by James Devine
Polk was shocked at Jackson’s appearance when Donelson escorted him into the G-G’s office minutes later: Andy looked five years older than he had in early March. As he rose in greeting, he seemed to rely on the cane more now for support than as a prop. A quick glance at the secretary confirmed that Donelson, too, was concerned about the G-G’s health.
“James, it is good to see you. Now, first I’ll want a report on the sentiment in Tennessee. Then we can discuss the whole picture…”
Two hours later, Polk had the information he needed: the G-G was still uncommitted and would remain so until he got a sense of the people through reports from the returning Congress. And, significantly, he knew nothing of the European situation…or its potential to tilt the emancipation issue.
It’s just like these arrogant Limeys to withhold such crucial information, the Congressman thought. The bastards believe the assignment of foreign affairs in the Colonial Compact to London is all encompassing…even when it directly impacts domestic affairs here in America. Well, this is one time when their high-and-mighty attitude is going to come back to haunt them: once Wellington realizes we know the Empire is eye-to-eye with the Russians---or maybe past that---he’ll cave on the exemption. And Jackson will be so mad he wasn’t let in on the secret that he’ll join in pushing for the exemption to cover any future Southwestern expansion. Expansion he has Sam Houston working on in Texas right now!
___________
Calhoun Residence
Georgetown, D.C.
June 2, 1833:
The Southern inner circle, for the most part (Senator Troup had not yet arrived), had caucused hours earlier and now, at 5 p.m., was winding up its meeting.
“Well, gentlemen, we all are now up to date.” Calhoun looked at the group with tired satisfaction. “You all can now see how this fortuitous Russian adventure has given us the leverage to force Wellington to compromise. And while the old man in The Residency is still trying to make up his mind, we’re about to make it up for him. Now, I again caution you: no word of the Syrian situation is to be spoken when we meet with our colleagues from the other sections tomorrow.
“Debate, as I understand it, is scheduled to begin Tuesday. We’ll make our valid constitutional arguments for our institution and hope the soundness of our position convinces those from outside the South. Meanwhile, we bide our time and wait for the opportune moment to utilize the Russian weapon. From James’ report, I would expect Jackson to address Congress late in the week, or perhaps a week from tomorrow. We’ll hold back until after he announces his position.”
He paused and nodded his head vigorously, his long hair flying. “Then will be the time to officially inquire how things are going in Asia Minor.”
It took a moment before the others recognized the biting sarcasm reflected their leader’s complete confidence in his plan.
___________
As the meeting broke up in laughter, a servant entered to announce the arrival of General Gaines. Despite the quizzical looks from Brown and Tyler, among others, Calhoun ushered his guests out with the bland explanation that the General’s wife and Floride were old and dear friends; the Gaines were honoring a long-scheduled invitation to dinner. That Gaines was alone in the parlor was, if not commented upon, noted by many…
After closing the front door behind the last of his followers, Calhoun returned to the parlor and noticed for the first time the satchel at the General’s feet.
“Well General. Business…on a Sabbath evening? I thought only disreputable sorts like politicians so flaunted the Good Book…”
Edmund P. Gaines was the antithesis of Winfield Scott: short, spare and gaunt-faced. And despite Scott’s dismissal of his fellow-Virginian as a “paper-pusher,” Gaines had heard and seen his share of lead---and arrows---in large and small fights with the French and with Indian tribes from Michigan to Florida. Now, ironically, it was that very skill at pushing paper that was to impress the Senator from South Carolina.
The General got right to the point, picking up his satchel and giving Calhoun a hard look: “Senator, I have documents in this pouch which could easily get me cashiered, if not shot for treason. I suggest we go behind locked doors”---he indicated the dining room in which the previous caucus had met---“and examine them privately.”
This time, Calhoun’s smile was not sarcastic, but quizzical: “Certainly, General, if you think necessary. Though your concerns do seem, shall we say, perhaps ‘overly-dramatic’…?”
“I doubt you’ll feel that way, Senator, after you study the first set.”
Once settled at the table, Gaines opened the pouch and retrieved the papers detailing the reorganization of the USBAA, including the list of potential Southern officer resignations. He gravely handed the papers to Calhoun and sat back.
The Senator’s quizzical expression darkened as he studied the plans, occasionally pausing to stare at Gaines. More than 40 minutes passed before he threw down the final pages, though he continued to stare down at them. Finally, he looked up and nodded at the General.
“General Gaines, if those plans are authentic, it is not you who should be shot for treason. Now tell me how you obtained them…and how it is there has been no scandal over their disappearance.”
Gaines sketched the process by which he had come into possession of the papers. The tale began with Lieutenant Beaufort’s discovery while searching for a listing of Consulate military attaches the Liaison Office had requested while Lieutenant Wilder was off with General Scott on an inspection trip to West Point.
“There’s no doubt whatsoever this document came from the locked desk of Scott’s own intelligence aide, General?” Calhoun wanted the Vice-Commander’s strongest assurance that the plans were real.
