Eagle's Cry

by David Nevin

  “Only consolation,” John Quincy said, “in four years the people will be so sick of the mess the Democrats make that they’ll scream for the Federalists to come back.”

  “The fools,” his father said, and John Quincy knew by instinct that he referred to Hamilton and the cabinet. “They’re the ones put us in this mess.”

  The story poured out. It was not unfamiliar, but there was a special poignancy in listening to his battered father tell it.

  It boiled down to the French in their revolutionary arrogance demanding we swing to their side against Britain and erupting in fury when we held to our neutrality. They did treat us with abominable rudeness, as they were treating everyone, and we took bitter offense.

  “The XYZ Affair,” he father said, lips tightening.

  “Oh, well,” John Quincy said, “that was just Talleyrand, obnoxious and outrageous as always.”

  John Quincy himself had smarted under the French foreign minister’s sarcasm—Talleyrand left no one untouched and was corrupt to the core, but his brilliance invariably overcame the trail of outrage he left behind him. He had refused even to talk to an American delegation without payment of a bribe, sending three agents whom the Americans later labeled X, Y, and Z. They’d reported the insult, and Hamilton began beating the drums for war.

  John Quincy chuckled. “The story I heard was that Talleyrand was amazed when the Americans stormed off. ‘Sacrebleu!’ he’s supposed to have said. ‘The Americans don’t know how to play the game.”

  “The devil! What were we supposed to do?”

  John Quincy saw his father was getting angry, but he said quietly, “Offer him less, pay him less than you offered, write it off to expenses, and move on.”

  “Johnny! That’s not the American way.”

  “Europe was amazed when we talked war over that.”

  “Here it was a deadly insult. I guess it really was that the world wasn’t taking us as seriously as we took ourselves. Of course, they were abusing our trade and seizing our vessels in the sugar islands; it wasn’t just talk, you know.”

  Well, finally it wasn’t. It came very close to war, Hamilton and the press he controlled beating the drums, new warships on the ways, militia polishing weapons … and John Quincy had found himself thrust into epic events. He’d gotten to know a minor figure in Talleyrand’s diplomatic establishment named Louis Pichon during a three-month tour in Paris. They had taken a shooting holiday together in the south of France and had become fast friends.

  Then Louis appeared suddenly in Berlin. After dinner—Louis was absolutely gallant to Louisa, which pleased her inordinately—the two men settled down to talk. Just as John Quincy had suspected, it seemed the French had never wanted war; they were just playing with the uncouth Americans. Now the game was getting out of hand, so the message Louis brought was to send a new delegation and there would be no more XYZ foolishness.

  The American thought this over for a few days. If he reported it to the secretary, it would be shot to pieces before a real decision could be made. Finally he ignored his nominal superior and sent it directly to his father in a confidential dispatch. The president presented it to the cabinet. Ignore it, those worthies said unanimously, it will only lead to further demeaning humiliation. Hamilton was in a froth. But the president sent a new delegation, peace with France was quickly concluded, and war talk collapsed. Just before leaving Berlin John Quincy had had a note from Louis: In reward Louis was being posted as envoy to America.

  “Sending the new delegation was the right thing,” his father said, “but by then, you see, war had the bit in its teeth—huge army building, big navy, new taxes to pay for it, heavy borrowing from financiers who were licking their chops at the interest rate, fifty thousand militia authorized—and then no war to justify it all. And the Alien and Sedition Acts. Well, we were all worried about the vitriol the Democratic papers sprayed on the government, on everyone, you see. Painted me as black as they painted Hamilton and the most extreme. So we were jailing editors and lurking in barrooms to catch men blackguarding the government. It was like dogs snarling in the pit, everyone in a fury—and the people were moving to the Democrats in droves.

  “And then on top of everything, Alex writes this stupid letter to party leaders, trying to get them to shift support from me to General Pinckney—running for vice president with me, you see—and Alex wants to install him in my place! Says that in failing to attack France I’d knuckled under to the tyrants and had betrayed the country and so forth and so on.

