Memories of the Ford Administration: A Novel

by John Updike

  My recollection snags on this irritating mishap; I forget what all I said; I had pretty well run out of promises. The ragged, burning tear in my knee may have impaired my eloquence. She was firmly in control now. She pooh-poohed as one would a child’s fear my fear that she would with Brent’s connivance take many other lovers. After me, after us, she assured me, they would be anti-climactic. No, fidelity to her husband would be her passion, her penance, her nunnery. How stunning, in my mind’s eye, she would be in her habit, her wimple and winged headdress! She had been a nun all along, perhaps—that was the secret of her immaculate poise. The more extravagant my pleas became, the more gently adamant she grew; at last, trying to salvage something from this wreck of a tryst, I tugged at the zipper on her snug white Calvin Klein jeans and reached up under her black sweater—“Ouf, Alf!” she cried involuntarily, “your hands are icy!”—and proposed that we make love one last time. This, too, was refused, as too sad-making, the two of us knowing it would be the last time. There were things one shouldn’t know. She was a realist, my perfect mistress, and I, I was that dying man I have described, unable to believe a blank white abyss drops off from the foot of his bed, that the film is within a few feet of running out and clattering in the empty projector, that there will be no tomorrow. We have trouble believing in yesterday, but believe absolutely in tomorrow. I could not believe this was the end. I was with her; I felt terribly alive, with that life she alone created in me; still in her presence, for these few more seconds, I was happy.

  [Returns to U.S. April 24, 1856, one day after sixty-fifth birthday—avoids public dinner in New York and in general avoids statements likely to offend one or another faction of agitated Democracy—says in Baltimore, Disunion is a word which ought not to be breathed amongst us even in a whisper.… There is nothing stable but Heaven and the Constitution—on May 22, 1856, Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina invades Senate and beats Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, leading Abolitionist, insensible with gutta-percha cane—two days later, John Brown and sons slaughter five Southerners at Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas—in Cincinnati in June Democratic-party convention picks Buchanan on seventeenth ballot, over Pierce and Douglas, the South’s favored candidate—platform asks for end to agitation of slavery question and recognition of the right of the people of all the Territories … to form a constitution with or without domestic slavery—in Pittsburgh the Republican party nominates its first Presidential candidate, the explorer John C. Frémont, and puts forth a platform prohibiting from the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery and promising to bring all those responsible for the atrocious outrages in Kansas, including President Pierce, to a sure and condign punishment—Republican leaders in subsequent campaign speeches hope to bring the parties of the country into an aggressive war upon slavery (New York Governor William H. Seward) and look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection in the South; when the black man [shall] wage a war of extermination against his master (Ohio Representative Joshua R. Giddings)—Buchanan makes no speeches during campaign, but stays at Wheatland copiously writing letters decrying the possibility of disunion, proclaiming, We have so often cried “wolf,” that now, when the wolf is at the door, it is difficult to make people believe it—

  [On October 15th, Democrats win Pennsylvania by narrow margin, assuring election for Buchanan—final tally shows 1,832,955 votes for Buchanan, 1,339,932 for Frémont (fewer than eight thousand below the Mason-Dixon Line), and 871,731 for American (Know-Nothing) candidate Millard Fillmore, the thirteenth President of the United States—electoral tally a comfortable 174 to 114 to 8—Buchanan’s inaugural speech, delivered during debilitating siege of so-called National Hotel disease, while wearing a coat, tailor-made in Lancaster, lined with a magnificent design of thirty-one stars representing the states of the Union, with Pennsylvania dominating the center, in its one unexpected passage asserts that territorial issue is happily a matter of but little practical importance, and besides, it is a judicial question, which legitimately belongs to the Supreme Court of the United States, before whom it is now pending, and will, it is now understood, be speedily and finally settled—the Dred Scott decision, announced two days later, ruling that any law excluding slavery from a territory is unconstitutional, unleashes storm of protest in the North—office-seeker-harried Buchanan’s disposition of patronage alienates former faithful political friends John Forney, David Lynch, and Dr. Jonathan Foltz—financial panic of 1857 leaves the relatively untouched South cocksure and crowing that Cotton is King, whereas in the depressed North hungry workmen chant Bread or blood, and industrialists and Republicans demand higher tariffs—

