The Wages of Fame

by Thomas Fleming

Compared to New York, the Washington, D.C., of 1828 was little more than an extended village. The population barely exceeded twenty-five thousand. As much as a mile separated houses on many of the main avenues. The marble Capitol, rebuilt from the fiery ruin inflicted on it by the British in 1814, had a low, ugly wooden dome; it squatted on its hill like a disheveled general without an army, surrounded by the equivalent of a parcel of ragged little boys—such was the appearance of the straggling, sagging houses at the foot of the hill.

  George expressed some dismay at this evidence of a social desert. But Caroline was unbothered. She had come to Washington to meet the politicians. The Congressman had given the newlyweds introductions to a half dozen prominent figures, including Secretary of State Henry Clay and Vice President John C. Calhoun. They swiftly discovered these gentlemen were much too embroiled in the politics of the hour to give them more than a polite hello.

  Both houses of Congress were locked in a furious argument over a new tariff bill. Vice President Calhoun arranged for the Stapletons to get passes that admitted them to the debates in both the Senate and the House. As far as George Stapleton was concerned, the word tariff had dullness and pettifogging details embedded in its two syllables. Caroline was almost ready to agree with him. She was far more fascinated by the contrast in the two chambers of the legislature.

  The congressmen met in a large columned hall hung with tasseled crimson curtains that matched the crimson canopy over the Speaker’s desk. Beside each representative’s desk was a brass spittoon; these were much used by a majority of the Southern and Western representatives. Disorder reigned in the House. Members bellowed speeches into the echoing air, but ten feet away, no one could hear them; the acoustics were atrocious. Other members read newspapers, chatted with visitors, or shouted insulting remarks at the speechmaker. With over two hundred members confronting him, the Speaker seemed incapable of maintaining order. Beside his rostrum stood a fat man in a homespun shirt, eating a large sausage. The Speaker occasionally glanced at him with dismay, but he did not seem to have any power to discipline him.

  The nation’s forty-eight senators met in a small, handsomely paneled, domed room. They sat at large mahogany desks on raised platforms listening to the debates or writing letters to constituents. Vice President Calhoun presided over their proceedings with stern dignity. The senators treated him and each other with elaborate courtesy. Caroline decided that George Stapleton should become a senator as soon as possible.

  In both houses, the Stapletons were astonished by the passion with which the politicians debated the tariff. Members from the West and the South seemed to regard it as an attack on their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor; while members from the Middle States and New England ferociously defended the bill as a test of true patriotism.

  In the Senate, Caroline noticed a woman around her age who was following the debates with intense interest. Using a small lap desk equipped with an inkwell and pen, she took extensive notes on each speaker’s remarks. In the gallery of the House, Caroline noticed the same woman, doing the same thing. She was as tall as Caroline and carried herself in a similarly regal way, but her features had a somewhat severe, almost mannish cast—the kind of looks men called handsome rather than beautiful. Hers were redeemed from severity by her thickly curled, intensely black hair.

  That night, at supper at the Franklin House, Caroline found herself sitting beside the woman. In those early Washington days, guests mingled indiscriminately in hotel dining rooms. Caroline nodded and won a smile of recognition.

  “Did you enjoy the fireworks today?” the woman asked.

  “I would have enjoyed them more if I understood them,” Caroline said. “We’re newcomers from New York—I mean, New Jersey.”

  “I’m Sarah Childress Polk from Tennessee. This is my husband, Congressman James Polk.”

  She gestured across the table to a short, extremely handsome young man with a high broad forehead, penetrating dark eyes, and a slender frame. Polk was talking intently to a short rotund man with a bald head and a knowing mouth. Caroline introduced George; Polk and his friend, whose name was Churchill C. Cambreleng, joined the conversation. Cambreleng was a Democratic congressman from New York. Caroline had heard John Sladen speak of him with approval.

  “George is running for Congress,” Caroline said. “We’re on our honeymoon. We thought we’d see what life in Washington is like.”

  “I hope you’re supporting General Jackson,” Sarah Polk said.

