Chapter 2: The General's Blood

Scene 1

The candle on the washstand had burned three-quarters down before Jackson's eyes opened fully. Outside, the January dark still pressed against the curtains; within, the fire had fallen to coals, and the air lay thick with camphor and the sweet-rot smell of the poultice bound against his chest.

He lay still. The bullet sat where it always sat, a thumb's width from his heart, a fact he had long since stopped arguing with. The cough came next — a slow gathering below the sternum, tightening, and then the chest convulsing. He turned onto his side and gripped the bedframe with both hands and let it take him. When it passed, he did not look at the handkerchief.

Dr. Holt stood at the washstand, replenishing the basin from a pitcher. Steam rose faintly in the cold air. He was a young man, with the careful movements of someone who had learned to work around a patient's temper through patient observation rather than instruction.

'You ought to have called me sooner,' Holt said. He did not turn around.

'I did not call you at all. Donelson called you.'

'Your nephew was right to do so.'

Jackson said nothing. He lay back against the pillows and listened to the fire settle — a low, hollow concussion, like a beam giving way in an empty house — and watched the ceiling.

The dispatches were on the chair beside the bed. He had asked for them before dawn, when the first grey light began to show at the curtain's edge, and the boy had brought them without question. They sat in a neat stack, the topmost folded and sealed with the Committee of Finance's stamp.

Holt crossed to the bed with the basin and a cloth wrung nearly dry. He pressed it to Jackson's forehead with the flat of his hand — the warmth unexpected, Jackson having braced for cold — and held it there.

'The bleeding has not stopped entirely,' Holt said. 'I mean to bleed the arm this morning. It may relieve the pressure on the lung.'

'You will not.'

'General—'

'I have said it.'

Holt removed the cloth and folded it with the precision of a man keeping himself in order. 'Sir,' he said, 'I have attended you these four months, and I tell you plainly: the lead is working further inward. The hemorrhaging will recur. If you do not rest — if you continue to receive delegations, to sit in that study until midnight, to read dispatches before the sun is up — I cannot answer for what follows.'

Jackson reached for the dispatches.

Holt's hand came down on his chest. Not hard — the man was not rough — but firm, pressing him back into the pillows with the authority of someone who has made a decision and intends to hold it.

'I must insist,' Holt said. 'I will send for Dr. Watkins and Dr. Sewell. A consultation of the three of us, properly conducted, and their findings recorded—'

Jackson's right hand found Holt's wrist.

He did not squeeze. He simply closed his fingers around it and lifted it from his chest, deliberate as a man clearing a table for work that cannot wait, and set the hand aside. Then he reached for the dispatches.

'You are dismissed,' he said.

Holt did not move immediately. He stood at the bedside with his removed hand held at a slight angle, as though uncertain what to do with a limb that had been so quietly returned to him.

'Sir. If I summon the consultation, the record of your condition becomes—'

'I know what it becomes.' Jackson broke the seal on the topmost dispatch. 'And you will not summon it. You will go.'

The physician gathered his bag. His footsteps crossed the floor, paused at the door.

'I will return this afternoon,' Holt said. 'And if you have not rested, I will summon the consultation without your leave. I am prepared to do so, General. The Constitution does not extend the executive power to the sickroom.'

Jackson looked up from the dispatch. Across the length of the room — the physician at the door with his bag in hand, a flush of resolution in his young face; the President in his bed with the unsealed paper flat across his thighs — the two men regarded each other.

'Then I will have you replaced,' Jackson said.

'You will,' Holt agreed. 'And your next physician will say the same things I have said, because the lead is where it is regardless of who holds the basin.' He opened the door. 'This afternoon, sir.'

The door settled in its frame. Jackson was alone.

He read the dispatch through once. Then he sat up straighter against the pillows, the effort costing him a long careful breath, and read it again.

Pursuant to resolution of the Committee of Finance, the petition of the President, Directors and Company of the Bank of the United States, praying for the renewal of their charter, has been formally received and referred to said Committee for consideration, this third day of January, 1832.

