Scandalmonger: A Novel

by William Safire

  Members of the jury were filing back in slowly, but the defendant’s mind was racing. Washington had been trying to replace the monarchic “the King could do no wrong” with a democratic “the President would do no wrong.” If the Treasury Secretary had been personally speculating in securities—or, more likely, corruptly helping his associates make money on the foreknowledge of government information—Hamilton would have done anything to keep any imputation of such government-crippling dishonesty from reaching President Washington. The Treasury Secretary must have known that his idol, that rock of integrity, would have turned on Hamilton savagely—no matter that he was his good right arm, or substitute son—and fired him on the spot, prosecuting him and ruining him forever to reassert the good repute of the government.

  What, in such a fix, would Hamilton do to keep Monroe and Muhlenberg from taking the charges of financial corruption to Washington? He would invent a blackmail scheme, covering all the real payments and notes to Reynolds, spicing it with an imagined affair with his wife and compounding it with nefarious blackmail. Never mind how painful or embarrassing it was or who it hurt; never mind that it would block his own future candidacy to succeed Washington—that concocted story of personal betrayal was as nothing compared to the revelation of a betrayal of the public trust. Hamilton took his moral standing down to perdition, but did not stain Washington’s new American government. That was the reason for Hamilton’s shame-filled cover-up in 1792, and that was the reason for his distracting and salacious Reynolds pamphlet five years later, when Callender dug up what he was sure was the truth about official wrongdoing.

  Under that theory, it dawned on Callender that Hamilton had not reacted foolishly at all. On the contrary, the former Treasury Secretary did the only thing he could do to protect what was most important to George Washington, the man most important to him. Falsely betraying his wife was insignificant compared with truly betraying his country. The fallen patriot had responded as a patriot should, drawing enemy fire on himself rather than letting it bombard his government.

  The defendant slumped back in his chair, shaking his head in wonderment at what he was certain was his flash of insight. He had at last reached a reasoned verdict on Hamilton.

  “Guilty.”

  Judge Chase nodded his head in agreement toward the eight men of the jury. It had taken less than two hours for them to come to the correct conclusion. “Your verdict is pleasing to me, because it shows that the laws of the United States can be enforced in Virginia, which was the principal object of this prosecution.”

  He turned to Callender and motioned for him to rise. The editor struck him as a small and unworthy person to be the cause of so much stress between the nation and its component parts.

  “President Adams is far from deserving the character which you, sir, have given him,” said Chase. “You are a well-informed observer, and surely know of the President’s long and eminent service to his country, and yet you represented him in blacker colors than Sejanus himself. Your attack on him is an attack on the people of this country, for any people who could elect so infamous a character as you pretend Mr. Adams to be must be depraved and wicked themselves.”

  Callender swayed in his place, and Justice Chase spoke slowly so that his words would be taken down by the press and sent across the land. “If your calumny, defamation and falsehood were to be tolerated,” he intoned, “it would reduce virtue to the level of vice. There would be no encouragement to integrity, and no man, however upright in his conduct, could be secure from slander.” Chase stopped glowering long enough to give the convicted man a last chance. “Do you have any contrition to express that might bring about a diminution of your sentence?”

  The defendant started to speak but could not because of the evident dryness of his throat. The judge motioned the marshal to give him some water.

  “I understand that government officers believe that government is strengthened by good repute,” Callender told the judge. “But let me say something about the complicated robbery that is a hallmark of every government.” The felon’s reedy voice was not easy to hear, causing Chase to lean forward and the spectators in the courtroom to fall silent. “In collecting the national revenue, every customhouse officer and exciseman has opportunities, more or less, of filching. In the spending of those tax monies, every colonel and sergeant in the army, every contractor for a plank of wood or a barrel of beef, has a squeeze at the public purse. This always has been the case, because in all ages and nations, human nature is the same.

