“That is the true state of what has passed between him and me,” the President insisted. “I leave to your judgment what use can be made of these facts. What do you think, James?”
“It is to be regretted that Captain Lewis paid the money,” Monroe replied, “after the intimation by Callender of his threat.” But he assumed that neither Lewis nor Madison, properly forewarned, would say anything about that meeting. Jefferson had spoken of one day sending Lewis on a scientific expedition; Monroe hoped it would begin soon and take him far away. “It might be well to get all your letters, however unimportant, back from Callender.”
Jefferson went to his desk and drew out a large file. “I have a letter file here that lists all letters I have written by the date.” He ran his finger down the pages, then picked up a quill and made notations. “I wrote to Callender on October 11, 1798, and then in 1799 on September 6 and October 6. I’ll get my secretary to search for the copies.”
Three letters, expressing encouragement and possibly transmitting money. How to get them back from the recipient? Perhaps as some part of a settlement; no, Monroe guessed that any attempt along those lines would add fuel to a blackmailer’s fire. “Your resolution to terminate all communication with him from now on is wise,” he said. He hoped that Jefferson’s recollection of those letters to Callender—presumably supplying objective answers to the questions of a reporter, but in no way urging him on—was accurate. But they should not cut off indirect communication, especially about remission of his fine. A postmastership would be a small price to pay. “However, it would be well to try to prevent a serpent from doing one an injury.”
“As soon as I was elected,” Jefferson responded, “Callender came on here wishing to be made postmaster at Richmond. I knew him totally unfit for it, and however ready I was to aid him with my own charities—and I gave him the fifty dollars you know about—I did not think that public offices were anything I could give away as charities. I think that rejection is what has given him mortal offense, far more than the delay in remission of the fine.”
Monroe saw that Jefferson was adamant about refusing the appointment and did not press the matter; in fact, in these abrasive circumstances, it would seem like bribery. He recalled how he had led Callender in prison to believe he would be a good candidate for the postmastership, and thus would gain social acceptance for himself and commercial advantage for his newspaper in Richmond. But he found no need to say anything to the President about that. There had been no witnesses, nothing in writing, and if necessary he would simply deny hinting at a Federal appointment. “In case he comes to Georgetown,” he cautioned, “be assured that Madison and yourself cannot be too circumspect in your conversations with him. Every act of charity he will attribute to improper motives, and he will pervert it to your injury.”
Jefferson readily agreed. One thought nagged at Monroe, however. Nearly a decade before, during the visitation to Hamilton about the Reynolds affair, the Treasury Secretary had said something about passing a message to Jefferson. He tried to call up the exact words but could not; it had to do with a relationship with their Virginia neighbor, John Walker. Monroe had presumed at the time it was a threat to reveal something embarrassing about Jefferson if the republicans ever dared made public Hamilton’s dalliance with Maria Reynolds. Monroe considered that threat to be idle. He knew that Walker was the only close neighbor who bore Jefferson a grudge, and that was merely about politicks. A decade before, Walker had been given an interim appointment as Senator from Virginia and wanted to continue, but Jefferson had snatched the nomination away from him and given it to Monroe.
“Beyond the charity offered to a man who was constantly importuning you,” Monroe asked about Callender, he hoped delicately, “is there anything you suspect that he knows that might possibly be twisted into something embarrassing? We speak, as always, as men of honor.” That “men of honor” phrase, as all Virginia gentlemen knew, was meant to assure absolute confidentiality about any hint of any affairs of a romantic or sexual nature.
Jefferson understood and replied without hesitation, “Callender knows nothing of me which I am not willing to declare to the world myself.”
Governor Monroe leaned back in his chair and allowed himself to sigh in relief. Then, reviewing in his lawyerly mind the way Jefferson had carefully couched his denial—limiting it to what Callender knew—he wondered: who else might know something about Jefferson’s past that the President was not willing to declare to the world? Who was in their Virginia social set, and knew Callender, and was a political opponent not to be trusted? John Marshall came to mind, and the Chief Justice was probably irritated at having to plead for a place for his Court to sit, but he was not a vindictive sort. Then he thought of Light-Horse Harry Lee.
