The Book of Bastards

by Brian Thornton

  The rumors flew fast and furious in the ensuing months: Gardiner wanted to be Comptroller for the Port of New York; he wanted a cabinet post; he wanted to be a United States Senator. The sky was apparently the limit. Whatever his asking price, it was obvious that Gardiner expected Tyler to help him get it, and in exchange for his daughter's hand in marriage.

  For public consumption Gardiner adopted the posture that his daughter was too young for the fifty-three-year-old president. He arranged a series of social engagements for her with “safe” escorts such as closeted gay Senator James Buchanan of Pennsylvania.

  It's anyone's guess how this would have all played out had Gardiner not died in an explosion onboard a U.S. Navy ship in February 1844. The obstacle so abruptly removed, Tyler made himself available to console the distraught Julia. Within a month the two were engaged, and they eloped in May of that year.

  BASTARD GETTIN' BUSY

  Tyler was married to Julia for the remaining eighteen years of his life. When he died at the age of seventy-two in 1862, Julia had recently given birth to their seventh child, which gave Tyler fourteen children that survived infancy — a White House record!

  So who was the bastard of this piece: Tyler for coveting this beautiful young girl? Or Gardiner, for his willingness to use Julia, his own flesh and blood, for his own ends? You decide.

  30

  ABEL P. UPSHUR

  Texas Redbacks and Currency Manipulation (1790–1844)

  “The terms of the treaty (of annexation) call for the United States to pay all the debts of Texas. Texas bonds and treasury notes that had been below 10 cents will be par. Now Sir, was there ever such a chance for a magnificent speculation?”

  — Abel P. Upshur

  Currency speculation in one form or another is as old as the notion of currency itself. By the mid-nineteenth century investing in the future value of foreign money was a fairly lucrative activity in every major city in the world. This was especially true of Washington, D.C. An unofficial currency exchange took place day in, day out, on the northern end of Lafayette Square, within sight of the White House.

  While speculating is perfectly legal, manipulating the value of currency is not. And that brings us to a guy you've never heard of named Abel P. Upshur. This former Virginia judge, congressman, and secretary of the navy exploited the system while working as John Tyler's secretary of state from 1843–1844.

  In 1836, American settlers in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas rebelled and won their independence from Mexico. Texas immediately petitioned to join the Union as a slave-holding state. But by 1836 the slavery debate was heating up. So Texas remained a separate nation. And since sovereign nations require money in order to operate, the Texas government invented a currency note called the “redback.”

  Texas, however, lacked the gold to back its own currency at anything close to full value. The Texans tried to counter the resulting inflation by simply printing more redbacks, but this just decreased the redback's relative value as a means of trade. By the early 1840s a Texas redback was worth eight cents to an American bank.

  For the forward-thinking investor, though, redbacks were anything but worthless. After all, if the United States annexed Texas and made it a new state, Texas's currency system would be discontinued. The Texans would need to adopt the United States's monetary system, and the U.S. Treasury would have to retire all those redbacks at face value. A Texas redback purchased from someone changing them in the north end of Lafayette Square in 1843 would be worth $1 in American coin and currency to a U.S.-Treasury-backed bank after annexation. The potential profit was twenty times the purchase price.

  BASTARD BY ASSOCIATION

  Upshur's friend and replacement as navy secretary was former Virginia Congressman Thomas Gilmer. He also speculated deeply in Texas redbacks, likely on Upshur's advice. Like Upshur, Gilmer failed to profit from speculating in redbacks. He died in the same gunnery accident that killed Upshur on the day the treaty was signed.

  Now imagine that you're the U.S. Secretary of State, secretly negotiating with the Texans to hammer out a treaty. You could use that information to turn a healthy profit by quietly and gradually speculating in Texas redbacks.

  Upshur got halfway there. On the morning of February 28, 1844, he and Texan ambassador to the United States Isaac Van Zandt secretly signed a treaty of annexation. If Congress ratified the treaty, his redbacks were going to be worth a fortune.

  The U.S. Senate, however, had other ideas. In April 1844, the Senate voted Upshur's treaty down. For the moment at least, Upshur's supply of redbacks was worth less than the paper on which they were printed.

  By that point Upshur was beyond caring about Texas, redbacks, currency speculation, or anything else, for that matter. He was killed (along with the secretary of the navy and several other VIPs) by a freak explosion during the test-firing of a new naval cannon on the afternoon of February 28, 1844. It was the very day on which he signed the treaty of annexation.

  31

  JAMES BUCHANAN

  America's First Gay President (1791–1868)

  “I am selfish enough to hope you will not be able to procure an associate who will cause you to feel no regret at our separation. For myself, I shall feel lonely in the midst of Paris, for there I shall have no Friend with whom I can commune as with my own thoughts.”

  — Rufus deVayne King while serving as minister to France, to James Buchanan

  Our fifteenth president, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, was one of the most experienced and capable of nineteenth century diplomats. He was also a disaster as a president: his paralysis in the face of mounting Southern pressure to protect slavery helped lead to the Civil War, which began during his term. In a more social context, he was the only bachelor to ever occupy the White House and our first gay president.

