by Jodi Daynard
There was a little house for rent just down the road from Peacefield that had belonged to one of Adams’s gardeners. With the money they’d been given as wedding gifts, they put a deposit on the house and settled in easily. Almost at once, Johnny began to help Kate with the Women’s Quarterly, both of them hoping it would eventually turn a profit.
Miriam, now a young woman of nineteen, put aside all other pursuits to help Kate. She quickly distinguished herself as an able, intelligent partner in the magazine business.
When the headaches eased, Johnny began to write once more. One day he handed Kate a small sheaf of paper, with neat lines of words written upon them.
“What’s this?” she asked him.
“My first essay,” he said.
It was signed John Watkins.
“Oh, Johnny.” Kate embraced him.
Kate published several of Eliot’s poems, too, which were very well received. And while it was several years before they could afford to do so, eventually they published a slender volume called Dreams Before Sleep: Poems by Eliot Mann.
Just after the New Year, with some slight profits from the sales of the journal and a loan from Mr. Adams, Johnny was able to rent a fine sunny room on State Street in Boston. It had an excellent fireplace and a small adjoining room where he could make himself a meal or a mug of coffee.
He amassed a goodly collection of legal texts, which he proudly displayed in a mahogany cabinet given to him by the Lees. Lizzie and Thomas Miller donated a Turkey carpet, a desk, and a lamp. Finally, Kate painted two fine watercolors, landscapes of their beloved Quincy, to adorn the walls.
He had easily passed the Massachusetts bar, aided behind the scenes by a certain former president, who made it known to the judge that he would “countenance no malignant excuses” to reject Johnny. None were forthcoming.
Johnny sat in his office all that winter and into the spring of ’02. He entertained himself by reading the newspapers, and in this way learned that Callender, having been refused by Jefferson for an appointment as the postmaster of Richmond, had joined a Federalist paper and published the very same information regarding Sally Hemings that the blackguard once sought to suppress.
The news saddened him. Though he would never love Jefferson, Johnny yet believed that the man had a right to his privacy. Well, but he was out of all that now. His own life was here, in Boston. Johnny might have found out what had happened to Miss Burnes and Peter Fray, but he had no wish to know. Not ever, he thought. But several years later he learned that Peter Fray had died of the consumption, that Moorcock had finally been sold to another family, and that Miss Burnes had married a certain Benjamin Fairfield, another prominent Virginia planter.
Day after day all through that spring, impeccably dressed and having removed all his jewelry save Madame Pringle’s ruby ring, Johnny sat in his office without anyone’s entering it. By Easter, he thought he would have to close up. He was a black man in a town crawling with white lawyers. Everyone knew it now, thanks to the scandalous pamphlet that had spread ever northward like smallpox on the packets and by post.
No one would patronize him, although each day had brought its share of busybodies, those curious enough about the “Negro attorney” to peer into his office window. Some bold souls pressed their noses right up to the glass, the better to gaze at him. Their breath fogged the glass until he had a pattern of several dozen round marks upon his window, which he kept having to clean.
Then, one day just after Easter, an impressive coach pulled up before his shop. It was a barouche driven by a very long-limbed white coachman in a glowingly new costume replete with a tall black hat. Johnny was staring in awe at the sight, wondering who this person could possibly be, when who should descend but Abigail Adams, in a bright-orange gown. He had never known her to love ostentation, and he wondered at it.
Johnny hastened to the door, opened it, and bowed. But Mrs. Adams lingered oddly for a time in the doorway, as if she might have left a parcel behind in the carriage. This was, of course, the better to garner the attention of passersby.
Not a few people began to gather in the street to watch her. When a sufficient number had gathered, enough to draw yet more, as crowds inevitably do, she entered Johnny’s office at last.
“Mr. Watkins.” She curtsied.
“Mrs. Adams. To what do I owe this honor? But sit—do!”
She drew toward the young attorney’s large desk and sat demurely upon the proffered chair.
“Well,” she began, folding her gloved hands together, “I should like to conduct some business.”
The nosier bystanders pressed their faces to the glass. Others edged their way in for a glimpse of the famous lady and the Negro attorney.
“Indeed. What business is that?”
“Well.” She drew herself up, a tiny smile curling one edge of her mouth. “I’ve been most grievously wronged. I should like to bring a lawsuit.”
“A lawsuit?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Against whom, pray?” Johnny’s heart pounded with sudden anxiety. He had never actually practiced the law, much less brought a lawsuit to bear.
“Oh, anyone will do, I should think.”
As the crowd continued to shove and jostle their way close to the glass, Abigail grinned and glanced back toward the throng.
Johnny suddenly understood. “I see. Well, let us draw up some papers. I’ll take the pertinent information regarding your suit against . . . Mr. Anyone, is it?”
“That will be fine.” She nodded gravely. “I imagine it will take a long time.”
“A very long time, I’m afraid, Mrs. Adams. Would you like a cup of tea while you wait?”
“Have you coffee?”
