Scandalmonger: A Novel

by William Safire

  “My writing is not very lucrative, I’m afraid, sir.” Callender was eager to use this opportunity to press for financial help. His plea to Madison had gone unanswered; perhaps this visit had been stimulated by Madison passing his letter on to the Vice President.

  To his surprise, Jefferson reacted positively to the hint that he needed money. “I’m concerned that the republican press in Philadelphia might totter for want of subscriptions. We should really exert ourselves to procure them,” the Vice President said, “for if these papers fail, republicanism will be entirely browbeaten.”

  “And that goes for books, too, Mr. Jefferson.” What did one call a Vice President? Excellency? That title went against his grain. He would stick to “sir” or “Mr.” Though nervous, Callender tried not to fidget, lest he seem to be lice-infested; Cobbett’s mean-spirited skewering kept everybody on the defensive. “I keep Tom Paine’s Rights of Man right here on the shelf, sir, the American edition Benny Bache turned out in the Aurora’s printshop, with your endorsement.”

  Jefferson’s expression clouded, but Callender reached for the book, opened it to the first page, and pointed delightedly to Jefferson’s courageous endorsement of the work by the English radical so beloved by the French and despised by aristocrats in England and their Federalist followers in America. “Here, where you say that Paine’s work published here will prove an antidote to ‘the political heresies which have sprung up among us’ ”—Callender pointed to Jefferson’s endorsing line—“that took great political courage. Everybody knew the heretic you had in mind was John Adams in his Federalist screed The Doctrines of Davila.”

  The Vice President nodded glumly. “All I did was send Paine’s pamphlet to a friend, with a brief note. But the printer published my note, to my astonishment, at the head of this edition of The Rights of Man.”

  “But surely you are glad to be associated with Paine’s work,” Callender insisted.

  “In my note I tell Adams freely that he is a heretic,” Jefferson admitted, “but I certainly never meant to step into public print with that in my mouth.”

  Evidently, the new Vice President was not as courageous as Callender had hoped. Even so, at that expression of the great man’s need for discretion, Callender felt drawn into his confidence.

  “I understand from friends we have in common,” Jefferson said, coming to the purpose of his visit, “that you have a book in work. How soon—”

  “Here. Here it is, sir.” Callender gathered the sheaf of pages, with his crabbed writing on them, spread out on his desk. “The printers are eager to set it in type. They’re urging me to finish.”

  “May I be a subscriber?”

  “That would help a great deal, Mr. Jefferson. Oh, yes. Not just in the number of books you order personally, but by virtue of your show of interest, others will surely follow.” He was about to say how he would use Jefferson’s name to get other subscribers but, in light of the admonition about discretion, cut himself short. He would do that first and apologize, if he had to, later.

  Jefferson leaned back, reached into his pocket, took out three bank bills and laid them on the writer’s table. “Send me however many copies fifteen dollars will buy.”

  Fifteen dollars would feed Callender’s sickly wife and four always-famished boys for weeks. Moreover, the Vice President’s presence in the office must already have impressed both Snowden and McCorkle. They would surely fling the news of the visitation in the face of Matt Carey, whose domination of republican printing they were eager to crack. Jefferson’s name at the head of the printed subscribers’ list, Callender knew, would bring in other republicans across the range of Paineites. These subscribers would range from Southern anti-monarchists to Western farmers who resisted Hamilton’s whiskey tax, and from people put off by the self-importance of President Adams to all good American friends of the radical republicans of France.

  “John Beckley might have some suggestions for other subscribers,” the Vice President added. “Monroe is still on the high seas on his way home from France, but Madison, Israel Israel, and Marshall Smith of Pennsylvania should be interested in your work.” Almost as an afterthought, and in an even quieter voice, he added, “And perhaps there is some assistance I can give you in a pecuniary way when the volume is finished. Are you almost done?”

  “A week or two, no more. . . .”

  “Are you getting all the information you need? I know that Beckley is somewhat troubled by the events of last week.”

