Out in the hall, I took a moment to gather myself before I greeted our visitors. My father had once said on the eve of the Constitutional Convention, with respect to the dangers of a failed rebellion in Massachusetts, that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Only, here and now, with so much in turmoil in our young nation, I couldn’t help but wonder who was who.
Chapter Twenty-five
Washington City, 16 January 1801
From Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph
Here one feels in an enemy’s country. It is an unpleasant circumstance, if I am destined to stay here, that the great proportion are Federalists, most of them of the violent kind. Some have been so personally bitter that they threaten a dissolution of the government if I’m elected.
WE WERE INFESTED. Not merely with the vermin and detritus of politics, but also with the dreaded itch at Edgehill. “Hold still,” I told my son Jeff, shearing off as much of his hair as possible to rid him of the nits he’d caught running about with an apprentice boy. Though it was winter, I was covered in sweat from the nearby cauldron in our yard where I was boiling his clothes.
And I felt agitated and upset at every little thing.
Why, I was even cross with Ann because I’d told her to finish her Latin translation, but she’d abandoned her books to watch her brother’s delousing.
In truth, since taking upon myself the education of the children, I was beginning to believe that both of my eldest were uncommonly backward. Jeff was a willful hooligan who couldn’t read without moving his lips. Ann had a good memory but never applied it without prompting. Only four-year-old Ellen—who was smart enough for two little girls—showed any aptitude for learning. I knew I ought to have been satisfied if my children turned out well with regard to morals, but I could never sit quietly under the idea of my father’s grandchildren being blockheads. Still, I told myself to be content with the idea of my son as a simple but industrious farmer because blockheads weren’t likely to run for president.
That’s what I was thinking when my stomach cramped so hard that I doubled over. I went down onto the cold ground to retch. Heaving into the grass, I was so very sick I had to crawl my way back into the house. The sickness came in waves, and I could tolerate neither meat, nor milk, nor coffee.
We thought I might be with child again.
I was with child, as it happened. But Tom thought it was more than that. “It isn’t healthful the way you hold your feelings in, and push them down,” he said, as if I’d somehow reached the limit of emotions my body would allow me to suppress.
Sitting on the edge of my bed, his big hand closing reassuringly on my knee, Tom said, “I know the election worries you, but nothing is going to happen to your father.”
“You can’t know that,” I said, vexed that Tom had somehow guessed at exactly the fears that consumed me. “He’s surrounded by violent men who will do anything to prevent him coming to power.”
“He’s beloved of the people—”
“Lafayette was beloved of the people, too. And they threw him in a dungeon anyway.” Unlike Tom, I’d already lived through two revolutions, and I was certain we were in the paroxysms of a third. The Federalists bayed that if my father were allowed to take the presidency, murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest would be openly practiced, the soil soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes. Which made me sure that they meant to kill him or usurp the government. I was equally sure there’d be chains, dungeons, and the gibbet for his supporters … to say nothing of his children and grandchildren.
I wasn’t alone in my fears.
Everyone now talked of civil war, and militias were being mustered. I’d seen this before in France—shouts of violence turned into bloody mayhem. I couldn’t count the revolutionaries I’d known who had, in the end, been eaten by the nation they birthed. As it was, the French Republic was still careening from constitution to directorship to the authority of General Bonaparte, and still the will of the people hadn’t triumphed.
So even though my father’s Republican Party had swept the election, taking both houses of Congress and the presidency besides, the Federalists weren’t prepared to surrender the government. A constitutional defect had allowed a tie between my father and his running mate, Aaron Burr. And now, in a spirit of perpetual war, the vanquished monarchists threatened to make mischief by elevating Burr to the presidency instead of Papa.
But I knew there was a far easier way to keep my father from the presidency. They could, for example, send him the bullet I’d been shielding him from since I was a child… .
And I couldn’t sleep, eat, or defeat the guilt consuming me for having secretly wished the Federalists would prevail. For having wished Papa would lose the election and come home to set things right, because it was all, everything, coming apart.