“None whatsoever, Senator. Lieutenant Beaufort says that, in retrospect, it is now apparent this plan is what Scott and Wilder have been working so diligently on behind closed doors for weeks. At the time, Luke, Lieutenant Beaufort, paid little heed. It seems Wilder is Scott’s fair-haired boy. Says Scott is always calling him in privately and sending him on special missions.”
Calhoun’s mouth twitched in such a way that Gaines had little doubt he was trying to smother a smile: “This Lieutenant Beaufort, now, he wouldn’t be…perhaps a tad…jealous… of his fellow junior officer?”
Gaines straightened up in his seat: “Senator, Luke Beaufort is the first graduate of the Academy to hail from Mississippi. He came to me as a Southern patriot.”
Calhoun nodded his head vigorously in acceptance. “Now then, General: what do you suppose we should in response to all this…treason?”
Gaines stared at the Senator for a moment, then lowered his head and dug the second set of documents out of his pouch. He handed them over wordlessly.
Calhoun accepted the papers with another, just barely, quizzical smile and reviewed them quickly. His eyebrows rose on occasion and he glanced up at Gaines with a newfound respect at several intervals.
“It seems you, too, have been hard at work building a paper army, General. My congratulations. However, a question: these state units you list. Are they ready to fight?”
Gaines was hard-faced: “No unit can be accurately termed ‘ready’ until it demonstrates how it performs under fire, Senator. But our Southern militia are just-as, if not more-so, than the Yankees. Our boys meet and drill regularly. I doubt if 10% of the militia units in Scott’s proposal, outside of the Illinois and Ohio boys who fought against Black Hawk, have drilled for anything other than Compact Day parades…”
Calhoun nodded and a thoughtful, faraway look came into in his eyes. “Do you agree with Scott’s assessment that---what is the prediction, 85%?---of the Southern officers in the present USBAA will resign their commissions if it comes to a fight?”
Gaines grunted affirmatively: “I do. You see, Senator, Scott and I know most, if not all, of these officers personally. There’s no need tonight, but we could go through that list and I could give you a performance evaluation on each man…a
s well as a personal history.”
Calhoun puckered his lips and nodded in satisfaction. “All right, General. Now, dinner is getting cold and I heard your dear wife announced sometime ago. We can resume our discussion later.
“However, concerning these documents: I trust you’ve been housing them in a safe place? In a locked safe at your home? Good; return them to it tonight. For now, I want you to refine these organizational plans…but I don’t want anyone else to know about them. I assume Lieutenant Beaufort assisted you? And no one else knows?”
The Senator smiled his dark smile. “Well, if we can keep the secret to one Senator, one General and one junior officer unless and until necessary, that will be excellent…
“My thanks to you and the Lieutenant. If the South is left no alternative but force to demonstrate our unwillingness to accept this emancipation abomination, your planning will have given us a vital headstart. Either way, you and Lieutenant Beaufort will be rewarded for your outstanding initiative, I promise you.”
The Senator leaned across the table and shook Gaines’ hand. The General grasped it firmly. “Senator, do you really believe it will come to that?”
Calhoun frowned: “General, we are hurtling towards a collision I believed was a decade or more away. Only the exemption can now stop it from occurring in a matter of months, I begin to be afraid.”
Once again, the dark smile broke out. “However, I have reason to believe the exemption may be looking more attractive to our visitor from London. And may be the lifeline our Governor-General will use to pull the Dominion through this crisis.”
His face turned darker and the frown returned: “If it is rejected, General, your next title will have the ‘Vice’ removed from the front of it…”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
USBA Capitol Building
Georgetown, D.C.
June 5, 1833:
John C. Calhoun was wasting no more time. He intended to begin---and, thus, end---the debate by going immediately on the offensive.
There would be no excuses offered for slavery as a “necessary evil,” or “vital to the economic prosperity of the South.” Instead, he would build on the theme of his stump speech that had rallied support across the South: slavery is a “positive good,” based on the equally rock-solid pillars of white supremacy and paternalism. As he had told cheering crowds from Norfolk to Tuscaloosa: “all societies, since time immemorial, have been ruled by an elite class which directs and then enjoys the fruits of the labor of the less-privileged.” Today, he would expose the hypocrisy of the Northern---and English---ruling classes by comparing their attitude toward their own lower classes to the paternalism demonstrated by the planters of the South!
