America's First Daughter: A Novel

by Stephanie Dray

  “Mistress Randolph,” she said, instead of Miss Patsy, as was her habit since our childhood. “I realize the sight of me offends you, but I beg you not to take it out on my son.”

  I rose from my bed, bewildered. “Whatever can you mean?”

  Sally met my gaze levelly, but her lower lip was atremble. “I loved your sister. I loved Miss Polly all her life, and she loved me, too, but I could never win your affection.” I started to tell her that she did have my affection, but she ran over my words. “That’s why I’ve always kept out of your way and made myself of use to you so that someday you might feel some small bit of love for me—”

  “I do feel it,” I protested. “Of course I do.”

  “Then why are you trying to take my son from me?” Her anguished question echoed through the room, and I was speechless in its aftermath. She pointed with an accusing finger. “I know it was you. Your father wouldn’t speak to anyone else about such a thing. And whatever you said to him—”

  “I advised him to ask Beverly what he wanted!” I cried, in defense of myself.

  But this appeased her not a bit.

  “Beverly? My son is too young to know what he wants.”

  Older than you were when you had to decide, I thought. “He’s a grown man, Sally.”

  She shook her head, nostrils flaring. “He thinks he knows what’s out there for him in the world. Thinks he can leave this mountain behind without regret and make his own way. But it’s a decision he can’t take back. I want him free—but I’m not ready to let him go.”

  How could I blame her? Especially after so nearly losing my own son? But from the edge of my bed I said what I believed to be true. “Wouldn’t it be kinder to let him go, Sally? His Negro blood … it’s only one-eighth. He’s legally white. If Papa petitions to keep Beverly here in Virginia, everyone will know your boy as a former slave. He’ll live with the taint and the shame of it all his life. But if Beverly leaves … he can pass, Sally. Beverly can marry into white society. Isn’t that the best future you can give him?”

  She blanched, wiping tears with the backs of her hands. “That’s what you’d want, if he was your son?”

  I thought hard about her question. I’d been afraid for my son when he marched off to war. Terrified when they brought him back to me in a wagon, bloodied and maimed. Each time, the thought of parting with him forever nearly unraveled me.

  But if I had to give my son up to save him, I would. I was sure Sally would, too. I’d always known her to be a protective mother. And it’d taken the courage of a mother lioness to confront me this way. “Yes, I would, Sally. God as my witness.”

  And this time, it was no lie.

  She narrowed her eyes, hugging herself, bronze arms against a bright white apron. “What happens when your father dies and his estate passes into the hands of a man who hunts Beverly down as a runaway slave?”

  Though I couldn’t bear to think of my father’s death, his health and vigor wasn’t what it once was. When we lost him, his estate would pass to my husband and my sons. “I’ll never let anyone hunt down Beverly. I vow, I’ll never let that happen.”

  When she was sixteen, she’d relied upon my father’s promise. Staked her whole life upon it. I couldn’t say she’d been wrong to, but she was less trusting now.

  And my vow mustn’t have persuaded her, because she kept Beverly at Monticello and sent him back to work as a slave in the carpentry shop.

  JEFF’S FATHERIN-LAW DIED in the autumn of 1820, leaving everything and everyone ruined: his people, his plantation, his once-haughty widow, and quite likely my father, too.

  The only good news was that Jeff was moving his arm. It still pained him, but he had the use of it, which improved my spirits and Tom’s, too. Returning from Richmond for Sunday dinner, my husband set down a carefully folded piece of paper onto the writing table beside me. “A letter from Nancy for you.”

  I smiled, blandly, not wanting to tell him all the letters we’d exchanged since I took her part against Randolph of Roanoke.

  “Nancy sent crayons for Cornelia,” Tom continued, rubbing the back of his neck. “And the girls tell me she sent you an extraordinary cup and saucer.” He turned, his muscles knotting tightly beneath his white shirt. “Martha, I know what you and your lady friends did for Jack Eppes during his campaign against John Randolph.”