  “Naturally it splits everything wide open. And you can’t keep such a thing secret. So none other than Aaron Burr ferrets out the letter and publishes it, and the whole country knows we’re fighting harder with each other than with the Democrats. Voters sliding away like tilting a table.”

  His father chuckled sourly. “And now that same Colonel Burr has triggered off the instability that wise men long have seen as inherent in Democrats. Ha! Before they can even enter office they’re already breaking up, attacking each other; why, they’re so many fishwives with gutting knives at the ready!”

  That wizened look of age and disappointment now was striking in his father’s face, accentuated by the dark hollows left by flickering candlelight, and the son saw he was revealing fully how hard the election had hit him. It was profoundly sad, but John Quincy knew better than to voice the thought.

  Instead he said, “It doesn’t speak well for the Democrats, granted, but the situation is easily enough settled. Let the Congress give it to Jefferson over Burr; that clearly was the people’s intention. It should have gone to you, but between Jefferson and Burr there’s no question. But Mr. Pickering talks as if they intend to overturn the election.”

  “They may do,” his father said, voice frosty and distant.

  “It’s really very dangerous.”

  “Aye.” Not another word. His father puffed on his pipe.

  “Would you support Burr?”

  “Over Tom, you mean? No. Jefferson is misguided but honorable. He’s no friend of mine—he betrayed me—but he is a decent human being. Burr is … well, slippery. Decidedly slippery. No force of character. I could never support him.”

  “Have you said so?”

  “In public? No. It’s not my place. The people have rejected me. No one wants my thoughts.”

  “Father! That’s not true.”

  “They voted. Let them see what they get.”

  “You’re immensely respected. This tampering with the election sounds like a tinderbox ready to go up. Surely a word from you would—”

  “No! If I’m asked, I’ll say what I think. But I’ll take no public position, write no letters, advance no opinions.”

  “Pappa—”

  “Son, I have been in public life since seventeen and seventy-five and very little has been the recompense. Now, old, broken in body, my purse flat, I go home to Braintree not sure if I can support my wife and household. I haven’t been able to save a copper in office. It’s too late to return to the practice of law. And what has been my thanks? Satisfaction of a job well done, perhaps, but nothing from the people I served. They flung me on the ash heap, bag of bones too old to be further used.

  “Now, then, sir, in the face of that, when they have said so clearly my voice counts for nothing, why should I thrust myself forward and cry disaster, though surely Burr’s attempt to seize the presidency is a disaster. But why should I speak?”

  There was a long silence. John Quincy refilled their glasses and pressed a new coal to his pipe.

  “Tell me about Nabby, Pappa. Has her baby come yet?”

  7

  WASHINGTON, JANUARY 1801

  The door on the street banged open and Dolley heard Carl Mobry’s heavy tread on the stairs. Danny jumped up as he strode into the room, a massive man standing well over six feet with a huge belly, a leonine ruff of gray hair around a bold face, a seabag on his shoulder. He was twice Danny’s age.

  “Hello, Princess,” he said, with a smile s
o full of love and trust that Dolley turned away as Danny flew into his arms; it was like looking into a man’s soul.

  “And Miss Dolley!” He took her hand. “We’re honored.”

  He threw the seabag in a corner. “Millie! It’s teatime! Sailor’s home from the bounding main. Let’s eat!”

  A tiny black woman leaned into the room. “We got gumbo, Mr. Carl.”

  “Damn me, that’s what I like about coming home!” He glanced at Danny and winked. “One of the things.”

  The gumbo was New Orleans style, heavy with shrimp and oysters, plenty of okra, enough pepper to make Dolley’s eyes water—a very solid tea. Through a front window she could see the massive Capitol looming over its bedraggled grounds.

  “Philadelphia’s all in a dither since the government left,” Carl said. “They knew it was coming but it still seemed like an insult. Oh, and Henderson’s warehouse burned—terrible mess.”

  “With our goods only half-insured?”

