Текст книги "Letters"

Автор книги: John Barth

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I learnt fast. And in the process came to respect, even more than formerly, the red men’s famous harmony with their land (to sell which, they regarded less as treason than as fraud, since in their view no man had title to what was every man’s). I saw the ultimate harmlessness of even the fierce Wyandots & once-fierce Senecas, by contrast with the whites: Tecumseh’s comparison was of a pack of wolves to a forest fire. To my surprise I came to feel ever more clearly my distance from the Indians, even as I bridged it: were I not part Indian, there could have been no bridge; were I not mainly & finally European-American, no bridge would have been needed. From this last I came to see what Tecumseh later told me Pontiac had seen (and what I now know my grandfather knew before Pontiac): that while the wolf may make the deer a finer animal, & the eagle quicken the race of rabbits, all flee together from the fire, or perish in it. As there was no longer any real where for the Indian to flee…

Yet he was no defeatist. That the Indians perhaps had only different ways to lose meant to Tecumseh that the choice of ways was all the more important. Hence his preference for the tomahawk, for example, together with his recognition that only British artillery might truly drive back American artillery. Hence his tireless exhortations to the chiefs not to forget their differences, which were as old & “natural” as those between hare & hawk, but to work for their common good despite them, against the menace. The flaw in his reasoning, of course, was that exemplary conduct presumes someone to benefit from the example. If deer & wolf rise above their ancient differences to stand together, what have they taught the fire? Tecumseh’s reply to this question (which I never put) was in his bearing, his eloquence, his selfless energy, his spaciousness of heart & the general fineness of his character, which I think must far exceed his hero Pontiac’s: to be thus-&-such a man (these virtues preacht), to behave in thus-&-such a fashion, were excellent & sweet yea tho one perish – especially if one is to perish in any case. This tragical (but nowise despairing) lesson is what Tecumseh taught, in a language neither English nor Algonkin.

By the time that contemptible treaty was sign’d (September 30, 1809, anniversary as it happens of Adam & Eve’s eviction from Paradise, according to tradition, & of Ebenezer Cooke’s inadvertent loss of his father’s estate), I had enough grasp of the language to be trusted with the errand of reporting to Governor Harrison Tecumseh’s anger, as well as the Wyandots’ enlistment into the confederacy. With credentials supplied by the Canadian secret service, I pass’d as a scout for the U. States secret service charged with learning the extent of British instigation of the Indian alliance, and reported truthfully to Harrison that the confederacy grew stronger every season. That while the British understandably were cheer’d by it, they had as yet provided little beyond moral support to Tecumseh & the Prophet, but were likely to supply them with weapons if the confederacy chose to resist the new “treaty” with force, as Tecumseh was prepared to do. That the real instigators of Indian solidarity were just such spurious or broken treaties. That the best strategy against that solidarity (and against driving the Indians to join the British in the coming war) was to cease invading their territory & murdering them with legal impunity.

The last point Harrison granted; he even worried (what I’d not dared hope) that President Madison, who rather shared my general position, might be persuaded to set aside the treaty he Harrison had just negotiated – a move which would put the Governor uncomfortably betwixt his constituents & the man he must rely on for political & military support. Cheer’d, I went off to Boston & my business with John Henry; then return’d to the Prophet’s town by way of Vincennes (& Castines Hundred) in the spring, this time as Harrison’s messenger to the Prophet, whom he invited to the capital to discuss the treaty. I reminded him that the real leader was Tecumseh. All the more reason to invite his brother instead, Harrison felt: promote any jealousy betwixt them. Andrée & I agreed that now the obnoxious treaty was accomplisht, the next great step toward Indian confederacy would be for Tecumseh successfully to resist by force its implementation, then to negotiate with President Madison its repeal. This would establish his leadership in the eyes of the Americans, the British, & his own people, & give him authority in Washington & London to barter his allegiance or neutrality in the coming war for firm guarantees of an Indian free state. I deliver’d myself (in Algonkin) of this opinion, together with Harrison’s invitation. To my dismay, Tenskwatawa loudly declared I should be executed as a spy: he had got wind thro the winter of my pose with Harrison, and feign’d to believe it was no pose; that I & possibly Star-of-the-Lake as well were in the pay of the Long Knives.

