“It was thirty-four years ago,” said Madison in sympathy. “You were single.”
“Unfortunately, Mrs. Walker was not,” Monroe reminded him, returning the group to reality. This was not a matter to be ignored, like the Sally slander, nor dismissed as a mere act of charity, as were the payments to Callender when he was serving the republican cause by calumniating Washington. The Walker affair could not be truthfully denied, and it could not be publicly acknowledged without great political risk. It had to be dealt with in some other way. Jefferson’s use of the word “incorrect”—rather than “wrong” or “improper”—suggested it could be treated as a social error, an indiscretion perhaps misunderstood and exaggerated in retrospect. In that light, friendly observers might not construe it as sinful behavior.
“It was without premeditation,” Jefferson offered in extenuation, “and produced by an accidental event.”
The explanation that they just fell into each other’s arms would not set well with Federalist editors, in Monroe’s judgment. Much depended on what the lady would recollect today; if the talkative Betsey could be induced to remain silent, perhaps by her husband, who could be promised anything, the matter would fade away in a few months. But Monroe knew Betsey; she loved being the center of attention. She would delight in basking in the interest afforded someone who had been maddeningly attractive to the young man who later became author of the Declaration of Independence and President of the United States.
“Did you correspond with either of the Walkers over the years?” Monroe knew Jefferson faithfully kept copies, or at least notes, of all his letters. He could recall no correspondence with either of the Walkers.
“Perhaps you would ask your secretary to search your records.”
“How can we keep this quiet?” Madison wondered.
“These people,” said the President about his press enemies, “slander for their bread. As long as customers can be found who will read and relish and pay for their lies, they will fabricate them for the market.”
Jefferson was missing the point; by his own admission, this was not a lie. Monroe thought a few moves ahead into the new year. First, there was the danger that Callender had the story Hamilton had alluded to. After that, the danger lay in public corroboration from Betsey. After that was the danger of reverberation in the New York Evening Post and elsewhere. And finally the greatest danger of all: the near-cuckolded John Walker being forced by public exposure to demand satisfaction from Jefferson on the field of honor.
Nobody wanted that; not Betsey, not Jack, certainly not Jefferson. But the code duello often forced Virginia gentlemen into inescapable corners. If Walker were forced to issue a challenge, Jefferson would be forced to take it up; he could not afford to be labeled a coward. Monroe recalled how close he had come to a duel with Hamilton when Callender published the Reynolds letters. Thanks to the insatiable lust for vengeance of that same scoundrel, Jefferson could soon be in mortal danger. “Next week: Mrs. Walker.” Monroe feared that this could get out of hand.
Chapter 44
February 3, 1803
RICHMOND
Mrs Walker
CIRCUMSTANCE BETWEEN A
CERTAIN GREAT PERSONAGE
And a lady in Albemarle County
First, the public have a right to be acquainted with the real characters or persons, who are the possessors or candidates for office.
Second, an enemy cannot refute the right of being attacked with his own weapons. Everybody must well remember the noise which was made by the republicans in Summer, 1797, concerning a personage of the Federalist party, who said he had fallen into an illicit commerce with another man’s wife. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, says the proverb.
Third, we have been badly accused in the past week of a design to attack the character of a most respectable lady, whereas such a thing never once came upon our heads. Instead of arraigning, we are going to vindicate the lady’s character, if indeed a character so uncommonly respectable and amiable could be supposed to stand in want of a vindication.
Without any declamation upon the sanctity of the Seventh Commandment, or the guilt of seduction, or such trite matters, we shall tell a plain story that is universally believed, and that ought long since to have been published.
Mr. John Walker of Albemarle is a gentleman of independent fortune, and a most irreproachable character. His lady is universally represented as worthy to be the pattern of her sex.
A Great Personage, who resides at some distance from Mr. Walker’s, and who had been at school with him, had, after Mr. Walker’s marriage, been received in Mr. Walker’s family with that cordial hospitality for which a Virginian country gentleman is so proverbially distinguished.
The return to this friendship was an attempt, as foolish as it was infamous, to injure the virtue of Mrs. Walker, and the happiness of her husband. He was repulsed with the contempt he deserved, and his intended exertion of his ENERGIES for the multiplication of our species, was, in this instance, disappointed.
The lady, at the request of the Great Personage, consented to the concealment of the proposal. She did this on the promise of better behavior in time to come. Matters remained in that situation, for a certain period, how long we do not exactly know.
We did not suspect that the Great Personage had possessed that ardor of constitution, which was necessary for the renewal of so detestable, and so desperate a scheme. However, we have been, within the last fortnight, almost overwhelmed with reputable affirmations that a second attempt was made, by slipping a billet into the lady’s hand.
In the commission of the very same crime, circumstances may lessen or augment the proportion of guilt. There is not, perhaps, any vice, where the degrees of guilt admit of a greater diversity than in that which is the subject of the present article. Upon a topic so delicate we decline the hazardous office of endeavouring to expatiate. We only say that, in combining the circumstances of this Albemarle conspiracy, there is not a single point of alleviation.