The cough struck without preamble — a violent uprising from somewhere below the ribs that doubled him forward over the pages. He gripped the bedframe with his left hand and held on until his shoulders stopped heaving. Ten seconds. Perhaps fifteen. He straightened and looked at the dispatch.

There was blood on it. A dark smear across the date, across the third of January, across the word renewal.

He pressed the dispatch flat against his thigh with both hands, the paper warm now from his body, and held it there.

If the consultation were summoned — if Holt put Watkins and Sewell in that room and they set their findings to paper — the record would exist. The newspapers would find it. Clay would find it. Every senator already calculating the odds of Jackson's survival through a second term would have his answer in ink, signed by three physicians, and the recharter would pass before the cherry trees bloomed. The Bank was in Congress. Biddle had moved. And every man in Washington who had a dollar in the Monster's keeping would this morning be reading the same petition and calculating whether Andrew Jackson would dare.

He swung his legs out of bed.

The cold of the floorboards came through his stockings at once, and he sat on the edge of the mattress with the dispatch still in his hand, letting the cold settle into him. Then he stood.

'Donelson,' he said, to no one in the room. Then louder, toward the door: 'Send for Donelson.'

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Scene 2

The corridor outside his bedchamber smelled of old plaster and the morning's woodsmoke, and Jackson moved through it with one hand trailing the wall — the floorboards were uneven and the light still grey — his breath coming short in the cold air. He did not permit himself to count the steps to the study.

Donelson was already there, standing beside the writing desk with his coat still on, a leather portfolio tucked under his arm. The servant had only just got the fire started; the room was cold enough that both men's breath showed, and the kindling was taking poorly, spitting and catching in turns. Donelson's face, as Jackson entered, closed into careful neutrality.

'Sit,' Jackson said, and crossed to the window.

The January sky over the grounds was grey and iron-hard, low and unmoving. Below, a groundsman was crossing the lawn with a barrow, the iron wheel turning in frozen ruts, and the sound of it came up clearly through the glass — a laboured, rhythmic protest against the unyielding earth.

'Tell me what you have.'

Donelson opened the portfolio. 'The petition has been formally read into the record of the Committee of Finance. Senator Dallas — '

'Dallas is wavering?'

A pause. The fire caught at last, and warmth began its slow work on the room's cold air.

'Senator Dallas dined with Mr. Biddle at the Philadelphia mansion on the fourth of January, sir. The day after the petition was filed.' Donelson looked at his papers rather than at his uncle. 'He has not yet declared himself, but those who attended the dinner — and there were others present, men whose names I can provide — report that the conversation ran to the Bank's role in Pennsylvania commerce and the value of a settled financial establishment to a state of that size and character.'

'He was being flattered.'

'He was being instructed, sir. There is a distinction.' Donelson turned a page. 'He is not the only one. Senator Grundy has accepted the hospitality of the Bank's agents in Nashville, which I confess I did not expect. Representative Cambreleng of New York has received — '

'How many.'

The fire popped. Donelson did not look up.

'Among senators whom we had counted as reliable, sir — I mean reliable in the sense of men who have previously spoken against recharter or who ran upon the administration's principles — I count seven who have accepted loans, retainers, or notable hospitality from the Bank or its branches within the last twelve months. Among representatives, I cannot give you a complete accounting, but the number is larger. Perhaps considerably larger.'

'Considerably.'

'Enough to make the override a possibility, sir.'

Jackson's fingers found the sill and began a slow rhythm against the painted wood — not rapid, not impatient, but deliberate, as a man works through a sum he already suspects the answer to. Seven. Seven men he had counted upon, seven men whose notes the Bank had quietly retired or whose tables the Bank had quietly furnished, and each one now sitting in his chamber calculating the distance between his conscience and his comfort.

The groundsman below had stopped his barrow and was crouching over the wheel's axle, examining it in the frozen grass.

Behind Jackson, a servant entered with kindling, clattering the grate, and Jackson waited — jaw set — for the man to finish and withdraw. The sounds filled the room: the clank of iron against iron, the soft knock of split wood being laid, the scrape of the grate being replaced. Then the servant's footsteps, retreating, and the door settling in its frame.

