Scandalmonger: A Novel

by William Safire

  “Both acknowledged,” Hamilton corrected. “Monroe is the key.”

  both acknowledged their entire satisfaction that the affair had no relation to official duties, and that it ought not to impair the public confidence in Mr. Hamilton’s character.

  “They were sorry they even brought it up,” Hamilton dictated.

  Mr. Muhlenberg expressed his regrets

  “Monroe, too.” Wolcott did not want to make a false statement that Monroe could refute, so assumed that Muhlenberg spoke for both, and wrote instead:

  They expressed their regrets at the trouble which the explanation had occasioned.

  “I hope you don’t intend me to backdate this,” Wolcott said.

  “Date it today, and sign,” Hamilton ordered the Secretary. “Then go to Monroe and give him a letter I shall now write.”

  Hamilton told himself not to let his fury get the better of his judgment, but then ignored his own advice. He took the quill from his former deputy and wrote on a fresh page:

  James Monroe, Esq.: July 5, 1797: I ask you to attest to this account of our interview. I shall rely upon your delicacy that the manner of doing it, will be such as one Gentleman has a right to expect from another.

  Wolcott, looking over his mentor’s shoulder, urged him to stop at that, but the infuriated Hamilton had to get in a rebuke about the unauthorized disclosure.

  You must be sensible that the present appearance of the papers is contrary to the course which was understood between us to be proper and includes a dishonorable infidelity.

  “He’s not going to like that ‘dishonorable,’ ” Wolcott cautioned. “Monroe’s a Virginian—you know how important honor is to them.”

  “No more than mine is to me.” Hamilton, anger at his tormentor rising with every moment, was aware that he might be taking the step that would precipitate a duel. Much as he despised the code duello, he did not care. On second thought, and as a concession to Wolcott’s advice, he added a word making it “dishonorable infidelity somewhere.”

  Wolcott was trying to placate him further. “Monroe is sure to want to think it over, sir, and to talk to Muhlenberg. You know you won’t get an immediate response from Monroe.”

  “Meanwhile, the whole country will be talking about this.” Hamilton, who had shown his understanding of the need to mold public opinion in The Federalist Papers two decades before, was aware of how such word was spread. “Every republican sheet will reprint the worst of this part of Callender’s book, and then commentary on top of that. The ‘democratic societies’ will post it everywhere. This slander cannot go unanswered. I have to make some kind of statement now.”

  “That would be unwise, Colonel. Stand above all this. Don’t feed the fire.”

  “I know what I’m doing. Send up Fenno.” Hamilton referred to John Fenno, the Philadelphia editor whose publication the Federalists sponsored. “I’ll have a letter for his United States Gazette making clear that I was investigated and exonerated. And if that doesn’t staunch the wound, I’ll have more later. Much more.”

  Hamilton was aware that Wolcott departed for his Treasury office in Philadelphia with a sense of great unease. Hamilton was glad to have such a loyal friend with him in this, though he could have done without his successor’s high-mindedness about backdating his memorandum.

  No sense of guilt whatever attached to his personal financial dealings while in command at Treasury in Washington’s Cabinet. At the time, he had even rid himself of valuable holdings at a loss rather than have it appear to be in conflict with his duties. He had been poorer when he left the government than when he went in, a statement few could make, including the tower of integrity Washington himself. Some of Hamilton’s friends and family had been knaves, and in retrospect perhaps he might have been more severe with them, as Wolcott and Richard Harison had counseled at the time, but nobody could truthfully say that Secretary Hamilton was not personally honest to a fault.

  But what did Callender, the hireling of the republican Aurora, care about truth? His only interest was in helping Jefferson and Madison and that icicle Monroe seize power from the government and distribute it to the States, returning the country to a loose confederation of sovereignties, encouraging disorder, abetting disunion. He slapped the writer’s damned booklet against his leg a few times, pacing around the library. Who could contradict today the account he gave to Muhlenberg and Monroe five years ago? James Reynolds, he had been assured, was a sailor usually at sea and in deserved obscurity. Young Clingman knew nothing of importance firsthand. Maria Reynolds had obtained a divorce from her husband a couple of years ago in New York, represented by Aaron Burr, the republican New York lawyer who had long been a thorn in his side. Hamilton suspected that Burr and Maria had known each other all too well years ago; were they still friends? That could spell trouble.

