Legacy: A Novel Read online

  This irritated him slightly: ‘Forget the legal niceties. Attending to them is my job. That’s what I get paid for.’ This was apparently his standard advice to clients, but this time we both laughed, because he wasn’t getting paid.

  ‘How do you plan to use this background stuff?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, but what I want you to do, and you can help him in this, Nancy, is review what you’ve just told me. Get it lead-pipe solid in your mind, because this afternoon before the Senate it just might become important, if they elect to go down those garden paths.’

  When he left us at seven, we dug out some family heirlooms, old papers and pamphlets that my grandfather Richard had collected. He was proud of our family, and spent his wasted life trying to prove that the Starrs were more distinguished than the facts justified, but he did come up with a surprising batch of material.

  I had barely begun refreshing myself on old Jared Starr, when the phone rang: ‘Norman? Zack. Great news! I’ve persuaded the Senate staff to postpone your appearance till Monday morning. Do your homework.’ He did not even wait for me to respond, but since the urgency in his voice made it clear that he was totally involved in my case, I felt the least I could do was follow his instructions. So before heading for the White House, I considered the case of the rambunctious founder of our clan.

  Jared Starr was a gritty old fellow, seven generations back, and he would probably have made some dramatic contribution to the writing of our Constitution had he not been such an ardent patriot. He first attracted public attention in rural Virginia in 1774 when he boldly supported Patrick Henry in the agitation for freedom. Two years later, in Philadelphia, he affixed his challenging signature to the Declaration of Independence, and without returning to his farm, volunteered to serve in General Washington’s ragtag army, in which he rose to the rank of major.

  He fought in many hopeless battles, usually as the oldest man in his detachment, and, as he told his children in later years, ‘I became a master of retreat.’ In the closing months of the war he met up with someone who would lead him to what would be the outstanding experience of his life: he was seconded to a regiment in which he found himself next to a dashing West Indian immigrant, Alexander Hamilton, whom he described eventually as ‘the bravest man I’ve ever known and the brightest.’

  At the culminating Battle of Yorktown in 1781, Starr followed Hamilton on a daring charge into British lines which helped turn the tide of this engagement. ‘Had I looked behind me,’ said Hamilton at the dinner celebrating the end of the Revolution, ‘and not seen Jared Starr puffing along like a wearied dog at the end of a chase, I doubt I would have had the courage to enter the enemy lines.’ Then, bending a pewter spoon, Hamilton fashioned a rude medal, which he stuck into a tear in Jared’s blouse. ‘Honors of battle,’ he cried with a rare enthusiasm.

  After the British surrender, Starr retired to his Virginia farm, where he watched with growing despair as the thirteen states of his new nation fumbled and stumbled their way toward chaos. But in these doom-filled days he sought guidance and reassurance from Hamilton through the series of letters the two patriots exchanged: ‘Dear Colonel Hamilton, I see chaos threatening from all sides. Our Continental Congress can assess taxes on each of the thirteen states but cannot force them to pay. It can call for an army to protect us, but not conscript any soldiers from the states to serve. What can we do to save our nation?’

  Hamilton’s responses never varied: ‘We must either put backbone into our present form of government or construct a better,’ and just as Starr in his remote corner of Virginia had supported Patrick Henry in the call for freedom, he now echoed Alexander Hamilton’s comparable cry for reform. In the spring of 1786 neither Hamilton nor Starr was yet brave enough to openly call for abandonment of the inept Articles of Confederation, under which the new states were trying to govern themselves, but each knew that the other was at least contemplating a radical new form of government.

  In the late summer, Hamilton and a few others like him invited the thirteen states to send delegates to an informal gathering in Annapolis, Maryland, for a discussion of steps that might have to be taken if the precious American experiment in self-government was to be saved. But despite the growing anarchy, only five states bothered to respond—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia—and even they sent only twelve participants in all.