  “Thus, you see, corruption is one of the first elements of government,” Callender continued. “This proves the necessity for an impartial and independent press, because government exists but by the support of public opinion, and the press is the axis around which public opinion may be said to revolve.” His voice gained some strength. “I may be insolent. I have written some words that may be abusive. But the insolence and the abusiveness of liberty, sir, are far preferable to the groveling decorum of this Court and the funereal silence of despotism.”

  The “hanging judge” had become aware, as the trial progressed, of the Virginians’ plot to make their man Callender seem a martyr. He was troubled by Governor Monroe’s ostentatious display of State protection of the Federal presence. He was annoyed by the walkout of the three defense attorneys, which was sure to be hailed as evidence of his unfairness in the press and perhaps even before the Congress. He was determined now to ameliorate the public reaction sure to come if he gave the convicted man the Draconian sentence he deserved.

  “You will serve time in the Richmond jail until March 4, 1801,” he pronounced, which was the day the Sedition Act was to lapse and the next Presidential term would begin. A mere nine months was not half the length of time this libelous hack ought to sweat in the Richmond jail. And because he knew that Callender could be portrayed by his friends as the penniless father of four destitute boys, Chase thought it wise to be relatively lenient on the fine. “You will pay a fine of two hundred dollars.”

  He gaveled the trial of Callender for sedition to an end. As he slowly exited the courtroom, accepting the congratulations of the prosecution and Federalist spectators, Chase could see the shorthand note-taker whispering to the prisoner and several newsmongers. They would most likely print the transcript of this trial in a pamphlet and mail it to every election district soon to choose Presidential electors. Virginia had deferred most politely to Federal authority in this case but the Virginians, he suspected, had a political plan in mind to exploit the “groveling decorum” in his court. Chase made a mental note to tell Robert Goodloe Harper that his plan to use the courts to systematically suppress criticism of the government might just have the opposite effect.

  Chapter 23

  August 19, 1800

  PHILADELPHIA

  “I don’t know how Burr did it,” said Albert Gallatin to sssJohn Beckley, “but his slate of Presidential electors was able to snatch victory from the Hamilton men in New York City. Imagine—the city, the bastion of Federalism.”

  They were in the republican leader’s office in Congress Hall. Boxes of records were stacked to the ceiling in early preparation for the move of the nation’s capital from Philadelphia to the muddy new town in the Federal District carved out of Maryland and Virginia.

  Beckley was elated. News of the upset election in New York was trumpeted in that morning’s Aurora, along with a savage bit of doggerel that its editor had been using to whip up sentiment against the Federalist judge for jailing Callender: “Cursed of thy father / Scum of all that’s base / Thy sight is odious / and thy name is Chase.”

  Beckley had smoothed over the petty jealousy between the editor, Duane, and the unjustly but usefully convicted Callender. Now the Aurora was one of the many portholes that the Scot, more productive than ever in his Richmond jail cell, was firing through.

  “Burr must have used some of the organizing methods we won with in Pennsylvania,” Beckley speculated to Gallatin, the only republican he co
nsidered capable of matching Hamilton’s brilliance in financial affairs. “Hamilton must be having fits. Now the New York Governorship is Burr’s for the taking.”

  “Jefferson is certain he cannot win this winter without New York’s electors,” the angular republican responded. Beckley had heard Madison say the same. “That’s why we failed four years ago. Can Burr bring the unanimous support of the New York delegation to us?”

  “Not unless he is our choice for Vice President.” Beckley knew Burr’s reputation for a combination of shrewdness and ruthlessness in driving political bargains. “But I’ve heard Jefferson call him a ‘crooked gun.’ Doesn’t trust him.” It was one of the few judgments Jefferson and Hamilton had in common.

  “Is the mistrust misplaced, Beckley, in your view? A crooked gun, when you fire it, explodes in your face.”

