Boots thumped on the porch. The vestibule door opened to admit their next-door neighbor to the north, Congressman Joshua Giddings of Ohio. George had made a point of also offering him a ride in his coach on rainy days. Caroline greeted him as cordially as she had greeted Quitman. He adjusted the frayed collar of his aging overcoat, glanced sullenly at Quitman, and managed a muffled good-morning.
“Come on, Giddings, cheer up,” General Quitman said. “You abolitionists should be used to getting your socks beaten off by now.”
He was referring to the abysmal 10 percent of the vote the abolitionists had polled, even with Martin Van Buren at the head of their presidential ticket. In the debates in the House, Giddings violently opposed allowing a single slave in the new territories. But few listened to him. The voters had spoken in 1848 and their collective voice had been clear. They did not care about slavery.
Giddings glowered at Quitman. The Ohioian was one of those rawboned Yankee types, with a face like a peeled onion. He had been ranting and raving against slavery since he came to Congress ten years ago. During the Mexican War he had called on the Northern states to secede rather than permit the South to conquer new territory. Such extremism endeared him only to the voters in his Ohio district, most of whom were fellow migrants from New England.
“What did you think of Senator Stapleton’s speech yesterday?” Quitman asked. “I’m planning to read portions of it to the House today.”
“I think the senator is misguided about the territories. But we’re allies on another matter, which I plan to introduce in the House today. My annual call for the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia.”
“I find it hard to believe that the senator supports such a proposal,” General Quitman rumbled.
“You can ask him yourself. Last week, another Negro committed suicide rather than accept his sale to a plantation in Mississippi.”
“Sir, I own one of the largest plantations in Mississippi. I can assure you that my Negroes are better fed and better clothed than any Northern factory worker. And a great deal happier. If a District Negro did commit suicide for the reason you state, his blood is on your hands—the poor fellow listened to the atrocious lies you abolitionists tell about Southern slavery.”
“I’ve known enslaved District Negroes who have killed their children rather than permit them to be sold south.”
“Again, my answer is, I hope you’re prepared to face your God with their blood on your conscience—if you have one.”
“Gentleman, please,” Caroline said.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Stapleton,” Quitman said. “Our conduct is particularly appalling in the light of your recent illness. Forgive us both. I doubt if our righteous neighbor can bring himself to apologize to anyone who doesn’t cravenly submit to his bizarre creed.”
“I sincerely apologize, Mrs. Stapleton,” Giddings said.
“Thank you, Congressman,” Caroline said.
Tonight, as on other nights, when she retreated to her loveless cave, Caroline would pace for sleepless hours, savoring these signs of coming vindication. Since President Taylor’s administration began a year ago, Congress had been locked in a ferocious battle over the future of the southwestern territories acquired from Mexico. The dispute quickly expanded to the vast plains west and north of Missouri. Should Southerners be permitted to take their slaves into either of these regions? When their populations reached the required number, should these expanses of desert and mountain and prairie be organized as slave states or free states? Adding to the turmoil, gold had been discovered in California, leading to a surge in population that had enabled it to apply for immediate statehood with a constitution that barred slavery.
George Stapleton and other Northern Democrats, clinging to the American tradition of majority rule, argued that each territory should vote for or against slavery when its time came. Logically, that meant Southerners were free to bring their slaves into a territory until such a vote was taken. But the growing number of abolitionists like Giddings in the Whig Party and the free-soilers like Van Buren in the Democratic Party denounced this policy as immoral. They were determined to imprison slavery within the confines of the fifteen states in which it was now legal. General Quitman and his friends had an answer to that: secession. Why should Southerners put up with being treated like pariahs in the Congress of the United States? Why should they tolerate abolitionists’ repeated attempts to start a slave rebellion? Better to become a separate country, close their borders, and silence the antislavery fanatics with a stroke of the pen.
