Kitabı oku: «An American Patrician, or The Story of Aaron Burr», sayfa 8
Aaron does not look at Van Ness as he thus brings the secrets of his soul to the light of day, but wears the manner of one preoccupied and in the spell of self. Van Ness shudders as he listens; and, while the slow words follow one another in hateful swart procession, a chill creeps over him, as from the evil monstrous nearness of something elemental, abnormal, fearsome. A sweat breaks out on his face. Neither his wits nor his tongue can frame remark for either good or ill. The brooding Aaron seems not to notice, but falls into a black muse.
CHAPTER XIV – THE TRIUMPH OF AARON
IT is the era of bad feeling, and the breasts of men are reservoirs of poison. Jefferson and Adams, while known admitted rivals, deplore these wormwood conditions and strive against them. It is as though they strove against the tides; party lines were never more fiercely drawn. Some portrait of the hour may be found in the following:
Adams gives a dinner; and, because he cannot get over the Jonathan Edwards emanation of Aaron, he invites him. Also, Van Ness being with Aaron, the invitation includes Van Ness. Hamilton and Jefferson will be there; since it is one of the hypocritical affectations of these good people to keep up a polite appearance of friendship, by way of example, if not rebuke, to warring followers, who are hopefully fighting duels and shedding blood and taking life in their interests. On the way to the President’s house Van Ness, to whom Adams is new, queries Aaron:
“What sort of a man is Adams?”
“He is an honest, pragmatic, hot-tempered thick-skull,” says Aaron – “a New England John Bull! – a masculine Mrs. Malaprop whom Sheridan would love. You can have no better description of him than was given me but yesterday by a member of his Cabinet. ‘Adams,’ says the cabineteer, ‘is a man who whether sportful, witty, kind, cold, drunk, sober, angry, easy, stiff, jealous, careless, cautious, confident, close or open, is so always in the wrong place and with the wrong man!’”
“Is he a good executive?”
“Bad! By nature he is no more in touch with the spirit of a democracy than with the maritime policies of the Ptolemies. His pet picture of government is England, with the one amendment that he would call the king a president. As to his executive labors: why, then, he touches only to disarrange, talks only to disturb. And all without meaning to do so.”
The dinner is neither large nor formal. Aaron sits on the right hand of Adams, while Jefferson has Van Ness and Hamilton at either elbow. In the cross fire of conversation comes the following: The topic is government.
“Speaking of the British constitution,” says Adams, “purge that constitution of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would be the most perfect constitution ever devised by the wit of man.”
Hamilton cocks his ear. “Sir,” says he, “purge the British constitution of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would become an impracticable government. As it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most powerful government that ever existed.”
Presently, the currents of converse shift, and the torrid heats of party are considered. It is now that Jefferson is heard from.
“The situation is deplorable!” he exclaims. “You and I, sir” – looking across at Adams – “have seen warm debates and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the street to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way lest they be obliged to touch their hats. Men’s passions are boiling over; and one who keeps himself cool, and clear of the contagion, is so far below the point of ordinary conversation that he finds himself socially cast away. More; there is a moral breaking down. The interruption of letters is becoming so notorious” – here he looks hard at Hamilton, whose followers are supposed to peep into letters not addressed to them – “that I am forming a resolution of declining correspondence with my friends through the channels of the post office altogether.”
Even during Aaron’s short stay at the Capitol, fresh fuel is heaped upon the fires of his Hamilton hates. A cloud blows up in the sky; war with France is threatened. Washington at Mount Vernon is commissioned commander in chief; Hamilton – the active – is placed next to him. Aaron’s name, sent in for a general’s commission, is secretly vetoed by Hamilton whispering in the Adams ear.
Adams does not like the veto; he thinks he should name Aaron, and says so.
“If you do,” declares Hamilton warningly, “it will defeat your reelection.”
Adams groans and gives way. It is the argument wherewith Hamilton never fails to drive him or curb him as he will. Aaron hears of this new offense; he says nothing, but lays it away with the others.
Candidate Jefferson and Manager Aaron are far apart in their hopes and fears, the former taking the gloomy view. They come together confidentially.
“I have looked over the field,” says Jefferson, “and we are already beaten.”
