Eagle's Cry

by David Nevin

  Gallatin had already arrived. The president sat in his deep Queen Anne chair cradling a teacup in both hands. His face was sagging and pouchy, as haggard as Madison felt. Gallatin was at a table pouring tea, and he set out a cup for Madison.

  “Welcome, Jimmy,” the president said, his voice tired but light and relaxed. “I’ve just been acquainting Albert with the terms of Napoleon’s deal with Spain; for returning Louisiana, he swaps them a hunk of Italy that he stole.”

  “That does put it harshly, Mr. President,” Albert said.

  Jefferson had a lazy, amused look that Madison didn’t like. That damned whimsicality of his, popping up at the unlikeliest moments!

  “It’s a harsh situation, Albert,” Jefferson said. “I know you’ve admired Napoleon—”

  “Well, he is a man of extraordinary power, a genius on the battlefield, an executive of exceptional talents—”

  “And a seducer and destroyer of democracy,” Jefferson said, still with that easy manner. “Let’s not forget that he stole the French democracy with a military coup and has been reveling in power ever since.”

  “Well, I suppose,” Albert said, and sat down with a thump.

  Madison felt anger stirring. “He’s drunk with power if he thinks he can handle us so cavalierly,” he snapped. Let’s get down to what matters! Would he have to bring them to order himself and show them the dangers ahead?

  “Unfortunately,” Gallatin said, “most Europeans haven’t the least sense for this vast continent. What is it—four hundred miles across France? Five? Here that just takes you down to Carolina. Napoleon has no idea what he’s trying to bite off.”

  “More than he can swallow,” Madison said.

  But then the atmosphere changed, as suddenly as a spring sky can clear. The president stood, tall and lean, towering over them both. “All right, gentlemen,” he said, “to business.” With sharp relief, Madison saw that his face had hardened and the easy-going manner was gone. He walked to a window, walked back, clearly in command. Madison waited. This was the Jefferson he wanted to see, the basic man, strong, stern, very tough, who he always knew was there when you cut through the idle talk, the spray of ideas, the erratic focus on anything and everything, the extraordinary capacity to deceive himself and to believe whatever he wanted to believe, the wild stories he told, the encyclopedic interests and knowledge, all these the reasons men and women who didn’t know him well gushed and called him a genius. But Madison knew none of this would matter tuppence if at bedrock there wasn’t a man of power, hard as stone.

  Madison had spent his adult life as junior partner to Jefferson, who was nine years his senior. Dolley resented it, but Madison saw it as the natural order. They’d done well together—junior didn’t mean inferior—and Madison had been content to follow. Only on the Constitution, written while Tom was in Paris as ambassador, had he broken with Tom and gone his own way. He’d seen what must be done, and while the document’s writing was a group effort done in convention, he knew he had had more to do with the key points than anyone. And then he’d beaten Tom into support too. For he knew the Constitution was the most important thing that had happened in America, more than Tom’s own great Declaration of Independence, more than General Washington as the first president holding the nation together when it wanted so much to fly apart. This was the document that told the core value of the American people. And Tom had seen that in time and come along … .

  So Madison waited, confident on the one hand, terrified on the other, for what the leader would say.

  The president leaned against his desk. “Now, let’s start with the basic fact. Ipso facto, who occupies New Orleans and controls the Mississippi becomes our enemy. To control the river is to strangle, or threaten to strangle, half of our country. That is the single point that must guide our every move. We cannot tolerate—we will not tolerate—any nation taking that position.” A wintry smile flashed and disappeared. “Spain, of course, has held it only at our pleasure. France on the Mississippi we will not accept. Is that understood?”

  “But—” Gallatin said, and stopped before the president’s raised hand.

  “And you gentlemen are quite right. We are too big a bite for Napoleon to swallow, let alone digest. The problem is that he doesn’t know that. Not yet. Our task is to educate an ignoramus. We must show him his plans are unworkable.”

