Scandalmonger: A Novel

by William Safire

  Richmond was a far voyage down the coast from Boston, but nothing like the trip they had just taken across the Atlantic. A clear separation was necessary if her daughter was to start life unburdened with the association of parents marked by scandal. Maria trusted Burr, who always had her best interests at heart, and who was solicitous of the daughter of his own he was rearing alone. And she preferred the South to New York, with its unhappy family memories, or pestilential and gossipy Philadelphia.

  “I have a friend in Richmond, too,” she noted. “James Callender.”

  Burr smiled. “Jefferson has arranged for Callender to put some life into the local republican newspaper. You’ll enjoy reading the Richmond Examiner.” He led her down to breakfast with their girls. “And the name I will send to Dr. Mathew?”

  “Maria Clement.” She had used that in her letter to him and liked the sound. Not only was it her legal name, but it meant “mild weather”; she was looking forward to more of that in her life.

  Chapter 21

  January 21, 1800

  RICHMOND

  The Governor’s manfion in Richmond was draped in black throughout the month of national mourning. James Monroe thought this properly honored the Virginian who bravely led the American Revolution against British tyranny, but who had failed to see the meaning to mankind of the subsequent French radicals’ revolution against the Bourbon kings.

  In Europe, that revolution to win the struggle against the kings and generals had failed; the Jacobins had been turned out and their red radicalism replaced by the new First Consul, General Bonaparte. Only America carried the hopes of Paine’s Rights of Man, and even here, Monroe believed, democracy had been stultified by the Federalist oppression. Even the word “democrat” had become an epithet used by Porcupine to remind Americans of the Reign of Terror; Monroe could use only “republican” to define Jefferson’s approach to government. Their dream of a worldwide alliance of free peoples lay in a grave deeper than Washington’s.

  He received John Beckley with a handshake as cordial as the dour Virginian planter could convey. That was because he considered the former indentured servant from England to be the republicans’ most useful political instrument. Beckley had already demonstrated in Pennsylvania how to organize voters in their local villages to elect legislators. These officials would then pick the electors who would choose Jefferson President, if all went as planned.

  Monroe accepted the political agitator’s congratulations on his election as Governor by the Virginia legislators. He was aware that Beckley knew the Governorship was little more than a Jefferson-Madison appointment, and spoke quickly to pre-empt the inevitable request for patronage: “The Vice President gave me a letter for you, John, to give to Governor McKean of Pennsylvania. It endorses your proposal to become a state official there.”

  The new Governor of Virginia remembered well how Beckley had lusted for vengeance when Federalists had turned him out of his job as Clerk of the House of Representatives. The ousted functionary had taken his copy of the memorials Monroe had given him about the Reynolds affair and passed them on to Callender. That began the ruination of Alexander Hamilton’s chances of ever becoming President, though it was surely Hamilton’s indiscreet over-reaction that caused his downfall. He recalled with distaste how that arrogant financier’s demand for support of his claim of honesty had almost led to a duel between them. But he did not blame Beckley, the perpetrator of the publication of the Hamilton scandal; the deed might have been a year or so premature, but had been useful in curtailing the Presidential ambition of Jefferson’s most brilliant rival.

  Beckley was effusive in his thanks for Jefferson’s endorsement and Monroe’s obvious part in it. “It’s a sinecure, of course—hardly any work involved. But it will give me an income and pay my expenses in organizing supporters for the election of electors for Jefferson.” Monroe nodded coolly: he knew Beckley had tried to become a landowner and thereby to rise above his station, but his speculations in Greenbrier land were unsuccessful. “By the way, Governor, your book on foreign affairs was very well received throughout the nation, despite one purely politically inspired review.”

