Copyright © 1987 by Random House LLC

Introduction copyright © 2014 by Steve Berry

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

THE DIAL PRESS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 1987.

ISBN 9780812986853

ebook ISBN 9780804151528

randomhousebooks.com

Book design by Carole Lowenstein, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Pete Garceau

Cover photograph: Getty Images

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INTRODUCTION

Steve Berry

I grew up in the 1960s, a time when the extent of reading material for kids was, to say the least, limited. R. L. Stine, J. K. Rowling, Suzanne Collins, and so many others had yet to come along. In fact, what we now know as the young adult genre had yet to be invented. Back then, at least for me, it was Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. A limited selection, but what gems those tales were—each loaded with action, adventure, secrets, and conspiracies. Wondrous stories to fuel young imaginations. I devoured them.

Then one day when I was sixteen years old, a friend handed me a dog-eared paperback copy of Hawaii by James Michener. Its thousand pages immediately intimidated me, as did the small print. I’d never seen so much information packed into one book. The opening sentence alone contained thirty-six words—monstrous in comparison to the prose of Franklin W. Dixon.

But what a sentence: Millions upon millions of years ago, when the continents were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others.

I kept reading.

What unfolded was a saga spanning many centuries that described how a tiny group of islands in the Pacific Ocean were formed by nature and then settled by man. The epic involved Polynesians, Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, and Americans. Its massive chapters, hundreds of pages long, featured one expansive episode after another—each intertwined—forming a chronicle that defined both the land and its culture. I read it cover to cover. Then I found more books by this guy Michener and read every one. Eventually, I started collecting them, and now, more than forty years later, I own a first edition of each, save one—Tales of the South Pacific. That book is hard to find. Only a few thousand were printed and, if by some miracle one of those 1947 first editions can be found, the price is through the roof. I keep every one of my Michener books prominently displayed, wrapped in plastic. I see them every day. They are a source of pride and comfort. Today, I write modern-day thrillers in which history plays a central role. Without question, the seed for that technique was planted the day I discovered Hawaii.

James Michener led an incredible life. Born in 1907, he was orphaned but was soon adopted by a woman named Mabel Michener, who was already raising two other children. Some of his biographers have hypothesized that he was actually Mabel’s natural son, the adoption story used to protect both of their reputations. No one knows the truth, and as an adult Michener refused to comment on the subject.

By the time he turned ten, the family had moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They were poor, barely able to put food on the table. His classmates, and even a teacher or two, tormented Michener about the secondhand clothes and toeless sneakers he wore every day. Later in life he recounted that taunting with a sly smile and a twinkle in his eye. He would say that those early years instilled in him an appreciation for life that he never forgot. They taught him about living simply and not attaching too much value to material things. And though he eventually earned hundreds of millions of dollars from writing, he always feared ending up poor.

Before he’d even reached twenty years of age, Michener had traveled across the country in boxcars, by thumbing rides, or simply by walking. He worked in carnival shows and other odd jobs, and he visited all but three states. Of that time, he wrote in his 1991 autobiography, The World Is My Home, “Those were years of wonder and enchantment. Some of the best years I would know. I kept meeting American citizens of all levels who took me into their cars, their confidence and often their homes.” He would also say that those wandering years spurred inside him an insatiable curiosity about people, cultures, and faraway lands.

In 1925 he entered Swarthmore College, a prestigious Quaker institution, on a four-year scholarship, graduating with highest honors. He attended graduate school in Scotland, then returned home and taught at a school in Bucks County. He eventually ended up in New York City, editing textbooks at Macmillan Publishing.

World War II changed everything. At age forty Michener enlisted in the navy, where he discovered the enchanting South Pacific. He earned the rank of lieutenant commander and was made a naval historian, assigned to investigate cultural problems on the various islands. A near-fatal crash landing in French New Caledonia altered the course of his life. He wrote in his autobiography, “As the stars came out and I could see the low mountains I had escaped, I swore: ‘I’m going to live the rest of my life as if I were a great man.’ And despite the terrible braggadocio of those words, I understood precisely what I meant.”

That brush with death also made him realize what every soldier was experiencing during the war, and that one day, when the danger had passed, people might want to recall those things. So each night he began writing down observations, recording comments, describing people and places. Fifty years later, in 1991, he said:

Sitting there in the darkness, illuminated only by the flickering lamplight, I visualized the aviation scenes in which I had participated, the landing beaches I’d seen, the remote outposts, the exquisite islands with bending palms, and especially the valiant people I’d known: the French planters, the Australian coast watchers, the Navy nurses, the Tonkinese laborers, the ordinary sailors and soldiers who were doing the work, and the primitive natives to whose jungle fastnesses I had traveled.

All of that became Tales of the South Pacific.

The story of how that first manuscript made it to print is typical Michener—an unexpected combination of skill, determination, and luck. Using a pseudonym, he submitted the work to Macmillan, the publisher he’d worked for before enlisting. He omitted his name because he knew the company had a strict policy against publishing anything by an employee. Once the war was over he definitely intended to return to work there, but at the time of the submission he was technically a naval officer and not an employee. So the company bought the book, which was published in 1947. One year later Tales of the South Pacific won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Michener changed publishers in 1949, moving to Random House, where he stayed for the rest of his life. More books followed—The Fires of Spring, Return to Paradise, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, and Sayonara. Also in 1949 he moved to Honolulu and soon began work on his most ambitious project to date. Four years of research and three years of writing were needed to produce Hawaii. Its epic scope, length, and breadth proved to be the stamp of Michener’s trademark style, one he would master over the next forty years. Legend has it that he finished Hawaii on March 18, 1959, the day Congress voted to accept the islands as the fiftieth state.

In 1962 Michener ran for Congress as a liberal Democrat but lost. Then, in 1968, he worked as secretary of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention. Outer space was a lifelong interest, and he served on NASA’s advisory council, an experience that led to his novel Space.

Honors were something Michener shied away from, but in 1977 Gerald Ford bestowed upon him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Eventually, he wrote nearly fifty books, including five on Japanese art. His work has been translated into multiple languages, and there are more than 75 million copies of his books in print. These latest editions, being rereleased with new covers, will only add to that already staggering inventory.

A myth associated with Michener speaks of his cadre of researchers, used to gather the enormous amount of historical detail included in each of his epics. The reality was quite different. Most of the work was accomplished with the help of only three secretaries. He was a disciplined writer, establishing a routine early in his career and maintaining it his entire life. An early riser, he would go straight to work, where he wrote using a manual typewriter. He then had a light breakfast, maybe a meeting or two, and went back to work until around one P.M. Evenings were a time to be by himself. In the final year of his life, at age ninety, he still kept to his daily routine, except he spent three days a week at a renal treatment center, undergoing kidney dialysis.

The treatment proved painful in a multitude of ways, perhaps the most difficult being that it prevented him from straying far from home. The man who’d visited nearly every country could no longer travel. He told an interviewer at the time, “I sit in the TV room and see shows on the big ships I used to travel or areas that I used to wander, and a tear comes to my eye. It’s not easy.”

And that explains his death—he simply decided there would be no more dialysis. Instead, he welcomed the end.

Michener died on October 16, 1997.

I recall the day vividly. A segment on the evening news reported that he was gone. A sadness came over me, as if I’d lost a close friend—which, in a sense, I had.

In preparation for writing this introduction, I reviewed many articles written just after Michener passed. Most came from folks who’d had some personal contact with him through the years—an experience that had clearly stuck in their memory. All of them recounted what happened as if they had been in the presence of a king or head of state. It seemed a privilege to have spent just a little time with James Michener.

And that legacy lives on.

Though he was known to be fanatically frugal, he gave away more than $100 million. Recipients of his generosity included libraries, museums, and universities. He donated $30 million to the University of Texas for the establishment of a creative writing program. Several million more went to the creation of the James A. Michener Art Museum in Pennsylvania. One wing of that building was named for his third wife, Mari Sabusawa Michener, who died before him, in 1994.

He never really liked talking about himself, and he could frustrate interviewers. “Famous is a word I never use,” he would say. “I’m well known. I’ve written thirty or forty books. I’ve done a great deal. I let it go at that.” He was extremely generous with his autograph, so much so that he once noted, “The most valuable books are those that aren’t signed.”

Of my own collection, only one bears his signature.

To the frequently asked question, “Which book are you most proud of?” he would just smile and say, “The one I’m working on next.”

By no means was he perfect. He could be a difficult man to know. He wasn’t the type to start conversations with strangers, and he detested small talk. He had few close friends, and those who counted themselves in that number knew to tread lightly. He could be abrupt, even rude, and quite aloof. After his death we learned that he utilized collaborators on some of the big books, a fact he refused to acknowledge in life. He was married three times and at one point maintained a mistress. He was a multimillionaire, yet he would constantly fret about not having enough money to pay his bills. And though he was an orphan himself and a co-founder of an adoption agency, in the 1950s he gave up his claim to an adopted child when he divorced his second wife.

All of which shows that he was human.

But still, what a remarkable man.

Michener possessed an incomparable ability to simultaneously enthrall, entertain, and inform. Nobody else could write a two-hundred-word sentence with such grace and style. And he chose his subjects with great care: the South Pacific (Tales of the South Pacific, Return to Paradise), Judaism (The Source), South Africa (The Covenant), the West Indies (Caribbean), the American West (Centennial), the Chesapeake Bay (Chesapeake), Texas, Alaska, Spain (Iberia), Mexico, Poland, the Far East.

Like millions of other readers, I loved them all.

I never met James Michener. I would have loved to tell him how he sparked the imagination of a sixteen-year-old boy, which led first to a lifelong love of reading, then to a career as a writer. When, in 1990, I decided to write my first novel, it was Michener who influenced me most. By the end of that decade, though, changes had firmly begun to take hold. Today you won’t encounter many two-hundred-word sentences or millennia-long sagas involving hundreds of characters. Instead, in the twenty-first century, story, prose, and purpose are expected to be tight. In the Internet age—with video games, twenty-four-hour news, streaming movies, you name it—there is just little time for thousand-page epics. Toward the end of his life Michener gave an interview in which he doubted he would have ever been published if he’d first started in that environment.

Thank goodness he came along when he did.

Now his stories can live forever.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

INTRODUCTION by Steve Berry

THE STARRS

JARED STARR 1726–1787

SIMON STARR 1759–1807

JUSTICE EDMUND STARR 1780–1847

GENERAL HUGH STARR 1833–1921

EMILY STARR 1858–1932

RICHARD STARR 1890–1954

RACHEL DENHAM STARR 1928–

NORMAN STARR 1951–

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

By James A. Michener

About the Author

Excerpt from Hawaii

THE STARRS

My bad luck started just before Christmas 1985. But at the time, as so often happens, it seemed like good luck.

I had graduated from West Point just in time to join the final fighting in the rice paddies of Vietnam. Returning with a chest full of medals, a few earned, most routine, I married Nancy Makin, a girl from Maryland whom I’d been dating whenever I found myself with stateside duty. We had spent our first three years of married life in the Panama Canal Zone, where I had the shameful task of watching as Jimmy Carter gave away that marvel of engineering to the Panamanians. My father, a colonel in the Army Reserve and a noted hero in World War II, called it mildly “the most traitorous act of any American since Aaron Burr.” And believe me, considering what Aaron Burr had done to our family as well as our nation in the early 1800s, that was a savage indictment.

It was in Panama that I mastered Spanish, which led to further assignments south of the border; and in Argentina, Chile and especially Guatemala, learning firsthand about Communist subversion on our doorstep.

I was never gung ho in my work against the Reds. That’s not my style. I don’t like to be out front unless war’s been declared and I’m in charge of troops. But no one had greater aversion to Communism than I did, after the butchery I’d seen in Nam and the cruel behavior in Guatemala.

I’ve never known whether it was my familiarity with Latin American Communism or my Spanish that accounted for the unexpected promotion, but on 10 December 1985, I received orders to leave my duty station in Cartagena, Colombia, where we were trying to stanch the flow of cocaine into the States, and report to the Pentagon.

Nancy rejoiced at what she called “a long-overdue assignment,” not only because it meant a promotion, which I needed if I was ever going to make colonel, but also because it allowed me to rejoin her in Washington, where she had established our permanent home. I appreciated the new job because I would be working with men who had been in my class at the Point or on duty with me in Nam.

My duties were well matched to my experience: liaison with the various military commissions from South and Central American nations, anti-Communism in general, and exciting duty with Vice-President Bush’s special task force on drug smuggling. I met Bush only a couple of times, always in a crowd of officers, but from my earliest days in Colombia, I’d had a favorable opinion of what he was trying to do.

