Legacy: A Novel Page 5

  Hamilton told me: ‘It was Morris who wrote that sterling preamble. He borrowed the phrase We the People from an earlier version, but on his own he added the important words of the United States. And he alone was responsible for that musket fire of eight short, simple verbs denoting action and determination: form, establish, insure, provide, promote, secure, ordain, establish. Right at the start he wanted the world to know that we meant business.’

  Some whispered in the days that followed that Morris had perverted his assignment to his own purposes, slipping back into the final version points he had lost in debate, but none of the other four ever charged him with that. What he did do, all agreed, was tighten any loose statement always to make the powers of the federal government stronger and clearer.

  When we ordinary delegates finally received a printed version of what the committee had accomplished and saw with admiration that the twenty-three rambling articles had been compressed into seven of remarkable sharpness, we assumed that this was the work of Hamilton and Madison, but when I quietly congratulated the latter, he corrected me: ‘No, it was Gouverneur. He grappled with chaos and brought it into logical order and felicitous style.’

  Now that our new government seems a success it has become popular, with those who do not know, to hail Madison as ‘The Father of our Constitution.’ Those like me who followed closely what actually happened are apt to think it was James Wilson. But regardless of who the father was, the midwife who supervised the birth was Gouverneur Morris, the one-legged dandy. Perhaps every nation, now and then, has need of someone who knows how to use words with precision and emotion.

  On Monday, 17 September 1787, forty-one tired but happy delegates met for the last time in the hall that housed their debate. Armed guards still kept away inquisitive strangers, for the pledge of secrecy taken so long ago had been preserved right up to these final moments, and there was an air of excitement as men told one another: ‘I think we’ll finish today.’

  When the session began General Washington astonished everyone by making his first and only speech of the Convention. On all previous days he had sat in silent grandeur as the storms of argument swirled about him, but now he rose to support a motion that membership in the lower house be made more widely democratic, one representative to every thirty thousand population instead of every forty thousand. Wrote Madison later: ‘No opposition was made to the proposition, and it was agreed to unanimously.’ Washington had a way of enforcing unanimity.

  But now came a most painful moment, for as the delegates prepared to cast the momentous vote which would determine the future of their nation, it became apparent that three of the finest, ablest and most intelligent members of the Convention would refuse to sign. In an impassioned cry from the heart, Alexander Hamilton pleaded with the three not to abstain: ‘No man’s ideas are more remote from the plan than mine are known to be. But is it possible to deliberate between anarchy and convulsion on the one side and the chance of good to be expected from the plan on the other?’ He begged the delegates to join with him and sign unanimously.

  His plea was futile. Edmund Randolph of Virginia, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts and, to the amazement of all, George Mason of Virginia refused to sign, and not even an ardent plea from Dr. Franklin, read by James Wilson, caused them to change their minds.

  Forty-one men were in the chamber that morning, three refused to sign, but thirty-nine did. How was that possible? John Dickinson of Delaware had had to leave Philadelphia early, but was so desirous of launching a new government that his fellow delegate from Delaware, George Read, was allowed to execute his proxy.

  That night James Madison, still scratching away on his personal journal, penned one of the loveliest paragraphs in American history:

  Whilst the last members were signing, Doctor Franklin, looking toward the President’s chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art, a rising, from a setting, sun. I have, said he, often and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now at length I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising, and not a setting, sun.

  Those were the last words that Madison would write in his journal, and as he worked, the rest of the delegates traipsed over to the City Tavern for a night of feasting, drinking and goodfellowship.

  The nation did not rush to embrace the Constitution designed by my ancestor Simon Starr and his thirty-eighty associates. It had been agreed that for it to go into effect, nine states would have to ratify it, but since cantankerous Rhode Island still refused to have anything to do with it, that meant nine out of twelve. If four rejected it, the vast labor would go for naught.

  The chronology was frighteningly slow. The finished document was presented to the nation in September 1787. The ninth state to ratify, New Hampshire, did not do so until June 1788. The new government was finally put into place with the inauguration of General Washington as President on 30 April 1789.

  Simon Starr made a significant contribution to ratification during the extremely close contest in Massachusetts, where a veteran of Shays’ Rebellion harangued the voters with grave condemnations of the proposed Constitution:

  ‘It was written by rich men for the protection of their wealth. They keep their slaves. The western lands on which so many of them gambled jump in value, making them all richer still. Their manufactures are protected, and every article in the document favors them and oppresses us. The poor farmer gets no relief, so the Constitution by rich men for the rich should be rejected.’

  Friends of the Constitution, grasping for every vote, invited Simon to participate in its defense as the son of the patriot Jared Starr who had died in Massachusetts defending strong government. Like his father before him, he jumped at the chance to help in the North, and at a gathering in Boston he boldly rebutted the opponents:

  ‘I own slaves, and I confess that the proposed Constitution protects me in that ownership. I own a few shares in a gamble on western lands, and if you ratify, those lands will grow in value. And I have other small interests which will prosper if we have a strong central government. But so will all of your interests and the interests of the nation at large. This is what we strove to accomplish in Philadelphia, the improvement of all for the benefit of all, and I think we achieved it.

