“Do you still not understand?” he cried. “We’re bankrupt—no economy, no currency, no structure, no credit. We’re the laughingstock of the commercial world. But I can give us structure, restore our credit, control inflation. Jimmy, I can put us on a par with any nation in the world.”
“Nor do I doubt that,” Jimmy said. “But, Alex, I think you understand finance too well and your fellow Americans too little.”
“So you say, but what is there to understand? The common man is just that, common. He’s a boor. Knows nothing. Captive of his emotions. Prey of demagogues. As witness the ear he gives all these dirty little Democratic rags attacking our financial reality.”
Jimmy started to speak, but Alex shouted him down. “Captive of his emotions, sir! Swung by the last shout penetrating
his piggy little brain. Of course he needs to be controlled, guided, shaped, held in line. He’s a peasant! And peasants were made to be held in line, to touch their caps to their lords and ladies. This difference you see in Americans has about the width of an eyelash.”
“You’re wrong, Alex,” Jimmy said. His smile was supremely confident, and it subtly ridiculed Hamilton. Alex caught it too, that flush riding up his cheeks again. “In fact, the common man is a lover of freedom. He possesses an innate wisdom, rough hewn at times but entirely real. He takes care of himself, he controls himself, his sense of right and wrong rings like a bell, he’ll fight forever for his freedom. And he sees you canting government away from him—catering to the bosses, the money men, the merchants and owners. And sooner or later he’ll make you pay, Alex.”
The general had pushed back his chair. “That’ll do, gentlemen,” he’d said. Still, it had been illuminating and he was glad he’d let the argument rage, distressing as naked anger could be. He doubted Alex and the Federalists really wanted monarchy in America—the general had made that decision for them years before—but they certainly wanted the best people in charge and probably liked the idea of institutionalizing their role in a hereditary form, nobles in perpetuity. Once, much later, he challenged Alex to his face on this and Alex backed and filled, smiling boyishly, but he never denied it.
It wouldn’t have mattered so much if this were just a cabinet quarrel, but in fact it swept across the country. The parties shaped ever more clearly around these opposite visions, newspapers hammered the issue, even the states split up, taking sides, New England strong for Federalism, South and West for the Democrats, middle states swinging. Federalists shouted that any nation must be run by the nobility, call it what you like; Democrats denounced an elite rewarded at the common man’s expense. The general had judged the party break to be beyond repair.
The image of an old soldier swapping his certificate for a sack of beans was darkly painful, but in the end he’d accepted
Alex’s plan because he’d seen no alternative; we would have no standing in the world till we could pay our bills. But an estrangement arose between him and the two Virginians. This hurt, especially with Jimmy. Tom was brilliant, but there was something foolish about him too. Jimmy was solid.
A dream seized him. He’d plunged into a lake, didn’t know why. The water’s warmth was comforting and he’d gone down and down in search of something, he wasn’t sure what, until his breath began to fail and now he was fighting his way back to the surface, lungs bursting. He popped awake and heaved a great gasp that broke things open enough—
Craik bent over him. With candle and mirror he cast light into the tortured throat. Craik’s face was strained; the general read fear. There were more men in the room. He recognized Dr. Brown from over at Port Tobacco, and Craik introduced a Dr. Dick, Elisha Dick, new young fellow from Alexandria, who bowed deeply. He’d just finished medical school at Edinburgh, well known as the best in the world, but he looked very young.
Three
doctors … he must be as ill as he felt. He let Craik depress his tongue while Brown held mirror and light and they all peered. He felt about like that heifer he’d been doctoring.
“Quinsy, I think,” Craik said. Pus engulfing the tonsils. The general nodded: That’s what it felt like. Brown agreed. The young fellow hesitated, then said, “With respect, it could be inflammation of the throat membranes.” Craik grunted, which told the general all he needed to know about the young man. Edinburgh was fine, but the lines in Craik’s face made the real diploma.
