Eagle's Cry

by David Nevin

  King George III, who had his odd moments but was nobody’s fool, was reputed to have said that if General Washington gave up power now the American would be the great man of the eighteenth century. Well, he could have justified hanging on. Many men so urged, brimming with reasons, the country staggering out of the disciplinary grip of war, a weak and quarreling Congress, states that viewed themselves as separate powers, European nations looking upon us as a hawk looks on goslings. Men tried to push duty on him, told him he owed them a ruling hand. He remembered being infuriated one day, close to knocking the man down … . now he couldn’t remember who it was … .

  But it was clear he could have been king, and he thought about it. Power is sweet; he knew that who doubts that hasn’t tasted it or is a liar. But he gave it up and went south in a great rattling coach with four horses that Simon Simcoe of Camden had loaned him, cheering crowds and cannon salutes and children with hothouse flowers all the way. The darling of the people. Tendered his commission to Congress with a graceful speech, tears standing in his eyes. Then he was free … . Mount Vernon and Martha awaited.

  Even now, he remembered his contentment. He had been true to himself. He was a man of probity, above the slashing swords of ambition and desire and hence all sides could turn to him.

  Meanwhile, he must mark those trees. He summoned Billy with the axe, wrapped a scarf around his neck in deference to a throat that now was worse than sore, and walked out, boots growing damp in three inches of snow.

  “General,” Billy said, “you look like something the cat drug in. You better stay inside.”

  “I’ll manage,” he said. He was very tired. Suddenly it seemed quite intolerable that people should call on him again—just too much!

  Billy was holding the axe close to the head. “Show me which trees. I’ll blaze ’em.”

  “I’ll do it!”

  “Suh—”

  “Damn you, Billy, shut your mouth!” He was in a fury, hands shaking. He snatched the axe. Billy stared at him, dismayed but not cowed. It struck Washington that he must be sicker than he thought … .

  “All right,” he said at last. He touched Billy on the shoulder. “Maybe I’m not so well after all.” It wasn’t quite an apology. He passed over the axe. “You do the rest.”

  The pain in his chest expanded. He began to shiver, overtaken by a chill despite his coat. They walked back to the house in silence. He was searching for something to say to Billy when the big man said, “You’ll feel better tomorrow, General. You don’t mind my saying it, you’ll find a dollop of corn would go good right now.”

  The general smiled. “I believe you’re right, Billy.”

  Inside, he asked Cullie to lace his tea with whiskey. He pulled off his boots and put slippered feet toward the fire before Martha could admonish him. His pipe had a foul taste, not a good sign. He was surprisingly tired, and he put his head back in the big blue chair, eyes shut, remembering … .

  Home from war he’d seen immediately that a tottering confederation under a toothless Congress with no chief of state must fail. He remembered his surprise that it came as a surprise. There was just no focusing authority to hold states together. So he’d put into motion the steps upon steps that led to forming a new government.

  There was a heat wave in Philadelphia that summer of 1787. Dancing on burning cobblestones and shedding coats in the stifling chamber reminded them of their common humanity, he felt, inducing humility. They met in the State House, in the same room where years before he had accepted command, and seated themselves at the same little tables covered in green baize. He took his place on a small dais between two dormant fireplaces faced with marble. He scarcely spoke; he was a commander, not an orator.

  And he watched them unfold a miracle.

  He jerked awake. Martha was standing over him, her hand on his forehead. She gave him a cup of thick pea soup that slid down his aching throat and said he must go to bed. In the bedroom she helped him disrobe. He made her face the wall when he pulled on his nightshirt—modesty holds to the end—and then sank into the feathers, exhausted. He let her spoon the potion of emetic, James powder and Peruvian bark, into his mouth.

