I. Burr and Lincoln

Washington, D.C. (1967) was followed six years later by Burr (1973), which covers the period 1775 to 1840 as it was lived and understood by the notorious Aaron Burr. Another three years went by, and Vidal published 1876 (1976), portraying the events leading up to and immediately following the hotly contested presidential election campaign of the U.S. Centennial year, which pitted Democrat Samuel Tilden of New York against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio.

It was nearly a decade before Vidal would add another volume to the American Chronicle series. That next volume was the celebrated Lincoln (1984), which follows events in Washington from Abraham Lincoln's surreptitious arrival in the city to be inaugurated for his first term in the White House to his assassination scarcely four years later. Lincoln was followed, in quick succession, by Empire (1987), which focuses on the years 1898 to 1906, and Hollywood (1990), which focuses on U.S. involvement in World War I and its immediate aftermath— the years 1917 to 1923. Then, after a decade of work unrelated to the American Chronicle, Vidal published the final volume of the series, The Golden Age (2000). Oddly, this volume does not depict a previously undramatized period of years. As Harry Kloman puts it, "Rather than simply taking place after Washington, D.C.—which covers the years 1937 to 1952—The Golden Age loops back to re-cover the same years, 1939 to 1954." It also features almost all of the same characters. And, of course, the major historical events in the two novels are the same. As Kloman writes, The Golden Age "is the narrative WashingtonD.C. might have been had Vidal written the books chronologically." Thus "You might think of the new book as an alternative version of the older one." Kloman points out that "[w]hen Vidal published Washington, D.C. in 1967, he had no plan to tell America's story from the Revolutionary War through the present." Accordingly, he counsels, "now that Vidal has completed the series, one might just consider it to be six books in length, with Washington, D.C. standing off to the side, in part an accidental beginning to a Chronicle that it no longer fits, and in part an alternative conclusion that's more literary and introspective than historical."⁹¹

In the following pages, I take Kloman's advice: I use the term "American Chronicle" to refer to the following set of six novels, arranged and discussed in correct historical sequence: Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, Hollywood, and The Golden Age.

Burr is narrated by a fictional character, Charles Schermerhorn ("Charlie") Schuyler, a young clerk employed in the New York law office of Aaron Burr. Charlie moonlights as a journalist, writing fairly regularly for the poet William Cullen Bryant, in the latter's capacity as editor and publisher of the New York Evening Post. It is 1833, Andrew Jackson has just begun his second term in the White House, and the political cognoscenti are already debating who should be his successor. Jackson himself favors his vice president, Martin Van Buren, as does Bryant. But Bryant's assistant on the Post, William Leggett, is not convinced of Van Buren's suitability. He has heard rumors that Van Buren is one of Burr's many illegitimate children, and he believes that a book or pamphlet proving the truth of that rumor to the public's satisfaction would have the estimable effect of ruining Van Buren's chances for the presidency. He hires Charlie to research and write such a book or pamphlet.

In the course of his research, Charlie will discover that he himself is one of Colonel Burr's illegitimate offspring. But in the beginning he thinks of the Colonel as merely his elderly boss (Burr is seventy-seven when the novel begins), who turns out to be more than willing to have his brain picked. He gives Charlie his journal of the Revolutionary War period to read. He dictates his further memoirs to Charlie in a series of meetings, some of them at the law offices where both of them work, some of them in Burr's home. Burr's narrative is alternated with Charlie's own so that the reader is gradually filled in on the history of the United States from the beginning of the Revolution to the last days of the second Jackson administration. This history is not, however, the conventional one which most of Vidal's readers have presumably had presented to them in school. As Donald E. Pease puts it, what Burr presents in these pages is "an alternate American narrative" in which the founding fathers look somewhat different from the way most readers are accustomed to seeing them. "Instead of finding them to be representative of American civic virtue and American democracy, for example, Burr explains Washington's belief in a strong central government as an effort to protect his vast landholdings in Mount Vernon, and Thomas Jefferson's espousal of states' rights simply as a political strategy to win votes."⁹²