  The Annapolis adventure was a failure, but Hamilton of New York and Starr of Virginia were resolute fighters who badgered the others with prophecies of doom if something was not done, so that in the end the twelve plotters mustered the courage to send a rallying cry to all the states: ‘Let us convene a grand assembly in Philadelphia in the spring of next year.’

  Hamilton, who could rarely abide vagueness, made a motion: ‘Make it the fourteenth of May 1787,’ and in a loud voice Starr cried: ‘Second the motion!’ and it was done. As the two friends parted, Hamilton said: ‘Starr, we’ve work to do between now and May,’ and the Virginian nodded as he turned away.

  He had taken only two steps when he felt his right arm grabbed forcefully from behind. It was Hamilton and, leaning close to Starr’s ear, he said: ‘Jared, we either lay the groundwork for a new nation … or watch the old one sputter out like a spent fire.’

  The solemnity of this challenge awed Starr, and for a moment he surveyed the backs of the delegates as they said their farewells. ‘Colonel, I think most of these men came here honor-pledged to mend the present Articles and under no circumstances to bring in a radical substitution.’

  Hamilton stood rigid: ‘Do you think the miserable system we have today can be fixed? No! Neither do I.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we in decency expose our thinking now?’

  ‘No,’ Hamilton said, ‘because today all would oppose us. But eight months from now, when we meet to solve the matter, all will see that our way is the only practical one.’ They parted with a handshake.

  On his lonely ride home from Annapolis to Virginia, his thoughts and his horse his only companions, my fighting ancestor hammered out two convictions from which no political storms could ever divert him: We’ve got to have a strong new government. But the rights of Virginia must be protected in whatever changes we make.

  Had the times been placid, Jared would have gone home, agitated quietly among his neighbors for a new form of government, and reported to Philadelphia in May of 1787, ready to continue the bold work he had helped launch with the Declaration of Independence. He would surely have supported Hamilton in the latter’s drive for a powerful central government, even though it would be marked by many of the more successful aristocratic and monarchical characteristics of British rule.

  But the times were not placid. The ramshackle government by which former colonies tried to organize their Atlantic seaboard was so ridiculously inefficient that it seemed about to collapse from any one of many weaknesses: the inability to impose or collect taxes; the lack of a strong court system; a pathetic weakness in the face of likely invasions from Europe; and the absence of an effective way to settle internal arguments among the states. Since everyone who loved America recognized these weaknesses, her enemies must have seen them too.

  Then, as if to illustrate in one dramatic gesture the low estate into which American government had fallen, in rural Massachusetts a rabble-rousing countryman named Daniel Shays said he could tolerate no longer the grievous hurts he and his kind suffered at the hands of the well-to-do. Seeking redress, he launched a minor revolution against the tyranny of the local courts, the banks, and most other manifestations of government.

  He was forty years old that winter, an inspired agrarian so persuasive in his fiery harangues that he collected about him a substantial following of Massachusetts farmers. They demanded only simple things: a larger supply of paper money with which to pay their heavy debts; an end to courts’ throwing honest men into bankruptcy and jail; and general freedom from what Shays called ‘the oppressive government of the rich.’

  During the cold
winter of 1786–87, Shays and his wild men so terrorized western Massachusetts that his Rebellion, as it was now formally called, threatened to expand into neighboring states. A shudder passed along the Atlantic seaboard as anxious men asked: ‘Is this a foretaste of destruction to come?’ And those who were being designated by their various states to attend the Philadelphia meeting spent the cold months wondering: What can we do to stop this rot? George Washington wrote to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson in Paris wrote to George Mason in Virginia, and Hamilton corresponded with scores of patriots, all seeking a practical answer to the question which overrode all others: What can be done to save the nation?

  No one pondered the question more than Jared Starr, for he had helped launch this experiment in self-government and did not propose to sit idly by as men unwilling to make difficult decisions allowed it to break apart and crumble. So, when disruption threatened as a result of Shays’ Rebellion, he knew what he must do.

