The Wages of Fame

by Thomas Fleming

  “True. Can Andy’s approval be obtained?” Calhoun said.

  Again the “council of state,” as George began to call the meetings with the Polks and Sladen, was convened at 3600 Pennsylvania Avenue. James Polk thought it would be dangerous to broach the topic directly to Andrew Jackson. He was likely to issue a thunderous no. “It might be better to have someone in the inner circle read it and recommend it.”

  “Who?”

  “Eaton, perhaps. He’s jealous of Van Buren’s influence with Jackson. The Little Magician has all but shoved him aside. He might even suggest things that ought to be changed before Jackson sees the manuscript.”

  “Perfect. Will you talk to him?” George said.

  “Let’s both talk to him.”

  The next day Congressmen Stapleton and Polk visited John Henry Eaton in his opulently furnished house opposite the British legation on Pennsylvania Avenue. George thought the secretary of war was looking haggard. The conflict over his wife continued, and Peggy was not winning it. At dinner party after party, a half dozen, sometimes a dozen, empty seats testified to wives who chose to stay home rather than sit near Mrs. Eaton. George could imagine without much difficulty the tantrums Peggy was throwing in private.

  George told Eaton about the exchange of letters. “I know about it,” he said. “So does everyone else in Washington.”

  “Mr. Calhoun thinks publishing these letters would clear the air on both sides—and might expose a certain party to the sort of notice he deserves,” Polk said.

  “Would you read them and, if you find the manuscript meets with your approval, show them to the president?” George said.

  Eaton’s eyes remained opaque. He knew they were playing high-stakes poker. They were offering him a chance to undermine Van Buren and regain his role as Jackson’s closest adviser. “I’ll be glad to read them.”

  A day later, he summoned George to his house and gave him a dozen suggested changes—mostly deletions from the president’s letters, and a few from Calhoun’s. George noticed he did not delete any of the snide, thinly veiled references to Martin Van Buren. Calhoun readily agreed to the changes. Two days later, George returned with the corrected manuscript, set in type. Eaton glanced coolly at it and nodded in approval.

  “Do you think you can show this to the president now?”

  “I think so,” Eaton growled. “Unless you hear from me, you can proceed.”

  Eaton’s curt manner worried George. But he decided it was only the tension of the situation. He was risking the residue of his influence with Jackson, who might take a dim view of publishing the letters. A week passed without a word from the secretary of war. George told Calhoun he assumed they were free to proceed. Two days later, the letters appeared in a well-printed fifty-page octavo pamphlet entitled “Correspondence between Gen. Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun … on the subject of the course of the latter in the cabinet of Mr. Monroe, on the occurrences in the Seminole War.” They were backed by a ferocious editorial in the Washington Telegraph, whose editor supported Calhoun, denouncing intrigue and backstairs throat-cutting in the Democratic Party.

  The publication created a sensation throughout the country. Suddenly the rest of the United States discovered the clandestine struggle for power raging in Washington. Few people had any difficulty identifying Mr. Calhoun’s unnamed enemy.

  Two days after the pamphlet came out, George was summoned to the White House. He confronted an enraged president. “Now what do you think of your friend Calhoun?”

  “What do you mean, General?”

  “He’s cut his own throat. He’s published parts of my private letters without my consent!”

  “But, General—”

  “The man is dead. Cut yourself loose from his corpse, I urge you, my dear young friend. I know every young man tries to attach himself to a rising star. I was that way myself in my salad days. But the wise man should know when he’s made a mistake!”

  Never had George seen Andrew Jackson in such a passion. He reeled home to tell Caroline of the debacle. “What happened? How could he say he never saw the manuscript? Is he lying?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “Eaton double-crossed you. He never showed him the letters. It’s his revenge against Calhoun—in Peggy’s name. In fact, I would bet the price of this house, or the Eatons’ house, that Peggy made him do it. Is there anyone in Washington she hates more than Vice President and Mrs. John C. Calhoun?”

