Dolley dropped the letter in her lap. Her hands were quivering. Again she had that odd sensation of words flying across the sea to deal her a visceral blow. Purchase out of the question, a new army coming—all their hopes for avoiding war were fading … .
The candle was guttering down and she lighted a fresh one and set it in its stick. Then she took up the letter and again was immersed in the vivid scene. The first consul, having delivered devastating news, wheels and marches out as forcefully as he entered. General Victor stands with legs wide, head thrown back, looking down a long, slender nose with eyes almost hidden by grizzled eyebrows. A formidable man, his voice an angry growl.
“We will bring a new order to America. Before I’m done your people will be as quick to heel as my wolfhounds.”
“Americans don’t heel, General. You are sure to be disappointed,”
Mr. Livingston says, managing to sound relaxed. This oaf is not going to unsettle the gentleman from New York. “And we have treaty rights on the Mississippi that are being violated as we speak. We will expect you to correct that promptly.”
The general raises both hands, palms out. “None of our doing. That was the Spanish. But convenient—means we take it with the river already closed.”
“Be careful, sir. We have treaty rights on that river—signed by Mr. Pinckney in Madrid in 1795, terms perfectly clear. I will send you a copy.”
“Hah! Treaty—it’s so much wastepaper—use it to wipe your bum; it’s worth nothing more!”
“Sir!” Mr. Livingston lets his voice rise. “Is that French honor? To violate sworn word between nations?”
The general’s voice goes soft and silky. “Do not dare mention French honor in my presence or I may feel compelled to uphold it.”
“I am at your service, sir,” Mr. Livingston says. Dolley’s eyes widen as she reads this. The gentleman from New York is placing himself in terrible danger. He makes it clear he is no duelist, but he is not prepared to be backed down by this French scoundrel. He decides to buy the finest dueling pistols in Paris and practice for an hour each day.
The general looks as if the water has suddenly become deeper than he expected. He draws himself up. “Easily said, sir, when you know I must depart for Holland within the hour.”
“Whenever you find time, I am at your service.”
The general gives him an evil grin. “Perhaps I will avenge your impertinence on your countrymen.” He slaps his gloves against his palm, bows, murmurs, “Your servant, sir,” and is gone.
The letter ended there. She was in tears as she refolded it. Nothing had changed after all. The sale that Mr. Du Pont envisioned was a feckless dream. The French were still coming with a massive army under a general fully as ferocious as Leclerc. They would crush the blacks at Santo
Domingo and come on to the Mississippi, and we must rally an army to meet them with all our recent hopes gone glimmering.
Then it struck her that Victor and his army were already in Santo Domingo. They would have sailed as rapidly as the ship that brought Mr. Livingston’s letter. Why, they might even be in New Orleans now, at this very moment!
In the bedroom she found Jimmy lying in the dark with his eyes open. Without a word she lay beside him and put her head on his shoulder.
A week later another letter from Livingston: Ice had trapped General Victor’s fleet in Holland. He couldn’t sail until March. A breathing space, that’s all.
Things were coming down to scratch. Madison had one real card left, and it was time to play it. After that, war, which probably would leave us tied to the British empire and mark the end of our brilliant common man democracy.
So at dusk one afternoon, with storm clouds roiling on the horizon, Madison watched a closed carriage stop on Pennsylvania Avenue. Young Lewis, sitting his horse nearby, gave a slight nod. Madison opened the carriage door and stepped in.
“By God, I was glad to hear from you,” said Jim Ross. “My people are demanding I speak out and I’ve been holding them off, but I can’t no longer. So …”
Madison admired the Pennsylvania senator’s fortitude. As the westernmost Federalist, Ross was his party’s designated speaker to demand forceful action against the French while denouncing democratic failures. The folks at home in Pittsburgh were pushing him, but so were his party chiefs.
“Let’s pour it on,” Madison said. “Stronger the better. Let’s show the world your party is ready to fight.”