  “George,” she said, “I forbid you to be ill.” She sat on the edge of the bed and wiped his face. He brought her hand to his lips. She was stout now with jowls and double chin that accentuated her pointed nose, and her beauty of long ago had not faded but changed, gone inside, evident as ever through her eyes. She’d been a widow when he’d married her and well-to-do, not a small matter, and perhaps for both of them it had been as much arrangement as passion. He had known passions; now he wanted solidity, a woman who could manage a home and complete a life. And over fortyone years respect had deepened into profound love, and he was never quite so content as when she was near.

  He lay there, drifting and dreaming and wondering, back in Philadelphia again listening to them build a new nation. They would have a president, and soon he saw they expected him to take the post and give it shape. Good enough. Sliding toward sleep, his breathing very shallow, ignoring the fire in his throat, he saw that this was why finding the way was so important. In Philadelphia they had created a form in which free men could live in peace, granting the rights of others while retaining their own. It was a noble document and it should live forever.

  Indeed, it was proving itself out at just this moment of George Cabot’s terror, when Alexander Hamilton was doing his best to crush the Democrats. Jimmy Madison had overcome the great pitfall of democracy, how to have majority rule while still preserving the rights of the minority. He’d crafted an intricate balance of powers between the three branches: Freedom within limits—divided legislature with staggered terms, each branch forced to yield to the others, two-thirds to impeach, three-fifths to limit debate … .

  The general supposed Jimmy felt fully estranged from him now. Madison had left the Congress and was rusticating at his estate in Virginia, a great waste. Suddenly wistful, he thought how good it would be to see Jimmy again, see him walk in and flash that shy smile and hear his soft voice laying out logic in that building-block way of his.

  And the general would say, my boy, you saved yourself and your people with that wonderful document. For as things had worked out, now Jimmy’s own Democrats had become an angry minority that couldn’t be silenced no matter how the Federalists tried. Good … as much as the general admired Hamilton he didn’t like to think of a man with Alex’s instincts ruling without limits. Wouldn’t be much different from that young devil Napoleon, now shattering the old orders in Europe, probably forevermore. Not that shattering the old orders was bad—open ’em up and let in air and light. But we needed no Napoleons in America.

  Lying quietly on his side, swallowing only when he must, he searched those early days for hints of the trouble that was to come. Well, getting started had been the easy part. He’d been elected in an atmosphere of good humor. Hamilton as secretary of the treasury and Jefferson as secretary of state would be the key cabinet figures. Jimmy Madison was a congressman from Virginia and became the general’s leading advisor.

  Alike in their powerful minds, Jimmy and Alex were startlingly different in every other way: Hamilton handsome, vivid, swift of thought, clever to a fault, dashing with women; Madison modest, retiring, thoughtful, stimulating in quiet conversation, but downright dull in social situations. You never saw him with a woman in those days. But when he did stir himself to look at a woman, lo and behold, he chose the gorgeous Widow Todd, her husband swept away in the great yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia.

  Miss Dolley was as charming as she was beautiful, and when she began appearing on Jimmy Madison’s arm the whole town took note and some of the racier lads made book on whether he would have the nerve to follow through. The general loved to dance with Miss Dolley—he danced with all the women, of course, a champion of the minuet, but she was special. Martha turned matchmaker: Had Jimmy spoken? She said Dolley looked ready to cry as she shook her head. Martha marched to Ji
mmy: This young woman was a prize and he’d better be sensible. The general was dubious about interfering in matters of the heart, but Martha pished him to silence and she proved right, for the wedding followed and they seemed supremely happy. That was in the easy days, dancing with Dolley before things turned harsh.

  He was less familiar with Jefferson, who was just back from six years as ambassador to France under the old govemment. They’d gotten off to a poor start when Jefferson had delayed accepting the appointment. Took a couple of months to get a yes out of him, and the general heard that Jimmy had had to make a hard case to persuade him. Jefferson had wanted to sit on that mountaintop he called Monticello—a pretentious name, really, not that that was any of the general’s business—but it was his business that a man would hesitate when asked to serve at a crucial time. It embarrassed Jimmy; he and Jefferson were the closest of friends.