  He sat down on the maroon leather library couch. He thought again about that Reynolds woman, what she had done to and for him, and the poignant way she refused to argue with him five years ago, the last time he saw her. One of Hamilton’s informants had reported that Maria and her daughter were living in Maryland, probably with Clingman. Though he could not be certain, he was willing to gamble that she would be disinclined to come forward now to dispute his account by claiming he had forged her letters. Though he had savaged her privately in his defense, he had never intended to brand her a whore and a blackmailer publicly; that would be Monroe’s doing, and Callender’s. But further notoriety could do her no good. All Maria could do now was to hide her identity and protect her daughter.

  He tapped the rolled-up Callender pamphlet lightly against the arm of the couch. With his other hand, he stroked the supple leather seat of the only major piece of furniture he had transported from the library in his Philadelphia home. He had paid a foolishly large sum for its carriage when he returned to New York, but it was his souvenir of the unforgettable Maria Reynolds.

  Chapter 5

  July 3, 1797

  PHILADELPHIA

  In his suddenly buftling office at Snowden & McCorkle, the most successful new printing establishment in Philadelphia, Callender read that morning’s Gazette, edited by the Federalist hireling Fenno, with glee.

  “Hamilton’s decided to engage me,” the newly invigorated Scot said. The former Secretary of the Treasury had confirmed the accuracy of the published documents and then tried to wriggle out of responsibility for his actions. “Listen to what Hamilton writes, McCorkle: ‘The inquiry was politically motivated. Two of the most profligate of men sought escape from prison by the favor of party spirit. One of the inquiring Congressmen was my known political opponent’—he means James Monroe, who went out of his way to avoid partizanship in this. ‘A full explanation took place between the Congressmen and myself in which by written documents I convinced them of the falsehood of the accusation.’ ”

  Callender, finger trembling in his excitement, pointed to a key paragraph in Hamilton’s quick response. “Now see this base canard, McCorkle, the lie that gives me my opening: ‘They declared themselves perfectly satisfied with the explanation, and expressed their regret at the necessity which has been occasioned to me in making it.’ Hah!”

  “What’s the lie?” the printer asked.

  “Oh, I wish Beckley were here, he’d see it in a minute.” He rummaged through papers on his table for the original memorandum from Monroe, and held it up. “Here is what Monroe wrote just after the interrogation at Hamilton’s that night. Look at this line: ‘We left him under the impression our suspicions were removed.’ Does that sound like a man who, as Hamilton now says, was ‘perfectly satisfied with the explanation’? Hamilton, five years ago, thought he got away with it—which was evidently what Monroe wanted him to think. But Monroe wrote down that he remained suspicious—Hamilton’s explanation, whatever it was at the time, did not resolve all doubts.”

  A postscript to the investigators’ memo of that night was the keystone of Callender’s planned riposte. In it, Monroe re-introduced Maria R
eynolds—how Callender wished he could have met that mysterious belle, who either manipulated men or was cruelly abused by them, he couldn’t be sure which—with this passage: “Mr. Clingman called on me this evening and mentioned he had been apprized by Mr. Wolcott of Hamilton’s vindication. When he told that to Mrs. Reynolds, she appeared much shocked at it and wept immoderately.”

  “That postscript is the key. Why, McCorkle, do you suppose our beautiful Maria was shocked to tears when she heard about the presumed vindication of Hamilton?”

  The sturdy printer was catching on. “Because she knew Hamilton’s explanation was false?”