  [Buchanan’s insistence on submitting the technically legal but unrepresentative pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution to Congress for approval as condition of Kansas’s admission to statehood splits Douglas off from Southern body of the party and results, after numerous strenuous and corrupt efforts of suasion, in return of Kansas to territorial status under terms of the English Bill compromise, passed April 30, 1858—Lecompton struggle generates impression that Buchanan is captive to pro-Southern “Directory” consisting of Secretary of Treasury Howell Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson from Mississippi, and Senator John Slidell of Louisiana, Senate whip and mastermind of the President’s nomination and election—Howell Cobb once allegedly replies, when asked why he seemed troubled, Oh, it’s nothing much; only Buck is opposing the Administration—at outset of the Lecompton affair Pierce’s secretary, B. B. French, writes to his brother, I had considerable hopes of Mr. Buchanan—I really thought he was a statesman—but I have now come to the settled conclusion that he is just the d—dest old fool that has ever occupied the Presidential chair—

  [April 1858 “Mormon War” ends happily as Buchanan, having dispatched troops under Colonel Albert Sidney Johnson, permits Philadelphian Thomas L. Kane to travel to Salt Lake City and reach peaceful agreement with Brigham Young, who submits to authority of federal government and the newly appointed territorial governor Alfred Cumming—in August Buchanan dispatches nineteen warships up La Plata River to win redress for Paraguayan wrongs against U.S. citizens—responds courteously to first official message over Atlantic cable, from Queen Victoria, despite patriotic furor in press over rude brevity of message, shortened in transmission by cable failure—in warming atmosphere of British-American relations, British abandon right of search of vessels on high seas—

  [Summer of 1858, Lincoln-Douglas debates in Illinois Senatorial campaign keep national attention on slavery issue and widen Douglas-Buchanan rift—1858 election returns spell defeat for administration Democrats and rise of Republicans, though Douglas wins in Illinois—Buchanan writes to Harriet, Well! we have met the enemy & we are theirs. This I have anticipated for three months & was not taken by surprise except as to the extent of our defeat. I am astonished at myself for bearing it with so much philosophy—contentious Congress stymies Buchanan’s foreign and domestic initiatives, failing by March 3, 1859, to pass routine Treasury bills—Postmaster General Aaron Brown dies four days after losing battle to win appropriation to cover postal deficit—Elizabeth C. Craig, widow and reputedly most beautiful woman in Athens, Georgia, who had come to Washington (with Cabinet wife Mary Ann Cobb) declaring her determination to snare the President, departs after living in White House for two months—Buchanan confesses to Howell Cobb he has spent restless nights dreaming of her—

  [Spring of 1859, Southern excursion excites public ovations and newspaper report of President as gay and frisky as a young buck—takes annual summer fortnight in Pennsylvania’s Bedford Springs with wealthy grass widow, a Mrs. Bass from Virginia, and her three daughters—they are placed in rooms next to JB’s archenemy Senator Simon Cameron, and abolitionists persuade Mrs. Bass’s black servant girl to run away—October 16–18th, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry is put down by forces under Colonel Robert E. Lee—[Spring of 1860, at Charleston, Democratic convention collaps
es when Southerners, angered by Douglas’s refusal to promise protection of “property” (e.g., slaves) in territories, walk out—in May, border-state moderates organize Constitutional Union party and nominate John Bell of Tennessee, and Republicans in Chicago nominate Abraham Lincoln of Illinois—in June Democrats re-meet in Baltimore and split again, Douglas nominated in main hall and seceders in separate hall nominating John C. Breckinridge, Buchanan’s Vice-President—March–June, Covode Committee, established in March of 1859 to investigate solicitation of Congressional votes in support of English Bill, hears parade of anti-administration witnesses, though Buchanan in spirited rebuttal on June 22nd says, I have passed triumphantly through this ordeal. My vindication is complete. The committee have reported no resolution looking to an impeachment against me; no resolution of censure; not even a resolution pointing out any abuses in any of the executive departments of the Government to be corrected by legislation. This is the highest commendation which could be bestowed on the heads of these departments—also on June 22nd JB vetoes the Homestead Bill on grounds that This bill, which proposes to give him [“the honest poor man,” earlier evoked] land at an almost nominal price, out of the property of the Government, will go far to demoralize the people, and repress this noble spirit of independence. It may introduce among us those pernicious social theories which have proved so disastrous in other countries—large delegation of Japanese to sign first commercial treaty between Japan and U.S. captivates Washington society and presents Buchanan with largest porcelain bowl in world—in August, at Bedford Springs, Buchanan approaches the Reverend William M. Paxton, rector of New York City’s First Presbyterian Church, and questions him as closely as a lawyer would question a witness upon all the points connected with regeneration, atonement, repentance, and faith. At end of session says, “Well, sir, I hope I am a Christian. I think I have much of the experience which you describe, and as soon as I retire, I will unite with the Presbyterian Church, explaining, I must delay for the honor of religion. If I were to unite with the church now, they would say “hypocrite” from Maine to Georgia—