  Monroe took that as a reminder that Beckley had performed a personal service to him in helping distribute and sell his book defending his service as Minister to France. President Adams had slandered him publicly as “a disgraced minister, recalled in displeasure for misconduct,” an insult that called for detailed response in book form. The review Beckley mentioned was by a Connecticut Federalist writing under the name of Scipio. “I have repeatedly thought I would answer the flimsy, scurrilous papers of Scipio,” he told Beckley with a sigh, “but whenever I took up the subject it really laid me up with a headache.”

  He had a greater headache facing him as Governor: rumors of an imminent slave uprising in Virginia. Inspired by the success of the black leader Toussaint L’Ouverture in San Domingo, the talk of black rebellion was causing much unease among plantation owners. If the conspiracy led to a riot, the Governor would have to apprehend and hang the leaders. No lesser punishment was possible, and Monroe was not looking forward to it because such punitive action would hurt the Jefferson cause in the North. Federalists led by Porcupine were already mocking the Virginia republicans’ eloquent protestations of belief in liberty and equality while they were defending human slavery with its often attendant cruelty. Because Beckley was the one who published Thomas Paine’s radical works in this country, Monroe said nothing about his concerns about an uprising.

  “Let me tell you how I am organizing the campaign in the North,” Beckley said. “I won’t presume to discuss your efforts down here, which is surely our stronghold.”

  “We take nothing for granted here,” Monroe responded. “The resolutions in Virginia and Kentucky against the Alien and Sedition Acts, which you know sprung from Jefferson’s brain, were not taken up by other states. To be truthful, they have not been too popular among the people here, either. And President Adams’s appointment of John Marshall as Secretary of State won him Federalist support here in Virginia. We will prevail, I am sure, but not overwhelmingly.”

  “Then strong victories in New York and Pennsylvania are all the more important,” said Beckley. “In New York, I am working closely with your good friend Aaron Burr. He understands political organization and despises Hamilton for some personal reason. He is, I’m sure, a loyal Jefferson man. In Pennsylvania, I’m using the technique that worked so well to carry the State for Jefferson in ’96.”

  Monroe was aware of Beckley’s zeal. When the Federalists passed a law prohibiting the distribution of printed ballots, Beckley’s troops wrote out by hand 50,000 handbills with voting instructions. Beckley paid local leaders and farmers to pass the word to come to evening meetings at which he harangued the populace for Jefferson. They denounced the Federalist belief that “the rich, wellborn, and well educated must be preferred to office.” Although that was a credo that Monroe privately agreed with, he could see the political wisdom in the popular attack upon it by lower-class republicans campaigning against Federalists in the North.

  “And I’m finishing a biography of Jefferson in time for the campaign,” the politician concluded, “to be sold in the meetings and advertised in the handbills. Callender here in Richmond, besides his newspaper articles, is writing a new book analyzing the failures of the Federalists and hailing Jefferson as the next President we need. His work sells very well, you know.”

  Monroe knew all about the sales of Callender’s works. He had some hints about his subsidy by republicans, including payments from Jefferson himself. That had to be done discreetly because Jefferson, the Vice President, wanted to be thought to be above crass politicking. It would not be seemly for him to be caught undermining the continued authority of President Adams. Even worse would be any evidence of Jefferson having supported newspaper and pamphlet attacks on George Washington’s government in its final year.

  Callender was one of the few journalists who had dared to quest
ion Washington’s financial probity at the time that the President was using his reputation for honesty and fidelity to unify the new nation. Monroe knew that Washington’s ambition had not been to acquire power or money, though he did both; his primary goal was to gain and hold the good repute of his countrymen. Vanity was part of that concern of Washington’s with reputation, but the stability that came to the new nation with the assurance of a leader of pristine personal character and rock-solid financial integrity was the greater part. When Washington spoke of the need for Americans to have “a standard to which the wise and honest can repair,” he thought of himself as that high standard. Because the rare newspaper attacks on him endangered that standard of stability, he had been infuriated by them. Now that one and all were elevating the dead President to sainthood, any politician who had contributed to criticism of him would be in trouble. Monroe hoped that Jefferson had not taken Beckley into his confidence about payments to the hard-hitting writer.

