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Eagle's Cry

Page 49

by David Nevin


  He stood. “Welcome to America, Mr. Montane. In peace we will consider you an adornment; in war we most certainly will call upon your sword.”

  Actually, if war came, they would be in desperate need of trained officers. That they would give a French officer much authority in a war with France was laughable, but it was all academic: Madison intended to avert war and with this stunning news from Santo Domingo it seemed ever more possible to do so. He hurried to report to the president and then hurried home, shockingly early really, but too pleased to restrain himself. He would have clicked his heels but that it would be inappropriate to the dignity of the secretary of state.

  36

  WASHINGTON, EARLY 1803

  You could feel the tension all over Washington, at least the black community could. Samuel Clark could. Slave or free alike, black folks kept their ears open, they listened to the whites, their expressions as inattentive as so many sticks of wood, which was how the white folks took them. But they knew … and it didn’t augur well for them.

  War was coming. All over town Samuel heard more and more agreement on that, white men wondering why the administration didn’t say it out loud, call up the militia, get the Royal Navy to help, get ready, for God’s sake. The French hadn’t turned around yet, and it didn’t look like they ever would. It wasn’t Napoleon’s way to back off; everyone knew that.

  So the disaster in Santo Domingo, if you wanted to put it that way, came as a mixed blessing. It would slow the French some—but it meant the niggers had won. Oh, the French would settle it soon enough, get a new army in and clean ’em out, but it gave America a breathing spell, time to get ready and all. But the thing was, it also gave the niggers ideas. Made slaves wonder if they couldn’t do the same.

  Most whites pretended they couldn’t see blacks, treated them like so much furniture. But low-class whites, one glance told you who they were and you wanted to watch out for them. They were getting more and more on edge and off balance, and sometimes they looked downright scared. And a scared white man was a white man thinking about killing you. It paid to stay out of his way. Made the whole community tense though—there was talk of a lot more floggings in slave yards, and two freedmen had been left in the woods dangling from trees. White people didn’t talk much about it, but blacks knew. Whites talked about war and how we’d have to fight the French, but they looked at blacks when they talked that way and they didn’t look good.

  One day, when he’d delivered Miss Danny to the pier where Mobry vessels moored, she told him to go home and dig in the storage room for a file box marked thus and so. Two hours later he was back, the box heavy as he carried it along the pier to the shed and up the narrow steps to her office. Her door was ajar and he was ready to knock when he heard Mr. Clinch’s voice.

  “Do you know,” he heard Mr. Clinch say, “those blacks in Santo Domingo, they saved America’s bacon.” He wasn’t from hereabouts, Mr. Clinch, he was from up north somewhere, New York maybe, you could hear it in his voice.

  Miss Danny said something, Samuel couldn’t distinguish the words, and then Mr. Clinch said, “Yes, ma’am, the French can send a new army, but will they? War in Europe seems about to start again. I don’t know … but just think of the courage of those black men standing against the mightiest army in the world. Why, we’d have expected them to run like rabbits; but no, they took their machetes and fought and won! We think our blacks here are passive, don’t care for ought but food and sleep, but can they be so courageous there and so different here?”

  Again Miss Danny’s voice, a murmur, and Mr. Clinch laughed and said, “Well, I know, but you have to admit it’s ironic that the courage of far-away black men saves us …”

  The box was heavy and Samuel had been eavesdropping too long, someone below would notice, so he knocked lightly and pushed the door open. He made haste to place his burden where Miss Danny pointed. There was a heavy silence as he hurried out.

  But when he was safely back on the box of the carriage, he smiled quietly, inside, not exposing himself to watching whites, and he thought on what Mr. Clinch had said—this nation saved by the courage of black men. Slaves. Men who would fight and die to rid themselves of the French. Men like Joshua.

  With a wave of exultation like nothing he thought he’d ever experienced, he thought, we won! Joshua won! He was right to go, right to risk, right to stand for freedom!