  ‘Of course, I’m aware that everything we did strengthened my personal holdings, but at the time of voting, that personal interest was never foremost in my mind. Nor was it in the minds of others. We were thirty-nine ordinary men, no more honest nor dishonest than any like thirty-nine that you could find. We labored only to build a strong, new nation able to guide and protect itself, and I think we did just that. Please accept our work. Ratify it and we shall all prosper.’

  In a close vote, 187 to 168, Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify. The logjam was broken, and when three more states followed—Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire—the new nation was put upon the right track. In its creation and guidance my forefathers Jared and Simon Starr had played honorable if not conspicuous roles.

  It was the final entry in Simon’s notes, written in 1807, that seemed to me to strike an honest balance regarding the character of the men who wrote and signed that Constitution:

  I find constant pride in what my associates in that great Convention have achieved since we left Philadelphia. Alexander Hamilton was the leading light of the first presidencies, and James Madison served with almost equal brilliance in various posts. I think more than a dozen became United States senators, including four of that group dubbed by the other delegates ‘The Silent Ones’ who did not venture to speak in debate: Richard Bassett, William Blount, William Few and Nicholas Gilman. John Rutledge became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and three others served as associates: John Blair, William Paterson and the brilliant James Wilso
n.

  But there were others who did not prosper, and some of their cases are appalling. No one stood higher before the Convention or lower after its close than Robert Morris, the patriotic banker of the American Revolution. When I first met him in 1787, he was whispered to be the richest man in America, with immense holdings in cash and land speculations. But in later years his precarious ventures began to crumble, until he had to sell off most of his holdings. In 1798 his creditors, still unsatisfied, forced him to dispose even of the grand mansion in which he had entertained General Washington during the Convention, but this gained him neither time nor relief. Shocking as it seems even now, this one-time millionaire was tossed into a debtors’ prison where he languished for three long years, aided by none of the friends who had earned fortunes by following his advice. Finally, word circulated among the former delegates, and some of us collected enough money to get him out of jail, but he spent his final days in poverty till the age of seventy-three, when he died alone and forgotten.

  Four other delegates watched in glum despair as their fortunes declined into bankruptcy, the most pitiful case being that of James Wilson, my hero and an associate justice of the Supreme Court. He had lost so much money gambling on western lands that a swarm of creditors harassed him. To escape a forced bankruptcy, he fled to New Jersey, from where he continued to conduct Court business, to the disgust of all. Finally, his powerful mind having failed, he skipped to North Carolina, where a fellow justice on the Court took pity on him, providing him with a small cottage in which he died, his mind gone, at age fifty-six. I went into mourning when I heard of this great man’s fall.

  But worse was to come. I was shocked to distraction when I learned that two of my fellow delegates, patriots of the greatest ardor in the summer I knew them, conducted themselves so carelessly that they were actually indicted for treason! Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey became so involved with that archenemy of mankind, Aaron Burr, that he was formally charged with treason, only narrowly escaping trial.

  William Blount of North Carolina was serving in the Senate when his enormous land speculations turned so sour that he became entangled in complex and illegal negotiations with Spain, Great Britain and various Indian tribes. When incriminating letters were intercepted he was expelled from the Senate by a vote of 25 to 1. The House then impeached him, but the Senate judged that expulsion was enough, and there it ended.

  For me, the Convention ended on a bright July day in 1804 when a messenger came galloping down my lane, shouting: ‘Simon! Simon! Have you heard? Alexander Hamilton is dead!’ I stood perfectly still, the hot sun beating down upon my face, my senses numbed. Hamilton dead? A young man with the world before him? The architect of our stability as a nation? A victor in actual battle, a constant winner in debate, he was abler than us all, a man I loved for his gallantry and courage. And then came the crushing blow, the one from which I will never recover.

  ‘Simon! It’s true. Aaron Burr shot him in a duel. A matter of political honor.’ And when the news finally filtered in, I found all that my informant said was true. Alexander Hamilton, the finest man of his generation, was dead by a bullet from the pistol of Aaron Burr, that unspeakable craven, that traitor, that disrupter of nations. My God, that such things are allowed!

  Our family has a careful record of what happened after that fateful day in 1804, because Simon’s son, Edmund, who would serve on the United States Supreme Court, left a tragic memorandum:

  My father Simon spent the rest of 1804 in a trance, unable to focus on anything for long. The death of Hamilton, the man he admired above all others, represented a tragedy he could not absorb. In 1805 he pulled himself together and traveled to Philadelphia, where with the help of Gouverneur Morris, a man whom he had not liked at first but who grew upon him as he did upon all who knew him, arranged a kind of rescue fund for their fellow delegate Robert Morris, whom they found in poverty.