Down the stairs came Senator Stapleton’s heavy tread. George greeted Giddings and Quitman with equal cordiality. Quitman congratulated him for his speech urging free access to the territories. Giddings said nothing. George’s eyes clouded briefly. But he chose to act like a presidential candidate and talked about the weather. He kissed Caroline on the cheek and assured her that he would be home for dinner. Her eyes telegraphed: I don’t care.
In the mail were letters from Charlie in New Orleans and Jonathan in New Jersey. Charlie boasted that he had made fifty thousand dollars on the Cotton Exchange last week. That barely replaced what he had lost the previous week. He was ignoring his father’s repeated advice to invest, not to gamble. Everyone gambled on the Cotton Exchange, as the price of the South’s principal product gyrated skyward around the world. With 100 million pounds a year shipped from New Orleans and other ports, the South had money to burn. Charlie’s politics breathed contempt for abolitionists and free-soilers.
From Jonathan came a report that Jeremy Biddle had accepted a presidential appointment to a federal judgeship in Philadelphia. He and Sally and their daughter, Laura, would soon move to the City of Brotherly Love. Jeremy had not sought reelectiop to the Senate. His contrition for his letter to George was apparently genuine. This had deepened Sally’s contempt for him until it was impossible to conceal from family and friends. Jonathan said he felt sorry for Laura, who was caught between her quarreling parents. He added with studied casualness that he knew “all too well” how she felt. By now their sons had detected the rift between Caroline and George. The younger Stapletons attributed it to politics. They knew nothing about John Sladen or Maria de Vega or Sarah Childress Polk and the Temple of Fame.
“Missus. Senator Sladen’s here to see you.”
John was looking tanned and fit. He was still drinking moderately if at all. He had seemingly accepted the arrangement that Caroline had decreed for them. He would remain devoted to the memory of their love—without any hope of its renewal. His consolation was the knowledge that she shared his political ambitions for the South—and he shared her hunger for vindication. They were partners again, in a deeper, darker union that both found satisfying.
They discussed George’s speech in the Senate and his future in the Democratic Party. “I think there’s a very good chance that George could be elected president in 1852,” John said. “If the South decided to secede during his administration, it would be vital to persuade him to let us go in peace.”
“You mean, I should become his wife again?”
“Whatever gives you the power.”
“You men are so stupid. You always pursue the obvious. I have far more power this way, as his public wife and his private enemy. When the crisis comes, I can destroy his self-confidence by saying I told you so. I can reduce him to total dependence on my judgment. Perhaps then I might offer him a reward.”
“What a beautiful monster you’ve become.”
“You’ve done more to create me than anyone else.”
In her imagination, Caroline uttered these evil words in front of Hannah Cosway Stapleton’s portrait in Bowood’s library. She dared her to murmur, Oh, my dear girl, I fear for thy salvation. But the voice remained silent. The wedding ring on Caroline’s left hand gleamed dully in the gray light. The rain continued to slosh against the windows.
They discussed the probable course of Taylor’s administration. The general was still opposed to
allowing slavery in the territories. He was threatening to veto any attempt to work out a compromise. “If he does that, the Whig Party will go up in a puff of gunsmoke,” John said. “Quitman, even Calhoun, will recommend secession. But cooler, younger heads will prevail, I hope. Taylor has said he’ll lead an army against us. That’s the last thing we want. The thing has to be done peacefully, so we retain the strength to march elsewhere.”
“Into Mexico?”
“Into Mexico, Cuba, Central America. With our stupendous supply of black labor, once we conquer the Isthmus of Panama, we’ll build a canal that will give us control of all the trade between Europe and China—and California. We’ll detach the Golden State and maybe everything else west of the Mississippi from the Yankees. We’ve already got Missouri as a base for expansion on that flank.”
“How lovely.”
Caroline felt ardor stir in her blood. This man knew how to arouse her. He might lure her from her icy refuge yet. She might join him in another Temple of Fame, elsewhere in
America. Perhaps in New Orleans. Or in Mexico City.