  But the very thought, joyous though it was, unleashed a despair that he saw now he had been holding out on the edge of his mind for days. What had been concern and then open fear now became conviction. He would not see his brother again. Joshua was dead. He’d had no word and expected none, but he knew. It was as solid a conviction as that the sun had risen in the morning and would set in the evening. Joshua was dead. He had died doing what he’d known he must and he’d won his battle, and his life meant more than all the years an old man might live.

  He’d seen his duty and he’d gone to fight.

  Well, duty took many forms, didn’t it?

  A dray drawn by a worn gray cut in front of him, and he had to draw the matched team back so hard the horses almost reared. A surly white man at the reins of the dray glared at him and reached under his seat for an oaken bat. Samuel occupied himself quieting the horses, and after a while the white man clucked the gray into motion and drove away without looking back.

  This was a dangerous town, more so now, and sure to be worse when the inevitable war started. The French had fought at Santo Domingo till they were mostly dead; they weren’t going to give up now. They would be back and the blacks of Santo Domingo would fight them off again; but would the whites in the lower Mississippi have that same courage? He didn’t know, and while he knew it meant a lot to Miss Danny, he didn’t really care. The question was whether low-class whites like that scoundrel in the dray would take out their fears on blacks.

  They should long since have taken their little horde of escape gold and gone north, where whites didn’t hate blacks so … .

  But duty takes many forms … .

  Was it, then, at last, beginning to break in their direction? Madison had steeled himself for war for so long, walked the narrow tightrope of hope for so long, that he was quite unprepared for the possibility that the French might actually start listening to reason.

  So as he sat in the president’s office looking at Pierre Du Pont’s letter from Paris, he felt dizzy with disbelief and joy and fear that as a magician waves his wand, it might all disappear in a flash.

  Pierre said he had information that the first consul was open to the offer by the United States to purchase New Orleans!

  Think of it! The whole island of New Orleans, which really was the city and its surrounding swamps separated from land by lakes and water courses all around, would solve the whole problem. With the city in our hands the French could do as they liked with the rest, for they could not close the river then, and that was the sine qua non of the whole crisis. If they couldn’t seal the Mississippi, our whole central section was safe. The rest of Louisiana was mostly the terrain Meriwether Lewis would be crossing soon; we could worry later about the ownership of that vast stretch. Indeed, Madison was supremely confident that ultimately the tide of western settlers would make the continent American, since neither France nor Britain brought new homesteaders, while the flow of Americans across the Appalachians and westward was constant year by year.

  He handed the letter to Albert Gallatin. The president had summoned them both. Mr. Jefferson paced the office, looking as exuberant as a boy. The room was flooded with glowing late winter sunshine, matching their moods perfectly. Albert blinked and shook his head when he came to the basic point.

  Of course, Pierre Du Pont had presented this information as all his own doing, a conceit he probably believed and that Madison felt he’d earned. His advice was terse: First, abandon threats. Conciliate. No belligerence. Then petition to buy, not just the city, but the entire east bank of the river, from the Gulf of Mexico to Natchez in Mississippi
territory, which included New Orleans. Foreswear any interest in terrain west of the river. Guarantee France full commercial rights. And make a serious offer, one that would command instant respect.

  The Treasury secretary frowned. “Of course, Pierre doesn’t care if it breaks us. What does he propose?”

  “Six million dollars.”

  “Six million! More than half a year’s budget. It would shatter our finances, Mr. President.”

  “Jimmy?” Tom had that easy smile; he’d already decided.

  “Oh, we must do it, of course.”

  “But not for six,” Albert said. “Three, even four …”

  There was a long silence. Madison would sound off if necessary, but better it came from the president.

  “Well,” Tom said, his face radiating amused pleasure, “I was thinking of a nice round figure—say fifty million francs how much would that be in U.S. dollars, Albert?”

  In strangled voice, Albert said, “Some $9,375,000 that, I must remind you, Mr. President, we don’t have!”

  “Then we must find it, Albert. Scrape it up, you know. I’ll leave the details to you, but yes, fifty million francs. That should get the Frenchman’s attention.”