Whether the Great Personage was, at that time, married, we do not pretend to say. We have, in relating this affair, adhered to a generality of expression, to prevent the little contradictions of our precious public printer.
On the receipt of the billet from the Great Personage, Mrs. Walker took her husband aside. She put the paper into his hand, and told him of the former attempt that she had conditionally promised to suppress. The Great Personage received immediate permission to quit the house.
Mr. Walker never mentions the name of the Great Personage but in epithets of the most ardent detestation. We have been assured that he received from the Great Personage either one or more letters of deprecation. If any great clamour shall be raised by the republicans, these letters, or that letter, will be produced to burn upon the indignation of mankind.
Now, don’t give us any more challenges to publish letters. You have had quite enough of that. Don’t give us any more defiances to do all that we can do.
If you had not violated the sanctuary of the grave, SALLY and her son TOM would still, perhaps, have slumbered in the tomb of oblivion. The vile attempt to seduce a best friend’s wife would still, perhaps, be whispered about among the Virginia gentry. But there is reason to bring these scandals into the light of public scrutiny.
To charge a man as a thief, and an adulterer is, of itself, bad enough. But when you charge him with an action that is much more execrable than an ordinary murder, is the party injured not to repel such baseness, with ten thousand-fold vengeance upon the miscreant that invented it?
PART IV
The Libel Scandal
Chapter 45
February 9, 1803
NEW YORK CITY
Hamilton, returning from a regular meeting óf the Society for Manumission of Slaves, read the reprint in his Evening Post of Callender’s latest exposé with considerable satisfaction. Jefferson’s youthful attempt to seduce the wife of his best friend had finally caught up with him; such a revelation about his lif
elong adversary’s character, he believed, was long overdue.
Ten years before, under the pseudonym Catullus, Hamilton had written that Jefferson was “a concealed voluptuary hiding under the plain garb of Quaker simplicity.” He liked the word “voluptuary,” with its Latin root “pleasure, sensual gratification,” and applied it to both his major rivals, Jefferson and Burr. He supposed they could both have applied it to him, though no longer fairly, despite all the talk about an affair with his delicious sister-in-law, Angelica Church.
In 1792, his estimation of Jefferson’s two-facedness had been based on his political rival’s advances toward Betsey Walker, his best friend’s wife. He had not known at the time of the man’s Negro concubine. Surely Jefferson had read the “concealed voluptuary” attack; when he did, and Monroe relayed to him Hamilton’s threat to make unspecified sexual charges public, Jefferson might have assumed guiltily that Hamilton knew about both scandals. And yet the reserved Virginian did nothing to stop Monroe, five years later, from providing Callender with the Reynolds papers. Hamilton wondered why. Did Jefferson assume that he was immune from retaliation—that his own illicit amours with the wife of his best friend and with the slave companion of his daughter would never be exposed?
The man was shameless, Hamilton concluded, or self-deluded about his immorality. Or—and this, curiously, was a good augury for the Republic—the man now President was possessed of more sheer audacity than anybody previously imagined. The New York lawyer was glad to have had nothing to do with the original publication of the Walker story, but delighted that Jefferson’s egregious misconduct, after all these years of hypocritical moralizing by its perpetrator, had been dragged by the press into the light of day.
He assumed that Harry Lee was the source of Callender’s information. He remembered Light-Horse Harry, during the Revolution, as the sort of disciplinarian who decapitated deserters. That was contrary to Washington’s orders; although beheading set a stern example to others in the ranks, it smacked of savagery. Years later, during the Whiskey Rebellion, Washington had sent Hamilton with Lee into western Pennsylvania and told him to make certain the hotheaded cavalryman did not execute anyone not in armed revolt. And never under any circumstances by chopping off his head.
His wartime comrade had told him in those days of “whispers that I have heard” about Jefferson’s improper approaches to the beautiful Betsey Walker just after she had first become a mother. Her husband, Jack, who had won an interim appointment as Virginia Senator in 1790, had been ruthlessly thrust aside by Jefferson to make a seat for Monroe, and Jack had complained to their Albemarle neighbor Harry Lee, who passed the sordid tale on to Hamilton. He asked himself: should he have carried out his threat, sent through Monroe to Jefferson, to expose the affair if the republicans made public their investigation of him in 1792? He had been tempted to five years later, when Monroe stabbed him in the back by giving the documents to Callender. But he was glad now to have restrained himself. Burr would have used it to win the presidency. Better that the Walker affair not come out until now.
What Hamilton found hard to understand was how Jefferson had been able to maintain, through all these sordid revelations, his hold on the public sentiment. Despite all the suspicions of preachers about his supposed atheism; despite the sea change of opinion in America that turned against the bloodthirsty French radicals; and despite the growing distaste in the North at the way the author of “all men are created equal” continued to support human slavery—the President seemed to float above it all. Why?
Perhaps it was because most of the country was so productive and the population was growing so rapidly. Jefferson had cut the odious tariffs on imports previously needed to support a navy—indeed, acting on an end-of-term initiative of the perfidious Adams, he had sold off a portion of the navy to private bidders. That act of tax reduction lowered many prices to farmers and mechanics. It made the republican President a hero to many in the Federalist rank and file, though in Hamilton’s view it weakened the nation.