'Dallas,' Jackson said.

'Yes, sir.'

'His father was a friend to this administration.'

Donelson made no answer.

'I appointed him.' Jackson turned from the window, his voice shed of the flatness of a man conserving breath and sharpened into something else — something that had been waiting behind the flatness all morning. 'The Bank buys what it cannot persuade. That is the whole of its philosophy, and we have permitted it to operate upon our own men without — '

He stopped. Coughed once, controlled it.

'Write me a list,' he said.

Donelson looked up.

'Every congressman who has received a loan from the Bank, every man who has taken their hospitality, every man who has dined at Biddle's table or whose note has been quietly retired by one of his branches. I want names, amounts where you can determine them, dates. I want it written and in my hands before the Kitchen Cabinet meets this evening.'

'Sir, some of this intelligence is — it is not fully confirmed. I would not wish to put men's names to paper on the basis of — '

'Put them to paper.'

'If the list were to become public before we have verified — '

'Andrew.' Jackson said his nephew's name once, quietly, and Donelson closed his mouth. 'I am not going to read it from the floor of the Senate. I am going to know my ground before I walk upon it. There is a difference between intelligence and accusation, and I am asking you for the former. Can you compile it?'

'I can.'

'By this evening.'

'Yes, sir.' Donelson hesitated. He turned another page in the portfolio, and the deliberateness of it — the way his thumb pressed the corner flat before he spoke — announced that what followed had been held back for the proper moment. 'There is one matter further, sir. A letter arrived this morning from Senator Clay's office. Not to you directly — to the Committee of Ways and Means, with copies distributed broadly. He has called for public hearings on the recharter petition. Open testimony. The Bank's officers, the Treasury, and—' he looked up — 'representatives of the executive, should the President wish to make his views known through proper constitutional channels.'

The room was very still.

'He has set a date,' Donelson said. 'The fourteenth of February.'

Jackson moved to the desk. He did not brace himself against it — he stood over it, upright, and the posture cost him something visible in the set of his jaw. Five weeks. Clay had drawn the line in the open, in public, where every newspaper in the country could watch the administration either step forward and be measured or step back and be counted. If the administration did not appear — if it sent no witnesses, filed no remonstrance, offered no constitutional argument to the Committee — the recharter would proceed with the appearance of having been examined and found sound, and every wavering senator would have his reason to vote aye and tell his constituents he had acted in good conscience.

'How many of them know they are being bought?' Jackson said. It was not quite a question.

Donelson took a moment. 'I think most of them, sir, have found a reason to believe they are being persuaded.'

Jackson picked up Van Buren's letter from the desk, broke the seal, read the first two lines, and set it face-down without reading further. He knew what it would say. Van Buren had been saying it since October, in that careful, courteous hand that wrapped its meaning in so many qualifications a man could spend an hour reading and still not be certain whether he had been advised or merely entertained.

'This evening,' he said. 'The list. Every name.'

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Scene 3

The fire had been built up properly now, and the room smelled of pine resin and the sweetness of tobacco newly lit — Blair's pipe, which he had drawn on once and set cold in his hand. The candles on the writing desk threw yellow light across the faces of the men assembled: Donelson nearest the door; Blair beside the mantelpiece with the ink-stained fingers; Kendall in the chair nearest Jackson's desk, his legs crossed, his pale face composed in the expression of a man whose conclusions are already drawn and who is waiting, with thin patience, for the occasion to present them.

The blood-marked dispatch lay on the desk.

No one had remarked upon it.

Jackson stood at the window for a moment before taking his chair — not looking out, the curtains were drawn against the dark — his right hand pressed flat against his chest in the old way, until the pressure of the room's waiting recalled him to himself. He sat. He looked at Kendall.

'Speak your piece,' he said.

Kendall uncrossed his legs. He proceeded into argument the way a surveyor proceeds into rough country: methodical, eyes on the terrain before the foot committed.