  John Beckley had just been fired as Clerk of the House, though he had held the job since Speaker Muhlenberg’s day. In the Presidential campaign of 1796, however, the tall, spare functionary, always dressed in black, became an active republican partizan, daring to derogate the retiring Washington’s second term, organizing and ultimately carrying the State of Pennsylvania for Jefferson’s candidacy. Such partizan agitation invited Federalist retaliation; when Adams won the Presidency, the Federalists in the House threw Beckley out of his job as soon as the new Congress convened. The new Vice President had no power to stop them.

  So Beckley was Jefferson’s choice to be go-between. Callender counted himself a journalist who knew a signal when he heard one. Every now and then, Beckley—enjoying a glass of rum with Callender in a bar or writing pseudonymously as “The Calm Observer” in one of the republican organs trying vainly to compete with Porcupine—would drop a hint that he had damaging material on a Federalist in high office. Cobbett had even teased Beckley in print about those sinister hints, and the Clerk had backed away. Now he was surely filled with resentment at his ouster, and at the glee with which Cobbett hailed the partizan deed by calling him “the first of the bricks to fall from the Temple of Anarchy.” The longtime government functionary was now reduced to advertising for law clients in Bache’s Aurora.

  “That was a dirty deed of the Adams men in the House,” Callender said fervently, “firing Beckley after eight years. Where were our republicans?”

  “They were prevented by the suddenness of the call and their distance from being here on the first day of the session,” said Jefferson. “And so we’ve lost the ablest clerk in the U.S. An outrage.”

  “To the Adams men, he was guilty of politicking in Pennsylvania for you,” the Scot chimed in. While Jefferson had stayed serenely above the electoral battle, as was the custom, Beckley had delivered the votes that made Jefferson runner-up to Adams and Vice President. “There’s no end to Adams’s lust for vengeance,” Callender told his visitor. “With Monroe recalled from Paris, and Edmund Randolph sent packing out of the Adams Cabinet, now the Federalists are reaching right down to the clerk Beckley. They have the power now, and no President Washington to even try to balance the scales. There’s nobody left in the government but you, Mr. Jefferson, for those who believe in the rights of man.” Callender faulted Jefferson for having quit Washington’s Cabinet as Secretary of State, leaving Hamilton and his faction to dominate the field, but had never written that and was now thankful for his caution.

  “The new changes excite a fear,” the Vice President agreed, unwinding his long body from the chair, “that the republican interest has lost.” Yet it seemed to the heartened Callender that the Vice President was hardly fearful. By virtue of this visit to a republican writer, and by the unexpected offer of financial aid from himself and his political supporters—not to mention the suggested avenue of information to Beckley—Jefferson was hinting that the republican cause was far from lost.

  The languid Virginian bid him farewell with a casual invitation: “I’m staying at Francis’s Hotel.” He motioned for Callender to stay at his desk to finish his book, and walked downstairs unescorted.

  Callender waited until he heard the front door close. He bolted down the steps, and waved the three $5 bills in the faces of both Snowden and McCorkle, beginners in the printing trade who had never before assembled a subscriber list. The Scot shouted, “He gave me a joe!”—the full value of a Portuguese gold coin—and then made a beeline for a tavern
near Francis’s Hotel, where Jefferson lodged amidst a nest of like-minded Congressmen. Republican scriveners like Callender and agitators like Beckley had made that convivial drinking place a second home.

  Chapter 2

  June 19, 1797 (Evening)

  “Put James Madifon down for twelve copies,” Beckley said expansively. He poured Callender and himself another glass of rum. “I can speak for him. And another twelve for James Monroe, who should be home from France any day now.”

  Callender knew that Beckley could indeed speak for Madison and Monroe, Jefferson’s two leading acolytes. He assured the former Clerk of the House that all good republicans were aware that it was Beckley’s skill at press persuasion and political agitation that had made possible Jefferson’s surprising victory in Pennsylvania. Without those electoral votes, Jefferson would not have come in second and been Vice President today.

