CHAPTER 33

MARCH 1803

Love is, in a great degree, an arbitrary passion, and will reign, like some other stalking mischiefs, by its own authority, without designing to reason.

mary wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1794

Duty's a slave that keeps the keys, But love, the Master goes in and out Of his goodly chambers with a song and shout Just as he please—just as he please.

dinah maria mulock craik (date unknown)

It was March before Thomas Jefferson arrived again on his mountain. His slave family rushed to greet him. Thomas, Beverly, and Harriet. He seemed to hesitate in greeting them, then he saw her. She approached timidly.

"Thomas," she said softly.

"Thine own," he replied, adding his harsh short laugh.

"Thomas. Thomas. We ... you cannot. The risk ..." But the risk has already been taken. And pride had sealed it. They had won.

"The thermometer at sunrise today, my darling, was thirty-four degrees. I have marked it in my book. I have taken it every day for the past four months and I didn't drop the thermometer once."

His voice was husky and scarred as it was that day in Paris. She began to cry. She knew he would listen to no one, accept no advice, no opinions, nor have this passion discussed, revoked, diluted, appended, crossed out, objected to, or any part of it destroyed. She would not be excised. She would not be censored. She would not be discarded. She would remain at Monticello.

There was irony and love in his voice:

"Hold, little one," he said. "The peach trees begin to blossom and I see the well has plenty of water in it after having been dry for eighteen months."

She pressed her head into his chest, and his great hands came up and cupped her skull. Her tears wet his vest and shirt. Here was her victory, written in his haggard and loving face. They were like the lone survivors of an earthquake. It had shaken the mountain, but the mountain was still there.

Thomas Jefferson sat making delicate sketches of the plan for his new pleasure ground: a grove of the largest trees, shaded with poplar, oak, maple, linden, and his beloved ash trees. A green labyrinth, which had at its center a small temple: a safe place.

His troubles were far from over.

This trip was to try to avoid the possibility of a duel with his old friend John Walker over his wife. Callender had not stopped his pen. With the aid of the Northern papers he had enlarged its scope to include the Langhorne letter to George Washington involving his nephew Peter Carr. Then there was the everlasting charge of atheism, of Jacobinism, and now the threat of publishing his letters to John Walker over something that had happened thirty-three years ago! It was insane.

"Why have you not married some woman of your own complexion?" The Virginia Gazette.

He ground his teeth. Why? "Tell me who die," he thought, "who marry, who hang themselves because they cannot marry...." He prayed that Sally had not seen most of what had been written about them. He came home feeling defeated. Everything reminded him of his two families and the problems they faced. The presence of Maria and Martha in Washington last winter had dampened all but the most infamous gossipmongers. They had not deserted him. He had had his explanation with them and now he must arrange a meeting with his injured friend and avoid a duel at all cost. He had already talked his son-in-law Thomas Mann out of a duel with his cousin John Randolph for the sake of Martha; now Madison must do the same for him. He could not leave either his white family or his slave family unprotected by his death.

Thomas Jefferson looked up at his slave wife as she entered his rooms. She appeared terribly small to him and fragile.

She wouldn't know the worst!

The following day James Madison arrived at Monticello. He was bringing good news. He had interceded in Thomas Jefferson's favor, and there would be no duel.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am, Mr. Madison, with the outcome of this unfortunate affair ... and how I thank you."

"Mr. President, I don't think Mr. John Walker was any more anxious for a duel than you."

"My dear Mr. Madison, I've never even held a pistol in my hand. The very idea of one man murdering another in the name of injury is insanity. We already have enough ways of men killing men without inventing an etiquette for it."

"The law of Virginia 'honor' is a rather crude one, sir."

"Mostly the law of vanity, dear sir. I am a simple man. I accept with relief your intervention in this senseless affair and am quite satisfied that Mr. Walker has accepted my apology."

James Madison noted a slight hesitation. Thomas Jefferson was anything except a "modest" man and "insanity" or not, he was a Virginian brought up in its codes and mores. The Walker affair had distressed him much more than he was willing to admit. And his vanity had indeed been touched. There was yet one more thing.

"As for the other calumny ..." began James Madison, "I believe Mr. Monroe would be happy to take her."

Madison couldn't bring himself to say Sally Hemings.

"Take her?"

Thomas Jefferson swayed slightly and the blood rushed from his face. "Temporarily, of course," added James Madison, alarmed at the sudden pallor of the man standing before him. "Take her where?"