“I have heard that Harry Lee was in Richmond the other day,” he told the President, “and related to a mutual friend about a conversation he had with Aaron Burr up here. Lee told Burr that he knew all the arrangements of your Cabinet, and Burr replied with apparent resentment that he had never been consulted on a single point by you, or expected to be.” When Jefferson attested to the truth of that last, Monroe went on: “Harry Lee also told my friend that if Burr had come forward and favored the views of the Federalists who supported him in the recent election in the House, he might be President today.”
“You are sure Lee said that?”
“Yes, and it’s important that you and Madison know it. I was always aware there would be much difficulty in the management of these men,” Monroe said firmly. This report suggested that Burr might not have been as duplicitous in the election as Jefferson had suspected. But Lee knew all the gossip in their Virginia social set, was now out of power and out of sorts, and probably was in touch with Callender. “Nobody is likely to give you more trouble.”
June 1, 1801
Washington
Private
Jas. Monroe Esq.
Dear Sir
I have recd. Your favor of the 23 Ult.
Callendar made his appearance here some days ago in the same temper which is described in your letter. He seems implacable toward the principal object of his complaints and not to be satisfied in any respect, without an office.
It has been my lot to bear the burden of receiving and repelling his claims. What feelings may have been excited by my plain dealing with him I cannot say, but am inclined to think he has been brought by it to some reflections which will be useful to him. It is impossible however to reason concerning a man, whose imagination and passions have been so fermented.
Do you know too, that besides his other passions, he is under the tyranny of that of love. Strange as it may appear, this came out, under a charge of secresy. in a way that renders the fact unquestionable.
The object of his flame is in Richd. I did not ask her name; but presume her to be young, beautiful in his eyes at least, and in a sphere above him. He has flattered himself & probably been flattered by others into a persuasion that the emoluments and reputation of a post office, would obtain her in marriage. Of these recommendations however he is sent back in despair.
With respect to the fine even I fear that delays, if nothing more may still torment him & lead him to torment others. Callendar’s irritation produced by his wants is whetted constantly by his suspicion that the difficulties, if not intended, are the offspring of indifference in those who have interposed in his behalf.
Intelligence has come thro’ several channels, which makes it probable that Louisiana has been ceded to France. This is but little wonderful. You will readily view this subject in all its aspects. If any ideas occur on it that can be of service, favor us with them.
Mrs. M. joins in the most respectful salutations to Mrs. Monroe & yourself. Adieu Yrs. Affly
James Madison
Chapter 31
June 5, 1801
NEW YORK
“Prime Minifter Pitt is going to be delighted to welcome you back to England, William,” said the British consul, Edward Thorn
ton, in his second-story office facing the Hudson River. “You have become quite the hero at home. William Windham told the Commons a golden statue should be erected in your honor.”
“I left there nine years ago under threat of prosecution for sedition,” Cobbett reminded him. “Frankly, I would prefer to stay here in New York and start Porcupine’s Gazette again. But the choice is not mine. General Hamilton’s partner—the scholarly fellow, Harison—advises that the bleeding doctor is coming after my stock of books to drive me out of business entirely.”
“Dr. Rush will stop at nothing, it seems,” the diplomat sympathized. It struck him that Cobbett’s recent pamphlets excoriating the doctor in evermore-libelous terms only stimulated the medical man’s desire for vengeance, but Thornton was not about to try to influence the Porcupine’s virulent opinions. “His destruction of your collected works—selling them for waste paper—added insult to injury.”
“Rush will be remembered by Americans, thanks to me, as the man whose quack treatment killed George Washington. One of Rush’s bleeding acolytes diagnosed a ‘malignant sore throat’ and ‘lack of strength’ and then bled his patient to death.”