“Sir,” returns Aaron with grim point, “you should look again. I think you see things wrong end up.”
“My hatred of Hamilton,” observes Aaron to Van Ness, as their coach rolls north for home, “is the good fortune of Jefferson. I shall be fighting my own fight, and so I shall win. If I were fighting only for Jefferson, I can well see how the strife might have another upcome.”
The campaign draws down; it is Adams against Jefferson, Federal against Republican. Hamilton leaves the seat of government, and comes to New York to take personal charge. At that his designs are Janus-faced. He says “Adams,” but he means “Pinckney.” He foresees that, if Adams be given another term, he will defy control. Wherefore he is publicly for Adams, and privately for Pinckney – he looks at Massachusetts but sees only South Carolina. This collision of pretense and purpose, on Hamilton’s false part, gets vastly in the Federal way. That it should do so will instantly occur to curious ones, if they will but seek to go south by heading north.
As Hamilton sets out to take presidential possession of New York, he has no misgivings. He knows little or nothing of Aaron’s designs or what that ingenious gentleman has been about.
“There is the Manhattan Bank of course; but what can it do? There are the Bucktails – who are vulgar clods! There are the Livingstons and the Clintons – he has beaten them before!”
Thus run the reflections of the confident Hamilton. No; he sees only triumph ahead. He gives Aaron and his candidate Jefferson – with their borrel issue of Alien and Sedition – not half the thought that he devotes to ways and means by which he hopes finally to steal the electors from Adams, and produce Pinckney in the White House. That is Hamilton’s dream of power – Pinckney!
Everything pivots on the legislature; since it is the legislature which will select the electors.
Hamilton, bearing in mind his intended steal of the State, prepares his list of candidates for Albany. He does not pick them for either wisdom or moral worth; what he is after are legislators whom he can certainly manhandle to match his designs, and who will give him electors – he himself will furnish the names – of a Pinckney not an Adams complexion. He makes up his slate to that treasonable end; and the swift Aaron gets a copy before the ink is dry.
Aaron smiles when he runs down the ignoble muster of Hamilton’s boneless nonentities.
“They are the least in the town!” he mutters. “I shall pit against them the town’s greatest.”
Aaron with his Bucktails, now makes ready his own legislative ticket. At the head he places old North-of-Ireland Clinton – a local Whittington, ten times governor of the State. General Gates – for whom Aaron, when time was, plotted the downfall of Washington, and who received the sword of the vanquished Burgoyne and sent that popinjay back to England to fail at play-writing – comes next. After General Gates the wily Aaron writes “Samuel Osgood” – who was Washington’s postmaster general – “Henry Rutgers, Elias Neusen, Thomas Storms, George Warner, Philip Arcularius, James Hunt, Ezekiel Robbins, Brockholst Livingston, and John Swartwout” – every name a tower of strength.
Hamilton cannot repress a flutter of fear as he reads the noble roster; but his unflagging vanity, which serves him instead of a more reasonable optimism, rushes to his rescue. None the less it jars on him a bit strangely, albeit, he laughs at it for a jest, that the best regarded of the town should make up the ticket of the yeomanry and the crude Bucktails, while the aristocratical Federals and the equally aristocratical Cincinnati – that coterie of perfume and patricianism! – search the gutters for theirs.
Seeing himself on the Jefferson ticket, old North-of-Ireland Clinton makes trouble. He sends for Aaron and his committee, and notifies them that he cannot consent to run.
“If you, Colonel Burr, were the candidate,” he says, “I should run gladly; but Jefferson I hate.”
In his hope’s heart, old North-of-Ireland Clinton – who, for all his North-of-Ireland blood, was born in America – thinks he himself may be struck by the presidential lightning, and does not intend to place any deflecting obstruction in the path of such descending bolt.
Aaron has forestalled the Clinton refusal in his thoughts, and is not surprised by the high Clintonian attitude. He tries persuasion; the old ex-governor and would-be president only plants himself more firmly. Under no circumstances shall he agree to run; his honored name must not be used.
It is now that Aaron shows his teeth: “Governor Clinton,” says he, “when it comes to that, our committee’s appearance before you, preferring the request that you run, is a ceremony rather of courtesy than need. With the last word, regardless of either your plans or your preferences, the public we represent is perfect in its right to name you, and compel you to run. And, sir, making short what might become long, and so saving time for us all, I must now notify you that, should you continue to withhold your consent, we stand already determined to retain and use your name despite refusal, as a course entirely within the lines of popular right.”
