by David Nevin
The West was opening. The settlers, the flowing river, the explorers ready to track the setting sun across the unknown all told him the East was losing its weight, that power was transferring over the Appalachians. Finance and manufacturing would remain in the East a long while, but this was a country built on land and land lay to the west. Mr. Jefferson understood that with his common man democracy, yeoman farmer at his plow; as long as new land lasted, the nation would grow and grow and Jackson couldn’t see any end to it. No end—and he would be growing with it.
Thus his frame of mind after the purchase when all that he expected was coming to pass. He was a new man, calm, collected, magisterial, temper not dead but restrained. Rachel was delighted.
And then on a warm and dusty day in Nashville, when he had disposed of the last case a bit early, he stepped into the taproom of the Nashville Inn for a glass of ale. As he walked in, he heard a voice he recognized immediately as that of Cant Cantwell say, “Well, I don’t know. Way I heard it, the governor threw his marriage up in his face and the governor’s still alive. So maybe—”
Silence fell across the long, narrow room. Jackson heard a ringing in his ears as he walked to the far end where Cantwell stood before an empty fireplace. Cantwell started to speak but didn’t, as if what he saw in Jackson’s eyes stopped his tongue.
He was a big man, not as tall as Jackson but much heavier. Now he seemed to shrink a little. When the silence became unbearable, Jackson struck him backhanded in the mouth so hard he was knocked into the dead fireplace. He lay in the ashes staring at Jackson. He didn’t move.
“If you want me,” Jackson said, “you’ll know where to find me.”
He turned and walked out of the silent room. The Louisiana Purchase had saved the West; it would make the Mississippi Valley flower as only the infusion of money and people could do. It had changed everything, but perhaps it had changed nothing too. The West was still wild and rough, and a man still had to kill his own snakes.
44
WASHINGTON, FALL 1803
About dusk on an early fall evening, John Quincy Adams, senior senator from the State of Massachusetts, drove into Washington in a barouche with a coachman at the reins. The twenty-day trip from Boston had exhausted them all; Adams, Louisa, and even the little boys, George and John. Everything had gone wrong. They’d set out for New York by ship and found Long Island Sound thunderous with shipwreck weather. They held in New London, and when the storms abated a little and Adams pushed the captain to start again they were violently seasick. In New York they found people fleeing an outbreak of yellow fever. They hurried across the Hudson into New Jersey where Louisa fell sick. Yellow fever? He was terrified until she recovered a few days later. On, finally, to Washington.
Despite their weariness, he asked the coachman to drive slowly; he wanted to savor this raw, rude hamlet with its occasional magnificent building. For he was here now as an official, not a visitor; it was his place and already he knew that the policy questions he would face as a senator would fascinate him. He was equally sure that his fellow senators would disappointment him. On Pennsylvania Avenue a small carriage leaving the president’s house held up to let them pass. But when they were close, the driver hailed him by name.
“Why, Senator Adams, welcome to Washington!”
In the pale light it took him a moment to recognize an old Massachusetts friend, Samuel Otis, now secretary of the senate. Otis leaped down, bowing to Mrs. Adams.
“Please, Johnny,” Louisa whispered. She was exhausted and still half sick. But he couldn’t ignore Otis, so he clambered down as the secretary said, “I’ve just delivered the Louisiana treaty to the president; I’m afraid we’ve bought the benighted province whether we want it or not.”
“It passed without opposition then?”
“Not without opposition. Seven against, twenty-four in favor. Every Federalist present voted nay, ranks unbroken.” He ticked off on his fingers. “Hillhouse and Tracy of Connecticut, Olcutt and Plumer of New Hampshire, Pickering of Massachusetts, Wells and White of Delaware. Ross of Pennsylvania was absent. I, of course, as a mere functionary, have no vote. Pity you weren’t here; we’d have made a little better showing.”
“No,” Adams said, “I’d have made it twenty-five.”
“Sir!” Otis stared at him. “You favor this mad acquisition of Louisiana?”
