That piqued his interest as both lawyer and newspaper owner. The republicans had let the Federal Sedition Law lapse, which was good, but could State law that currently punished seditious libel also be overturned, or at least modified? The republicans had marshaled public opinion against the Federalist’s Sedition Law, to their great political benefit; could Federalists now turn the tables and marshal public opinion against State libel law? “Keep me informed about the progress of the New York State action against Croswell.” Only a few years before, Hamilton had successfully sued a newspaper for libel and driven its editor to the wall, but the times and his position had changed. He was now a publisher and in political opposition, and the opposition press needed all the protection it could get.
Coleman left him alone in the office. Before packing up his papers to take to the Grange, his new home ten miles north, in Harlem, Hamilton allowed himself to ruminate about the strange effect of the news.
Even miserable miscreants like Callender, he was forced to admit, served a public purpose in checking a too-popular government’s power. But the apathetic public reaction to the editor’s string of exposés struck the owner of the Evening Post as hard to explain. His paper and even the republican press dealt with the salacious doings daily, to the benefit of their circulation, but the public reading it avidly did not seem incensed by it. Why?
He presumed one reason for the absence of outrage was the division and disheartenment of the Federalists. Their main supporters in New England were worried about the effect on their commerce of new hostilities between England and France, and concerned that their political influence was being diluted by westward expansion. But that only partly accounted for the national ennui. Perhaps a greater part was the reluctance of republicans to join in the jeering at their vehicle to power; it was not that they loved the flawed Jefferson more, but that they loved the imperious Federalists less. Adultery, the admission of which had dashed Hamilton’s dream of the highest office, seemed not to shake the foundations of Jefferson’s hold on the people. To the contrary, although Hamilton always thought of his rival as womanish, these scandals about Sally and Betsey were evidence of vigorous manhood, imbuing the man in the new President’s house with a new reputation for virility.
He was aware of the way seemingly minor events could upset great plans. Callender had not yet published the gossip that a romance actually had been consummated between Jefferson and Betsey Walker. What if the spread of that suspicion—which Hamilton did not think was so farfetched—were to force Jack Walker into a demand for satisfaction of his honor? Men were often killed in duels. Hamilton’s heart sank at the thought of his son Philip, killed at nineteen in a duel that his father stupidly failed to prevent, a failure that would surely depress his spirit throughout his life. Hamilton and Monroe had been on the verge of a duel in which the life of one of them would have been cut short, and only the cool intercession of Aaron Burr, of all people, had averted it.
Burr. If Walker were driven to demand satisfaction under the code duello, Jefferson could not in honor refuse. If Walker then shot him dead, Vice President Burr would become the acting President of the United States.
Hamilton sent for Coleman to return for new instructions. The Evening Post would reduce its reprinting of Callender’s latest scandal. The atmosphere was already too highly charged.
Chapter 46
May 1, 1803
ORANGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA
Light-Horfe Harry Lee was glad that James Monroe had sailed for France, supposedly on some business to buy New Orleans from Napoleon. That seemed to him to be a fool’s errand and a weakling’s way. Lee’s approach to protecting the West was to raise an army, side with the British against the French in their war, and dare the French general to fight it out up the Mississippi Valley.
With Monroe gone, James Madison was the only other intimate that Jefferson trusted enough to deal with the delicate Walker affair. The Secretary of State, Lee was certain, would be a softer negotiator. The talk was that if Jefferson did not choose to stand for re-election next year, Monroe might challenge Madison for the support of republicans. Lee thought Monroe would make a more forceful President, possessed of what Hamilton liked to call “energy in the Executive.” He was also more likely to obey Washington’s stricture, written by Hamilton, against foreign entanglements.
Lee’s fine chestnut mount, a vestige of his former affluence, approached the mansion and acreage the Madisons called Montpelier. The house rested on a plateau where the western slope of Little Mountain leveled off and the great Blue Ridge Range could be seen. This Shenandoah property was becoming more valuable every year, unlike the speculative Greenbrier land that had brought Lee to the brink of impoverishment. He dismounted and turned his horse over to a slave.