  [In early October 1860, the nineteen-year-old Prince of Wales, travelling incognito as Baron Renfrew, visits the White House and at a state dinner JB permits card playing afterwards, for the first time in his administration—then the President discovers that all the White House beds have been taken by the royal party and he must sleep on a sofa—Abraham Lincoln wins November elections, polling a million fewer votes than his three opponents combined, and fifty-seven more electoral votes—in Columbia, South Carolina, Laurence Keitt orates, South Carolina will either leave the Union or else throw her arms around the pillars of the Constitution and involve all the States in common ruin—John Slidell writes Buchanan from Louisiana, I deeply regret the embarrassments which will surround you during the remainder of your term—

  [Retrospect eds.: Speaking of embarrassment, what follows is fragmentary, unsatisfactory. After my break with Genevieve, I realized that my attempt to complete my book and my attempt to marry her had been aspects of a single vain effort to change my life.]

  “Mr. Floyd, are you going to send recruits to Charleston to strengthen the forts?”

  For a long time, things had not been right with Secretary of War John Floyd, whose middle name was Buchanan. A former Governor of Virginia, son of another governor, he had, like many men who have been born into a patrician eminence, that faint sleepwalking air of those who have not fully earned their lives. Dandified in dress, he wore his hair long, so it protruded from his balding skull in two crimped wings; his eyelids had a mournful droop and his mouth a maiden-auntish pucker; his furrowed and dry-skinned face testified to recurrent illnesses and intervals of exhaustion. A mere fifty at the time that Buchanan—on the advice of Slidell and his other friends Senator Bright and Governor Wise, all three of whom had declined Cabinet posts in deference to their own ambitions—had appointed him, Floyd had remained youthful in the President’s old eyes, and forgivably susceptible to the influence of harder, hungrier men than himself.

  The Covode Committee, in its perjurious and malice-motivated workings, had uncovered disturbing bargains which Floyd had indifferently struck with some of the New York Hards [eds.: need explain Hards = Hardshell Democrats or Hard Shell Hunkers (pro-Buchanan) vs. Softs/Soft Shell/pro-Pierce faction, allied with old Barnburners?], John Mather and Augustus Schell, the collector of the Port of New York, and Schell’s brother Richard: the purchase by the War Department for $200,000 of a site for fortifications, at Willet’s Point on Long Island, which had recently been rejected by army engineers at a price of $130,000, and, with some Virginia partners, the purchase for a mere $90,000 of the eight-thousand-acre Fort Snelling reservation in Minnesota, a site that had been declared essential. Buchanan himself had intervened to prevent the purchase of a California site at far too dear a price.

  Floyd stood to profit financially by none of this, but he had the air of a man whose honor was slumping away from him, leaking away little by little, through one careless concurrence after another. The Meigs affair this summer had brought disgrace upon the administration. Captain Montgomery Meigs, a conscientious and efficient but abrasive official entrusted by Pierce’s Secretary of War Jefferson Davis with a number of construction projects in Washington, including the completion of the Capitol dome and wings, had for long been feuding with Floyd, whom he accused of using contracts as a means of awarding political and personal favors; for example, Floyd awarded the valuable contract for heating the Capitol to a Virginia doctor who knew nothing of heating and was intending to sublet his concession. Meigs, of a prominent Philadelphia family, more than once complained to Buchanan, who attempted to keep peace in this as in everything else; the Senate, however, on the instigation of the rigidly principled Jefferson Davis, passed amendments to the appropriate civil-appropriation bill requiring, in one case, that the half a million to complete an aqueduct could only be spent if Meigs supervised; this frustrated Floyd’s attempt, in January of 1860, to have Meigs transferred to a construction project in the Dry Tortugas.