  He popped his hands together in infectious joy that mirrored Madison’s mood as well and cried, “We’ll drink a glass of Madeira and toast a radiant future!”

  When Madison got home he broke out champagne and he had Dolley got well into a second bottle, dreaming aloud about the pleasures of life absent the threat of war.

  A week later Jimmy came home in a totally different mood. The very set of his shoulders told Dolley something was wrong. He scarcely touched food and responded to the bits of gossip she offered for entertainment with flickering smiles and monosyllables. Then he said he would lie down a bit.

  So she asked, and for answer he drew a letter from his shoulder case. With dismay, she recognized Mr. Livingston’s spiky handwriting on fine vellum. Jimmy went to the bedroom and she retreated to the study to sink into the corner of the sofa and open the letter.

  She began reading, slowly, with frequent pauses. It was odd how the gentleman’s words drew her in so, stirring the already vivid images of Paris that so many French novels had built in her mind. Discursive as always, Mr. Livingston said he had been trying to draw attention to American demands, and she could see his tall, spare frame marching about the Paris of her imagination …

  Talleyrand proves a total waste of time; Mr. Livingston suspects he has been bribed by British agents to follow his natural inclination to abuse Americans. Britain’s ends are served if the first consul’s mind remains fixed on an empire on the Mississippi instead of resuming war over Malta. Meanwhile, the supreme leader doesn’t deign to answer missives Mr. Livingston sends directly. Marbois is friendly but paralyzed by fear he’ll make a wrong move. In desperation Mr. Livingston turns to Joseph Bonaparte, the older brother, to whom the great man may or may not listen, if he listens to anyone.

  The news from Santo Domingo strikes Paris a savage blow; newspapers are edged in black; portraits of General Leclerc appear in windows swathed in black crepe. At the cathedral a memorial mass for the general and his men draws fifty thousand. Common folk weep in the streets. Of course, many are the families of the young soldiers swept away by the disease, but Mr. Livingston still is startled by the official outpouring.

  That the loss of an army under ultimate orders to oppress the United States doesn’t strike Mr. Livingston as truly bad news is a thought he keeps to himself, especially when he attends a vast reception at which the first consul is expected. As always, the big room is crowded—Dolley’s imagination has clothed it in grandeur—a thousand sperm oil lamps blazing in chandeliers, double girandoles on walls between tall windows that are draped in crimson, waiters threading through the crowd with trays overhead holding flutes of champagne in rows as orderly as soldiers’ ranks, the whole room a display that offends Mr. Livingston’s democratic sensibilities … .

  And then a stir, a tremor—the first consul arrives! But this time, instead of circling the room and allowing his hand to be kissed as his cold gaze flicks about, he forges straight toward Mr. Livingston, waving courtiers out of his way. He wears a black band on his arm, his face is more than stern, and Mr. Livingston sees that he is angry.

  This is a man whose anger shakes the ground around him, but Mr. Livingston remains composed. He bows and says, rather gracefully, he feels, “May I express my nation’s condolences, to yourself, sir, to Madame Leclerc, to the people of France—”

  But Napoleon is glaring. “Your condolences are neither needed nor desired.” His French is rapid, slurred, guttural. “I wish to tell you, Mr. American Ambassador, do not flatter yourself that General Leclerc’s tragic demise changes anything. Nothing, sir!” Mr. Livingston notes that the first consul speaks like a barracks room sergeant when he’s angry.

  Then, as if somehow the dictator feels he has lost ground in a contest of wills, he snaps, “Two points, sir. Hear them well, memorize them, take them back to your masters. First, do not disturb me further with offers to purchase Louisiana. Only spendthrifts and fools sell land, and I am neither. Sale is out of the question.

  “Second, I am sending a new army immediately under General Victor. He will go with twenty thousand men to Santo Domingo and send two thousand on to take immediate possession of New Orleans—two thousand should be ample to deal with the American rabble there, including scum floating the river.”