  The Clerk thought that Gallatin—and, for that matter, Jefferson and Madison—lacked political practicality. To his mind, the only member of the republican gentry who possessed an understanding of the need to compromise one’s purity on occasion to win election was James Monroe. “We can count on Burr to defeat Hamilton’s slate of electors,” he replied narrowly.

  “Is there another New Yorker, besides Colonel Burr, who could bring Jefferson the whole crowd of them?”

  “Governor Clinton, I suppose. He’s getting old, though.”

  “Here is what I would like you to do.” Gallatin was the son-in-law of an eminent New York banker who was close to the political powers of the State. His wife was that month staying with her elderly father in their William Street home. He directed Beckley to see his wife and her father and find out who were the two or three republicans in that State who would best stand for Vice President alongside Jefferson for President. Then Beckley should sound out each of the two possible candidates, without, of course, making a commitment.

  Beckley was sure Gallatin was aware of the blind spot in the Constitution that had been causing such trouble. The founders’ idea was for the electors to cast votes for individuals running for the two highest offices, and the two men with the most support would be President and Vice President. Unforeseen was the notion of parties, each presenting a pair of men for the separate posts harnessed together like a team of horses. In the founders’ theory, the second man would be nearly as capable as the first; in the practice of the factions, however, the second man was now to be decidedly inferior and running only for the secondary post.

  Both parties were eager to avoid the sort of two-headed result in the 1796 election: the Federalist Adams, President, and the anti-Federalist Jefferson, Vice President. Not only did they work against each other, but if the President died or was assassinated, power would be wrenched by one party’s hands from the opposition’s, inviting civil war. Another problem that bothered Beckley was the possibility of a tie: in 1796, if Adams and Jefferson had tied, the election would have been decided in the House of Representatives by a vote of the States, and perhaps a compromise unknown to the people would be chosen. Madison and the other founders had thought only of individual candidates, and not of entire political factions, competing. The irony was that it was Madison who helped create an opposition faction behind Jefferson that left the initial national election process in a mess.

  “There’s another matter, while you’re up in Hamilton’s neighborhood,” said Gallatin. “Robert Harper, not the brightest of our adversaries, let slip a remark to me that bears further examination. Something about a letter that is being sent from Hamilton, perhaps in pamphlet form, to a select group of Federalist leaders around the country. All very secret. I could not show too great an interest in it to Harper without engendering his suspicion, but if it has to do with Hamilton’s disagreement with President Adams about war with France—”

  Such a letter, if properly exposed, could split the Federalists. “Maybe Colonel Burr knows something about it. A printed pamphlet, you say?”

  “I cannot be sure. You now know as much as I do about it.”

  If Hamilton wanted to circulate his strategy for the coming election to the key high Federalists, Beckley estimated, his list would include about sixty men. They would range from Harper in the House to Treasury Secretary Wolcott, the last of the Hamiltonians left in Adams’s Cabinet. That many letters would be difficult to copy out by hand, if the letter was long, and Hamilton tended to write at great length. If this covered more than forty pages and sixty copies were needed, it would make sense to have it printed—if you trusted the printer. He assured Gallatin that on his trip to New York he would snoop about.

  August 20, 1800

  NEW YORK CITY

  A large and ill-painted portrait of Tamanend, the Delaware Indian chief, in full-feathered headdress and beaded regalia, hung above the saloon bar at the Tammany Society. Over a glass of beer with one of the sachems in the political clubhouse in Martling’s Tavern called the Wigwam—derided by the city’s aristocrats as “the pig sty”—Beckley marveled aloud at the way Tammany had been able to bring to the polls such a number of republican voters. The system of district captains with money in hand for “expenses” on Election Day was familiar to him—he had pioneered the technique four years before—but the politician was intrigued by a few of Burr’s original maneuvers. Voters had been canvassed door-to-door, and each voter’s name was written on a card at the Wigwam, with his political background, family desires, and needs for transportation on Election Day.