Even my silence.
“I’m so very worried, Tom. We have four children and another on the way. We’ve a house that’s cold, and wet, and too small.” I bit my lip. I knew wives weren’t supposed to know anything about the business of planting, but I was expected to manage the economy of the household, and how could I do it without knowing how bad off we were? “How are we going to pay our debts? How will we survive?”
“We’ll live on the profits from wheat this year,” Tom said, rising to pace at the foot of my bed. “And give up on tobacco.”
I peered up at him through bleary eyes. “I hope so, Tom.”
Then a sudden clenching pain had me groaning and curling into a sweaty ball. Tom rushed back to swab my forehead with a cool cloth on the nightstand. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rubbed my back and whispered soothingly until the cramps eased off.
Later, after I’d managed a few hours of fitful sleep, he came back with some tea, still warm from the kettle. “You’re letting everything frighten you, Patsy. Trust in me to take care of you. Trust in your father to take care of himself. The Federalists don’t have to kill Mr. Jefferson to keep him from claiming the presidency. They just have to resort to legal trickery, and they’ve shown a willingness to do it. Because of the tie vote, the House of Representatives says they may choose neither candidate and settle upon John Marshall instead.”
John Marshall. I remembered that man from the trial of Richard Randolph—his cool eyes appraising me as I stood there with lies on my tongue and my hand on his Bible. It horrified me to think he might become president.
But my husband continued on with his thoughtful, and admittedly well-reasoned, assessment. “Either way, it won’t come to a fight. In spite of all the saber rattling, your father won’t lead us into war. He doesn’t want the presidency that much. The Federalists won’t go to war either, because above all, they cannot bear anarchy and disorder … that’s the one thing they have in common with your father.”
He was right. My father was a man of routines, civility, and particularity. In France, at the height of the danger, he’d encouraged Lafayette and the others to principled stands, but pragmatic compromise. He often told them to take what they could get in the hopes of pressing for more later. Papa could write fiery screeds, but he was, in fact, an even-tempered, rational actor.
And in the end we were all saved by it. By my father’s temperament, his reputation, and the respect of his enemies. What else can explain the way Alexander Hamilton stepped into the breach to resolve the crisis? Yes, my father’s bitterest foe threw his full weight behind my father’s election to the presidency. Hamilton hated my father. But he hated Aaron Burr—and perhaps John Marshall—much more.
After the House of Representatives voted thirty-five times in a deadlock, on the thirty-sixth ballot my father was elected, peacefully and democratically, to the presidency of the United States.
PAPA AND HIS PARTISANS called it the Revolution of 1800.
Our countrymen delivered the nation into my father’s hands—with much hue and outcry and paroxysms of bitter slander—but ultimately,
without blood. Power passed from one faction to the other in accordance with the wishes of the people, and the rule of law was obeyed. It was the first time such a thing had ever happened in our country, or perhaps anywhere.
Papa wanted my sister and I to rejoice, insisting we make annual visits to the presidential mansion and promising that he’d return to Monticello so often we’d be together four or five months of the year. But it was a plan that ignored reality. With all our little children running afoot, Tom couldn’t do without me. And Jack Eppes couldn’t stay off my sister.
Polly gave birth to a little boy at the end of September, and somehow, it didn’t kill her. But she was so ill that she fled to me, fearful of the physicians near Eppington.
When I felt how thin she was in my embrace, I cried, “Polly, you look so unwell.” My nephew was a fragile creature who had still somehow robbed his mother of nearly all her life’s blood. Her pallor was deathly, and as unreasonable as it was, I blamed Jack Eppes for that. “You’re white as a ghost and thin as a scarecrow!”
Cradling her delicate new baby boy, she smiled softly. “Mr. Eppes is so happy to have a son that he says I’ve never looked prettier. Besides, we can’t all breed so easily and often as you do, Patsy. Why look at you, set to give birth yourself any day now and you’re trying to haul my baggage into your house!”