And then, just before Christmas, I was suddenly handed the exciting news: “Starr, an opportunity like this doesn’t reach down to tap a major very often. Your Spanish and all, or maybe it’s your strong record in Guatemala. Anyway, they want you for a stint at the National Security Council.”

“Am I qualified?”

“The Army wants you to go. Demands that you go. Too damned many Navy and Marine types over there.”

“My duties?”

“Cloak-and-dagger? Who ever knows?” He was a two-star general, and he half saluted before I did: “Keep your nose clean this time, Starr. We want you back. Men like you are too precious to lose.”

His last words spoiled the good news, because they reminded both him and me that my promotion to lieutenant colonel had been sidetracked. Normally, an Army officer, if he’s good, expects regular promotion up to the rank of lieutenant colonel. The real weeding out occurs in the jump from light-chicken to full-chicken. As my West Point bunkmate Zack McMaster once said in his poetic way: “Any asshole can make light colonel. It takes a real man to handle the next leap.” He had left the service after only two years, for it had become clear that because of his outspoken manner, he would never hack it.

My promotion had been held up twice because of an incident in Chile. Information I was picking up on the street, where I moved about in civilian clothes, led me to believe that one of our clandestine exercises was bound to backfire, allowing a gang of real murderers to sneak behind the American flag while they continued their dirty games. I protested in an embassy meeting, failed to get attention, and sat down to write a forceful memorandum. My grandfather, having undergone two messy divorces in which his ardent letters betrayed him, had summarized his experience in a pithy command: “Do right and fear no man. Don’t write and fear no woman.” Forgetting half of this, I drafted a memo that turned out to make my superiors look bad. Infuriated, they had blocked my advancement.

Zack, who had turned to law after his nonproductive fling with the Army, had enrolled at Columbia Law, graduated high, served as clerk to Justice Byron White of the Supreme Court, and gone on to become one of Washington’s street-smart geniuses who know where the bodies are buried. But if he did a lot of manipulating, he also did much pro bono work. When my promotion was blocked by the bad vibes from Chile, he advised me: “Starr, if you move to another command, keep a low profile and do a superior job. Then not even your enemies will be able to hold you back.” My assignment to the NSC proved him right.

But his urgent phone call this morning put an end to that strategy: “Starr, old buddy. You’re in serious trouble.”

“How do you know?”

“A Washington lawyer is supposed to know everything.”

“Like what?”

“The Senate Committee on the Iran deal wants to interrogate you. You’ll be notified today.”

“Zack, I’ve had nothing to do with Iran.”

“The angle isn’t Iran. It’s the contras.”

Suddenly my mouth went dry, for the contra affair was much different from the Iranian, and this time I could not paint myself as lily-white. There was, after all, the Tres Toros affair about which rumors had begun to circulate, and I would not feel easy being interrogated about that. “You better come on over.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed away from the White House? Your home maybe?”

Today, twenty-four hours later, I can recall every thought that assailed me in the fifteen minutes it took Zack and me, by different routes, to reach our condo in Georgetown. First I clarified my mind as to Iran: Did the Iran project touch me in any way? Never. I knew vaguely that something was under way—but details? I never had a clear word from anyone. How about Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, did I really know him? I heard from everyone that he was a fine dedicated patriot, but I never had direct contact with him on anything to do with Iran. On Iran, I am squeaky clean.

But how about Nicaragua? Now, there I did bump into North a couple of times. Strictly professional, strictly within the law, so far as I know. I reported to him twice on the effectiveness of the contra effort. Tried to brief him on the bad cocaine situation in Colombia, but he was too occupied with other things. Did I ever receive orders from him? Never. Did I ever propose Central American actions to him? Never.

But if I wasn’t on Colonel North’s team, and I wasn’t, what in hell was I doing in Central America from Christmas ’85 to Christmas ’86? I’m so damned security-conscious that I won’t even spell out in these notes the gory details. All I’ll say is that even at Tres Toros, my actions were inspired by patriotism, my conviction that Communism is a deadly peril, and my belief that the free world must not sit back and let the Reds run rampant. But if I knew nothing about Iran, I did know a great deal about Nicaragua, and I approved ninety-five percent of what we were doing down there. And then, as I approached the street leading to our house, my stomach turned to ice, and I found myself saying aloud, as if my wife were sitting next to me: “This is not going to be easy.”

When I entered our house I was relieved to see that Nancy wasn’t home. Explaining complex things to her is never easy, because she has the habit of interrupting with questions that probe embarrassing alleyways.

When Zack arrived, it was as if we were back at the Point. He even wore his three-piece suit with the trim appearance of a uniform, and like always, he seemed to keep four steps ahead of me. I was glad to have him on my side.

After clearing a place on our table for his papers and yellow note pad, he said: “Let’s get right down to cases. Do you consider yourself guilty of anything?”

“Like what? Traffic violations?”

He looked at me almost with contempt, and in a harsh, unfamiliar voice said: “I mean this Iran mess.”

“Never touched Iran even remotely.”

“You can swear to that?”

“I just said so, didn’t I?”

Zack pushed himself away from the table, took a hard look at me, and said: “Look here, soldier. You could be in deep mud, and to save your neck I need to know the absolute truth. You know how men like you stumble into fatal error? Lying under oath. The Feds double back ten years later, confront you with your earlier perjured testimony, and throw you in the slammer. Tomorrow, before the Senate Committee you’ll take an oath, so I’m going to question you today as if you just had. And if you lie, you go to prison…for a long, long term.”

I am amazed at what I said next, but it was the reaction of a man who had always worked for a limited government salary: “How much is this going to cost? Your legal fee, I mean?”

“Starr! My firm is doing this for free. Because I know you’re honest.” He stopped. “You got problems, Major. I’m here as your bunkmate.” Now he got down to business: “I’ll take your word that it wasn’t Iran that got you into trouble. So it’s got to be the contra connection. Tell me about your role in that beauty.”

“You’re right, it must be Nicaragua. But I can’t go public with much.”

“Before this is over, I assure you, you’ll go very public.” And he began to bombard me with many questions, and such intimate ones that quite often I had to say: “That one I can’t answer. National security.”

Once he stormed: “I’m your lawyer, dammit! I have to know.”

“Not that, you don’t.”

So we agreed on a procedure that didn’t please him but which we could live with. We reviewed my Army career, my near court-martial, my delayed promotion, my unceasing fights against the two enemies Communism and drugs, and my publicly acknowledged work for the Security Council in Central America. But concerning the secret operations, I would not allow myself to be questioned. This infuriated Zack: “Dammit, Norman, I can’t handle your case unless you give me short, honest answers to three questions. One, were you pretty deep in the contra affair?”

“Yes.”

“Two, did you ever do anything illegal?”

“I always had authorization.” I hesitated, a fact which he noticed, then changed my answer: “Better make that, I always thought I had.”

“Three, could a civilian jury find you guilty of anything?”

“If the facts were presented to them with a twist, yes.”

Zack stopped. Dead-cold. Not even his motor running. He went to the window, studied the street as if afraid we were being watched, and I could see that he was trying to devise our strategy, but then he laughed in his old red-headed way and came back to me as if he were starting an entirely new conversation.

Grasping me by the shoulder, he said: “You’re in a dangerous position, old friend. The public smells blood on this contra affair and they’re hungry for victims. But there may be a way out.”

“There better be. I do not fancy a prison term.”

“It’s my job to see that you don’t get one. If you lose, I lose, and in this town, I cannot afford to be seen as a loser.”

At this point Nancy came in through the front door. Five feet one and eighty-percent high explosive, she was lugging two big brown paper bags from the supermarket, and before she could put them down she saw Zack, ran across the room, and gave him a hearty kiss: “What brings you here, Counselor? According to the papers, you keep a lot of irons in the fire.”

“None bigger than this one, Nancy,” he said, and he invited her to join us. “The bloodhounds are after your old man, and it’s my job to get him safely across the ice.”

“Serious?”

“Very.”

“The Iran affair?” My wife is a clever woman, always willing to make leaps in the dark.

“Worse. The contra affair. Central America.”

As I had done earlier when Zack threw those loaded words at me, she sort of choked, grew pale, and disclosed much more than I had: “Anyone who worked closely with the contras, and Norman did, has got to be under suspicion. And since Norman…”

“Stop right there!” I interrupted, and Zack, looking at both of us with the familial affection he so often displayed, especially since his divorce had left him without a real home of his own, said: “Relax, you two. Let me do the worrying.” And he left our house with a very worried look.

JARED STARR

1726–1787

At six-thirty Friday morning our doorbell jangled, and it was Zack: “Couldn’t sleep. Kept devising alternate strategies, came up with about eight, none outstanding.”

When Nancy joined us in her bathrobe she said: “Join the club. We couldn’t sleep, either.” And when she brought out the coffee she said, as she handed Zack his: “You will keep us out of trouble, won’t you?” and he said: “That’s my job.”

He didn’t waste time on social niceties. Sitting with both hands clasped about his cup to keep them warm, he asked: “Norman, didn’t you tell me once at the Point that some of your family, I mean one or two of your ancestors way back, weren’t they involved in the Army? Our national history and all that?”

“Nearly all of them.”

“Refresh me.”

I went to the bookshelf by the fireplace, took down my 1985 World Almanac and placed paper markers at the two pages my family was proud of, and handed it to him: “Four forty-three, look who signed the Declaration of Independence, toward the bottom of the list, under the S’s.” The print was quite small, but there after the noble name of Roger Sherman, Connecticut, came that of Jared Starr, Virginia. Major in the Continental Army, served in the final battle of the Revolution at Yorktown, 1781.

“Quite a record. He’ll prove very helpful to us. Didn’t you also say he signed the Constitution?”

“That was his son. Look on page four forty-seven,” and there, in minute print under the heading Virginia, came two names, the first more distinguished than the second: James Madison, Jr., Simon Starr. I could see that Zack was impressed, but at this point he didn’t care to say so: “Didn’t you have a rather well-known general in your family, too? Civil War, maybe?”

“General Hugh Starr, always fought close to General Lee. Many battles. Attested to the surrender at Appomattox, then lived to eighty-eight, firing Confederate fusillades all the way.”

“Anyone else we can use to keep you out of prison?”

“Well, my father won the Congressional Medal of Honor at Saipan in 1944.”

“He did? You never told me.”

“Rather simple. Marines formed the two outer flanks, Army the middle. Both generals were named Smith. ‘Howling Mad’ the Marine was in charge, Ralph the Army man led the unlucky Twenty-seventh Division, mostly New York National Guard. Clerks and shopkeepers principally, with my father as a West Point light colonel attached to lend some professionalism.

“Divided commands are hell, as we learned at the Point. This was classic. Two conflicting doctrines. The Marines roared ahead, leaving enemy hedgehogs behind. The Army, properly methodical, cleaned out everything, but to tell the truth, we did lag…Hell of a mess. Finally, ‘Howling Mad’ relieved Ralph of command. Said the Marines would finish the job alone. Unprecedented.

“My father went ape. Later claimed he had not been told of the order to hold fast where he was and let the Marines take over. Led his men on a fantastic surge forward, performed what they called ‘incredible feats of valor.’ Lost his left leg, and earned a place in Army history for getting a court-martial on Saturday and notice of his Congressional Medal of Honor on Monday.”

Zack reflected on the history of my four military ancestors, and said: “You Starrs are patriots, aren’t you? If we play this right, no Senate investigation can touch you.”

“But the culpability?”

“What do you mean?”

“It always seemed to me, during the various courts-martial on which I served, that there were two conditions. Legal guilt and moral culpability. They’re not always the same.”

This irritated him slightly: “Forget the legal niceties. Attending to them is my job. That’s what I get paid for.” This was apparently his standard advice to clients, but this time we both laughed, because he wasn’t getting paid.

“How do you plan to use this background stuff?”

“I’m not sure yet, but what I want you to do, and you can help him in this, Nancy, is review what you’ve just told me. Get it lead-pipe solid in your mind, because this afternoon before the Senate it just might become important, if they elect to go down those garden paths.”

When he left us at seven, we dug out some family heirlooms, old papers and pamphlets that my grandfather Richard had collected. He was proud of our family, and spent his wasted life trying to prove that the Starrs were more distinguished than the facts justified, but he did come up with a surprising batch of material.

I had barely begun refreshing myself on old Jared Starr, when the phone rang: “Norman? Zack. Great news! I’ve persuaded the Senate staff to postpone your appearance till Monday morning. Do your homework.” He did not even wait for me to respond, but since the urgency in his voice made it clear that he was totally involved in my case, I felt the least I could do was follow his instructions. So before heading for the White House, I considered the case of the rambunctious founder of our clan.

