Джон Апдайк - Memories of the Ford Administration

On the morning of December 30, 1824, young James Buchanan outstayed all the other guests at a gathering in General Jackson’s apartments and was rewarded for his patience by an invitation to take a walk with the former backwoodsman, now the Senator from Tennessee. More than tall and lean, Jackson appeared emaciated, even skeletal; not since his impoverished boyhood had he been entirely well. His eyes were a glittering blue. Unruly locks of ashen-yellow hair framed his parched face. A greasy pigtail behind was tied with an eelskin. To Buchanan’s nostrils Jackson smelled faintly rancid, and smoky, like beef hung too long in the curing, or like the warmed inside of dogskin gloves. In the open air, this unpleasant impression dissipated: Washington City on this bracing winter morning breathed, beneath its bare sycamores and locust trees, an atmosphere cleansed of the long summer’s scarcely tolerable heat. The mudholes in the avenues wore a thin glaze of ice, and the ubiquitous sense of incompletion — of ill-financed starts at marmoreal grandeur thrusting aside the shacks wherein the negroes (then so styled) and the less fortunate class of whites found shelter, with occasional charred proofs of the savage British destruction in 1814 still permitted to stand — was softened by a picturesque mist come up from the swamps by the Potomac. Compared with Lancaster, it was a raw city, a grand design but as yet sketchily given embodiment.

The Hero of New Orleans did not waste much time on pleasantries. “You tarried this morning, Mr. Búchanan,” he said, accenting the first syllable of the name in the frontier fashion, “with a gleam in your eye, as of one with a message to impart.”

“No message, sir, but merely a question,” the thirty-three-year-old politician answered, taken aback but locating courage in the sound of his own voice, a faithful friend, clear and untiring if a little high-pitched, which had seen him through many a court case and stump speech, and which carried even in the abysmal acoustics of the House chamber. “However,” he went on, “before I trespass upon your forbearance in posing my question, let me petition in advance for a guarantee of your continuing friendship, which I value most highly among all my claims to public service, saving only my love of the Constitution and the great Christian people which it serves.”

“That is nicely said, young man,” said Jackson, little concealing his impatience but hoarsely letting escape the words, “You have your guarantee.” Nowhere did Jackson fever run higher than in Pennsylvania, so this popinjay from the Keystone State must be allowed his rigamarole.

Still, Buchanan did not dare charge ahead. “My question would be asked on behalf not of my own curiosity but that of many others, all friendly to your interests, and concerns a subject upon which, typically, and to your great honor, you have expressed a determination to remain silent. I recognize that, deeming my question improper, you may refuse to give it an answer; believe me that my only motive in asking it is friendship for yourself, and anxiety that this Republic have as its chief executive the man best qualified to lead it — that is, General Jackson!”

In the midday foot traffic along Pennsylvania Avenue, with its rows of freshly planted saplings and its distant termini of an incomplete Capitol and a freshly repaired White House, a small negro urchin darted out and pointed at the two men’s dusty boots, offering a fresh application of goose grease, to be polished on a much-trodden wooden box he carried as a tool of his humble trade. Jackson, with a visionary’s sure sense of proportion, gave the little petitioner a quick glance relegating him to his place, a low and inconsequential one, whereas Buchanan felt himself inopportunely tugged by pity for the child, and by an irrational sense of obligation to him. The child’s need to earn a penny seemed a claim upon him, as the baby’s cry is a claim upon the mother and gets the milk to flowing in her breast. But he could hardly allow a shoe-shine to interrupt a verbal negotiation upon which the Presidency might hinge!

The General was urging, “Speak on, Mr. Búchanan. From your respectability as a gentleman and a Congressman, I do not expect you would lend yourself to any communication you suppose to be improper. Your motives being pure, let me think what I will of the communication.”

Buchanan had not used the word “communication,” with its implied insult of regarding the speaker as a messenger for higher-placed others, but thought it best not to contradict. Nor did he hear his avowal of friendship reciprocated. Nevertheless, he proceeded, with the words he had anticipatorily framed to the point of memorization: “We live, General, in times of intrigue and rumor; would that we lived in a better, but we do not. A report exists in circulation that, if — as I fervently hope and trust — you are elected President by the House, you will continue Mr. Adams in his present office as Secretary of State. You will at once perceive how injurious to your election such a report might be. It rises, I think you will also perceive, from the friends of Mr. Adams, as a reason to induce the friends of Mr. Clay to accede to their proposition — which has been distinctly forwarded, of that I have been assured — to the effect that Mr. Adams’s election will bring with it the appointment of Mr. Clay as Secretary of State.”

At the convenient pausing-place of the curb, where both men hesitated as the elegant equipage of the French Legation spun past in a coruscation of plumes, hooves, and ebony spokes trimmed in gold paint, Buchanan gathered himself to pose the obvious crux: could General Jackson, then, hold out to the friends of Henry Clay hope of the same office, in return for the votes of the Ohio and Kentucky delegations? With the safety of the opposite curb secured, he pitched his voice to a more meaningful, though still casual register, in saying, “I think you will not be surprised to hear that the friends of Mr. Clay do not desire to separate West from West.” In case this was too subtle for the whip-thin apostle of backwoods America, whose wild pure eyes were surveying, above his interrogator’s head, the transparent treetops and slate rooftops of Washington City as if gauging the limits of a cage in which he was held, the deferential young Congressman asked, “Do I mistake in supposing your view of the matter to be not unlike mine, which is that in this Republic there are many able and ambitious men, among whom Mr. Clay might be included, who would not disgrace the first Cabinet post?”

“Our views of the matter have some correspondence, Mr. Búchanan. Mr. Clay has considerable ability and is second to none in the ambition department. Was this the question you proposed to ask? If so, it seems unworthy of its long preamble.”

Thus challenged and stung, Buchanan lunged, so to speak, at the exposed chest of the matter. “Senator, my question is merely this: have you ever intimated the intention ascribed to you, that is, to continue Mr. Adams as Secretary of State? If it could be contradicted, under your authority, by you expressly or by one of your confidential friends, that you have already selected your chief competitor for the highest office within your gift, then I have reason to believe that the Presidential contest can be settled within an hour.” The obstinate fool , Buchanan thought, the Presidency was his for a nod .

The General, feeling his turn had come to speak, pulled himself erect, so that Buchanan had to twitch his head to keep his revered companion’s face in focus. Their stroll halted beneath a scabby-trunked sycamore, near a bench of weathered slats where a negro in threadbare blue field clothes had fallen, with the aid of rum, into an oblivious doze, cold as was this, the penultimate day of the year. “I have not the least objection, Mr. Búchanan, to answering your question. I think well of Mr. Adams. He stood by me when the Indian-lovers would have had my hide for cleaning out the damnable Seminoles. But I have never intimated that I would, or would not, appoint him my Secretary of State.” A fury of righteousness now stiffened Jackson’s slender frame, as if there were an audience beyond his lone auditor, a ghostly vast audience stretching to the frontiers of the Republic. His talk became rhetorical, Biblical. “There are secrets I keep to myself,” he said, the ever-latent fury of the man finding sudden vent. “I will conceal them from the very hairs of my head! If I believed that my right hand knew what the left would do on the subject of appointments, I would cut it off and cast it into the fire! In politics as in all else, Mr. Búchanan, my guide is principle alone. If I am elected President, it shall be without intrigue and solicitation. I shall enter office perfectly free and untrammelled, at liberty to fill the offices of government with the men I believe to be the ablest and best in the country!”