Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase (62 page)

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Authors: David Nevin

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

BOOK: Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase
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She stared at him. Her face felt hot as it did when she bent over a cooking fireplace. Had he read her mind? Her hand came up—later she realized she’d been close to hitting him—and he added smoothly, “Given that your husband finds me so detestable.”
The music ended and his words fell loudly into the sudden silence just as Jimmy, partnered with Hannah Gallatin, stopped beside them. Of course Jimmy had heard and as Hannah gave her a conspiratorial wink he said with a smile, “I don’t detest you, Alex. I detest your ideas.” All good humored, but she saw by his expression that he wasn’t joking.
“Because I want the economy solid and workable?”
Jimmy hesitated; she knew this was tender ground, because the new nation had been flat broke and a country that can’t pay its bills, international or domestic, has little standing in the family of nations. But Hamilton as Treasury Secretary had put American finances on a sound footing. Jimmy said Alex was a financial genius, which was the more amazing since his only financial experience had been keeping books in a country store in Jamaica, he the bastard son of a minor Scottish nobleman. Hannah patted her arm and went off somewhere.
“No,” Jimmy said, “because you want to feed the rich at everyone else’s expense.”
“Oh, Jimmy,” Alex said, carefully smiling to show this was all in fun, “next you’ll be prating about the bank!”
“Yes, I will, now that you raise it. Bank of the United States. Functions as a treasury of the nation, doesn’t it?”
“Well—”
“It’s where government stores its money, deposits taxes collected, disburses as necessary?”
“Exactly—and—”
“And three-quarters of its assets are in private hands and hence the owners of those monies are in position to manipulate public funds to their own advantage.”
Alex’s smile was gone. “You will never understand, James. Of course our bank favors the wealthy. Their capital is power and we need them with us, not agin us.”
“So you shape law and government and power to their interests.”
“Of course—and the bank is a fine example,” Alex said, now looking quite self-satisfied.
Then, quite surprising herself, seeing a startled look flash over Jimmy’s face, she said, “But won’t that build an elite class, the wealthy over everyone else? They hold land, hold commerce, hold politics—they’ll have it all, won’t they?”
She found herself holding her breath in sheer fright and let it go with a rush. Without a thought she had inserted herself into a complex argument that she was suddenly sure a wiser woman would have avoided. Alex hesitated as if arguing with a woman unsettled him and then Jimmy said in an easy voice, “She does sum it up well, doesn’t she?” She felt a flash of gratitude as he went on, “Control by the right people over the rest of us, that’s what you’re saying—and Alex, isn’t the next step logically to make control hereditary and doesn’t that suggest nobles and princes and such and doesn’t that—”
“Damn it all, Jimmy, you can’t believe I want a king when we fought a war to free ourselves of a king!”
“I don’t think you want a king. But I think your attitude takes us in that direction—”
“Faugh!”
Jimmy colored. “Faugh, my foot! I could see the reality as soon as the debt question came up.”
She knew that was a true sore point with Jimmy. At war’s end the nation had countless small debts—soldier’s mustering
out bonus, the paper given a farmer for a couple of hogs and a sack of oats, payment to gunsmiths and powder dumps and lead mines, all given on a promise of someday, if we win. Well, now someday had arrived and Alex’s plan was to float long-term bonds that would pay these debts all at once and clear the books. Debt management, he called it, and yes, it did make fiscal sense.
But who was holding these slips of paper given across the war? Not the soldier mustered out, the farmer for his hogs and oats—no, they long since had been forced by need to sell that scrap of paper to a speculator at a dime on the dollar. Jimmy still got red in the face when he talked of this—he said that piece of paper was a sacred debt of the United States given in honor and taken in the belief that the nation would survive and prosper and honor debts.