“I’ll carry it,” my son Jeff said, always a little helper even then. Though I couldn’t get him to crack open a book without bribery or threat, he was a sweet boy. And I was grateful that he dragged my sister’s trunk into the house so I could get her inside.
“I’m fine, Patsy,” Polly insisted as my daughters crowded around. But she wasn’t fine. She was so weak she needed to be helped up the stairs. At which point I realized how much nursing she required. And given how ill I had been during the election, and how ailing I still felt now, I determined that I’d have to have my baby at Monticello, where at least I could count on Sally’s help.
Truly, I longed for my father’s house, the attentions of his servants, windows that didn’t leak, and a bed to birth my baby that was comfortable and clean. After all the terrors of the election, I wanted nothing more than sweet seclusion with my family now.
But in that simple desire, I was to be utterly thwarted. For when Papa came riding up his mountain that summer to fetch us home, he was accompanied by a multitude. Neighbors, relatives, well-wishers, sycophants, and every manner of hanger-on all ascended with him, calling, “President Jefferson! President Jefferson!” He rejected all trappings of monarchy, but our guests fluttered about him like courtiers attending a king.
Except royal courtiers—as I recalled from France—had duties and obligations to their sovereign. Royal courtiers were bound by strict rules of etiquette and social niceties. Royal courtiers didn’t demand berths without invitation. Royal courtiers didn’t lounge about in various states of dress, insolently ordering servants who were not theirs to command.
There was very little I could do about it, however, because my father insisted that as a man of the people, there must be no formality in our entertaining.
During the mornings, I planned the menu then waddled up and down the narrow staircase with my big pregnant belly to unlock the storerooms and cabinets so the servants could keep our guests fed. After meals, I played music to entertain or chased after the children, though my ankles had swollen up so much that my shoes were painful. And by evening, I tended to my sister, who was still too weak to leave her bed.
Perhaps realizing how weary I was, Papa promised, “Next time I visit, I’m resolved to do a flying visit by stealth, telling no one but you that I’m coming.”
On the night my labor pains started, I surprised myself with the thought that I was happy for the pain, because it’d confine me to childbed, where I could rest. After a hard night of panting and pushing, I gave birth to a little girl. And Sally swaddled my baby with crisp efficiency. Later, she and Polly sat with me while I nursed my newborn child, the three of us reminiscing about Paris, a time when all options were open before us. Those memories were preserved forever in our minds like bubbles suspended eternally in glittering glass.
Sally liked to speak of them, though whenever she spoke in French, it annoyed the other slaves. It set her apart. Served as a reminder that she was my father’s pretty, genteel, sophisticated mistress. Sometimes I worried about those resentments and jealousies … but on this night, I only enjoyed our reunion, all three of us with babies at the breast.
Sally was nursing little Harriet, named after her poor daughter who died. But this Harriet, who was as pale and rosy as any little white child, also had my father’s piercing blue eyes. I think Sally loved her best, and how couldn’t she? After all, Harriet, like my Ellen, must be treasured enough for two daughters.
But, of course, daughters were of little help to a planter. Sons were prized—even ones who foamed at the mouth in fits like my sister’s baby, Francis. “Poor little thing,” Sally said to me when my sister drifted to sleep. I thought she meant Francis, but her amber eyes settled on Polly with as much worry as I felt in my own heart. “Miss Polly won’t survive another. She gave Mr. Eppes a son now. That ought to be enough for him.”
No other slave would ever dare say such a thing, but I wouldn’t scold Sally for it. She was only confiding in me what no one else had the courage to say.
“It ought to be enough,” I said.
But I feared it wouldn’t.
“WE’LL CALL THE NEW BABY VIRGINIA—Ginny for short,” Tom said, and I didn’t gainsay him, because I felt his disappointment. A son could help in the fields, but a daughter was another mouth to feed and another bride to dower. He had four daughters, a plantation deeply in debt, and failed crops. And so, at a time when I ought to have been filled with joy for the beautiful new daughter in my arms, I was still sick with worry.
That is, until the day came that I realized I couldn’t afford to be sick with worry.