  “Jefferson’s throwing a very grand dinner to welcome Monroe home,” Beckley said. “It will be at Oeller’s Hotel on the first of July. I’ll be there, of course, along with fifty republican members of Congress. Pity they don’t invite poor miserable scriveners, James, or you could come.”

  “Twelve copies for Madison, same for Monroe,” Callender noted down, “and when you buy twelve, you get a thirteenth copy free. I have the addresses.” He put aside the quill and took up his glass of Madeira. “To your success in the law.”

  “I’m broke, James,” Beckley blurted with inebriated honesty, “forty years old and out of work. I co-signed some notes when I was Clerk, and now that I’m not, they’re after me. And I have my family here and my family back in England to support.” He slumped over the bar. “You know, the only time they removed anybody from clerical office was for misconduct. Never for faction. They changed the rules on me.”

  Callender was no better off financially, but now at least he had prospects. “I thought you owned land in Virginia.”

  “Greenbrier? Nobody wants to buy it. You want to buy ten thousand acres in the wilderness? Make a fortune someday. But it’s worthless now. I’m advertising in the Aurora for clients as a lawyer. Benny Bache isn’t charging me for it.”

  “You’ll get them,” Callender assured him. “You made a great record as Clerk and everyone knows that it was the Federalist politicians who turned you out.”

  “But then there’s Cobbett. I think he’s going to come after me in his filthy gazette, kicking me when I’m down. He’s been asking about a little mistake I made in the House on the Jay Treaty.”

  “Don’t tell me about Peter Porcupine.” Callender poured his companion another glass and reminded him of their common enemy. “You saw what he wrote about me in his sheet today. Cobbett is still soreheaded about what I wrote about Washington after he signed that treaty.”

  “You were dead right about Washington, the old hypocrite.” Beckley had given Callender the story of the President’s extraordinary advances against salary. The Scot had written that Washington—who claimed at first he wanted no salary at all—was drawing money from the Treasury faster than Congress had authorized. The Aurora printed it and the President was said to have been furious. Served him right, Callender thought, for signing John Jay’s treaty that served British commercial interests at the expense of the American farmer.

  “Somebody had to criticize the President,” Callender said. “The Federalists were hiding behind his famous ‘integrity’ up and down the country.”

  “You were right with us, Jimmy. Nobody else was willing to say that Washington could no longer expect to be viewed as a saint. For God’s sake, for four years running, the President was in debt to the United States!”

  “If ever a nation was debauched by a man,” Callender agreed, “the American nation has been debauched by Washington. Let’s hope Adams will be an improvement.”

  They drank in silence awhile. “We took Washington off his pedestal,” Beckley went on. “Probably why he didn’t run for a third term, couldn’t stand our criticism.”

  “You mention that blackguard Cobbett,” Callender said, steering the conversation toward his object. Jefferson had said the Clerk had some information for his History of 1796, but Callender did not know if the cautious Vice President had directed Beckley to pass it along. He had a suspicion, however, about the subject. He extracted a couple of cuttings from an envelope in his jacket. “Here’s something you wrote not long ago, as ‘Calm Observer,’ that intrigued me. You asked ‘whether a certain head of a department was not in the month of December 1792, privy and party to a certain inquiry of a very suspicious aspect, representing real mal-conduct on the part of his friend, patron and predecessor in office?’ I calculated that to be Treasury Secretary Wolcott and his predecessor, Hamilton. Right?”

  Beckley would not say. “And then you went on to ask in this piece,” Callender continued, “ ‘Why has the subject been so long and carefully smothered up?’ ”

  Beckley nodded acknowledgment that he wrote it but offered nothing more. Callender held up a cutting from Porcupine’s Gazette of only a week before. “Now here’s Cobbett, saying you’re bluffing. ‘Pray, Mr. Beckley, if you are really in the possession of these valuable secrets of official misconduct in certain high characters, was it not your duty, long since, to have disclosed them?’ Cobbett then goes on about ‘such threats are either the ravings of approaching insanity or the fretful foamings of a weak mind.’ The bastard.”