Martha wiped his face. He asked for the two wills in his desk. Her eyes widened and she started to object, but he gave her his command stare. One was out of date: Burn it. The other went into her closet. She said he’d soon be better, but he raised a hand; he knew he was in a long slide toward the end.
Craik bled him again, Martha watching in alarm. Not
much blood came. Craik burned his neck with Spanish fly to bring blisters and draw blood from the throat. Fed him sage tea with vinegar, but his throat instantly closed and he was drowning until Craik lifted him. He fell back on the bed feeling more dead than alive; this was going to be harder than he’d supposed.
He spun off into blessed darkness, yet felt his mind was firing with its old force. Too late now to dream of the healing speech, but he didn’t want to go into the dark night feeling his country was dying too. His brilliant young men had brought the issue to focus. Who are we? How will we define ourselves? Tightly held, narrowly based, men of wealth controling with lesser folk locked to place and class? Or open, fluid, moving, every man equal, with breaks as fair for the poor as for the wealthy, everyone limited only by his own capacities, free to be all that brains and grit could make him?
That was the quarrel out of which parties had grown. Now men seemed willing to war to the death over these matters. But how had we come to that? Eyes shut, motionless, taking shallow breaths, Martha’s weight heavy on one side of the bed, he could hear them talking in low voices. But he held to the question—he must know!—and immediately saw how thoroughly the events of the last decade had pushed both sides toward extremes.
He remembered the day the news from France had burst—they were in New York, he and Martha still in the Osgood House on Franklin Square. There had been a clamor outside and he’d gone to a window to see shouting men running from the direction of the Battery. It was late fall and a light rain had kept up all day. An hour later Billy delivered a rain-spattered broadsheet headlined REVOLUTION IN FRANCE! the ink still wet. Commoners had taken over, all new laws proclaimed, the king acquiesces, crowds seize the Bastille, political prisoners stream to freedom. He remembered standing just inside the door, light pouring in from a high window, Billy pulling off his wet coat, and he’d thought instantly, this will be trouble.
It was happening too fast, the old thrown away too rapidly,
wild mobs surging in the streets of Paris, and it was sure to get out of hand. Monarchies of Europe would resist it, and that could mean war and they would try to draw us in … .
Every ship brought fresh news. Americans took the French adventure as an extension of their own revolution. They thrilled to a glorious declaration of liberty,
Rights of Man and of the Citizen
. Crowds celebrated in American streets. Men wore the soft liberty caps affected in Paris, decorated their coats with tricolor cockades, sang French songs in theaters, dropped mister for citizen as a form of address. This enthusiasm swirling madly through the streets—he could feel it even as his stately carriage passed by—was infectious but a little frightening too. Everything seemed unstable.
Jefferson had been beside himself with joyous approval and infuriatingly patronizing to boot. On the basis of his ambassadorial years he explained it in moralizing little analogies for America, showing that the gentry should look for no special favors. When French affairs did darken, Tom seemed to see them as insignificant, the important thing being that the French movement stood for liberty.
The general had grown steadily more concerned. French radicals executed the king and scores of nobles, bloody blade clattering, heads tumbling to the basket. The mad zealot Robespierre opened a reign of terror that killed thousands; bodies must have been stacked like cordwood in France from the sound of things.
Americans enthused over revolutionary ideals as they lamented the excesses. It puzzled the general that events abroad that really were none of our business should so profoundly affect life here. Both sides were ready to fight. Democrats said all that mattered was that monarchy had been vanquished and democracy was on the march. Federalists said that France proved that democracy given free rein must destroy itself and all around it. Let Democrats push Federalists aside in America and next thing you know the best people would be dangling from trees.
Sure enough, war did flame in Europe. Surrounding monarchies attacked the revolution, which responded with evangelical fervor. Then Britain jumped in against France and, just as Washington had expected, both sides turned on the little United States. It had infuriated him then; and sick as he was, it still did, breath going short at the thought. Man abused you, you’d like to take a stick and break some heads. Both abused us, stopping our ships, seizing our cargoes, the British impressing our seamen, each trying to force us into a reluctant alliance.
