MONTPELIER, DECEMBER 1800
“Well,” Anna said, lying on a sofa, thumbing Dolley’s copy of
Mrs.
Crowell’s Philadelphia Commentator
with the latest in London and Paris fashions, “I hope nothing goes wrong.”
“Why?” Dolley turned quickly. “Have you heard something?” Anna lowered the magazine. Dolley’s baby sister was eighteen and on the cusp of womanhood, sometimes silly, sometimes wise and penetrating. “Just on the stage coming over. Passengers talking as if Mr. Jefferson was the devil incarnate. You could hear the hatred in their voices. They said they should have strung the first Democrats up to trees and settled it before it got out of hand. Talking about how the revolution in France ended up killing all the decent people.”
“That’s nonsense!” She knew she sounded more angry than she’d intended—that’s what fear does. Anna looked at her, eyebrows raised, then returned to the magazine with a sniff. Dolley was packing her old leather trunk for the stage trip to Richmond where Jimmy, as an elector, would cast one of Virginia’s twenty-one electoral votes, for Mr. Jefferson, of course. Electors meeting on the same day in each state theoretically reflected the popular vote, but things could always go wrong.
William, Colonel Madison’s ancient body servant, tapped on her door. “Old Colonel calling for you and Mr. Jimmy.” He saw her start and added, “He ain’t no sicker today than yesterday, Miss Dolley. I done sent Jonas out to find Mr. Jimmy.”
She hurried from their wing and heard Jimmy gallop up. He leaped from the horse, flinging the reins aside. “Is he—?”
“I think he just wants to see us.”
He was breathing heavily. He was deeply devoted to his dying father; they feared the old man would be gone before they returned from Richmond.
But they found him sitting up in his blue brocade gown. He had a shrunken look, hair wispy and cheeks concave, but his eyes had the old force. Three glasses and a bottle of wine were on his table. His doctor forbade alcohol but Colonel Madison did as he pleased. He poured and raised his glass.
“To the
next
president of the United States!”
“To Mr. Jefferson,” Jimmy said.
“No, no,” his father said, “Tom’s already elected. I speak of the next—James Madison of Virginia!”
Her eyes widened. The old man had lifted a line straight from her secret heart! Of course Jimmy should follow Tom! He’d earned his claim, central to the past and cocaptain of the new. Anyway, she thought it was Jimmy who provided the real weight in the partnership with Tom. Of course he should be next; to deny it was an abuse of modesty.
But Jimmy shook his head. “Succeeding Tom? That’ll be Colonel Burr, surely, after being vice president.”
“Burr won’t make it,” Colonel Madison said. “It takes moral fiber to run a country, strength of self. Look at General Washington, at Mr. Adams, a man of real quality even if we disagreed with him, and now Tom, men of stature all. Burr? No, he doesn’t compare.” A coughing spell overtook him and he set down his glass. “But the real point is this: You must be very careful. In everything, do you understand? This is a dangerous time; we could easily see violence.”
In a phrase the old man had forced to the surface the fear she’d been trying to suppress for days. Violence? What, anarchy, civil war, those in power refusing to relinquish it? After all, they had all the tools of force … .
“Won’t be violence,” Jimmy said. His glance slid to her.
“You’re talking about a transfer of real centralized power
to the people. That will terrify the former and could destabilize the latter.”
“No,” Jimmy said.
“James, there hasn’t been a transfer of power from a closed inbred elite to the common folk without bloodshed in a thousand years. Read your history, Son. Men don’t surrender power willingly.”
“But we are different. We’re a new people, we’ve built a new system, a government of checks and balances. Free men
can
govern themselves, Father.”
The old man smiled, suddenly tired. “Just watch yourself, Son. Both of you.”
Everything seemed darker as Dolley went back to the bedroom. She had been an inexperienced young Quaker woman when she married Jimmy, and she had moved into the highest circles of national life with studied aplomb—displaying much more confidence than she felt—and she hadn’t managed that by being naive and foolish.