  “A book by Callender is not enough,” he told his visitor. “That will not come out until the fall, but the electors will be chosen in New York this summer. We need to stimulate public sentiment now.”

  “He’s editing the Richmond Examiner here,” said Beckley. “At the same time, he’s writing for the new monthly that Spittin’ Matt Lyon’s son is publishing—”

  “Strongly enough, you think?”

  Beckley was taken aback. “Nobody ever suggested that James Callender wrote weakly about anything.”

  Monroe frowned; he did not want to put his thought into quotable words, but he wanted Beckley to grasp the maneuver he had in mind. “You mentioned James Lyon. I recall that the arrest and trial of his father, the Congressman from Vermont, had a great effect on public opinion in the North. It discredited the Sedition Act decisively when he won re-election, running from jail.”

  Beckley fell silent. After a bit, he observed, “Writing from jail is dramatic, no doubt. Whips up the emotions of people, especially when the trial is patently unfair, as those sedition trials always are.” At Monroe’s encouraging nod, he went on: “And the younger Lyon would be the perfect person to publish another inflammatory Callender book, this time with the author writing from behind bars.”

  “That would surely be a cause célèbre. I’m told that the Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase is on his way to Virginia on behalf of the Federalists,” Monroe observed, “to investigate seditious practices here.”

  The Governor was pleased to see that Beckley did not need further instruction. He was certain that the political operative understood that the sure way to infuriate Southerners against Adams was to stimulate overzealous prosecution of the Sedition Law by the Federal government. It was not so much a concern for liberty of the press that angered Virginians as the reach of the powerful Federal arm into the rights reserved to the States.

  “I’m to have a glass or two with Callender tonight,” said Beckley. “He reacts well to incitement from his friends.”

  “I’m firing through four portholes at once!”

  Callender, his words published in more outlets than ever, could not have been happier to see Beckley’s face in his Examiner office. He felt wedded, in a way, to the former House clerk who had not only been his source of the most stunning scandal exposure of the decade, but also had a few years before helped him escape deportation from America to certain prison, if not worse, in Scotland. “I sign five columns a week of politicks under ‘A Scots Correspondent.’ This paper has doubled its advertising and gained four hundred subscribers in the six months I’ve been here—we’ve just about driven the Virginia Federalist out of business. On top of that, I do a monthly article under my name for Lyon’s Scourge of Aristocracy that’s circulated all over the South and West.”

  “And in Philadelphia?”

  Callender winced. “Duane doesn’t run me in the Aurora any more, but that’s just because he’s jealous of the way I write. Makes his own prose seem feeble. But the New York Argus takes my articles, and at night I work on my book, The Prospect Before Us.”

  He took a bottle of rum out of his desk drawer, poured out a couple of drinks and toasted the campaign of 1800: “To the downfall of His Majesty John Adams—he likes that ‘majesty’ title, you know—the apostle of royalty and aristocracy, and the blasted tyrant of America.”

  “Strong words, Jimmy. I’ve not seen you put them in print.”

  “I will, I will. I’ve had to pull out of the press a few choice comments I was to make about that hypocrite George Washington—did you know he authorized the robbery and ruin of the remnants of his own army? I hold back only because it’s not done to speak ill of the dead, and I don’t want a mob of Virginia war veterans throwing rocks through my windows. But Adams is fair game, the blasted tyrant. I think he must be a British spy.”

  “You’ll write that? Not many Americans with the courage to put that in print, Jimmy. Here’s to you.” He sipped his rum, darker and tangier than the kind they used to imbibe in the taverns of Philadelphia. “I take it you’re not worried about the Sedition Law.”

  “Not down here. That’s why I’m in Richmond, out of reach of the Federalist rascals. Took an awful beating from some ruffians in Leesburg last year, but that’s northern Virginia. You see these proofs?” He proudly brandished the first chapters of the book that he was sure would crush all argument against a Jefferson victory. Beckley took them and perused the pages. “Kind of skips around,” he noted.