Van Buren, in his role as President of the Senate, was in the chair as Calhoun rose to ask permission to speak. The Southern caucus had spread word yesterday that the fireworks would begin the moment Matty Van gaveled the Senate into session; the galleries were now crammed with Congressmen, diplomats and anyone else who could force entry:
Sir John Burrell, representing the Duke, saw a black-haired, eye-patched man of wiry yet powerful build squeeze in between Count Renkowiitz and M. Jean-Claude. One look at Captain Bratton’s grim face provided confirmation: so this is Ignatieff/Karlhamanov! Bratton’s concentration on the Russian was broken when he glanced past to an upper row: that fabulous auburn-haired Lucille Latoure was moving to a seat, accompanied by Mrs. Scott. Frank Blair, after depositing Eliza in the gallery next to Sarah Polk, had now sighted General Scott, off to the left and back of the podium. Scott, who had made arrangements to hear the debate with Blair, now grunted in acknowledgement of the sudden appearance at his side of an elf-like, elegant old man with a mischievous grin. He had wondered how long till Aaron Burr would be back in town…
After an awkward, self-depreciating attempt at humor concerning Van Buren’s assumption in the new 23rd Congress of his own role in the previous one---“let us pray the quality of the oratory you will hear will be superior to that which helped drive me from your chair”---Calhoun moved immediately into the twin-pillar foundation of his speech.
He then fired his first salvos at the North and England: Southern slaves, unlike Northern or European laboring classes, were not cast aside to die in poverty when they became too old or ill to be of use to the governing classes:
“I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe (and the North)…look at the sick and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse!”
The Senate erupted in cheers, jeers and outright groans and gasps of disbelief at this righteous depiction of Southern benevolence. Scott could see Webster on his feet, demanding to be heard as Van Buren hammered the gavel down repeatedly with a surprising strength. “Poor Matty will have finger calluses and shoulder strain before this day is through,” Burr whispered in his ear. Elsewhere, Henry Clay could be seen shaking his head sadly, while Troup led the wild Southern applause.
Perhaps, Calhoun was now saying, the peculiar institution might not be the negros’ permanent destiny.
“If at some point, it will be deemed wise and practical to emancipate the slaves,” that point would come several generations from now when the blacks have been made “unfit for slavery and made fit for freedom by equally generous doses of education and discipline administered by the individual masters and mistresses of that time at the direction and close supervision of the respective state governments…not through arbitrary decisions made in either London or Georgetown!”
This was not a new, or even Southern, position, he added.
“During the great debates by the founding fathers at the Constitutional Convention, the following statement was recorded by the Convention’s Secretary: ‘The morality or wisdom of slavery are considerations that belong to the states themselves.’”
The dark smile flashed as he paused to await the abatement of the obligatory groans and catcalls. Then he pounced:
“James Madison, Secretary of the Convention, attributed that assertion to one Oliver Ellsworth.” He paused again. “The delegate from Connecticut.”
The South, the Senator now proclaimed, “comes here today with the expectation, yea, the assumption,” that the other sections join in demanding that Parliament and Lord Grey’s Government uphold the maxim enunciated by Ellsworth and abide by the articles of the Colonial Compact and the USBA Constitution concerning property rights: “a right no less sacred, no less inviolate that that of freedom of speech, assembly and the holding and bearing of firearms.”
The previous gasps and groans could not match the uproar that followed Calhoun’s final remarks. Ignoring the evidence of his previous stump speeches, he categorically denied that the South “seeks an ‘exemption’ from Parliamentary legislation. We seek to have the Compact and the Constitution revalidated; to have confirmation from London, based on the united stance of the peoples of this Dominion, these concurrent majorities, that our rights will be respected; our property conceded as our own and our tranquility guaranteed!”
___________
The Residency
June 5, 1833, 6 p.m.:
“Concurrent majorities!” Frank Blair shook his head disgustedly at the Governor-General. “That same damn theory Calhoun first floated back in ’31! That no government can long operate without a general concurrence of its systems. And, if any one of the social or community systems of a government feel its survival threatened, it automatically will resist by all means possible; a war for survival is thus inevitable!”
“Unless, of course, the other systems give in….” Jackson was brief and dry.
The closest advisor
nodded in agreement as he sipped the decanter of Tennessee whisky Jackson had handed him upon his immediate return from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Calhoun has degenerated most dangerously,” Blair said, “into a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.”
Jackson was now looking out the window toward the picturesque Potomac and the stately mansion on the hill. Washington’s adopted son, Custis, lives there. I wonder, old George, what you would say---or do--if you were in my boots? You held slaves, plenty of them, and never manumitted a one…until you were comfortably dead and buried. Yet, you had as much, if not more, to do with putting this system of government together---and making it work---than anyone!
He turned to Blair, who was now pacing the room and had apparently asked a question. “I’m sorry, Frank, my mind was elsewhere. You said…?”
“I asked, Andrew, whether you think Calhoun could be so drunk on his own rhetoric that he actually believes the South can bully the rest of the Dominion---and London---with the mere threat of secession.
“Surely, he doesn’t believe the Dominion---or the Empire---will just permit the South to secede, rather than risk a sectional insurrection? Or that the South can whip the Dominion’s forces, especially with the British military ready to step in as needed, if it should come to a fight? Or that the rest of the Dominion will join in resuming the unpleasantness of 1775 out of some sense of continental loyalty?”
Jackson had poured himself a healthy refill and stood leaning against the window sill, Arlington House towering above him in the distance. He sipped and pondered for so long Blair was half-convinced he had no answer. A first time instance, if so!