Burr is appalled at what he considers to be Washington's "incompetence" as a military leader.⁹³ He notes that Washington "did not read books" and that though he "was always short of money, he lived grandly." He looks back on Washington as having been "defective in grammar and spelling, owing to a poor education" and as having been "most puritanical." He speaks derisively of our first President as having been "unable [...] to organize a sentence that contained a new thought."⁹⁴ He tells Charlie that when "in September 1777 the British out-manoeuvred Washington once again and occupied Philadelphia,"

the Philadelphians did not at all mind the presence of the British army in their city; in fact, many of them hoped that Washington would soon be caught and hanged, putting an end to those disruptions and discomforts which had been set in motion by the ambitions of a number of greedy and vain lawyers shrewdly able to use as cover for their private designs Jefferson's high-minded platitudes and cloudy political theorizings.⁹⁵

Jefferson makes out no better than Washington in Burr's eye view. "He was the most charming man I have ever known," Burr tells Charlie, "as well as the most deceitful." All in all, in Burr's view (as imagined by Vidal), Jefferson was a prize hypocrite. "Proclaiming the unalien-able rights of man for everyone (excepting slaves, Indians, women, and those entirely without property)," Burr sneers, "Jefferson tried to seize the Floridas by force, dreamed of a conquest of Cuba, and after his illegal purchase of Louisiana sent a military governor to rule New Orleans against the will of its inhabitants."⁹⁶

Not only did Jefferson betray his supposed individualist ideals, he refused to fight for them when the time came—at least, as Aaron Burr sees it. "I do remember hearing someone comment," he tells Charlie, "that since Mr. Jefferson had seen fit to pledge so eloquently our lives to the cause of independence, he might at least join us in the army." But did he? No. Instead, while Washington's army suffered at Valley Forge, Jefferson "spent a comfortable winter[...] at Monticello where, in perfect comfort and serenity, he was able amongst his books to gather his ever-so-fine wool."⁹⁷ Later, when the British army closed in on Richmond,

Governor Jefferson fled to Monticello, leaving the state without an administration. At Monticello he dawdled, thought only of how to transport his books to safety. Not until the first British troops had started up the hill did he and his family again take to their heels. Later Patrick Henry's faction in the Virginia Assembly demanded an investigation, but fortunately for Jefferson the proud Virginia burgesses did not want to be reminded of the general collapse of their state and so their hapless governor was able to avoid impeachment and censure. He did not, however, avoid ridicule; and that is worse than any formal censure.⁹⁸

Not only was Jefferson a coward and a fraud, according to Burr, he was also "a ruthless man" who "simply wanted to rise to the top. Odd how Jefferson is now thought of as a sort of genius, a Virginia Leonardo. It is true he did a great number of things, from playing the fiddle to building houses to inventing dumb-waiters, but the truth is that he never did any one thing particularly well—except of course the pursuit of power."⁹⁹

The pursuit of personal power is, however, difficult to reconcile with the ideal of individual liberty proclaimed in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the Bill of Rights. On the other hand, according to Burr, Jefferson never really believed very fervently in such individual liberty. Consider freedom of speech and of the press, for example. Burr quotes Jefferson as having told him in late 1803 or early 1804, that

"[i]n 1789, Madison sent me a copy of the proposed amendments to the Constitution, and I wrote him that I thought he should make it clear that although our citizens are allowed to speak or publish whatever they choose, they ought not to be permitted to present false facts which might affect injuriously the life, liberty, property or reputation of others or affect the national peace with regard to foreign nations. Just the other day I reminded Madison of that sad omission in our Constitution, and he agreed that today's monstrous press is a direct result of the careless way the First Amendment was written."