"Why doesn't she ... I believe ... she has a sister Thenia at Mr. Monroe's. She could ... retire there with her children until the time when—"

James Madison raised his eyes from the silver buttons on Thomas Jefferson's waistcoat and looked directly into his eyes. How could Thomas Jefferson not know in what political danger he was? He, James Madison, simply had the duty to warn him that Virginia would not tolerate, even from Thomas Jefferson, certain unpardonable things. He had to understand.

James Madison involuntarily stepped back. The cold blue eyes had now turned a deep aquamarine.

"The Hemingses are mine," said Jefferson. "All of them. I will deal with them personally."

"I didn't mean to presume ..." began Madison. He concentrated on controlling the tremor in his voice. He brought his handkerchief out of his waistcoat and mopped his brow. He had gone too far. Too far for his own good. Relieved, he realized that Thomas Jefferson had already dismissed the subject. His face had taken on the serene expression Madison knew so well: his public face. The flash of his inner turmoil had been suppressed. Thomas Jefferson seemed even taller to Madison as, towering over his small person, he took him by the shoulder and flashed one of his rare smiles. The sudden intimacy made Madison blush.

"We have come this far, Mr. Madison. But we still have a long road to travel... full of the most dangerous ruts for the carriage of State." Thomas Jefferson's smile disappeared. "You know, Mr. Madison, how I feel about your rightful place in the political scheme of things….I'm an old man. Compromise comes hard to me, but you have a brilliant talent for negotiation. A nation isn't shaped in a featherbed...."

Madison started. It was a strange choice of words, but Thomas Jefferson didn't seem to notice.

"Shall we get back to the important issues of the day? Put this demeaning and ridiculous affair behind us. You have a long way to travel, my dear Madison. After all, we can't disappoint Mrs. Madison, can we? She's dead set on redecorating the President's House. And God knows, it needs it!"

Both men laughed.

The night before he left the safety of Monticello for Washington City, Thomas Jefferson sat alone in his study and brooded on what he had written in his account book in August 1800. He knew now that there would be no duel, thanks to the sturdy and tenacious Madison. Callender could be silenced—the others were mere copiers. He could end the outcry in the Republican press; if only his friends could end the clamor in the Federalist press.

He must bring his families through the crisis of Callender but he must navigate the United States through the bloody aftermath of Napoleon and the specter of his troops arriving at the Mississippi; he must control an undeclared war on Tripoli; cope with the Indian boundaries which were constantly violated as the nation pushed them farther and farther West; he must reduce the public debt, distribute the surplus in the Treasury—at least, at last, the slave trade was outlawed; and he must bring to a successful end the secret negotiations with France for the purchase of Louisiana and mount his expedition to the Pacific. He had already chosen his secretary, Meriwether Lewis, as head of the expedition, and he would take back to Washington City his new secretary, Lewis Harvie, who was loyal enough to have threatened to kill James Callender.

Callender. His Judas. Sally Hemings was only a pretext. Before he had left for Washington, he would put down his for all to see. He had also made a census of his family.

He lit his candle in the darkening study, opened his account book and wrote:

Shortly after Thomas Jefferson had returned to Washington I looked at his account book and found the pages open to the census he had written in it of his family.

I stared at it for a long time, and then softly closed it. My master had counted Thomas, Beverly, and Harriet as free and white.

Our love had been denounced and we had been betrayed in Virginia. Even now, the hate, the epithets made me shiver. Did he think I hadn't heard them all? Slave, whore, slut, concubine, Black Sal, Dusky Sally, paramour, blackamoor, wench, a slave paramour with fifteen or thirty gallants of all colors, including Thomas Paine, black wench and her mulatto litter, mahogany-colored charmer, Monticellian Sally, Sooty Sal, black Aspasia ... nothing was too horrible for me: my heart cut out, my tongue pulled out by its roots, my body burned, my throat slit from ear to ear, my soul sent to everlasting Hell. Perhaps they would at least triumph in sending my soul to Hell, but for the rest it was too late. My master and I were both anchored to a past and a passion nothing could disavow. I had prayed for proof and he had given it to me.

He had paid the worst of all possible prices: public humiliation. To have been scourged at the public whipping post for slaves would have been easier for him than that price: the loss of his public image, the facade he cherished almost as much as he cherished the facade of Monticello.

He had paid. There was something he could do: remain silent. And this silence would be payment. Payment for my servitude, which he would not change. Payment for our children, whom he did not recognize. He had paid with a kind of helpless, bewildered pride, for I was Monticello.