Maybe a bankrupt nation was more desperate than you’d guess. Clearly they needed Santo Domingo to protect the route to Louisiana and Louisiana to support the island. But look beyond that—the Spanish empire had been dying for years, revolution in the air everywhere. Maybe that was Napoleon’s real aim—Cuba with its sugar, Mexico with gold pouring from its mines …
Grain and gold … fuel with which to conquer the world!
Yet it was feckless, wishful thinking pushing dreams, frantic soldiers colliding with reality. In the end reality controls, and Madison had an idea that disaster lay ahead for Napoleon, though better someone else should administer the coup de grace. All America need do was show him that the centerpiece of his plan was forever beyond his grasp. Warn him off …
Madison stood as the president entered the room with Albert Gallatin and behind them, Henry Dearborn, secretary of war. The president settled himself and looked around with a frown as the steward poured tea. He disliked cabinet meetings—they wasted time, invited posturing, set up quarrels, so he said. He liked to sound members individually, then act on his own.
Dearborn, whose suit looked tighter every time Madison saw him, dragged the cruller platter before him and took three with relish. He’d been on Benedict Arnold’s starvation march to Quebec in the Revolution; perhaps something of those terrible days still lived in him. Levi Lincoln, the attorney general, and Robert Smith, secretary of the navy, came in together. Robert was Sam Smith’s little brother, without half his ability.
“Damned blackguard,” Dearborn growled, when Madison described the visitor.
“He was very explicit,” Madison said. “They intend to have a Mississippi empire at our expense.” He looked around the table. “Of course, we won’t stand for that.”
“No, we won’t,” the president said. He glanced at the secretary of war. “Henry, I suppose this falls to your area.”
Dearborn wiped his lips with a cambric kerchief. “Yes, sir, and I hope you won’t take it amiss when I point out that we have cut the army almost in half—from six thousand when we took office to scarcely more than three thousand today.”
Madison heard an edge in the president’s voice. “Meaning,” he said, “that now we must deal with what is.”
“Yes, sir,” Dearborn said. Madison saw a bead of sweat on his upper lip. “As to the state of the army, I asked General Wilkinson to be here. He’s waiting downstairs.”
When Captain Lewis went to fetch the general, some oddity in his expression made Madison wonder what had gone on between them in the past. As the captain opened the door for the general that oddity had intensified. Seemed strange …
Wilkinson bowed when he entered. “Mr. President. Gentlemen.” Late fifties, Madison judged, stuffed into his uniform like a sausage, the saber a cock’s tail jutting out behind. But overall, his usual gaudy uniforms had been set aside in favor of plain blue with cream facings. Not quite a warrior but businesslike. Madison knew better than to judge on appearance alone, but it did strike him that this was a shifty-looking man. Rumor said Wilkinson had been in the
pay of the Spanish for years, feeding them information and misinformation. Was he doing the same with the French? Still, rumor was hardly a creditable source. The man did head the army and they were stuck with him, another reason, Madison thought wryly, to avoid war.
Wilkinson laid out the facts well enough. Army of three thousand men, of whom two thousand could be called effective, and one thousand, roughly speaking, could start down the river to challenge the French within three months. A thousand men; Leclerc had twenty-five thousand. They wouldn’t all be available, but he certainly would have ten thousand troops free for combat.
American troops still carried French muskets left over from the Revolution. No replacing them now, but muskets wore out in the field, despite regimental gunsmiths. America had gunsmiths, of course, but few were good for more than fifty pieces a year, each weapon being made individually and fitted by hand. Rearming would be difficult … .
Uniforms already were scarce and would wear out quickly on a march. Powder and shot was short. Medical supplies. Shoes. Frontier posts had vegetable farms and raised livestock for meat. But on the march they would need massive supplies of food. Wilkinson seemed to have no idea of the availability of corn and beans, let alone salt pork and beef in vinegar.
Artillery … well, three pounders were useful for aweing Indians but negligible against professional soldiers. Even the six pounders were small for serious combat. More clearly than ever, Madison saw that the army was a frontier force maintained to discourage Indian raids and keep Indians and settlers apart.
“Of course,” the president said, “ultimately we’ll rely on militia. We could rally fifty thousand militia men on fairly short notice, a hundred thousand in a year. Everyone from twelve to seventy. But they’re prickly, and they’ll take suggestions better than orders. Are you prepared to direct such a force?”
For a moment Wilkinson looked as if he’d peered into an abyss, but then he said smoothly that he would welcome the challenge. With a start, Madison saw that the man was afraid—of war, of field command, of the kind of men he must dominate as commander. He was an arranger, a conniver, not a real commander. The thought jolted Madison back to the idea that they must do all they could to sidestep war—and his belief that the French would swing to his way of thinking yet.
When the general left, Madison said, “Henry, what about these rumors that Wilkinson is—well, too close to the Spanish?”