“I do. It strengthens the whole country. Isn’t that what matters?”
“I see, sir, that you intend to stand alone.”
“I hope not alone but certainly on principle.”
“I expect that will mean alone then,” Otis said slowly. “I’ve known you and President Adams so long, I’m really not surprised. But Democrats will despise you, and you’ll be a pariah among Federalists.”
Well, Adams thought as the barouche went on toward Stelle’s Hotel, a man could do worse than that.
Timothy Pickering’s tortured smile suggested he was trying to be cordial. He had arrived the week before to take his seat, and he waylaid Adams in the members’ lobby. The sleek vice president swept into the lobby just then. Adams bowed, which Mr. Burr returned with a courtly sweep of his hand as he hurried into the chamber and mounted the dais.
“We must talk,” Pickering hissed. “Mr. Otis tells me you will support this Louisiana madness.”
“Yes,” Adams said, maintaining a steady smile, “I’d have voted aye yesterday had I arrived in time.”
“I had hoped it was a jest,” Pickering said. Plumer and Hillhouse and the other Federalists joined them.
Plumer spoke in an angry growl. “We can caucus in a corner, so few are we. Why we must stand together. But see here now, let’s have this out immediately. It’s downright sinful to encourage this Louisiana insanity. My God, sir, have you no common sense?”
They struck from all angles with a litany of fears and outrage, insistence that adding so much territory would destroy the Union as they knew it and New England in particular. Countless new states would be carved from the vast territory, each eager to plunge a spear into New England’s heart. Slave states, they would make the nation a slavocracy, decent people outvoted and ruined, the last vestiges of all that was good and right about America swept away in a tide of mongrel variants.
“Don’t you see?” Hillhouse cried, veins standing out on his forehead, face purpling. “This means the end of the Federalist Party, and that means the end of all chance of rule by the well-born, the wise, the good. Make us a mongrel people—”
“Oh, God,” Pickering cried, “will you and your fatuous father never understand? Your region will abandon you, it will repudiate you, finally it will destroy you. We won’t stay in a Union that sweeps in all the trash of the continent to drown us in common-man scrapings. We will separate, sir, and New York will join us. Great things are coming, and you, sir, you would do well to listen to your peers and abandon your arrogance and save your skin while it is still savable by voting as you should vote, as your people elected you to vote, as common sense and decency demand, as duty instructs—”
“Thank you for these insights, gentlemen,” Adams said. “Shall we go in? I believe the Senate has come to order.”
So they had declared and he had declared, and he would stand alone. As if to drive home the point, he attended a Democratic banquet celebrating the acquisition of Louisiana and drank to the toasts without offering one himself. He voted with Democrats to provide the funding that paid for bringing the vast new territory into the Union. He voted for a bill that not only admitted Louisiana but left the way open for acquiring other territory. Senator Ross voted with him on occasion but was full of Federalist rhetoric; the Essex men forgave Ross since he would have been tarred and feathered in Pittsburgh if he’d voted against Louisiana and an open Mississippi. Alexander Hamilton approved the purchase too, but he could be forgiven anything; he was the Federalist darling.
Not so Mr. Adams. “Curse on the stripling; how he apes his sire!” Theodore Lyman shouted. “He is a kite without
a tail,” Stephen Higginson announced to a rapt audience in his Boston bank, all reported to Adams as rapidly as horses could carry mail, “ … violent and constant in his attempts to rise, lunging right and left but never truly up, ambitious to a fault even for the chair of state, and doomed to everlasting failure.”
At parties, which he didn’t enjoy though Louisa did, he played chess with the secretary of state. Mr. Madison was a strong, solid player, very hard to corner; Mr. Adams was quicker, lighter, swifter to strike; they were a good match.
“I expect a place could be found for you in the party of the future,” Mr. Madison said one evening.
“Among Democrats?” Adams smiled. He was carefully polite, but he spoke his mind. “Never, sir. Never.”