  No one spoke. Jefferson walked the length of his office and back. He folded his arms.

  “Now, gentlemen, Napoleon, conqueror of all he has seen, doesn’t strike me as very susceptible to reasoning. Power is his mode, and I doubt he respects anything else. So he must be made to understand that we will fight, and that in the end we will win. When that recognition penetrates, he will be open to reason.”

  “But, Mr. President,” Gallatin bleated, “how can we fight? We’re broke, we’re reducing the army, we’re laying up ships—”

  Again a raised hand stopped the Treasury secretary. “First things first, Albert,” the president said. “First, we must make the tyrant understand the danger in which he places himself.”

  He glanced at Madison. “Mr. Secretary, I will count on you to find ways to do so.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Madison said. “Starting with the premise that we will fight.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We can raise a hundred thousand militia in the West.”

  “More. Two hundred, I would say. I know westerners. Every man from twelve to ninety will pull down his rifle.”

  “But, but—” Gallatin was sputtering. “Militiamen, no matter how many, against highly trained troops, blooded in years of war, supported by countless cannon, supplied and resupplied and reinforced and—”

  “We’ll need some help,” Madison said.

  “Well,” Jefferson said, “this mad French dreamer has a limited future. His dream of conquering the world is too big a dream. He has absolute power, and absolute power is cruel to its holders. It first seduces and then destroys them, and sooner or later his dreams will destroy him. But meanwhile, if he presses on until we must fight or submit, then certainly, we will need help. From, to get it said, the Royal Navy.”

  Madison couldn’t restrain a great sigh. He knew his face had cleared in relief. Tom had followed the same course of logic through the dark of the night to this same cold conclusion. He saw reproach in Jefferson’s eyes. You doubted me?

  “The Royal Navy!” Gallatin’s voice squeaked.

  “Napoleon’s days will be numbered if we join the British,” Jefferson said. “We’re already the largest neutral shipping nation in the world; together we would rule the seas. Britain would be glad to blockade the Gulf Coast while our militia cleared out the French if we were its ally in the world war.”

  It all sounded cool, no raised voices, no emotional cries—the language of disaster, Madison saw, was not much different in tone from that of ordinary life. But this was disaster.

  “That’s just what the Federalists want!” Gallatin cried.

  Yes, exactly what those who dreamed of conservative rule by the better classes had wanted for years, war with republican France, the little United States curled up between the paws of the British lion, an end to Jeffersonian democracy.

  “But it would be to British interest to keep the French out of North America,” Gallatin said.

  “Well, Albert,” the president said, “they wouldn’t do it if it weren’t in their interests. But every encounter with the British over the last quarter century says they’ll make us pay.”

  Madison saw this as simple logic. And payment would be to join the world war on their side, put our shipping at their disposal, bend our trade to their advantage, perhaps assume the defense of Canada to free their troops for the Continent. Our import-export duties—the government’s only source of income—would pour into empty British coffers. Our foodstuffs would flow to their armies with payment when and if and how they said.

  “That’s the reality,” Jefferson said. “Underneath a little face-
saving cover they would grant us.”

  “So the Federalists would win after all,” Albert said.

  “I assume so,” the president said. “They’ve wanted alliance with Britain against France for years. Surely they would argue that only they have the stature to bend British protection to our ends without losing our own sense of nationhood.”

  “If we did what they’ve wanted all along, of course the people would turn back to them,” Madison said, “and there go our dreams—back to the old autocracy, Hamilton in the saddle again, bending the economy to serve those who have the most, aristocracy coming, monarchy in the wings.”

  So defeating France by force would give us a very costly victory, but Madison felt better with the peril laid out on the table. They had decided, they were together, they could fight in lots of ways.