Still, as Burr relates it, Jefferson did not advocate federal action against members of the press who published "false facts." On the contrary. "As usual, Jefferson had a way around the difficulty [...]. 'Since the federal government has no constitutional power over the press, the states can then devise their own laws.'"¹⁰⁰

Perhaps worst of all (at least in the eyes of some), there was the matter of Jefferson's slave, Sally Hemings—or, as Burr refers to her, "Jefferson's concubine Sally, by whom he had at least five children." Sally was an illegitimate daughter of John Wayles, Jefferson's father-in-law, Burr tells Charlie, "which made her the half-sister of Jefferson's late wife. [...] Amusing to contemplate that in bedding his fine-looking slave, Jefferson was also sleeping with his sister-in-law! One would have enjoyed hearing him moralize on that subject."¹⁰¹

Nor are Washington and Jefferson the only Founding Fathers to rank low in Aaron Burr's estimate. There is also Alexander Hamilton, whom Burr had met and befriended during the Revolution—or so, at any rate, he tells Charlie. As the years passed, however, the two men not only grew apart but also came more and more regularly into conflict. In the end, Burr killed Hamilton in a duel. Burr does not explain to Charlie why he called Hamilton out, but an old friend of Burr's, Sam Swartwout, the customs collector of the port of New York, does the job for him. Hamilton, Swartwout tells Charlie, had accused Burr, a widower, of living in incest with his lovely, intelligent, and accomplished daughter.

The 1804 duel with Hamilton is perhaps the most famous event in Burr's life. The second most famous is probably his arrest and trial, four years later, on charges of treason. As Burr tells Charlie the latter story, it reminds him (unsurprisingly) of Jefferson's hypocrisy and lust for power. According to Burr, Jefferson tried to suspend habeas corpus so he could continue to hold two of Burr's alleged associates in a military prison and "beyond the reach of the Constitution." In his defense, Jefferson argued that "[o]n great occasions, every good officer must be ready to risk himself in going beyond the strict line of law, when the public preservation requires it." His political opponents, Jefferson acknowledged, "will try to make something of the infringement of liberty by the military arrest and deportation of citizens, but if it does not go beyond such offenders as Swartwout, Bollman, Burr, Blennerhassett, etc., they will be supported by the public approbation." Burr's summary of Jefferson's view is succinct and unsparing. "In other words," he tells Charlie, "if public opinion is not unduly aroused one may safely set aside the Constitution and illegally arrest one's enemies."¹⁰²

In the next novel in Vidal's series, Lincoln, another president employs the same tactics, and justifies his actions in a very similar way. It is now more than fifty years after Jefferson's abortive attempt to suspend habeas corpus. Abraham Lincoln is making war against the Southern states that seceded from the Union at the beginning of his first term in the White House. In his attempt to ensure that Maryland does not join those seceded states, he imposes martial law, orders the arrest of "anyone who takes up arms—or incites others to take up arms, against the Federal government," and orders further that those arrested be held "indefinitely without ever charging them with any offense." His justification is reminiscent of the one Burr attributes to Jefferson, who spoke of "the public preservation." "[T]he most ancient of all our human characteristics is survival," Lincoln tells his Secretary of State, William H. Seward. "In order that this Union survive, I have found it necessary to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, but only in the military zone." As Lincoln sees it, he is merely exercising what he calls the "inherent powers" of the presidency when he takes actions of this kind. And, as he tells Seward, "An inherent power [...] is just as much a power as one that has been spelled out."¹⁰³

Lincoln is not narrated in the first person as Burr is. Rather it is narrated in the third person—not an "omniscient" third person, but one whose point of view hops around among a short list of important characters: Lincoln's secretary, John Hay; Secretary of State Seward; Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase; First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln; and David Herold, the pharmacist's clerk and Southern sympathizer who was later convicted of conspiring successfully with John Wilkes Booth and others to assassinate Lincoln early in his second term in office.

The Lincoln thus presented might well be expected to resemble the proverbial elephant as observed by several different blind men. But in fact Vidal's Lincoln is much more coherent than that, for his observers are not blind. They differ widely in their opinions and interpretations of what they see, but what they see is identifiably the same man. Harold Bloom looks at Vidal's Lincoln and sees "[a] minority President, elected with less than 40 percent of the total vote."

