The Wages of Fame Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  CHRONOLOGY

  A WORD TO READERS OF THE FUTURE

  BOOK ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  BOOK TWO

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  BOOK THREE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  BOOK FOUR

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  BOOK FIVE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  BOOK SIX

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  BOOK SEVEN

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  By Thomas Fleming from Tom Doherty Associates

  AFTERWORD

  Notes

  Copyright Page

  To Tom and Susan

  CHRONOLOGY

  1800—Thomas Jefferson elected president. “Second American Revolution” attacks elitism in national life.

  1803—Jefferson purchases Louisiana Territory from France, vastly expanding the national domain.

  1804—Aaron Burr kills Alexander Hamilton in duel.

  1804—Jefferson reelected president.

  1808—James Madison, Jefferson’s secretary of state, elected president.

  1812—Madison reelected. War of 1812 with England begins. Americans badly defeated in Canada.

  1814—British burn Washington, D.C.

  1815—General Andrew Jackson rescues America from humiliation by inflicting a shattering defeat on an invading British army at New Orleans.

  1816—James Monroe, another disciple of Jefferson’s, elected president.

  1818—General Jackson invades Florida in a punitive expedition against raiding Indians. He hangs two British traders who are supplying the Indians with weapons.

  1820—James Monroe reelected president.

  1824—John Quincy Adams elected president by House of Representatives. “Corrupt bargain” between Adams and Henry Clay excludes Andrew Jackson, who received the largest popular vote.

  1826—Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die. Symbolic farewell of the generation that founded the nation.

  1828—Andrew Jackson defeats President John Quincy Adams in a landslide. The Democratic Party is born.

  1832—Andrew Jackson reelected in another landslide.

  1832-33—South Carolina secedes from the Union. President Jackson’s threat to use force and lack of support from other Southern states bring a quick end to the crisis.

  1836—Texas defeats Mexico and declares its independence. It expects to be admitted to the United States but its status as a slave state causes problems.

  1836—Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s vice president, elected president, defeating William Henry Harrison, candidate of the new Whig Party.

  1840—William Henry Harrison defeats Van Buren for the presidency in the “log cabin” campaign—-the first to use slogans and imagery.

  1841—Harrison dies after only a month in office. John Tyler of Virginia becomes president. Essentially a Democrat, he vetoes most of the Whig program.

  1842—Tyler’s wife, Letitia, dies. In 1844 he marries Julia Gardiner and together they launch a campaign to admit Texas to the Union.

  1844—James Polk elected president.

  1845—Congress votes to admit Texas on President Tyler’s last day in office.

  1845—Andrew Jackson dies at his Tennessee home, the Hermitage.

  1846—Mexican War begins when Mexico attacks U.S. Army on the Rio Grande. General Zachary Taylor wins two quick victories at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. He captures Monterrey in September 1846 and becomes a presidential candidate.

  1847—Taylor wins another battle at Buena Vista in February. President Polk puts General Winfield Scott in charge of the war and he begins drive on Mexico City from Vera Cruz. After hard fighting he captures the capital in September.

  1848—Treaty of Peace with Mexico is approved. United States acquires New Mexico and California, adding five hundred thousand square miles to the national domain.

  1848—Whig candidate Zachary Taylor elected president. Violent battle in Congress over whether slavery should be permitted in the newly captured territories.

  1849—Ex-president Polk dies three months after leaving office.

  1850—President Taylor dies. Millard Fillmore becomes president. He signs Compromise of 1850, temporarily defusing confrontation between North and South.

  1852—Democrat Franklin Pierce elected president. Turmoil over slavery subsides but South remains restive and seeks expansion, either by acquiring Cuba or territory in Central America.

  1854—Kansas-Nebraska Act makes concessions to the South—offers “squatter sovereignity” in the territories—slavery will be banned or permitted by majority vote. Abolitionists and pro-slavers fight civil war in Kansas.

  1856—Republican Party organized on a platform of no slavery in the territories.

  1856—Democrat James Buchanan narrowly elected president. Turmoil over Southern desire for expansion continues. “Filibustering” expeditions attempt to seize Cuba.

  1860—61—Republican Abraham Lincoln elected president with only 39.8 percent of the popular vote. In ten Southern states he does not receive a single vote. Southern states secede. The Civil War begins.

  A WORD TO READERS OF THE FUTURE

  As I begin this book, my heart is filled with dread that I may be inflicting a wrong on my friend George Stapleton. But write it I must, not merely because it is a look behind the veils that men draw across the history of their time. It is also an attempt to do justice to all the actors in the story, not least of them myself.