  William Rufus deVayne King was Buchanan's longtime friend. The scion of a well-to-do North Carolinian family who won election to Congress while still in his twenties, King eventually moved to Alabama, where he helped found the city of Selma. King served as a U.S. Senator for decades before retiring and taking the post of minister to France. He was elected as Franklin Pierce's vice president in 1852. He was also our first gay vice president.

  Buchanan met King in the 1820s while the two served together in Congress. From that moment on they were inseparable and eventually began sharing a house. The time they spent living together raised no eyebrows. But their behavior together and apart certainly did.

  No matter how discreet the two might have thought they were, their relationship was an open secret, and the cause of much coarse humor around the nation's capital.

  President Jackson often referred to King as “Aunt Fancy”; a Buchanan biographer more politely noted that King was “fastidious about his appearance.” And Tennessee Congressman Aaron Brown even called Buchanan “Miss Nancy,” which was the nineteenth century's slang equivalent of calling someone a “fag” today. In one famous letter, Brown wrote about observing “Senator and Mrs. Buchanan” (e.g., King) in the midst of a quarrel that closely resembled a lover's spat.

  BASTARD “DATING”

  Though Buchanan and King are remembered as lifelong bachelors, Buchanan had been engaged until his wealthy fiancée abruptly committed suicide. According to many who knew the couple, Buchanan was far more interested in the girl's money than in her. We'll never know for sure why she killed herself, as Buchanan made a point of burning all of their letters to each other. He called on many young ladies in fashionable Washington society after her death, but Buchanan never seriously courted any woman again. When asked about it, he said that he had never gotten over his dead fiancée. Some noted that it was almost as if he was using the event as a shield, keeping him from having to go through the pretense of dating.

  As much as their bond shocked polite society, the two remained devoted to each other for the rest of King's life. In 1852, when Buchanan lost out to Senator Franklin Pierce for the Democratic presidential nomination, he was mollified
by the selection of King as Pierce's running mate. They won the election, but King was ill with tuberculosis. A special act of Congress allowed King to be sworn in as vice president in Cuba, where his doctors had advised he go for his health; he was the only American vice president to take the oath of office outside of the country. It was too late: King died just over a month after taking office. He never returned to the United States.

  How Buchanan reacted to this tragic news is, of course, unrecorded. And in retrospect the very pretense so central to the lives of both of these men, the need to keep up appearances (as much as possible in a gossipy town like Washington, D.C.)just seems sad.

  32

  WILLIAM WALKER

  When “Filibuster” Was More than Just a Word (1824–1860)

  “What Walker saw and heard at Guaymas satisfied him that a comparatively small body of Americans might gain a position on the Sonora frontier, and protect the families on the border from the Indians; and such an act would be one of humanity, no less than of justice, whether sanctioned or not by the Mexican Government.”

  — William Walker

  Born in Nashville in 1824, William Walker trained in Philadelphia as a doctor, but seems never to have practiced medicine. Instead he traveled throughout Europe during the next two years, then moved to New Orleans to study law. In 1849, he caught gold fever and moved to San Francisco along with thousands of others. It was there that he conceived and carried out his first attempt at a “filibustering” expedition.

  In 1853 Walker and a small force of men took the city of La Paz, declaring it the capital of the new “Republic of Lower California.” But when he ran out of money, supplies, and ammunition, Walker abandoned this “republic” and fled back to California one step ahead of the Mexican army. Walker next set his sights on tiny Nicaragua in Central America. In 1855 he led a well-financed, well-armed force of over three hundred men (most of them Americans) into the war-torn country.

  Within a year Walker had himself “elected” president. Having seized power, his methods for holding on to it were effective and brutal. At one point he ordered one of his officers, the English-born adventurer Charles Frederick Henningsen, to sack and burn the city of Granada. Henningsen torched the place, killed many of the residents, ran off the rest, and then decamped, hotly pursued by several thousand Honduran soldiers. He supposedly left behind a sign marking the smoking ruin of the city that read “Aquí fue Granada” (“Here was Granada”).

  By 1857 Walker had worn out his welcome. Not only had he made local enemies, he had also irritated American millionaire “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt had made his fortune in shipping. In Nicaragua his company used short rail lines and lake steamers to transport people and goods from the Gulf of Mexico, across immense Lake Nicaragua, thence to Pacific steamboats, which were ready to take travelers the rest of the way to California.

  WHAT'S IN A WORD?

  The word “filibuster” itself comes from the Anglicization of a French word filibustier, which means “freebooter” or “pirate.” In truth this notion of privately funded and manned expeditions of conquest into America's neighboring countries began before Walker was even born. “Adventurers” had coveted both frontier and Mexican land for years. Men like former Vice President Aaron Burr worked tirelessly on cockamamie plans to either carve a new country out of the western territories of the United States or carve a slice out of northern Mexico … or both.

