The Wages of Fame

by Thomas Fleming

  “Whoaaaaa,” Charlie said. “My mother the stateswoman. Or have you taken a job as steward to make ends meet while Father’s shooting Mexicans?”

  “Ben—”

  A blond, slim, extraordinarily handsome young man came to the parlor door and gave Caroline one of the coolest most appraising stares she had encountered in a long time. “How do you do, Mrs. Stapleton.”

  “Ben is from Utica. He’s at Columbia on a scholarship. He’s finishing first in the class in everything this year.”

  “How nice.” Caroline grew almost uncomfortable under Ben Dall’s continuing stare. “I see you’ve brought some New York papers for me to read.”

  “I knew you’d like to see O’Sullivan’s latest effusion,” Jonathan said. “I don’t think he did Father any favor, printing that letter slamming General Taylor. Where did he get it?”

  “I gave it to him.”

  Jonathan could scarcely conceal his dismay. “I hope you don’t agree with this stuff—about taking and keeping all of Mexico.”

  “It’s the first I’ve heard of it. I must confess I find it intriguing. It’s exactly what the Mexicans deserve. I’m sure Father has told you how they’ve broken promises to negotiate and used flags of truce and armistices in the most dishonorable way.”

  “I think it’s a great idea!” Charlie said. “Think of all these senoritas, Big Brother. Ready to hurl themselves into the arms of their country’s conquerors. Women adore conquerors. Don’t you agree, Ben?”

  “I have too much respect for women to regard them in such a callous way,” Ben Dall said.

  Charlie staggered back as if he had just been punched in the jaw. “I should have known Big Brother would bring home a roommate like you. Ten bucks say you’re also high on the rights of the Negro.”

  “I’m an abolitionist, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Sure, I can spot one of you crathers at a hundred paces,” Charlie said in a perfect imitation of an Irish brogue. He struck a boxer’s pose and said, “Shall I throw the fellow into the street, Madam? Surely y’can’t allow such a monstroosity in the house of an honest Dimmycrat!”

  “Shut up!” Jonathan said, advancing on Charlie with his big fists clenched. “Ben is my guest. I won’t have him ridiculed. Surely you can tolerate an intellectual disagreement on the Negro, Mother. I haven’t succumbed to Ben’s arguments. I’ve defended the Stapletons’ political principles vigorously, I assure you.”

  “He’s almost convinced me once or twice,” Ben Dall said in a feeble attempt at jocularity.

  “I assure you, Mr. Dall, I’m not likely to let the arguments of a college sophomore change my mind,” Caroline said. “Especially when I have an opportunity to see the Democratic Party’s principles being applied to the government of the country every day in the White House. I predict James Knox Polk will be considered a great president someday, when history was given us time to appreciate his fame.”

  “I hope you’re right, madam. For our country’s sake.” An unmistakable sneer was in Dall’s voice.

  “While we’re on the topic or close to it, Mother, why can’t I go to Mexico?” Charlie said. “You could change Father’s mind in five minutes. The president could get me a commission …”

  He followed Caroline upstairs, refusing to pay the slightest attention to her vehement refusals. In the upper hall, five-year-old Paul entered the fray. “Mother, Charlie says I could become a powder monkey in the navy. A lot of boys do it. They have great adventures, bombarding forts, capturing enemy ships.”

  “You must learn never to take seriously anything Charlie says.”

  In her bedroom, Charlie hurled himself onto Caroline’s bed. “Come on, Mother. I’m almost seventeen. Lots of volunteers in Mexico are younger. I have a great military future. Why are you holding me back?”

  “Because I don’t want to see you killed by some Mexican peon. Have you noticed how many second lieutenants are on the casualty lists? You have a brilliant future ahead of you as a politician.”

  Caroline had already chosen careers for her sons. Plodding Jonathan was to take over the Camden & Amboy Railroad and the other family businesses. Flamboyant Charlie, with his good looks and effervescent personality, would be the next politician. Paul was still too young and unformed to decide anything about him.

  “A politician doesn’t need a college degree, do you think?”

  “Not necessarily,” Caroline said.