She continued packing. The storm was coming and they would be at its center, and yes, she was frightened.
When he walked into the bedroom, the set of her shoulders told Madison she was angry. Of course he’d seen her alarm, nor had his father told him anything new. Certainly there was peril in this discarding of an old philosophy for one that was new and untested, what Tom called the second revolution. But the men on the other side were honorable, despite their more restrictive view of democracy. They’d be all right so long as no new disruption shattered things and turned the genie loose … .
At last she spun around. “Why didn’t you tell me you looked for trouble?”
“I don’t look for trouble.”
“Jimmy, don’t tell me! Your father talked trouble; you didn’t look in the least surprised. You knew it all along!”
She glared at him, fists on her hips. She was a stunning woman, her black hair full and striking, her eyes the color of
sky on a bright day, her cheeks always at a blush, which he’d been amazed to learn was not entirely nature’s gift, immense strength in set of nose and modeled lips. In fact, he had feared to alarm her, and he wondered if that were a form of denigration.
“Don’t shield me,” she said. “My first husband died in my arms and my newborn infant died the next day, and there’s hardly a dirtier death than yellow fever with black vomit and bloody bile bursting from the bowels and the victim gasping for water. The only blessing’s that it’s quick. I’m a strong woman—I don’t need to be shielded.”
She wiped her eyes. “So,” she said, smoothing her gown down her sides, “if there’s trouble, I guess we’ll deal with it.” She blew her nose. “Now, didn’t I see you turn your horse loose when you galloped up? Let’s go get him before everyone decides he threw you.”
She was the joy of his life and he took her hand as they walked out into the sunny afternoon.
The man Burr sent from New York made a terrible impression. Madison didn’t like him the moment he presented himself at Swan’s in Richmond, where the Madisons had the inn’s only parlor and room, bouncing in like an absentee landlord. His name was David Gelston, and he was a sleek young businessman en route to what he described as unique opportunities to be exploited in Charleston. Madison read him at a glance: pale, overdressed, too eager, talked too fast, and his open cupidity in describing his Charleston hopes put a civilized man’s teeth on edge.
“I’m here to tell you the New York view,” he barked. “This time Virginia must play fair. You betray us again. The party will be torn to shreds.” Madison fought to control anger, though in fact there was validity in Burr’s complaint.
In writing the Constitution they had left one fundamental flaw, which was natural enough since that was before parties emerged but now was very dangerous. The presidency
would go to the man with the highest number of electoral votes, the vice presidency to the runner-up.
No one thought in terms of a ticket then or of a running mate. That concept arose in ninety-six when the general was stepping down, and without much hope, Tom ran against Adams. In a loose relationship, forerunner of the ticket concept, Burr ran with him for the vice presidency. Things had been so informal then! As Madison remembered it, everything was casual. As it turned out, Burr drew far fewer votes than Tom, but it was the bare handful that Virginia gave him that he took as a special slight. He’d never forgiven Tom or Virginia.
But his ultimatum now raised a new problem. If electors voted two-by-two for Tom and Burr, each man would emerge with seventy-three electoral votes, and
they
would be tied. That would throw the election into the Congress, and the House still sitting was firmly in control of old-line Federalists consumed by fear of the new, and then anything could happen.
It was an immense danger but easily solved. Short Burr a single vote here, and there could be no tie. “Tell Aaron not to worry; we’ll guarantee him a solid twenty votes.”
But Gelston jabbed his finger. “We must have the full twenty-
one
. Nothing less will satisfy!”
“Look, young man,” Madison snapped, “it has nothing to do with Aaron; the risk of a tie is what matters.”
“Forget that,” Gelston said. “We’ve already solved that—arranged for a couple of short votes in the North. Colonel Burr doesn’t want an equal total; he just wants Virginia to pay him the respect that is his due.”
“Does Aaron really endorse this claptrap?” Madison asked.
