Scandalmonger: A Novel

by William Safire

  “I’ll write Burr a letter”: The letter offering a Cabinet post, TJ to Burr, Dec. 15, 1800. Burr reply to TJ, Dec. 23, 1800. See Schachner, Thomas Jefferson, pp. 651-657.

  “Many attempts have been made”: TJ to Monroe, Feb. 15, 1801.

  “You are right about Hamilton”: Signing himself “Aristedes,” Noah Webster of the Commercial Advertiser answered Hamilton’s published letter with a defense of Adams as “a man of pure morals . . . and by far the best-read statesman that the late Revolution called into notice,” whose “occasional ill humor at unreasonable opposition and hasty expressions of his opinion are of little weight.” In contrast, wrote Webster in this open letter to Hamilton, “Your conduct on this occasion will be deemed little short of insanity.” See Page Smith, John Adams, vol. 2, p. 1045.

  “talk perfect Godwinism”: Syrett, vol. 25, pp. 315-323.

  “I admit that his politicks”: AH to Bayard, Jan. 16, 1801.

  “Burr has no principle public or private”: AH to John Marshall, Dec. 26, 1800. Marshall of Virginia was opposed to Jefferson, replying that “the morals of the Author of the letter to Mazzei cannot be pure,” referring to a publicized private letter of TJ’s that denigrated Washington, but Marshall respected Hamilton’s judgment about Burr, whom he had been inclined to support:

  “Your representation of Mr. Burr with whom I am totally unacquainted shows that from him still greater danger than even from Mr. Jefferson may be apprehended.” He agreed to remain neutral. See Smith’s biography of Marshall, pp.13-14.

  “Les grandes âmes”: AH to Bayard, Jan. 16, 1801.

  “Many attempts have been made”: TJ to Monroe, Feb. 15, 1801. Jefferson denied ever having made this deal, and recounts his meeting that day with Morris in his Anas, April 15, 1806.

  “Men never played”: AH to Morris, Jan. 20, 1801.

  “Harper is telling us”: From Morris, Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2, p. 397. Other South Carolina Federalists disagreed sharply with Harper.

  “Are the republicans then ripe”: Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, p.504.

  “A new Constitutional Convention will be called”: Schachner, Thomas Jefferson, p. 657, based on TJ to Monroe, Feb. 15, 1801. Did Jefferson agree to the terms of the deal proposed by Hamilton through Gouverneur Morris? He later denied it; Bayard and Smith swore he did; whether he did or not, TJ honored its terms.

  “Here ends the most wicked”: Gallatin to his wife, Feb. 17, 1801, in Schachner, Thomas Jefferson, p. 658.

  Beckley leaped to his feet: James MacGregor Burns writes in The Vineyard of Liberty, p. 154: “Ingenious mediators worked out an artifice that enabled Jefferson to be elected President without a single Federalist voting for him. A number of Federalists cast blank ballots, and a single congressman from Vermont now cast his state’s vote for Jefferson. That congressman was ‘Spitting Matt’ Lyon. The crisis was over—Thomas Jefferson was elected President of the United States.”

  PART III: THE JEFFERSON SCANDALS

  Chapter 27

  Cobbett trial proceedings: This account of Cobbett’s Pennsylvania trial for libel is taken from his embittered and biased Rush-Light series, published in March 1800 as an act of vengeance from the relative safety of New York. See pp. 12-123 and 167. In my account, two trial dates are telescoped into one. Judge Shippen’s complete charge to the jury can be found in Cobbett, The Life of William Cobbett, pp. 80-82.

  “A ruinous and therefore a rascally judgment”: was said not by Hamilton but by republican Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, later Governor of, then Senator from, that state. Spater, vol. 1, p. 104-106, describes Harper’s doublecross of his client. Daniel Green in his Cobbett biography, p. 175, writes that PP “consulted Alexander Hamilton about the new libel actions threatened against him. Hamilton offered, if and when they came up, to defend him in court and take no fee for doing so. He did, however, beg Cobbett to keep that fact secret.” AH did not want to be seen publicly supporting a much-despised alien that Adams might well deport.

  “I never thought much”: AH, Federalist Paper 84, cited in Flink, Sentinel Under Siege, p. 94.

