Jeremy Biddle’s face grew grave as he listened to John Tyler’s recital of the central cause of the crisis. “I doubt very much if Lincoln will agree to such an idea, Mr. President,” Jeremy said. “No more slave states has become the bedrock principle of the Republican Party. I think Lincoln wants peace—but not at the price of annihilating the party that’s put him in the White House.”
“I hope you’re wrong, Judge Biddle,” Tyler said. “We’ll find out in a week’s time. I’ve requested an interview with Mr. Lincoln as soon as he arrives in this city. It’s crucial for us to know the limits of his so-called principles.”
Tyler turned away to greet an old friend from Tennessee. The brothers three gazed at each other. George and Jeremy looked stricken. Triumph glittered in John Sladen’s saturnine eyes. He had never been a true brother to the other two men. In his bitter soul he rejected their overtures because their noblesse oblige somehow suborned his equality. Now he was about to become their superior, a leader of a new nation, a candidate for the Temple of Fame. In spirit if not in fact, Caroline would stand beside him in that shadowy enclave, his clandestine priestess. A rush of passionate happiness filled her soul. It transcended all and every physical pleasure she had ever known. Like her secret lover, she was affirming her soul’s destiny before history’s graven face.
EIGHT
“THEY’VE MET HIM,” JULIA TYLER said. Her face was ashen. From the street, her hack driver asked if he should wait for her. It was Judson Diggs, the fat African who had betrayed Tabitha and the slaves who had fled with her on the Pilgrim. “My coach will take Mrs. Tyler wherever she wishes to go,” Caroline said, barely managing to conceal her loathing for the man.
Fifteen hours had elapsed since Abraham Lincoln had slunk into Washington in disguise, like a foreign agent infiltrating an enemy country. Senator Stapleton and a few other congressional leaders were told that the president-elect had learned of a plot to assassinate him in Baltimore and had decided to travel incognito on a secret train. George promptly asked if Lincoln would receive Tyler and a delegation from. the peace convention to discuss ways to defuse the crisis, which was growing more formidable by the hour. The seceded states had created a government, the Confederate States of America, and elected George’s good friend and fellow veteran of the war with Mexico, Jefferson Davis, its president.
A week ago, Senator Stapleton and ex-president Tyler had prevented an explosion that would have undoubtedly meant war. South Carolina had sent a spokesman to Washington, Colonel Isaac W. Hayne, the state’s attorney general, to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter, the federal fort in Charleston Harbor. By this time, most of the Southerners in President Buchanan’s cabinet had resigned to join the new government taking shape in the South. Buchanan, now under the influence of his Northern attorney general, balked. Hayne claimed the manner of the president’s refusal had been personally insulting to him. South Carolina, with a hundred cannon aimed at the fort, threatened to take it by force.
The ex-president and Senator Stapleton had rushed to the White House and persuaded Buchanan to assure the South Carolinians that he had not intended to insult Colonel Hayne and was only interested in peace. Tyler had urged Buchanan either to surrender the fort or reduce its garrison to a token six men. Buchanan refused to do this, pointing out the garrison was already so small, the place was indefensible anytime South Carolina wanted to take it. Nevertheless, Tyler managed to calm the angry men in Charleston and a shaky peace was restored.
Now Julia Tyler was here to tell Caroline what Abraham Lincoln had to say about the looming crisis. Julia brushed aside the offer of tea and asked for eau-de-vie. She was deeply shaken by what she had just heard from John Tyler.
“Mr. Lincoln greeted them warmly at first and praised their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis. But his tone changed when James Sedden, one of the Virginia delegation, challenged him to admit he was an abolitionist. He seemed to regard this as an insult and told Sedden that as an intelligent man he shouldn’t make such statements.
“Then William Dodge, a businessman from New York, burst out, ‘It is for you, sir, to say whether the whole nation shall be plunged into bankruptcy, whether the grass will grow in the streets of our principal cities. Will you or won’t you yield to the just demands of the South? Tell us you won’t go to war over slavery!’
“Lincoln replied that he was determined as president to live up to his oath to enforce the Constitution of the United States in every part of every one of the United States—let the grass grow where it may.
“The president—my president,” Julia continued with a flicker of a smile, “told Mr. Lincoln the peace convention was going to propose a constitutional amendment which would allow new territories to enter the Union as slave states, if the voters approved. Would he, as president, tolerate such an idea?
“Mr. Lincoln scuffed his shoe on the carpet for a moment and said it would be time to consider that question when it arose.
“Then he added, ‘In a choice of evils, war may not always be the worst.’”
Somehow, hearing these words from Julia Tyler made them doubly terrible. She and Caroline had shared so much of the history of the last twenty years. Caroline was flung back to the dream of fame that the admission of Texas had aroused. But Julia knew nothing of the foul taste of failure that Mexico had inflicted on Caroline and Sarah Polk. Julia had escaped the dark illumination Caroline had experienced on the Mississippi and in New Orleans. She was oblivious to the black anaconda of slavery in America’s heart. She still denied the evil that had been perpetrated in the South in the name of profits. Caroline had no such illusions. That left her more exposed to the acute possibility of failure.