John sensed her emotion. “I still want you. I want you even more now than I did in 1827. Arrange a visit to New Orleans to see Charlie. Go down the Mississippi by steamboat. I’ll be on the boat, traveling incognito.”
“Can’t you see that’s exactly what George would love to hear? It would make him immune to me forever. How often do I have to tell you—only those who sacrifice their private desires change the course of history, John.”
She lived on John Sladen’s vision of future glory until George returned for dinner. It had been a day of heroic oratory in the Senate. Henry Clay had proposed a four-point compromise to hold the Union together. Admission of California as a free state. Equal access to the territories for slave and free labor. A fugitive-slave law with teeth in it. The abolition of the slave trade in Washington, D.C. “Coming from the man who’s run for president twice as the Whigs’ candidate, I don’t see how they can resist it. Calhoun and Webster are both for it.”
“What about the Democrats?”
“As usual, the Southerners don’t want to give an inch. But if they don’t go along, they’re crazy. They’ve got Texas as a slave state. The territories are wide-open. The slave trade in the District is a disgrace and it always has been.”
“Did you speak against it?”
“Not yet. But I intend to.”
“Let someone else do it.”
“Why?”
“John Sladen came to see me today. He begged me to persuade you to keep a low profile. He says more and more Southerners are turning to you as the party’s candidate in ’52.”
She sat there in the mouth of her cave, watching ambition overwhelm moral indignation in Senator Stapleton’s soul. It was amazing what distance and detachment could detect. “Maybe he’s right,” George said.
“Mistress. Senator. Could you speak to Tabitha? She’s in the kitchen.” Mercy Flowers’s face was wreathed in concern.
“What’s wrong?”
“She needs money.”
An anxious Tabitha Flowers appeared in the doorway. She was wearing decent clothes. She looked more than respectable. She began by apologizing for not visiting George since he had returned from Mexico. “I couldn’t bear to hear the story of how my daddy died. Even if he died a hero like you said.”
“I understand,” George said. “Why do you need money, Tabitha?”
Tabitha said her husband had an opportunity to move to New York and open a tailor shop. They needed five hundred dollars to lease the shop for a year and buy equipment on the premises. It was a chance to escape Washington, D.C. “You know how much I hate this city, because of what happened to my mother.”
There was something fishy about the story—or about the way Tabitha acted while she told it. She rattled it off hastily, as if she were reciting a lesson. She gave no details, such as how the offer had reached her husband. As far as Caroline knew, he was not a tailor. He owned and operated several local hacks. But Caroline knew George would be sympathetic, and she had no reason to be hostile to the young woman. She let George make up his own mind.
“Of course you can have the money, Tabitha. You can pay it back whenever you can afford it. There’ll be no hurry.”
“Oh, thank you, Senator.”
In five minutes, still babbling her gratitude, Tabitha departed into the rainy night with George’s check for five hundred dollars in her pocket. “Is she telling the truth?” Caroline asked Mercy Flowers.
“I hopes so, mistress.”
“You sound like you’re not sure.”
“I ain’t never sure of anything Tabitha says. She like a weather vane, always swingin’ one way or another. One day she say she hates all white folks and Senator Stapleton ’specially and wants to go back to Africa. Then she shows up here with this story about goin’ to New York. That ain’t no promised land from what I hear. All them Irish that come in off the boats lately hate colored people and beats ’em up and kills ’em. Washington’s a lot safer, I tole her, but she don’t listen to me no more.”
“I couldn’t say no to her,” George said. He told them for the third or fourth time how Hannibal had saved his life at Molino del Rey.
Three mornings later, General Quitman knocked on Caroline’s door. The weather had turned fine—spring sunshine filled the streets. Caroline was puzzled. On such days, General Quitman usually walked to the Capitol.
“Mrs. Stapleton, are any of my servants visiting in your house?”
Like most Southerners, General Quitman always called his slaves “servants.” He had brought five of them from Mississippi to cook and clean and otherwise run his spacious house for himself, his wife, and two daughters.