Though his election committed him only to barring the extension of slavery to the new states, and though he was a moderate Republican and not an Abolitionist, Lincoln was violently feared by most of the South. Vidal's opening irony, never stated but effectively implied, is that the South beheld the true Lincoln long before Lincoln's own cabinet [...] The South feared an American Cromwell, and in Vidal's vision, the South actually helped produce an American Bismarck.¹⁰⁴

Vidal's Lincoln, says Donald E. Pease, is "interested mostly in self-aggrandizement," though his interest in sex was sufficient in his younger years that he "contracted syphilis from a prostitute and communicated this disease to his wife and children."¹⁰⁵ To Fred Kaplan, Vidal's Lincoln is "a pragmatic and manipulative politician with one overriding vision: to save the Union and by saving it to transform it into a modern, industrialized, national state so powerfully and tightly coherent that nothing can tear it apart again."¹⁰⁶

This mania for "saving the Union" cannot be overestimated as a central factor in the motivations and behavior of Vidal's Lincoln. As Bloom notes, Vidal's Lincoln is "a respecter of neither the states, nor the Congress, nor the Court, nor the parties, nor even the Constitution itself."¹⁰⁷ Pease makes the same point when he writes that "Vidal's Lincoln is a political heretic who believes in none of the political instruments supportive of union (the Congress, the Courts, the Constitution) except insofar as they can supplement his will to absolute executive power."¹⁰⁸

Vidal's Lincoln is also no Great Emancipator. Vidal's Lincoln, as Pease points out, "believes the emancipation of slaves entails their exportation to the West Indies or Liberia."¹⁰⁹ For, as Kaplan notes, though he is "[o]pposed to slavery, Lincoln does not believe slavery an issue worth fighting about."¹¹⁰ Vidal's Lincoln tells the assembled delegates of the Southern Peace Conference that met with him shortly after his election that "I will do what I can to give assurance and reassurance to the Southern states that we mean them no harm. It is true that I was elected to prevent the extension of slavery to the new territories of the Union. But what is now the status quo in the Southern states is beyond my power—or desire—ever to alter." "I have never been an abolitionist," he tells his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. To a delegation of black freemen that comes to meet him at the White House, Vidal's Lincoln declares that "your race is suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves you are still a long way from being placed on an equality with the white race." His secretary, John Hay, sitting in on the meeting, reflects that the president "was unshaken in his belief that the colored race was inferior to the white."

The fact that Lincoln had always found it difficult to accept any sort of natural equality between the races stemmed, Hay thought, from his own experience as a man born with no advantage of any kind, who had then gone to the top of the world. Lincoln had no great sympathy for those who felt that external circumstances had held them back.

Early in his second term, Vidal's Lincoln informs Congressman Elihu Washburne (R-Illinois) of his intention to "reimburse the slaveowners" for their freed slaves. This, he tells Washburne, "will[...] be a quick way of getting money into the South for reconstruction." In addition to the money he'll need for that plan, he adds, "we'll need money to colonize as many Negroes as we can in Central America." Washburne is somewhat astonished that the president still favors such a plan. "When you get hold of an idea," he says to Lincoln, "you don't ever let it go, do you?" Lincoln replies: "Not until I find a better one. Can you imagine what life in the South will be like if the Negroes stay?"¹¹¹