It started with a cough. First Sally’s children, then my sister’s child, then mine. The illness spread so quickly that our flight from Monticello in the autumn came too late. “It’s the whooping cough,” Polly insisted, wringing her tiny hands. “I’d know that sound anywhere!” She’d been young when she’d taken the cough at Eppington, but she hadn’t forgotten. She’d survived the illness, but our little sister Lucy hadn’t. And at the memory, Polly’s eyes filled with tears.
What could I say to comfort her or myself when our children fell ill, one by one? My clever five-year-old Ellen, after composing her very first letter to her grandfather, promptly fell into a fever and slowly began to strangle with the rest. The children were afflicted with coughing fits that made their eyes bulge, their ribs ache, and their throats so raw they sometimes vomited blood and sobbed. My newborn baby turned blue in the face and gasped for breath. My Ellen and Cornelia both cuddled together under the last clean, dry blanket I had. In her delirium, Cornelia laughed and sang to some unseen spirit above her. But Ellen had the good sense to be gloomy and terrified by her own hallucinations.
“My God, they are dying,” Tom whispered when I passed him in the doorway to the nursery to fetch some honeyed water for the little ones to sip.
Unwilling to credit his whisper, I asked, “Would you do me the favor of fetching my cloak? The blankets and linens I washed aren’t dry yet. But I can keep the girls warm and covered with my cloak.”
Tom took a deep, shuddering breath, then dropped his face into his hands. “We’re going to lose them. Our precious baby girls.”
“We can’t think it,” I said, almost as weary as I was terrified. Then, edging past him, I hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen to scrape the last of our honey from its jar.
Tom was right behind me, his big frame all atremble, and he spoke in a panicked whisper, “I can’t think of anything else, Patsy. I dreamed it last night. Little coffins!”
How was I to hear such a thing and not sink to my knees? But I couldn’t sink to my knees, because our p
recious children needed me. “Please, Tom. Please stop.”
“It’s my curse, Patsy. Everything I do goes wrong. Everything I make withers away. Now my daughters,” he cried, grabbing hold of my shoulder and sobbing into my hair. “My daughters.”
He was so strong, so hardened from horse riding and laboring in the fields, that I couldn’t push him away if I tried. It wasn’t as if I didn’t want to cling to him. That I didn’t want to offer him solace—and receive it in return. But in his state, I knew Tom couldn’t help himself, or me.
Stroking his hair, I called to my son. “Jeff, fetch my cloak for the girls.”
A moment later, Jeff came into the kitchen. “They’ll only spit up on your cloak. Why not—” His eyes widened at the sight of his father weeping in my arms.
And Tom roared in a sudden rage that burned away all his tears like a brushfire. “Don’t you backtalk your mother!” Then my husband’s long arm snapped out, and a slap sent our boy reeling back, stumbling for balance.
“Tom!” I cried, half in disbelief as he tore himself away from me and grabbed up our boy by the shirt, pushing him against the wall. I couldn’t guess what had turned his mood so swiftly, but my voice came sharp like the crack of a musket. “Tom.”
My husband never laid a violent hand on our daughters—never seemed to take anything but delight in Ann, who cowered in the doorway, at the edge of tears. But Jeff worked my husband’s every last nerve. I suspected this time, it was simply that Tom couldn’t bear the thought that his son had seen him weep. He stood there, his chest heaving as he glowered at the scared little boy, then let him go with a shove. “Go do as your mother told you.”
With a hand to his stinging red cheek, Jeff ran off for my cloak. And I turned to Ann. “Your father is tired. Won’t you take him into the other room and read him one of the little newspaper stories Grandpapa cut out of the paper for you?”
Pretty Ann bobbed her head in obedience with a little hiccup before leading Tom out. And I was glad he went with her, even if half in a daze. For I was half in a daze myself. I turned back to my pitcher of honeyed water and stirred the honey into it, catching a glimpse of myself in the surface of the water once it stilled.
America's First Daughter: A Novel Page 35