John Walker was already in the library with Madison. The aggrieved husband of Lee’s Aunt Betsey had asked his wife’s nephew to represent him after news of the egregious misbehavior had been galloping from Richmond all across the country for months. The Bee’s reprinting of Callender’s series of articles had stirred New England, the Evening Post was informing New York, and Duane’s Aurora in Philadelphia spread the scandal by denying it in detail.
Lee’s assignment was to assist Walker in obtaining, first, a private acknowledgment of the wrong done to his family by Jefferson, which had after all these years come to public attention. Not only had the barrage of articles in the Recorder become a source of great embarrassment, but cast a reflection on Mrs. Walker’s virtue and, more to the point, Mr. Walker’s honor.
The second object of negotiation was to establish the fact of Jack Walker’s written protest to Jefferson in Paris. Because he sent this letter as soon as his wife told him of the attempts to seduce her, this would show Walker had not been remiss in defending his family from a predatory force.
Lee’s third and most difficult goal was to obtain a public apology from Jefferson. And not just a murmured plea for forgiveness between old friends, but a public statement that would firmly assert Mrs. Walker’s virtue, which she maintained despite her would-be lover’s sustained importuning. This last would give moral underpinning to a political cause that Lee and Callender had in common: to discredit the character of the republican leader and make impossible his re-election. As Hamilton had shamed himself out of a potential candidacy with his admission of philandering, so could Jefferson, his character as a youth revealed, be shamed out of standing again.
“Thomas Jefferson will be here soon,” Madison said. “It’s only thirty miles from Monticello, as Jack here knows. Perhaps we can begin.”
“No,” Lee told the Secretary of State, “we’ll wait for the President.” Lee had fought honorably in the Revolution alongside Washington and Hamilton—while Madison and Jefferson had been, to his mind, mere politicians. Like Jefferson, Lee had served as Governor of Virginia, but unlike Jefferson, no blemish of suggested cowardice tainted his three-term record. Like Madison, Lee had recently served in the House of Representatives, but on the Federalist side of the aisle. Though in deep financial difficulty at the moment, Lee would not be awed by the power of his kinsman’s adversaries, which he knew to be why John Walker had turned to him, beyond the family tie. His own underlying reason—known only to Callender, and delicious to both of them—was that Lee was the man responsible for the exposure of the wrong.
Such revelation of the scandal, in Lee’s disciplined mind, was by no means a sign of disrespect to his wife’s kin. Betsey Walker was secretly delighted at all the attention she was getting. At this stage of her maturity, embarrassed by her girth, to be linked to the handsome President in their youth was an elixir to her spirits. Lee suspected that her claim of ten years of travail—keeping the secret of Jefferson’s insulting propositions lest her husband be forced into a duel with the assailant of the sanctity of his marriage—was a bit exaggerated. Tom Paine, the atheist friend of Jefferson now visiting America and being feted at the President’s house, had observed pithily the month before that the suppo
sed siege of Betsey was longer than the siege of Troy.
Nor did Harry Lee think of himself as being the least disloyal to John Walker in having secretly spread the story. He knew that Walker had enjoyed being Virginia Senator before he was shunted aside by Jefferson to make way for Monroe, and the rejected politician bore his faithless neighbor a lifelong grudge. He had struck his pose of outraged husband, determined to set straight the matter of his wife’s challenged but never-compromised virtue, provided—as he told Lee—it did not get out of hand.
Lee was aware that Walker did not want to invoke the code duello any more than Jefferson wanted to take up a pistol. To Walker, the contretemps between himself and the President of the United States increased his importance in the eyes of his neighbors. That was satisfaction enough, of pride if not of honor, but Lee could not allow his client’s eagerness to avoid combat show in the negotiation.
Jefferson, looking dusty from his ride and grim at what he was facing, joined them. He nodded in a friendly way to Walker and Lee but did not extend his hand; in this delicate situation, that would have been in error.