  “That’s good. Because I don’t think I’m going to get one. They’ve thrown me out of dear old North Carolina U.”

  “Charlie … What did you do?”

  “I was flunking all my courses, Mother. But I didn’t want to get expelled for stupidity. So I loaded a pound of buckshot into an old cannon on the campus in front of the president’s house and aimed it in his general direction around midnight. It blew out every window in sight.”

  “Your father will be very unhappy with this news.”

  “Don’t tell him about it until he comes home. Senator Sladen says he can get me a job at the Cotton Exchange in New Orleans. I’ll be as rich as he is before I’m twenty-five. Meanwhile I’ll be enjoying myself. He says he’ll introduce me to those beautiful octoroons—”

  “Senator Sladen has no business taking charge of your life! I intend to give him a thorough tongue-lashing for encouraging this—this—”

  “Mother, face it, I’m not like the rest of the family. I don’t want to read every book in the libraries like Jonathan. I don’t fret about the future of the country, like Father and you. I’m just Good Time Charlie.”

  “You have gifts which I’m determined you’ll use. You’ll enroll in Princeton in the fall.”

  Charlie groaned in despair and trudged off like a man on his way to his execution. Caroline was changing for dinner when Mercy Flowers knocked on her door. “Missus, you got to help me with Tabitha. That girl is close to losin’ her immortal soul. She won’t do nothin’ I say. If her poor father comes home from Mexico and finds her ruined, he’ll blame me.”

  Tabitha was seventeen but looked twenty. She was fully developed and as beautiful as her mother had been, with the same creamy tan skin and wide liquid eyes. Mercy was training her to replace aging Harriet as their cook. But Tabitha claimed to hate the idea. She was staying out until midnight at dances and parties with “wild friends.” Her latest report card from school was a disaster.

  Caroline sent for her. The girl stood defiantly in the doorway as Caroline told her sternly that she would not tolerate her behavior.

  “What are you going to do about it? Sell me south? I’m not your slave.”

  “You see what I mean, missus?” Mercy said. “She done take it into her head that she’s as good as white folks.”

  “I am. So are you,” Tabitha said. “If you stopped bowing and scraping long enough to think about it.”

  “Young lady,” Caroline said, “while your father is risking his life for our country in Mexico, I consider myself your guardian. You’ll do what your mother and I say or I’ll whip you personally.”

  “You lay a hand on me and I’ll go to the police. I don’t have to live here and learn how to cook to your taste. I met a man who said I could make a hundred dollars a week entertaining congressmen.”

  “You hear that, missus?” Mercy cried. “Now you know why I fears for her ’mortal soul!”

  “This old fool and her God—where was God when my mother got kidnapped and killed?”

  For a moment, Caroline was back in Ohio, telling her mother she would never believe in a God who let her father die such a horrible death. What could she say to Tabitha? Caroline groped through old pain and a sudden shuddering sense that the world was an evil place, impossibly beyond anyone’s control.

  “I can only say this to you, Tabitha. What would your father think if he came home and found you’d become that kind of woman?”

  “I don’t know,” Tabitha said sullenly. “He’s so wrapped up in his prayers and his Bible I don’t think he gives t
wo damns about me.”

  “He loves you. I’ve heard him say it a hundred times. Haven’t you, Mercy?”

  “He sure do. Why, if he come home and found her a Jezebel, a harlot—it’d kill him as sure as any bullet.”

  Tabitha’s defiance dissolved into tears. “I just miss him so. If he could write to me …”

  “I’ll ask General Stapleton to write a letter for him. Hannibal will tell him what he wants to say.”

  “Oh, thank you, missus,” Tabitha said.

  Caroline sank on the bed. Was she some sort of madwoman? How could she believe that she could change the course of American history when she could barely control the chaos in her own family—in her own soul?

  Slowly, that steeled will, that relish for power, reasserted itself. It was still possible, as long as she and Sarah controlled that stooped, harassed man in the White House, the president of the United States, James Knox Polk.