“The president, my John, says there’s no alternative now but secession and preparation for war. Otherwise, Virginia will have an abolitionist army in its midst, freeing and arming our Africans. His one hope now is, to take as many border states as possible with us.”
“I’ll speak to George tonight. We’ll be prepared to join you,” Caroline said.
“Do you really think you can persuade him?”
“I’ll do everything in my power. Everything.”
Julia embraced Caroline. “Oh, my friend. I think I know some of what you feel. Not all. Perhaps it’s best that I don’t know all.”
“It is,” Caroline said.
Two hours later, Senator George Stapleton came home from his labors on Capitol Hill. Caroline was waiting for him in a sea green Worth gown. An hour before her dressing table mirror had restored the illusion of youth to her face. The dining room table was set with their best silver and blue Wedgwood china. She had drawn her dark hair back to a thick knot on her neck. Greek, she told herself. Speak as if Aeschylus or Sophocles were writing the words.
She sat in the parlor sipping sherry until George changed and joined her. “I have some remarkable news,” he said.
“So have I.”
“Ladies first,” he said, pouring himself a half glass of bourbon. He was still drinking hard.
“John Tyler has seen Lincoln. The meeting convinced him that there’s no alternative to secession.” She told him what Lincoln had said about war as the lesser evil.
“I know all about it. Tyler was so upset he came up to the Capitol and told me everything. I calmed him down and went to see Lincoln myself.”
“And … ?”
“He said I was one of the two or three Democrats in Washington he wanted to meet. He’d heard about my proposal to create a federal fund to begin buying slaves and settling them back in Africa or in the Caribbean. He thought it was a brilliant idea and he was planning to propose it to the new Congress.”
Caroline struggled for equilibrium. “George—he’s toying with you!”
George gulped his bourbon. “What do you mean? We had a long talk. He’s not an abolitionist. He considers them a bunch of madmen. He sees the country trapped between extremists on both sides. Exactly the way I see it.”
“Why didn’
t he say something like that to John Tyler? All he had to do was guarantee there would be no war over slavery—all he had to do was say it. But he wouldn’t say it. Because he wants the South to crawl back into the Union like whipped dogs. They’ll never do that now.”
“What are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you not to let that two-faced liar from Illinois make a fool of you. John Tyler is going back to Virginia as soon as this farce of a peace convention ends and call for immediate secession. He’s going to invite the border states to join Virginia. If you truly love this country—and me—you’ll go back to New Jersey and tell the state legislature that you agree with him. You’ll tell them that if New Jersey speaks out on behalf of the South, it will shock New England’s fanatics back to reality. It will shock the whole country.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening to you. I don’t understand this—this frenzy.”
“It isn’t frenzy, George. It’s vision. Deeply thought—and felt—vision.”
He downed the rest of his drink and paced the parlor, staring at the pattern in the Turkish carpet, then at himself in the mirror, as if he were hoping to find some sort of revelation—or escape.
“Look at me, George,” Caroline said, rising to her feet. “Remember what I told you after the Mexican peace fiasco? Remember that I predicted we were throwing away our best hope of rescuing this country from civil war? You laughed at me then. Your wonderful Mexican saint, Maria Pena de Vega, was in charge of your soul. Look at what’s happening in Mexico now. Look at what’s happening here. Doesn’t this compel you to recognize my intelligence, my prescience?”
“I’ve always recognized your intelligence. What I worry about is your motives.”
A February wind moaned in the street. Were the furies descending on Washington? Caroline invited them into this seemingly peaceful parlor. She knew exactly what he meant by that word motives. He was implying that John Sladen still had a lodgment in her soul. It would have been easy to respond to the accusation with righteous fury. But it was better to ignore it.
“My motives? Let’s begin with our two surviving sons, both prime cannon fodder. Let’s proceed to your political career. Here’s a chance to salvage something significant from the wreckage. A chance to win a niche for yourself in American history as the man who prevented the most unnecessary, the most idiotic war in the history of the world. There may be a chance to win an even larger reputation in the future—as the first president of the Northern Confederacy of America.”
He stood there absorbing it. Finally grasping the dimensions of her vision of the future—and his place in it. He went over to the tea table and poured himself a full glass of bourbon. “You’ve never loved me, have you. Not even for one day. You couldn’t be saying this to me if you did.”
The words had a terrific impact on Caroline’s nerves. She felt the migraine heave in her skull. “I told you how much I loved you, before you came home from Mexico and destroyed it. You’re doing it again. By refusing to respect my ideas.”
She strode from the room and mounted the stairs with slow emphatic steps, waiting for him to call her back. But he said nothing. In her bedroom, she was seized by a paroxysm of weeping. She fell to her knees and prayed to her evil god. Kill me now. Kill me. I want to die. I can’t say another word. I can’t breathe another breath.
After a long silence came that familiar voice: Oh, my dear girl, I fear for thy salvation.
Was she going mad? After another hour of mindless weeping, she put on her fur-lined pelisse and fled the house. She paused in the parlor to savor the memories of a thousand salons. She saw John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster and Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams flinging admiration at her feet. Was she about to become a ghost, as stripped of life as all of those dead worshipers in fame’s temple?