—

Jared Starr was a gritty old fellow, seven generations back, and he would probably have made some dramatic contribution to the writing of our Constitution had he not been such an ardent patriot. He first attracted public attention in rural Virginia in 1774 when he boldly supported Patrick Henry in the agitation for freedom. Two years later, in Philadelphia, he affixed his challenging signature to the Declaration of Independence, and without returning to his farm, volunteered to serve in General Washington’s ragtag army, in which he rose to the rank of major.

He fought in many hopeless battles, usually as the oldest man in his detachment, and, as he told his children in later years, “I became a master of retreat.” In the closing months of the war he met up with someone who would lead him to what would be the outstanding experience of his life: he was seconded to a regiment in which he found himself next to a dashing West Indian immigrant, Alexander Hamilton, whom he described eventually as “the bravest man I’ve ever known and the brightest.”

At the culminating Battle of Yorktown in 1781, Starr followed Hamilton on a daring charge into British lines which helped turn the tide of this engagement. “Had I looked behind me,” said Hamilton at the dinner celebrating the end of the Revolution, “and not seen Jared Starr puffing along like a wearied dog at the end of a chase, I doubt I would have had the courage to enter the enemy lines.” Then, bending a pewter spoon, Hamilton fashioned a rude medal, which he stuck into a tear in Jared’s blouse. “Honors of battle,” he cried with a rare enthusiasm.

After the British surrender, Starr retired to his Virginia farm, where he watched with growing despair as the thirteen states of his new nation fumbled and stumbled their way toward chaos. But in these doom-filled days he sought guidance and reassurance from Hamilton through the series of letters the two patriots exchanged: “Dear Colonel Hamilton, I see chaos threatening from all sides. Our Continental Congress can assess taxes on each of the thirteen states but cannot force them to pay. It can call for an army to protect us, but not conscript any soldiers from the states to serve. What can we do to save our nation?”

Hamilton’s responses never varied: “We must either put backbone into our present form of government or construct a better,” and just as Starr in his remote corner of Virginia had supported Patrick Henry in the call for freedom, he now echoed Alexander Hamilton’s comparable cry for reform. In the spring of 1786 neither Hamilton nor Starr was yet brave enough to openly call for abandonment of the inept Articles of Confederation, under which the new states were trying to govern themselves, but each knew that the other was at least contemplating a radical new form of government.

In the late summer, Hamilton and a few others like him invited the thirteen states to send delegates to an informal gathering in Annapolis, Maryland, for a discussion of steps that might have to be taken if the precious American experiment in self-government was to be saved. But despite the growing anarchy, only five states bothered to respond—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia—and even they sent only twelve participants in all.

The Annapolis adventure was a failure, but Hamilton of New York and Starr of Virginia were resolute fighters who badgered the others with prophecies of doom if something was not done, so that in the end the twelve plotters mustered the courage to send a rallying cry to all the states: “Let us convene a grand assembly in Philadelphia in the spring of next year.”

Hamilton, who could rarely abide vagueness, made a motion: “Make it the fourteenth of May 1787,” and in a loud voice Starr cried: “Second the motion!” and it was done. As the two friends parted, Hamilton said: “Starr, we’ve work to do between now and May,” and the Virginian nodded as he turned away.

He had taken only two steps when he felt his right arm grabbed forcefully from behind. It was Hamilton and, leaning close to Starr’s ear, he said: “Jared, we either lay the groundwork for a new nation…or watch the old one sputter out like a spent fire.”

The solemnity of this challenge awed Starr, and for a moment he surveyed the backs of the delegates as they said their farewells. “Colonel, I think most of these men came here honor-pledged to mend the present Articles and under no circumstances to bring in a radical substitution.”

Hamilton stood rigid: “Do you think the miserable system we have today can be fixed? No! Neither do I.”

“Shouldn’t we in decency expose our thinking now?”

“No,” Hamilton said, “because today all would oppose us. But eight months from now, when we meet to solve the matter, all will see that our way is the only practical one.” They parted with a handshake.

On his lonely ride home from Annapolis to Virginia, his thoughts and his horse his only companions, my fighting ancestor hammered out two convictions from which no political storms could ever divert him: We’ve got to have a strong new government. But the rights of Virginia must be protected in whatever changes we make.

Had the times been placid, Jared would have gone home, agitated quietly among his neighbors for a new form of government, and reported to Philadelphia in May of 1787, ready to continue the bold work he had helped launch with the Declaration of Independence. He would surely have supported Hamilton in the latter’s drive for a powerful central government, even though it would be marked by many of the more successful aristocratic and monarchical characteristics of British rule.

But the times were not placid. The ramshackle government by which former colonies tried to organize their Atlantic seaboard was so ridiculously inefficient that it seemed about to collapse from any one of many weaknesses: the inability to impose or collect taxes; the lack of a strong court system; a pathetic weakness in the face of likely invasions from Europe; and the absence of an effective way to settle internal arguments among the states. Since everyone who loved America recognized these weaknesses, her enemies must have seen them too.

Then, as if to illustrate in one dramatic gesture the low estate into which American government had fallen, in rural Massachusetts a rabble-rousing countryman named Daniel Shays said he could tolerate no longer the grievous hurts he and his kind suffered at the hands of the well-to-do. Seeking redress, he launched a minor revolution against the tyranny of the local courts, the banks, and most other manifestations of government.

He was forty years old that winter, an inspired agrarian so persuasive in his fiery harangues that he collected about him a substantial following of Massachusetts farmers. They demanded only simple things: a larger supply of paper money with which to pay their heavy debts; an end to courts’ throwing honest men into bankruptcy and jail; and general freedom from what Shays called “the oppressive government of the rich.”

During the cold winter of 1786–87, Shays and his wild men so terrorized western Massachusetts that his Rebellion, as it was now formally called, threatened to expand into neighboring states. A shudder passed along the Atlantic seaboard as anxious men asked: “Is this a foretaste of destruction to come?” And those who were being designated by their various states to attend the Philadelphia meeting spent the cold months wondering: What can we do to stop this rot? George Washington wrote to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson in Paris wrote to George Mason in Virginia, and Hamilton corresponded with scores of patriots, all seeking a practical answer to the question which overrode all others: What can be done to save the nation?

No one pondered the question more than Jared Starr, for he had helped launch this experiment in self-government and did not propose to sit idly by as men unwilling to make difficult decisions allowed it to break apart and crumble. So, when disruption threatened as a result of Shays’ Rebellion, he knew what he must do.

Riding north from his farm, he stopped in Philadelphia to consult with the sturdy patriots of that bustling commercial city, went on to New York to assure Hamilton that Virginia would be sending first-class men to the impending convention, and then on to Boston, where he offered his support to the government that was struggling to put down Shays’ Rebellion.

“How old are you?” the colonel in charge of the local militia asked, and Starr said through clenched teeth: “Sixty-one…service under Washington and Hamilton.”

“We don’t need grandfathers,” the colonel said, and he would not accept Jared into the formal militia.

So Starr moved west under his own command, associated himself with an improvised force under General Benjamin Lincoln, and during a skirmish at the Springfield depot took two musket balls through his left hip.

Disgusted by his carelessness and infuriated by the brazen manner in which the revolutionaries escaped to the north, Major Starr badgered the nurses who tried to attend him and refused the doctors permission to amputate his festering left leg. When it became obvious that he was about to die, he penned a letter of instruction to his son Simon back on their Virginia farm:

The leg don’t get better. Advise Colonel Hamilton. And make plans to fill my spot at the next meeting in Philadelphia on 14 May next. Remember the two obligations we undertook. Fashion a strong new form of government but protect Virginia’s interests. You can safely follow Colonel Hamilton in such matters.

Still fulminating against nurses, doctors and revolutionaries, he died at the end of March 1787, less than seven weeks before fifty-five other patriots much like himself convened to see what steps might be taken to rescue the United States from disintegration.

SIMON STARR

1759–1807

I’ve always had difficulty explaining to my wife and my friends the curious role played by Simon Starr in the writing of the Constitution. Because he was a most excellent man and one of the founders who attended every session of the Convention, Nancy likes to imagine him standing before the members and orating with such persuasion that he modified the course of debate.

Alas, it wasn’t that way, so on Friday morning before I left for my duties in the basement of the White House, I scanned my grandfather Richard’s copy of the informal notes Simon left regarding his role in the Convention, and asked her to refresh her memory while I headed for the lion’s den.

By the time I reached the White House, word had circulated that I was to testify before the Senate Committee on Monday, so while Nancy spent her spare time with the Convention battles of 1787, I was immersed in the political battles of 1987.

Of course, all my military co-workers dropped by inconspicuously to wish me well, and at least three used exactly the same words: “Hang in there, champ,” as if I were a boxer getting hell pasted out of me. I felt that way, a reaction not diminished when Zack phoned me rather breathlessly: “Norman, can you meet me at your place? Immediately?”

“It’s only eleven.”

“I said immediately,” and when I reached home he was fretting impatiently on the stoop because Nancy wasn’t in. Friday was her day at the military hospital, where she read to men who had been blinded in one action or another around the world. Once inside, he asked, before sitting down: “Soldier, do you have a decent uniform? Good, bring it out. Now, what fruit salad can we slap on it? I want everything.”

He said that since I was going to appear before the Senate as a man who might be accused of secret misbehavior, he wanted me to stand forth in what he called “blazing patriotic glory,” which meant he wished to check my ribbons, all sixteen.

“Are these first three of personal significance?”

“They are.”

“That amazing job you did on the swamp installation in Vietnam?”

“That’s the second one.”

“The first? You do something I missed?”

“The swamp was routine. Barely deserves a medal. This one was for real. Saving a corporal’s life under…well, unusual circumstances.”

“Care to specify?”

“It was earned. President Nixon said so when he pinned it on. Jabbed right into my skin. Quite clumsy.”

Zack sat at the table for several minutes staring at my medals and arranging the four tiers in different patterns. Abruptly he asked: “Could I see your Almanac again?” and when I handed it to him, he said almost brusquely: “Find me those pages about your ancestors.”

It required only a few minutes for him to reassure himself about the Starr names, after which he spent several minutes idly scanning familiar phrases in the Declaration and the Constitution. With a bold gesture that indicated he had made up his mind, he slammed the book shut, strode to the door, and left. But from the street he called back: “Your uniform. Get it dry-cleaned.”

—

On 9 May 1787, when Simon Starr left his family plantation in northern Virginia and started his five-day horseback ride to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he carried with him the letter of instruction his father had sent from his deathbed in western Massachusetts: “…make plans to fill my spot…Fashion a strong new form of government but protect Virginia’s interests.” More than most delegates, Simon appreciated how difficult it would be to fulfill these two commands.

In the first place, his elders in Virginia had made it clear that he and the other delegates were authorized merely “to correct and improve our present Articles of Confederation, and under no circumstances to meddle with any new form of government.” For him to achieve what his father had wanted, a strong central government, would require ignoring these instructions.

In the second place, he realized that a new union could not be established unless the three big states—Massachusetts in the North, with its manufacturing; Pennsylvania in the middle, with its commerce; Virginia in the South, with its tobacco and cotton plantations—found some way to protect their majority interests while ensuring the small states like Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Delaware a respectable voice in whatever form of government emerged. Up to now, it had been one state–one voice, but with the big states constantly accumulating more power and responsibility, such an imbalance could not continue. Rhode Island did not carry the weight of Virginia in population, trade or wealth, and to claim that she did was folly.

He was perplexed as to how this impasse would be resolved, but he was sure of one thing: he would never allow Virginia’s rights to be trampled.

Simon was twenty-eight years old that spring, a graduate of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, red-headed, quick to anger, interested in all aspects of American life. He had served as foot soldier in the latter years of the Revolution, rising to the rank of captain, but he had known none of the commanding figures of that period. In recent years, however, he had corresponded with two of the most brilliant men in Virginia or the nation, George Mason and George Wythe, the dazzling professor of law at William and Mary College. Simon was literate, informed, patriotic, and determined to conduct himself with distinction at the Convention.

As he left that May he assured his wife and young son: “I’ll be back for the fall harvest,” and as he rode down the long lane to the highway, he called out the same message to the slaves who lined the pathway to bid him farewell.

In his compact canvas saddle bags he carried four books he had come to treasure at college: Thucydides’ account of the Greek wars, John Locke’s treatise on government, a book by Adam Smith on the political economy of nations, a saucy novel by Henry Fielding. In his head he carried about as good an education as was then available in either the United States or Great Britain, but in both Princeton and Virginia he had been careful to mask any pretension to superiority. He was an earnest young man of solid ability who would always show deference to his elders. As one of the two youngest members of the Convention he would feel himself at a disadvantage, but he intended to associate himself with older men of talent and make his contribution through supporting them.