“Hell, yes, we’re ready. We’re sick to death of this piddling and hoping and waiting. It’s beyond time to fight!”
“Exactly. So lay your bill out. We’ll debate awhile, and then of course, we’ll have to defeat you.”
“Oh?” Ross was suddenly wary. It was too dark to see in the closed carriage to be sure, but the senator’s round, red face probably was going purple.
“Then,” Madison added, “we’ll pass a bill that will be stronger still. Let the world see we’re united on this.”
There was a long pause. The carriage lurched into a mudhole. A passing carriage—Madison heard horse’s hoofs—splashed mud that he heard spatter against the side and Merry yelled something. At last Ross wagged his finger, a white flicker in the dark carriage, and said, “Listen to me now. You betray me, you beat me and don’t pass a bill of your own, I’ll make you pay and pay. I’ll shout these meetings from the housetops. Do you understand?”
“Fair enough …”
So Ross took the floor in the Senate chamber with its carved panels and draped flags to offer a bill raising an army of fifty thousand men and appropriating five million dollars for an immediate attack on New Orleans.
“Let’s go
take
the place!” he roared. “Make it our own in fact of occupation when everyone knows it’s ours by right of reason, by right of the rivers that flow past our doorsteps and collect in a single mighty stream at New Orleans. Our lifeblood runs down that river. Who can say it’s not ours!”
Madison was delighted. He sat listening in the gallery with Harrison Smith, Maggie’s husband and editor of the
National Intelligencer.
Smith’s pencil was flying as Ross shouted, “For years we’ve acquiesced in Spanish control, letting them have what we so easily could have taken, and what has it gotten us? Abuse, insult, pecksniffs thinking they can slam the door in our faces, baiting us to do something about it.
“Our people clamor for war. No damned evil foreign power will dismember the fairest land under God’s sun. And who is this evil power? France, once our friend, now corrupted, with all its noble hopes destroyed as unfettered
democracy ran amok and gave natural rise to the dictator who brings order out of chaos by crushing freedom.”
Cries from the floor, “Hear! Hear!” Federalists were overjoyed to hear their core beliefs so clearly stated. It was just as Madison had hoped.
“Oh, our blind friends on the other side of the aisle!” Ross shouted, glaring around the chamber. “Remember that we saw the danger,
we
said join our British brethren and destroy the usurper of liberty before he usurps world liberty. And so it has come to pass, democracy without restraint spawning the man who would dismember our nation. But we’ll never allow it, never! We must march on New Orleans and take it once and for all!
“The time is now! Not a moment to lose. We must have courage, be daring, show the fortitude that made this country great—we must take our destiny into our own hands … .”
Perfect! Every time Mr. Smith’s flying pencil flagged, Madison nudged him. Get it all, sir, get it all. Madison had posted Pichon outside the chamber, and Ross hurried out and gave the whole speech again for his benefit. Inside, Sam Smith of Maryland, that darling of the radical Democrats, shouted that he believed a state of war with France already existed! Madison couldn’t have put it better himself. The Democrats finally defeated the Ross bill. Breckinridge of Kentucky offered a substitute bill—
eighty
thousand men—that passed in a roar.
Madison accompanied Smith to the
Intelligencer’s
office and waited while Smith set his story, flying fingers pulling letters from the type case as the words formed. They wrapped the first dozen copies in oilskin, and Johnny Graham galloped toward Annapolis with the packet. He would cover the thirty-odd miles in under four hours, changing horses every few miles.
A swift merchant brig lay on the hook off Annapolis, its longboat at the dock. A lieutenant took the packet, and Johnny watched the boat pull for the brig, oars flashing. It
lay alongside and was hoisted aboard, men ran aloft, the anchor windlass cranked, the big square sails shook out, and the brig took the wind, running down Chesapeake Bay toward the sea.
So went the last great effort. Robert Livingston’s most significant contribution had been a bit of gossip: Napoleon read
The Times of London
daily, had it sent over in the diplomatic pouch, lay soaking for several hours each day in a vast marble tub thinking and conferring with his courtiers and reading history—and reading
The Times
.