Adams had an analytical mind and was well versed in European affairs after nearly a decade there in the diplomatic service, so the question came naturally: why had Napoleon agreed to sell Louisiana after he’d gone to such trouble to batter Spain into releasing it? He put this to Madison over the chessboard.
“We made it in his interest,” the secretary said.
Adams was horrified. “Surely you don’t mean you … you bribed him?”
Anger flashed on Madison’s face; an abrupt hand movement scattered chessmen. Adams had a sudden feeling of danger; he was seeing a much different Madison. In a low, compressed voice, the secretary said, “Certainly not, sir! I take the very question as highly offensive.”
Adams heard a tremble in his own voice and stiffened himself as he said, “I meant no offense, but you said ‘in his interest.’”
“By that I meant we demonstrated that the cost of his enterprise was more than he could afford. Gave him an interest in pulling out. In short, we showed him he couldn’t hold Louisiana and would destroy himself if he tried.”
They righted the chessmen and started a new game, but when it was done neither was interested in another.
But Adams found that too easy an answer. Napoleon often said that nothing was impossible. Experts told him he couldn’t cross the Alps in winter, but he’d taken his army over with heavy artillery and descended on the Italian states to crush them in lightning strokes. That Louisiana was beyond him didn’t sound like Napoleon.
So Adams waited until he and Louisa dined with his old friend Louis Pichon and his pale wife. Through a good dinner and into a second bottle of wine, he and Louis regaled the women with stories of the three-month holiday tour they had taken together, Italy and the Greek Isles and back via Barcelona, with its theater and street music and booming opera. But Pirette wasn’t well and when it was time for the ladies to withdraw, Louisa, who was kindness itself, said, “Johnny, Pirette needs to rest; I’ll take the carriage home and send it back for you.” When Adams saw her out, she whispered, “Don’t stay too late. Her baby’s dying and there’s nothing she can do to help the poor little thing. She’ll need her husband tonight.”
When he returned Louis had set out cognac and cigars. Adams asked if he should stay. Louis nodded. “Please. It’s very hard on Pirette … our little boy. Better she sleeps now … .”
So Adams asked, Why did Louis think Napoleon agreed to sell? Mr. Madison seemed to feel the United States had bullied him into the move; but knowing something of Napoleon, he’d been doubtful.
“Perhaps you misread Mr. Madison. Bullied isn’t right.”
“So I suspected. But what is the story?”
Louis drew on his cigar, watching Adams. At last he said, “On what basis do you ask?”
Adams stiffened. “I need a reason?”
“John, I am a diplomat. You are an official of the host government—”
“No, I am a U.S. senator with a free voice, answerable only to my constituents.”
“Whom, if gossip be trusted, you don’t spend much time pleasing.”
“I must please my own conscience first of all. If that doesn’t please them, so be it.” He waved a hand, dismissing a petty issue. “To respond to your concern, I ask for no purpose beyond the inherent fascination of the question, and I will make no use of what I may learn.”
Louis had a faint smile. “Thank you for the assurance. I felt duty required my query, and I too respond to duty.”
Adams smiled and touched the back of the other’s hand. “So, my friend, answer me or tell me duty instructs you not to.”
Louis laughed. “All right, all right, let us not become ridiculous. You misread Mr. Madison in using the term ‘bullied, ’ but the essential idea is correct. The Americans demonstrated that Louisiana could not be held. I flatter myself I played no small part in getting Paris to understand that point.”
He described the brutal events in Santo Domingo, the pressure under which Leclerc had put him, the first consul’s fury at his even questioning a favorite general, the fear he felt for his own head as he continued to report what neither Leclerc nor the first consul wanted to hear. With a start Adams realized his friend was a truly brave man. Louis added, without inflection, that he thought it was Pirette’s worry in this period that had contributed to their baby’s failing health since birth.
“Every week without fail Mr. Madison called me in and made a new argument, most of which I already had mounted to Paris. He sent a New Orleans merchant to make the moneymen in Paris see what they had to lose, he enlisted the whole Du Pont family in America’s behalf, made them feel they were prime negotiators on whom everything depended, and by accretion, so to speak, water wearing down stone, made Paris see that it would have to fight forever to hold the province.”