He rode into Philadelphia, a burgeoning city of some forty thousand, in the late afternoon of Sunday, 13 May 1787, and without difficulty found Market Street, the main east-west thoroughfare, which he pursued toward the Delaware River until he came to Fourth Street. Here, in accordance with instructions, he turned south till he saw ahead, swaying in the evening breeze, the reassuring signboard of the Indian Queen Tavern. He tied his horse, took down his saddle bags, and strode inside to announce himself to the innkeeper: “Simon Starr of Virginia, for the room assigned to my father, Jared Starr.”

At the mention of this name, several men who had been idly talking showed great interest and moved forward to meet the newcomer. In the next exciting moments he met members of the Virginia delegation, including four men of distinction: Edmund Randolph, James Madison, and the two older scholars with whom he’d been in correspondence, George Mason and George Wythe. Looking carefully at each as he was introduced, he said: “And General Washington’s a Virginian, too. Add him to you gentlemen, and Virginia’s to be strongly represented,” and Madison said quietly: “We planned it that way.”

“I rode hard to get here for tomorrow’s opening session,” Starr said, to which Madison replied, with a touch of asperity: “No need. There’ll be no session.”

“Why?” and young Starr learned the first basic fact about the Convention: “Takes seven of the thirteen states to form a legal quorum. Only four are here now.”

“When will the others arrive?” and Madison said sourly: “Who knows?”

Eleven days were wasted in idleness as delegates straggled in, and each evening Madison informed those already in attendance of the situation: “Two more states reported today. Perhaps by the end of next week.” If the nation was, as the Virginia delegation believed, in peril, the men designated to set it right seemed in no hurry to start.

And shortly, there was sobering news: “Rhode Island has refused to have anything to do with our Convention and will send no delegates.” This meant that only twelve states would do the work.

One night during the waiting period Starr returned to the Indian Queen, to see a group of delegates speaking with a newcomer, a slender, handsome, self-contained young man of thirty, so compelling in his manner that Simon whispered to a friend: “Who’s that?” and when the man said: “Alexander Hamilton, just in from New York,” Starr gasped so loudly that the newcomer turned, gazed at him with penetrating eyes, and said, almost grandly: “Yes?”

“I’m Jared Starr’s son.”

And now the rather icy reserve which Hamilton had been showing melted in the sun of remembered friendship. Elbowing his way out of the crowd, he hurried to Simon, embraced him warmly with both arms, and cried: “When I learned of your father’s death I felt mortally stricken. A man rarely finds such a trusted friend.”

They spent three hours together that first night, with Hamilton probing in a dozen different directions to determine Starr’s attitudes, and as the evening waned, it became clear that the two men had even more in common than Hamilton had had with old Jared Starr. Both believed in a strong kind of central government, in the right of large states to exercise large powers, and particularly in the sanctity of property. But toward the end of that first exploration Simon heard several of Hamilton’s opinions which could be interpreted as an inclination toward a monarchical form of government: “Simon, the world is divided into those with power and those without. Control of government must rest with the former, because they have most at hazard. Whatever kind of supreme ruler we devise, he should serve for life and so should the members of the stronger house, if we have more than one. That way we avoid the domination of the better class by the poorer.”

“Poorer? Do you mean money?”

Hamilton bit on his knuckle: “Yes, I suppose I do. But I certainly want those with no money to have an interest in our government. But actually voting? No, no. That should be reserved for those with financial interests to protect.”

When Simon accompanied Hamilton to the door of the Indian Queen, he experienced a surge of devotion for this brilliant young man, so learned, so sure of himself, so clear-minded in his vision of what his adopted nation needed: “Father told me that you were the best man he’d ever met, Colonel Hamilton. Tonight I understand why.” Then, hesitantly, he added: “If I can help you in the days ahead, please let me know. You can depend on my support.”

In the next week, when the delegates chafed because a quorum had still not reached Philadelphia, Simon remained close to his Virginia delegation and watched with what care they laid their plans to assume intellectual and political control of the Convention. The three awesome minds, Mason, Madison and Wythe, perfected a general plan they had devised for a wholly new government, and it was agreed that at the first opportunity on opening day, the imposing Edmund Randolph would present it as a working paper around which the other delegates would have to frame their arguments. “If we put up a good plan,” Madison said, “we’ll probably lose two-thirds of the minor details, but the solid structure will still remain.”

At the close of the Convention, a hundred and sixteen days later, Simon Starr would draft a perceptive memorandum regarding his major experiences; these notes would not record the great debates or the machinations by which the new government was formed, but they would depict honestly one young man’s reactions to the men who gathered in Philadelphia that hot summer, and no entry was more illuminating than his summary of the people involved:

Only twelve states nominated delegates and they authorized a total of 74 men to come to Philadelphia. Of these, only 55 bothered to appear for any of the sessions, and of these, only 41 stayed to the bitter end, but of these, only 39 were willing to sign our finished document.

One of his entries that was widely quoted in later years dealt with the composition of the membership, and although the comments on those who were there could have been provided by other observers, his list of those who were conspicuous by their absence was startling:

I was surprised at how many delegates had college degrees like my own. Harvard, Yale, King’s College in New York, the College of Philadelphia, and four of us from Princeton were expected, but I was startled to find among them men from Oxford in England, the Inns of Court in London, Utrecht in Holland, and St. Andrews in Scotland. We were not a bunch of illiterate farmers. We were, said some, “the pick of the former Colonies.”

But I was equally impressed by the luminous names I expected to see in our group and didn’t. Patrick Henry was missing and so were the two Adamses from Massachusetts. Tom Jefferson was absent in France. John Marshall wasn’t here, nor James Monroe nor John Jay. John Hancock, my father’s friend, wasn’t here, nor famous Dr. Benjamin Rush. And I expected to see the famous writer and political debater Noah Webster, but he wasn’t here.

Eight men were on hand, however, whose presence gave not only Simon Starr but all the other delegates a sense of awe. These were the men who, eleven years before, had dared to sign the Declaration of Independence: these were the men who along with Simon’s father had placed their lives in jeopardy to defend the principle of freedom. One by one, these eight introduced themselves to Simon, reminding him of the high esteem in which his father had been held, and he was deeply moved by the experience. Two of the veterans earned a special place in his affections:

I was disappointed on opening day to find that Benjamin Franklin was not present, but on the morning of the second day I heard a commotion in the street outside our meeting hall and some cheering. Running to glimpse what might be happening, I saw coming down the middle of the street an amazing sight, a glassed-in ornate sedan chair of the kind used by European kings. It hung suspended from two massive poles which rested on the shoulders of eight huge prisoners from the local jail. Inside, perched on pillows, rode an old, baldheaded man who looked like a jolly bullfrog. It was Dr. Franklin, most eminent of the delegates, and the oldest at eighty-one. Gout, obesity and creaking joints made it impossible for him to walk, hence the sedan chair. When the prisoners carried him into the hall, someone alerted him that I was present. Calling “Halt!” to the prisoners, he beckoned me to approach, and when I did he reached out with both hands to embrace me, and tears came into his eyes: “Son of a brave man, be like him.”

Franklin, like General Washington, played almost no role in the deliberations; they were ornaments of the most valuable kind, since they reminded the other delegates of the grandeur of the Revolution and the gallant acts that led up to it. There was one more delegate who had signed the Declaration, and he was to become a major influence on Starr:

I was in the assembly hall one morning when I felt a tug on my arm, and turned to see a man I did not know. He was a short, pudgy fellow in his mid-forties, bald and with heavy eyeglasses. There was nothing about his appearance that was memorable, and when he spoke, it was with a heavy Scottish burr which made his words almost unintelligible. “Hello, lad,” he said. “Am I right in thinking you’re Jared Starr’s boy?” When I said I was, he smiled: “I’m James Wilson, Scotland and Pennsylvania, and I relied upon your father’s help at the Declaration of Independence. I suppose your father spoke of me?” Father had said nothing, and I knew nothing about the man who faced me, but as the weeks and months of our assembly passed, this very ordinary-looking man with no oratorical graces emerged as the great solid rock of the Convention, and I noticed that when he spoke, which he did repeatedly, others stopped to listen, for not only was his knowledge encyclopedic but he also talked sense. He was without peer the brains of our effort, for with his merciless logic he killed faulty ideas and with his Scottish enthusiasm he made other men’s good ideas palatable. Great orators like Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania and Dr. William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut made fiery speeches, half of them wrong, but James Wilson in his quiet way was always right, and after he had been knocked down for six days in a row, he rose on the seventh with fresh arguments to win the day. If our Constitution is a workable success, it is so largely because Wilson hammered its ideas into shape.

Simon was aware that his journal notes now said that two men were of prime influence on his voting in the Convention, Hamilton and Wilson, so he added a note lest someone judge him to have been fickle in his loyalties:

I am aware that I said Hamilton was my guide, and now I’m saying that Wilson was. The explanation is simple. The New York delegation consisted of three men, Hamilton and two others, but these two scorned what the Convention was struggling to do and after a few days they stalked out in a huff and never returned. That left poor Hamilton high and dry, for as I said, we voted by states, and with two of New York’s three delegates gone, the state could never have a quorum. Thus, one of the most brilliant men in the nation was left without a vote, so in disgust he rode back to New York, being absent during the sweltering days when men like Madison, Mason and Wilson hammered out the crucial details. So it’s simple. Hamilton was not present, Wilson was, and I followed the wonderfully sane and solid leadership of the latter.

And now we come to a mystery which has given all subsequent Starrs considerable embarrassment. During the entire hundred and sixteen days of the sessions, and some of the debate was so vigorous that it became almost violent, Simon Starr uttered not one word. He attended every session, followed the swing of debate with close attention, and discussed the nuances at night in the Indian Queen, but in the hall itself he said nothing.

As I sought to know him, over the centuries, I thought: How could an honor graduate from Princeton, a man with his own considerable library, participate at the heart of a world-shattering debate and make no contribution? He himself wondered:

There were eight of us delegates who said nothing or little. William Blount of North Carolina, Nicholas Gilman of New Hampshire, Richard Bassett of Delaware, William Few of Georgia, John Blair of Virginia, Thomas Mifflin and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, and me. We kept silent, I think, because we were in the presence of our betters, men who had either wide experience like Dr. Franklin or profound intellectual insights like Madison and Wilson. We felt no urge to parade our ignorance.

We left the podium open for polished debaters like Gouverneur Morris and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, who spoke upwards of a hundred and forty times each. Careful students of history and politics like Madison and Wilson invariably had something cogent to say on every subject. We eight didn’t.

On the matter of speaking, Simon left one paragraph which has astounded later generations, especially those of us who have gone through public flagellations such as Watergate and the present Iranian arms scandal:

One of the first decisions agreed upon when we finally assembled was that our deliberations would be conducted in secrecy. News journals would be allowed no entry to our hall and all members promised to disclose nothing of our debate. So for one hundred and sixteen days, fifty-five men who were among the leaders of our nation met and argued and retired to our inns to continue the debate, and we dealt with the most profound topics that men can deal with, the problems of self-government, and not a single clue as to what we were discussing or how we were dividing was revealed to the outside world. Thus, delegates were freed from posturing for public acclaim; more important, they were free to change their minds and to retreat from weak positions hastily taken. I once heard Gouverneur Morris argue heatedly on five different sides of a question in four successive days, coming down finally on the correct side.

So much for the chitchat. It is valuable in that it throws a warm, illuminating light on the delegates and the soul-shattering work they were engaged in, but it is more important that we see how these powerful men grappled with the great problems of their day, and in the Starr family we have always been proud of our ancestor’s secret role in the Constitution’s greatest victory—ashamed of his part in its most disgraceful defeat.

I said there were fifty-five delegates to the Convention; there were actually two additional “members,” shadows who cast their silent votes in almost every deliberation. They were Daniel Shays, the Massachusetts revolutionary, and Cudjoe, the black slave imported from the African coast. Whenever the argument between the three big states, who felt entitled to more voice in government, and the several small ones, who demanded protection of their rights, became so heated that compromise became impossible, someone would mention Dan Shays, and the possibility of similar rebellion throughout the states became real. Then tempers subsided, debate continued in a lower key, and men began seriously to reconsider how they could resolve this dilemma of how to allow the big states to exercise the power which they unquestionably had and to which they were entitled without engulfing the small. So Dan Shays, invisible, played a vital role.

One June evening, after a steamingly hot day of bitter debate, Simon Starr was quaffing an ale in the Indian Queen when he saw a group of delegates, some who had spoken on the floor, but most, like himself, silent, and as he started to speak, he drew them about him: “Let us hoe away all the manure and see what roots grow basically. I’ll go first.” Wetting his lips and pushing back his red hair with both hands, he said: “It is engraved in granite, fused inseparably to the mountains of our land, that the three big states, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia, will never again agree to the old pattern of one state, one vote. That is the bedrock from which we start.”