It was fortunate for me that his indictment included your mother, for while Tecumseh forbade torture, he believed in the swift execution of spies. But the Chief knew of my facility with documents & other credentials; he chided his brother, veto’d my execution, praised my improvements in their tongue, & subsequently took me as his interpreter – with 400 fine young warriors, for effect – to the 1st of a series of conferences with Harrison in Vincennes. It was my 1st experience of his statesmanship: the man was magnificent, both as orator & as tactician: always eloquent; tactful & forceful by turns; & so possest of memory & information that he could recite the provisions & violations of every Indian treaty made & broken by the Long Knives “since the Seventeen Fires had been Thirteen & had fought for their sovereignty, as his people were now conjoin’d to fight for theirs.” The pretenders who had sign’d the last of those treaties, he declared, were dead men. The confederacy would no more accede to Madison’s order to disband than would the Seventeen Fires to such an order from himself. & cetera. Harrison was enough imprest with Tecumseh to delay moving settlers onto the treaty lands—& to request troops from the War Department. Tecumseh was enough imprest with my services, & my Algonkin, to speak to me now on those matters he had tabled earlier.

What he vouchsafed me, in effect, over the following year, was a clear tho fleeting glimpse of what Andrée has since seen to be the pattern of our family history; more generally, he re-introduced me to the tragical view. Tecumseh understood to the heart Pontiac’s dilemma at the siege of Detroit (as explain’d in my 3rd letter); for that reason he would always attack, attack, preferably at night & hand-to-hand, & leave siege operations when necessary to whatever white allies the confederacy might enlist from time to time. The confederacy itself he view’d as a necessary evil, contrary to the Indians’ ancient pluralism, & for that reason he thot its central authority best left more spiritual than political. Thus his willing dependency on his undependable brother. Farther down the white man’s road toward a central government he would not go, tho he was not at all certain the Indians could prevail without one. He pointed out to me that my father & grandfather had had a common esteem for Pontiac, whatever their other motives & differences. Perhaps one or both of them had thot to aid him in the long run by misleading or impeding him in the short, as one strengthens a child by setting obstacles in his path, or tells him simple myths till he can grasp the hard true ones. But Tecumseh question’d both my father’s conviction, that his parents had betray’d Pontiac, & mine, that my father had betray’d, for example, the Iroquois under Joseph Brant. If he believed that, he declared, he would have permitted Tenskwatawa to tomahawk me, & would himself put a knife thro the heart of Star-of-the-Lake, whom he still loved, ere we could betray him. As it was – and since he had little time for a wife & children nor any wish to leave behind a young widow & orphans – he gave his blessings to our match, hoped it would be fruitful, & pray’d that we would set no helpful obstacles in his path, as he was no child.

I rusht to Castines Hundred with these tidings. To Andrée (now 22, & I nearing 35!) they were not news: she came to me smiling, & soon after wed me privately in the Iroquois ceremony, as my grandmother & grandfather had been wed. Andrée had just commenced her research of the family history; she was fascinated by our likeness to our grandsires. And tho she knew I had not the peculiar defect of male Burlingames (which they have always overcome), she follow’d the example of Andrée I in declining to marry me Christian-fashion till I had got her with child.