  “No, no,—Sea Sprite loaded and cleared two days before.”

  “Thank God!”

  “Captain Thompson brought the Mary Weatherly in a week ahead of time. Cracked mizzen and she’ll need a new suit of sails.”

  “Carl, we just outfitted her a year ago!”

  Millie brought Carl a fresh bowl of gumbo without being asked. Dolley noticed Danny frown. “Well,” Carl said, “Tommy’s a driver, you know.”

  “He’ll drive that ship right under one of these days.”

  “But he makes the best time of any skipper we’ve got.”

  Dolley knew that Carl involved his wife in every aspect of the business. It was most unusual. They had a dozen vessels, each with a trusted captain, warehouses in New Orleans and Philadelphia and Baltimore. He was in Washington because government was crucial to shipping. Export-import duties, the need for a strong navy to protect against pirates …

  “Why,” he said, cackling, “I talk like a Federalist.”

  “But you’re a Democrat,” Dolley said.

  “Yes! A rebel—or a traitor to my class. But I put country before profit, though mind you, there’s nothing wrong with profit. But the Federalist hull is full of worms. Any day now they’ll bore through and she’ll go down like a stone! Every sensible man is a Democrat! Millie! Any more gumbo?”

  “Carl, for goodness sake,” Danny said.

  He raised his hand. ’Pon my word, haven’t eaten since I left.”

  “Go on. In Philadelphia and no scrapple?”

  “Well, scrapple. Yes, a little.”

  “Fried in ham grease?”

  “Bacon, actually. God, it was good!”

  “Four helpings, I suppose?”

  He looked wounded. “A couple only. Maybe three.”

  “Oh, darling,” Danny said, “I do fear for you.”

  “Princess, Princess, I’m healthy as a bull!” He turned to Dolley, eager to change the subject. “Do you bring us news?”

  “We’re hearing terrible things,” she said.

  “So are we. What say they in Virginia?”

  “That federal armories are being stripped of powder and weapons, arms taken into hiding, maybe to keep Democrats from using them to attack, maybe actually for use against our people. Army officers making threats—” She stopped, remembering Colonel Emberby’s son. “Federalist papers insisting they are trying to save the nation against the hordes. Democratic editors under arrest. That frigates may sail into southern ports and run out their guns. All rumor, of course, but imagine! That we’d use our ships on our own people. It’s unthinkable!”

  “Tallies with Pennsylvania,” Carl said. “Rumors, rumors. That they’ll use the army against us. That General Wilkinson, that toadying sycophant, will lead troops if Democrats get out of line. That Pennsylvania armories are being stripped. That troops are being called in from the West to ring the Capitol when voting starts. We heard the navy talk too. Looks like Mr. Burr has kicked over the milk pail, don’t it?”

  Old Colonel Madison’s prediction coming true. She was surprised to find she wasn’t angry. It was just Aaron being himself, and she found she did still like him, though it wouldn’t do for his selfish solipsism to destroy the country.

  “Carl,” she said, “I must deliver a very private message to the Federalists.”

  Danny’s head snapped around, but she didn’t speak. Dolley saw a sudden intensity in Carl’s expression.

  “Jimmy thinks Mr. Bayard would be the logical choice.”

  Carl nodded. “Bayard of Delaware—ships with us out of Wilmington. Strong Federalist, but his probity is unquestioned and he carries great weight in that party. And then, Delaware has just one congressman. He can swing his state yea or nay without a word to anyone. Gives him great power.”

  “I want you to go with me,” she said.

  That glitter of eye again. He has an interest of his own, she thought. But she needed him; women didn’t go about on matters of state, no matter what Jimmy said about European mistresses. Not that Jimmy really knew; he’d never been to Europe nor had he ever had a mistress, or so she liked to believe. She didn’t need Carl’s support; he would learn what was afoot when Mr. Bayard did. But Jimmy had agreed: A woman alone could so rattle the man as to block out her message.

  “My pleasure,” Carl said.