  To remove even the taint of partisanship, I have reduced myself to one of the many characters. Who of us would deny that when we look back fifty years, the self we discover is a semi-stranger, perhaps better described in the third person?

  Although the narrative begins in 1827, when George Stapleton and I were in our early twenties, the story extends deep into the years that preceded those days of our youth. Thanks to the Stapletons and their profound sense of involvement in America’s meaning and destiny, we are in intimate touch with the thoughts and the feelings of men and women who knew Washington and Jefferson and Hamilton as friends—or enemies. Their political and personal passions vibrate through the decades. America has never been a dusty package of economics and abstract issues. From the start it involved fervid partisans challenging one another for power and fame, each intensely convinced that justice and history were on his side.

  I hope this vital truth has enabled me to avoid the habit of so many memoirists, to coat the days of youth in a glow of golden unreality. We sensed the tensions, the regrets, the sorrows, swirling through the lives of the older generation. But I must confess, like most Americans, we faced the future with a confidence that we would somehow avoid
the pitfalls and tragic paradoxes of age. America of the 1820s was charged with hope and heartbreaking innocence.

  Perhaps you will say we should have known better. Beyond the founders, the Stapletons’ reach extended to those dim days when white men and red men, Frenchmen and Englishmen, fought for possession of a primeval continent and the first blacks arrived in slave ships from Africa to confront America with a moral challenge that continues to torment her. But Americans, their eyes turned resolutely to the future, managed to avoid this somber reality for a long time. In our story you will witness the gradual realization that this baffling tragedy has at its heart a terrific conflict between good and evil.

  Evil becomes a presence in this story the way it often infiltrates people’s lives—silently, stealthily, while the eyes are averted, while the heart is groping for love or the self for recognition. Evil does not negate the human—it surrounds it little by little with a web of compromises and half-truths until the moment of terrible realization is reached, the moment when a life is ultimately entangled—or freed.

  As I wrote this narrative, I watched myself succumb to evil. I watched my friend George Stapleton confront it and struggle fiercely in its deadly strands. Above all I have pondered the angry humanity, the inexplicable vulnerability, the hidden anguish of that formidable woman who is at the heart of the story—my enemy, Caroline Kemble Stapleton. How she tormented me over the decades! Even when we were hundreds of miles apart, when we did not speak for years, I lived in her mind, even at times in her body, to the detriment of my own life. She was a kind of vortex, draining my emotions and thoughts into her imperious soul, the way a planet seizes a wandering asteroid in its voracious, invisible gravity.

  Was she admirable? Pitiable? In the wake of a war that has left six hundred thousand Americans dead, such personal questions seem absurd. Perhaps it is better to fling into history’s face the words she hurled into mine: I regret nothing. Even if those words are a lie. These days, the truth often seems no more than a haunted lie.

  Jeremy Biddle

  Washington, D.C., July 4, 1870.

  BOOK ONE

  ONE

  ABOVE THE HUDSON RIVER AND the ever multiplying rooftops of New York, the September sky was crystal blue, dotted by scudding clouds. A brisk west wind invoked apostrophes to Shelley—and to the vast continent that receded over the horizon on the other side of the broad river. On such a perfect day, Jeremy Biddle had no trouble persuading George Stapleton and John Sladen to join him for an amble to the steamboat dock beside the Bowling Green at the tip of Manhattan to meet his Ohio cousin Caroline Kemble.

  In their years at Columbia, the three had become more or less inseparable. Jeremy, sentimental about friendship, called them the frères trois. He took not a little credit for this harmony. In those days he was fond of considering himself a third—an expert at softening the collisions and clashes that our very different natures seem to make inevitable in this world. Between Sladen and Stapleton, a third was urgently needed. Slim and swarthy, with something of the aura of a fallen angel, John Sladen had a reserved, caustic personality, its edges sharpened by poverty and family disappointment. George Rensselaer Stapleton was his opposite, a big, easygoing paragon of amiability and optimism, thanks to his family’s wealth and his view of life as a romantic adventure.

  Jeremy, with his thick glasses and unruly mass of red hair and mouth full of uneven teeth, was anything but handsome. Interest in his Ohio cousin was minimal, on the unspoken assumption that there was likely to be a family resemblance. There was another reason why Stapleton had abandoned his books of poetry and Sladen had put aside his newspapers crammed with acrimonious political prose. Aboard the good ship Hercules arriving from Perth Amboy was the ex-president of the United States, James Monroe, who had vacated the executive mansion in Washington some two years ago.

