all but electrified his own pen. At Julia’s New Year’s Day reception, the reporter declared her “as beautiful, winning, and rosy as a summer morning on the mountains of Mexico, as admirable as Queen Victoria but far more beautiful and younger and more intelligent—and quite as popular with the people.” O’Sullivan repeatedly claimed Julia proved Americans had blended beauty, good taste, and democracy—and it was their manifest destiny to export this heady mixture to the whole world.
Julia surrounded herself with a “court” of female cousins and friends, all of whom wore white and appeared with her when she went to the Navy Yard to christen ships or to the galleries of the House or Senate to cheer on the debate on Texas. All these young ladies were carefully coached to urge their swarms of admirers in and out of Congress to push the all-important topic. At White House dinners, Julia persuaded ex-suitors to swallow their opinions and offer toasts to “Tyler and Texas.”
Caroline was pursuing the same policy at her weekly salons. There the atmosphere was somewhat more intellectual and opposition voices were heard. John Quincy Adams maintained that if Congress annexed Texas by a simple majority vote, they might as well scrap the Constitution and become a South American republic, ruled by the latest junta. John C. Calhoun answered him with marvelous rationalizations that argued annexation could precede a treaty or even preclude one. Senator Stapleton and Congressman Sladen stayed out of the argument. They were too busy counting heads in the Senate and House to care what these two great intellects thought.
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