  So that when Floyd, looking languidly wan and bilious, appeared in the President’s office, in response to an urgent evening note to discuss the condition of the federal forts in Charleston Harbor, and the likelihood that they would be attacked, Buchanan had little reason to expect reassurance.

  [No—stopped here—too much like other people’s history—Nevins and Nichols especially, full of pro-Northern, anti-administration innuendo. Floyd was more complex a case than a corruptible if not corrupt Tidewater aristocrat. Though a Southerner, he was against secession, and may have tried to warn Buchanan, after the election of Lincoln, against the influence of secession-minded Cobb and Thompson. Floyd was also the one Cabinet member somewhat sympathetic with Douglas, and anxious to heal the breach that brought on the ruin of the Democratic party. Philip Gerald Auchampaugh, in his James Buchanan and His Cabinet on the Eve of Secession, even thinks he wasn’t a bad administrator: Floyd was a man of real personality and ability, save perhaps in dealing with contractors. He was active, alert, always attending to his duties except when utterly unable to be about. The administration of his office force seems to have been able. The army was kept in as good state of fitness as the funds would allow. Auchampaugh defends or dismisses the action that brought about Floyd’s fall: his continuing endorsement, even after Buchanan ordered him not to, of bills presented by the Western contractor Russell, Majors, and Waddell, who had supplied the troops of the Utah War while Congress was tardy with appropriations. These “acceptances” were then presented by the contractor to banks as securities on loans. However, the amounts mounted—by the calculations of the investigating House committee, Floyd’s acceptances totalled close to seven million dollars—to the extent that banks ceased to discount them, and William H. Russell of the firm sought an illegal expedient: he connived with a minor clerk in the Land Office, Godard Bailey, a gambler and kinsman of Mrs. Floyd, to substitute these by now worthless acceptanc
es for Indian-trust funds, locked in a chest, consisting of over three million dollars in unregistered, negotiable bonds. As Russell required money, Bailey substituted more, and eventually thus disposed of $870,000 worth. January 1, 1861, approached, however; the coupons on the bonds must be presented for payment. Bailey, panicking, wrote a confessional statement to his superior, Secretary of the Interior Thompson, and sent a copy to Floyd, who was lying sick of other causes. Thompson, a Mississippian with Snopesian energy, spent three sleepless nights tracking down Russell, who was then jailed with Bailey. This financial scandal, in which monies generated and absorbed in our Western expansion were cavalierly mishandled by Southerners, broke at the very time that the Buchanan Cabinet was wrestling with the explosive immediate matter of the Charleston Harbor forts and the ultimate constitutional conundrum of the states’ right of secession—did it exist?—and the federal government’s right to resist secession.

  [Against the background of national disunion and impending fratricidal war, climaxing decades of mounting regional tension over the underlying moral question of whether or not this society should continue to include and protect black slavery in its fabric, Floyd’s and Russell’s and Bailey’s malfeasances’ coming home to roost is an irrelevancy almost comic. It was a great embarrassment to Buchanan and continues to be one to American historians, who in writing of these suspenseful last months of his administration must trouble to understand and explain what “acceptances” and Indian-trust bonds were. These economic details, though properly reminding us that our Manifest Destiny had a shaky and overextended financial underside, and that personal gain is the prime American mover, are a considerable headache to non-Marxians like myself. Yet the scandal was momentous at the time and cannot be isolated from the struggle within Buchanan’s Cabinet, for it heightened the fever and clangor and finally compelled Buchanan to request the Virginian’s resignation, though he was too cowardly or kind-hearted to do it himself, asking his fellow Pennsylvanian, Attorney General Jeremiah Black, to do it instead. Black refused, and then JB asked Breckinridge, who did approach his kinsman Floyd, who—but I get ahead of my story, thanks to the muddling Floyd, who kept a diary, by the way. I hate history! Nothing is simple, nothing is consecutive, the record is corrupt. Further, the me inside these brackets appears no wiser than the one outside them, though he (the former) is fifteen years older. I tried to begin again:]