  My stomach clenched because I couldn’t be sure who my husband hated more. Jack or John … or me? “We did it for your sister. But it didn’t work.”

  “Oh, it worked,” Tom said, turning to face me, again. “Mr. Morris took my sister’s side in the matter before he died, didn’t he?” Thankfully, that death couldn’t be blamed on Nancy—having come about due to Mr. Morris’s botched self-surgery with a whalebone to remove a blockage from his urinary tract. “My sister is a wealthy widow now, and she has you to thank. You kept the villain from doing real mischief.”

  “But John Randolph won the election anyway,” I said, bitterly.

  “Doesn’t matter. He’ll think twice before going after Nancy again. Besides, anyone could’ve beat Jack Eppes in that election. With the war over and Virginians so angry, Jolly Jack would never make a proper representation for popular rage.”

  He didn’t use the word jolly in any complimentary way. Nevertheless, it was, I thought, a correct assessment. “I’m glad to have been any help.”

  “You’re adept at influencing people, Martha,” he said, staring out the window at the mountain’s turning leaves, as if contemplating the bleak winter to come. “You’re clever at social discourse. You’d be an asset to me in the Governor’s Mansion.”

  By that point, we’d lived apart for nearly two years, during which I’d learned to prefer loneliness to my husband’s hostility. I’d assumed he was happier without me. That’s what gave me pause. But Tom took my hesitation for something else, and snapped, “Martha, without you, I’ll lose this upcoming election and the salary that goes with it. You ought to do at least one of your duties by me, since I’m not holding you to the others.”

  Our marriage bed, he meant, which irritated me enough to resist. “My father needs me here—”

  “Are you his wife or mine? Sometimes, I wonder!”

  I didn’t dignify the question with an answer. Instead, I fumed, no longer able to soothe my temper by reminding myself that ladies were never angry. “Are you so very unpopular a governor, Tom?”

  He crossed his arms. “If I’m not now, I soon will be. Because I intend to introduce a bill for the emancipation and deportation of slaves in Virginia once they reach the age of puberty. I want to abolish slavery in Virginia.” The import of these words crashed down upon me like a house in collapse. Congress had just wrangled its way through an unhappy compromise to admit the new state of Missouri to the union while prohibiting slavery north of it. There was no cause of greater controversy, and now my husband wanted to take up the antislavery banner. “Martha, I decry the new morality which tolerates slavery in perpetuity.”

  “As do I,” I said, swiftly, because I felt accused. “Of course.”

  “Your father says the same, but he won’t lend his support to my proposition. His voice would carry enormous weight, but he says he must leave the accomplishment of ending slavery to the work of another generation.”

  That startled me, though it oughtn’t have. For years, Papa had been asked to advocate more actively against slavery. William Short had all but begged him. Friends like the Coles who had sheltered us in our flight from the British all those years ago had tried to shame him into it. And now my father was old, tired, and often in ill health. Sometimes I believed the love of Virginians—the love of the nation—was all that sustained him. To throw his weight against the slaveholders of the South would surely be a struggle for him beyond his strength.

  But as his daughter … I might serve as a symbol of his authority. And I realized with some astonishment that Tom was asking me to be just that. He was looking to me to help him tackle the moral problem of our ti
me. And if he deserved my obedience in anything, it was in this.

  But it would be more than obedience. For Tom’s request rekindled in me an old flame of Parisian idealism that I thought long snuffed out. I wanted to play a part in dismantling the system of pain and degradation that undermined our union. My father said that the work of ending slavery belonged to another generation. Maybe he was right.

  Maybe it belonged to me and mine.

  THE GOVERNOR’S MANSION WAS A MESS. My husband had been living like a lonely bachelor. Everything was in disorder, windows unwashed, carpets unshaken. I couldn’t find a square inch of the place not coated in a layer of dust. That was the first thing I set right that Christmas season. Then, of course, was the matter of sociability.

