“Major, she was stung to death by slander! It was such adders as John Quincy Adams, such pit-vipers as Henry Clay, that killed her!”
CHAPTER XX—THE GENERAL GOES TO THE WHITE HOUSE
THIS is of a steamboat day, and keel boats are but a memory. The General makes his tedious eight-weeks' way to Washington via the Cumberland, the Ohio, the mountains, and the Potomac valley. It is like the progress of a conqueror. The people throng about him until Wizard Lewis, remembering his broken state, fears for his life. The fears are without grounds to stand on. Applause never kills, and the General finds in it the milk of lions. He enters Washington renewed, and was never so fit for hard work. The General is inaugurated. As he is cheered into the White House by jubilant thousands, Statesman Clay, beaten and bitter, retires to Kentucky; while Statesman Adams goes back to Massachusetts, where his ice-waterisms, let us hope, will be appreciated, and from which frigid region he ought never to have been drawn.
When the General is declared President, Statesman Calhoun is made Vice-President. From his high perch in the Senate Statesman Calhoun begins at once to scan the plain of the possible for ways and means to name himself the General's successor. He proves dull in the furtherance of his ambitions, and conceives that the only best path to victory lies over the General himself. He must break down that demigod in the hearts of the people, and teach them to hate where now they trust and love.
The General is not a day in Washington before Statesman Calhoun is intriguing to cut the ground of popularity from beneath his feet. As frequently happens with dark-lantern strategists, his plottings in their very inception go off on the wrong foot. Statesman Calhoun is so foolish as to commence his campaign against the General with an attack upon a woman. The woman thus malevolently distinguished is the pretty Peg, once belle of the Indian Queen.
Between that time when the General came last to Washington as Senator and the pretty Peg was petted and loved by the blooming Rachel, and now when the General occupies the White House as President, destiny has been moving rapidly and not always gayly with the pretty Peg. In that interim she becomes the wife of Purser Timberlake of the Navy, who later cuts his drunken throat and walks overboard to his drunken death in the Mediterranean.
In her widow's weeds the pretty Peg looks prettier than before—since black is ever the best setting for beauty, and shows it off like a diamond. Major Eaton, Senator from Tennessee and per incident friend of the General, is smitten of the pretty Peg, and marries her. The wedding bells are ringing as the General rides into Washington.
It is an hour wherein Vice-Presidents have more to say than they will later on. Statesman Calhoun, scheming his own advantage, puts forward covert efforts to place his friends about the General as cabineteers. This is not so difficult; since the General is not thinking on Statesman Calhoun. His eyes, hate-guided, are fastened upon Statesman Adams and Statesman Clay; his single aim is to advance no follower of theirs. These are happy conditions for Statesman Calhoun, who comes up unseen on the General's blind side, and presents him—all unnoticed—with three of his Cabinet six.