  “Harper, that walking ball”: Cobbett’s excoriation of his lawyer, Harper, is in a footnote on p. 151 of the Rush-Light. “Let Mr. Harper . . . resolve, before he undertakes another cause, never to seek to preserve his popularity by traducing the character of his client . . . ” The “lump of tallow” derogation was directed at Samuel Bradford, a printer, and was cited by Callender in his Annual Register, p. 178, as typical of Cobbett’s “violent stile.”

  “I knew an Englishman”: From “Progress of a Ploughboy,” in Cobbett and Cobbett, Selections from Cobbett’s Political Works, p. 83.

  Chapter 28

  Tom Paine: Thomas Paine, Callender’s pamphleteering hero and Jefferson’s good friend, whose Rights of Man Beckley published in the U.S., wrote a “letter to George Washington” in 1796 berating him as “treacherous in private friendship . . . and a hypocrite in public life; the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an imposter; whether you have abandoned your good principles or you ever had any.” Cobbett responded in a pamphlet: “How Tom gets a living, or what brothel he inhabits, I know not . . . Like Judas he will be remembered by posterity. Men will learn to express all that is base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous, by one single monosyllable—Paine.”

  Washington in retirement, as the novel notes later, sent both to a friend, saying of Cobbett: “Making allowances for the asperity of an Englishman, for some of his strong and coarse expression, and a want of official information on many facts, it is not a bad thing.”

  JTC and Maria: JTC’s association with Maria Reynolds Clingman in this and subsequent chapters is fictional. The dinner in Richard Price’s Tavern in Albemarle County was held soon after Callender’s release on March 2, 1801. The toast by Capt. Edward Moore on p. 275 is cited in Durey, With the Hammer of Truth, p. 142.

  “You and I know”: JTC in the Richmond Examiner, Oct. 31, and Nov. 25, 1800.

  “Those of us who have been the victims”: Ibid., Sept. 23, 1800.

  Chapter 29

  Callender-Madison meetings: JTC visited Secretary of State Madison in his office three times in 1801. Callender’s side of the dialogue in this scene is drawn primarily from his angry letter to Madison of April 27, 1801 (“I now begin to know what Ingratitude is”) which was followed by an obsequious follow-up on May 7, 1801 (“I am exceedingly ashamed and sorry for laying such a disagreeable tax upon your time”). Ford, pp. 153-156. Madison’s quotations are supported by letters among Madison, Monroe and Jefferson cited hereafter.

  “My views about the liberty of the press”: Brant, p. 298.

  “I can remember Jefferson saying”: TJ to William Johnson, June 12, 1823.

  “You would not take the chances”: JTC to Madison, in the Richmond Recorder, Sept. 1, 1802.

  “I am not going to set myself up”: JTC in the Richmond Recorder, Feb. 9, 1803, recollecting that meeting.

  “Inform Mr. Callender, Captain”: Based on TJ to Monroe, May 29, 1801: “Callender is arrived here . . . Understanding he was in distress I sent Capt. Lewis to him with 50 D. to inform him we were making some inquiries as to his fine which would take a little time, and lest he should suffer in the meantime I sent him etc.”

  Meriwether Lewis’s visit to Callender: Reported by TJ to Monroe on May 29, 1801: “His [JTC’s] language to Capt. Lewis was very high toned. He intimated that he was in possession of things which he could and would make use of in a certain case; that he received the 50 D. not as a charity but a due, in fact as hush money; that I knew what he expected, viz. a certain office, and more to this effect.”

  Lewis’s account of his meeting with Callender evidently upset Jefferson considerably. “Such a misconstruction of my charities puts an end to them forever,” he continued. “He knows nothing of me which I am not willing to declare to the world myself. I knew him first as the author of the political progress
of Britain, a work I had read with great satisfaction, and as a fugitive from persecution for this very work. I gave to him from time to time such aids as I could afford, merely as a man of genius suffering under persecution, and not as a writer in our politics. It is long since I wished he would cease writing on them, as doing more harm than good.”

  TJ, and Callender’s fine: TJ had already sent a check to Monroe for $50 to pass through his cousin George Jefferson to pay for one-fourth of Callender’s fine.