But a delegate from Delaware, an inoffensive man who also said nothing in public debate, argued: “As remorseless as the tides of the ocean which no power on earth can halt, the small states will never agree to a legislature in which we do not have equal representation with the big states, and that means one state, one vote.”

“But if you small states persist,” Simon warned, “we, the more populous states, will simply go home, form a kind of union of our own, and let you small ones join up later when you come to your senses.”

The Delaware man and his supporters did not tremble at the threat: “If we are denied justice, we’ll march out and build an alliance with some European nation.”

Such terrible words, words which shook the soul and made it cringe in despair, could not have been offered in the general assembly, but they deserved airing, and in Simon Starr’s informal group, there they stood in naked force, big and little both threatening: Do it my way or we’ll go home.

It was beyond the power of young Starr to engineer a compromise between these two adamant positions, but he had sense enough to appreciate the gravity of the impasse faced by the nation. So he sought out delegates from the middle-sized states, and this threw him into the arms of men from Connecticut and South Carolina, who listened attentively as he reported the iron-hard determination of each side not to yield. In the next days the argument reached the floor of the Convention, where tempers were guarded but concessions nonexistent.

Finally, a committee was appointed whose members were dedicated to finding a compromise between large and small, and under the leadership of Roger Sherman, a plan was devised unlike any other that had ever been in existence: the powerful legislature would be divided into two houses, an upper whose members would be appointed by state legislatures, with each state regardless of size having one member, and a lower elected by the general population, with each state entitled to a varying number of members depending on an index of population and wealth, or taxes paid. Some wanted the upper house to be appointed for life, all agreed that the lower house should enjoy certain unique privileges. It was as delicate a balance as could have been devised, and Simon Starr, silent by day, had been a chief instigator by night.

Of course, details had to be perfected slowly and in heated debate. For example, the membership of the lower house was set arbitrarily at fifty-six seats: Virginia would have nine; Pennsylvania, eight; Massachusetts, seven. New Hampshire would have two, and Delaware and Rhode Island, one each. Few delegates liked the distribution, but after protracted discussion a clever correction was proposed which seemed to make everyone happy: the number of seats in the lower house was raised from fifty-six to sixty-five, so distributed as to minimize the strength of the big states and increase the middle group.

The great compromise was in order, the best that could have been devised, and on Monday, 16 July 1787, came the crucial vote, and it was terrifyingly close, as Simon remembered in his memorandum:

As time for voting approached, those of us in favor of a strong, new government grew frightfully nervous, because only a few states were eligible to vote and we knew that the two big states, Virginia and Pennsylvania, were against us, while the third big one, Massachusetts, could not vote at all, since its delegation was evenly split. New York, of course, had no vote during most of the Convention because two of its three delegates had left early in a huff. Think of it! Alexander Hamilton, one of the architects of our nation, had no vote in its building, because New York could never provide a quorum of its delegates! Rhode Island had refused from the first to participate in any way, and poor New Hampshire never collected enough money to send us its two delegates till the summer was waning and our work nearly done.

So, in what might be called the most important vote in the history of our nation, only nine states took part, and in the counting I felt sick when the first three votes were negative. Then it was tied, then it was four against and one more negative would doom us, but the last two votes were yeas. The nation was saved by a vote of five of the little states out of thirteen, and that night I got drunk.

After he sobered up, Simon reflected first on the great moral victory of that day, when delegates submerged their regional prejudices to form a union, and then on the moral cowardice of those same delegates, including himself:

We have refused like cravens to even mention the word that haunts our nation. We delay and avoid and postpone, and if we continue to ignore our reponsibilities, this problem will stay with us and worsen until it destroys this nation.

He was speaking, of course, of slavery, that dark and brooding presence which haunted all discussion and lurked in each meeting corner. Cudjoe the slave emerged everywhere, and the sullen problems he represented were discussed, solved, rejected, and discussed again, the second or third solution being little better than the first in technical terms and usually worse where the moral posture of a great nation was concerned.

Of the original fifty-five delegates, some eighteen owned slaves, and of the signers, a dozen did. Some had only a few; others like George Mason, who abhorred slavery and favored manumission, had many. Washington was a slave owner, as were the two Pinckneys, Charles and Charles Cotesworth, and John Rutledge of South Carolina. Starr, whose family had always owned slaves and who had inherited seventeen prime hands, had inherited also a strong Virginia prejudice in favor of the institution, but his experiences at Princeton as a student and now in Philadelphia as a delegate had begun to make him insecure as to the future. Also, he found it both fascinating and perplexing that Washington had freed some of his slaves and that Mason looked upon slavery as a curse, despite his many slaves.

“I’d be ready to free my slaves,” he told his Southern friends at the Indian Queen, “if only some way could be worked out to have them keep tending the fields,” but as soon as he said this, his friends started to argue. One said, in sharp comment: “There are really three Americas; our problem is to keep them all happy. The North, without slaves; the Deep South, which needs them for cotton and sugar; and lucky states like North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, which have them but whose climates are so kind, they could manage without them.”

A clever man from Georgia pointed out something Simon had not considered before: “In Georgia and the hot lands west we must continue to import slaves. We’d be strangled if their importation was ended, as you suggested last night. But in Virginia? You’d make money if the importation was halted, because then you could ship the slaves you no longer need down to Georgia and sell them at great profit. As far as we’re concerned, you Virginians are as bad as the New Englanders.”

As the debate, formal and informal, continued, Simon learned that the Convention could not escape dealing with four difficult slavery problems: Should it be outlawed altogther? If it was allowed to continue, should further importation from Africa be permitted? If a slave ran away from a plantation in the South to freedom in the North, would the federal government be obligated to return him to his rightful owner? And, most perplexing of all, should the slave be counted as the equal of the white man in allocating taxes and awarding seats in Congress? Debate on these inflammable questions produced some appalling statements.

John Rutledge argued that religion and humanity had nothing to do with the importation of slaves. Financial interest alone was the governing principle with nations. And if the Northern states considered this carefully, they would not oppose the bringing in of more slaves, because the more slaves in the South, the more goods Northern traders would sell.

Pierce Butler of South Carolina wanted the Constitution to state that fugitive slaves who sought freedom in the North were to be delivered like criminals to their owners in the South.

And speaker after speaker hammered home the point that slaves were property, just like other material found on a plantation, and the South required assurance that their owners would be protected in their ownership and use of said property.

Roger Sherman voiced the question that perplexed many Northerners: “Why should slaves, who are considered property in the South, be counted, when seats are being allocated, any more than cattle and horses in the North?”

General Charles C. Pinckney had an inventive answer: “To include blacks equally with whites in determining representation is nothing more than justice. For the blacks are the peasants of the Southern states and are as productive of wealth as the laborers of the North. They add equally to the wealth of the nation, and, if you consider money as the sinews of war, to the strength of the nation. It would also be advantageous to the North, since the more representation the Southern states have, the more taxation they will pay.”

Gouverneur Morris came out vigorously against slavery: “It is a nefarious institution. It is the curse of heaven on the states where it prevails.” He said he would rather pay a tax to free all the Negroes in the United States than to see pro-slavery articles in the Constitution.

Such tirades infuriated William Richardson Davie of North Carolina, who said it was high time to speak out. If the delegates refused to count blacks as at least three-fifths, the business of the Convention was at an end, and he intimated that North Carolina would withdraw.

Of course, it was Gouverneur Morris who leaped up to challenge this threat of dissolution: “It has been said that it is high time to speak out. I will candidly do so. I came here to form a compact for the good of America. I am ready to do so with all the states. I hope, and believe, that all will enter into such a compact. If they will not, I am ready to join with any states that will.” This was as grave a threat as Davie’s, but now Morris, in his ingratiating way, doubled back on all he had said previously, providing an image of urbane sweetness and conciliation. He said that since the compact was to be voluntary, it was vain for the Northern states to insist on demands that the Southern states would never agree to, and it was equally vain for the Southern states to require what the others could never admit, and so on, and so on.

His bland efforts at conciliation proved fruitless, and when Starr met with his cabal at the Indian Queen, he found both the Southerners and the Northerners ready to break apart if their prejudices were not honored. Realizing that the Convention was in peril, he sought out Madison, and found, to his surprise, that this Virginia stalwart was in favor of naming a time limit after which the importation of slaves would be outlawed, suggesting 1800 as an acceptable date. Starr hurried back to his friends: “I think a compromise is possible,” and a negative one was worked out: Congress could not ban importation prior to 1808 for those states existing in 1787, but it would be under no obligation to do so then.

On the question of capturing runaway slaves who had gained their freedom and returning them to their bondage, the South won. The Constitution required this shameful act to be done.

And then came the crucial question, the one involving morality, political power, tax money and the sanctity of private property. Division of opinion was clear-cut and regional. In allocating seats in the lower house of Congress, the South wanted each slave to be counted as one citizen, but the North argued: “If the slave has no political rights, he can’t be a citizen.” Before this extremely emotional issue was solved, the South argued: “Since slaves are not citizens, they should not be counted when assessing federal taxes” but the North reasoned: “We allocate taxes according to the count of the population, and whether a man is a citizen or not is beside the point.”

As Simon explained one night to the other silent members of the Convention: “The South wants votes but no taxes. The North wants us to pay taxes but have no votes. We may break up on this one.” The debate was prolonged and brilliant, with men of deep conviction wrestling with this most complex of problems. In the end, a subtle compromise was reached, one with the gravest moral flaws but one which allowed the two sections of the nation to remain together for the time being.

When up-to-date census figures were provided for the giving of seats and the collection of taxes, five black slaves would count as three white persons. There was no sensible justification for such a deal, but it was the best that could be worked out in 1787, and it would preserve the nation until 1861, when a civil war would rectify the matter—in blood.

And now a most curious thing happened. Throughout a long summer, these fifty-five delegates had debated the slavery issue, using the word slave thousands of times, but when they were required to put their conclusions in writing, all of them, North and South alike, shied away from placing the word slave in what they were beginning to consider a sacred document. Men spoke urgently against using the word, but none gave the honest reason: that it would be totally improper to defile a document dedicated to freedom with a word which demonstrated that a large portion of the persons covered were not free.

On the night it was decided, Simon Starr wrote in his notes:

How shameful the circumlocutions we resorted to. Imported blacks from Africa are not slaves. They are “such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit.” We were afraid to say simply “Fugitive slaves shall be returned to bondage,” for the words were too ugly. Instead, we devised this beautiful evasion: “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” What in the world do such words mean? What crimes do they mask?

Simon was not proud of himself or his colleagues that night.

These informal evening discussions were never attended by three of the outstanding delegates: General Washington was too busy with the social leaders of Philadelphia; Benjamin Franklin was too infirm; and James Madison, the aloof scholar, remained in his room, mysteriously occupied. But one night Madison suddenly appeared at the edge of the group, a small unimpressive fellow in his late thirties, with a penetrating eye and a manner which indicated that he did not suffer fools easily.

“Starr,” he said in a voice so low that few could hear, and when Simon joined him he said nothing but indicated that they should move to his room. When the door was closed behind them, Starr saw a jumble of papers on and beside a low writing desk. Unable to imagine why Madison had summoned him, he turned to ask, when Madison said with the warmest interest: “I wasn’t aware you had attended the college in Princeton,” and the friendly manner in which the words were spoken encouraged Simon to ask: “You, too?”

Yes, some eight years before Simon attended that fine Presbyterian school to which so many Southern boys migrated, Madison had gained distinction there by his exceptional work; but now, as he and Simon talked about their college years, Madison said modestly: “Studies were easy. I went back for an extra year to take Hebrew and ethics.”

“Why?”

“A man must know many things…many different things.” He reflected on this, then added: “When I was a member of the Continental Congress, and now here, I do believe I used each single item of history and philosophy and ethics I learned at college.”

“And Hebrew?”

“Studies like Hebrew toughen the mind.”

“I’ve noticed in debate that you have a very organized mind.”

“Why don’t you speak up? I’m told you’re effective in the night debates.”

Starr bowed and asked an impertinent question: “When were you born, Mr. Madison?”

“In 1751.”

“You’re only eight years older than me. It seems impossible.”

“Ah, Mr. Starr. Don’t despair. Those years were spent in constant study. And now I seek your help as a very bright young gentleman. On something I wrote some nights ago.” With that, he lifted from his table a hefty stack of sheets containing meticulously written paragraphs and dated Monday, June 18. The entry began: “MR. HAMILTON had hitherto been silent on the business before the Convention, partly from respect to others whose superior abilities, age and experience rendered him unwilling to bring forward ideas dissimilar to theirs…”

“You’re a friend of the colonel’s, are you not?” Madison asked, and Simon replied without hesitating: “I revere him.”

