The president explained to Sarah and Caroline. “Calhoun told me the Mexicans are disputing the Texas boundary. They’re claiming it should be the Nueces River—a good hundred miles north.”
“What would Old Hickory say to that?” Caroline asked with a smile.
“Old Hickory will be in paradise soon,” Polk said. “The doctor told me that he can’t possibly live more than another month. There are times when I almost envy him.”
“James,” Sarah said. “Cheer up! The impossible has happened! You’re the president of the United States! With friends like the Stapletons and many many others, there’s no limit to what we can accomplish.”
With a visible effort, the president got a grip on his feelings. “You’re right. Let’s all join in a prayer.”
He held out his hands to Caroline and George. Sarah stepped into the circle. President James Knox Polk bowed his head and prayed, “God of our fathers, we face this task which you have ordained for us with a troubled heart, with doubts about our abilities and our country’s good will. Only you can sustain us, only you can direct us according to your purposes. Surround us with your love and support. Without it our frail human love may founder, our courage may falter. With your help we will overcome any and all obstacles and win the victories that will set America’s feet on the path to glory.”
Caroline suddenly heard Hannibal Flowers saying, Only God can do it. What did that mean? She found herself twisting Hannah Stapleton’s ring on her finger as if she wanted to tear it off. Why?
“Amen,” George Stapleton said. “Amen, amen.”
Sarah kissed James Polk. Caroline also pressed her lips to the sallow cheek of this small earnest man whom she had helped make president of the United States. For a moment she saw sadness, even guilt, in Sarah’s eyes. The rain drummed on the White House roof. It was an unnerving introduction to the Temple of Fame.
BOOK SIX
ONE
SOMEWHERE IN THE WHITE HOUSE’S cavernous halls, ‘a clock bonged midnight. It was May 11, 1846. Caroline sat with Sarah Polk in the parlor off the president’s study. Through the open door, she could see James Polk hunched over his desk; beside him loomed Senator George Stapleton. They were working on a final revision of the president’s message to Congress, asking the lawmakers to declare war on Mexico.
Fourteen turbulent months had passed since James Polk’s inauguration. Caroline had watched the president struggling to cope with the nasty realities of the Democratic Party without Andrew Jackson. The old warrior had died on June 8, 1845—leaving a number of large egos in the U.S. Senate and elsewhere eager to prove they were in charge. It never seemed to occur to any of them that the logical man was President James K. Polk.
Instead, they all began, in George’s words, “kicking sand in his face.” The Calhoun men suddenly joined the Whigs to vote down the appointment of an obscure Democrat as collector of the port of Bath, Maine. Martin Van Buren sent his son John to Washington to hold forth in hotel barrooms and finally in the White House about the president’s ingratitude because New Yorkers were not getting enough good jobs. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri descended on the White House at all hours of the day and night with dire warnings against going to war with Mexico without making him a lieutenant general in command of the army.
It was how adolescent boys in a schoolyard challenged the authority of the teacher assigned to keep order. In this case, the schoolmaster, small, anxious James Polk, looked as if he would be easy to bully. That was not the case—at least, James Polk plus his partner, Sarah Polk, were anything but easy to bully. But the president had to deal with these formidable characters and their often obnoxious behavior on his own. Only later in the day or night could he consult Sarah about how best to dispose of their challenges.
Caroline had reported Vice President Dallas’s nasty remark about Sarah being the real boss, and this had prompted her to withdraw even deeper into the background of James’s presidency. She did not say a political word at her receptions. Nor did she alter the drab nonalcoholic atmosphere at these events. Soon she had a nasty nickname in Washington’s world of gossip: Sahara Sarah. An outraged Caroline had no trouble tracing it to John Sladen and his hard-drinking friends.
Nevertheless, the first lady and the president had pushed ahead with their program. Sarah handed to Caroline the problem of soothing or charming congressional egos. Vice President Dallas became a guest at Mrs. Stapleton’s salon. Caroline virtually oozed sweetness every time she saw the man. George was ordered to seek his advice on how to maneuver administration bills through the Senate.
Meanwhile, the British were playing their old game of trying to humble the Americans. They had encouraged the Mexicans to break off diplomatic relations over the annexation of Texas. The president had sent Congressman Sladen to Mexico City with instructions to offer as much as $40 million for New Mexico and California. The Mexicans, changing governments every six months, spurned the proposal and had countered by offering the British the right to colonize California, if they would finance a Mexican war against the United States to regain Texas. The British declined, preferring to threaten the Americans with a war in the Northwest if they did not agree to settle the Oregon boundary on their terms: the forty-ninth parallel and the right to navigate the Columbia River as freely as the Americans navigated the Mississippi.
The secretary of state, goggle-eyed, devious James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, was another Democrat with presidential ambitions. He tended to disagree with everything President Polk said, hoping to create a sort of separate record on which he could run in 1848. He saw nothing wrong with letting British gunboats cruise up and down the Columbia just because the river flowed on both sides of the proposed border. He was terrified at the thought of war with England and was inclined to let the British have anything they wanted, including California. Sarah and Caroline soon coined a private nickname for Mr. Buchanan: the Old Maid.