“I do. I dislike tea, always have.”
Johnny moved to his little fireplace to put the kettle on, and in a few minutes they both sipped their coffee as Johnny prepared papers that no one would ever see.
The next day, his first real client walked through the door. And, soon after that, others did, too. After several months, a few other businesses owned by free black men opened up on State Street: a hairdresser, a grocer, and a flour merchant. Johnny befriended many of these men, just as his mother and father had befriended a number of free black families in Barbados.
Then, one day, after much private thought, Johnny walked into the Boston African Society on Beacon Hill. He told them he wished to join and to be of what use he could in the cause of abolition.
“Our membership is open to Negroes only,” a young, well-dressed man told him. He began to show Johnny the door when, laughing heartily, Johnny disabused the fellow of his mistake.
Through his contacts in the society, Johnny became a member of Boston’s first black Masonic Lodge. The lodge, which had been founded by a certain Mr. Hall, was a powerful presence in the growing abolitionist movement. Aunt Martha told Johnny that she knew Mr. Hall quite well. They often “collaborated,” she said, by which Johnny knew they aided slaves escaping from the South.
It was a smaller life than he had once imagined, but a good one. A rich one. He practiced law, went to meetings at the African Society, helped the old man to carry stones up Penn’s Hill, and loved his family, which soon included three healthy children. He grappled them all unto him like hoops of steel. It was enough.
He would leave it for future generations to do better.
Author’s Note
THREE WEEKS BEFORE MY FATHER DIED, IN October of 2013, I received a phone call from him that began, “I’m reading about the 1800 election. Do you realize how contentious it was? I would think it would be important for you to know that.”
“Of course I know that, Dad,” I said. None of my siblings or I were ever comfortable admitting ignorance to a man of such encyclopedic gifts, even when he was ninety-six. Our father had always expected a lot from us. He assumed that others read as voraciously as he did, keeping up on history, politics, philosophy, religion, problems in the Middle East, and arguments for and against God’
s existence.
We did our best. But in the matter of the 1800 election, I had lied. Or, like Johnny, I had lied by omission. I knew something about the election, but I did not, in fact, understand the personal treachery, the emerging party system, or the radically bifurcated population that very nearly made the United States a brief, failed experiment.
I also did not understand how familiar this election would seem to a modern American: the way vicious partisan papers exaggerated or downright lied, the way so many people were terrified by a foreign presence in their midst. At the time, these unsavory “others” were French and Irish. The origins of the unsavory “foreigners” has since changed, but the hostility and paranoia toward them are much the same.
For a long time after my father died, I felt guilty about my little lie. Not so much consciously, but somehow, when I went to write the final novel in the Midwife series, I knew that it would be about a boy’s involvement in the 1800 American presidential election.
Apart from being fascinating in its own right, the 1800 election seemed an excellent setting in which to place a brilliant young man seeking to change the world for the better, seeking the greatness theoretically possible in this new land. Heroic Johnny, partly black, holds out as long as possible for that promise of the American Dream. And in fact he has every chance at distinguishing himself, if only he can sustain the lie of his whiteness.
Readers who have read my other books know that, while my stories are entirely my own, many supporting historical characters get tangled up in them. As always, I have been careful to draw on many sources to determine the physical attributes, whereabouts, and personalities of the real people whose portraits I draw. Even though this is fiction, I am aware of the great responsibility I have to portray the lives and times as accurately as possible.
John and Abigail Adams should be familiar to my readers by now; I feel that I know them intimately, and their movements in this novel correspond to their movements in real life. For example, Adams really did catch cold upon his arrival in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1799, and an irate Alexander Hamilton did visit him there. The president’s ink really did freeze in his Philadelphia study; and Abigail actually hung laundry in the East Room of the new President’s House. Small facts like these help create a sense of realism. But more important, these details are the things that move me and inspire me to write.
A word about the novel’s many letters and newspaper clippings. All of the letters are my own invention, with two exceptions: Adams’s April ’94 letter to Abigail, which Johnny quotes from the Barbados Mercury, and Jefferson’s infamous letter to Philip Mazzei. The poem Eliot reads on Christmas of ’95 derives from an anonymous poem of that period. Newspaper excerpts and articles are taken from genuine historical documents, except for Johnny’s contributions. The vicious pamphlet called The Federalist Mongrels is also my fiction, though it is certainly in keeping with the tone of the times.
With the exception of a very few cases, the movements of my historical figures are accurate. For example, the Adamses’ departures and arrivals—to and from Quincy, Philadelphia, and Washington—are usually correct to the day. When not at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson did in fact stay at Francis’s hotel. Documents indicate that he lived there off and on from May of 1797 to May of 1800. Smaller events, such as the parties and balls that Johnny attends, are also real, though I’ve taken liberties with the attendees.
