Eagle's Cry

by David Nevin

  She stopped, staring, head thrown back, the parasol gripped in both hands. “This democracy business, it’s terrifying! I know you believe in it, Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson its promoters, I hear the talk, but it’ll fool you, it’ll turn on you, wait and see! Common folk go mad, give them a chance, that’s what France proves. Your followers’ll turn on you too, on all of us—you’ll see, the ravening mob in the streets, the good people hanging from trees on Chestnut Street. Oh, how can your husband endorse this madness?”

  She bristled, ready to leap to Jimmy’s defense, but Charity patted her hand and went hurrying down the street as if she feared democracy would consume her right now. But democracy needn’t lead to chaos, though Jimmy always admitted that its success did depend on the capacity of free people to control themselves. Frenchmen, breaking out of centuries of feudalism into anarchic revolution had lost that control. But there was a vast difference between France and America; here revolution had been for liberty, there it was for equality. As the search for equality darkened the nobility was executed in ever greater numbers, Dr. Guillotine’s grisly machine snicking and snacking and Guillotine square slick with blood. Then the revolution turned on its own and the Terror began when no one proved sufficiently poor and equal. Finally the guillotine was too slow for the killing ordered and crowds were gathered and taken down by cannon fire or burned alive. The dead numbered tens of thousands. And the mob chanted slogans that once had defined American patriotism and democracy.

  No wonder Charity Jester in her fine gown was terrified—so was everyone else of position and wealth. These pressures led to a seismic shift in American affairs that was itself revolutionary. Until now there had been no parties; leading men simply stepped forward to take the reins. But the growing schism led automatically to two parties evolving into the two-party system. The old line wealthy elite were Federalists, personified by Alexander Hamilton. For the moment they had the government and were turning toward coercion and control of the little man, driven by the fear that what they saw in France must follow here. Opposing them were Democrats, first called Republicans, then Democratic Republicans, soon shortened to the Democratic Party. Thomas Jefferson led, Jimmy provided the intellectual power and her old friend Aaron Burr of New York was a rising star. They stood for the little man and the tighter and meaner things grew under frightened Federalists, the stronger the Democrats became.

  And she, herself stronger and more confident each year, marveled at how often great events and national movements and crucial decisions turned on the same human emotions that children in a nursery will exhibit—rage, fear, greed, hunger …

  Thomas Jefferson was Jimmy’s best friend and the three of them were often together. She liked Tom no matter what Pa had said. He was clever and witty and very gentle, an innately decent man. His mind ranged all over the place with bewildering speed and she often stopped trying to keep up. Yet in the end she thought Jimmy had greater weight which was another reason she rather resented the deference he showed Tom, a decade his senior. Settled in marriage now, she handled herself well and people listened to her with real interest.

  Things were changing rapidly. General Washington retired to Mount Vernon. John Adams succeeded him. Tom had stepped down as secretary of state and was at his estate at Monticello. Jimmy left the Congress and they returned to the Madison estate, Montpelier, in sight of the Blue Ridge. Living in a mansion in which Jimmy’s family made her welcome, she nevertheless had a full taste of life in a house not her own.

  The national atmosphere darkened steadily. Rank fear seemed to guide Federalists as if they saw hordes of common men advancing on them. Laws became abusive. Every time she and Jimmy went to Philadelphia, still the capital though the new capital on the Potomac would soon be ready, things became more volatile and dangerous. And then Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.

  On one of their Philadelphia trips she went on to New York with Hannah Gallatin to visit Hannah’s family. New York was booming, soon to overtake Philadelphia, she was sure. Aaron Burr gave them dinner and a tour, bursting with pride. Then, afternoon shadows lengthening, she and Hannah strolled down Broadway.

  They were near the Battery when they heard hoofs clattering. A wagon fitted with benches and bearing a half-dozen men in dark coats stopped across the street before a print shop. Carrying oaken clubs the men jumped out to kick open the shop door.

  The two women stood frozen, gazing across the street. They heard shouts and a crash within the shop and then a scream. An upstairs window popped open and a woman leaned out.

  “Jeremy!” she yelled. “Come quick! They’re after Paw, they’ll smash the press—”

  The press? A sign hung over the door, The Peck’s Slip Tattler. A newspaper! The men were constables after an editor who’d spoken out of turn.

  A dark-haired young man in breeches and buckled shoes and a white shirt with bunched sleeves burst from a nextdoor tavern, dashed into the shop and was knocked senseless by a constable’s club. Then a skinny, gray-haired man in his fifties was led out with hands bound behind him. Crying and cursing at once, he stepped over his son’s inert body. Two stalwarts hurled him face down into the bottom of the wagon. When he sat up the side of his head was bloody.

  The woman in the window poured invective on the constables, their ancestry and parentage, their sexual proclivities, their dietary habits—it was thrilling no matter how rough, for in the most direct way at her command this woman was making her stand. But without even looking up two of the constables took sledge hammers from the wagon, strode into the shop and from the sound were beating something to pieces.