On the frigid street she finally found a hack. Before she looked into the driver’s black face, she knew who it would be: Judson Diggs, Tabitha’s fat betrayer, mocking her with his whining, self-pitying voice. He took her to Senator Sladen’s boardinghouse. She mounted the stairs, hoping she would find him in bed with a whore. She was not coming to him for love. She wanted to know if he sensed it too—the mounting flood of evil, swamping the levees of their vision.
“Who is it?” His voice was blurred.
“Open the door and find out.”
He stood there blinking at her in his nightshirt. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything. I want to hear you say we’re doing the right thing. I need to hear you say it. I begin to doubt it in some terrible way at the bottom of my soul. As if there were some sort of jungle creature loose inside me.”
He sat her down and poured her a tumbler of brandy. “We are doing the right thing,” he said. “But I begin to wonder if we can win the game. Lincoln is tougher and shrewder than anyone expected.”
He had heard about Lincoln’s response to the peace convention delegates. He only nodded grimly when she told him about his wooing of George. “He’s done the same thing with Douglas. He has him saying Democrats should be ready to fight to save the Union. He’s convinced the drunken slob that he’s Andrew goddamned Jackson.”
“Can Tyler bring any border states with him?”
“He’s a spent bullet. The failure of the peace convention will finish him. He’ll be lucky to persuade Virginia.”
“Then there’s no hope?”
“If one border state came in, it could swing a lot of others. It’s time to play the George card. I didn’t think you needed any urging—”
“I’ve played it. But I loathed it. I can’t understand why. I thought I passed through that barrier on the Delilah.”
“You never pass through that barrier. It’s always there, just ahead of you on the path, waiting to torment you again. What’s yours like? Mine is a mass of brambles covered with offal.”
“Mine is a wall of fire.”
“Perhaps we’re in hell and don’t know it.”
“Then there’s no cause to fear it, is there.”
“Not as long as we have each other.”
He kissed her. She held him at arm’s length. “No. I didn’t come here for that. I came here to find strength, not more shame.”
That last word shook him. But he could not contest it. Shame was unquestionably a legacy of their voyage on SS Delilah.
Back at 3600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she saw a light under George’s door. She knocked.
“Come in.” She found him sitting by the window, drinking. “Where did you go?” he said thickly.
“I went to see John Sladen.”
“Why?”
“To find out if there was any hope of a peaceful solution. He says it’s dwindling fast. But if one Northern Democratic leader—man like you—spoke out for the South, it could change everything.”
“I left my speech on your bed.”
She read the scrawled pages swiftly, voraciously. It opened with all the right things. It denounced the abolitionists as warmongers. It listed the South’s injuries. Then it urged the citizens of New Jersey to instruct their legislators to declare the state neutral if the Republican Party launched a war on the South. But it said nothing about joining the South in secession. Instead, George Stapleton had written. I urge my fellow Democrats to join me in this stance, because I believe it is an honest alternative to civil war. I can only hope that enough Democrats in the South will take a similar stance and give men of goodwill—among whom I number President Abraham Lincoln—a chance to solve our terrible differences without bloodshed.
“It’s useless!” Caroline screamed. Clutching the speech, she stormed back into George’s bedroom. “It’s useless mushy idiocy. Either say you’re with the South or against them!”
George was on his feet. His big arm whirled out of the room’s shadows and caught Caroline on the check. The blow was like the crash of an explosion inside and outside her skull. She hurtled backward onto the bed and lay there, a high silvery whine racing through her brain. She rubbed the b
ack of her hand across her mouth and tasted blood.
“You’re evil. You destroyed Grandfather. You’ve almost destroyed me. And I know why. Because in your heart you’re still fucking John Sladen!”
“That’s not true. I made a vow the other day—no matter what happened, I would never leave you.”
“You were planning to leave—to go South with him?”
“Yes. But I realized I loved you too much to do such a thing.”
“You’re a goddamn liar.”
Caroline ruefully rubbed her bruised cheek. “I have lied to you more than once. But I’m not lying now. To do good in this world, George, often you must first do evil. When are you going to stop trying to be good? It’s the American male’s greatest flaw.”
“Get out of this room. Before I kill you.”
She stumbled into the hall, the whine in her skull deepening to a roar.
“I’m going to make that speech!” George shouted.
“If you do, you’ll make a fool of yourself forever.”
Three days later, the peace convention collapsed in total disarray. Its proposal for a constitutional amendment was rejected by Congress and ignored by every state legislature still in the dwindling Union. Ex-president John Tyler returned to Richmond with Julia and made a speech on the steps of his hotel, urging Virginia to secede immediately and prepare for war. No one paid much attention to him. Union sentiment was strong in Virginia. Voters elected a convention to discuss secession, but it could not reach a decision.
Senator George Stapleton remained silent. His lack of participation in the Senate’s debates was noted by several newspapers. A frantic Julia Tyler wrote to Caroline, asking for an explanation. She told Julia that George had decided now was not the time for him to speak. But Caroline assured her that George would speak, in the right time and the right place. She had begun to see a future for George’s neutrality speech.
The Wages of Fame Page 69
