Chapter Thirty-Seven
QUINCY
Massachusetts
John was home in the summer, digging up stones to build a wall between our garden and the new road. And while I sorted a basket
of apples, choosing some for baking and some for the cider press, I watched him work himself into a lather, muttering with
each stone he hefted.
“Careful, John,” I warned, because he’d recently got himself so agitated that he tripped over a wheelbarrow and hurt his shin.
“We don’t need a catastrophe.”
“Another catastrophe, you mean,” he snapped.
Just as swiftly as Nabby’s husband had met with great fortune, so did he meet with complete financial ruin. His ships seized.
His properties in foreclosure. His furnishings, carriages, artwork, and expensive wine were all to be auctioned off.
There’d be no more talk of building another Mount Vernon for our daughter. It was a miracle he did not land in debtor’s prison.
Nabby pleaded with us not to worry that they’d be without a roof over their heads, as her husband retained some small property
in East Chester. But worry we did . . .
It was of no comfort that our son-in-law wasn’t the only one in dire straits. He’d been caught up in a spiraling financial
crisis that threatened to collapse the whole economy. Despite ratifying the Jay Treaty, international business was contracting.
Shops, trades, and businesses of all kinds shuttered in our port cities.
Many men were ruined. But those men weren’t the vice president’s son-in-law on the eve of the most fateful election our new nation had ever had.
It had been a foregone conclusion that George Washington would be re-elected to a third term, and that my husband would be
asked to continue as vice president.
So, truly, no thunderclap could’ve resounded with more force than Washington’s announcement that he intended to retire from
office.
I thought all America ought to be in mourning to lose the leadership of a man with such profound wisdom and modesty. Washington
had resigned covered with glory and crowned with laurels as the father of our nation, which would place him in the archives
of time with the greatest heroes and benefactors to mankind.
But oh, what a mess he left behind.
And with my husband as the heir apparent.
John was now past sixty years of age. The responsibility of the presidency, at this stage in life, would surely kill him.
He ought to have been greatly agitated on that score. Indeed, he ought to have removed his name from consideration. But I
couldn’t bring myself to advise that he do it.
In the weeks that followed, as the electioneering began in earnest, my husband said very little, and his agitation gave way
to a preternatural calm. Instead of muttering over stones, John cheerfully informed me, “The next president could just as
easily be Jefferson, Pinckney, or Jay.”
I snorted, knowing it would not be Jay.
I was suspicious of my husband’s sudden mildness. Daily, newspapers like the Aurora condemned John as an infernal monarchist who’d become king and tyrant if given the reins of power. And newspapers like the
Gazette of the United States condemned Jefferson as an atheist. As for Pinckney, they condemned him as being Hamilton’s puppet.
“You don’t worry on that score?” I asked John one afternoon while he was digging in the garden.
“I worry about very little here on the peace of my farm. In fact, I should like to call this place Peacefield.”
Peacefield? Really! Since when had he become a philosopher? “John, how long our home, or our country, shall be peaceful relies in great
measure upon the next president.”
John took up a clump of dirt in his hands. “Oh, I daresay whoever shall be chosen will not do us any harm. Not even if it
is me.”
I narrowed my eyes, not trusting this coolness of temper. At night, when he should’ve been writing letters to his colleagues
to help swing the election, I found him scribbling inane things in his diary, such as, It looks like rain.
Whilst I scoured the gazettes for news from every corner about the fate of the nation, my husband mowed bushes. He whistled to himself
while plowing the meadow. He hummed while washing casks and making compost with seaweed. And in the evenings, he cheerfully
soaked his feet while reading Cicero’s discourse on civic virtue.
John’s uncharacteristic equanimity was maddening! And one night, I pulled that volume of Cicero right out of his hands and
said so.
Laughing, John explained, “There’s no benefit to fretting about whether I’ll be elected to the presidency. The vote shall
assuredly be close—a miserable, meager triumph to either party. I’m not ambitious for it.”
Or so he was trying to convince himself.
“Oh, you want it,” I accused.
My husband toweled his feet dry. “As you must want it for me, or you’d have pleaded with me to bow out of the contest.”
“It’s only that I fear for someone else to win! But I also fear for you. We both know the toll the presidency took upon Washington. You’re not much younger.”
Taking light umbrage, John pulled me into his lap, as if to prove he was a much younger man. “Nevertheless, I think a man
had better wear than rust. Abigail, if called to the presidency, I’d brave it because I have only a few years of life left
and they cannot be better bestowed than upon the country in defense of which we’ve jeopardized all from the start.”