  “I lost five years of labor”: JTC’s recollection of this meeting from the Recorder of Feb. 9, 1803.

  Chapter 30

  “I am really mortified”: This and other TJ quotes in this chapter from TJ letters to Monroe, May 26 and 29, 1801.

  “It gives me concern”: This and subsequent quotes, TJ to Monroe, July 15, 1802.

  “According to the Scot”: From Callender, Richmond Recorder, Nov. 3, 1802 (see first note for p. 52).

  TJ’s account of two letters to JTC: In TJ to Monroe on July 15, 1802, and July 17, 1802. Monroe’s irritation at the Lewis payment to Callender is based on his letter to Jefferson of June 1, 1801: “It is to be regretted that Capt. Lewis paid the money after the intimation of the payer of his ruin etc.” S. M. Hamilton, vol. 3, p. 289.

  “In case he comes to Georgetown”: Monroe to Madison, May 23, 1801. Having reported to Madison six days before about the difficulty of getting the Federalist Marshal in Richmond to remit the fine, Monroe wrote at length about two visits from Callender, who “spoke of the ingratitude of the republicans who after getting into power had left him in the ditch . . . He asked the loan of some money to enable him to go on the next day to Washington.” Monroe advised against giving him anything toward the remission of his $200 fine: “I do not think he wod.acquit the Executive tho’ five times the sum shod.be advanced him, and that in case he attacks the Ex: he might state these circumstances or advances, to the discredit of the govt. & its friends.”

  Monroe’s advice was to let Callender complain: “I wod.rest on the ground of principle & meet his attack. Be assurd that the President & yrself cannot be too circumspect in case he comes to Georgetown in yr. Conversations with him; for I think nothing more doubtful than his future political course.” Monroe’s counsel was not followed.

  “I have heard that Harry Lee”: Monroe to Madison, May 23, 1801.

  Madison letter: This is the letter Madison wrote to Monroe on June 1, 1801. I have cut about 30 percent of the letter, but all spelling and shortening is left as written by Madison; only paragraphing was changed. It appears in Brugger, vol. 1, pp. 244-245.

  Chapter 31

  Cobbett’s return to England: PP sailed home from New York on the Lady Arabella on June 11, 1800, a year earlier than this scene is dated.

  Cobbett had frequently turned down: Porcupine’s Gazette was never supported by the British government; see PP to Thornton, Sept. 4, 1800, in Cole, Letters from William Cobbett to Edward Thornton, 1797-1800. However, Hamilton was said to have arranged for the consul Thornton to pay his libel judgment.

  mutton-fisted style: “Mutton-fisted” was the description of PP’s prose by the British essayist William Hazlitt in 1821. “One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen,” wrote the great stylist, “but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns his readers . . . He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist; ‘lays waste’ a city orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the Government itself. He is a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country. He is not only unquestionably the most powerful political writer of the present day, but one of the best writers in the language . . . wherever power is, there is he against it; he naturally butts at all obstacles, as unicorns are attracted to oak-trees, and feels his own strength only by resistance to the opinions and wishes of the rest of the world. To sail with the stream, to agree with the company, is not his humour . . . He has no satisfaction but in the chase after truth, runs a question down, worries and kills it, then quits it like vermin, and starts some new game . . . with the rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault. This he calls sport-royal.” See Spirit of the Age, pp. 219-229. In this, Hazlitt may have coined “fourth estate” as a description of the press.

  “Let me remind you of the fable”: Cobbett, the Political Register, April 10, 1830.

  “live and let live”: Callender letter to the Examiner, Sept. 18, 1801: “In the spirit of charity, he [JTC] wishes those good folks to let him alone . . . Quiescat.”

  “I’m sorry we delayed”: PP to Thornton, May 27, 1800.

  “The Governor himself?”: PP to Thornton, June 11, 1800.

  “As I have long felt”: Cobbett, Porcupine’s Works, vol. 12, pp. 109-110.

  Chapter 32

  Callender was relieved that Maria: The entire chapter is fictional.

  “a dose of salts to the human body”: The Paine quotation comes from With the Hammer of Truth, Durey, p. 150. Paine added that both political parties “bear a great deal of watching; . . . there is not a prodigious difference between the moral characters of the one and the other,” a position that Callender adopted.