  “Remember,” he said, “the only thing worse, more dangerous, would be not to fight. A democracy that can’t defend itself must fail by definition.” Still, he was feeling better, and he cried, “But maybe standing strong would save us, prove that freedom works. What do we argue, after all? Only that the common man has the courage, the self-discipline, the control, the collective wisdom to govern himself—that he doesn’t need rich men or aristocrats or a king to guide him—” He saw Jefferson’s smile and stopped himself, then added, “Well, soldiers of democracy must be preachers too.”

  The president nodded. “Well said, Jimmy. Preachers must believe, and we must too. We set out the worst, the ultimate disaster. But long before we come to fighting, to rallying militia, let alone appealing to the Royal Navy, we must try to head them off. So, Mr. Secretary, it’s in your hands. Take it one step at a time.”

  Madison stood and squared his shoulders. “Mr. President,” he said in his most formal tone, “I will operate on this basis: We know we can drive them out and we will if we must.”

  “Quite—destroy them by destroying ourselves. Bit of a bad joke, eh? So, Jimmy, I leave it in your hands.”

  “I’ll need some presidential weight, I expect.”

  “Oh, I’ll be available.”

  Well, Madison thought as he snatched up his boots and case and bounded out into the cold morning air, at least the president was strong, no matter Dolley’s reservations. Anyway, what really lit Dolley’s anger was the feeling that Madison worked and Tom got the credit. But Madison was full ready to cede credit, for what did it matter? Dolley wanted him to be president someday, that was the core of it, and the idea was taking on a certain appeal to him at that, though his instinct told him he would never be a man to leap to saddle and lead his people. But neither he nor Tom would be president if they couldn’t handle this thing, though he knew the difference between talking a fight and fighting it. He must walk that narrow line between showing them we can win but not having to prove it, and he didn’t know if that line even existed … .

  22

  WASHINGTON, LATE DECEMBER 1801

  As Madison emerged from the mansion deep in thought and hurried along the brick walk toward the little State Department building, Johnny Graham assailed him with a cheery good morning. Johnny had returned from the Madrid embassy. Finding him a bright and capable young man, Madison had pressed him into service and by now had grown fond of him. The talk with the president was reverberating and his shoulders ached from tension, but he smiled and greeted Johnny. A long road lay ahead, and he would do well to hold things in proportion.

  Johnny was pegging the State Department nag to graze on the mansion lawn. Every morning he went to the stables on G Street to fetch the horse on which the nation’s diplomatic errands were run. A stalwart man still under thirty, with a shock of carroty hair and fists like hams, he’d grown up on the Ohio near Cincinnati and acquired a legal education before he found he didn’t much like the law and didn’t want to practice. Among Madison’s clerks, the Nothingarian had departed; and while he regretted losing a man with such an appellation, he had to admit it was justified. Johnny had leaped at the chance to replace the Nothingarian.

  The Mississippi, for which the Ohio was the great feeder, was on Madison’s mind. It was the lure and the key. Remembering Johnny’s background, he asked what he knew of river trade and traffic.

  “A good deal, actually. My uncle’s in the business—runs twenty, thirty flatboats out of Cincinnati every year. I went down with him one year.”

  “That many boats, eh?”

  “More going every year. Pa said in a letter they’re saying maybe five thousand hit New Orleans this year.”

  “Really? So how does it work out when you get there?”

  “First off, it’s a long float. You’re mighty happy to see civilization again. And the Spanish? Well, they make some trouble, but you know, my uncle has sixty, seventy men and most of ’em, the bark’s still on. They wanted, they could bump up against the handful of Spanish soldiers, take their pieces, and—well, put them someplace that my uncle describes somewhat indelicately. So the Spanish don’t push the rivermen too far.”

  “But suppose they clamped down? Shut the river.”

  “Shut it?” Johnny laughed. “Western folk wouldn’t tolerate that.”

  Madison walked into his office pondering the image of flatboatmen with the bark still on as an element in the international equation.

  He gestured the chief clerk into his office and warned him that the French move must remain a secret. Mr. Wagner hesitated, swallowed, said, “I don’t suppose we’ll be disputing it … .”