In the looks and tones of Aaron, the old North-of-Ireland governor reads decision not to be revoked, and for once in his obstinate life surrenders gracefully.
“Gentlemen,” says he, with a bland wave of the hand to Aaron and his Bucktail committee, “since you put it in that way, refusal is out of my power. Also let me add, that no man could take a nomination from a higher, a more honorable, a more patriotic source.”
The campaign, on in earnest, goes forward with a roar. Not a screaming item is omitted. Guns boom; flags flaunt; bands of music bray; gay processions go marching; crackers splutter and snap; orators with iron throats sweep down on spellbound crowds in gales of red-faced eloquence; flaming rockets, when the sun goes down, streak the night with fire; the bold Buck-tails, cidered to the brim, cause Brom Martling’s long-room to ring again, and make the intersection of Spruce and Nassau a Bedlam crossroads.
This is well; yet Aaron desires more. The issue is Alien and Sedition; he yearns for an overt expression of what villain work may be done by that black statute.
Aaron’s strength, as a captain of politics, lies in his intuitive knowledge of men. He is never popular – never loved while ever admired. Men may no more love him than they may love a diamond, or a Damascus sword blade, or a tallest, sun-kissed, snow-capped mountain peak. Still that innate grasp of men, and what motives will move them, is as an edged tool in his hands wherewith to carve out triumph. This gift of man-reading comes in play when now he would exhibit Alien and Sedition in its baleful workings.
There is a Judge Yates; his home is in Otsego. As though he had builded him, Aaron is aware of Yates in his elements. That honest man is of your natural-born martyrs. Is there a headsman’s block, there he lays his neck; given a scaffold, he instantly mounts it; into every pillory he thrusts his head and hands, into every stocks his heels; by every stake he takes his stand as soon as it is put up; and he would sooner meet a despot than a friend. And yet – to defend Yates – that bent for martyrdom is nothing less than a bent to be noble; for a martyr is but a hero reversed. The two are brothers; a hero is only a martyr who succeeds, a martyr only a hero who fails.
Aaron sends for the oppression-thirsty Yates. “Here is a pamphlet flaying Adams,” says he. “It is raw and ferocious. Take it home and circulate it.”
“Why?” asks Yates.
“Because the Federalists will arrest you. They are fools enough to do it.”
“Doubtless!” – this dryly. “But what advantage do you discover in having me locked up?”
“Man! can’t you see? It will illustrate their tyranny! Your seizure will be on a United States warrant. That means they must bring you from Otsego to New York. Think what a triumph that should be – you, the paraded victim of the monarchical Adams!”
Yates goes home to Otsego with a gay, elate heart, and publishes Aaron’s blood-raw pamphlet. He is seized and paraded, as the astute Aaron has foreseen. The flocking farmers fringe the captive’s line of march. Yates is a martyr, and makes his journey through double ranks of sympathy for himself and curses for the despotic Adams. The martyrdom of Yates is worth a thousand votes.
“It is the difference between the eye and the ear,” says Aaron to his aide, Swartwout. “You might explain the iniquities of Alien and Sedition, and never rouse the people. Show them those iniquities, and they take fire. It is quite natural enough. I tell you of a man crushed by a falling tree; you feel a conventional shock that lasts a minute. Should you some day see a man crushed by a falling tree, you will start in your sleep for a twelvemonth with the pure horror of it. Wherefore, never address the ear when you can appeal to the eye. The gateway to the imagination is the eye.”
The campaign wags to a close; the day of the ballot has its dawning. To the amazed chagrin of Hamilton, Aaron and his Bucktails go over him at the polls with a rousing majority of four hundred and ninety; he is beaten, Aaron is dominant, New York is Jefferson’s. The blow shakes Hamilton to the heart, and for the moment he can neither plan nor act. In the face of such disaster, he sits stricken.