  FOUR

  ON APRIL 17, 1847, BRIGADIER General George Stapleton sat in his tent not far from a steep ridge called Cerro Gordo. It loomed in the starlit night like a massive wall of absolute darkness. Beyond it stretched a well-paved road through the mountains into the heart of Mexico. The Mexicans had ten thousand men and fifty cannon on Cerro Gordo. They hoped to smash the American army here and send them fleeing back to the humid seacoast, where yellow fever would destroy them.

  Around George camped the brigade of Ohio and Kentucky volunteers that he commanded. Men were shouting and laughing, someone was playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me” on a harmonica, dogs were barking. Except for the colonels and majors and captains, they were all in their teens and twenties, mostly big husky young men, bursting with life and confidence. In twelve hours, half of them might be dead. The American army was going to attack Cerro Gordo and its outlying fortifications at dawn.

  By the light of a guttering candle, the general was rereading a letter from his wife.

  Dear Husband,

  I trust this finds you healthy and far happier with General Scott’s army. On that force now rests a great deal. All our political hopes, for one thing. If you don’t swiftly defeat the Mexicans and extract a peace treaty from them, I shudder to think what may happen in the upcoming congressional elections. The Whigs are becoming ever more vocal critics of the war, in and out of Congress. The Taylor balloon continues to rise and swell. But a swift end to the war by another general (or generals) will send him plummeting to earth. Though I know it troubles your conscience, as you’ve explained, I hope you’ll deign to talk to reporters at least as much as your ex-friend Gideon Pillow, so as to convince voters that not all the President’s military appointments are windy idiots.

  Enclosed you will find some interesting clippings. They reflect a growing public opinion that if the Mexicans refuse to sign a peace, we should consider taking full possession of their disorganized country for the next fifty years or so, educate them in the fundamentals of democracy, and meanwhile extract from them the full cost of this hideous war, which they have so treacherously prolonged. The result would (or could) be salubrious for both countries in the long run. We would have a docile neighbor to our south, a foreign market for American manufactures—and an occupation for thousands of restless young Americans like our son Charlie. The British have fended off revolutionary upheavals by sending their younger sons and turbulent spirits to India and similar places. But I won’t undertake to tell you what to think about it—knowing you will form your own opinion.

  Perhaps more important for the moment is the President’s decision to send a diplomat to open formal peace negotiations. He is Nicholas Trist, whom I am sure you’ve met at the State Department or at our house, where he has been an occasional guest at our weekly receptions. How reliable he is, I can’t say. The Secretary of State trusts him, but I don’t consider that a recommendation, since none of us trust Mr. Buchanan to do anything but promote his own ambitions for president. I would keep an eye on Mr. Trist if possible and report directly to the President if you think he’s acting out of channels.

  The boys are fine. They send their love. As do I.

  Caroline

  George Stapleton read this letter with gloomy approval. His attitude toward the war had changed since that slaughterous assault on Monterrey. He had acquired a cold anger at the Mexicans, which was shared by almost everyone in the army. They detested the way Mexican guerrillas preyed on lone dispatch riders or small groups of foragers. They bitterly resented the way the Mexican cavalry murdered wounded Americans without mercy. Above all, they despised the Mexican leader, the one-legged two-faced liar who was opposing them once more at Cerro Gordo, General Antonio Santa Anna. His bombastic proclamations, his readiness to use flags of truce to extricate himself from losing battles, his offers to negotiate peace, followed by pompous repudiations, disgusted the Americans. If any of them had had doubts about the morality or justice of the war, Santa Anna had erased them.

  Then there were the dead. With each battle, their voices acquired resonance. In the silences of the night they insisted that they had not died in vain—that this ugly struggle must be resolved in a way that gave meaning to their foundered lives. Their voices pervaded the army. Even doubters like Sam Grant were determined to end it with victory now.

  “General Stapleton. Are your men ready?”

  Captain Robert E. Lee, one of the engineers on General Winfield Scott’s staff, stood in the entrance to the tent. Extraordinarily handsome, with a soft black mustache and high, noble forehead, Lee was the son of Light Horse Harry Lee, one of the cavalry heroes of the American Revolution. George had read the captain’s father’s memoirs, and his admiration had created a bond between them.