  Dolley worked out the arrangements with Margaret Bayard, her young friend from Philadelphia who had married a Mr. Smith and come to Washington, where they would publish the National Intelligencer. They were solid Democrats, though the Bayards of Philadelphia were famous Federalists. Indeed, young Mr. Smith had come on Tom’s express invitation to be sure there was a paper in Washington to give the truth as Democrats saw it, and Maggie was said to be absolutely enamored of Tom. Mr. Bayard was Maggie’s uncle or cousin or something, Dolley thought; at any rate she quickly agreed to provide the setting and make the arrangements for what she obviously saw as a dashing bit of political intrigue.

  Willowy and bright with the glow of the newly married, Maggie welcomed them at ten in the morning. The ring of hammers came from the nearby Capitol. Mr. Bayard bowed, a cool, austere man in his middle years, round in body, small beside Carl’s bulk, and Dolley responded with a brief curtsey.

  Maggie led them to an alcove in her drawing room and settled them at a polished whist table on which she placed a tray with coffee and a platter of morning breads studded with raisins before leaving them alone. Bayard gazed at the breads, and Dolley saw that he expected her, as the woman present, to serve. Amused, she decided to oblige.

  Bayard turned to Carl. “We’ve done business for years, and you know I respect you, but this is extremely irregular.”

  Dolley cleared her throat. “Mr. Bayard, I am the one who asked for this meeting. And it is irregular because these are irregular times.” She explained the circumstances that led Jimmy to send her to deliver the message in his place.

  “A letter might have sufficed,” Bayard said.

  “There are things best not committed to paper.”

  “Ah.” His smile was clearly patronizing. “We enter an era of mystery.”

  “We are in an era, sir,” she snapped, “when men who can’t win at the ballot box seek to win by other means.” And bit her tongue: she was here to deliver a message, not to debate.

  Bayard put down his cup with a clatter. “I assure you, madam, that’s not so. We seek to preserve the Constitution.”

  “Preserve?” Carl cried. “Pulling weapons from armories, calling in troops, readying ships—this to block an election already lost? Let me remind you, sir, the whole thing is a mere accident. There was no tie. Jefferson clearly defeated Adams. That by accident he tied with his own vice presidential candidate is a mere quirk.”

  “But most of life is accidental. We must deal with things as they are.”

  “Which means using the army on your fellow citizens to seize the advantage you find in an accident?”

  “That’s newspaper talk. I know of no such plans.”

&nb
sp; “Mr. Bayard,” Dolley said, “are you saying there are no such plans or that you know of none?”

  He hesitated, face reddening. “I know of none, madam.”

  But of course, he wouldn’t. A moderate, he was decent to the core by every report. As was Mr. Adams and certainly Alex Hamilton and, so she supposed, a host of other Federalists as well. But the problem was with the radicals.

  “Anyway,” Bayard said, “if troops were called, it would be to control democratic mobs. It’s preservation, not usurpation. We know what the Democrats want. Even assuming mobs won’t form on the French model—a dangerous assumption—it’s clear that the new people will ruin everything. They’ll destroy army and navy because they fear that troops lead to oppression. They’ll repudiate the national debt, and that’ll destroy credit markets and trade, make us the laughingstock of the world. They’ll break up Mr. Hamilton’s bank, which has been our deliverance. And they’ll throw out honest government workers so as to replace them with their own people full of crazy ideas. And then you’ll have chaos and disaster. Oh, I fear for the future!”

  How madly fervid!

  “I’ve heard no such planning,” she said.

  He pounced like a cat. “Do you speak for your husband in making that statement?”

  “I do not, sir! You know better than that. I bring a specific message, that and no more.”

  “And pray, madam, what is that message?”

  “Governor Monroe of Virginia wants the Federalist Party to know that he will call out Virginia troops to march on the capital the moment it’s clear that usurpation is taking place—men with arms to be sure that government is not stolen.”

  Bayard rocked back in his chair. “My God, madam! March? Attack, you mean? You come here and threaten civil war?”