Buchanan also feared the Mexicans. He was not the only person in the cabinet and out of it who noted Mexico’s army numbered thirty-two thousand and most of them were veteran soldiers, hardened by years of fighting in their perpetual revolutions. While the American army numbered seventy-two hundred and had fought no one but a few scattered Indian tribes in the past thirty-one years. This disparity in numbers and training was trumpeted by numerous newspapers when the president decided to order General Zachary Taylor and four thousand men to march to the Rio Grande. The Mexicans had riposted by marching twice that many men to Matamoros, a Mexican town on the river. Critics screamed that Polk had put Taylor and his tiny American army in mortal peril.
Three days ago, a haggard John Sladen had returned from Mexico City to inform the president that the Mexicans were never going to negotiate as long as they thought the British were on their side. Privately, he told Caroline that was the exact truth. There was no need for him to obfuscate negotiations. No Mexican politician could stay in office for twenty-four hours if he agreed to talk peace with the Americans. The country was. split into two savagely contending parties: the conservatives, who detested the very idea of democracy, and the republicans, who admired it. Each was ready to accuse the other side of treason if it so much as received an American ambassador.
“We’re going to have to beat hell out of them to change their minds,” John said. “That may not be as easy as we thought.”
“Now is hardly the time to lose your nerve,” Caroline said.
In the White House, Sarah Polk shuddered at what the Whigs and abolitionists would say if the United States declared war on Mexico. “John Quincy Adams made a vicious speech in the House of Representatives today, denouncing James as a tool of the slavocracy,” she said. “Do you still invite that vile old man to your salon?”
“Lately he hasn’t come. He wrote me a note saying he was saving his strength to belabor Democrats.”
“He and his abolitionist friends are another reason why the Mexicans won’t negotiate. They think we’re divided. And we are.”
“Mrs. Polk?”
A blue-uniformed figure loomed in the doorway. It was Roger Jones, the bulky adjutant general of the U.S. Army. Clutched in his right hand was a sheaf of papers. “Is the president free? I have urgent dispatches from General Taylor on the Rio Grande.”
Sarah opened the door to the president’s study and announced Jones. Minutes later, Caroline heard the president exclaim, “My God!” He came to the door and said, “A huge force of Mexican cavalry crossed the Rio Grande and attacked a scouting party of sixty American dragoons, killing a dozen and capturing the rest. We’re at war.”
Sarah embraced him. The gesture was protective, not celebratory. “We knew it might happen,” she said.
“They’ve done us a great favor—firing the first shot,” Adjutant General Jones said.
“I hope we can fire the last one as soon as possible,” the president said.
Caroline rushed home to tell George. He already knew about it. The news had raced across Washington minutes after Taylor’s dispatches arrived at the War Department. “I saw Jeremy Biddle as I was leaving the Capitol,” he said. “He asked me if I was happy about the bloodshed.”
“I hope you told him to go to hell.”
George said nothing. He still disliked the idea of a war. Jeremy was so opposed to it, he had decided not to resign from the Senate, in spite of his wife’s demands. It infuriated Caroline to think her old enemy could still influence George on such a crucial matter.
The next day, Caroline returned to the White House, expecting to find the place swarming with soldiers and civilians. Instead Sarah was alone in her sitting room, wearing a doleful face. “James was up most of the night, studying maps of Mexico, planning how to fight the war,” she said. “When I begged him to come to bed, he insisted I stay up with him. He sad it was my war as much as his. Maybe more.”
“I thought we all agreed that it would probably come to blows,” Caroline said.
“I fear he never gave up hoping for the success of Mr. Sladen’s mission.” Sarah sighed. “He doesn’t feel qualified to be commander in chief. He’s haunted by General Jackson’s shadow.”
At a cabinet meeting that morning, Secretary of State Buchanan had added to the sleepless president’s agitation. He said if the United States declared war, they should combine it with a proclamation that they had no desire for any territory, including New Mexico and California. He had a letter to this effect prepared for circulation to all the U.S. ambassadors abroad. Unless they did this, Buchanan solemnly predicted, England would join the war on Mexico’s side. She would seize the moral high ground and declare she was doing it to prevent the spread of American slavery.
This stark prophecy was obviously intended to stampede the cabinet, and the president, into a policy that would satisfy the growing antislavery movement among Pennsylvania Democrats. The president pounded the table and shouted in Buchanan’s face that rather than let the English meddle in the affairs of this continent, he would fight them and the Mexicans and the French to the last living American.
“I was listening in the next room,” Sarah told Caroline. “Never have I felt so proud of him. But when the meeting ended, James was in a fearful state of nerves. He wondered what to do with Buchanan. He reproached himself for appointing him. General Jackson warned him against it. But the creature carries Pennsylvania in his pocket and it was the only counterweight we had to New York’s influence in Congress.”
For the next two days, virtually without sleep or rest, President Polk toiled on his war message to Congress. He conferred with the leaders of the Senate, notably John C. Calhoun and Thomas Hart Benton, showing them various drafts. He soon realized this was a mistake. Each had strong opinions on what Polk should and should not say. Calhoun was the most astonishing. He agreed with Buchanan that the United States should renounce any interest in acquiring territory and in general declared himself opposed to the war.