  Tom was thought to be an irascible hermit by Virginia legislators, so I determined we’d make the rounds of parties and dinners and holidays balls. I acquired for these functions a beautiful white crepe robe, a lace turban and ruff, and looked fashionable for the first time in more than a decade.

  I’d played the part of first lady for my father. Now I played that role for Tom. I went with him to academic lectures, to see an exhibit of jaguars and elephants, and together we strolled the cobblestone streets where we might be noticed by newspapermen. On his arm, I smiled so persuasively I almost convinced myself that we were happy.

  But that illusion came unraveled after a supper at the Governor’s Mansion one evening in early December. “Your turban is very becoming,” said a courtly gentleman, David Campbell, a dashing man of great political future, who knew my husband from their service during the war. “It’s as though you mean to become the incarnation of Dolley Madison.”

  I smiled, flattered. “I can think of no better lady to emulate.”

  “Can’t you? I suppose you hope to be as popular.”

  I sensed in him some hostility, and wondered at his angle. “I hope to be anything that will do honor to my husband.”

  Mr. Campbell sipped coolly from his glass. “You’re going to get him reelected.”

  I smiled more brightly. “Oh, Governor Randolph’s own conduct will secure his reelection for him, not mine. His ideas are right-thinking, courageous, and worthy of the greatest consideration.”

  Mr. Campbell raised a brow. “You’re going to stand loyally beside him? I suppose you owe him that much.”

  My head tilted as I tried to form a genial reply. “As do all his friends.”

  “It wasn’t his friends who destroyed his military career.”

  My smile froze upon my face, so shocked was I to be confronted on such a matter. “I beg your pardon, sir.”

  Mr. Campbell’s eyes were cold, though he spoke with a chuckle. “You ought to beg your husband’s pardon.”

  I had begged my husband’s pardon. I’d begged it a hundred times. But never did I think Tom would confide our troubles to an outsider, especially when no one need ever have known that I took part in his reassignment. Tom might have spared himself the greater part of the humiliation he felt if only he’d kept quiet about it!

  But alas, self-command was never one of Tom’s virtues. And in that moment, I feared it wasn’t going to be mine. “Mr. Campbell, during my visit I’ve become acquainted with a number of rare creatures. They’re my favorite curiosities. So I’m afraid you must excuse me, as I’m in search of that rare creature still left in Richmond called a gentleman.”

  With that, I left him.

  Mr. Campbell later wrote that I was cold, vain, and sarcastic.

  But I was satisfied, there in the crowded gallery on the cold winter day when my husband was reelected to the governorship, feeling within myself a stoic satisfaction in my duty well done.

  Would that I could’ve been as effective when it came to my husband’s policies. Papa had worked the levers of power with geniality and personal charm, but he’d always properly gauged the public mood. I remembered a time no gentleman of Virginia would ever advocate for slavery, even if none of them took steps to change it. But that was all changed now within a generation. My husband’s proposal to emancipate the slaves was met with fierce and bitter opposition, even though it promised to compensate slave owners for the loss of their property. No matter what Tom said to the legislators and no matter what I said to their wives, our efforts to cleanse Virginia of slavery fell upon deaf ears.

  For Virginians now argued that slavery was a moral good, encouraged by the Bible. I thought it had more to do with the fact they were discovering that slaves were more than an asset in and of themselves; they could be bred. They could be bred for sale to barbarous plantations in Georgia and South Carolina. Though Tom was ready to empty the state’s treasury to bring about an end to the evil, the gentry resisted the antislavery movement as nothing but northerners bent on consolidating power by taking advantage of the virtuous feelings of the people.

  I was ashamed of Virginia that year.

  Tom’s proposal would’ve failed even if my father had supported it. But because it failed without Papa’s support it further embittered Tom.

  It also revealed my father’s paralysis on the matter of slavery, a paralysis brought about by his true intimacy with it. For there was one “wolf” Papa could neither safely hold nor safely let go.

  The last time I saw Beverly Hemings was at Christmas the next year, just before he took his violin outside into the snow to play holiday songs for the slaves on Mulberry Row. Shortly thereafter, he left Monticello and didn’t return.