  “God damned scoundrels,” a tall man in a sailor’s cap snarled. “Busting up poor Jethro’s press. The only man in New York with the guts to tell the truth, pin the tail on those donkeys in Philadelphia, damn president don’t know his right hand from his left and here they are smashing Jethro’s press!”

  He stood poised on the balls of his feet, fists clenched. “You know why they want to crush Jethro, don’t you? ‘Cause the truth scares the shit out of them!”

  At which the leader of the constables turned with eyes red and club poised and said, “Maybe we’ll take you too, you seditious son of a bitch!”

  The man in the cap laughed. “Try the Alien and Sedition Acts on me, will you? Well, you can kiss my arse!” With another loud laugh he turned and fled into the warren of streets that led to the eastside docks.

  “I expect we’d better walk along,” Hannah said, voice trembling. It was deeply disturbing—this was the Alien and Sedition Acts in action and it was sickening. It had become a crime to criticize the government. Speak your mind on the capabilities of the president and look for the constable to snatch you from the tavern and into jail you went. Troublesome aliens who arrived under the illusion that democracy meant democracy were easily deported. Print a letter in your newspaper that said the government was a donkey and draw a couple of years in prison, your press destroyed.

  They walked on, neither speaking, and it struck her suddenly that her view of everything had changed. A slightly abstract view of politics had shifted in her mind to something visceral and direct. “It’s all real, isn’t it?” she said to Jimmy on her return. “This printer, editor, this Mr. Jethro, doubtless still in a cell somewhere, probably in the same bloody shirt—”

  Of course she had known that politics affected people’s lives but never again would she see issues only in the abstract.

  “What about the First Amendment, free speech, free press?” she demanded of her husband.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “violates the Constitution, all right. But who’s to stop the Congress? The Supreme Court is powerless, scarcely functioning, really—government can do as it pleases.”

  “That’s outrageous!”

  “Well, maybe it’ll make common folk see the danger.”

  One could hope, anyway. The Federalists were squabbling among themselves while Democrats were coming on strong. The election of 1800 was nearin
g and Tom was making a serious push against John Adams, while Aaron Burr stood for vice president. Adams had New England, Jefferson the South and West; they counted on Aaron for New York.

  Not long before the election she bumped into Aaron by chance on a Philadelphia street and let him give her tea in a sidewalk café. He was remembering life in her mother’s boarding house and the day he brought Jimmy to call and what an innocent naïf she was then. Well, she was a far cry today from that long ago Quaker miss. And the times had changed with her. Imagine—through Tom they might sit in the august General Washington’s seat yet.

  With a little smile that she took as introduction to a witticism he added, “Though it might just as well be me.”

  But he wasn’t joking and she said rather sharply, “No one sees you there, Aaron.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, all geniality. “Try that in New York—you’ll be surprised. There’s little sentiment there that I am in any way inferior to the sainted Virginian. Stranger things have happened, you know.”

  She snorted. “Horse gives birth to a goat, that would be stranger.”

  Something sparkled deep in his eyes and he said with what she saw was utter seriousness, “You underestimate me, dear girl.” It unsettled her; Aaron had a profoundly devious mind.

  So the election of 1800 came about and the Democrats won with the help of New York and poor John Adams was sent home to Massachusetts with a broken heart just as the government moved into the new capital on the Potomac.

  It was no less, as Tom put it, than a second revolution! The people had turned from the old way to the new, from privilege and control and coercion to the belief that free people could find the self-control to govern themselves. Magnificent!

  And then Aaron sprang his dirty trick. For a terrible few weeks he seemed in position to carry out what she had first taken as a bad joke—with Federalist help, to exchange places with Tom and make himself president, Tom vice president.

  She was enraged at this sudden scandalous turn—my word, Aaron seemed to be confirming the Federalist fear that the agony of France must play out here. Charity Jester’s worst dreams ready to unfold—Democrats attacking each other before they even took office! Oh, but she was far from Ma’s boarding house now. She watched the country boil toward civil war, Virginia and Pennsylvania preparing militia to march on Washington to enforce the Constitution. Responsible Federalists began to back off. Hamilton put country before politics and argued for Jefferson over Burr as a man of quality. More Federalists abandoned Burr and his dream collapsed.

  So the crisis passed, and with it her anger. For after all, she could see that this really had just been Aaron being Aaron—greed and cavalier willingness to strike for the main chance was an indelible part of his nature. That and his pride and his unshakeable confidence—he would have made a good pirate.

  Democrats remained enraged and so did Jimmy. But Aaron had been a real friend when she needed one and that she could not forget. And wouldn’t, and that was that. Anyway, it was settled after a few alarming weeks and no great harm appeared done. Things went on, Aaron as vice president presiding over the Senate with his usual panache, graceful and smiling. Really, it struck her as a triumph of democracy that it had responded to crisis with such vitality.

  But she saw that Tom and Jimmy intended to punish Aaron, strip him of power and deny him victory’s rewards. She knew he’d assumed that once it was settled they’d all be friends again. Punishing him struck her as small, unproductive, even dangerous. Of course they shouldn’t trust him—he always would be drawn to the main chance. But to strip him of power and position, bare him to the world as a shattered man—all aside from cruelty, she saw no profit and much risk in that.