Sweet last summer! Mme de Staël wrote me from Coppet of her troubles with Napoleon; of her friend Schlegel’s narrow rescue of her manuscript De l’Allemagne; of her current affair with a Swiss guardsman half her age, très romantique mais peu esthétique. She wonder’d whether I thot it safe for her to move to her New York property if Napoleon hounded her from Coppet; surely “we” were not going to war with Britain, Europe’s only hope against the bloody Corsican? I was obliged to reply that unlike Paris in Year III, which appear’d dangerous but was safe, upstate New York in 1811 appear’d safe but would soon be dangerous. To convince her, I attacht a copy of a letter I’d forged with Andrée’s help for the purpose of inflaming the American press against the British: based on a real one sent from Major James Crawford at Niagara to Governor Haldimand in Quebec on January 3, 1782, it itemized eight boxes of scalps lifted by the Senecas & presented to the Governor-General for bounty payment: 43 “Congress soldiers,” 93 “farmers kill’d in their houses,” 97 farmers kill’d working in their fields, 102 more farmers of which 18 scalps were “markt with yellow flame to show that they were burnt alive after being scalpt,” 81 women, “long hair, those braided to show they were mothers,” 193 boys’ scalps “various ages,” 211 girls’ scalps big and little, “small yellow hoops markt hatchet, club, knife, & cet,” 122 “mixt scalps including 29 infants… only little black knife in middle to show ript out of mothers body,” & cet. Joel Barlow wrote from Kalorama, his house in Washington, that he was sailing reluctantly from Annapolis aboard the Constitution as Madison’s minister to France, to deal with Napoleon’s foreign minister in a final effort to prevent war betwixt the U. States & G. Britain. He recall’d fondly my assistance in his dealings with the Dey of Algiers, & wisht I could be with him now. Toot Fulton, he was sad to report, had married soon after the Clermont’s success; Ruthy was disconsolate. The war-hawk American Secretary of State, Barlow’s friend James Monroe, had instructed General Mathews in Georgia by secret letter on January 26 to move against the Floridas “with all possible expedition, concealing from general observation the trust committed to you with that discretion which the delicacy and importance of the undertaking require.” In May the U. States frigate President crippled the British sloop-of-war Little Belt off Sandy Hook, to the delight of Henry Clay & his fellow hawks, much increast in strength since the 1810 congressional elections. Surely the 12th Congress would declare Andrée’s War of 1811 when it convened in the fall! Tecumseh inform’d Governor Harrison early in the year that he would not only remain neutral, but fight on the side of the Seventeen Fires in the coming war if President Madison would set aside Harrison’s false treaty & make no future ones without consent of the chiefs assembled at the Tippecanoe. White citizens’ committees from Vincennes to St. Louis petition’d Madison to move against the Prophet’s town, disperse the confederacy, & drive out the British Indian traders who were “behind it.”

At Castines Hundred, whilst the Baron tiskt & tutted, your parents kiss’d & coo’d – and made plans. Barlow himself believed that inasmuch as the Westerners & Southerners were hottest for the war, my friend Tecumseh was of more immediate moment in the matter than Napoleon & George III together (that latter so sunk into madness now that a Regency bill was expected daily, but still urging in his lucid moments that troops be sent to recover his lost America). Joel could but hope that if France & England were persuaded to lift their decrees against American merchant shipping, the Indian issue itself would not be a sufficient casus belli; he implored me to use whatever influence I had to keep Tecumseh neutral. I had not seen fit to tell him that I was become a hawk myself, tho at the time of Burr’s trial in Richmond, when I had visited Barlow in Philadelphia to aid him with the new Columbiad, I’d spoken warmly of Tecumseh’s plan for an Indian nation, and tried to work into Joel’s epic a denunciation of “Manifest Destiny” by Columbus himself.

It seem’d to us now – your mother & me – that Tecumseh’s willingness to treat directly with Madison, before the confederacy had proved its strength to both Washington & London, was premature. Our friend replied that they would not be ready to prove their strength for another year, by when he hoped more of the southern nations, especially the Creeks, would be represented at the Prophet’s town: his present objective was to temporize with Harrison thro the winter whilst he did more diplomatic work in the South. It seem’d to us too that Barlow’s mission was dangerous to our cause: just possibly Madison’s gamble would work, and if there were no war to bring British troops to the Great Lakes & the Mississippi Valley (and divert the Americans’ energies from their Manifest Destiny), Tecumseh’s cause was lost. We resolved therefore on a double course: to make sure – what was anyhow unlikely – that Harrison did not agree to send Tecumseh to Madison before our friend left for his southern enterprise; and to see to it Barlow’s French mission fail’d.

The 1st we accomplisht in July, by suggesting to Harrison that his own goals might be attain’d without bloodshed, in Tecumseh’s absence, by moving infantry and militia conspicuously up the Wabash to establish a fort near the Prophet’s town: their leader gone, the Indians would likely disband before such a show of force, and Harrison would then negotiate from a position of strength with his own Indiana constituents as well as with Tecumseh. We caution’d him that attacking the Prophet’s town directly would serve only to rally the Indians, as an attack on Mecca would rally the Islamites (had we actually believed that, of course, we would have urged attack). Harrison agreed, and after a last fruitless conference at Vincennes on July 27, Tecumseh bid us farewell till spring & set off southwards down the Wabash with 20 warriors.