Vidal's Lincoln is firm in his belief that slave-owners should be compensated for their loss and that the freed slaves should be deported. He is also firm in his belief that both these issues are merely tangential to the war raging between the United States and the Confederate States. Late in 1861, when the rogue Union general John C. Fremont declares martial law in Missouri (a border state) and announces that he will "confiscate the property of all secessionists, including their slaves, who were to be freed," Vidal's Lincoln declares "with anguish, to Seward, 'This is a war for a great national idea, the Union, and now Fremont has tried to drag the Negro into it!'" As Vidal sees it, this understanding of the war was not only Lincoln's, but also that of other prominent Americans of the time. Early in 1863, for example, not long after the president has delivered his annual message to Congress, Vidal's John Hay finds himself in conversation with the lawyer, diplomat, and newspaperman Charles Eames (1812-1867), who assures him that "what the war is about" is "the principle that the Union cannot be dissolved, ever." Later that year, when Union forces under General George G. Meade finally won a decisive victory over Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Meade telegraphed the White House, according to Vidal's account, that he now looked "to the army for greater efforts to drive from our soil every vestige of the presence of the invader." Vidal's Lincoln does not like Meade's choice of words. "Of course, Pennsylvania is our soil," he tells Hay. "But so is Virginia. So are the Carolinas. So is Texas. They are forever our soil. That is what the war is about and these damned fools cannot grasp it; or will not grasp it. The whole country is our soil. I cannot fathom such men."¹¹²

Fully in keeping with this understanding of what the war is all about is Lincoln's view of how reconstruction should be handled once the war is won. The Radical Republicans take the formation of the Confederate States of America at face value: "the states in rebellion were out of the Union and should be treated as an enemy nation's conquered provinces."

But Lincoln's line was unwavering. The Union was absolutely indivisible. No state could ever leave it; therefore no state had ever left it. Certain rebellious elements had seen fit to make war against the central government, but when those elements were put down all would be as it was and the Southern states would send representatives to Congress, exactly as they had done in the past.¹¹³

But, of course, after the war, nothing was as it was before the war. Not only had 600,000 Americans lost their lives in the conflict, but another 400,000 were wounded, many of whom were crippled for life. Altogether, nearly 1,000,000 Americans were casualties of the war, out of a total population of a little more than 31,000,000. If three percent of the current U.S. population were to be killed or wounded in a war, we would be looking at nearly 9,000,000 casualties. There was also extensive property damage, particularly in the South—damage so extensive it would be many decades before anything resembling a full economic recovery could be said to have taken place there. Perhaps most important of all, in Vidal's version of the years 1861-1865, a series of precedents was laid down by the Lincoln administration which, in the years ahead, would justify the steady erosion of individual liberty in the United States.

For Vidal's Lincoln does not limit his assault on the Constitution to the suspension of habeas corpus. He tells Seward not long after his first inauguration, "Yesterday, at three in the afternoon, I ordered every U.S. marshal in the country to seize the original of every telegram that has been sent and a copy of every telegram that has been received in the last twelve months." Seward wonders aloud about "[t]he legal basis for this seizure," and Lincoln answers, "The broader powers inherent in the Constitution." Vidal's Lincoln censors the press, locking up editors who oppose his policies. Vidal's Baron Gerolt, the Prussian minister to Washington, tells Seward that his own boss, Otto von Bismarck, "very much admires the way that you arrest editors but he dares not do the same in Prussia because he says that, unlike you, he is devoted to freedom of speech." That Vidal's Lincoln is not in fact devoted to freedom of speech is made evident by his action against the former Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham, who "held that Lincoln's war measures were illegal and unConstitutional [sic] and so far worse than the defection of the Southern States." Vidal's Lincoln has Vallandigham arrested and forcibly exiled to the Confederacy. Vidal's Lincoln threatens to place New York City under martial law to suppress opposition to the nation's first military conscription law. Vidal's Seward reflects in 1864 that there is now "a single-minded dictator in the White House, a Lord Protector of the Union by whose will alone the war had been prosecuted" and that "Lincoln had been able to make himself absolute dictator without ever letting anyone suspect that he was anything more than a joking, timid backwoods lawyer." Charlie Schuyler, the narrator of Burr, reappears briefly in a couple of scenes in Lincoln, and, in the novel's closing pages, observes to John Hay that Bismarck "has now done the same thing to Germany that you tell us Mr. Lincoln did to our country."¹¹⁴