The brig would cross the Atlantic and run up the Thames, and the captain would hurry the packet to the American embassy. Rufus King would take it to the editors of
The Times,
who would find the American shift toward war with France welcome news well worth splashing. And two or three days later the first consul, who listened to no one, who ignored Livingston and Pichon, Clark and DuPont, and all who’d tried for his ear, would have the message laid in his hand in columns of hard type.
The Americans were united and gearing for war. Was that really what Napoleon Bonaparte wanted?
WASHINGTON, EARLY SPRING 1803
The note a steward handed Lewis when he returned to the mansion late in the afternoon was brief.
“Pls. see me at eight in the morn. TJ”
Why did it have an ominous ring? Such a summons meant it involved him directly rather than just requiring his services to deliver something to the Hill, like the glorified errand boy he really was. As the administration had grown ever
more preoccupied with the French crisis, Lewis had found himself taking ever longer walks, eight, ten, fifteen miles. Toughening himself for the expedition, he told himself, but knew better: He was walking off frustration lest he blow right there in the mansion like a bottle of cider fermenting in the sun.
The president had been that close—that close!—to turning him loose to start the great adventure, and then the French business had shut everything down. But this forever waiting abraded his nerves and there were times he was close to marching into the great man’s office and … but then, there was a quality in President Jefferson, and in Mr. Madison too, that made it not that easy to get up on your high horse. Something in their faces, in their manner, gracious and courteous as they were, told you to walk softly. There was a power in both of them that no one with any sense would cross lightly.
Anyway, he had to grin at himself a little: if he really were so ready to beard the man in his den, why did the summons have an ominous ring?
“I think it’s time we got on with it,” the president said.
A candle flickered under the silver coffee service. He had poured his clerk a cup and urged a sweet roll on him and there had been a desultory moment and then it was to business.
“I’ve been pondering this for some days,” Mr. Jefferson said. “Yes, it looks like war, but a dozen men won’t make that much difference. I want this expedition to go no matter what.”
That
was good news! And how like Mr. J. to ponder it for days, then slap him with the decision.
“Now, you have crucial study yet before you from men who can better teach you than I can. Botany, medicine, celestial navigation, taxidermy—and that’s just a start on the essentials. I’ve already written Mr. Ellicott and Dr. Rush and Dr. Bartram, and the others, told them to expect you in
Philadelphia momentarily. Also, that’s the place for the supplies you must begin gathering now. So can you leave today? Or in the morning?”
“Mr. President, I—”
“I’d like the expedition to push off this year and get on up the Missouri a ways and at the crack of next spring be ready for the great assault on the mountains. We have initial authorization from Congress now; best to strike before minds change. Looking at the maps, you might be able to get eight hundred miles or so upriver before winter catches you. What do you think?”
He saw that in Mr. Jefferson’s mind the expedition was akin to strolling the banks of the Potomac.
“We might get that far, yes, sir,” he said slowly.
“Well,” the president said, “not if you don’t get started. Can you leave today? Tomorrow?”
“Sir, I’d like to go first to Harper’s Ferry. Gather weapons from the United States arsenal there—and then there’s the boat idea—”
“Oh, yes, the boat …” The president had been enthusiastic when Lewis had first described the idea, an iron frame carried in parts that bolted together and, covered with waterproofed skins, would give them a vessel wherever they found a body of water in the mountains. But now he was frowning. “I’d really like you to get on with the study we’ve outlined. And gathering your supplies—I know you have lists and plans but it’ll take time actually to purchase everything. The Schuykill arsenal in Philadelphia can supply weapons, surely, and as for the boat, I suppose any competent smith could—”
“Sir, pardon me, but the rifles we carry will be at the heart of the expedition. You live or die by your weapons in the field, for defense, for impressing the Indians, for hunting. I want to be sure of the best, I want weapons made to my order.”
“Well, that makes sense.”