  “I think so. I’ve told them what we have to do. I told them what the Mexican cavalry did to our wounded at Buena Vista. They want to even the score.”

  Lee nodded. “A little fire in the belly never hurts. I’m happy to report I’m to be your guide.”

  “I’m happy to learn that. When do we move out?”

  “In about an hour.”

  Four hours later, George and his men found themselves at the base of a smaller hill, La Atalaya, just north of Cerro Gordo. His men waited in the chaparral, under orders to maintain total silence. Brigadier General David Twiggs, pulling on his chest-length white beard, was telling them in his profane way that he needed their help. His men had driven the Mexicans off La Atalaya yesterday. But some of them had kept on going up the slopes of Cerro Gordo and had been badly mauled. They were supposed to drag three huge twenty-four-pound cannon to the top of a La Atalaya for the dawn attack. With their losses, and the exhaustion that followed heavy fighting, they could not do it.

  For the next three hours, George and his men undertook this herculean task, under the guidance of Lee and other West Point engineers. It took all the strength of five hundred men, straining on ropes as thick as a wrist, to move the gleaming black monsters one hundred feet up the hill. They had to be replaced by another five hundred men for another hundred feet. George threw aside his general’s coat and hauled with the men. By 4 A.M. the big guns were in place.

  George had concluded that in the American army, generals needed to do things like hauling on ropes and eating army rations to assure the enlisted men that rank had not changed them into aristocrats. Reporters had taken to calling George “the democratic general” for the way he included these touches in his style of command.

  At 7 A.M., as the rising sun streaked the slopes of Cerro Gordo with crimson, the three big guns on La Atalaya opened fire on the startled Mexicans. By this time, Lee had led George and his men deep into the Mexican rear. They were waiting in the chaparral on the edge of the road into the interior of Mexico. It was guarded by a five-gun battery and several regiments of infantry, proof that the Mexicans realized the road’s importance. If the Americans cut it, they would have Santa Anna’s army trapped.

  “There’s our objective,” Captain Lee said, pointing to the battery. It had a ditch around it and the w
alls were eight or nine feet high. “Let’s wait a few minutes to see how the other attacks go. If they distract the enemy on Cerro Gordo, we should have an easier time of it.”

  George could see exactly what he meant. Cerro Gordo had gun emplacements on the rear slope that could wreak havoc on his men when they came out in the open.

  The artillery thundered and Mexican guns boomed in reply. Then came the rattle of small arms and a swelling cheer from the other side of the hill. Over the top came blue-clad figures. Panicky Mexicans sprang out of their ditches and batteries and began fleeing down the rear slope.

  “Now!” Lee said, drawing his sword.

  George unsheathed his sword and pulled his Colt revolver from the holster on his hip. “Remember the wounded at Buena Vista!” he shouted.

  Out of the chaparral stormed the volunteers, howling like Iroquois. The amazed gunners in the five-gun battery got off a single badly aimed round before General Stapleton, Captain Lee, and the lead companies were in the ditch, firing into the faces of anyone who peered over it, hoisting each other on shoulders to get over the parapet. The first two or three men were shot and toppled back into their comrades’ arms. But the number of climbers multiplied along with their bloodcurdling howls, and in five minutes the Mexican gunners and their supporting infantry were fleeing toward Cerro Gordo screaming, “The yanquis. are in the rear!”

  Panic rampaged through the Mexican lines. Off to the right, a handsome vermilion carriage pulled by a dozen white mules lumbered onto the road. “That’s Santa Anna’s coach!” George shouted. “Don’t let him get away.”

  A hail of bullets riddled the coach, killing the two drivers and most of the mules. But no one was inside it. The drivers were simply trying to rescue the vehicle from the yanquis. George led his men past the wreckage toward Cerro Gordo. Hundreds of Mexicans threw down their guns and surrendered, pleading for merey. ,

  “Should we give them the same treatment they gave our wounded at Buena Vista, General?” one of the men asked. He had his bayonet poised to impale a cowering Mexican.