“Good! And you heard the long speech he delivered before he returned to New York?”

“I did.”

“You have my notes summarizing what I thought he said. I want you to read them carefully and point out any spots at which my memory might be doing him an injustice.”

“Why?”

“Because I was appalled at the strong monarchical nature of his recommendations—his obsequious respect for all things British.”

“Sometimes there is that cast to his thought,” Simon confessed, remembering his discussions with Hamilton. “But I didn’t think his remarks in the Convention…”

“Good! As a friend of his, please show me where I might have introduced error.”

Simon often told acquaintances of that extraordinary night of editorial work, but what they remembered most were his concluding remarks:

So, long into the night, as I read Mr. Madison’s careful report of what Colonel Hamilton had said, I sat on one side of the lamp, he on the other, me reading intently, him writing furiously, and when I finished I asked: “What are you writing, Mr. Madison?” and he said: “Each afternoon when the debate ends, I come here and try to report it faithfully speech by speech,” and when I asked why he did this, since we had Major William Jackson as our paid secretary, he said: “In years to come the Republic may need an honest account of what really transpired.”

So each day Mr. Madison rises early, has a frugal breakfast, reports to the Convention, engages vigorously in debate, speaks far more than most and with better effect, then comes home, dines sparingly, and drafts his account of what happened. He is not required to do this, and when I handed him back the Hamilton pages with the monarchical passages marked either yes or no, I asked him how many pages his journal covered, and he said with that great precision of mind which marked all he did: “I calculate there will be about a quarter of a million words.” And all of this completed at night while the rest of us are arguing and drinking beer.

In the latest stages of the long session, Simon added another portrait, which would be widely circulated after the death of both him and his subject:

There was another delegate from Pennsylvania whom I came to know late and unfavorably. I seemed unable to apprehend him, for although he was only seven or eight years older than me, he had acquired such a suave manner, which he displayed at every opportunity, that I both loathed and envied him. He was Gouverneur Morris, big and plump and almost oily, with the habit of reaching out to touch anyone whom he was striving to best in an argument. He spoke far more than anyone else in the Convention, but when I listened closely to what he said, he seemed to come down on all sides of every argument, but he had the effective tactic of admitting at the beginning of one of his amusing speeches that yes, he did yesterday say that he was against this motion but that overnight conversation with those who knew more about it than he had convinced him that he was wrong, and then he would launch into a vigorous defense of his new position. I stopped listening to his first four speeches on any topic, waiting until he reached his fifth position, which sometimes made great sense, for he was not stupid, just lacking in character.

What astounded me about Morris as I followed his wavering career was his effect upon women, for whenever a wife or daughter visited Philadelphia to stay with one of the delegates, there he was, like a gallant from the palace of Louis XIV paying court and kissing fingertips and uttering compliments that would make an ordinary man blush. He was reputed to be a dashing man with the ladies, and I noticed that when a tavern maid brought him a mug of ale, he treated her with the same exalted courtesy and courtship that he paid the wife of a wealthy businessman, and the tavern maid accepted his graciousness as if it were her right.

All this, mind you, with a withered right arm damaged by boiling water when he was a child and a big, clanking wooden left leg, the consequence of a riding accident in his youth. He was Caliban, and I did not like him.

But Simon penned a second report on Morris, and it has been this one which immortalizes the pompous ladies’ man:

By late Saturday afternoon, 8 September 1787, we delegates felt that we had made all the decisions necessary to launch our young nation on a bold new course, but the various papers reporting our conclusions were a sad jumble. So General Washington instructed us to vote in secret for five of our members who would bring order into this chaos. When the votes were counted, five of our ablest men had been chosen, Hamilton and Madison among them, and they were handed the impossible task of setting our new government in order. They were to work Saturday night, all day Sunday, and submit their finished job on Monday—and it did indeed prove to be an impossible task. For on Monday they reported sleepily that they would require one extra day, and it was granted.

To my surprise, Gouverneur Morris had been elected to this august body which would make all the final decisions, but when I asked my friends why, they reminded me: “He does have a way with words.”

No written account exists of how the committee spent their three nights and two days, but word circulated that the members were aghast when they looked at the jumble of papers before them and realized that they faced twenty-three rambling, disorganized and sometimes contradictory articles which they must fashion into a coherent document. I believe, and so do others, that Morris stepped forward, gathered the mass into his arms, one good, one withered, and sat down to rewrite the whole. The other four, awed by the complexity of the task, were glad to have him try his hand.

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-eight 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 Wilson.

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 establish.

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?

So this huge fellow sat on the Supreme Court, listening and dozing while Marshall and Story picked arguments apart and asked lawyers probing questions. “He is like a great sleeping walrus,” said one newspaper, “waiting for a fish to swim by,” and so he appeared in several cartoons of the time, his drooping mustaches converting him into a gross human being topped by a walrus head. In a letter to his wife he explained the affinity which had grown up between him and Marshall:

He finds himself comfortable with me because neither of us ever studied law. We just became lawyers on our own. Then, too, he was never a judge, leapfrogged right into the job of Chief Justice. He told the Court the other day: “I think and think and make the right decision, then leave it to Justice Story here to cite the precedents on which it should have been made. He’s a scholar, I’m not.”

In the February term of 1819, Justice Starr was privileged to sit through what legal scholars call “the six most important weeks in the history of any major court,” for in a series of thunderbolt decisions, Chief Justice Marshall and his six associates hammered into place the rules under which the nation would henceforth be governed: “At the close of this breathless period, Marshall told me: ‘Starr, a constitution is a bundle of flabby wishes till the courts give it a backbone.’ ” The United States would never be the same after these blazing weeks.

There was a more fundamental reason why Starr and Marshall functioned so amiably. They both despised Tom Jefferson. Marshall often carried in his pocket that incredible statement about Shays’ Rebellion which Jefferson had issued from the safety of his cushy job in Paris:

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms! What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

“Imagine a man like that as President!” Marshall grumbled. “Our task is to frustrate the radicalism he introduced,” and the two justices strained every muscle to do just that.

They started with the famous Dartmouth College v. Woodward case, in which Marshall established the sanctity of contracts, a decision enabling the business of the nation to proceed and grow in an orderly way for the next hundred years. What role did our justice play in this crucial case? He seems not to have followed the impassioned argument, focusing instead on the appearance of the principal lawyer, Daniel Webster. Making no comment whatever on the merits of the case, Starr wrote to a friend:

Daniel Webster came before us like a leading actor in a play. Robust, handsome, shoes of the most expensive quality, tight britches of a purplish color, blue cloth coat fitted exquisitely to his frame and adorned with flashing silver or pewter buttons, a waistcoat uniting with a huge expanse of ruffled shirt, a flowing collar marked by an elaborate kerchief, hair neatly tied in a tail behind. When he spoke, he dominated the Court.

It was Justice Starr who was responsible for the lasting picture we have of Webster as he concluded his plea in defense of Dartmouth’s right to exist under its contract:

When Webster finished, he stood silent before our Court. Then in his great organ voice told us: “You may destroy this little institution: it is weak, it is in your hands. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which have thrown their radiance over this land. It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it.” When he finished, there were tears in his eyes, and in mine, too. We all voted in his favor, and I think Dartmouth College was saved, but it might have been the other way.

Justice Starr played a similar role in what is widely regarded as the most important case ever to be decided by the Court, McCulloch v. Maryland, but like many commentators at the time and since, he seemed to have difficulty in remembering who was claiming what and the significance of the arguments. It came down to two questions on which the future of our nation depended: First, is the federal government denied permission to create a needed agency, in this case a national bank, if the Constitution overlooked granting such a power, or can Congress rely upon authorizations not spelled out but implied by common sense? Second, and of even greater import, can a state, in this case Maryland, impose excessive taxes on an agency created by the federal government and thus destroy it? Put simply, what body of law controls the United States—the rigid terms of a Constitution engraved in stone in 1787, or a living, breathing body of principles, always loyal to the framework of the Constitution but able to adjust to the nation’s evolving needs?

Webster and a scintillating Maryland lawyer named William Pinkney defended the government, but once again Justice Starr missed the essential arguments, even Webster’s immortal cry: “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” He also missed most of Pinkney’s historic three-day oration, which Justice Joseph Story, sitting in the case, called “the greatest effort I have ever heard.” What Starr concentrated on once more was sartorial splendor:

I perceived that he [Pinkney] wore a corset to squeeze in a belly which was even bigger than mine. He also wore women’s powder and grease to handsome up his face, shoes high-heeled to make him taller, and suitings, changed each day, to bedazzle the ladies in the gallery and the judges on the bench. He dazzled me.

Starr could not report on Pinkney’s inspired arguments in favor of a strong, central government, because, as the papers revealed: “Pinkney’s arguments on the first day must have satisfied Justice Starr, who slept through much of the second day and some of the third.” But after the decision was read, only three days after argument, Chief Justice Marshall told a friend: “I could not have written this difficult decision judgment without the assistance of Starr, who sat with me for three long days and nights, caring for my pages as I finished them and bringing me refreshment.”

And what were Marshall’s answers to the two burning questions? That the government could operate on implied powers, thus adjusting to new needs and conditions as they arose. Therefore, even though the Constitution said not one word about the right of the central government to establish a national bank supervising the currency, common sense, as Alexander Hamilton had reasoned, dictated that the federal government must have that power. And that in the vital areas defined by the Constitution, the powers of the federal government prevailed over those of the states. Of course, it would be profitable to Maryland if she could tax operations of the federal government carried on within her boundaries, but the rights of the central had to supersede; also, each state would be tempted to impose duties upon the goods of other states coming into it, but the federal government could not allow the confusion that would result. When these matters were finally clarified for Edmund Starr, he exulted in letters home: “I think I have helped John Marshall save the nation. We can now march forward.”

But the picture of Justice Starr which I treasure is one written by an Englishman traveling through his former colonies:

The judges of the Supreme Court meet in Washington part of the year, then serve as circuit judges during the remainder. Chief Justice Marshall is responsible for Virginia and North Carolina; Justice Starr for South Carolina and Georgia. It is their delight, at the end of their circuits, to meet in Richmond, where they engage in a protracted challenge of quoits covering three or four days. The Chief Justice is now near eighty, but as bright of eye as a man of thirty. Justice Starr is a quarter of a century younger, and of such enormous girth that he requires a colored boy to reach down and fetch him his quoits, round iron saucers with big holes in the middle.

You should hear these eminent jurists compete. Standing side by side at one end of the pit, they pair themselves with local gentlemen at the other end, which means that the two justices compete one against the other. Their shouts can be heard at a distance, and there are noisy arguments as to whose quoit is nearer the meg.

I did notice, however, that when the Chief Justice made a particularly good throw, the players agreed that his was best, even though Starr’s was clearly closer, and although Marshall must have been aware of this favoritism, he accepted it as his due.

When the game ended, with him invariably the winner, players and spectators alike repaired to a tent to gorge ourselves on barbecue, a delicious concoction of roasted pork and peppery sauce, assisted by melons and fruits, all washed down with glasses of toddy, punch and porter, followed by a rich dessert called mince pie.

It is difficult for the English visitor to realize that these two unpretentious old men in shirt sleeves determine the legal fate of our thirteen former colonies and the eleven new states which have recently joined them.

GENERAL HUGH STARR

1833–1921

On Saturday, Nancy insisted that we avoid a big lunch and go instead to the Georgetown Racquet Club for some vigorous tennis with the Wrightsons, and I appreciated the suggestion, because although I’m always too lazy to make such a decision myself, when Nancy arranges it, I accept. It helps keep the weight down, and on this tense day, the anxiety.

Sam Wrightson was considerate, for although he is on the staff of the Washington Post, he did not pester me with questions about the rumors of my role in the Iran or Nicaragua affair. It was a lively game, interrupted most pleasantly at the end of the first set by the unexpected appearance of Zack McMaster, who apologized to the Wrightsons: “I hoped I’d find these characters here. Could I please speak to them for a moment?”

“When legal eagles scream, we salute,” Wrightson said, and off they went to fetch some lemonade.

“Nothing important,” Zack told us. “I’m afraid I’ve been a little uptight these last few days. May have made you nervous. No need. No need at all.” He accented these last two words quite heavily, then added: “I’m meeting this afternoon with some of the older men in our firm…to nail things down. So you relax.”

It was the kind of assurance I needed, and I remember our last set that day as some of the most enjoyable tennis we’ve had. Back home, after we’d showered, I told Nancy: “We ought to do that more often,” and she exploded with laughter: “Look who’s talking more tennis, you lazy bum.” For lunch we had whole-wheat toast, a tangy cheddar cheese and big glasses of cold buttermilk, after which Nancy said she wanted to query me about one of my ancestors whom she did not care much for, because of his cavalier treatment of women, but whom I respected as one of the best.