  Columbia, not yet driven from its ancient buildings on Murray and Chapel Streets by the real estate developers, was only a brisk walk from their destination. A moderate crowd had assembled on and around the dock by the time the frères trois arrived. Hercules was a spanking new steamer, well over a hundred feet long, with powerful paddle wheels on both sides. She churned smartly up to the dock and reversed her engines with a blast of her whistle that caused many ladies and a few men to cover their ears.

  Down the gangplank soon stumped the ex-president. To the young eyes of the frères trois, he was a curious figure. The collegians wore the pantaloons, tall hats, and flowing coats of their era, which had profited from the liberating influences of the French Revolution. The president was wearing the constricting style of 1776—knee breeches, lung-binding waistcoat (vest), and tight coat that sloped away to two narrow tails in the back. On his gray head was a cocked hat such as George Washington wore. For a moment they could do nothing but goggle. It was like seeing a piece of history, alive and walking among them.

  George Stapleton’s eyes grew damp. He hoped to write a chant to the Revolution in Homeric hexameters. Seeing Monroe stirred his admiration of the heroes of that era, so different from their puny contemporary politicians. Beside him, John Sladen had a different reaction. “He looks like an even bigger fool than Aaron Burr says he is,” he muttered.

  . Down the gangplank behind Mr. Monroe strode a young woman in a simple, high-waisted, blue dress and carelessly draped blue cloak. Raven black hair fell in a cascade to her shoulders. The broad, open forehead, the brows firmly arched without a hint of heaviness, the chiseled nostrils, and perfect mouth cast in the softest feminine mold reminded the frères trois of some supreme work of art. With all its purity of outline, the face was not severe or coldly statuesque but superbly serene. To its perfect glory was added a pink coral tint that flushed faintly through the pale cheeks, while the lift of the long, trailing lashes revealed the magnificent eyes.

  “Who’s that adorable creature?” John Sladen murmured.

  Having no idea, Jeremy and George could only stare as the ex-president, once he had reached the bottom of the gangplank, turned and gallantly assisted the black-haired beauty to the dock. “Mr. Monroe,” she said in a warm, throaty voice, “you are too kind. May I introduce you to my cousin?”

  Whereupon, Caroline Kemble led the city’s most distinguished visitor of the year 1827 over to Jeremy and with a coolly triumphant smile said, “This is Jeremy Biddle. President Monroe and I met on the steamer. Who are these gentlemen, Jeremy dear?”

  Jeremy managed to stutter out the identities of Stapleton and Sladen. The ex-president shook their hands and said, “You have the most interesting cousin, Mr. Biddle. She told me stories of her grandmother’s adventures in New Jersey during the Revolution that deserve to be· put into a book. I have a particular fondness for that state. I was with Washington at Trenton in ’76. I saw how our little victory ignited patriotism in her people.”

  “You’re too modest, Mr. President,” George Stapleton said. “As I recall from my history books, you received a wound at Trenton, leading a charge on a Hessian gun.”

  “Who’d believe young fellows remember things that happened so long ago,” Monroe said, immensely pleased at George’s compliment.

  Hurrying to Monroe’s side were his daughter, Mrs. Maria Gouveneur, and her numerous family as well as the pompous mayor of New York, the Honorable Philip Hone, and a half dozen other distinguished welcomers. The ex-president beamed at Caroline Kemble for another moment. “She reminds me so much of my wife the day I married her. She’s the same age,” he said.

  This was no small tribute. Mrs. Monroe had been one of the great beauties of her era. The ex-president went off with his relatives and the welcoming committee while the frères trois gazed in astonishment at Caroline Rawdon Kemble. No one was more amazed than Jeremy Biddle. He had never seen his Ohio cousins. Like many other New Jerseyans, they had migrated west around the turn of the century.

  “How did you know me?” Jeremy asked.

  “Mother told me to look for the homeliest boy on the dock,” she said.

&nbs
p; George Stapleton and John Sladen chuckled. Jeremy was somewhat less amused, but he managed to produce a rueful smile. It was their first glimpse of Caroline’s Western directness.

  “How did you meet the president?” John Sladen asked.

  “He was standing alone on the upper deck, with everyone else too tongue-tied to speak to him. I introduced myself and we chatted agreeably until we docked.”

  “I’m glad to see Western women have mastered the manners of democracy,” John Sladen said.

  This was a loaded word—even a loaded sentence—in 1827. The Democrats were a controversial movement, full of rancor against the “ruling clique” as they called Monroe and his successor, President John Quincy Adams. Their hero was General Andrew Jackson, the Tennessean who had lost the 1824 presidential election although he won a plurality of the popular vote.

  “I predict women will master a great many things before our generation totters off to oblivion, Mr. Sladen,” Caroline said in her oddly authoritative voice.