Chapter Forty-Eight
QUINCY
Massachusetts
Farmer John looked quite well, I thought, as he gathered up the last of the beans and the onions. On the morrow, he’d take
the grandchildren apple picking in our orchard, as it was cidering season and I was of a mind to bake a pie.
In the two years since leaving the presidency, we’d thrown ourselves into the soft rural pleasures of farm and family.
Nabby was returned to respectability in New York, thanks to her husband’s position as port inspector. Tommy had quit his law
practice to help tend our farms. Charlie’s widow and her children were living with us, too. And having returned from Europe
with his English wife and children, John Quincy was now a Massachusetts state senator living in Boston, near enough to visit
every weekend.
We counted ourselves lucky that President Jefferson’s administration kept a leash on the radicals, and no one had yet lost
their heads to the guillotine.
Politics was none of our concern now.
Let our whole world be only our neighbors and our farm. Let us lose ourselves in the hayfields. Let us lose ourselves in the
garden. In the full bloom of the pear, the apple, the plum, and the peach. For envy nipped not their buds, calumny destroyed
not their fruits, nor did ingratitude tarnish their colors.
But into our Garden of Eden, news did sometimes slither . . .
“Have you heard?—”
“—President Jefferson’s scandal—”
“Fathered a child on an enslaved girl!”
The talk came up around the fire after supper, following a Sabbath meeting. Poor Reverend Wibird having passed away, the preaching was done by Reverend Whitney, who went on so long that the children were put into a near stupor and went up early to bed.
Naturally, John and I didn’t believe the accusations against Jefferson and were appalled to see them taken up in Federalist
newspapers with glee.
But Tommy laughed at the profane cartoons being printed of Jefferson as a lecherous rooster. And our eldest son, John Quincy—who
had taken on a mantle of gravitas—did believe the worst of the new president. “It is my opinion that the sin of slavery corrupts the soul of everyone it touches.
Jefferson is not immune.”
“Oh, my boy,” John replied, having carried his dish of apple pie from the table to the comfort of one of my French upholstered
chairs. “You can believe nothing that wretch James Callender says in the newspapers. I would not convict a dog of killing
a sheep if that man was the witness.”
I felt the same way, though I took at least a little satisfaction in Jefferson finally suffering the same abuse that he thought
we ought to suffer in silence. “I daresay President Jefferson wishes he did not pardon Callender for sedition now!”
Still, I couldn’t help but be appalled by the perverse specificity of the newspapers that John Quincy spread out before us.
The accusation was not merely that Jefferson was debauching women he purported to own. The newspapers named Sally Hemings.
The so-called African Venus of Monticello.
I remembered her well—that lovely mulatto girl who had come to our house in London, slept in our bed, and accompanied us to
puppet shows. “She was just a slip of a girl, scarcely older than his daughters . . .”
“Which is why I don’t believe it,” John said. “That Jefferson would seduce his own daughter’s pretty maidservant? No. Whatever
my quarrels with the man, it’s a disgrace that any president must endure such slanders.”
John Quincy gave a wry smile, nursing a glass of peach brandy.
“You have a generous soul, Father. I suppose it’s because nothing weighs upon your conscience.
Here you are, in happy retirement, with the consolation of knowing you discharged all the duties of a virtuous citizen and the genuine pleasure of knowing you left the country in a safe and honorable peace without the smallest sacrifice of national honor and dignity.
And you accomplished that against the advice of both your allies and your enemies. ”
“Prettily said, brother.” Thomas took a gulp of his drink. It was his fifth of the night, and I looked at him askance. “It
seems that over in Europe, Johnny traded his once fine head of hair for eloquence.”
“A deal with the devil,” John Quincy said ruefully, touching his balding pate and taking the ribbing in good stead. “Pray
tell, what did you trade away to keep your mop of curls, brother?”
“What little sense of refinement I had,” Tommy replied. “For it seems to me that if our father had been less virtuous, he’d
still be president.”
I thought Thomas was right.
But John Quincy grew serious. “Only the common and vulgar herd think of personal interest before public. Our father is a statesman
who sacrificed his own interest to the benefit of his country.”
To which my husband groused, “And you see how that’s rewarded!”
Fortunately, John Quincy knew how to keep his father from too much bitterness. “But Mama tells me that from the earliest period
of your political life, you’ve always expected such treatment in return for every sacrifice, and every toil, and done it anyway. So I hope you won’t think more harshly
of your country than she deserves.”
Looking up from my knitting, I said, “Well, your mama, these days, thinks very harshly of her ungrateful country indeed.”
John Quincy folded his hands in his lap. He’d always had a grave countenance, even as a boy. Now it was very grave. “I wonder
how much the country can be blamed when they were lied to. And when those lies were funded by the very man who stood to gain
the most power from the deception.”
I wasn’t willing to excuse the voters who turned my husband out of the presidency as if they were addled children. “Perhaps
the public should’ve known better than to put stock into the election lies of an adulterous schemer like Hamilton.”
“I’m not speaking of Hamilton,” said John Quincy.
“It pains me to deliver this news. But I ought to be the one to tell you.” We all leaned forward in curiosity as he explained, “There’s a reason Callender is printing these accusations about Jefferson.
And it isn’t because the newspaperman has changed sides from Democratic-Republican to Federalist. It’s because he’s avenging himself on the very man who encouraged him and likely paid him to print all those lies about you, Father. ”
My husband inched to the edge of his chair. “What do you mean?”
“It was Jefferson,” said our oldest son. “Behind all those newspaper attacks when we were on the verge of war with France . . .”
Tommy let out a long whistle at this revelation. “Your own vice president, egging on sedition!”
My husband shot up, shaking his head in vehement denial. “Is there proof?”
John Quincy shrugged. “Circumstantial. Jefferson gave the newspaperman a pardon and fifty dollars after he was released. But
he refused to give him a government appointment, and so now the wretch is retaliating.”
My husband paced, nearly toppling one of my hand-embroidered fire screens. “What does Jefferson say against these charges?”
“Nothing,” John Quincy replied. “Which is wise.”
“It’s beneath the notice of a president,” my husband agreed. “I wish that I’d noticed less. But I never wrote a line against
my political enemies nor contributed one farthing to a writer to do it for me.”
We all knew this was true. Yet my husband’s natural fair-mindedness came to play. “No, I cannot believe it. Jefferson’s charities
to this scoundrel are a disgrace, but his refusal to give Callender a political post is evidence of virtue rather than corruption.”
Reluctantly, I agreed. Though, later, as we readied for bed, I realized that against my will, something had stuck to the back
of my mind. John had remembered Sally Hemings as a pretty maidservant.
Yes, the young Sally had been pretty. And even my husband had noticed. Pretty, poised, personable Sally . . .
I shook away the thought. “Perhaps President Jefferson will learn a well-deserved lesson from this humiliation, but I cannot wish it upon his poor daughters.”
Patsy and Polly—who were both grown now—must each be mortified. My heart went out to them. To have to think, even for one moment, that their father was capable of such immorality.
They might just die with shame.
As I brushed my hair for bed I said, “I can only shudder to think of how our children would feel if they ever read such a
thing about their father.”
John whirled upon me. “Abigail, I swear by the Almighty, whatever is printed, my children will never have just cause for such
humiliation for even one moment.”
He stood before me, hands on his hips, his nightcap askew, and I could almost laugh at myself for my youthful fears. Whatever
my husband’s faults—and I could name plenty—he was an honest and upright man. He’d always been that. And I was grateful that in the evening of our lives our love remained, leaving me curious about what was yet to
come of it.