The general had hoped this pressure would draw our own warring sides together, but no—the split widened. Never mind Robespierre’s excesses, Democrats said, the French were fighting to preserve democracy against monarchial tyrants, and a fellow democracy
must
support them. Federalists called American Democrats slaves to the French, who would make us an overseas department of France. Rather, Democrats shouted, Federalists were using the war as excuse to tuck America under the wing of the British monarchy. At least, though, Tom quit talking about the nobility of the French after the Terror took hold.
“Tell me,” the general remembered crying in exasperation one day, this when the secretary of the treasury and the secretary of state had stopped speaking, “do you really believe these extremes you’re prating?” And both had nodded.
Papers had gone to new extremes. Congress rocked with charge and countercharge. Orators struck mighty blows for the British on one corner, for the French on the next. Some taverns were Federalist and some were Democratic, and it was as good as a man’s life to go in the wrong one. In Boston a mob tarred and feathered a fellow who insisted on wearing a cockade and singing “La Marseillaise,” the new French revolutionary song.
His eyes popped open. Someone had thrust a knife down his throat, or so it felt. There was haze in front of his eyes and then his vision cleared and he saw Billy Lee standing by his bed. Billy was crying, tears coursing unguarded down
his cheeks. The general put up a hand and Billy took it and held it a moment. Then Washington’s throat closed and he choked for air, his body bucking, and Craik was at his side holding him, and Martha was leading Billy away.
When he could breathe again, rasping, shuddering breaths, he told Craik to bleed him once more. The young doctor, Elisha Dick, raised a hand as if to protest, but Craik ignored him. The old doc milked the arm but almost no blood came and no relief. The general gasped, desperately sucking wind. The young fellow said something.
“He says your throat may close completely,” Craik whispered. “Wants to try something new from Edinburgh. Open your windpipe below your throat so you can breathe through the opening.”
The general was dubious. Speaking was torture. “Wants to cut me?”
“Yes, sir. Cuts into the trachea. Tracheotomy, he calls it. Says they preach it at Edin——”
“Has he done one?”
“No, sir, but he knows how. He says.”
“Come on, Jim.” The fear was back in his old friend’s face and he whispered, his throat tearing, “Do we or don’t we?”
Long silence. Jim sighed and shook his head. “I’m scared,” he said.
That settled it. He didn’t look at the young doctor. He took Craik’s hand. “I die hard,” he said, “but I’m not afraid to go. My breath cannot last long.”
His secretary, Tobias Lear, knelt by the bed and took his hand. “I am just going.” The general forced out the words. “Have me decently buried and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days.” Lear, weeping, nodded.
“Do you understand?” Even now, it was the voice of command.
“Yes, sir!”
“’Tis well.”
He looked around for Martha. She came and sat on the bed. She held his hand in both of hers and after a while she
leaned close and kissed him. He drifted away, conscious of her hand and her presence, drifting down and down into sleep, going away.
Dreams, flashing lights, but it was too late; he was hurrying now. Too late to grasp all the troubles, and did they really matter? The Whiskey Rebellion, those West Pennsylvania farmers bloodily protesting a tax … . He’d thought for a while there that scenes of France were to be replayed, but it had all passed. Finished his second term, the Democratic papers denouncing him in the vilest terms—too late to horsewhip an editor, but it didn’t matter now—and John Adams had taken over.
More trouble with France, they treating us with vast contempt for no reason he could see, but neither was that cause for war … . But Alex wanted war, wanted to focus France as the enemy, wanted to link with Britain just as Jimmy had always said. That Jimmy … there was a man, frail in body, weak in health, iron in mind and courage and force of personality. And good John Adams resisted the Federalist clamor for war, may God bless him in heaven, the country more shredded than ever … .