“I think the affair between the President and Mr. Walker,” said Madison, host of the gathering, to Lee, “can have a happy eclaircissement.” Lee said nothing; he did not appreciate the Secretary lapsing into French, but the word sounded like it had something to do with clarification. Lee wanted more than that; his client deserved a public apology. “Of course what is discussed here today,” Madison continued, “is for the bosom of those already privy to the affair.”
“This is already in entirely too many bosoms,” said Lee. He took out a page taken from the most recent Recorder. “Listen to this. ‘We hasten to correct an error in our earlier story. Mr. Walker was not at home when the attempt was made on his domestic peace. He did not learn the particulars till after the Great Personage had gone to France as an ambassador. He then wrote a letter to this inestimable representative of the New World. The answer has been read by dozens.’ That is what this blackguard Callender avers.”
“I have been used for some time as the property of the newspapers,” President Jefferson responded, “a fair mark for every man’s dirt.”
“Of course,” said Lee to the man he could not forget subsidized the dirt that Callender threw at Hamilton and Presidents Washington and Adams. “My question to you, Mr. Jefferson, and to you, Mr. Walker, is—would you show these letters to Secretary Madison and me?”
Jefferson looked directly at Walker. “I never received a letter from you while I was serving in Paris.”
“Perhaps it miscarried,” said Walker, as Lee had instructed him. “I have a copy of my letter to you. It’s dated May 15, 1788.”
He handed it to Jefferson, who read it slowly, shaking his head. “Never came to me. I think its miscarriage unfortunate. Had I received it, I should—without hesitation—have made it my first object to have called on you on my return to this country.”
“To what end?” asked Lee, to pin the President down.
“To come to an understanding as to the course we were to pursue,” Jefferson replied, “which was the object of your letter.”
“And here is my recent letter from you, Thomas,” said Walker, “dated April 13, 1803, only last week.”
Lee wished Walker would not call the President by his first name. It would not do to re-establish a cordial relationship. “Read it aloud,” Lee told his wife’s aunt’s husband.
Walker did so. “It says, ‘Time, silence and the circumstances growing out of them have unfavorably affected the case.’ I presume by ‘the case,’ Thomas, you refer to the unconscionable advances you made over the years on my totally innocent wife. Your letter goes on: ‘My best endeavors shall be used to consign this unfortunate matter to the oblivion of which it is susceptible. I certainly could have no objection to your showing this letter to the ladies of your family. My greatest anxieties are for their tranquillity. I salute them and yourself with respect, Thomas Jefferson.’ ”
“Hardly a proper apology,” said Lee. “Not even an admission of guilt. And how, Mr. Jefferson, do you propose to keep all this out of the newspapers in the future?” asked Lee. The anti-republican press led by Callender was enjoying an enhanced readership thanks to the scandal, and the reliably republican papers like the Aurora, to keep up, were reprinting all the charges under the pretense of refuting or condemning them.
“If Callender of the Recorder and Coleman of the Post can be silenced,” Jefferson said, “the others are but copiers or answerers of them. They have not pretended to original information, but as long as customers can be found who will read and relish and pay for their lies, they will fabricate them for the market.” Apparently, Jefferson considered his allies in the press no better than his foes.
“The Bee, one of your republican papers,” Walker noted, “has been devoting much attention to this.”
“With respect to the New England Bee,” said Jefferson, “I know not the editor. But through a friend who knows him I can have a total silence recommended to him, probably with effect. Through the same channel, the Aurora and American Citizen may probably be induced to silence. If their antagonists can be brought to be silent, they can have no reason not to be so.”
“As you see, we can quiet the republican papers,” Madison said to Lee. “But the Federalist papers—”
“As for the antagonist presses,” Jefferson broke in, “I have with conscientious exactness opposed the smallest interference with them, further than to have public documents published in them.”
Lee said nothing, waiting for Jefferson’s qualifier at his show of virtue. It came.