  When Walker nationalized Vanderbilt's lake steamers, the “Commodore” set his agents to oust Walker and get Vanderbilt's property back. Realizing it was time to get while the getting was good, Walker surrendered to the captain of an American warship, returned to a hero's welcome in New York, and wrote a book about his exploits. Within a year he had begun hatching another scheme to return to power in Nicaragua.

  This time Walker's famous sense of timing failed him. He landed in Honduras in 1860, and instantly found himself in the custody of the British navy. Rather than return Walker to the United States, the British — who controlled Honduras's neighbor British Honduras, now Belize — turned Walker over to the Honduran government as a gesture of good will. A firing squad executed the last filibuster on the site of what is now a hospital in the port city of Trujillo, on September 12, 1860. Walker was just thirty-six years old; he missed the American Civil War by a mere three months.

  33

  DAN SICKLES

  The Temporary Insanity Defense (1819–1914)

  “One might as well try to spoil a rotten egg as to damage Dan's character.”

  — George Templeton Strong

  Democratic Congressman Dan Sickles was already a nationally notorious figure when he pulled strings to get appointed as a brigadier general of volunteers at the beginning of the Civil War. In 1859 Dan Sickles became the first person in American history to successfully employ the “temporary insanity” defense in order to beat a murder charge.

  The son of a New York City attorney who dabbled in local politics, Sickles followed in his father's footsteps, securing a scholarship to study law at New York University. While a student there he first met his future wife Teresa when he rented a room from her family. She was three years old. He was twenty.

  The two of them eloped thirteen years later; Teresa was sixteen and pregnant.

  By the late 1850s Sickles had been elected to Congress, and the couple had relocated to Washington, D.C., moving into a house on Lafayette Square, less than a block from the White House. Isolated from her family and by then aware that Sickles drank too much and chased women habitually, it comes as no surprise that Teresa eventually began an affair of her own.

  Teresa's lover wasn't just anyone; he was Philip Barton Key, son of the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Key was also district attorney for the District of Columbia, and every bit as much a womanizer as Teresa's husband.

  When Sickles found out about his wife's infidelity his reaction was typically Victorian: he flew into a rage and insisted his wife write out a detailed confession. She did so. It wasn't enough.

  In February 1859, Sickles confronted his wife's lover on a street corner down the block from his house; right across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. Sickles shot Key twice, once in the groin. Key died the next day.

  On trial for murder, Sickles hired an expensive legal defense team, including future Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Their strategy was for Sickles to claim that learning of his wife's infidelity had so enraged him that he could not control his own thoughts, that he was literally “temporarily insane.”

  BASTARD BODY PARTS

  History best remembers Sickles for what he did as a “political general” during the Battle of Gettysburg. He disobeyed a direct order and led the men under his command to a position far forward of where they had been assigned to defend the flank of the Union lines. Sickles lost his leg to a cannon ball while in the Peach Orchard. He later donated his severed limb to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, where he frequently came to visit it for the remaining fifty years of his life.

  Sickles began his trial as the butt of much public scorn, but his defense was so sensational and so successful that he was acquitted on all charges. He was even seen as something of a hero, having rid the innocent women of Washington of a predatory rascal like Key.

  Teresa Sickles never reconciled with her husband. She died profoundly sad and lonely in 1867. Sickles for his part went on to lead a long political career in spite of losing his leg. He served as U.S. Minister to Spain from 1869 to 1874. In 1871 he married the daughter of a Spanish nobleman who eventually bore him three children.

  Sickles received the Congressional Medal of Honor for losing his leg at Gettysburg, and money was appropriated to erect a statue in his honor on the spot in the Peach Orchard where he was wounded. But the statue was never cast or placed.

  Rumor has it that Sickles stole the money.

  34

  DAVID C. BRODERICK

  The Only Senator Killed in a Duel (1820–1
859)

  “To sit in the Senate of the United States as a Senator for one day, I would consent to be roasted in a slow fire on the plaza.”

  — David C. Broderick

  Over the course of its two-hundred-plus years of history, the United States has been served by hundreds of senators. A few score of them have died in office. But only one serving U.S. Senator was ever killed in a duel: that bastard out of California, David C. Broderick.

  The son of an immigrant Irish stonecutter who came to America in order to work on the U.S. Capitol building, Broderick was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in New York City. While still a young man, he became the proprietor of a public house where customers discussed politics over beer and made political deals in the back room.

  Broderick headed west in 1849, and once he landed in California began a highly lucrative business casting gold and silver coins. He had a talent for making his coins just a bit light, so that a $10 gold piece would be full of about $8 worth of actual gold, and so on. Within a year he was a millionaire. He employed both his new-found wealth and the political acumen he had learned from his time running that pub in New York to get himself elected to the California State Senate as a Democrat. Within another year he was serving as that body's president.

  And he had already established himself as the uncrowned king of San Francisco.