As a result, Jefferson rode a crest of national confidence and gained much of the affection that Washington had steadily enjoyed but had been denied to Adams. In the recent Congressional elections, thirty of the thirty-three new House seats had been gained by the republicans; worse, in the Senate, Federalists had lost seven; republicans now outnumbered Federalists in the upper body by three to one. In the Presidential election ahead, however, Jefferson’s reputation would have to reckon with the vicious investigative talents of James Callender, and no public servant, Hamilton reckoned, could withstand such a sustained onslaught on his character. Public sentiment would surely turn into public outrage and be directed against him.
He summoned William Coleman, his editor of the Evening Post. “Callender is a scoundrel,” he told the young man when he appeared, breathless and eager. Hamilton tapped the edition that reprinted Callender’s sensational Recorder story. “I want you to put a notice in the next issue of the Post that I was not consulted before you reprinted this offensive story. Get this down, young man”—he pushed forward a quill and inkwell—“that I am adverse to airing in the press the private business of all personalities, not immediately connected with public considerations.”
“But this is news, General. The city is abuzz with it. Some fool republican will be sure to deny it, which will give the Recorder cause to run another damning piece next week.”
“Which you will display prominently,” Hamilton directed, “again without consulting me.” He smiled. “Be prepared to be rebuked for your impetuosity.” Coleman’s work pleased him; the young editor had driven Noah Webster’s Commercial Advertiser out of business.
“I know how you despise Callender, sir, for his calumnies about you years ago,” Coleman said. “But in everything he’s written about Jefferson recently, that Scotsman has been dead accurate. The charge that Jefferson and Madison and Monroe paid him secretly was denied, but then he printed their letters to him and proved himself right.”
“What about the innuendo about consorting with his slave?”
“His articles about ‘Luscious Sally’ and his mulatto children were denied, too,” said Coleman, “but I have corresponded with less biased editors in Virginia. They have been talking to people on the rich plantations, and they inform me that what Callender has written is probably true. And now this Walker affair—I know it’s about a youthful indiscretion of thirty years ago, but it does reveal character, and don’t you think it has the ring of truth?”
“Harry Lee will verify it, but don’t tell him I said that,” Hamilton said, being certain to add with a frown of disapproval, “Scurrilous. Public men should not have to endure this.”
“Callender suggests here”—the editor pointed to a passage in the article the Post had taken from the Recorder—“that he has letters to authenticate his charges. He all but dares the Jefferson men to deny the article.”
“He could be bluffing,” Hamilton replied, recalling his previous experience with the scandalmonger. “Or the letters could be forged, or possibly false ‘copies’ of what had never been written.” The thought of libel crossed his mind. “How do you suppose Jefferson and his friends will react to the Post’s republication of Callender’s work?”
“You know how he has talked about the liberty of the press,” Coleman noted, “but he’s not above letting the States do his dirty work.” Hamilton nodded; the First Amendment to the Constitution held that “Congress shall make no law” abridging the liberty of the press, but placed no such restriction on the State governments. Jefferson set great store by the rights of States. He showed that disunionist bent in his anti-sedition resolutions that threatened to nullify the Federal compact. Hamilton suspected that Jefferson was the secret author of the inflammatory Kentucky Resolution that sowed dangerous seeds of secession.
“There is not a syllable in the New York State Constitution concerning the liberty of the press,” said Hamilton, a point he had made more than fifteen years before, writing a
s Publius in the Federalist papers. But at that time he was arguing against the need to festoon the Federal Constitution with a bill of rights. He believed then that no fine declaration in any document denouncing any freedom—excessive taxation, or violating the liberty of the press—would secure the people’s rights. Liberty of the press altogether depended on public opinion, on the general spirit of the people and their government, he had been certain then. Now he was less sure. There was a bill in the state legislature to shield editors, and even talk of amending the New York State Constitution to ensure press freedom. If Jefferson, Madison and Monroe achieved a stranglehold on the national Presidency for decades to come and intended to make State Courts their instruments of suppression of criticism, such protective action by individual States might be necessary. Public opinion was not showing itself to be a dependable guardian.
“McKean in Pennsylvania has been cracking down in State court there,” Coleman reported, feeding his fears, “and the Attorney General here is moving on the Wasp up near Hudson.”
The Wasp was a lampooning weekly of insignificant circulation published upstate, near Albany. Hamilton asked what it had done to draw the fire of the state’s chief law officer.
“Harry Croswell, the editor—no more than a boy, in his early twenties—has been printing every word Callender writes,” Coleman replied. “And it’s the home newspaper of Attorney General Spencer. We did an article about his suit against the Wasp for seditious libel.”
“Why did he swat the insignificant Wasp and not the Post, if we’re reprinting Callender, too?”
“The republicans are afraid of coming after you in a New York City court, what with your legal acumen, sir.” Hamilton noted the editor wisely did not mention his employer’s influence with New York City judges, many of whom owed their appointments to him. “But they want to make an example out of somebody, to intimidate anyone else who reprints Callender.”
Scandalmonger: A Novel Page 43