But when Alex prepared to pay these debts—and then, quite suddenly as one awakens from a dream, she realized that the music had not resumed and a small crowd had gathered around them. They had interrupted the whole entertainment! She saw Mrs. Washington frowning, the general striding toward the musicians—
And Jimmy cried, voice rising, “I saw it when you rewarded the speculators and froze out the little men, the veterans, the farmers, the small debt holders who’d long since lost their paper. You paid the speculators and devil take those whose suffering had won the war!”
The musicians were lifting their instruments and the general was coming toward them when she heard Alex snap, “Talking of the plight of veterans ill-behooves a man who sat out the war.”
The first violinist sounded an A and the general had turned and was coming toward the disruption as she saw her husband go pale at this sally. It was his point of vulnerability. Even today his health was delicate and he was often ill. While Alex had been a dashing officer on General Washington’s staff Jimmy hadn’t been physically fit for the field. He knew that made sense but it still bothered him. As he stood ashen and silent she was moved to a mighty rage.
“Sir,” she cried, “surely a man boasting of his war exploits is at his least attractive!”
At which Alex’s cheeks flamed deep red and he turned away. She took her husband’s arm and turned him into the dance and in a moment the Washingtons passed. The general looked stiff and cool but Aunt Martha glanced at her and with the faintest smile inclined her head in clear-spoken approval.
The next time she saw Alex he smiled and bowed but didnt approach her, and it was just as well. Of course he hadn’t been boasting of his exploits, but he had been positioning himself against Jimmy and that had brought up in her a willingness to fight that she found startling—and exhilarating too.
Jimmy didn’t say much afterward. He made it clear he was pleased with her and she realized on her own that he didn’t need his wife to fight his battles. Yet things seemed different and after a period of reflection it came to her that she had somehow advanced on that day from the Quaker miss feeling her way to a woman who had legitimated her place in a new world.
But certainly the exchange stood for the schism that was dividing the country. It was philosophical, she supposed, though she didn’t spend much time in philosophical musing. Anyway, the basic argument was pretty simple. Are you for entrenched power regulating life or for free people finding their own way on their strengths and instincts? That was simple enough so that left to themselves Americans would have come to satisfactory answers—but then the French Revolution upset all the balances in America.
So it was that on a sunny day in Philadelphia a week or so later she heard someone calling her name as she strolled near the Statehouse. It was a woman’s voice, high and urgent with a little note of hysteria. She turned to see Charity Jester almost trotting toward her, wearing an expensive gown of crimson velvet, her pink parasol stabbing the brick walk like a cane. They had been girls together, sharing a reader under some dreaded schoolmaster they both preferred to forget.
Charity seemed to be having trouble getting her breath. “Oh, do you remember that nice Mr. Fournier, Jacques Fournier, I think, he was with the French embassy or some such? Remember how he would smile and correct your French without making you feel a silly goose? He was the count of—oh, I don’t know what he was count of, but something, he was somebody, don’t you see? And Mr. Jester just learned today that they cut off his head with that terrible slicing machine in Paris. Imagine, murdering a wonderful person in the name of their democracy!”
She stopped, staring, head thrown back, the parasol gripped in both hands. “This democracy business, it’s terrifying! I know you believe in it, Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson its promoters, I hear the talk, but it’ll fool you, it’ll turn on you, wait and see! Common folk go mad, give them a chance, that’s what France proves. Your followers’ll turn on you too, on all of us—you’ll see, the ravening mob in the streets, the good people hanging from trees on Chestnut Street. Oh, how can your husband endorse this madness?”
She bristled, ready to leap to Jimmy’s defense, but Charity patted her hand and went hurrying down the street as if she feared democracy would consume her right now. But democracy needn’t lead to chaos, though Jimmy always admitted that its success did depend on the capacity of free people to control themselves. Frenchmen, breaking out of centuries of feudalism into anarchic revolution had lost that control. But there was a vast difference between France and America; here revolution had been for liberty, there it was for equality. As the search for equality darkened the nobility was executed in ever greater numbers, Dr. Guillotine’s grisly machine snicking and snacking and Guillotine square slick with blood. Then the revolution turned on its own and the Terror began when no one proved sufficiently poor and equal. Finally the guillotine was too slow for the killing ordered and crowds were gathered and taken down by cannon fire or burned alive. The dead numbered tens of thousands. And the mob chanted slogans that once had defined American patriotism and democracy.