“Let me look in the kitchen,” Caroline said.
Peering into a room she seldom visited, Caroline found Mercy Flowers scrambling eggs and cooking bacon for George’s breakfast. Mercy said she had not seen any of those “Mississippi niggers,” as she called General Quitman’s servants, for days. She did not like them. She said they tended to steal things.
Caroline told General Quitman there was no sign of backstairs visitors. “Extraordinary,” the general muttered. “They’re all gone. Not a speck of breakfast cooked, not a fire lit. It’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never whipped a Negro in my life but …”
Across the street, they saw beefy, red-faced Senator Ben Harkins of Florida on his porch, peering up and down the street. “You too?” Quitman called. “They’ve all run away?”
“It sure looks like it,” said Harkins. “I ain’t whupped one of ’em in a good month. I can’t understand it.”
By noon Mercy Flowers had the whole story. No less than seventy-seven slaves—almost 5 percent of the slave population of the District of Columbia, had vanished en masse. All over town Southern families such as the Quitmans and the Harkinses had been reduced to cooking their own food and stoking their own furnaces. Some Southern congressmen demanded that the president issue a general warrant, which would give them the right to search the houses of known abolitionists such as Joshua Giddings. Taylor’s attorney general declined to issue such a document, noting it was a British legal weapon that had been discredited well before the Revolution of 1776.
Under General Quitman’s leadership, the Washington police marshaled a hundred-man posse to hunt down the runaways. But they did not have a clue in which direction they should ride. They dispersed through the swamps and groves of the District, wearing out men and horses—without finding a trace of the fugitives.
Late that afternoon, Judson Diggs, the Stapleton’s fat coachman, came to Caroline with a crafty look in his eyes. “Missus, how much money do you think it’d be worth for General Quitman and his friends to find out where them runaways have gone?”
“A great deal. Do you know?”
“I got a pretty good idea.”
Caroline sent Mercy Flowers to General Quitman’s house with a note. In an hour or so, the general, his
boots and trousers spattered with mud, appeared in their living room. She summoned Judson. The coachman sparred with Quitman until he promised to pay a thousand dollars if Judson helped them catch the fugitives. It was a good bargain on Quitman’s part. Each of the runaways was worth at least a thousand dollars at current prices.
The bargain struck, Judson rolled his eyes and announced, “You ain’t gonna catch’m with horses, General. You need a boat.”
“A boat?”
Judson nodded. “They done left Alexandria last night in a ship called the Pilgrim. Tabitha Flowers and her husband hired it for five hundred dollars. Tabitha’s been plannin’ this for a long time.”
“How do you know all this?” Quitman asked.
“Her husband and I is ole friends. I used to drive one of his hacks. He didn’t want to do it. But Tabitha, that woman got him so crazy about her, he’d try to walk across the Potomac if she told him that’s what she wanted him to do.”
Quitman rushed from the house, leaving Caroline alone with Judson and Mercy Flowers. “This nigger is the lowest, most miserable human being on God’s earth,” Mercy said. “I hopes you fires him, mistress. You know why he done this? He wanted Tabitha for his fancy woman but she wouldn’t so much as look at him.”
When George returned for dinner, Caroline told him what was happening. “I hope Tabitha gets away with it,” he said. “But if she doesn’t—”
“You loaned her the money.”
A knock on the front door brought Congressman Joshua Giddings into their parlor. “Senator Stapleton, if what I’ve heard is true, you’ve done more to drive a stake through the heart of the slave trade in the District of Columbia than I’ve accomplished with ten years of yammering.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Congressman.”
“Your coachman told my cook all about your part in the flight of the Pilgrim.”
“I wish I could claim credit for such a noble deed, Congressman, but—”
“I know you can’t admit it. But that won’t be necessary. Everyone will know and understand.”
The gleeful Giddings departed. Caroline and George sat there, too stunned to speak. “What are you going to do?” Caroline finally asked.
The Wages of Fame Page 61