Whether she really wanted to know about the general or was merely trying to keep me distracted, I’m not sure, but we did talk.

—

On no member of the Starr family did the Constitution fall with a heavier hand than on Hugh Starr, for he found himself far ahead of its provisions and had to wait painfully until amendments were made.

It was in the summer of 1856, while serving as instructor at West Point, trim in appearance and sharp of mind, that he became personally aware that the Union was in real danger of flying apart. Two bodies of information reached him from two much different sources. First came a detailed letter from his older brother, who had remained at home in Virginia to operate the small holding known affectionately as the “family plantation.” The brothers had inherited from their father, the Supreme Court justice, some eight hundred acres and thirteen slaves, and to tend the place effectively, they had acquired an additional six slaves, and it was these nineteen that were causing concern:

Hugh, I’m perplexed by the damages the South suffers from its adherence to slavery. It brings us constant criticism from church groups and abolitionists, even though we can morally justify our behavior, because you and I know that we treat our slaves decently. But dispensing with the system would take a moral burden off our backs. More significant is the fact that some of the wisest men of northern Virginia and those who operate the best plantations and large farms have come to a striking conclusion. Counting the cost of everything we have to provide a slave, clothing, medicine, food and a place to live, we would get a much better deal for ourselves by setting them free and hiring them back for a small cash wage. Think about this. I recommend it, and so do the others.

When Hugh tried to reconcile such a radical shift with his emotional support of his home state, he was always left with one stubborn idea: Slavery is the way we define the South. Virginia can’t turn its back on slavery and remain Virginia, but my brother’s right. Change is inescapable. Unable to resolve the dilemma, he could make no sensible reply to his brother’s suggestion that the Starrs rid themselves of their burden: It may make sense economically but not in daily living. He would postpone his decision.

But he was also required to adjust his thinking about the North, because four of his fellow officers, “almost the best of the lot” he decided, came from Vermont, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, and in nightly discussions they presented such a rational, nonhysterical body of opinion that he had to listen. They were not abolitionists and voiced little patience with those who were, nor did they display any animus against the South, but Starr was surprised at how firm they were in their opposition to slavery.

The man from Vermont, Captain Benjamin Greer, was a wiry, taciturn fellow, a year or so older than Starr and not given to ranting. So when Greer said one night: “If the differences between slave states and free continue to widen, the Union could possibly divide, break clean apart,” Starr was appalled that an officer in the United States Army dared make such a seditious statement. But when the four Northerners pressed him as to what choice he might make in such a situation, he had to confess: “In my family it’s always been Virginia first, the Union second. So I suppose I’d have to follow whatever lead Virginia took.”

Greer, seeing Hugh’s perplexity, assured him: “I’m not threatening to shatter the Union, never, never. But as I listen to you Southern men talk, I hear you advocating positions that can only lead to a split between the two sections of our nation.”

“Sad day that would be,” Hugh said, dismissing the possibility, but when he listened closely to what officers from Carolina and Alabama were whispering, he was forced into a gloomy conclusion: Yes, I can imagine a mess when Virginians like me might be goaded into forming a union of our own where the traditions of the South would be preserved. And once he conceded this about himself, he saw that responsible Northerners like Ben Greer were edging toward a similar solution: In order to defend what they believe in, they may also decide that they’ll have to have a union of their own. He was frightened by this collision—or separation—course.

His vague reflections were dispelled by the arrival of a bugle-call letter which demanded that he make up his mind, for his brother wrote:

Hugh, I’ve made the decision for us, and unless you countermand it by an immediate letter, I shall proceed. All of us who occupy the good lands at the bend of the river have decided to manumit our slaves, hire them back for wages, and give each family a plot of our land big enough to sustain themselves. This will not only release us from increasingly difficult moral problems, but will also make our return on our land considerably more profitable…

The startling letter contained many additional details, most of which Hugh judged to be in the interests of everyone, white owner and black slave alike. Because Ben Greer was interested in such matters, Hugh sought him out, placed the letter before him, and said: “I want you to see how we Southerners react to the problems you’ve been discussing.” The social statesmanship of the Virginia letter was so pronounced and the personal integrity of the farmers involved so clear that Greer summoned his Northern friends and read them the details.

“It’s magnificent that your brother can think so clearly,” Greer said. “I suppose you’ll be sending him your approval?”

“Yes,” and that night he showed Greer the letter he had composed:

You have my permission. I turn over to you all my rights in the nineteen Starr slaves with the understanding that you will manumit the lot. But regardless of how the details are arranged, I hope you can see to it that my personal slave Hannibal remains with me, if the cost is not prohibitive.

Hugh’s letter was quite long, because he went into detail about each of the family units among the Starr slaves: “Birdsong and Nelly are too old to work regularly for a salary, and since they can’t live much longer…How old is Birdsong, in his nineties maybe? Arrange for him and Nelly to take their meals with one of the other families and charge it to me.”

Quiet word, all of it approving, passed through West Point regarding the extraordinary act of young Starr in freeing his slaves. Even die-hard officers from South Carolina and Georgia stopped by his quarters to voice their reserved sanction. Said one confirmed Southerner with a degree from Oxford: “Louisiana and Mississippi aren’t ready yet to do what you’ve done. For the present we need our slaves. It’s been proved that in those swampy, steamy climates no white man can possibly work outdoors in the sun. So without our slaves we’d have no sugar or rice. But even so, I do believe that if the Northerners leave us alone, we’ll probably free all our slaves by the early years of the next century, when we’ll continue to produce sugar and rice with freed Negro help.”

As the young officers at West Point gingerly edged toward a mutual understanding regarding slavery, they were unaware that in Washington the Supreme Court was also belatedly attempting to correct the tragic errors left in the Constitution by the framers seventy years earlier. Now the justices would specify how the United States must handle slavery. These were the tense weeks of February 1857, when Franklin Pierce was ending his presidency and James Buchanan was about to begin his, and although the Court had decided what its judgment was going to be, the justices realized that it would be inflammatory, so they delayed announcing it until Buchanan had been safely inaugurated.

This took place on a frosty fourth of March, and two days later the Supreme Court delivered one of its most poisonous decisions, Dred Scott v. Sanford. Facts in the case were simple and uncontested: Dred Scott, a Missouri slave, sixty-two years old, had been taken by his owner north into free territory. After a prolonged stay there as a free man, Dred voluntarily returned to Missouri, where he was promptly claimed as a slave by his former owner’s widow. The problems: Was Dred in any sense of the word a citizen? Had he the right to sue in a federal court? And did return to slave territory automatically reinstall him as a slave?

The major opinion was read by the Chief Justice, immediate successor to the awesome John Marshall and a jurist almost as revered. He was Roger Brooke Taney, a tall, thin, acidulous legal scholar from Maryland, eighty years old and passionately dedicated to the task of protecting the gallant agrarian South against the grubby industrial North. In his crusade he was abetted by five other members of his nine-man court who also sided with the Southern states; the seventh justice vacillated in his loyalties, while numbers eight and nine were outspokenly Northern in their sympathies.

It required all the first day for Taney to read his extensive review of slavery in the United States, and when he finished, his audience was stunned by the breadth of his knowledge, the scholarship of his references, and the totality of his support for the South. His decision was an iron-studded gauntlet flung into the teeth of the North. Its conclusions were so shocking that every one of the other eight justices issued his own decision, but on the big issues the vote was 7 to 2 supporting Taney.

His conclusions were bold and startling. No slave could ever be a citizen. In fact, no black, slave or not, could ever be a citizen. Slaves were property, just like mules and wagons, and the right to hold property must be protected. Then, in his Southern zeal to settle the slavery question once and for all, Taney threw in several opinions of his own, obiter dicta they were called, interesting conclusions but not justified by the data in the case at hand. They were inflammable: the Missouri Compromise of 1820, adjudicating which new states should be free of slavery, was unconstitutional; and even though a slave gained temporary freedom by running away to the North, if he ever returned to slave territory, he became once more a slave.

These judgments, so alien to the general drift of the nation in 1857, were harsh enough to arouse the fears of the Northern states, but Taney compounded his terrible error by inserting a protracted essay about the genesis of slavery, which did great damage. Taney never said that he believed what he was about to say; he was merely citing what the framers believed when they wrote the Constitution, but the phrases were so brutal that thousands of Northerners, upon hearing them, decided then and forever that since these were the opinions of the Court, any further compromise with the South was impossible:

Negroes were not intended to be included under the word citizens and can, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges of citizens….They were considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power might choose to grant them.

They had been regarded as beings of an inferior order; and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it.

Another justice added:

The stigma of the black slave, of the deepest degradation, was fixed upon the whole race.

And then it became clear how Taney justified his basic decision: since the Founding Fathers in 1787 believed these things about black people, the judgment was fixed forever; blacks could neither obtain now nor expect in the future any relief in the courts. In 1787 the framers of the Constitution had considered them non-beings devoid of any rights, and so they must continue perpetually.

Hugh Starr, having just clarified his own thinking about slavery and having freed his own, was appalled that the Supreme Court could issue such a document, for it lagged fifty years behind informed thinking, and he was not surprised when his fellow officers from the North scorned the Court’s opinion. Even level-headed Benjamin Greer said: “Your Southern justices make it impossible for us Northern states to remain in a union to be governed by such laws,” and for several painful weeks young Starr remained apart from his friends, striving to find even a shred of justification for the Dred Scott Decision.

He found none. Just as his grandfather’s Constitutional Convention had lacked the courage to grapple with the slave problem in its day, so this Supreme Court failed to provide the type of guidance necessary to preserve the Union. When his perplexity subsided, he sought out his friends and tried to probe their thinking, but a veil had dropped between North and South, and relationships at West Point were strained.

Said Starr one night, after trying in vain to talk with the Northerners: “The Supreme Court agitates the nation, and the Army pacifies it. Something’s topsy-turvy.” And the confusions deepened.

The frenzied presidential campaign of 1860 revealed just how chaotic conditions had become. The animosities of the Dred Scott Decision produced four major contestants for the presidency. Young officers from the Northern states had never heard of John Cabell Breckenridge and John Bell, the favorites of the South, while Hugh and his Southerners, although familiar with Senator Stephen Douglas, knew little of the lanky former congressman, this Lincoln. Both groups were astounded when Abraham Lincoln won on a strictly regional vote, and on the night the results were known, a brassy-voiced officer from Georgia shouted warning of what loomed ahead: “Lincoln got not a single vote from the South! He’s not my President!”

Now the wonderful camaraderie of the Point evaporated as one Southern officer after another quietly surrendered his commission in what he perceived as the Northern army, and slipped home to the Southern state which had always commanded his allegiance. Departing officers confided to their friends: “If trouble comes, and I don’t see how it can be avoided, I’ve got to be a South Carolina man.” It would not have been proper for secession to be openly discussed at the Point, but as the date for Lincoln’s stormy inauguration approached, worried friends discussed their options in whispers, and Starr saw that the nation his ancestors had fought so diligently to create and preserve was destined to fracture along North-South lines.

Then came the real problem: But if war comes, what do I do? On the morning after he first dared to voice this question, three of his friends left the Point to return South and offer their services to their state militias, and Hugh narrowed his question: A choice between the Union and Virginia, what then? The problem was made more difficult when the commandant summoned him to share good news: “Captain Starr, I have here your promotion to major in the Army of the United States. Congratulations.” Hugh accepted, but in doing so, realized that he was binding himself ever more strongly to the Union.

Alone in his quarters, he remembered the advice Jared Starr had given his son Simon in his deathbed letter in 1787: “Fashion a strong new form of government but protect Virginia’s interests.”

Ah, but what were “Virginia’s interests”? He had begun to think that the time might be at hand when Virginia should join with Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania as the four powerful states of the Union and forget sentimental and romantic attachments to the South: Sensible Virginians like my brother see that their interests are best protected by giving their slaves freedom, right now. They want no part of the Dred Scott Decision. But Virginia is tied to the other Southern states by bonds of iron, and so I suppose we must help them fight their battles defending slavery. Since Greer and the other Northerners will never allow slavery to move west, war becomes inescapable. And then what do I do?

In March 1861 he went on leave to his home in Virginia, where he spent happy days with his wife and children, son Malcolm and daughter Emily. He found his neighbors uneasy about the civil war that loomed, but none who even considered fighting on the Northern side. His brother, now the master of a prosperous plantation on which freed slaves worked effectively, summarized local thought: “It will be war to defend a way of life. Virginia planters against Northern factory owners.” His brother always spoke as if Virginia alone would bear the military burden, but even though he disliked the arrogant way in which Carolina and Georgia men handled the slavery issue, he felt that Virginia must line up with them, and Hugh agreed.