To accomplish the 2nd objective I sadly bid my bride au revoir immediately after, struck out eastwards down the Mohawk & Hudson to New York City, and took ship for France to try whether I could “torpedo” good Joel’s negotiations with the Duc de Bassano, described above. In October I reacht Imperial Paris (much changed), where everyone but the Barlows, so it seem’d, went about drest in “Caca du roi de Rome” & reenacting the age of the Caesars. I found Aaron Burr (much changed) so sunk in Baroque vice as to seem more than ever the descendant of Henry Burlingame III, were he not equally sunk in despair & alcohol. I found Germaine (much changed) newly pregnant by her sturdy guardsman – now secretly her husband – whom the household call’d Caliban behind her back: she was become nervous, insomniac, a touch dropsical to boot, & much given to laudanum in consequence; yet no less busy & brilliant than when I had first met her.

She scolded me for not bringing with me my belle sauvage, & insisted that I rehearse to her new young protégé the story of the original Baron Castine’s romance with Madocawanda, & my own with “Consuelo del Consulado.” She was certain her needling letters to Napoleon, on the occasion of De l’Allemagne’s French publication, still rankled the Emperor; he had banisht her beautiful friend Juliette Récamier for the crime of visiting her in Switzerland; if his secret police continued to harass her at Coppet, she would have to flee to Vienna, to Russia, to God knows where, since she had no wish to lose her scalp in America. If only she could resist writing letters! All the same, she believed the Emperor to be fascinated with her: let her set out for Russia, she bet he’d not be far behind. Had I read M. Chateaubriand’s silly Indian novels, Atala and René? Really, she thot her precious romantisme could be carried too far, and no doubt the worst was yet to come; if she were as young as young Master Balzac, she would set about to invent whatever was to follow it. Someday soon she meant to write her own version of la révolution: perhaps I would assist her with the chapters on the Commune & the Terror? Or was I back to my Pocahontas? In any case, I look’d more like my father every day. The Duc de Bassano? No wilier or more dishonest than the run of foreign ministers, she reckon’d, Napoleonic or Bourbon: he would promise Barlow everything, & (wise man!) put nothing in writing. But she would not advise me on how to thwart my friend Barlow’s mission, for while she approved the idea of an Indian free state, & agreed that another war with England would distract the Americans from westward expansion – just as Britain’s war with France kept both countries from expanding their influence in America – she believed it more imperative to curb Napoleon than to curb the pioneers. Better the Indians be lost than the British! Now: what was it I said happen’d to that famous plagued snuffbox?

Only stout Joel and Ruthy, it seem’d to me, were not much changed, simply mellow’d into middle age. Resign’d now to childlessness, they had replaced me & Fulton with a nephew of Joel’s from Yale. Resign’d also to less-than-Homerhood after the mocking critical reception of his huge Columbiad & his ode to Captains Lewis & Clark (ably parodied by John Quincy Adams), he regretted not having stuck to satire as my father had advised, and doubted he would go to the Muse again. He agreed now with his former tutor that History is your grandest fiction, tho he had not yet come to my father’s modest corollary (which I heard now for the 1st time): that its eloquentest authors, like those of the ancient ballads & Eastern tales, are anonymous, their subtlest “works” known only to the elect. Our deals & double-deals with Joseph Bacri & Hassan Bashaw, for example, were surely works of art, which gave him more pleasure than the whole Columbiad. He hoped his work in progress would equal it.

But he cordially declined to make me privy to his strategy with the Duc de Bassano, beyond acknowledging that he was not imprest with that gentleman’s verbal assurances that the Berlin & Milan decrees had been effectively revoked. The Duke was a regular Burlingame, he said, even whose written word could not be assumed to be authentic; and I was grown too much my father, & my interests too far from his own, for him to confide in me as he had used to, now he’d re-met me. My Tecumseh sounded like a splendid fellow, my “wife” a splendid woman; he hoped that the red men would not be hounded from the continent to become, like the black slaves, an indelible stain on the conscience of white America. But even as we spoke, the 12th Congress would be debating a war with England which Madison did not want yet must surely yield to if Prime Minister Perceval fail’d to rescind the Orders in Council, & Tecumseh’s confederacy did not disband. He Barlow would be pleased to be remember’d as a diplomatist instrumental in avoiding that war; if he should fail, he bade me seriously consider what I seem’d to him to have given no thot to: that with the cream of the British military engaged against Napoleon in Spain, the U. States might very well win the war, in the process destroying Tecumseh, annexing Canada, the Floridas, & Mexico, & sweeping uncheckt across the entire continent of North America as Napoleon was sweeping across Europe. Patriotic as he was, Barlow did not believe American destiny to be quite that manifest: he urged me to turn my energies to the course of peace.