  “I’m afraid George is a National Republican by inheritance,” Caroline said. “His grandfather represented New Jersey in the Senate for over twenty years.”

  “We’ll do our utmost to convert you to the true faith,” Sarah Polk said.

  “So she let you marry her before you won, eh?” Congressman Polk said. “Sarah insisted I had to prevail at the polls first. It’s quite a tribute to your charms, George.”

  Sarah Polk gave Caroline a smile that communicated far more than tolerance of her husband’s humor. We understand each other, it said. Caroline felt a flash of kinship, of sympathy in its root meaning, which she had never felt before for any woman.

  “All this only proves my contention that a strong-willed woman can persuade a man to do anything—even jump from the roof of the Capitol—if she puts her mind to it,” said Congressman Cambreleng. “You ladies are living proof of why I’m a bachelor and intend to remain one.”

  “Allow me to defend myself against my husband’s accusations,” Sarah Polk said good-humoredly. “When he came to me with a marriage proposal, he was know for a certain instability in his affections—and in the general conduct of his affairs. I thought I was entitled to a demonstration that his vows of reform were in earnest.”

  “If they weren’t, they are now,” Cambreleng said. “Never have I seen a more complete love slave.”

  “You, sir,” said Sarah with the same good humor, “are an enemy of society. That a scoundrel like you should be sent here to pass laws is a commentary on how little appreciation New Yorkers have for national politics.”

  Cambreleng seemed to consider this a compliment. “No doubt about it. We New Yorkers live only for local pleasure. Pure—and impure—local pleasure.”

  “As long as you support General Jackson, I forgive you,” Sarah Polk said. “I only hope God will do likewise.”

  Here was a woman who talked to men as an equal. Caroline was dazzled. “I’m eager to become your political pupil,” she said. “I’ve just spent a year in a school where I learned nothing.”

  “Careful,” Cambreleng said. “Sarah allows no dissent in her classroom. Witness this recent graduate. If Polk ever disagreed with her, the shock would be so great it would knock down every building in this excuse for a city.”

  “That may be a testament to affection, and admiration, Mr. Cambreleng,” Caroline said. “Something every wife hopes to win from her husband.”

  “Well said,” drawled Polk, cheerfully lighting a cigar. If Sarah was the tyrant Cambreleng claimed, the Tennessee congressman did not seem troubled by it.

  “I can see you have a mind which can easily master politics on your own, Mrs. Stapleton,” Sarah Polk said. “But you may appreciate what will transpire here tomorrow if I explain a few things. These gentlemen and the rest of the Jacksonians are in for a rude shock.”

  She gestured to her husband and Cambreleng and swiftly explained the passionate quarrel that was dividing House and Senate. The tariff was the brainchild of Secretary of State Henry Clay and President Adams, who were exponents of the much touted American System. The National Republicans said America needed high tariffs to protect fledgling industries and to produce the money needed to build canals and roads and bridges to improve the country’s transportation system. The South and the West saw the tariff as a tax on them. They had to pay higher prices for American-made goods. Meanwhile, many nations were slapping retaliatory tariffs on American cotton and wheat, hurting Southern and Western farmers.

  �
�Some Democrats, such as Senator Martin Van Buren of New York, have joined the supporters of President Adams and proposed a tariff so high, it’s certain to outrage the South and West,” Sarah Polk said. “The Jacksonians thought it would be voted down by both houses. But I’ve been listening to the debates. Tomorrow, I predict it will pass—and woe to the politicians from the South and the West who go on the record as voting for it.”

  “If it passes, does it mean General Jackson will be defeated?” Caroline asked.

  “No, General Jackson is an irresistible force. He’ll denounce the tariff and run against it. Though I think he could run for it and win. He’s become the people’s hero. Whatever is wrong in Washington, they think he can fix it.”

  “Can he?” Caroline asked.

  Sarah Polk’s smile was enigmatic enough to be worthy of the Mona Lisa. “He’ll try. Of that much you can be certain. General Jackson always tries to fix things. He’s a man of action.”

  Caroline remembered what she had told George about General Jackson being an old man whose influence would soon vanish. Had this clever woman also drawn that conclusion? Was she also saying that some things were wrong in Washington that not even General Jackson could fix?

