Signing Their Rights Away (27 page)

But times were tough. The Napoleonic Wars were raging in Europe, and tensions with Britain erupted into the War of 1812. The First Lady demonstrated her heroism when the British army invaded Washington D.C.; she wrote her sister several letters describing what would turn out
to be an invaluable act of bravery and level-headedness: “I have pressed as many cabinet papers into trunks as to fill one carriage; our private property must be sacrificed, as it is impossible to procure wagons for its transportation.… Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me, because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall.… I have ordered the frame to be broken and the canvass taken out.” And so it is thanks to Dolley Madison that some of the White House’s most precious papers, as well as Gilbert Stuart’s famed portrait of George Washington, have survived.

The Treaty of Ghent brought a wimpy end to the stalemate of a war, though Andrew Jackson’s triumph in the battle of New Orleans—which technically occurred after the conflict’s end—perhaps gave the United States a false feeling of victory.

Madison retired to Montpelier but remained politically active. He was cochair of the Virginia Constitutional Convention, took on the post of foreign-policy advisor to President James Monroe, and served as rector (or president) of the University of Virginia. He dedicated time to editing his journals, including his notes from the Constitutional Convention, leaving instructions that they not be published until after his death. They were published in 1836 and remain the best guide to the extraordinary events of that remarkable summer in 1787.

The house and grounds of Madison’s Montpelier, in Virginia, are open to the public and currently undergoing renovations. The Octagon House in Washington, D.C., where the Madisons lived after the burning of the White House and where the Treaty of Ghent was signed, is also open to visitors.

X. North Carolina

The Signer Who … Oh, There’s No Way to Dance Around the Issue, This Guy Was a Crook

BORN
: March 26, 1749

DIED
: March 21, 1800

AGE AT SIGNING
: 38

PROFESSION
: Planter, politician

BURIED
: First Presbyterian Church, Knoxville, Tennessee

Scoundrel. Rogue. Rascal. Scalawag. Rapscallion. There are so many delicious words in the English language to describe the less-savory side of William Blount that it can be easy to forget that—regardless of his motives—this shady signer was instrumental in getting North Carolina to ratify the Constitution.

Raised at Blount Hall, a large cotton and tobacco plantation near then colonial capital of New Bern, North Carolina, Blount (pronounced
blunt
) was the eldest of a large brood. His father, Jacob, was a prosperous merchant who was active in land acquisition. The Blount children were taught primarily by tutors and their parents. Blount lost
his mother, Barbara Gray, when he was fourteen years old; as the eldest in the family, he stayed close to his father and learned all there was to know about buying and selling property. These lessons would contribute equally to his successes as well as his failures.

In 1776, with the Revolutionary War raging, Blount was appointed regimental paymaster for the Third North Carolina Regiment and, later, chief paymaster of state forces and deputy paymaster general for North Carolina. Under General Horatio Gates, head of the southern armies, Blount served as a chief commissary agent, a handy post for a budding wheeler-dealer in which he handled purchasing and supplies. After the brief but brutal and bloody defeat at Camden, South Carolina, Gates hightailed it from the battlefield; he left behind not only weapons but, supposedly, £300,000 in paper currency, a sum intended for the soldier’s payroll, which Blount later reported to the federal government as,
ahem
, “missing.”

Blount married Mary Grainger in 1778, and in 1780 he left the military and began his political career as part of the North Carolina state legislature. He was appointed to the Continental Congress in 1782 but the next year decided to return home, serving again as part of the state legislature and working to expand his already considerable land holdings.

Blount, with his brother John Gray Blount, had his hands in literally millions of acres, and together they worked via the North Carolina legislature to open to settlement the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. Trading posts were established, and Blount secured an appointment as an agent dealing with the Native American tribes on the frontier, in hopes of ensuring that any treaties struck would favor his extensive interests in the area. Blount wasn’t always successful in convincing other members of the commission to give up more land to speculators, but that didn’t stop him from getting creative with his purchases. He used aliases, took land that wasn’t legally his, and deceived Native Americans along the way. These actions certainly didn’t make him a leading candidate for any
ethics awards, but they did keep him popular among settlers who had similar goals but lacked Blount’s talent for chicanery.

In 1786, Blount was back in the Continental Congress and traveled to New York to talk up the importance of encouraging migration toward the frontier; he even put mentions in newspapers in London and New York encouraging folks to do just that—a ploy that would increase the value of his own holdings. The next year, he then served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He didn’t speak much during the convention, nor did he hold much faith in the future of the United States. Though delegates were forbidden to do so, Blount sent home letters in which he discussed the deliberations, expressing his pessimism in this way: “We shall ultimately and not many years hence be separated and distinct governments perfectly independent of each other.” Although reluctant at first to sign the Constitution, he later explained away why he did so, hedging that his signature was not technically a mark of approval but merely proof of his presence at the proceedings.

Eventually, Blount came to support the idea of a strong central government, if only because it would ease the way for westward expansion. But North Carolina would prove to be a tough anti-Federalist nut to crack—citizens of the state were demanding a Bill of Rights. Blount’s lobbying in favor of ratification didn’t win him many fans; he was not elected as a delegate to the state’s convention in 1788, and ratification was handily rejected. But by the next year, after ratification by nine other states and with the Constitution officially in effect, Blount’s arguments suddenly seemed more compelling. Another convention was held, this time with Federalists driving the conversation. On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state, leaving as the last holdout only Rhode Island, which hadn’t even participated in the Constitutional Convention.

The next year, President Washington appointed Blount governor for the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio, a region that included Tennessee and parts of western North
Carolina. Blount was also superintendent of Indian affairs for the southern department and, in that role, negotiated treaties with such tribes as the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. He organized militia and also swore in a twenty-three-year-old upstart named Andrew Jackson as attorney general for the western part of territory. His opportunities on the development front were staggering. Let the wild land-speculating rumpus begin!

In 1792 Blount began constructing Blount Mansion in Knoxville, which he decided would be the territory’s new capital. In 1796, he was president of the convention that made Tennessee the sixteenth state and was elected one of its first two senators. Knoxville served as state capital until 1817.

Then things went horribly wrong.

Blount and his brother had millions of acres to their name (or any of the fictitious monikers they used at the time). With ongoing wars in Europe causing immigration to dry up, land values took a swan dive. Ever crafty, Blount became involved in a nutty plan to incite Native American wars with Spanish territories in Louisiana, Florida, and beyond. In the letter that sealed his fate, he wrote that his role would be “at the head of the business on the part of the British.” Whoops. He instructed his correspondent to burn this incriminating letter after reading it; instead, the missive found its way into the hands of President John Adams, who turned it over to the Senate, which charged Blount with treason and conspiracy. The House impeached him, and the Senate promptly gave Blount the boot. He tried fleeing Philadelphia but was stopped and his possessions were seized. He posted bond and was set to stand trial before the U.S. Senate but escaped to North Carolina, where he hid from his government and his creditors.