I was moved by what he said, not to believe that the Indians’ cause would be better aided by peace than by war, but to see more clearly than ever, from the perspective of Paris, what Tecumseh knew: that their cause was lost in any case; that their future lay not in history but, as it were, in myth, & that therefore their only victory would be in valiant tho futile resistance. I wisht Andrée there to advise me. My plan had been to reestablish my acquaintance with Jérôme Bonaparte, now divorced from his American wife & restored to his brother’s good graces, & thro that avenue assure Napoleon that even half a year’s dallying with Barlow should suffice to see war declared betwixt the U. States & G. Britain, especially given the slowness of transatlantic communications. Only keep Britain from revoking her Orders in Council before Congress adjourn’d for the summer; Tecumseh’s confederacy would do the rest.

But before I could begin to put this strategy into action, your mother’s urgent letter reacht me: our stratagem with Harrison had misfired, not because he had attackt the Prophet’s town, but because, incredibly, Tenskwatawa had tried to win a military victory in his brother’s absence by attacking Harrison! Losses had been high on both sides, but the victory was unquestionably Harrison’s: the Indians were disperst from the Tippecanoe, the Prophet had fled, the town was burnt to the ground; the army had return’d triumphant to Vincennes with British rifles taken from the Indians; Harrison was everywhere acclaim’d a great hero. “Cato” would be furious: with his brother for having launcht so premature an attack; with us if he learnt we’d advised Harrison to make his threatening move. Andrée was the more distrest because, to console herself in my absence, she had pursued her research into our family’s history, particularly the activities of our namesakes in Pontiac’s rebellion, and was horrified at what she saw as a pattern of deadly reenactment, too mattersome for her to put in a hasty letter. Finally, our labors of the summer had, if not borne other fruit, at least sown other & sweeter seed: she was expecting! I was to forget Napoleon, Joel Barlow, & the Game of Governments, & come posthaste to make an honest woman of her; then together we must examine History, our family’s & our own, to the end of making honest people of ourselves.

But (she could not help adding, out of self-confest habit) it would not much delay me to return to her by way of London, where “our coney J[ohn] H[enry] was ripe for catching.” That was a trap too shrewdly set to go unsprung, & should provide our baby with a handsome & much-needed nest egg.

I was alarm’d as she. To settle that certain old family score with the late Duc de Crillon which I explain’d in my 2nd letter, I had assumed the name “Jean Blanque” & had imposed upon his son for a loan of £1,200 against a pledge to help restore him to Napoleon’s good graces, which he did not currently enjoy, via my friend the American minister, who did. Given time (and Barlow’s increasing popularity in the court of St. Cloud) the man would have been good for another thousand: but I cut short my mining of that vein as well as my futile intriguing against dear Joel. I’d not had time to make real headway on that front, but then, none seem’d especially call’d for, inasmuch as I’d learnt from aides of the Duc de Bassano what Joel himself was beginning to understand: that Napoleon’s policy, like mine, was to forestall England’s lifting her Orders in Council until war with the U. States was inevitable. I bade my friend farewell.

So relieved was Barlow to see me go, all his natural affection came to the fore. He was old enough now, he declared (nearing 60), & the times parlous enough, that he could not bid a friend good-bye without wondering whether they would meet again. He misst Toot Fulton & Benjamin West, Tom Paine & Jefferson, Jim Monroe & Dolley Madison; he even misst that old Yale fossil Noah Webster, who’d been so unkind to the Columbiad; aye, & Joseph Bacri, & my father, of whom I was now the very spit & image. And he would miss me, tho not my work against his peaceable aims, which he could excuse only because so many of his countrymen shared my belligerence. It was a snowy forenoon, one of 1811’s last. Barlow was reminded of his earliest satirical verses, written for my father even as I was being conceived: “And Jove descends in magazines of snow.”