  “What in the devil gives you that idea?”

  “Well, it’s just that many people felt the Democrats were—”

  “Captives of the French? Many people, eh?” His temper was fraying. “Federalists, you mean.” He stared at Wagner. “You’d be wise to see less of your Federalist friends.”

  But with vulnerable expression Wagner said his friends—former friends—shunned him or pumped him for secrets. “I suppose you find out about people when circumstances change.”

  “Probably just as well.” Madison was calmer now. In fact, he had come to depend on Wagner; but if the clerk let information slip, the hue and cry from radical Democrats would be deafening. Still, that Wagner was only learning this late in the day that most friendship is shallow made him wonder a bit about his clerk. Madison had found many a false friend among Federalists, though he supposed that’s how they felt about him … .

  “As for the French,” he said, “we favored their revolution as they had ours. But it imploded, and Napoleon jumped in and bent French hopes for a better world to his own corrupt ends.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s the Federalist view.”

  “No!” Madison snapped. “The Federalist view is that without controls by the better classes, democracy will degenerate into mob violence. Now that’s poppycock. All Napoleon says about democracy is that it’s always at risk and always must be guarded. As for us, we’ll maintain neutrality in the European squabbles, but we’ll tolerate no dabbling on this continent. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, you know Mr. Pichon quite well, don’t you?”

  Wagner massaged his chin. “When he was here before as secretary of the French legation we were more or less counterparts, and I saw a good deal of him. Now that he’s back as chargé d’affaires it’s different.”

  “Why do you think they named him just a charge, not an ambassador?”

  “A mark of contempt to the host country, I would think.”

  “So would I, unfortunately,” Madison said. “Now just last night Mr. Pichon denied knowledge of this Louisiana matter.” Actually, he had said he had no instructions from his government, but that amounted to denial. “Do you think he deliberately lied?”

  Wagner sighed. “I’d guess his government didn’t tell him. He’s a decent fellow, always seemed honest and straightforward, as not all French diplomats are. Plain potato, really. Mrs. Pichon, too. She gives the impression of a milkmaid who’d really rather be back on her father’s farm in Provence.”

 
Plain potato? Well, this was the instrument through whom they must reach the strongman of the French.

  Wagner cleared his throat. “Spends too much time with the Federalists though. They’ve got him thinking the Democrats can’t survive, that the people’ll turn on ’em before long. He’s in Gouverneur Morris’s Senate office nearly daily.”

  Madison sat a long time gazing out on the mansion lawn where the department nag cropped a circle. Then he told Johnny Graham to ride up to the Hill, keep an eye on Morris’s office just off the Senate floor, and hurry back when he saw Pichon go in.

  “I’d like to catch him coming out of that office.”

  Meriwether Lewis was in a state of wild turmoil. He saddled his horse and set out for the Capitol bearing a message binding the chairman to secrecy on the French move. Of course, the speaker was in charge, but he preferred to do business through the energetic Ways and Means chairman. This time Lewis had specific instructions from the president to place this in Mr. Randolph’s hands—personally. So much for the pale clerk.

  He was barely aware of the chill morning, the big gelding frisky and rambunctious under him. He hadn’t slept the night before, burning as he was with excitement: The expedition had been broached at last! The talk at the diplomatic dinner had been especially charged, Mr. Jefferson expressing precisely what Lewis had always felt—the wondrous sense of the West beckoning like the Golden Fleece.

  And he was utterly ready to go! He had armfuls of plans, charts, lists. Nothing more had been said, but it was, after all, only the next morning, and this damnable French business had intervened. Which could ruin everything. If we had to fight the bastards, of course he would revert to the army—with a command, surely, or maybe knowing Mr. J’s attitude toward favoritism, not so surely—but the expedition would be shot to hell, about like putting a charge of grape through a paper target. It would be another dream crashing against reality; wasn’t that the very nature of life?