'Mr. President.' He did not wait for acknowledgment. 'Pennsylvania is not secure. New York is not secure. The recharter question, made the central issue of the campaign before the summer, becomes Mr. Clay's question — he has constructed it as such. If you move now — publicly, irrevocably — you hand him the instrument he requires. Every merchant in Philadelphia who fears a contraction of credit, every manufacturer in New York who has borrowed on Bank paper, will be told that you mean to destroy the institution that holds their notes. They will believe it because it will be true.' He paused. 'The argument for delay is not timidity, sir. It is a matter of numbers.'

Blair shifted against the mantelpiece. He was watching Jackson, not Kendall.

'Pennsylvania went for you by eleven thousand votes in '28,' Kendall continued. 'If Biddle works the commercial districts as he worked them last autumn — dinners, loans extended, notes not called — that margin narrows to something a clever man might contest. New York is Van Buren's business, and the Vice President has counselled patience. I would not disregard his counsel. Not in an election year.'

He stopped.

'Mr. Kendall.' Jackson's voice was quiet. 'You have counselled patience before. I have heard the counsel. I am not asking for it again.'

'Sir, I am not offering counsel — I am offering a reckoning. Eleven thousand votes. If you wish to know what the Bank's notes are worth in Pennsylvania, I can tell you: they are worth that margin, and Biddle knows the figure as well as I do.'

'Then he has already spent them.' Jackson leaned forward. 'Clay has called hearings. The fourteenth of February. He has invited the executive to make its views known through proper constitutional channels.' He let the phrase sit a moment. 'You understand what that means.'

Kendall's hands stilled in his lap. 'It means he has chosen the ground.'

'It means that if we do not appear — if this administration does not stand and speak — the recharter passes the Committee with the appearance of having been examined and found sound, and every wavering man in both chambers has his reason to vote aye and tell his constituents he acted in good conscience.' Jackson set both hands flat on the desk. 'Clay has given me five weeks to either fight in the open or be seen to have retreated. You counsel retreat.'

'I counsel delay, sir. There is a distinction.'

'Mr. Kendall.' The two words fell flat and final. 'I have heard the distinction. I am telling you there is none.'

Kendall opened his mouth.

'I will tell you something,' Jackson said, 'that I have not told you before.'

He was seized, mid-breath, by a cough he could not suppress. He turned from the room, gripped the mantelpiece where Blair stepped aside to give him room, and his shoulders heaved — once, twice, a third time — before he mastered himself and turned back. His face had gone the colour of old linen. He continued as though nothing had occurred.

Kendall had not moved. But the careful composure of the arithmetician had altered — briefly, involuntarily — and he glanced at the dispatch on the desk, then at Jackson, and whatever calculation he had been conducting quietly revised itself.

'Eighteen and nineteen,' Jackson said. 'You know the year.'

'I know it,' Kendall said. His voice had lost its edge.

'Then do not make me explain the Bank to you as though you do not.' Jackson moved from the mantelpiece and stood before the desk — before it, not behind it, so that the three men faced him without the furniture's mediation. 'The Bank contracted its credit. Called in its western paper. Every farmer who had borrowed to plant, every settler who had borrowed to build, every man who had carried his family into new country on the faith of a note — the Bank called it in. Not for want of soundness in the borrowers. For want of soundness in the Bank's own speculation in the East, which it had conducted with the public's money and the public's faith, and which had gone to ruin. And the ruin was visited upon those who had done nothing to cause it.'

He did not pace. The fire warmed his back. The men before him sat as men sit before a judge who has not yet pronounced.

'I had a ward,' he said. 'A young man whose prospects I had helped to arrange. He had borrowed — modest sums, honest purpose — on the security of land worth every cent of what it secured. The Bank's agents came in the autumn of that year. They did not ask for partial payment. They did not ask for time. They asked for the whole, immediately, in specie, which no man west of the mountains possessed in quantity sufficient. The land was taken.'

He stopped.

The tobacco smoke had thickened near the ceiling. Somewhere below, a door opened and shut.