“As for the boat, I disagree that any competent smith—it’s
full of complex curves. They’re specialists in iron at Harper’s Ferry—best in the country—”
“All right, Merry. You’re the better judge of what you’ll need, I suppose. How long will it take?”
“I should be through there in a week.”
“A week … well, that’s not so bad.” He smiled. “All right, son, you’re off. And great good fortune to you.”
It was eighty-odd miles to Harper’s Ferry where the Shenandoah met the Potomac and carved a great gash in the mountains for its race to the sea. After Leesburg the passengers had to get out every half mile or so in ankle-deep mud and push the stage out of mudholes and up hills. It was late the third day before they arrived. Wrapped in silence, Lewis reviewed everything as the stage lurched and the whip popped like pistol fire. The thing about Mr. Jefferson; he was a scientist. A philosopher. An international tactician, a student of government, an authority on liberty, ranking intellectual—but he’d never been on the trail beyond the occasional hunt.
The president had always been an enthusiast for western exploration, but it had taken Mackenzie’s book to jar him into real action. They’d known for a long time that the British North West Company traveler had gone down a river that clearly wasn’t the
Columbia
, abandoned it at impassable rapids, and gone overland to the Pacific. Indeed, the president had mentioned it that night he talked of exploration.
But the book seized his attention for what Mackenzie said he had written on a rock in paint of vermilion and hot grease: “Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three.”
By land!
Instantly, the president had decided that time was critical and pressed Lewis into a fresh study of botany that he might be fully attuned to new plants he’d find in a march across the continent. This was last summer at Monticello, and each day they’d walked for miles examining foliage,
the president lecturing. Lewis was a good self-taught botanist after those years prowling the Carolina wilderness, but the old man was a professor. Plants, their form, their infinite distinguishing marks, the subtle differentiating points in similar species and in variations within a species, the differences accountable to soil, water, location, and light, the way plants could fool you, Latin designations and why they mattered, and every time Lewis decided he’d learned it all, the old man unfolded a new wrinkle. No wonder they said he was a genius! On top of everything else, he was a botanist of a range Lewis knew he never would obtain.
All this with the French doing their damnedest to crowd him into war.
The stage crept into Harper’s Ferry at near midnight. In the morning, boots newly blacked, he set out for the U.S. arsenal. The town consisted of a single dirt street running along the river. He supposed Mr. Harper was long dead, but the three-way ferry crossing into the western wilderness of Virginia and into Maryland was the main industry after the arsenal, which he found in small brick buildings along the river, its basic power source. He saw forges glowing in several buildings. This, with a similar institution in Springfield, Massachusetts, was the supplier of weapons for the United States government.
The superintendent spent a long time examining the letter of authorization from the secretary of war that Lewis presented. Joseph Perkins was tall and lean, with a mustache that looked chewed on and a nervous tremor around his eyes. Lewis would have preferred something a bit more emphatic than the single sentence Dearborn had written instructing Perkins to cooperate with Lewis. Made you wonder how warmly the secretary endorsed the expedition.
Perkins looked up with a frown. “I know nothing of this,” he said. He seemed to bite off his words.
Lewis said it all had come up suddenly, and there’d been no time to forewarn. Perkins seemed not at all mollified.
“Nothing in here modifies my basic orders,” he said.
“Sir?”
“We’re working desperately to rearm the army for war. You understand that, don’t you, Captain? You
are
aware that war with France threatens?”
A fire began to burn in Lewis. He was under a little too much pressure to enjoy sarcasm. “Yes, sir,” he said, “I’m aware of that, and of course the president is too. If you find the orders of the secretary of war insufficient, I’m sure the president would be glad to write you more specifically. Take a week round trip, I suppose, but—”
Perkins’s voice rose a couple of octaves. “I said nothing of the sort, sir! Nothing! Of course I will obey the secretary’s orders and I resent suggestions—”
“I meant no suggestions,” Lewis said smoothly, and went on to cite his needs. The weapons needed would present no problem, Perkins said, but an odd distaste swept his face over the boat.