  Riding north from his farm, he stopped in Philadelphia to consult with the sturdy patriots of that bustling commercial city, went on to New York to assure Hamilton that Virginia would be sending first-class men to the impending convention, and then on to Boston, where he offered his support to the government that was struggling to put down Shays’ Rebellion.

  ‘How old are you?’ the colonel in charge of the local militia asked, and Starr said through clenched teeth: ‘Sixty-one … service under Washington and Hamilton.’

  ‘We don’t need grandfathers,’ the colonel said, and he would not accept Jared into the formal militia.

  So Starr moved west under his own command, associated himself with an improvised force under General Benjamin Lincoln, and during a skirmish at the Springfield depot took two musket balls through his left hip.

  Disgusted by his carelessness and infuriated by the brazen manner in which the revolutionaries escaped to the north, Major Starr badgered the nurses who tried to attend him and refused the doctors permission to amputate his festering left leg. When it became obvious that he was about to die, he penned a letter of instruction to his son Simon back on their Virginia farm:

  The leg don’t get better. Advise Colonel Hamilton. And make plans to fill my spot at the next meeting in Philadelphia on 14 May next. Remember the two obligations we undertook. Fashion a strong new form of government but protect Virginia’s interests. You can safely follow Colonel Hamilton in such matters.

  Still fulminating against nurses, doctors and revolutionaries, he died at the end of March 1787, less than seven weeks before fifty-five other patriots much like himself convened to see what steps might be taken to rescue the United States from disintegration.

  Simon

  Starr

  1759–1807

  I’ve always had difficulty explaining to my wife and my friends the curious role played by Simon Starr in the writing of the Constitution. Because he was a most excellent man and one of the founders who attended every session of the Convention, Nancy likes to imagine him standing before the members and orating with such persuasion that he modified the course of debate.

  Alas, it wasn’t that way, so on Friday morning before I left for my duties in the basement of the White House, I scanned my grandfather Richard’s copy of the informal notes Simon left regarding his role in the Convention, and asked her to refresh her memory while I headed for the lion’s den.

  By the time I reached the White House, word had circulated that I was to testify before the Senate Committee on Monday, so while Nancy spent her spare time with the Convention battles of 1787, I was immersed in the political battles of 1987.

  Of course, all my military co-workers dropped by inconspicuously to wish me well, and at least three used exactly the same words: ‘Hang in there, champ,’ as if I were a boxer getting hell pasted out of me. I felt that way, a reaction not diminished when Zack phoned me rather breathlessly: ‘Norman, can you meet me at your place? Immediately?’

  ‘It’s only eleven.’

  ‘I said immediately,’ and when I reached home he was fretting impatiently on the stoop because Nancy wasn’t in. Friday was her day at the military hospital, where she read to men who had been blinded in one action or another around the world. Once inside, he asked, before sitting down: ‘Soldier, do you have a decent uniform? Good, bring it out. Now, what fruit salad can we slap on it? I want everything.’

  He said that since I was going to appear before the Senate as a man who might be accused of secret misbehavior, he wanted me to stand forth in what he called ‘blazing patriotic glory,’ which meant he wished to check my ribbons, all sixteen.

  ‘Are these first three of personal significance?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘That amazing job you did on the swamp installation in Vietnam?’

  ‘That’s the second one.’

  ‘The first? You do something I missed?’

  ‘The swamp was routine. Barely deserves a medal. This one was for real. Saving a corporal’s life under … well, unusual circumstances.’

  ‘Care to specify?’

  ‘It was earned. President Nixon said so when he pinned it on. Jabbed right into my skin. Quite clumsy.’

  Zack sat at the table for several minutes staring at my medals and arranging the four tiers in different patterns. Abruptly he asked: ‘Could I see your Almanac again?’ and when I handed it to him, he said almost brusquely: ‘Find me those pages about your ancestors.’