  “New York aristocrats put in a property requirement to vote,” said the ruddy-faced sachem behind a brimming stein of ale. “You have to own a twenty-pound freehold, or live in a house that pays forty shillings in rent, to have the right to cast a ballot. Hell, the only things most of us own are our tools.”

  “You circumvented that law? And got away with it?”

  “Colonel Burr found the way. Months ago, some of us gathered up forty, fifty laboring men or poor law students, and got them to club together and rent a house to live in. It’s called a tontine. Then they could put down their address and every man jack of them was qualified to vote. We did that ten times.” He took a satisfying swallow of the ale. “Tammany brought over five hundred votes to the polls that way, surprised the bejeesus out of everybody.”

  Armed with that and other electioneering tips, Beckley made for the town house of Aaron Burr. This was not Burr’s elegant estate, Richmond Hill, overlooking the Hudson, but the modest quarters that included political offices at 30 Partition Street at the corner of Church Street. He presented the New Yorker with a congratulatory letter from the republican leaders in the House, added his own professional regard, and asked what the secret of the electoral success had been.

  “Great names,” Burr said immediately, making no mystery of it. “Up to this last election, nobody of any important station ever ran for elector. The office is insignificant, beneath the dignity of successful men or famous soldiers. After Hamilton put up his list of nonentities, all his lackeys, I offered the people of New York our most famous names. General Horatio Gates, for one—some of us know he rivaled General Washington in military sagacity—and Governor Clinton, and Judge Livingston.”

  “How did you get them to agree to stand for election?”

  “I said it would irritate Hamilton and Adams, and it would not take any of their time, and that Thomas Jefferson and I would appreciate it. They found it amusing to stand for such an inconsequential and momentary office. Nobody turned me down, though Clinton—the ‘Old Incumbent’—thinks Jefferson is a bit of a trimmer. And the people recognized the names on the ballot. They were impressed and voted for them, setting aside their politicks, and now we will have electors ready to vote for the republican candidate.”

  “Brilliant,” said Beckley, smiling at the simplicity and audacity of the scheme. “I understand that the surprising result of the election set Hamilton off in a rage.”

  “He cannot stand to lose,” said Burr, enjoying the thought. “He wrote to Governor Jay demanding that the selection of electors by the new legi
slature be changed. He suddenly, belatedly, wanted the direct election of the Presidential electors by the people.” That was revealing to Beckley; direct election was what republicans sought wherever entrenched Federalists blocked them. “He said that Jefferson was an atheist and a fanatic and it would not do to be over-scrupulous in stopping him. John Jay’s a good Federalist—they wrote The Federalist Papers together, remember?—but changing the rules after the election was asking too much. He ignored him.”

  Beckley made admiring noises about Burr’s sources of information and then asked what he thought Hamilton would do next.

  “Adams has accomplished his ‘move to the middle,’ where most of the people are.” In Burr’s analysis, Hamilton would have to find another Federalist—General Pinckney came to mind—to stand alongside Adams as Vice President and get the same number of electoral votes. “Then, when the House meets to break the tie and re-elect Adams, Hamilton and his high Federalists will arrange for some States to withhold their votes for Adams so that Pinckney would win in a most Constitutional coup.”

  Could such a convoluted scheme ever succeed? Would the people stand for it? It struck Beckley that Burr, a born conspirator, was remarkably adept at reading Hamilton’s mind. “But that will come as a terrible surprise to the people, Colonel. They will have thought the Federalists wanted General Pinckney only as Vice President, and suddenly he’ll be their President.”

  “That’s Hamilton’s plan. I’m sure of it. Such a coup won’t be easy to bring off,” Burr observed, as if finding the plan academically intriguing, “but what else can he do? Adams despises him and is stripping away his influence. He cannot desert Federalism and support Jefferson. He cannot run himself; you and Callender and that Reynolds woman saw to that. He can’t make himself dictator, because Washington is dead and Adams took away his army. So what would you do if you were General Alexander Hamilton?”