“Certainly, because he stands for New York, and New York, sir, is watching! Any fool can see that Virginia aims to rule or ruin. Biggest state, ran the war, ran the Constitution, ran the government. Adams not a Virginian, and we threw him out. Well, New York is coming up; we have our pride.
We don’t intend to submit to Virginia, and you’d better believe it.”
The young man leaned forward in his intensity, fist doubled and beating on his thigh for emphasis. “Look, Mr. Madison, I can see you don’t care much for me. Probably you see me as a typical New Yorker, crass, competitive, not a real gentleman. Well, I don’t much like you, either, living on a plantation with a passel of slaves to keep you comfortable, and you’re oh, so polite, so gentlemanly, drinking your tea with your finger stuck out, darkies bringing you Madeira.”
Gelston laughed without mirth. “It’s time you got used to New York, for we’re coming into our own. Winning there gave Mr. Jefferson the election, and that was Colonel Burr’s doing. So we want the honor due us. You slap us in the face with a twenty vote and we won’t take it!”
He stood abruptly and cracked his hands together. “You go wrong on this, and I promise you you’ll split the party wide open. That is Colonel Burr’s message, and it is totally real. Please take it very seriously.”
Madison stood. “Good day,” he said. He didn’t offer to shake hands, nor did Gelston.
When Madison was troubled—and he was very troubled now—he liked to put a good horse under him and take to the country. He was trotting along a little used lane, passing fields still covered with slash, fruit trees banked against cold, a herd of cattle that would dress out, to his practiced eye, at a hundredweight below his own cattle on Montpelier.
At a small creek he swung down and hobbled the horse to let it drink and crop the abundant grass near the water. He paced the bank. If he protected against a tie but raised the specter of North and South at each other’s throats on the eve of triumph, what had he gained? And then, smiling sourly, he had to admit that he wasn’t all that selfless either. Now that the prize was in sight, he
wanted
it!
So did Dolley. She hadn’t said much, but he knew her well. And Burr had another claim on them. He had introduced
them in Philadelphia and Madison recognized that as a debt, for she had reshaped his life. She was gorgeous with her robust figure and striking color. He was a gnomish little fellow with a soft voice, a bit the looby in society, but a beautiful woman loved him! He felt a personal triumph when she turned heads. And so he was what he was and on the whole was satisfied with that. He had a powerful mind—a fact he had demonstrated too often for self-doubt—though that was poor consolation when he was with men who were tall, dashing, and touched with the gift of command. But he made good decisions, if he always found many a pro and con to weigh. Indeed, he doubted the competence of men who saw issues as simple and made decisions in a finger snap. He didn’t decide things in any finger snap, you may be sure.
Anyway, the current problem was of his own making. Of course they should have foreseen the rise of parties, which are just vehicles to express different views, but they hadn’t. Failure of imagination then impaled him now. But he wouldn’t be deciding in any finger snap. A cold breeze arose. He tightened the saddle girth and turned the horse toward Richmond, as chilled by the decision ahead as by the wind.
At the inn’s stables, he swung down and gave the groom a coin to give the horse a good currying and brushing. Billy Blackleg, so called for some presumably forgotten episode, was a skinny man with hard, horny hands and rheumy eyes, his drooping mustache gray at the top and stained brown at the ends from the chaw always in his cheek. He lived in the stables and he washed his shirt every week or so.
He slipped the coin into his pocket like a sharpster palming a card, pulled off the saddle, and said from the corner of his mouth, voice very low, “Mr. Madison, I guess you’re watching out pretty good this business don’t fall into no tie between Mr. Jefferson and that New York feller.”
Startled, Madison said, “We certainly don’t want one, Billy. What brought that to your mind?”
“Well, thing is, most rich folks ain’t like you. They hold ‘emselves special. They don’t even look down on you.”
Madison waited.
“Know what I mean? They don’t even
see
you. ‘Lessen you make a mistake. Then they act like you was a dog shat on the floor.”