  It required only a few minutes for him to reassure himself about the Starr names, after which he spent several minutes idly scanning familiar phrases in the Declaration and the Constitution. With a bold gesture that indicated he had made up his mind, he slammed the book shut, strode to the door, and left. But from the street he called back: ‘Your uniform. Get it dry-cleaned.’

  On 9 May 1787, when Simon Starr left his family plantation in northern Virginia and started his five-day horseback ride to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he carried with him the letter of instruction his father had sent from his deathbed in western Massachusetts: ‘… make plans to fill my spot … Fashion a strong new form of government but protect Virginia’s interests.’ More than most delegates, Simon appreciated how difficult it would be to fulfill these two commands.

  In the first place, his elders in Virginia had made it clear that he and the other delegates were authorized merely ‘to correct and improve our present Articles of Confederation, and under no circumstances to meddle with any new form of government.’ For him to achieve what his father had wanted, a strong central government, would require ignoring these instructions.

  In the second place, he realized that a new union could not be established unless the three big states—Massachusetts in the North, with its manufacturing; Pennsylvania in the middle, with its commerce; Virginia in the South, with its tobacco and cotton plantations—found some way to protect their majority interests while ensuring the small states like Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Delaware a respectable voice in whatever form of government emerged. Up to now, it had been one state-one voice, but with the big states constantly accumulating more power and responsibility, such an imbalance could not continue. Rhode Island did not carry the weight of Virginia in population, trade or wealth, and to claim that she did was folly.

  He was perplexed as to how this impasse would be resolved, but he was sure of one thing: he would never allow Virginia’s rights to be trampled.

  Simon was twenty-eight years old that spring, a graduate of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, red-headed, quick to anger, interested in all aspects of American life. He had served as foot soldier in the latter years of the Revolution, rising to the rank of captain, but he had known none of the commanding figures of that period. In recent years, however, he had corresponded with two of the most brilliant men in Virginia or the nation, George Mason and George Wythe, the dazzling professor of law at William and Mary College. Simon was literate, informed, patriotic, and determined to conduct himself with distinction at the Convention.

>   As he left that May he assured his wife and young son: ‘I’ll be back for the fall harvest,’ and as he rode down the long lane to the highway, he called out the same message to the slaves who lined the pathway to bid him farewell.

  In his compact canvas saddle bags he carried four books he had come to treasure at college: Thucydides’ account of the Greek wars, John Locke’s treatise on government, a book by Adam Smith on the political economy of nations, a saucy novel by Henry Fielding. In his head he carried about as good an education as was then available in either the United States or Great Britain, but in both Princeton and Virginia he had been careful to mask any pretension to superiority. He was an earnest young man of solid ability who would always show deference to his elders. As one of the two youngest members of the Convention he would feel himself at a disadvantage, but he intended to associate himself with older men of talent and make his contribution through supporting them.

  He rode into Philadelphia, a burgeoning city of some forty thousand, in the late afternoon of Sunday, 13 May 1787, and without difficulty found Market Street, the main east-west thoroughfare, which he pursued toward the Delaware River until he came to Fourth Street. Here, in accordance with instructions, he turned south till he saw ahead, swaying in the evening breeze, the reassuring signboard of the Indian Queen Tavern. He tied his horse, took down his saddle bags, and strode inside to announce himself to the innkeeper: ‘Simon Starr of Virginia, for the room assigned to my father, Jared Starr.’

  At the mention of this name, several men who had been idly talking showed great interest and moved forward to meet the newcomer. In the next exciting moments he met members of the Virginia delegation, including four men of distinction: Edmund Randolph, James Madison, and the two older scholars with whom he’d been in correspondence, George Mason and George Wythe. Looking carefully at each as he was introduced, he said: ‘And General Washington’s a Virginian, too. Add him to you gentlemen, and Virginia’s to be strongly represented,’ and Madison said quietly: ‘We planned it that way.’