“My men are gunsmiths, not blacksmiths,” he said.
“But you have the stock, the forges, your men work in iron. Granted it’s a new idea, but I have complete plans.”
Long silence. Then Perkins sighed. “I have a couple of men who might take it on. They make different things—replacement parts for wagons and gun carriages and the like. I even catch them making toys sometimes … .”
“They sound ideal,” Lewis said. But it was clear he would have to press for whatever he wanted here. Perhaps Perkins would have warmed if he’d known Lewis’s plans, but they were still secret. He would be crossing territory of France or Spain, one or the other, and there was no need to advertise it. So his story was that he planned an upper Mississippi trek, and everyone yawned.
A foreman named Jennings led him down the line of buildings. At a smaller one to which an oversized forge was attached underneath a shed, Jennings thrust his head in the door and shouted, “Jimson!”
“He’s in the privy,” a voice said.
“That you, Little Bit? Tell Jimson to get his ass in here. Man wants to see him.”
A small, slender man with a huge beard bobbed up from
behind a counter. “Captain,” Mr. Jennings said, “this here is Little Bit Jones,” Mr. Jennings said. “Bit, Mr. Perkins, he says you and Jimson are to give Captain Lewis whatever he wants.”
There were several anvils in different shapes mounted on rounds from a big tree trunk, iron of all shapes and sizes piled in a corner, hammers and tongs and all sorts of smithy tools hanging from pegs on the inside log walls over a heavy bench supported in front by smaller logs. Everything was massive and spoke of strength. Which applied as well to the man who now bounded through the door, dragging up his pants and hitching suspenders into place.
“Bit,” he shouted, “what you doing yelling at me? Man taking a crap don’t like to be disturbed.” He had black hair that fell to his shoulders and his face was red. His shirt of homespun looked ready to tear on his massive shoulders. Little Bit jerked a thumb toward Lewis.
“Oh,” the big man said. Then he extended a hand. “Jimson Cotton,” he said.
“Meriwether Lewis.” He took the proffered hand, wondering if his would be crushed, but the other’s touch was light. He explained himself, Little Bit confirming their orders.
Jimson leaned on his bench. “I bet ol’ Perkins was right happy to see you.”
Lewis hesitated. “More or less,” he said.
Both men guffawed. “He’s on us all the time, get this done, why ain’t that done—but we don’t let him fuss us.”
Lewis described his boat concept. It would mean fifty or sixty iron rods rigged to bolt together in the shape of a boat, which then could be covered with waterproofed skins.
“Why you want to do that?” Cotton said.
Lewis explained the idea of portaging, of reaching a point at which regular boats must stop, marching overland with packs on their backs, finding a new body of water, and having a boat that could be readied in a few days. He unfolded his plans.
“Gor!” Bit said. “A portable boat.”
But Cotton shook his head. “Naw. We can’t make nothing like that. Can’t be done.”
Lewis smiled. “Why not?”
“’Cause I ain’t never made nothing like that. Never even heard of the likes of it.”
“You can get rod iron, can’t you? See, it’s really just a series of rods, fifty or sixty, with flanges to hold bolts.”
“Why,” said Little Bit, “ain’t that smart? Look, Jimson, you just bolt all them rods together and it’s in the shape of a boat.” The big man was frowning. “Cover it in skins like the cap’n says, get them all tarred, oughta float like a cork.”
“Maybe … ,” Jimson said doubtfully. “But look at all them curves. How we going to match those?” He dropped a heavy finger on bow and stern. “Curves on paper, that’s easy enough. But putting them in iron—what are you going to do, hold ’em up against the paper?”
“Templates, maybe? Wooden templates?” Bit’s voice was small.
“Shut up, Bit! I’m thinking.” A silence. “Well, Cap’n, straight pieces are easy enough, and you got the same curves at each end, right? Now what we’ll have to do, we’ll build one end in wood, then keep bending our pieces till they fit the wood. What we call templates.”