That often-repeated, abusive charge of Cobbett’s—Thornton had no idea of its veracity—surely infuriated the eminent physician. But on the other side of the ocean, the unprecedented libel judgment against the only English journalist in America to stand up for King and Country had been taken as proof of republican hypocrisy. With all its talk of liberty of the press, America had shown how easy it was to bring a critic of the government to the brink of ruination, or so the tame British press liked to think.
“Mr. Pitt’s government controls two daily newspapers,” Thornton said, “the True Briton in the morning and the Sun in the evening. Pitt is prepared to turn over to you either one you choose—its printing press, the building, subscribers, everything. You would be sole owner.”
Cobbett went to the large table in Thornton’s office that held a stack of American newspapers and began perusing the ones from the South. “You know, my dear Edward, that I have always turned down any pecuniary assistance you have offered me in the past. I have often accused the likes of Bache and Fenno and Callender of being hirelings of their favored republican politicians. Though they accused me often enough of being recompensed by the Crown, I have been resolutely independent. You know that.”
Thornton nodded agreement. Cobbett had frequently turned down offers of subsidy. He had made a financial success of his publications by his vividly plain, mutton-fisted style of writing, his corrosive humor, and the outrageousness of his personal vilification. But at the request of Alexander Hamilton, who was acting secretly as Cobbett’s attorney, the British legation had quietly supplied the $8,000 needed to pay the egregious fine and court costs laid against the loyal editor. Hamilton had made a point that nobody, including Cobbett, was to be told of this; the story agreed to was that the legation had urged British loyalists here to help pay the fine.
“Let me remind you of the fable of the wolf and the mastiff,” the editor continued as he turned the pages of the newspapers, apparently searching for something. “One night, when loose, the mastiff rambled into a wood. He met the wolf, all gaunt and shaggy, and said to him, ‘Why do you live this sort of life? See how fat and sleek I am! Come home with me and live as I do, dividing your time between eating and sleeping.’ The ragged wolf accepted the kind offer and they trotted on together till they got out of the wood.”
Cobbett found an article in one of the papers that set him off to another stack, presumably looking for another writer’s approach to the same account. Thornton waited, and then could not help himself: “You were saying about the wolf. And then what happened?”
“Yes. The wolf, assisted by the light of the moon—the beams of which had been intercepted by the trees—spied a crease, just a little mark, round the neck of the mastiff. ‘What is your fancy,’ said the wolf, ‘for making that mark round your neck?’ ‘Oh,’ said the mastiff, ‘it is only the mark of the collar that my master ties me up with.’ ‘Ties you up!’ exclaimed the wolf, stopping short. ‘Give me my ragged hair, my gaunt belly, and my freedom!’ And so saying, the wild and hungry wolf trotted back to the wood.”
The consul smiled. “I shall inform Mr. Pitt that your support of his government will come through the pages of your own new Porcupine’s Gazette.”
“You take my point. For me to do the government any service, I must be able to say that I am totally independent of it in my capacity of proprietor of a newspaper. Ah, here’s what I’m looking for.” He extracted a page from the pile. “My old adversary Callender, that flea-bitten and besotted fugitive from Scottish justice, is eager to make friends with his old foes. He writes here in the Richmond Examiner, in the spirit of Christian charity, that he is now willing to live and let live, and wishes to be let alone. He wants no more quills from Porcupine or my imitators in the Federalist press. Peace and good will and all that. Do you believe he means it, Edward? I don’t.”
It occurred to Thornton that these gladiators of the press, though different in personality and point of view, were intimately familiar with each other’s methods and might have much more in common. “What’s his game, William?”
“He is fishing for respectability, some sort of respite. They say there is a woman above his class he is eager to impress, and a postmastership would have done that for him in Richmond. But Jefferson properly denied it to him because he is a drunk and a rogue. His current posture of good will is either a manifestation of the glow of romance or a ruse. I suspect his true nature will manifest itself in time.”