  When he returned home at the end of 1805, he fell afoul of a blatant Jeffersonian named Killbride living in Culpeper, and although they never referred to each other by name, Killbride defamed the memory of Hamilton constantly, accusing him of being a royalist who wanted to install a king in Washington, while my father attacked President Jefferson for being a radical in the pay of France. At a debate in Washington, Killbride finally so infuriated my father by demeaning Hamilton that there was no recourse but to challenge Killbride to a duel, which was eagerly accepted.

  Father chose me as his second, and on a gray December morning in 1807 along the banks of the Potomac, eight of us marched into the mists, arranged ourselves as tradition dictated, and prepared for the duel. As seconds, Killbride’s man and I had to ask one last time if the difference between the two protagonists could be reconciled, and each man said in firm voice ‘No!’

  To the tremulous counting of the judge, one to ten, the two men walked away from each other, and I remember thinking: My God, if they could just keep marching forever! But at the count of ten, which rang like a funeral bell, they turned and fired, and my father fell dead with a bullet just above the heart.

  So ended his preoccupation with the American Constitution and his adoration of Alexander Hamilton.

  That evening as I walked under the trees that he planted on our place, I thought: Thirty-nine signers of our Constitution, two ended as traitors, two murdered in duels. That’s ten percent, and I began to chuckle as my red-headed father might have, to recall the charges that he had had to combat in the Massachusetts fight for ratification: that the framers were all rich, all slaveholders, all protectors of privilege.

  No! No! They were a collection of ordinary men, some bad, some good, some dull, some bright, some pro-slavery, some anti-slavery, and two of them, Hamilton and my father, ready to surrender their lives in defense of things they believed in.

  Justice

  Edmund

  Starr

  1780–1847

  In a perverse way, I’ve always reserved a special affection for one of the least admirable of my ancestors. In physical bulk, Justice Edmund Starr was unquestionably the greatest by at least a hundred and thirty pounds, but intellectually, I’m afraid he was a midget. Like others of our family, he first achieved public attention because of his valor in battle defending our nation, but it is not for such early feats that he’s in the history books. I cherish him because he illustrates how men or women of only modest attainment can sometimes take part in major accomplishments; in his case, help to keep society on the right path in times of decision. Justice Starr hoisted his immense bulk onto the bench of the United States Supreme Court at a time when a loyal, reliable vote like his was needed, and in his own way he helped forge the concepts that bound our nation together, and so when I returned from the White House tired and frightened on Friday night, I certainly did not want to distress Nancy with speculation about what might happen at my Monday appearance before the Senate Committee. Instead, I found quiet solace in ruminating with her about the amusing judicial experiences of our less than illustrious ancestor.

  A rural neighbor once said of Edmund Starr: ‘To settle a wager as to whether he weighed more than three hundred and twenty-five, we put him on the scale I use for hogs, and he tipped at three twenty-three.’ A fellow justice inclined toward the radical views of Thomas Jefferson characterized him as ‘flabby in both body and mind,’ while the keeper of an inn in Washington said: ‘His great love is dark brown ale, which he consumes in prodigious draughts.’

  Chief Justice John Marshall, the one whose opinion counted, wrote of him:

  No matter how contentious the debate became, nor how the general population or the Jeffersonians railed against the Court, I could always depend upon the support of Justice Starr. Frequently he could not fully comprehend the intricacies of a case, and sometimes he even got the sides of a question entangled, so that he did not know whether he was supporting the claimant or the government, but when I explained the niceties he accepted my analysis and voted in accord with the principles I was endeavoring to e
stablish.

  Starr had not always been obese, or even obtuse. As a slim young Virginia farmer in 1799, he had decided one day ‘I want to be a lawyer,’ so without formal training of any kind, not even working in the office of an established lawyer, he attended court, read a few books, and offered himself as a counselor. His good humor and common sense enabled him to prevail in country courthouses, and when he traipsed off to war in 1812 against the British, he left behind a lucrative practice. He joined the Virginia militia in time to take part in three straight American losses, but demonstrated such willingness and courage that he gained promotion to captain and then to major.

  Fighting always in the eastern theater of this disastrous war, he attracted the attention of James Monroe, the Secretary of War, and when Monroe attained the presidency he appointed Starr to the Supreme Court.

  I think in some ways he summarizes the Starrs. Always ready to serve the Army. Seldom out front or showing off in public. And for some strange reason, happiest when we follow the lead of someone more notable than ourselves. Jared, in the arguments that led to the Declaration, said little but followed the lead of Ben Franklin. His son Simon, at the great Convention, said never a word but did listen to Hamilton. And his son, the justice, sat through a dozen historic cases without asking a question, but when the Chief Justice needed support, there he was. As for me, I follow Ronald Reagan. He won forty-nine of the fifty states, didn’t he?