No wonder Charity Jester in her fine gown was terrified—so was everyone else of position and wealth. These pressures led to a seismic shift in American affairs that was itself revolutionary. Until now there had been no parties; leading men simply stepped forward to take the reins. But the growing schism led automatically to two parties evolving into the two-party system. The old line wealthy elite were Federalists, personified by Alexander Hamilton. For the moment they had the government and were turning toward coercion and control of the little man, driven by the fear that what they saw in France must follow here. Opposing them were Democrats, first called Republicans, then Democratic Republicans, soon shortened to the Democratic Party. Thomas Jefferson led, Jimmy provided the intellectual power and her old friend Aaron Burr of New York was a rising star. They stood for the little man and the tighter and meaner things grew under frightened Federalists, the stronger the Democrats became.
And she, herself stronger and more confident each year, marveled at how often great events and national movements and crucial decisions turned on the same human emotions that children in a nursery will exhibit—rage, fear, greed, hunger …
Thomas Jefferson was Jimmy’s best friend and the three of them were often together. She liked Tom no matter what Pa had said. He was clever and witty and very gentle, an innately decent man. His mind ranged all over the place with bewildering speed and she often stopped trying to keep up. Yet in the end she thought Jimmy had greater weight which was another reason she rather resented the deference he showed Tom, a decade his senior. Settled in marriage now, she handled herself well and people listened to her with real interest.
Things were changing rapidly. General Washington retired to Mount Vernon. John Adams succeeded him. Tom had stepped down as secretary of state and was at his estate at Monticello. Jimmy left the Congress and they returned to the Madison estate, Montpelier, in sight of the Blue Ridge.
Living in a mansion in which Jimmy’s family made her welcome, she nevertheless had a full taste of life in a house not her own.
The national atmosphere darkened steadily. Rank fear seemed to guide Federalists as if they saw hordes of common men advancing on them. Laws became abusive. Every time she and Jimmy went to Philadelphia, still the capital though the new capital on the Potomac would soon be ready, things became more volatile and dangerous. And then Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.
On one of their Philadelphia trips she went on to New York with Hannah Gallatin to visit Hannah’s family. New York was booming, soon to overtake Philadelphia, she was sure. Aaron Burr gave them dinner and a tour, bursting with pride. Then, afternoon shadows lengthening, she and Hannah strolled down Broadway.
They were near the Battery when they heard hoofs clattering. A wagon fitted with benches and bearing a half-dozen men in dark coats stopped across the street before a print shop. Carrying oaken clubs the men jumped out to kick open the shop door.
The two women stood frozen, gazing across the street. They heard shouts and a crash within the shop and then a scream. An upstairs window popped open and a woman leaned out.
“Jeremy!” she yelled. “Come quick! They’re after Paw, they’ll smash the press—”
The press? A sign hung over the door,
The Peck’s Slip Tattler.
A newspaper! The men were constables after an editor who’d spoken out of turn.
A dark-haired young man in breeches and buckled shoes and a white shirt with bunched sleeves burst from a nextdoor tavern, dashed into the shop and was knocked senseless by a constable’s club. Then a skinny, gray-haired man in his fifties was led out with hands bound behind him. Crying and cursing at once, he stepped over his son’s inert body. Two stalwarts hurled him face down into the bottom of the wagon. When he sat up the side of his head was bloody.
The woman in the window poured invective on the constables, their ancestry and parentage, their sexual proclivities, their dietary habits—it was thrilling no matter how rough, for in the most direct way at her command this woman was making her stand. But without even looking up two of the constables took sledge hammers from the wagon, strode into the shop and from the sound were beating something to pieces.

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