Using my Canadian credentials in London, I learnt that British elements opposed to a 2nd American war had gone so far as to plot the assassination of Prime Minister Perceval, a staunch defender of the Orders in Council, knowing that Lord Castlereagh, his likely successor, was inclined to revoke them. Also that the King was in strait-waistcoat, pissing the bed & fancying that England was sunk & drown’d, himself shut up in Noah’s Ark with his Lady Pembroke (a Regency bill was expected momently). Also that the Foreign Office had rejected John Henry’s claim for £32,000 and a good American consulship in reward for his espionage, on the grounds that his reports were valueless: they referr’d him for emolument to his employer, the Canadian Governor-General’s office. But Sir James Craig was by then gone to his own reward, & Sir George Prevost was not inclined to honor his predecessor’s secret debts. Embitter’d & out of funds, Henry had left London to return to farming in Vermont.

I overtook him at Southampton and (in the guise of le Comte Édouard de Crillon) won his sympathy on shipboard by declaring myself to be a former French secret agent temporarily out of favor with Napoleon by reason of the machinations of my jealous rivals. When Henry confided his own ungrateful treatment by the British, & prepared to post into the North Atlantic those copies of his letters which “a friend” had advised him to make, I suggested he permit me to do the two of us a service by engaging to sell them to the Americans via the French minister Sérurier & Secretary of State Monroe, both of whom would be pleased to present to the Congress such clear evidence of British intriguing with the New England Federalists. There should be $100,000 in it for Henry, I maintain’d, & for myself the chance to regain the Emperor’s favor. Delighted, Henry entrusted the letters & negotiations to me. I was at first dismay’d that his “copies” were but rough summaries in an unimpressive notebook, & that he’d neither named the New England separatist leaders by name nor invoked such useful embarrassments as the Essex Junto of 1804, which had plotted with Burr to lead New England’s secession if he won the New York governorship that year. I consider’d dictating to Henry a fuller & more compromising text, but decided it were better not to reveal overmuch knowledge of such details. The holograph letters from Lord Liverpool & Robert Peel were enough to implicate Britain & serve our purpose; relieved not to be directly incriminated, the Federalists could retaliate against Madison by declaring Henry’s notebook a forgery, and we could have it both ways, promoting war & disunity at once.

All went smoothly. My apprehensions were that M. Sérurier would hesitate to vouch for me before making inquiries of the Duc de Bassano, or Madison to buy the letters before making inquiries of Joel Barlow (whose Washington house Sérurier was renting); also that Monroe might see thro my disguise. But I was enough alter’d by nature & by art since my last interview with Monroe, and enough conversant in the gossip of St. Cloud & the family affairs of the Ducs de Crillon, and they eager enough to put the letters before Congress as a prelude to Madison’s appealing for a declaration of war, that the only hitch was financial: I ask’d $125,000, hoping for $100,000; Monroe agreed, but Albert Gallatin declared that the Treasury’s whole budget for secret-service payments of this kind was but $50,000. Fearing Henry might renege, I threw in for my part the (forged) title to an (imaginary) estate of mine at “St. Martial” & an additional $10,500 worth of (counterfeit) notes & securities negotiable in Paris, thus further demonstrating my good faith to Sérurier & Monroe. By February the deal was closed: Henry gave me $17,500 of his $50,000 & set out for Paris, as Eben Cooke had once done for Maryland, to claim his estate. I then successfully coaxt another $21,000 from the Secretary of State, & might have got as much again from the French ministry had I not fear’d discovery of my imposture & yearn’d above all else to rejoin your mother (before she should become your mother) at Castines Hundred, to put right if I could our great disservice to Tecumseh, to watch over your wombing, & to learn what my beloved might have learnt.

Et voici! Tecumseh, Andrée tearfully reported, would have none of us. Publicly he deprecated the loss at Tippecanoe as a mere imprudency by rash young warriors indignant at Harrison’s trespass, but he was in fact enraged; had seized his brother by the hair & banisht him from his sight. He was constrain’d from making a treaty with Madison (in order to gain time to reunite the scatter’d tribes) only by Harrison’s insulting stipulation that he go to Washington alone instead of with the 300 young warriors he wanted to comprise an effective retinue. Now he was off to Fort Malden & Amherstburg, at the farther end of Lake Erie, overseeing General Brock’s re-arming of the confederacy & directing minor raids against American settlements to restore his authority & the Indians’ morale. He rejected angrily Andrée’s suggestion that the Tippecanoe fiasco had, after all, purged his camp of some of its less reliable members. He had not accused us outright of treachery, only of being “our grandparents’ grandchildren.”