“Your thought is that Callender will engage the Federalists again?”
“What Federalists? The Tories here are finished. Jefferson has not only defeated them but also gobbled them up. ‘We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans’—that means the Whigs and the Tories have become Tory-Whigs. American politicians are now all thin-gruel radicals, middle-way quiddists, and in a few years time they’ll be at war with England to save France, with nobody here to object.”
“Surely the press,” said Thornton, “with no fear from sedition law, will support an anti-government faction.”
“Do you see another Porcupine around? No, they’ve driven me out, and Jefferson will not soon let another worthy opponent arise. The press was his engine to ride to office, Edward, and he knows its power. You’ll see, with this State Libel Law of his, and miscreants like Governor McKean to protect him, the Jefferson men will crack the press’s skull soon enough. I’m well gone.”
The British consul told the editor he could not agree. He was convinced that the colonists had patterned themselves on the lines of English politicks—staunch Federalist Tories and radical republican Whigs—and the twain would not be joined.
“Only unless someone with the mind of Hamilton can find his way back,” Cobbett amended, “or some hero on horseback sweeps the republicans out. Or a writer with a streak of meanness like Callender turns on them and ruins Jefferson as he ruined Hamilton.”
“But I thought you said Callender is a drunk and a rogue.”
“All that, but more than that. Callender is Ishmael,” said Cobbett, “born to be an outcast.”
“Ah,” said the diplomat.
“You are thinking, my friend, that I cast Callender in that mold because I am an outcast myself. Not so. I am an oppositionist; he is an outcast. Peter Porcupine finds joy in doing battle against the hypocritical rousers of the rabble; but Timothy Thunderproof, as that fugitive from Scottish justice styled himself, is vengeful to the core, a dark spirit who chews the cud of his rejection.” He contemplated the Hudson River boats, the mail packets and the stately, oceangoing Lady Arabella, in the docks that could be seen from the legation window. “I suspect that his innate rebelliousness will conquer his Tom Paine principles. A writer with a nose and an ear and a taste for scandal will ferret it out to satisfy the rage and hunger within. Callender will set his traps, gather up scandal
ous tidbits, and use them against his erstwhile allies in the next election. If the angry mob lets him live that long.”
Cobbett stared at the stack of newspapers and offered the consul a bit of advice to pass along. “If Hamilton starts that newspaper after I’m gone, tell him to consider this: Callender, the dagger that Jefferson used to stab him, could in another hand become a weapon to cut a trail to his own presidency.”
Thornton found most interesting Cobbett’s description of himself as an oppositionist. That was surely true of his role first in the British army, in opposition to a corrupt officer corps. Then it was true here in America, as he stoutly opposed not only republicans, but the French, the Irish, the Scots, Methodists, Jews, Catholics, bleeding doctors, paper money, women’s rights and all resisters to authority except himself. Cobbett had not often inveighed against blacks mainly because he found in their servile state an example of the Americans’ hypocrisy about all men being created equal. Because Cobbett’s loyalty to the Crown gained luster only as a lonely defender abroad, the diplomat wondered how long it would take him to find fault with the English government that welcomed him home.
“I sail for London on the Arabella tomorrow,” the editor announced. “I’m sorry we delayed so long because I am apprehensive that some vile wretch will conceive the idea of hampering me at my departure.”
“General Hamilton heard that Vice President Burr planned to send a gang of his ruffians from Tammany Hall to mar your leave-taking, but I have taken care of that,” the consul assured him. “A group we have assembled of your supporters, and a contingent of New York police, will be at dockside to assist you and Nancy, and little Anne and William, aboard. When the Arabella stops in Halifax before the ocean crossing, there will be a proper reception and dinner in your honor by Sir John Wentworth.”
Scandalmonger: A Novel Page 34