  He gestures to a heavy man standing directly behind him. “I present General Victor. He will leave within the hour for Holland where even now his army is embarking on ships heavy-laden with supplies.” He glances up at his general. “You tell him, Victor, tell him what he may expect. And then go to your men.”

  Dolley dropped the letter in her lap. Her hands were quivering. Again she had that odd sensation of words flying across the sea to deal her a visceral blow. Purchase out of the question, a new army coming—all their hopes for avoiding war were fading … .

  The candle was guttering down and she lighted a fresh one and set it in its stick. Then she took up the letter and again was immersed in the vivid scene. The first consul, having delivered devastating news, wheels and marches out as forcefully as he entered. General Victor stands with legs wide, head thrown back, looking down a long, slender nose with eyes almost hidden by grizzled eyebrows. A formidable man, his voice an angry growl.

  “We will bring a new order to America. Before I’m done your people will be as quick to heel as my wolfhounds.”

  “Americans don’t heel, General. You are sure to be disappointed,” Mr. Livingston says, managing to sound relaxed. This oaf is not going to unsettle the gentleman from New York. “And we have treaty rights on the Mississippi that are being violated as we speak. We will expect you to correct that promptly.”

  The general raises both hands, palms out. “None of our doing. That was the Spanish. But convenient—means we take it with the river already closed.”

  “Be careful, sir. We have treaty rights on that river—signed by Mr. Pinckney in Madrid in 1795, terms perfectly clear. I will send you a copy.”

  “Hah! Treaty—it’s so much wastepaper—use it to wipe your bum; it’s worth nothing more!”

  “Sir!” Mr. Livingston lets his voice rise. “Is that French honor? To violate sworn word between nations?”

  The general’s voice goes soft and silky. “Do not dare mention French honor in my presence or I may feel compelled to uphold it.”

  “I am at your service, sir,” Mr. Livingston says. Dolley’s eyes widen as she reads this. The gentleman from New York is placing himself in terrible danger. He makes it clear he is no duelist, but he is not prepared to be backed down by this French scoundrel. He decides to buy the finest dueling pistols in Paris and practice for an hour each day.

  The general looks as if the water has suddenly become deeper than he expected. He draws himself up. “Easily said, sir, when you know I must depart for Holland within
the hour.”

  “Whenever you find time, I am at your service.”

  The general gives him an evil grin. “Perhaps I will avenge your impertinence on your countrymen.” He slaps his gloves against his palm, bows, murmurs, “Your servant, sir,” and is gone.

  The letter ended there. She was in tears as she refolded it. Nothing had changed after all. The sale that Mr. Du Pont envisioned was a feckless dream. The French were still coming with a massive army under a general fully as ferocious as Leclerc. They would crush the blacks at Santo Domingo and come on to the Mississippi, and we must rally an army to meet them with all our recent hopes gone glimmering.

  Then it struck her that Victor and his army were already in Santo Domingo. They would have sailed as rapidly as the ship that brought Mr. Livingston’s letter. Why, they might even be in New Orleans now, at this very moment!

  In the bedroom she found Jimmy lying in the dark with his eyes open. Without a word she lay beside him and put her head on his shoulder.

  A week later another letter from Livingston: Ice had trapped General Victor’s fleet in Holland. He couldn’t sail until March. A breathing space, that’s all.

  Things were coming down to scratch. Madison had one real card left, and it was time to play it. After that, war, which probably would leave us tied to the British empire and mark the end of our brilliant common man democracy.

  So at dusk one afternoon, with storm clouds roiling on the horizon, Madison watched a closed carriage stop on Pennsylvania Avenue. Young Lewis, sitting his horse nearby, gave a slight nod. Madison opened the carriage door and stepped in.

  “By God, I was glad to hear from you,” said Jim Ross. “My people are demanding I speak out and I’ve been holding them off, but I can’t no longer. So …”

  Madison admired the Pennsylvania senator’s fortitude. As the westernmost Federalist, Ross was his party’s designated speaker to demand forceful action against the French while denouncing democratic failures. The folks at home in Pittsburgh were pushing him, but so were his party chiefs.

 

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