  “It’s the real bastard who’s at the root of it all,” murmured Beckley.

  Now Callender felt he was getting somewhere. He took that remark to refer to Hamilton, whose mother on the island of Nevis had been unwed.

  “ ‘Fretful foamings,’ ” Beckley muttered. “That’s what Porcupine says now. When the time is ripe, we’ll see who’s the mad dog.”

  “How soon might we see this information, John? No need to keep it ‘smothered up,’ as you say. It may be hard for you to practice law here in Philadelphia, with the newsmonger that everybody reads hooting at you this way, for bluffing.”

  “Don’t press me, Jimmy. Before I let any of that go, there’s somebody I have to see first. It’s too soon.”

  Who had to authorize Beckley to let slip the story he had been hinting at? Not Jefferson; Callender judged it was unlike him to ever let his hand show. Madison? That high-principled fellow would never dirty his delicate hands by touching the subject of mal-conduct. Monroe? “Would that somebody be anybody you could talk to tomorrow, to release you from any bond of secrecy?”

  “No.”

  That direct answer pointed to Monroe. The ship bringing him home from France was not to arrive for three days. Callender could feel a thumping in his breast. Monroe was said to be a cautious and calculating man and, when he arrived, might well counsel Beckley to continue “smothering up.” He might want to wait until a more propitious moment, such as during a presidential election three years hence, if Hamilton were a candidate. Or Monroe might fear, if a scandal were spread across the public press so soon after his return, being blamed for spreading it himself.

  Whatever the republicans’ interest, Callender was certain it was in the interest of his book that the news be in hand quickly, before Monroe arrived. Indeed, he could publish a part of the book on the day the Jeffersonians gathered to honor Monroe at Oeller’s the next week. That would take some fast writing and typesetting, but it was not impossible—if Beckley would confide in him tonight or, at the latest, tomorrow.

  “I don’t want to press you, John, because your pledge of confidence is sacred. But in view of Mr. Jefferson’s personal interest in my book, and the fact that you can trust me completely—”

  “Stop. Not another word. I have to talk it over with someone first.”

  Callender, frustrated, finished his rum, bid his reluctant source good night and trudged homeward. He picked his way through the mud of Second Street, then over to Front Street, close to the Delaware River. The humid air was oppressive. He could hear the distant, nocturnal croaking of the frogs in the mosquit
o-laden swamps. At 64 Dock Street, he turned in to his house. His wife, the three older boys, and the new baby boy were asleep. What, he asked himself as he eased into bed, could induce Beckley to talk before James Monroe’s ship arrived?

  June 20, 1797

  Next morning, Peter Porcupine struck again. His target this time was the ousted Clerk of the House of Representatives. Cobbett charged John Beckley with the most corrupt act that could be taken by a recorder of the votes of the House: deliberately miscounting a close vote as a tie rather than allowing the winning party to win. Nor was the vote run-of-the-mill legislation: The appropriation of money to implement the Jay Treaty was the most crucial vote of that year, following President Washington’s most controversial decision about foreign intercourse. To impute chicanery to its count was to forever besmear the reputation of the official counter.

  Quoting Beckley’s feeble defense that the miscount had been only “a casual and unintentional mistake,” Cobbett lit into the hapless republican: “Although I have never entertained a very high opinion of John Beckley’s political principles, I confess I did not believe him to be that whining, pining, cringing, contemptible creature he has shown himself on occasion of his removal from office. He has merited his fate, and shame and contrition should stop his mouth . . .” With this broadside, Porcupine discredited the republican complaint that rank partizanship was the reason for the firing of a well-qualified official; the real reason, Federalists could now insist, was at the least the Clerk’s ineptitude and at the most his corruption.