  “Exactly! You’re beginning to understand what you printed. Here’s the investigators’ report of what Clingman told them about Maria’s reaction: ‘She denied the imputation & declared it has been a fabrication of Colonel Hamilton, and that her husband had joined in it and even told her so. Reynolds had given Hamilton receipts for money and written letters, so as to give countenance to the pretense.’ You see? Hamilton and Reynolds conspired to make Maria seem to be the reason for their late-night dealings in stocks and government bonds. The money that passed was ostensibly for her assistance because of what Monroe called the ‘particular relationship’ Hamilton was supposed to have had with her.”

  “What’s a ‘particular relationship’?”

  “It’s what happens when a man and woman are in bed together, McCorkle.” Callender had to marvel at the daring of Hamilton, Wolcott and his fellow conspirators. “I’m only guessing now, but I think the explanation Hamilton gave the investigators for his dealings with Reynolds was that he was committing adultery with his wife.”

  “Do you suppose that was true?” The printer did not seem able to get his mind around the idea that one of the founders of the nation was confessing to such a sin, and that Callender, his attacker, was suggesting the confession might be untrue.

  “Who cares if it was true or not?” Callender answered. “The explanation is a diversion intended to throw the investigators off the trail of Reynolds and the money. Remember, Clingman said—in a note made contemporaneously, not cooked up five years later—that Maria told him that her husband was with Hamilton the morning after he left jail. After that visit of Reynolds to Hamilton, the investigators found out that Reynolds had run off to New Jersey or somewhere. Obviously, he ran off at Hamilton’s instigation, so he could not talk to the Congress.”

  Such encouragement of a witness to take flight, in Callender’s mind, was damning. “Now here”—he brandished one of the documents given him by Beckley—“is Monroe and Muhlenberg in their conclusion: ‘Clingman was of the opinion that Maria Reynolds was innocent and that the defense created by Hamilton and James Reynolds was an imposition.’ ”

  “What’s an imposition?”

  “A damned lie, McCorkle! The hint of adultery was a false story imposed upon the truth to mislead the unwary!”

  “But nothing you’ve written makes the slightest suggestion of this, uh, imposition. Not a hint, even. That would be an awful libel.”

  “Fear not. The astute reader can infer any such odious explanation from the documents themselves.”

  Callender could hardly wait to see the next installment of his History of 1796 in print. The book, by being published in a series of newsmaking pamphlets, was helping to make the history of 1797, because it was already pitting the Federalist Hamilton directly against the republican, democratic, anti-Federalist Monroe. No longer would the deep political differences between the factions be limited to printed debate in pamphlets, usually under pseudonyms, augmented on occasion through the hireling daily press of each side. Now the clash was out in the open and intensely personal, with the protagonists calling each other liars and a thirsty public lapping up the salacious details of a purported scandal.

  “I hope Hamilton doesn’t add to his reply with a barrage against us,” said the worried printer. “He can really write, you know. It would be terrible if we were successfully refuted.”

  “Don’t be a fool! Stop thinking like a printer and think like a newsmonger—this is an advertisement for our next installment.”

  “Can we get the same subscribers?” McCorkle was dubious.

  “No time to get subscribers. Print first, and you’ll have buyers lining up at the door. Every republican newsmonger in America will be scratching at the window for a copy.”

  “But this postscript that you set such great store upon, that had Maria weeping. Who wrote it?” asked McCorkle. The papers were copies, in a clerk’s hand, and no signature was under the memo or the postscript. “It says only that Clingman called on me. Who was the ‘me’—Muhlenberg or Monroe? That’s important, isn’t it?”

  Callender revised his estimate of the printer’s acumen. Even McCorkle was aware that the authorship of the postscript was vital, and the unsigned document provided no answer. Muhlenberg was no longer Speaker; having voted for Washington’s unpopular treaty with Great Britain, he had been defeated in a bid last year for Pennsylvania Governor and his political career was finished. Monroe, on the other hand, was a figure of current controversy. He had been insulted by President Adams with his recall from France, and was an anti-Federalist known widely to be allied with Jefferson and Madison, and as such had become the darling of the repressed republicans.