  Chapter 33

  “We shall neither calumniate nor flatter”: Callender, Richmond Recorder, March 6, 1802.

  “If we seem to bear hardest”: Ibid., Oct. 27, 1802; in Durey, With the Hammer of Truth, p. 151.

  Next day, the newspaper war: PP, in his 1795 pamphlet A Bone to Gnaw, had said, “The parties concerned in a paper war, usually bear an infinite resemblance to a gang of sharpers: a couple of authors knock up a sham fight to draw the public about them, while the booksellers pick their pockets.” How ever, the Recorder’s attacks on the Examiner in 1802 were properly described as “a newspaper war.”

  “No politicks”: Callender tried a touch of irony: “Reading Improves the Mind” was the Recorder’s surprisingly mild masthead slogan.

  Chapter 34

  “Callender? I’m George Hay”: George Hay’s angry visit to Callender in Pace’s print shop is recounted in Durey’s With the Hammer of Truth, p. 164. Because Hay had insulted Pace in a floor debate in the Virginia House of Delegates, Callender had sent word that Hay would receive a “serve” in the Recorder.

  Chapter 35

  Jefferson meeting with Abigail Adams: The physical confrontation between TJ and Abigail Adams did not take place; the dialogue in this chapter is based on an exchange of lengthy and spirited letters between two old friends bitterly estranged by politics.

  It began with a heartfelt condolence note dated May 20, 1804, from Mrs. Adams to TJ “to shed the tear of sorrow over the departed remains of your beloved and deserving daughter,”—concluding, from one “who once took pleasure in Subscribing Herself your friend Abigail Adams.”

  Moved, TJ wrote back on June 13, 1804, to avow his friendship but felt the need to add “a frank declaration that one act of his [John’s] life, and never but one, gave me personal displeasure, his midnight appointments. If respect for him will not permit me to ascribe that altogether to the influence of others, it will leave something for friendship to forgive.”

  Abigail replied on July 1, 1804, that President Washington did the same thing to her husband, and reminded Jefferson that when the appointments were made “there was not any certainty that the Presidency would devolve upon you.” She then launched into “One of the first acts of your administration was to liberate a wretch,” Callender, for “crimes of writing the lowest and vilest slander, which malice could invent, or calumny exhibit . . . the remission of Callender’s crime was a public approbation of his conduct.” She was pleased that “the serpent you cherished and warmed, bit the hand that nourished it.”

  TJ responded on July 22, 1804, on the subject of Callender that “I considered him a man of genius, unjustly persecuted. I knew nothing of his private character . . . When he first began to write, he told some useful truths in his coarse way; but nobody sooner disapproved of his writing than I did, or wished more that he would be silent. My charities t
o him were no more meant as encouragements to his scurrilities, than those I give to the beggar at my door are meant as reward for the vices of his life.”

  TJ then went on the offense: “I was as far from stooping to any concern or approbation of them, as Mr. Adams was respecting those of Porcupine. . . . who published volumes against me for every sentence vended by their opponents against Mr. Adams. But I never supposed Mr. Adams had any participation in the atrocities of these editors . . .” He explained that he pardoned everyone, not just Callender, convicted under the Sedition Law “I considered to be a nullity, as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image.” He then appealed “to that Being who sees himself our motives, who will judge us from his own knowledge of them, and not on the testimony of Porcupine . . .”

  An unfazed Mrs. Adams fired back on August 18 with, “If a chief Magistrate can by his will annul a law, where is the difference between a republican and a despotic government?” She added, “In no country has calumny falsehood and revileing stalked abroad more licentiously, than in this . . . No reputation so fair, as not to be wounded by it until truth and falsehood lie in one undistinguished heap.” She apparently did not believe Jefferson’s disclaimers of responsibility for what Callender wrote, pointing out acerbically that her husband “has never written a line in any newspaper to which his name has not been affixed.”

  The mockingbird “Dick” in Jefferson’s writing room is described in Schachner, Thomas Jefferson, p. 768. The cage purchase is cited in TJ’s account book for Dec. 8, 1803.

  Chapter 36

  “I brought you a case.” The meeting between JTC and Beckley is fictional.