He ran through the rest of it, most of which Adams already understood, boiling down to the assurance that couldn’t be doubted that the United States would ally with the Royal Navy and join the continental war against France. Add France’s disaster in Santo Domingo and it all tipped the weight against. Adams marveled at the courage of slaves standing against a major power and winning. He said he doubted many of his countrymen understood what they owed those black patriots. A sour look crossed Louis’s face and Adams remembered it had been young French troops those blacks had been killing, and his voice trailed off.
“And then, you know,” Louis said, “the American frontiersman has quite a reputation in Europe. Ferocious, deadly, implacable, rides alligators for sport and wrestles bears, rivals the wild Indians in bloodthirstiness … overdrawn a bit, doubtless, but I think real in essence. A fellow came through here from Tennessee—Jackson, I think his name was, Irish ancestry out of Carolina, apparently—quite ferocious. I didn’t take him entirely seriously, but then he talked to Montane. You know Montane?”
As Louis described him, this General Montane sounded interesting; he had opened an export-import business in Baltimore to which he was applying the same ability that had brought him a general officer’s rank in the army.
“It seems this Jackson was not just a pioneer, he was a commanding general of the Tennessee militia, and he and Montane spoke the same language. Later Montane told me to take him very seriously indeed, and I paid attention to that.”
So it was just as Mr. Madison had said, all American pressure? Adams said he was surprised.
Louis smiled. “Of course, that’s not all of it.”
“Ah. So I had supposed.”
Long silence while Lewis drew on his cigar. “How well do you know the first consul?”
“Don’t know him at all. I’ve spoken to him two, no, three times, at receptions. Awesome every time.”
“Those of us whose careers and sometimes lives depend on his whims, we get to know him quite well.” Even here in America, he added, he had kept up—had a friend well placed on the general staff who kept him abreast of things, all very sub rosa.
“First, understand that when Napoleon seized power four years ago, France was in a desperate condition. Ten years of revolution had demolished almost everything and had led to such violent excesses the people were frantic for relief. There were explosions of joy when he announced the revolution was over.”
“And they got in
its place a dictator.”
“Yes … but this is no return to the absolutism of monarchy, no raising of nobles. His Legion of Honor, it alarmed a lot of French democrats, but entry to it was by merit not birth. Countless parts of French society have that same openness to the common man. The national university, the system of lycées he established, every scholar accepted on merit, the ten thousand special scholarships so no outstanding student can be denied. Even opened national schools for girls, three schools—everyone to be educated.” Adams could see that his friend was a little shocked by this outbreak of equality, and it surprised him too.
Louis rushed on in full voice. The man establishes the Banque de France and stabilizes an economy that had been out of control for a decade. He establishes hospitals, medicine open to every citizen. He sets up a new legal code, civil, criminal, regularizes what has been chaotic, unjust, ridden with favoritism in which little men are given the most barbaric sentences and rich men and nobles walk free. Already some of the new code had taken effect; it was promised in full for the next year.
“So you see,” Louis said, “he has brought order, confidence, stability back to France; he has greatly improved the society; he has rejected monarchical forms just as fiercely as the revolution ever did, if not so destructively. In short, he is a great man, no doubt the greatest of the age. He has put his stamp on France, and France has put its stamp on everything from the Atlantic to the Urals. Europe will never be the same, believe me, no matter what happens to Napoleon.”
“But there’s a price for all this, I suppose,” Adams said.
“Of course. The secret police are ever vigilant.” He looked ready to say more and then stopped himself. Well, it didn’t matter. In today’s France loose talk probably was dangerous, even for a diplomat, perhaps especially for a diplomat. The secret police were always the key to despotism, monarchical or otherwise. The torturers of the tzar’s secret police were notorious. Adams already knew that in France everyone guarded his tongue. Open debate was rare, though it had been rare under the revolution too, after the first thrilling days of liberty and equality and fraternity, ironic words today.