Presently, as though the bad in him is more vivid than the good and quicker at recovery, that old instinct of larceny struggles to its feet. He will steal the State; not from Adams as he planned, but from Jefferson. He scribbles a note to Jay, who is in town at his home, urging him as governor to call a special session of the legislature, a Federal Legislature, and go about the crime. He feels the necessity of justification; for Jay is of a skittish honor. This on his mind, he closes with: “It is the only way by which we can prevent an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics from getting possession of the helm of government.”
Jay reads, and draws down his brows in a frown. Hamilton’s messenger is waiting.
“Governor,” says the messenger, “General Hamilton bid me get an answer.”
“Tell General Hamilton there is no answer.” Jay rereads the note. Then he takes quill, writes a sentence on the back, and files it away in a pigeonhole. Years later, when Jay and Hamilton and Adams and Jefferson and Aaron are dead and under the grass roots, hands yet unformed will draw the letter forth and unborn eyes will read: “Proposing a measure for party purposes which I do not think it would become me to adopt. J. J.”
CHAPTER XV – THE INTRIGUE OF THE TIE
HAMILTON writhes and twists like a hurt snake. Helpless in that first effort before the adamantine honesty of Jay, when the breath of his courage returns, he bends himself to consider, whether by other means, fair or foul, the election may not yet be stolen for Pinckney. He sends out a flock of letters to the Federal leaders, whom he addresses loftily as their commander in chief of party.
It is now he receives a fresh stab. By their replies, and rather in the cool tone than in the substance, the Federal chiefs show that his bare word is no longer enough to move them. Washington is dead; that potential name no more remains to conjure with. And now, to the passing of Washington, has been added his own defeat. The two disasters leave his voice of scanty consequence in the parliaments of the Federalists. He finds this out from such as Cabot of Massachusetts, Cooper of New York and Bayard of Delaware, who peremptorily decline a Pinckney intrigue as worse than hopeless. They propose instead – and therein lurks horror – that the Federal electors be asked to abandon Adams for Aaron. They can take the Adams electors, they argue, and, with what may be coaxed from the Jefferson strength, make Aaron President – their President – the President of the Federalists.
The suggestion to take up Aaron shocks Hamilton even more than does his discovered loss of power – which latter, of itself, is as a blade of ice through his heart. It is bitter to lose the election; more bitter to learn that his decree is no longer regarded; most bitter to hear of Aaron as a possible President, and by Federal votes at that. Broken of heart and hope, the deposed king retires to his country seat, the Grange, and sits in mourning with his soul.
Meanwhile, Aaron, as though a presidency in his personal favor possesses but minor interest, devotes himself to the near nuptials of baby Theo, who is to marry Joseph Alston, a rich young rice planter of South Carolina.
Having turned the shoulder of their disregard to Hamilton, the Federal chiefs confer among themselves by letter and word of mouth. Their great purpose is to save themselves from Jefferson, whom they fear and hate. They would sooner have Aaron, as not so much the stark democrat as is the Man of Monticello. There be folk to whom nothing is so full of terror in a democracy as a democrat; and our Federalists are white at the thought of Jefferson. Aaron would suit them better; they think him less of a leveler. Still they must know his feelings. They will bind him with promises; for they, cautious gentlemen, have no notion of buying a pig in a poke. They seek out Aaron, who has left off politics for orange wreaths and is up to the ears in baby Theo’s wedding. As a preliminary they send his lieutenant, Swartwout, to take soundings.
“If the presidency be tendered, will you accept?” asks Swartwout.
“Assuredly! There are two things, sir, no gentleman may decline – a lady and a presidency.”
Aaron sobers a bit after this small flippancy, and tells Swartwout that, should he be chosen, he will serve.
“There can be no refusal,” he says. “The electors are free to make their choice, and he on whom they pitch must serve. Mark this, however,” he goes on, warningly; “I shall lift neither hand nor head in the business; the thing must come to me unsought and uninvited. Also, since you, yourself, are of those who will select the electors for our own State, I tell you, as you value my friendship, that New York must go to Jefferson. We carried the State for him, and he shall have it.”
Following Swartwout’s visit, Federalists Cabot and Bayard wait upon Aaron. They point out that he can be President; but they seek to condition it upon certain promises.
“Gentlemen,” returns Aaron, “I know not what in my past has led you to this journey. I’ve no promises to make. Should I ever be President, I shall be no man’s president but my own.”