  John Adams was vice president. Fussy, good-hearted, honest, more proud of himself than any man needed to be, John was always ready to talk himself into trouble. He proposed the most god-awful kingly forms you could imagine with a thirteen-word title for the president, his most exalted etc. etc. The general never did get it really straight, but he cut right through the uproar—his title would be president of the United States and the direct address would be Mr. President and that was that! It had held so far; he hoped it would hold forever. A good start for a democracy … but then, thinking about it, he saw that the incident had foretold the divisions of the future.

  He snapped awake and knew instantly that he was much worse. His throat was aflame, his breathing labored. All at once breath stopped! Plugged! As if a hand clutched his throat. Strangling, he raised himself with a hoarse cry. Martha sat up, sleeping cap askew, horror in her eyes. He stretched an imploring hand toward her and then miraculously his passages opened and he took a rasping breath.

  “I’ll go for help,” she said, throwing back the covers. “We’ll call Mr. Rawlins.”

  He stopped her. Rawlins took care of the people down to the quarters and was expert with lancet and cup. Washington knew he needed bleeding, he could feel the evil humors in his veins, but if he let Martha wander the cold house she’d be as sick as he was. He viewed this as pragmatic: Bleeding could wait and he would need her before this was over. Yet he also had an odd sense that nothing really mattered. The suspicion that he was approaching the end was growing. They would call the doctors, but everyone knew that past a certain point doctors were helpless. He’d many times contemplated dying, doubtless everyone had, but never as an immediate prospect. Yet somehow he found the possibility not unduly disturbing.

  He turned on his side and Martha held his hand in both of hers. He found that he could breathe through his nose and his throat eased a little and he slid into sleep. When he awakened he was dizzy, head whirling, and he lay very still, listening to Martha breathe. She was awake and he knew she was frightened, but there was nothing more he could say to her. He felt he was chasing something, a fragment forgotten, left undone. His mind dipped and whirled. A duty …

  With an effort he remembered … he must put together a message and it must be exactly right. Recall their early enthusiasm. They were new and highly experimental, the only democracy in the world, moving on trial and error and struggling for balance. Now they must reclaim that focus. Somehow.

  He lay in the dark taking careful, shallow breaths, afraid his throat would close again, asking himself if that original focus had really been so strong, since it faded when they faced real issues. It all began there, factions, clashing ambitions, rage bordering into hatred—still, he knew now that parties wouldn’t go away because it was no accident that they had arisen. They represented the great philosophical schism breaking not on personalities but on opposite answers to that question, what kind of a country were we to be? He began to shiver and a cough tore his throat. Tears in his eyes, he tried to hold to his task … as soon they came to real things the question opened.

  At the time he’d had no idea that the break was at hand. He wondered: if he’d been wiser, more prescient? Well, it didn’t matter now. The problem was that they were broke, and the trouble arose in what to do about it. No nation can live long in insolvency. The trouble lay in those state bonds issued helter-skelter to finance the war and still outstanding, interest unpaid for years. He’d passed out bales of them himself, payment to a gray-faced farmer for a dozen steers; payment to a wounded soldier for his service when real money was scarce as hen’s teeth. This debt now in the many millions undermined everything. What sayest thee, Mr. Secretary of the Treasury? Within weeks, Alex had dropped two elegant designs on the cabinet table. Whence came Alex’s financial genius? He was thirty-five, bastard son of a Scottish planter in the West Indies, his only training in finance the keeping of ledgers in an island store before he came to America. Yet overnight he had put the national economy on a sound footing—and it was only later that it became evident that he’d also torn the cover off the philosophical question.

  His eyes popped open—daylight. Rawlins was standing by the bed, gazing down on him. Martha was up and dressed. He’d slept but felt no better. Rawlins was quivering with fear. He was a tall man with a permanent stoop who was uneasy among his betters. Get on with it, Mr. Rawlins, don’t be afraid—but no sound came so the general pointed emphatically at the big vein in the crook of his right arm. Lips trembling, Rawlins drew up a stool and braced the arm on his knee.