  “Of course the authorship of the postscript is important. Good for you for catching it, McCorkle. Let’s print Monroe’s name, alone, after the postscript, along with Maria’s charge of forgery and conspiracy. It’s obvious to me he wrote it.” Putting Monroe’s name under what Monroe had neglected to sign was not another instance of forgery, he told himself; it was merely informed attribution. And the printed signature would more likely draw a personal counterattack on Monroe from Hamilton, generating more controversy that would serve republican interests, not to mention the journalist’s own.

  Callender decided not to wait for Hamilton’s promised reply in detail. That might take a month. Instead, he would take quick advantage of his adversary’s blunder in falsely claiming that his explanation had convinced the investigators to exonerate him. The editor knew he had been shrewd to hold a little something back; a shocking revelation need not be a one-pamphlet thing. If the fish took the bait, a stream of booklets and articles could be developed, with circulation building at each new refutation and revelation in the scandal. Callender grinned, certain he had set his hook firmly in the great man’s mouth.

  Chapter 6

  July 5, 1797

  NEW YORK CITY

  The James Monroes arrived at a hotel on New York’s Wall Street by stagecoach from Philadelphia. The grand banquet welcoming them back to America, held at Oeller’s Hotel, had been a notable success, attended by Jefferson and every republican legislator left in the capital in mid-summer. Monroe knew the event was more than a personal welcome home; it enabled the anti-Federalists to conspicuously honor a diplomat known to be friendly to the French at a time they were denying President Adams the money he wanted for armed forces to oppose France.

  The ostensible purpose of the Monroes’ trip to New York was to visit Elizabeth’s family after their long service in Paris. But the recalled ambassador was keenly aware that his presence in New York meant a confrontation with Alexander Hamilton.

  A few days before, he had received Hamilton’s letter demanding a sweeping exoneration, which the newly unemployed Virginian was not inclined to give. Muhlenberg, a Lutheran pastor and forgiving sort—and still a Federalist in good standing with Hamilton’s party—was likely to accede to the former Treasury Secretary’s wishes. But Monroe had no cause to make Hamilton’s possible bid for the Presidency in 1800 any easier for him; on the contrary, any taint of scandal attaching to Hamilton would help Jefferson overturn the Federalists. Let General Washington’s favorite, whose near-monarchist advocacy of “energy in the executive” had caused Jefferson such pain in the first Cabinet, suffer a little.

  Unpacking at the lodgings took time because the stagecoach had been largely f
illed with dresses his wife had brought back from Paris and was eager to show New York friends. Elizabeth at thirty was seen to be a cool beauty, but Monroe admired her reserve, which was much like his own.

  “You never told me about your investigation of Colonel Hamilton,” she chided him. “All the ladies are buzzing about it, especially the hint of an affair with that Reynolds woman. I don’t know one of my friends who doesn’t find the Colonel powerfully attractive.”

  “It was a private political matter,” he said, helping her open a trunk, “and I couldn’t be sure the charges were true. Don’t feel left out. We didn’t tell President Washington, either.”

  “But you were genuinely surprised at the news when it appeared. Did it upset you?”

  “Surprised, yes; upset, not really.” Publication of most of the papers relating to their investigation of the association of Reynolds with Hamilton did not trouble him a whit. Let the man whose British sympathies undermined the Monroe mission to Paris feel some pain, if not of remorse at least of embarrassment. The Reynolds matter was never fully resolved, and only his and Muhlenberg’s sense of fairness in giving the accused the benefit of the doubt prevented the documents from reaching the President or the press five years before.

  “You’ll be blamed for putting it out, you know,” his wife said. “You have the motive.”

  “Impossible.” Elizabeth graced any dinner party with her easy correctness and high fashion, and usually took little interest in politics—the perfect wife of a politician, offering domestic tranquillity. She was no Angelica Church, who entranced both Jefferson and her brother-in-law Hamilton with her good looks and worldly good sense, or Anne Bingham, who be-dazzled George Washington with her salon. “We were on the high seas when the documents were passed to Callender, my dear. There is no way I can be blamed for arranging for their publication.”