  Caroline was sure of only one thing. She wanted to be Sarah Polk’s friend. The way Mrs. Polk pronounced that phrase national politics stirred Caroline almost as much as her dinner-table conversation with Hugh and Malcolm Stapleton. Here was another woman who relished the intricate sensations of power.

  TWO

  BY THE TIME THEY PARTED at the end of dinner, Sarah Polk had invited Caroline to breakfast with her and to spend the morning in the Senate gallery. Congressman Polk and Cambreleng invited George to be their guest on the floor of the House.

  Upstairs in their rooms, George remarked that he found Mrs. Polk to be a rather cold woman, but he liked her husband. “It’s possible that Mrs. Polk may only be capable of political warmth,” Caroline said. “Since you said almost nothing to indicate any sympathy for General Jackson, she naturally put you at a distance.”

  “You call that natural?” George said. “I don’t think it’s healthy for a woman to become absorbed in politics that way. It cuts off the ordinary emotions that make women so important in our lives.”

  “Perhaps extraordinary women don’t have ordinary emotions, George.”

  “I hope you aren’t speaking for yourself.”

  “I want to be both women, George. I want both kinds of emotion. I want to be your ordinary wife, and your extraordinary political partner.”

  George caught her in his arms and gave her a passionate kiss. “You’ll never be my ordinary wife.”

  Their lovemaking that night was by far the most fervent of their marriage thus far. Even at this early stage, Caroline needed an extra dimension to bring her feelings to bed with her. She sensed it had something to do with the effort she had made to seal off those subterranean desires that had flung her into John Sladen’s arms. But she chose not to worry about it.

  The next morning she began exploring that extra dimension with Sarah Polk. They breakfasted late, after the men had departed for the Capitol. Caroline asked Sarah the name of the strange man who was eating a sausage in the House of Representatives. “That’s Sausage Smith, the new Democratic congressman from Ohio,” Sarah said. “A man of the people if there ever was one. If you think he’s bad, wait until you meet Davy Crockett from Tennessee. He parades around in a coonskin hat and hunting jacket.”

  Caroline realized Sarah saw her as an Easterner who would be shocked by crude Westerners. “I grew up on a farm in Ohio,” she said. “We had similar types in our neighborhood.”

  Sarah was pleased to discover Caroline was a fellow Westerner. “I never would have gathered it from your accent.”

  “One of the few worthwhile courses at the finishing school I attended in New York was speech. They insisted we had to talk as Eastern ladies.”

  “Why did you and your husband decide to go into politics? I happened to meet a New Jersey congressman after dinner last night. He told me George Stapleton is one of the richest men in America—or soon will be, when his grandfather and Uncle die.”

  “I told George he would have to do it if he expected to marry me.”

  “Do you have a private fortune?”

  “On the contrary.”

  “Remarkable. What would you have done if he said no?”

  “Gone to New Orleans with another man—who’s been a Jacksonian virtually from birth.”

  “Does he have a private fortune?”

  “No.”

  “My interest grows by leaps and bounds. You make my ambush of Mr. Polk seem timid, Mrs. Stapleton.”

  “Aside from being from Tennessee, why do you support General Jackson?”

  Sarah Polk hesitated for a moment over her coffee. “I’ll be . as frank as you. Five years ago, Mr. Polk went to Mr. Jackson and asked him what he could do to further his career. Mr. Jackson replied in his blunt way, ‘Stop your philandering! Settle down with a wife and devote yourself to her—and serious politics.’”

  Mrs. Polk stirred more sugar into her coffee. “Mr. Polk, no doubt hoping to divert the General, asked him whom he should marry. ‘Sarah Childress,’ the General replied. ‘Her wealth, family, education, and health are all superior. You know her well.’

  “‘I shall go at once and ask her,’ Mr. Polk said.”

  Sarah Polk’s smile suggested she was not at all distressed to be singled out by General Jackson this way. “The General was an old friend of my father’s. I’d known Mr. Polk since he was a schoolboy. I’d long since concluded he was the handsomest man in Tennessee. But I controlled myself and suggested he run for the state legislature and win before we announced the banns. Wouldn’t you agree that was a prudent thing to do?”