When Caroline heard this, she sent Hannibal to the Capitol with a message summoning John Sladen to her parlor. “What’s wrong with your hero Calhoun?” she said as John walked in the door. “Is he losing his mind? He’s opposed to the war. Is he trying to put a noose around the president’s neck?”
John was drunk. “I can’t do anything with him,” he said, slurring his words. “He’s haunted by the War of 1812. He thinks the same thing will happen here. The war will be a disaster. Anyone who supports it will be ruined.”
“Speaking of disasters, when are you going to stop drinking?”
“When you tell me that you still love me.”
“Get out of here.”
That night at supper, a still panicky Caroline asked Senator Stapleton if he thought the war would be a disaster. He shook his head. “Since the War of 1812, we’ve graduated a thousand West Pointers. A lot of them are still in the army. Man for man, we’ve got the best officer corps in the world.”
“Doesn’t Senator Calhoun know this? He’s told the president he’s against the war. He thinks we’re going to lose it.”
“He’s been out of touch with the army for a long time.”
George gave Caroline a quick summary of his conversation with Calhoun about the War of 1812 on their journey south during the nullification crisis in 1833. “He’s a guilt-haunted man. I wonder if I’ll feel the same way when I meet some freshman congressman whose father got killed in this war.”
“Won’t it help that this war will be victorious?”
“Maybe. Anyway, I might not have to worry about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to Mexico, remember? The president’s going to make me a general. That won’t make me bulletproof.”
Caroline struggled against fresh panic. “Maybe your shouldn’t go. I’m beginning to think the president needs you here. He has so few friends.”
George shook his head. “I’m going. It’s the only way I can square my conscience with voting for the war.”
“Haven’t the Mexicans fired the first shots? You sound like your insufferable friend Jeremy Biddle.”
“Calm down, darling. I agree with your brilliant plan for my life. There’s only one thing wrong with it. It’s never been my plan. But that’s not a fatal flaw. A lot of men get pushed, shoved, or prodded through life by something or someone. You’ve still got Andrew Jackson on your side—and manifest destiny.”
“So you don’t hate me?”
“I love you as I loved you when you were sweet seventeen.”
What was he telling her? He had become a man who understood a great deal about both of them. But they were still partners. For an incredible moment she loved him more than she had ever loved John Sladen—or Sarah Polk. She loved him as. the father of their children, a better parent than she was, by far. She loved him for the years of hard work he had invested in his political career, the tens of thousands of handshakes, the hundreds of speeches.
Caroline was still thinking some of these thoughts as she sat with Sarah Polk in the darkened upstairs parlor on May 11 while George helped the president add some final touches to his war message. “Is George going to volunteer for action?” Sarah asked.
“Yes,” Caroline said.
“The sooner the better. James is going to ask Congress to authorize two more major generals and four brigadier generals. You can imagine the competition for those appointments.”
“Yes.”
“God will watch over him. I’m sure of it. Just as He’s watching over James. We’ve all been led to this task in such a remarkable way. I can’t help but believe the rest of the path will be exactly as we foresee it.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“You still feel no impulse, no wish, to believe?”
“No.”
There was a painful silence. Did Sarah feel Caroline’s atheism was a kind of flaw that God would punish? “I’ve prayed so hard for God to give you faith. It makes me wonder if He’ll listen to my other prayers.”
“Perhaps I’m not worthy.”
&n
bsp; “How can you say that? None of us is truly worthy. But you have so many gifts. Don’t you feel grateful for them?”
What have my gifts done but make me unhappy? And you, my beloved. Aren’t you unhappy too? Forced to sit in the anteroom, listening to the cabinet blather. When you could settle their stupid arguments in sixty seconds?
What if that wasn’t true? What if women discovered, when they achieved great power, that it was as difficult to control, to wield, to retain, as it was for men? Could Caroline Kemble or Sarah Childress make the British negotiate honorably over Oregon or force the Mexicans to be reasonable over Texas and California? Would their husbands be happy, sitting in the parlor while their wives wrote a war message in the president’s study? Probably not. Would it improve matters if the wives were in the study correcting this phrase and excising that one? On the contrary, it might make matters worse. Caroline suddenly remembered Sarah’s lighthearted observation about men’s inability to endure too much correction without reverting to small humiliated boys.
For the first time, Caroline wondered if power and love were incompatible. It was one of the most stunning realizations of her life. Only the discovery of the underground river of the heart compared to it.
President Polk and Senator Stapleton emerged from the study. “I think this message has been tuned to the point where only people with tin ears will hear anything but celestial music,” George said.
“I wish there were fewer tin ears in the U.S. Senate,” the president said.
“So do I,” George said.
The president handed a copy of the message to Sarah. It was full of inserts and scratched out words. She invited Caroline to join her on the couch and read it. War exists by act of Mexico herself. Mexico has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil. The president called on Congress to provide money to raise an army of fifty thousand men and begin an immediate expansion of the navy to blockade Mexico’s ports.
The Wages of Fame Page 45