  There was no other answer. The Polks and John Sladen mournfully agreed with Caroline. George could only go to Calhoun and pass on the bitter news of Jackson’s irreconcilable wrath. He found the vice president reading the Washington Globe, which thundered denunciations of him as a renegade Democrat who must be expelled from the party. George was amazed to find him smiling at this rain of abuse—and unfazed by the news of Jackson’s reaction.

  “Let the president rave and the Globe roar. The country is shouting my vindication.” Calhoun pointed to a pile of letters on his desk. “They’re arriving at the rate of fifty a day.”

  It was true. The nation as a whole and most of Washington, D.C., ignored the Globe’s fulminations that Calhoun had committed an unforgivable sin by Washing dirty political linen in public. Instead, most people were disgusted by Van Buren’s role in dredging up a long-dead quarrel to push his presidential ambitions. No one rejoiced more vehemently over this eruption of disapproval than John Sladen.

  In the next few months, Sladen became a virtual habitué of the Stapleton house. He constantly dropped by with the latest report on the secretary of state’s accelerating political decline. He showed Caroline a letter from a Louisiana constituent who declared, “Van Buren is a gone dog. He is done.” John gleefully reported that the Little Magician was no longer the man who never missed a party. He was spending more and more time alone in his big house on Pennsylvania Avenue. When he ventured out, he looked wan and spiritless.

  Those months created a precarious happiness in Caroline’s troubled soul. Three or four times a week, she saw love in John Sladen’s somber eyes—and silently returned it. She began to believe this love could remain unspoken but real, while she struggled to sustain and express another kind of love with her husband. In that love the body acted and the tongue spoke affection. At first the double miracle seemed a possibility. But discord from a source she could not tolerate suddenly disrupted this probably impossible dream.

  George began disagreeing with her and John Sladen about their passionate detestation of Martin Van Buren. George got this opinion from Jeremy Biddle, with whom he continued to correspond, in spite of Caroline’s spasms of disapproval. As a distant spectator, Jeremy advised George to espouse a peacemaker’s role, to give speeches in Congress deploring the lack of harmony in the party, urging everyone to compose their differences. Jeremy even wrote one speech for George (with some help from the new editor of the Newark Plebian), which George gave in the House to considerable effect.

  John Sladen scorned this gesture and Caroline echoed him, which meant George had to endure some bedroom lectures. Buoying John’s self-confidence and his prestige with Caroline was his elevation to John C. Calhoun’s inner circle. Sladen dazzled the older man with the range of his reading and the vigor of his ideas, which included a wholehearted approval of nullification as a doctrine that the great Jefferson himself had sanctioned. Sladen and Calhoun were a well-matched pair: they both tended to find most of their political enthusiasms in their heads, ignoring the existence of primal emotions such as ambition, envy, and hatred.

  One day, Sarah Polk was having tea with Caroline when John Sladen appeared with yet another rumor about the secretary of state. “He’s told some of his friends in New York that he’s going to resign. It’s the only thing he can think of doing to win some public sympathy. Of course we’ll do our best to make it an admission of guilt.”

  Caroline invited him to stay for a cup of tea. John shook his head. “Sam Swartout is in town, trying to persuade the president to consider him the
new political leader of New York. He’s got a hundred letters from prominent Democrats telling Old Hickory that Van Buren is beginning to stink up the party. Senator Legrand has arranged a meeting at the White House.”

  Sarah Polk waited until the front door slammed before speaking. “Mr. Sladen doesn’t seem to have heard of an old political axiom: there’s such a thing as killing a man too dead. He can come back to haunt you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Mr. Van Buren can convince the world that there’s a vendetta against him, the people will switch their sympathy to his side of this business.”

  Caroline hesitated, unable to tell her closest friend how well she understood John Sladen. “You don’t think Van Buren is a gone dog?” She had showed that picturesque Louisiana letter to Sarah.

  “I don’t think anyone who retains Andrew Jackson’s backing is gone—until rigor mortis sets in.”

  That evening, Caroline and George were sitting on the second-floor porch, enjoying the cool twilight of mid-May, when Josephine Parks announced Congressman Sladen had returned. Caroline knew why he had come and sensed from his crestfallen expression that the news was not good.

  “How did things go at the White House?” she asked.