  “Unquestionably. I see why you support General Jackson. You’ve almost made a convert of me.”

  “Is General Jackson popular in your part of New Jersey?”

  “Popular enough to get three cheers at our wedding when George announced his candidacy.”

  “I must convince you of Jackson’s national importance. He represents a reaction against the aristocrats of the East, the Adamses and their toadies like Henry Clay. They’ve been in power too long. Their so-called American System is as corrupt as Alexander Hamilton’s Federalism.”

  “Here’s where I need some education,” Caroline said. Praise of Alexander Hamilton was often on Hugh Stapleton’s lips. If her father-in-law was corrupt, she failed to detect any evidence of it.

  “The system is nothing but Hamilton’s consolidated government, run for the Eastern rich and powerful, with some soothing Kentucky syrup à la Clay poured over it,” Sarah Polk said with a fervor that almost matched some of the oratory Caroline had heard the day before in the Senate.

  “And you, the Jacksonians, plan to abolish the tariff—change the whole system?” Caroline said, almost shuddering at what Hugh Stapleton would say if George became a Democrat.

  “Of course not,” Sarah Polk said with her Mona Lisa smile. “On the stump we talk about abolishing it. But nothing is ever done totally in American politics—if the other side has some power. In the end there’s always a compromise. That’s the genius of our politics, the fine art of compromise.”

  They set off to the Capitol, a half mile down Pennsylvania Avenue’s uneven brick sidewalks. “When it rains, these bricks vanish into the mud,” Sarah Polk said. “New Yorkers like Cambreleng are fond of deploring our primitive capital. But it doesn’t look much worse than Nashville to my eyes.” An odd sound struck Caroline’s ears. The clink and jangle of metal. Toward them down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue trudged a long coffle of black slaves, chained ankle to ankle. Their clothes were in tatters. Many of them looked emaciated. At the head and rear of the column strode two white men armed with rifles. Big black whips jutted above their belts.

  Sarah Polk did not even notice the procession. She continued to talk humorously about the limitat
ions of Washington, D.C., as a city until she realized Caroline was staring at the blacks. “I’ve never seen slaves before. We have blacks in New Jersey, but they’re all free,” Caroline said apologetically.

  “You’ll soon get used to them if you spend much time in Washington,” Sarah Polk said. “This is a Southern city. They buy and sell them on the street outside the White House.”

  “What inspired your interest in politics?” Caroline asked as the coffle passed.

  “Joseph Addison’s play, Cato.”

  “I loved that play too. Especially that line ‘’Tis not in mortals to command success, but we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it.’ Those words made me understand the sublime.”

  Sarah Polk nodded. “The night I finished Cato, I dreamt I was in a domed Roman temple. There were statues of heroes on all sides of the rotunda. Before them, women wearing long robes were chanting prayers, performing dances, singing hymns. I asked an old man in a toga where I was. ‘You’re in the Temple of Fame,’ he said.

  “I asked him what these women were doing. He frowned at my ignorance and said, ‘Without their powers, none of these great men would be on their pedestals.’”

  By this time they were at the foot of the hill on which the Capitol stood. Sarah Polk gazed up at its massive classical bulk. Except for its ugly wooden dome, it might have been transported intact from a hill overlooking the forum of ancient Rome.

  “That dream made me think women can play a part in American history,” Sarah said in her low intense voice. “We too have powers that men neither possess nor understand. The power to persuade, the power to disarm enemies, the power to sustain our heroes.”

  Caroline told Sarah about her visit to Aaron Burr and his discourse on the true meaning of fame. Sarah nodded. “He, Hamilton, Jefferson—they all understood it. General Jackson is the last of their breed.”

  For the rest of her life, Caroline remembered that moment on Pennsylvania Avenue. She sensed she and Sarah Childress Polk were joining a secret religion, a worship of fame. In a corner of Caroline’s soul, there was a momentary pocket of resistance. She wanted to see herself—or Sarah—on one of those pedestals.