'Rachel wept,' he said. 'She wept over sums I could not pay and debts I had not contracted and the ruin of men who had trusted us to know the country they were entering. I have not forgotten what paper money is. I have not forgotten who holds it and for whose benefit it is issued and what becomes of a man who believes the notes in his hand represent something real when the men in Philadelphia decide they do not.'

The silence held.

'You speak to me of Pennsylvania,' Jackson said. 'I speak to you of what the Bank is. Not a financial institution. A declaration — that there shall be one class of men who hold the power of credit and another class who are subject to it, and that this arrangement is the natural order of the republic, and that I am to sign my name to its perpetuation because it is an election year.' He looked at Kendall. 'I will not. Now tell me whether you stand with me or whether you do not, and speak plainly, because I am tired of watching men find reasons to believe they are being persuaded when they are being bought.'

Kendall's jaw tightened. A muscle moved beneath his eye.

'That is not a fair characterisation of my position, sir.'

'Perhaps not. I am asking for your position, not my characterisation of it.'

The fire crackled. Blair had gone very still at the mantelpiece.

Kendall looked at the dispatch on the desk. He looked at Jackson. He looked, briefly, at the window, as though measuring the distance to somewhere else. Then he looked back.

'I stand, Mr. President. I will begin the work in the papers this week. The Globe will carry the argument.'

'You will do more than carry it.' Jackson's voice did not warm. 'You will make the country understand what the Monster is. What it has done and what it intends. Every western farmer who lost his land in '19 is your reader. Write to him. Not to the merchants of Philadelphia. To him.'

Blair said, from the mantelpiece: 'I stand.' He had not been asked.

Donelson looked at his hands, then at his uncle. 'I stand, sir.'

Jackson straightened. 'Mr. Donelson. In the morning you will carry a message to the Attorney General. Tell him I require his analysis of the constitutional question — the recharter, the McCulloch ruling, the whole of it. In writing. Before the fourteenth.'

Donelson wrote it in his memorandum book.

'Mr. Kendall. Clay's hearings will proceed whether we attend or no. I intend to attend — not in person, but through counsel, through witnesses, through every means this office commands. You will prepare a brief for the Committee. Names, figures, the contraction of '19, the Bank's expenditures upon newspapers and members of Congress since the petition was filed. All of it. I want it in Clay's hands before he opens the first session, so that every man in that room understands that this administration has done its accounting.' He paused. 'Can you have it ready in four weeks?'

Kendall looked at him steadily. 'It can be done.'

'See that it is.'

Jackson took up the dispatch from the desk. He held it a moment — the dark smear dried across the word renewal, the paper still faintly warm from that morning's handling — then folded it and placed it in the inside pocket of his coat.

The fire had burned to a steady red glow. The pine-resin smell had given way to something older — the oak beneath, slow and dense. Blair knocked the cold ash from his pipe against the grate.

The men moved toward the door. Donelson paused, his hand on the frame.

'Sir. The Attorney General will ask what constitutional ground we mean to occupy. He will want to know before he writes.'

'Tell him,' Jackson said, 'that the President does not recognise the McCulloch ruling as the final word on the matter. Tell him the President requires an argument, not a recitation.' He did not look up. 'Tell him to find one.'

Donelson went out. Blair followed. Kendall paused at the threshold, turned back once as though to speak, and then did not. The door closed.

Jackson stood alone in the room. The candles had burned low. Outside, the cold lay over the capital without relief, and somewhere to the northeast, beyond the frozen roads and the sleeping taverns and the dark windows of the boarding houses where senators kept their winter quarters, Philadelphia waited — the Chestnut Street office, the late lamp burning at Biddle's desk, the correspondence moving in and out with the quiet efficiency of an institution that had been preparing for this moment since before Jackson had known he would be called to meet it.

The brief Kendall would prepare, the witnesses Jackson would summon, the constitutional argument that had not yet been written — none of it existed. Biddle's did.

The hearing was in five weeks. The arsenal, at present, was empty.

And the man who would have to build the weapon Jackson required had not yet been summoned, had not yet been told what was being asked of him, and did not yet know that the asking would cost him everything he had spent a career assembling.