  “The president practically threw Sam Swartout out of the place. He told him he was loyal to the friends who were loyal to him, and at the top of that list sat Martin Van Buren.”

  “He’s a very headstrong old man,” Caroline said.

  “Pigheaded is a better word,” Sladen said.

  “Johnny, I see no point in getting so involved in this quarrel,” George said. “You’re not from New York anymore. This means nothing in Louisiana.”

  “I think you’re wrong, George. I’ve talked it over with the vice president. He agrees with me—this vile schemer Van Buren must be destroyed, one way or the other. Even if it involves teaching Andrew Jackson a lesson.”

  “I begin to think he’s right,” Caroline said.

  “I think all three of you are wrong,” George said. “Let Van Buren stew in his own juice. He may wind up a cooked goose and Jackson will have to get rid of him. If it doesn’t go that way, we’ll have to live with him.”

  “Live with a lying schemer? I disagree, George!” John said.

  Caroline silently vowed to change her husband’s wayward opinions. Little by little she was losing touch with the hard, cool intellect that had guided her choice of George Stapleton as a husband. She was drifting toward becoming John Sladen’s advocate; yes, even his secret political partner. She was less and less able to see that John, forever searching for a replacement for his lost father, had found one in John C. Calhoun, a man whose intellect also ranged over the history of law and politics in search of axioms that justified his antagonisms. They would soon demonstrate the dangers of this mind-set in an act of folie à deux.

  FIVE

  CAROLINE READ THE MOST ASTONISHING. news of the year 1831 in the Washington Globe: “President Jackson’s Cabinet Resigns.” John Sladen’s rumor had turned out to be true, up to a point. Martin Van Buren had resigned as secretary of state to escape the aura of shame and subterfuge that Vice President Calhoun’s pamphlet had woven around him. But the resignation of the rest of the cabinet was a total shock.

  George was at a meeting of the House committee that governed the District of Columbia. Two more kidnappings of free blacks had recently come to light, and the free Africans of the District had staged an angry demonstration in front of the federal marshals’ headquarters. Hannibal had been among the leaders and had gotten himself arrested for punching a marshal.

  Caroline rushed to consult Sarah Polk about the cabinet’s dissolution. As usual, Sarah had an inside-the-White House version, thanks to James Polk’s friendship with Andrew Jackson Donelson, Old Hickory’s secretary. “Mr. Van Buren has demonstrated he’s by no means out of the game,” Sarah said. “He persuaded the president to see his resignation as an act of loyalty—and proved it by persuading John Henry Eaton to resign with him, removing Peggy from the battlefield. The Little Magician then advised the president to demand the resignation of the rest of the cabinet, especially the Calhoun men whose wives had snubbed dear Peggy.”

  “What will Mr. Van Buren do now?”

  “He’s about to become ambassador to the Court of St. James, the most prestigious gift in the president’s power. Mr. Eaton and Peggy are going to become ambassador and ambassadress to Spain.”

  Sarah’s wry tone made it clear that she was staying aloof from this latest contretemps. She had managed to steer James Polk through the Eaton imbroglio without losing the friendship of Martin Van Buren, John C. Calhoun, or Andrew Jackson. Caroline was forced to admire her shrewdness. But she remained enmeshed in John Sladen’s passionate detestation of Van Buren and his fierce devotion to John C. Calhoun.

  John was waiting for her in the parlor at 3600 Pennsylvania Avenue when she returned home. He was wrestling with little Jonathan, a sight that made her tremble. The sharply angled features, the gray eyes, the taut mouth, were so similar. She ordered herself to get used to it.

  John leaped to his feet. “You’ve heard the news? We’ve driven the schemer out of the country! He’s running three thousand miles for shelter.”

  “He’s taken Eaton and Peggy with him. The president must be grateful for that.”

  “I wonder. I heard that the president visited Peggy to explain matters. She was extremely cold, almost insulting to him. If the old boy thought this latest Van Buren scheme was going to make her happy, he can’t be too pleased by the result.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “As a delicious bonus, Eaton will replace that pompous fraud Washington Irving as ambassador to Spain. There’s a nice story making the rounds about the president’s opinion of old Washy. When someone told him Irving was our most famous author, Old Hickory said he had never heard of him.”