“The present occasion, however,” Jefferson continued, “will justify using the intermediation of friends to direct the discretion of antagonists of principle circulation.” He looked directly at Harry Lee, apparently hoping he would volunteer to take on that task.
“That will be considerably more difficult, as they have a lively political interest in pursuing this unfortunate matter,” Lee replied. “I can appeal to General Hamilton, who would be able to quieten Coleman at the Evening Post.”
“What about Callender?” asked John Walker. “He’s the source of all the trouble.”
“I don’t know the man,” Lee lied. “I can undertake to visit his printing shop and say this is the wish of Mrs. Walker. From what he has written, I would say he holds her in high regard.”
“Never met him?” Madison asked, then without waiting for the denial Lee was quite prepared to make, went on: “Where do you suppose Callender is getting these documents from?”
“It’s likely he does not have them,” Lee could say truthfully. “You’ll note in this piece about what he calls ‘the Albemarle amours,’ he writes ‘the answer has been read by dozens.’ It is apparent to me that the contents have been described to him, but Callender does not have copies. If he does, perhaps I can prevail on him to turn them over to Mrs. Walker.”
“It is not enough to try to silence the press,” Walker reminded the group. “The honor of my wife and I needs more satisfaction than that.”
“You have my admission that I plead guilty,” Jefferson said painfully. Avoiding the eyes of the others, he made his carefully phrased confession: “When young and single, I offered love to your handsome lady. My action was without premeditation.” Jefferson forced himself to look directly into his former friend’s eyes. “I acknowledge its incorrectness.”
“It is one thing to confess to us in private your guilt in trying repeatedly to induce Mrs. Walker to commit adultery,” Lee said, using with relish the previously avoided word, “but it is quite another to make your behavior clear to a reprehending world. It is Mrs. Walker’s reputation for marital fidelity that is at stake, and it is necessary for you to attest publicly to her refusal of your repeated attempts.”
Jefferson shook his head, no.
“That is the only satisfaction possible short of a satisfaction of honor under the code,” Lee said with care. “I have hea
rd that great events are in train to expand our frontiers, and responsibility weighs heavy on you. But we are all Virginia gentlemen. We all understand that nothing is more important than our sacred honor, for without that we are nothing.”
Walker nodded nervously. Jefferson exhibited no expression.
“Perhaps there is a third way,” said the Secretary of State. He put forward a plan for Jefferson to write a letter to be shown to a small circle of their friends acknowledging the incorrect action, without reference to its place, frequency or duration. Jefferson’s letter would attest unequivocally to the morally indignant reaction of Mrs. Walker, thereby assuaging her irritation and obviating any need for further satisfaction. The letter would then be destroyed. In that process, her social circle would be reassured, her reputation would remain unsullied, and yet the President would not be publicly humiliated nor would the episode belittle the nation in the eyes of the world.
Lee knew this was what his client wanted and more than he thought he could get. The contents of Jefferson’s letter would be described to Callender, which was the same as having Jefferson make a public statement. The editor would probably pretend he had a copy.
“A solution worthy of a diplomat,” Lee said to the Secretary of State. “I think that might satisfy honor, provided the letter goes to the lady’s entire exculpation without mixing in any exculpation of yourself. And to make certain any future claim of it being a forgery can be refuted, the letter must be acknowledged and countersigned by any two of your friends in the world.” He looked at his client. “Do you accept that, Jack? If not, I stand fully prepared to be your second under the code duello.”
“I accept it,” said Walker, Lee thought a bit too quickly.
Madison nodded assent on Jefferson’s behalf. He must be thinking, guessed Lee, that it was right and proper for the President to acknowledge his own guilt and totally absolve Mrs. Walker, provided the document was certain to be kept out of the hands of Callender and his ilk. Monroe would not have been so naïve. “There is no need for documents or memorials of any kind on this matter to be preserved,” Madison said. “I will countersign the true copy for the President.”
Scandalmonger: A Novel Page 44