“Think of the honor, sir!” says Federalist Bayard.
“Honor?” repeats Aaron. “Now I should call it disgrace indeed if I went into the White House in fetters to you. Believe me, I can see my own way to honor, sir; you need hold no candle to my feet.”
Although rebuffed by Aaron, the Federal chiefs – all save the broken Hamilton, eating out his baffled heart at the Grange – none the less go forward with their designs. They call away from Adams what electors will follow them, and gain a handful from Jefferson besides. The law-demanded vote is finally taken and the count shows Jefferson seventy-three, Aaron seventy-three, Adams sixty-five, Jay one.
No name having received a majority, the ejection must go to the House. The sixteen States, expressing themselves through their House delegations and owning each one vote, are now to pick the world a president. At this the campaign is all to fight over again. But in a different way, on different ground, and the two candidates Jefferson and Aaron.
In the weeks which pass before the House convenes, Federalist Bayard, in the heat of the pulling and hauling among House men, makes a second pilgrimage to Aaron. The latter, baby Theo being by this time safely married and abroad upon her honeymoon, has leisure to talk.
Federalist Bayard lays open the situation, “As affairs are,” he explains – he has made a count of noses – “Jefferson, when the House convenes, will have New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and his home State of Virginia. You, for your side, will have New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, South Carolina, and my own State of Delaware. The delegations of Maryland and Vermont, being evenly divided between yourself and Jefferson, will have no voice. The tally will show eight for Jefferson, six for you, two not voting. None the less, in the face of these figures the means of electing you exist. By deceiving one man – a great blockhead – and tempting two – not incorruptible – you can still secure a majority of the States. I – ”
“You have said enough, sir,” breaks in Aaron. “I shall deceive no one, tempt no one; not even you. Go, sir; carry what I say to what ring of Federalists you represent. Also, you may consider yourself personally fortunate that I do not ask how far your conduct should have construction as an insult.”
Federalist Bayard hurries away with a red face and a flea in his ear. Gulping his chagrin, he tells his fellow chiefs that the obdurate Aaron will do nothing, consent to nothing, to help himself.
Jefferson does not share Aaron’s chill indifference. While the latter comports himself as carelessly as though a White House is an edifice of every day, the Man of Monticello goes as far the other way, and feels all the uneasy anger of him who is on the brink of being robbed. He calls on the wooden Adams, and demands that the wooden one exert his influence with his party in favor of Aaron’s defeat.
“It is I, sir,” says Jefferson, “whom the people elected; and you should see their will respected.”
Adams grows warm. “Sir,” he retorts, “the event is in your power. Say that you will do justice to the Federalists, and the government will instantly be put into your hands.”
“If such be your answer, sir,” returns Jefferson, equaling, if not surpassing the Adams heat, “I have to tell you that I do not intend to come into the presidency by capitulation.”
Jefferson leaves the White House, while Adams – who is practical, even if high-tempered – begins his preparations to create and fill twenty-three life judgeships, before his successor shall take possession.
As much as the Man of Monticello, however, our wooden Adams is afire at the on-end condition of the times. Only his wrath arises, not over the war between Jefferson and Aaron, but because he himself is to be ousted. The action of the people, in its motive, is beyond his understanding. As unrepublican in his hidebound instincts as any royal Charles, he cannot grasp the reason of his overthrow.
Speaking with Federalist Cabot, he furnishes his angry meditations tongue. “What is this mighty difference,” he cries, “which the public discovers between Jefferson and myself? He is for messages to Congress, I am for speeches; he is for a little White House dinner every day, I am for a big dinner once a week; I am for an occasional reception, he is for a daily levee; he is for straight hair and liberty, while I think a man may curl or cue his hair and still be free. Their Jefferson preference, sir, convinces me that, while men are reasoning, they are not reasonable creatures. The one difference between Jefferson and myself is this: I appeal to men’s reason, he flatters their vanity. The result – a mob result – is that he stands victorious, while I lie prostrate.” Saying which the wooden, angry Adams resumes his arrangements for creating and filling those twenty-three life judgeships – being resolved, in his narrow breast, to make the most of his dying moments as a president.