In two major places, however, fiction diverges from reality: James Callender was not released from prison until March of 1801, though his confrontation with Johnny occurs in February. And I recently discovered that Senator John Marshall stayed at Tunnicliff’s for several months in 1800, while Johnny was there. But I decided to keep Marshall out of Johnny’s hair at Tunnicliff’s. Ultimately, a story must have the freedom to be true to itself as well as to history.
Johnny is based on no single real-life character, though if I had to name an inspiration it would be our forty-fourth president, Barack Obama. As I wrote the novel, I kept wondering how someone like a young Barack would fare in those treacherous times. I kept imagining a young man with prodigious intellectual gifts and a rare sense of justice having to hide his race as he moved toward his dream of greatness. In my original conception, Johnny didn’t make it out alive. How could such a one live, if exposed?
Marcia Burnes did exist. She was very beautiful, as portraits of her from the time attest. Miss Burnes was heiress to the fortune her father, David Burnes, made when he sold his land along the Potomac to George Washington. The real Miss Burnes seems to have been a very good person and was later in life known for her philanthropy. My Marcia, on the other hand, is neither quite so good nor so philanthropic.
But perhaps my most ambitious undertaking was the portrait of Thomas Jefferson. To many, Jefferson remains an iconic figure of even larger proportions than Adams or Franklin. As the novel no doubt reveals, I am ambivalent about Jefferson. Johnny discovers that none of our Founding Fathers were quite the men they endeavored to seem, but this is especially true of Jefferson. Some would call Jefferson’s covert attempts to destroy Adams the apotheosis of hypocrisy. But as Jefferson biographer Joseph Ellis astutely observes, “What his critics took to be hypocrisy was . . . an orchestration of his internal voices, to avoid conflict with himself.” I’m inclined to believe that both observations are true.
The letter from Jefferson to Sarah Hemings is a fiction that I created. For a while, though, this letter was so real to me that, in fact checking the novel, I searched many hours for it before I recalled that it was my own fiction. The exposure of Jefferson’s decades-long relationship with Sarah or “Sally” Hemings happened in 1802 by James Callender, as the novel describes. Adams’s reaction to the letter in the novel is much as it was in real life: incredulity giving way to sadness. In the end, Adams placed the blame where it correctly belonged—not on Jefferson alone but on the institution of slavery itself.
Ultimately, I explored Jefferson’s character not to pass judgment but to plumb his complexities. I suspected that Jefferson’s complexity—his profound ideological vision coupled with profound personal contradictions—might provide a psychological road map of America during that time. In some important ways, I believe it still does.
If I’ve succeeded in portraying these people the way I wished to, a reader will judge less than question. Researching American history taught me not only about what has changed, but also what has remained stubbornly the same. Now as then, there is a great gulf between American promise and American achievement. And the question remains, What can be done about it?
I think even my father would admit that I now know a little something about the 1800 election. I’m sure he would have been proud. I wish he had another question for me.
Acknowledgments
FIRST AND FOREMOST, I WOULD LIKE TO thank my husband, Peter Hogan, for supporting me in so many ways. It’s not easy being married to a writer: there are many hours each day when we are not physically present; and when we are, we can be mentally miles away. Peter is also my literary first responder, reading those cringeworthy early drafts and sometimes late ones as well, catching the worst of the bugs before they sneak their way into print.
Longtime friend Gloria Polizzotti Greis is another important reader, a brilliant historian who not only finds historical inaccuracies but also points out places in need of development or deeper authenticity. Of course, in a novel containing so many hundreds of historical facts, mistakes are bound to slip through, and I take responsibility for any that have.
Thank you to my team at Amazon, who always take my books to the next level: my superbly straightshooting developmental editor, Jenna Free; ever-supportive Senior Editor Jodi Warshaw; and the entire Lake Union author team. I feel very blessed to have all these talented people taking such tender care of my books.
Thanks also to my agent, Emma Patterson, of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agency. You are a voice of reason, grounded in good sense at just those times when I tend to lose mine.
Lynne Flexner, Donald Flexner, Matthew Daynard, and Nancy Daynard: you have always been there to support me in so many big and small ways.
Thanks also go to my friend Corrie Popp, who came up with the name of the “Slotted Spoon Society”; Annabel Truesdell Quisao, for her expert assistance with manuscript preparation; and to Barbados scholar Karl Watson, who graciously shared his encyclopedic knowledge of Barbadian history and race relations with me. Finally, I’d like to thank the archives at Harvard University and the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, where I was able to see and touch many period letters, diaries, and drawings. The Internet is a boon to researchers, but nothing can replace the unique aura of the objects that were actually there. To me, the way such objects can conjure their time and place is nothing short of magical.
About the Author
Photo © 2013 Nancy Daynard
JODI DAYNARD IS THE AUTHOR OF THE bestselling novels The Midwife’s Revolt and Our Own Country. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times Book Review, the Village Voice, the Paris Review, AGNI, FICTION, and the New England Review. She has taught writing at Harvard University, at MIT, and in the MFA program at Emerson College. These days she divides her time between the Yorkshire Dales in Northern England and her home outside Boston.