Dearborn scowled. “I’ve heard them, of course. He lived on the frontier for years before he reentered the army and was an active trader on the river. Still trades, I think. But remember, nothing has been proved. He runs the army well. He’s not popular with his men; he’s a cruel disciplinarian and his personality makes enemies. But after all, he is what we have.”
There was more to it than that, Madison thought. Even he knew that on the frontier Wilkinson was considered a ludicrously poor trader whose ventures consistently failed to make a profit but who yet returned from Spanish territory with a profit. The whispers were legion, but they were only whispers, and he knew enough about the frontier to understand that it was alive with whispers and that drawing a line between consorting with a hostile power and carrying on trade that only moved with the permission of that power was necessarily narrow. And he saw that Dearborn had, in fact, put his finger squarely on the reality before them: Wilkinson was all they had and seeking out a new commander this late in the game could be fatal.
Dearborn cleared his throat and Madison realized that he felt himself under attack, as if military weakness was all his fault. “Now, Mr. President,” he said, “we see it takes time to get ready. I’d say the sooner we tie down that connection with Britain and the Royal Navy, the better.”
“Maybe we should hold up,” Madison said slowly. “There’s something crazy here.” He described his thinking and added, “I have an instinct, maybe wrong but strong. Let’s risk the wait and see what happens. They’re on the edge now; maybe they’ll come to grief on their own. Let’s see how the story plays out.”
“Well, now,” Dearborn said, his voice became a rumble, sure sign he was agitated, “that’s easy for you to say, but war is my responsibility and we just heard the problems—”
“All right, Henry,” the president said. He had a faint smile and Madison saw he already had decided. That was the joy of working with Thomas Jefferson, Madison thought; they were often unalike, their minds usually took different paths, but again and again they came out on the same bedrock of good sense. The president was looking at Dearborn. “We may regret it, but I think we’ll pause a little longer. Start war preparations and they’re hard to stop. People get their blood up and things can go out of control. Let’s not go to war a moment before we must.”
Then, with a firm air of summing up, he said, “All right. They do sound a bit off their heads. Certainly their dreams exceed their grasp. But given the costs of tying up with Britain, I’d like to push the French harder. So what progress are we making in penetrating their darkness?”
“Unfortunately, Madison said,”we have a better case than we have means to convey it.” He sketched out their avenues, Livingston, Pichon, perhaps Du Pont, even Montane and Leclerc, who for all their bluster understood they were in deep water.
The president nodded. “Livingston’s not much help. Pichon is the question. Does he understand? Will he relay honestly?”
“He understands,” Madison said. “But I don’t know how strong he is. That general seemed to terrify him yesterday. Will he have the courage to say what he knows his leader doesn’t want to hear? I don’t know, Mr. President. I just don’t know.”
WASHINGTON, EARLY FALL 1802
It was near dusk, the day warm and dusty. Madison stood near a side entrance of the mansion, inconspicuous in the shadow of a basswood. A closed carriage drew up, young Meriwether Lewis on the box. When Madison stepped inside he found the rear seat vacant and recognized a mark of courtesy.
“Good evening, sir,” he said.
“Good evening, Mr. Secretary,” said Senator Ross.
They rode in silence, facing each other, the horses at a walk, the carriage groaning and shuddering over the pitted dirt streets of Washington. Ross was a vociferous Federalist, but Pittsburgh was the starting place for all the commerce that floated the Ohio and on to the Mississippi and no place was more threatened by French invasion plans. Rough-spoken and often brick red with anger, his grizzled hair standing on end, Ross nevertheless was intelligent and his word as good.
Fingering his beard, voice low and reluctant, Ross said, “I wanted to meet ’cause I Goddam don’t like the way things are going. Young Merry said it would be in confidence—no gossip I’m consorting with the enemy!”
“Enemies?” Madison said. “Well, if so, we’re on neutral ground and all is in confidence.” Where had Merry found this carriage? It had little flower vases bracketed beside each door and would have been at home in a mourner’s train.
Ross’s voice was a growl. “Cards on the table though. Way I see it, the Democrats are a disgrace to this country,
full of the same crazy ideas that destroyed France and spawned this mad dictator. And I predict that at the next election the people will recover their senses and send your benighted leader back to his Virginia hilltop!”
Madison waited. Ross said into the silence, “Now, I told Merry, I’d never sit in the same room with that man. Disgusting fellow.” Madison let that pass too. Given the wild and vicious attacks on Thomas Jefferson all about the country, it was mild enough. Ross pointed a long, bony finger and said, “You—you’re different. I know you to be an honorable man, but—well, you know your trouble, James? It’s that you get on the wrong side of the question and you’re smart enough to convince yourself it’s the right side. But it ain’t!”
“Senator,” Madison said, “I’m glad we’re having this little chat. Otherwise I’d never have known how you felt.”