The day of White House fate arrives; the House comes together. Seats are placed for President and Senate. Also lounges are brought in; for there are members too ill to occupy their regular seats – one is even attended by his wife. Before a vote is taken, the House adopts an order which forbids any other business until a President is chosen and the White House tie determined.
The voice of the House is announced by States; the ballot falls as foreseen by Federalist Bayard. It runs eight for Jefferson, six for Aaron, with Maryland and Vermont voiceless, because of their evenly divided delegations, and a refusal on the part of the House to count half votes for any name. There being no choice – since no name possesses a majority of all the States – another vote is called. The upcome is the same: eight Jefferson, six Aaron, two mute. And so through twenty-nine hours of ceaseless balloting.
Seven House days go by; the vote continues unchanged. At the close of the seventh day, Federalist Bayard – who is the entire delegation from his little State of Delaware, and until then has been casting its vote for Aaron – beholds a light. No one may know the sort of light he sees. It is, however, altogether a Bayard and in no wise a Jefferson light; for the Man of Monticello is of too rigid a probity to entertain so much as the ghost of a bargain. On the seventh day, by that new light, Federalist Bayard changes his vote. Jefferson is named President, with Aaron Vice-President, and that heartbreaking tie is at an end.
The result leaves Aaron as coolly the picture of polished, icy indifference as ever during his icily polished days. The Man of Monticello, who has been gloom one moment and angry impatience the next, feels most a burning hatred of the imperturbable Aaron, whom he blames for what he has gone through. The color of this hatred will deepen, not fade, until a day when it gets trippingly in front of Aaron’s plans to send them sprawling. There is, however, no present hateful indications; for Jefferson, reared in an age of secrets, can lock his breast against the curious and prying. President and Vice-President, he and Aaron go about their duties upon terms which mingle a deal of courtesy with little friendly warmth. This excites no wonder; friendships between President and Vice-President have never been the habit.
In wielding the Senate gavel, Aaron is an example of the lucidly just. He refuses to be partisan, and presides for the whole Senate, not a half. He knows no friend, no foe, and adds another coat of black to the Jefferson hate, by voting when a tie occurs with the Federalists, against the repeal of those twenty-three engaging life judgeships, which the practical Adams created and filled in his industrious last days.
Not alone does Aaron shine out as the north star of Senate guidance, but his home rivals the White House – which leans toward the simple-severe under Jefferson – as a polite center of society; for baby Theo comes up from South Carolina to preside over it – Theo, loving and lustrous! Aaron, with the lustrous Theo, entertains Jerome Bonaparte, on his way to a Baltimore bride. Also, Theo, during moments informal, lapses into gossip with Dolly Madison, the pair privily deciding that Miss Patterson has no bargain in the Franco-Corsican.
On the lustrous Theo’s second visit to her Vice-Presidential parent, she brings in her arms a small, red-faced, howling bundle, and, putting it proudly into his arms, tells him it bears the name of Aaron Burr Alston. Aaron receives the small red-faced howling bundle even more proudly than it is offered, and hugs it to his heart. From this moment, until a dark one that will come later, little Aaron Burr Alston is to live the focus and central purpose of all his ambitions. It is for this little one he will make his plots, and lay his plans, to become a western Bonaparte and swoop at empire.
During these days of Aaron’s eminence and triumph, the broken, beaten Hamilton mopes about his Grange. Vain, resentful, since politics has turned its fickle back upon him, he does his best to turn his back on politics. For all that, his mortification, while he plays farmer and pretends retirement, finds voice at every chance.
He receives his friend Pinckney, and shows him about his shaven acres. “And when you return home,” he says, imitating the lightsome and doing it poorly, “send me some of your Carolina paroquets. Also a paper of Carolina melon seed for my garden. For a garden, my dear Pinckney” – this, with a sickly smile – “is, as you know, a very usual refuge for your disappointed politician.” It is now, his acute bitterness coming uppermost, he breaks into not over-manly complaint – the complaint of selflove wounded to the heart. “What an odd destiny is mine! No man has done more for the country, sacrificed more for it, than have I. No man than myself has stood more loyally by the Constitution – that frail, worthless fabric which I am still striving to prop up! And yet I have the murmurs of its friends no less than the curses of its foes to pay for it. What can I do better than withdraw from the arena? Each day proves more and more that America, with its republics, was never meant for me.”