  I was there when my father grimly took up his pen and listed Beverly as a runaway in his record book. “I’ll send his sister to him on a stagecoach with enough money to establish herself.” Papa said, eyeing me, as if anticipating some objection to the money he meant to give his illegitimate children.

  I put my hand atop his withered one. “You’re a kind and generous father.”

  He looked away, and my heart broke for him. Because I could imagine the pain I’d feel to send my children away, knowing I’d never see them again. But I believed it was a generosity to part with Beverly and Harriet this way. Beverly might never be known as a gentleman, but Harriet had a good chance of becoming a gentleman’s wife. She’d come of age in a genteel household and could both read and write. She’d been trained in the womanly arts of spinning and sewing and keeping house. She was more beautiful than her mother had been, which meant that so long as Harriet disavowed all connection to the Hemingses of Monticello, she might do better than my own daughters in securing her future.

  And in the end, I was right about Sally. Her fierce determination that her children should be free overcame all other instincts. I saw her on the terrace, her arms round her only surviving daughter’s neck. When they finally parted, Sally stood there, staring after her daughter’s carriage, knowing it was likely to be the last time she ever laid eyes on her. Then Sally quietly walked to her room by the dairy and shut herself inside.

  For weeks, Sally didn’t take meals nor did she answer the door when her youngest two sons knocked, nor even when my father sent for her. She pled illness, and my father pretended to believe her. For with the departure of Beverly and Harriet, our gentler way of life was more fiction than it had ever been before.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Monticello, 26 January 1822

  From Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Keech

  It’s not in my power to give you a definite idea of when our University may be expected to open. We shall be truly gratified should it become an instrument of nourishing those brotherly affections with our neighboring states which it is so much our interest and wish to strengthen.

  WHAT A PAIR of schoolmasters we’ve become,” my father said when my youngest boys dragged their school desks from my sitting room into a circle round his stuffed leather chair for a Latin lesson. Having recently taken a fall that put his arm in a sling, and with the winter weather harder on his bones than it used to be, Papa was housebound.

  The weather kept visitors away, so during our quiet winter respite, we made a little u
niversity out of Monticello. And because Sally was less and less at my father’s side since her eldest children left Monticello, Papa looked increasingly to me for his happiness.

  I enjoyed every moment of our harmonious idyll, but when spring thawed our mountain, Papa was restless and called to Burwell. “I want my horse.”

  We’d always relied upon Sally to quietly and sweetly dissuade Papa from folly, but the competent and devoted Burwell was too pliant, leaving only me to protest my elderly father’s insistence upon riding. “At least take a servant with you!”

  “I’ve been roaming this country since I was a boy. No one knows these lands better than me.” Soon after, he was up and into the saddle, riding off with the air of power he still carried with him even at his age.

  That busy day saw me chasing after my recalcitrant boys, who insisted on pelting one another with chinaberries from their grandfather’s ornamental trees. Ranging in age from five to seventeen, my four rowdies were as noisy and dirty as the half-alligator, half-horse men that infested our western country. They kept me so busy that the great clock chimed the dinner hour before I realized my father wasn’t home.

  In the parlor, Cornelia looked up from the architectural rendering of my father’s university and dusted her fingers. “I’ll ride out and look for him.”

  “Let your brothers go.” But before I could call them, we heard a commotion near the terrace where my father, frail, soaking wet, and muddy, was being helped up the stairs by Sally’s sons. Papa’s good arm was draped over an adolescent Eston, who in the light of that early spring evening looked much like my father in his youth. Supporting my father on the other side was eighteen-year-old Madison.

  My tongue let loose before I could measure myself. “What the devil happened?”

  “Fell in the river,” Papa said, and nothing more than that. He was shaken, but he didn’t seem injured. Though when we finally sat down together at the table for a meal that had gone cold, he explained, “The horse fell upon me and pinned me under the water. I’m mortified that if I’d drowned on that shallow spot, everyone would think I’d committed suicide.”