Ross stared at him, then laughed. “All right … but I’ll be working to end your tenure next time around.”
“And we’ll defeat you again, for we are the wave of the future and you are the story of the past.”
He waited a moment, then added, “But we have more immediate problems, so let me set a starting premise. We disagree on politics, but I hope we agree that we don’t intend to let any other country split us in half and make off with the West, where, in fact, our future lies—that, in short, we don’t intend to give up the Mississippi River to anyone!”
“Couldn’t put it better myself.”
“So the question is, what do we do about it?”
“Exactly,” Ross said. He had a triumphant air. “Here’s what I intend to do. Senate reconvenes, I’ll introduce a bill to raise fifty thousand troops, appropriate five million dollars for supplies and arms, and float ’em down to take New Orleans and be done with it! Throw the dons out on their ass and dig in to take care of the French when they arrive.”
Madison sat back. Five million … the annual budget was only ten Million. Bankruptcy stood in the wings; quietly he said he’d like to find a less expensive way to do it.
“Well, let me just say something here. Problem is, way it
looks to a lot of us, you don’t really intend to do a damned thing. You may not like the sound of it, but truth is we don’t see a lot of pith on display down your end of the avenue.”
Madison ignored that. He sketched out his simple thesis: Napoleon could never hold Louisiana, he must certainly be defeated if he tried, and the point was to make him understand that before he took the plunge. They wrangled a bit, Madison patiently leading him to light. Ross was for calling in the Royal Navy, always a Federalist dream. But Madison rocked him back on his heels with plain facts. Suppose Britain took New Orleans and kept it for itself? Britain helping to snatch Spanish territory surely would drive Spain deeper into Napoleon’s arms. Didn’t the senator think Britain would want recompense for adding Spain to its list of enemies? And wouldn’t that recompense take the form of demanding we enter the war—and place ourselves under Britain’s wing?
The carriage creaked and sighed, the horses still at a walk. It was getting dark outside and he could hardly see the senator. There was a crackle of tension in the air. At last Ross said in a strangled voice, “Well, what’s your idea?”
“We think Napoleon is blinded by pride, but he’s not an idiot. So we think we can get his eyes open.”
“In time, you mean?”
“Exactly. Warn him off. Show him he can’t win.”
“And if you fail?”
“Go to Congress. Ask for a hundred thousand men and ten million dollars. Call in the British and strike the best deal we can. A disaster, you see, but not so great a disaster as Napoleon on the Mississippi.”
Another long silence. Then, “That’s a guarantee?”
“Solid gold.”
Ross chewed on a thumbnail, gazing at Madison. At last he said, “Tell you what. You ought to know where you stand by the time Congress takes up. I think it would do Napoleon a world of good to know Congress ain’t going to let this pass. So why don’t you and me work together? Let’s talk, time to time, and one day we’ll put a bee in that bastard’s ear.”
“I’ll count on you,” Madison said. He put out his hand and Ross grasped it, hard.
“Tough little devil, that Madison,” Danny’s uncle said. They were strolling the waterfront on the Eastern Branch of the Potomac well out of anyone’s hearing. They’d had fair winds out of New Orleans and made Norfolk in less than four weeks. The
Cumberland Queen
had gone on to Boston with the sugar, while Danny and William Clark took a twoday stage to Washington.
He had been sharply skeptical during the voyage, and indeed, until she’d delivered him to the little brick State Department. He’d grunted when she showed him the president’s house, and she had wanted to kick his shins. But he was different when he returned. Since walls have ears, he refused to talk till they were safely in the open, ignored in the midst of hubbub—vessels creaking at dockside, stevedores hustling cargo up long gangways, stockmen shouting at the donkeys that powered winches hoisting bales and boxes, and Mr. Clark in his polished boots and bottle green coat stepping carefully around donkey droppings.
“Tough?” Danny asked. She thought she’d better set her uncle straight. “I don’t think so. I see him often and he’s always gentle, soft-spoken, quite witty, really, though he does freeze up with strangers. That’s probably what you saw.”
He turned to her. “I see you don’t know him at all.”
“But I do. I know him well.”
“No, you know his social side. I saw his real side. He’s not a man to fool with, not at all.” Then, after a silence, “He’s sending me to France.”
She was amazed. “He is?”
“Unofficially, you understand. I’m to see the men I’ve dealt with commercially. He wants me to use them to reach their most trusted friends in export-import.”
“To what end, Uncle?”
“I’m to let ’em know they can lose pots of money in Louisiana if Talleyrand presses this to conclusion. He seems
to think Talleyrand is half mad and half devil, and he’s probably right. Anyway, if France goes ahead, the United States will fight. New Orleans will be a battleground, and they’ll lose everything they’ve invested. To say nothing of what I’ll lose.”