  “That’s to capture the reader’s attention.” He hated to admit it, but he had learned this technique of holding the readers’ attention from reading Cobbett. “I’m always afraid of saying a great deal at once, upon any one subject, for fear of becoming tiresome. When you cannot guess what is to come in the next page, your mind is kept more upon the watch.”

  “Isn’t that a trick of Porcupine’s?”

  “Thomas Jefferson has seen this,” Callender changed the subject, “and thinks it’s a work of genius. Told me that himself: work of genius. Sent me fifty dollars against delivery of the first copies, through an intermediary of course.” He flashed a letter of Jefferson’s at Beckley that encouraged him to have confidence in his “power to render services to the public liberty.” Jefferson had added that because of “the curiosity of the post offices,” he would have to curtail his letter-writing in the future.

  “Our Tom is not like Jemmy Madison,” said Beckley. “I ordered a dozen copies of your last book in his name, but when they were delivered, the little skinflint wrote ‘Not Authorized’ across the bill and wouldn’t pay.”

  “What’s wrong with Madison, anyway? Jefferson wants him to take up his pen and join the fray, but he won’t. For that matter, neither will Jefferson himself. At least Monroe turned out a book, crabbed as it was.”

  “They’re above the battle, you know,” said Beckley, grinning. “Gentlemen do not get down in the muck and mire of politicking. No dirtying of skirts, not even to present their views directly on great issues. They leave that to ‘a Scots Correspondent’ and ‘the Calm Observer’—the likes of you and me.”

  “Just as well. Provides work for scribblers.”

  “You just get this book finished and printed before they start to pick electors for President this summer. I’ll get the people to vote,” Beckley promised, “if you get them all riled up with what you write about Adams. You say he’s an English spy?”

  “In effect,” Callender hedged. “About my last book, the copies I sent to Madison—where did you get the money to pay for them?”

  “From Israel Israel.”

  “A Jew?”

  “He’s not a Hebrew. Grandfather was, maybe. Monroe sent me to him. He’s been an important supporter of republicans all over, the way Jefferson’s relative George is down here, or Tom Leiper in Pennsylvania. Leiper tells me the boys you left with him are fine, by the way.”

  “They’re coming down to visit me,” Callender reported happily, “all four, as soon as school is out. Then I’m sending them back to f
inish, until I’m ready for a move. Richmond is no place to rear children, John.”

  The town of 6,000—less than a thousand white adult males—was safe from Federalists, he felt, but not from immoralists. Callender’s puritanical upbringing made him recoil from the raffish, frontier spirit of the place. Gamblers thrived on brutish animal blood sports. One tiny Episcopalian church was, as one shocked visitor put it to him, “spacious enough for all the pious souls of the region.”

  The newspaper offices had grown dark. Callender felt the need to get a little boozy and assumed his companion did as well. He motioned to Beckley to bundle up against the cold January night. To give his friend some idea of the moral degradation going on beneath the surface of Southern culture, the “Scots Correspondent” took the “Calm Observer” out for an evening’s entertainment at a “black dance.”

  The festivities took place in a barn on the town’s outskirts, near the James River. They could hear the thump of kettledrums and the merry sound of a couple of fiddles as they approached on horseback across the shallows near the riverbank. About a hundred slaves, mostly female, chanting and clapping, ringed the edges of the barn. Everyone with finery, certainly all the women, displayed it lavishly, the color red predominant. Over the pulsing sound and flashing lanterns and bonfires, Callender pointed out the dozen or so planters’ sons and a sprinkling of hired plantation overseers. These youngish whites, smoking long cheroots, surveyed the scene, a few joining the dancing but most observing the sinuous movements of attractive black and mulatto dancers. The white planters made their choices of the women and paid each other the necessary rentals.

  “This is where white and black mix,” said Callender darkly. “I hear miscegenation is rampant. Do you remember this from your days when you were here?”