  Martha watched from the end of the bed. “Not too much,” she said.

  Rawlins wiped the broad blade of the lancet on his sleeve. Bracing the heel of his hand on the arm he made a swift, clean incision, clamped his thumb on the vein above the cut, put the cup in place, and let the blood run out of the instrument. The general watched the cup filling with satisfaction. He felt better already. Bleeding was just the ticket to relieve the blood of the humors that caused the trouble. He’d used it for years, swore by it.

  When the cup was full, Martha said, “That’s enough.”

  Anger forced open his throat. “More!”

  “Yes, sir!” Rawlins placed a second cup.

  “George, darling, you’ll weaken yourself.”

  With a second cup gone, he nodded and Rawlins stopped the wound. He felt suddenly weak and shut his eyes.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  He nodded. “Better,” he croaked. He wanted to sleep.

  “Take a bit of the medicine,” she said.

  His throat had closed again, but he raised himself obediently and she poured in a spoonful. With his throat closed, the mixture had no place to go and suddenly he was strangling! He lunged upward, it was in his bronchial tubes, he was choking and coughing and his throat was tearing—he blew the medicine out on the bed and fell back in a near faint, the pain in his throat as bad as anything he remembered from a wound.

  “George, darling—” But he raised a hand. Please, let me sleep. She sat on the side of the bed, her warm hand stroking his face. He heard her sweet voice, “Sleep, darling.”

  Yet the pain was too great—and yes, the sense of urgency. The way he felt now he doubted he’d be speaking to anyone. But somehow that made the quest more pressing, time narrowing down; he must find the answers. See that political parties won’t go away so we can’t let them destroy us. Keep them in bounds … .

  But by thunder, he still thought Alex’s plans had been wise. First, the new nation would take over the state debts, issuing new bonds, interest to be paid by taxes. Second, it would establish a national bank, quite an unknown critter here. Together, the two would stabilize the national economy, provide a new source of credit and a reliable currency, and assure foreign capital that it would be safe here.

  It had seemed perfect, but immediately a storm of protest had arisen from men who scented royalist tendencies and cried that the bank was just like the Bank of England, which actually was one of its strong points. The government was still in New York then, in that ungainly building that later fell down or would have
if they hadn’t torn it down; the general hated inferior work, which he thought described the Democratic view. He remembered studying quarter-inch gaps in window frames as they talked. The quarrel had turned his Cabinet room into a battleground. He’d started to cut Jimmy off and then decided to let it rage. Madison and Jefferson were an effective team. He thought Jimmy provided the hard, analytical thought, Tom the flashing ideas and flights of rhetoric.

  They listened as Alex presented the first leg, the bonds, and then Jimmy’s icy question, “What about the original holders?”

  “What about them?” Alex had a way of hunching his head down into his shoulders when he saw a fight coming.

  Jimmy glanced at the general. “The original holders, mostly your soldiers, sir, plus the shoemaker and the gunsmith and the farmer who took these bonds for services; they haven’t been able to save their certificates. Had to sell them off for what they could get in hard times. And who was buying? Speculators, paying as little as a tenth of the face value. Now, Alex, you know that perfectly well.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then for God’s sake, take them into account! Give them some of the payment.”

  “Track them all down? Spend years when we’re sinking right now? That’s a baseless idea, all bleeding heart. Point is not to rescue little men but to save the country!”

  The general remembered Jimmy’s voice going flat, and he’d seen this would get no easier. “I see a plot,” Jimmy said, “a design to give vast windfall profits to men who literally stole from the little people who supported the war …”

  A little later the bank produced an equal fight. Alex envisioned it as a treasury binding private capital to government. As the official repository for government money, its bills would be as good as gold, and we would have stable money at last. It would be tax-supported, but 80 percent would be owned privately.