She walked in silence, digesting that. It gave her a new sense of Dolley’s husband, which made her think she’d better start looking at people more closely. Know your opponents … her lips tightened. It had been a valuable morning.
But inexplicably this made her think of Henri. For the two weeks she had been idled in New Orleans awaiting Mr. Clark, she and Henri had indulged in near constant lovemaking, wild, tumultuous, thrilling. She’d been surprised to realize how much she had needed a man. Zulie told her she was much improved—eyes brighter, complexion clearer, laughter joyous. And she realized that day by day Henri had passed from a tremulous lover as delighted as he was needy to a steady assertion of masculinity.
That first night, after they had coupled and even as they prepared to couple again, he had asked her to marry him and she was plunged back into the dilemma. In the days that followed he insisted that he loved her and always had, that he’d married only because she was gone forever, that life would be empty without her, that he had motherless, children who would love her … .
But he lived in New Orleans, she in Washington, he in a society in which a free-thinking wife disgraced a man, she among people who didn’t give much to women but allowed them to own and carry on business. Business—there was the rub. Marriage would give Henri the business that Carl had built—and that she was taking such joy in running independently.
Give that up? No, she couldn’t do it. And yet, every time he tilted her mouth up to meet his, she thought she couldn’t give this up either. They had quarreled the night before she’d left, his worst qualities on display, and then he had wept and begged her forgiveness and said it was love for her that drove him to excess. And promised again that if they married
her business would be hers forever—as God was his witness, he would never touch it.
Yet something in his manner tugged at her all the way home. They’d crossed the Gulf, rounded the Florida Straits with a following wind, and plunged into the awful seas off Cape Hatteras, Mr. Clark on the quarterdeck most of every day, ignoring icy spray as he gazed into the distance without a word as if trying to search out a clouded future. He scarcely spoke, which left her time for her own reflections, and gradually she grew convinced that for all Henri said, in fact he resented her business and her success. And that really meant he resented her independence.
It was a bad beginning for a love affair, let alone for marriage, but she didn’t have to think about it now. To Clark she said, “The French government, Napoleon’s police, will they like this line of argument?”
He gave her the quick, raffish smile of a man who didn’t mind combat “It’s not without peril and he’s not forcing me to go. But the men I’ll see, it’s to their advantage that I get home safely. And Monsieur Talleyrand loves money above all else; you may be sure he listens to these men.”
They reached the end of a dock and gazed off toward Buzzard’s Point, where, for the moment, seagulls dominated. A man in an anchored rowboat fished below them.
“You know,” her uncle said, “an odd point. He wants me back in New Orleans soon as I can. Says there’ll be work there for the American consul. He seemed to be saying—didn’t quite say it, you know, but it was the feeling I had—that no matter how this comes out, the Spanish are finished. I think he wants New Orleans … and I guess he speaks for the United States.”
“I guess he does,” Danny said in a small voice. It had been a day of surprises.
The last guests had left and Jimmy, exhausted, had gone to bed. Dolley, always wide awake after a successful dinner, sat with Anna amid the debris of the table. She refilled Anna’s
glass and her own; she had already sent Sukey to bed. Now, in the quiet pleasure of relaxing after a party’s tensions, they chatted over the evening, Danny unusually tense and tightly drawn. Louis Pichon making excuses for Pirette, whose difficult pregnancy was too advanced to risk going out; Hannah Gallatin easing a tense moment with quiet good sense; Albert going on just a little too long—doubtless national finance was important and perhaps it could even be interesting, but over dinner?
“That Ned Thornton is good looking, isn’t he?” Anna exclaimed. Her eyes were bright over her wineglass. “Talks funny, but he’s a tonic to the eye.”
“Anna!” Mock reproof. “What’s this for a girl practically at the altar with Mr. Cutts?”
Anna laughed. “Even when I’m married, I don’t suppose I’ll stop looking at men. Mr. Cutts looks at women—tries to hide it from me, but it won’t hide.” Dolley smiled, remembering her faint surprise that Jimmy had noticed Danny Mobry’s beauty.
“While we’re on such things,” Anna said, “what do you think really goes on with Mr. Jefferson and his dusky doxy.”
“I think that’s not a very nice way to put it, to start with.”
“All right, all right, but the story—do you give it any credence? All my friends sniff and say it’s terrible, but they all seem to like talking about it. Rabelaisian, you know.”
Dolley hesitated, remembering the smooth assurance of Sally Hemmings’s manner. Anna giggled. “You’ve answered it, I think. Anyway, it’s quite a story. The president! Who cares if it’s true? Everyone’s laughing about it.”
“Well, don’t let Jimmy hear you talking that way.”
“Jimmy is sweet, but you have to admit he’s the soul of rectitude.”
Dolley grinned. “He is that.”
“But you know, he told me the other day that Captain Lewis got his expedition after all. I was so happy.”