  Jimmy remained adamant and finally it became one of those subjects best left alone in a marriage. But in the act of differing from her husband, of questioning his judgement, she realized that in some subtle way she had come of age.

  Now Tom was president—she had decided that “Tom” would do perfectly well—and Jimmy was secretary of state and they were presiding over a great success. The people loved them and Federalists crept around like whipped dogs. By this time they had moved to the new city on the Potomac and built a handsome home of brick, three stories with cupola and porte-cochere. It stood a few blocks from the President’s House where Tom, the lonely widower, pressed her into service as official hostess. She took over presidential entertaining and invitations to the mansion became wildly sought after; the town was still a social wilderness, few congressmen brought their families, and everyone was hungry for a kind word and a good meal. Jimmy was at the heart of everything as secretary of state, but she felt she wasn’t far behind him, so central to Washington affairs did her dinners become.

  Her ambitions grew. If Jimmy succeed Tom—and who would be better?—she would be the president’s wife. Her social mastery would matter more than ever and she would be in a real position to complete this magnificent mansion. It was glorious on the outside, if a little boxy, its yellow sandstone walls painted white, but it was scarcely finished inside and in desperate need of decoration which she quickly found that Tom intended to ignore. But just wait!

  Year by year, adventure by adventure, she and Jimmy grew closer; once she had amused him and then she pleased him and then she interested him and now he depended on her. When they were apart they were equally stricken. He was a darling man.

  And then a terrible whisper came up the Mississippi from New Orleans. Napoleon intended to reclaim the province of Louisiana from Spain, to whom France had surrendered it long before. Napoleon? Napoleon Bonaparte, dictator of France, the most powerful man on earth? He who had whipped the British to a standstill, who controlled most of Europe and obviously intended to rule the world? He wanted Louisiana?

  Yes, as a matter of fact, the whole vast territory, New Orleans to Canada along the Mississippi and westward to the Stony Mountains. The day he took possession Jimmy’s dream of a continental nation would be dead. But Napoleon wouldn’t stop there. Soon he would want American territory too, Appalachians to the Mississippi, including the new states of Tennessee and Kentucky and Ohio. The United States would be left hugging the Atlantic shore. And it would kill the new democracy—voters would cast the new form into the dustbin.

  Yet how could the embryo nation stand against Napoleon’s eagles? Only by subordinating itself to Britain in return for a Royal Navy blockade to seal the coastline and starve French troops. But subordinating itself to Britain, a Federalist dream, would destroy the new democracy just as quickly.

  So they must make Napoleon see he could not win before they reached that point. What could she do in this crisis? She could stand by, and she understood how important that could be. When he talked all night of possible approaches, she listened. When he went silent she awaited his return. When he drew his chair to the window and stared into the dark she draped a blanket over his shoulders. She fed him and cosseted him and fussed over him; one day he told her—voice casual but eyes fixed on her—that he doubted he could get through this alone. That was worth a very great deal to her.

  Two years passed without French response. They had done all they could and Jimmy drew up a proposal to the British that would save Louisiana but destroy the new democracy. And then one day as they took tea with Tom in the mansion the message arrived: Napoleon Bonaparte had offered to sell all of Louisiana to the Americans! We had asked for the city of New Orleans or the right bank of the river or even a square mile above New Orleans on which the American flag could fly as guarantee of free trade on the river. And Talleyrand had said, what would you give for the whole?

  The whole? The country rocked with joy. Negotiations finally settled on fifteen million dollars and the deal was done. Jimmy told her poor Albert Gallatin, treasury secretary, was horrified at the price—and Hannah told her later that Albert muttered in his sleep—but Jimmy said someday it would be regarded as a great bargain. It saved the new democracy—that was bargain enough for her.
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  Oh, the vast and wonderful change—the nation more than doubled in size, its future as a continental nation assured, the threat of Napoleon removed forever. And she had changed with it. She was thirty-five years old and she had grown up too, faced tragedy and been made stronger; she had entered national life as an innocent and grown wise in experiencing democracy’s birthing pains. She had focused ambition and she felt complete as she had not at any time in her thirty-five years; and she supposed that is what maturity meant.

  But more immediately, she grew uncomfortable with the wild celebration of the vast Purchase. Everyone said Tom was a genius for mastering Napoleon and with sublime contradiction said how lucky that the Frenchman decided to sell. And with growing outrage she began to ask where in all these salutations was credit for her darling little husband who had taken on the most powerful man in the world in hand-to-hand combat and won? While he, modest man that he was, generous and decent, his voice light, his manner quiet, watched credit being taken by most everyone when it was plain to her that he and he alone had stood as Horatius at the Gate. Carefully she sharpened a fresh quill and unfolded a clean sheet of vellum and began to write:

  Mr. James Madison, Esq.

  Sir: Permit me to inform you that in the opinion of all right-thinking Americans the credit for the late great triumph of Louisiana rests squarely on your shoulders, as did the weight of the equally great campaign that achieved the triumph. And who, dear sir, should know this better than the undersigned?

  Your loving wife,

  Dolley P. Madison

  Notes

  1

  forthcoming

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.