  John paced the room, gesticulating as if he were making a speech to Congress. “We’ve got the Little Magician on the run. It’s simply a matter of choosing the right moment to finish him off.”

  “Finish who off?” George Stapleton loomed in the doorway. Caroline flinched at the way his sheer physical presence overwhelmed John Sladen’s slender frame. Behind George stood Hannibal. The big black had a livid purplish welt across his face.

  “Hannibal, what happened to you?” Caroline asked.

  “They whipped me bad in dat jail, missus.”

  “I paid his fine and got him out of there. His back is a mess,” George said. “I’ve sent Mercy for our doctor.” He told Hannibal to go upstairs and lie down until the doctor arrived.

  After a suitable pause, John answered George’s question. “We’re talking about the dissolution of the cabinet and the Little Magician’s flight to London.”

  “I’ve heard a slightly different version,” George said. “He’s staying around and handpicking all the replacements.”

  “If the vice president plays the card I’m recommending,” John said, “they’ll all have to come crawling to him—the cabinet, the presumed ambassador, and the president.”

  “What card might that be?” George asked.

  “I can’t tell you yet. It will take some negotiations with several people.”

  John seized his hat and departed. It was not the first time Caroline noticed he was uncomfortable when George was at home.

  George was irked by John’s portentous secrecy. “He acts as if he’s a member of Calhoun’s cabinet.”

  “He is, in a way. The vice president’s very fond of him.”

  For a moment, Caroline was unnerved by the antagonistic expression on George’s face. She thought he was going to say, “So are you.”

  But George was thinking less dangerous thoughts. “I’m not at all sure that Calhoun’s victory is as complete as he and his inner circle think it is. He’s made an enemy of Andrew Jackson—no small matter.”

  “Aren’t you pleased to see a schemer like Martin Van Buren driven out of the
country? Have you forgotten the way he tried to bully you into joining his faction?”

  George shrugged. “That was just a little political mud-wrestling. A man shouldn’t take those things too personally.”

  “What about his use—or better, abuse—of Peggy Eaton?” Caroline said, growing more and more irritated at George’s pose of superior wisdom.

  “Less than admirable, I admit. But in retrospect, wouldn’t it have been better for all concerned if Mrs. Calhoun had never mounted her high horse and started the whole thing—or John Calhoun had sat her down and told her to stop it the minute she started?”

  “You don’t think a woman has a right to her own opinion in such matters?”

  “She can have an opinion. But in politics, people often have to swallow their opinions temporarily, sometimes permanently.”

  “That strikes me as cowardly—and demeaning.”

  “Not at all. A political party is like an army. If you read military history, you’d see what I mean. Before a battle, there may be a dozen different opinions about the best way to fight it, or whether to fight it at all. But once the commander in chief makes up his mind, every soldier in the army fights the battle the general’s way no matter what he thinks of it.”

  “Cowardly—and demeaning! You leave women totally out of the equation with that comparison. I thought we’d come here as political partners!”

  “Darling, calm down. We’re just having a friendly discussion. I’m sharing a little of what I’ve concluded after three and a half years in Washington.”

  “It’s neither friendly nor sharing. You’re informing me that my opinions may or may not be important, depending on what you—or someone more powerful than you—thinks of them.”

  “They’ll be important to me, but they may not be correct or timely or well informed.”

  “Let’s end this discussion now! You’ve said far too much already.”

  George was baffled by the upheaval his candor had triggered. At dinner, Caroline barely spoke to him. In their bedroom, she flung herself under the covers and turned her back to him, making it clear that even a kiss would be unwelcome. She dimly realized she was acting irrationally. She could not see that the roots of her anger lay in George’s cool disregard for John Sladen’s elation—and his judgment on Floride Calhoun. In that woman’s abrasive arrogance, she sensed the same discrete resentment at women’s lot that so often surged in her own soul. They were spiritual sisters. She rejoiced—yes, rejoiced—at the turmoil Floride had caused in Washington with her decision to snub Peggy Eaton.