Both the spring idyll in Virginia and the intellectual uncertainty about the forthcoming war vanished when shocking word reached the Starr plantation: “President Lincoln offered Colonel Lee command of all Federal forces, and Lee refused. Said he respected the Union, but his heart was with Virginia.”

“What’s it mean?” Hugh asked, and his informant said: “Lee’s to be general of the Southern armies.”

“Then it’s war?”

“Don’t see how it can be avoided.” That afternoon Hugh rode to Richmond, where he was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel Starr, Army of the Confederacy, and when the war came, he welcomed it.

During the next four years he served at Lee’s right hand, sharing both the exciting early victories and the trailing defeats. His loyalty to Robert E. Lee duplicated Simon Starr’s loyalty to Alexander Hamilton, and Lee in turn gave repeated evidence of his high regard for Starr’s reliability, promoting him to full colonel, then to brigadier general.

Between battles, there were painful moments when it was clear that even Lee was beginning to wonder if the South could ever win against the vast Northern superiority in men and equipment, but more distressing were those night doubts which Hugh could share with no one: I wonder if the South deserves to win? I wonder if we aren’t backing the wrong forces in history?

He could not believe that he and his brother were wrong in freeing their slaves, and when his personal servant Hannibal asked permission to accompany him on one campaign, he saw confirmation of what he had often suspected in the past: He’s capable of anything, that Hannibal. But he did not go so far as to accept the abolitionist propaganda. “Most of the Negroes aren’t worth much,” he said, “but the good ones can be exceptional.” Yet when he inspected the free village that his brother had established for the former Starr slaves, he found it at least as well tended as villages occupied by lower-class whites.

As the War Between the States ground painfully toward certain defeat for the South, General Starr felt contradictory and agonizing emotions: My heart bleeds for General Lee. Like him, I weep for Virginia. But I’m also glad the Union is to be preserved. Northern men like General Greer are too good to lose. And then a most powerful thought possessed him, clear as the sound of a bugle on the morning of battle: Twenty years from now you won’t be able to tell South from North. In things that matter, that is.

—

Hugh Starr stood resolutely beside General Lee during the fatal last weeks of the Confederacy, participated in the surrender at Appomattox, and then turned his attention to mending the stricken fortunes of Virginia, and this brought our family right back into the heart of the Constitution, which had treated Hugh so poorly in its gross failure to solve the slavery problem at the time of Dred Scott.

In rapid-fire order the victorious Northern Congress passed three amendments, which should have gone into effect as early as 1820. The Thirteenth abolished slavery, the Fourteenth awarded blacks the civil rights that Dred Scott denied them, while the Fifteenth said simply that no citizen should be denied the right to vote because of “race, color or previous condition of servitude.”

General Starr achieved notoriety, not always of a favorable kind, by standing forth as a Virginia defender of these amendments: “Long overdue. About eighty years.” He visited various cities throughout the South, assuring men and women who were sometimes close to despair that the carpetbaggers from the North would soon be gone, that the disqualifications which dogged former Confederate leaders like himself would be lifted, and that devising new patterns for living with black folk would be the constructive task for the next two decades.

“That Virginia will rise again to the preeminent position she enjoyed in 1830, I have no doubt. We have the laws now and the men and women of ability. Let’s get on with it.” In the evenings he met with veterans who wanted to know what it had been like serving with Robert E. Lee, and after describing this battle or that, he ended: “We all have a chance to serve with him again. He’s working to rebuild the South and we must assist him.”

EMILY STARR

1858–1932

Early sunday morning our phone jangled. It was Zack: “Can I come over?” and when he arrived from church he accepted a glass of cider and began questioning me: “You got everything lined up? Your head screwed on tight?” When I assured him I’d been reviewing family records, he said: “Good. I’m sure I can save your neck. I don’t think they can lay a hand on you. Not in that uniform, with those family heroes and your own three or four tiers of medals.”

He concluded with a bit of advice: “Take it easy today. Listen to Mozart. Stay relaxed. Because tomorrow you’ll need all your smarts.” And he was about to leave me to my somnolence when Nancy broke in with a question which had begun to gnaw at her as she reviewed my family history.

“Tell me, Zack. You’re a lawyer who understands these things. Why, in the entire Constitution that governs our nation and in all the reports of the debates, are women never once mentioned? Slaves are and mules and soldiers and judges, but never a woman. Were we considered of no significance in a new land which needed all the babies it could get?”

He sat down again, for her question interested him. “Well,” he said, “the men who wrote the Constitution were influenced by European law. They had to be. What other law did they know?”

“But why the indifference to women?”

“Because of French law, mostly. An ancient concept called feme covert—old idea, old spelling—denoted a covered woman, a married woman whose only legal rights were those under the protection of her husband. Out of the goodness of his heart, her all-wise, all-just husband with his superior judgment could be relied upon to look after her property, her money and her civil rights.”

“How generous,” Nancy said.

“The principle of feme covert surfaced at its ugliest when a loving husband claimed, and got, the right to manage the huge dowry a merchant’s daughter often brought to their marriage. I believe a lot of wealthy wives died mysteriously in those circumstances.”

“Do you believe in the principle of feme covert?”

“No, but the fathers of the Constitution did, more or less.” He snapped his fingers as a completely new idea struck his agile mind: “Never thought of it before. I read the other day that an outrageous number of the founders had two wives, and quite a few had three. In those days of miserable medicine, child-bearing women were expendable. A man expected to have two or three wives. They were different from men, obviously more fragile. Men had to look after them, make decisions for them.”

In her traditional way, Nancy now asked some abrupt questions: “You’d sort of like it if the old days came back, wouldn’t you?”

“When I lose a case to a brilliant woman lawyer, I sure do.”

“Why did you divorce Pamela?”

“She wanted to find herself. Runs a bookstore in Bethesda.”

“In other words, she didn’t buy the legal theories of our Founding Fathers?”

“Don’t make it too complex. She fell in love with the owner of the store, who borrowed a slug of money from her. She’ll lose every nickel, as any man who inspected the guy’s profit-and-loss statement could have predicted.” Somewhat edgy, he turned to me: “I’ll pick you up at eight tomorrow.”

Wanting to thank him for his generous help, and also to apologize for Nancy’s bluntness, I accompanied him to his car, and in our driveway he gave me the encouragement he knew I needed: “Things look real solid, Norm. Stay limber.”

When I returned to the house, I realized that staying loose wasn’t going to be as easy as Zack had made it sound, because Nancy immediately confronted me: “That talk about the attitude of the Founding Fathers toward women makes me more interested than ever in the grand old lady of your clan.” And we spent the next few hours discussing General Hugh Starr’s gangling daughter.

—

The General had two children, a son, Malcolm, born two years before the Dred Scott Decision, and a daughter, Emily, born a year after. Malcolm, who became my great-grandfather, was an extremely stuffy type who went to Princeton and spent his vacations visiting one grand house after another in Philadelphia, Long Island and points north, looking for an heiress. He found none.

And then, miraculously, an heiress wealthier than any he had dared hope for came seeking him. General Benjamin Greer of the Vermont Rifles, who had performed so gallantly in support of General Ulysses S. Grant at Vicksburg, had come to Washington on one of his periodic visits, and, as always, he wanted to spend one evening with his old friend from West Point and Bleeding Kansas days. He and General Starr, fortunately, had never faced each other in battle, but their careers were so similar, Greer as an aide to Grant, Starr with Lee, that they had much to talk about.

This meeting was unusual in that Greer brought with him his attractive niece Anne, daughter of his older brother, a man who had moved to New Hampshire after the war to start a textile mill, which had prospered wondrously. “The other Greers,” Benjamin called them in public; in private he profited from their good fortune and, in gratitude, had helped his nephews and nieces see aspects of American life they might otherwise have missed.

“You’ll like the Starrs,” he had coached Anne before their arrival in Washington. “Solid people. One son, one daughter and a father that General Lee called ‘my faithful right arm.’ ”

It was a tempestuous courtship—it seemed to the two generals that both the young people fell in love at the same instant—and it rocketed to a Washington marriage graced by generals, senators and a cadre of New England textile millionaires.

Anne was regal as she posed that week in a white outfit while young Sargent painted her. You can see her in the museum in Philadelphia, a woman of unforgettable beauty, but also of great austerity. Women of wealth are apt to be like that.

She was so magnificent—that’s really the only word—that she quite overshadowed poor Emily, and the discrepancy was so visible that the General knew he wouldn’t have an easy time finding a husband for his daughter. She was taller than he thought a woman should be, gaunter than required, and quite graceless in a gawky way. Of course, I never saw her, but the history books are filled with photographs of her, tall and militant, swinging her pocketbook at policemen or being carted away to one or another of the four jails that housed her.

That came later, of course, because in the late 1870s, all three members of her family—the General, Malcolm, Anne—were busy devising tricks to trap a young man. Apart from his house in Washington, the General had almost no funds, but Anne did, and the family exhibited an aura of wealth which attracted several young men who would otherwise never have looked at Emily, let alone court her. Warfare had made the General a good judge of men, while Anne had had her own experiences with fortune hunters, so between them they sent scattering several young fellows who would have brought Emily only grief.

They were not so lucky with a chap named Nicky Poland, who had acquired at Amherst a social polish to which Anne said “he was not really entitled.” He had little money of his own, a vague kind of job in New York, and two good suits which he interchanged for maximum effect. He was such a charmer that in 1881, when Emily was twenty-three, he came frighteningly close to persuading her to elope with him to a town in Maryland that arranged swift marriages with no questions asked.

Emily, eager to take herself off the aging hands of her father, and persuaded that young Nicky had sufficient funds to support her, was about to flee Washington for a life of happiness. However, she confided her plans to her sister-in-law, who required only a few minutes to summon a family conclave, to which Nicky was invited. There in a sunny room, tea and biscuits were served, with little silver spoons for the marmalade, a delicacy young Poland had not tasted before. General Starr, tall and straight and almost funereal in his bleak presentation of facts, informed Nicky that the two Starr men had practically no money, that Emily had less, and that they were all living off the generosity of Anne Greer Starr.

Before Poland could react to this appalling news, Anne made a little speech, which has come down in our family from father to daughter: “Mr. Poland, what the General has just said is true. The obvious wealth in this family comes all from my father and me. Emily here has not a penny, nor will she ever get a penny if she elopes with you. Now, hadn’t you better leave this house and Washington, taking this envelope with you?”

Anne never told anyone what was in that envelope, but if it was money, it was sufficient to get Nicky Poland out of the room and out of Washington, too.

Now, to save Emily’s self-respect, the family felt it obligatory to find her a replacement, and since the two Starr men showed no skill at that task the burden fell on Anne, who brought to the Starr home one eligible young man after another, none of whom returned voluntarily, for at twenty-four, Emily was even less enticing.

“We must do something with your hair, Emmy,” Anne said. “And you ought to smooth out your piano playing.” Brother Malcolm was more direct: “Emmy, a girl with few graces has until her twenty-fifth birthday to get married. Anne has been most generous in helping you, but now you must help yourself.”

And that was when the Starrs first realized that in their Emily, they had a young woman quite out of the ordinary, because she said to her brother, within earshot of both Anne and the General: “I’ve been thinking there might be more to a human life than being wife to someone who doesn’t want me.”

Three gasps greeted this extraordinary assault on values, but since the revolutionary subject was now opened, Emily revealed the amazing turn her thinking had taken: “In all the noble work the men of our family did, Declaration of Independence to the rebuilding after Appomattox, Father, the word woman is never once mentioned. Women were not declared free in 1776. They weren’t mentioned once during the Convention. Grandfather Edmund never handed down a decision to protect or guide them. And the War Between the States was fought by men for men’s reasons.”

“Emily!” the General cried, as if his honor had been impugned. “The men of the South revered women…”

“If women had been consulted in that ridiculous affair, it would have ended in 1861.”

There was more, a whipping back and forth, laying bare ugly wounds that had not previously been ventilated, and at the conclusion, the General said: “Emily, you talk like an enlightened woman bred in Massachusetts, and an uglier tribe was never born.”

Leaving her alone in the darkening room, the three retreated to the General’s study, where they conducted a painful discussion on “what to do with Emily,” and once again Anne volunteered to take draconian measures: “She finds herself a husband within the year, or it’s over.” Before anyone could react, she corrected herself: “No, we must find her a husband within the year.”

That was how a shy, attractive man from Connecticut appeared at the Starr home. Philip Rawson was twenty-nine, unmarried and a distant cousin of the wealthy Greers. The money had not flowed his family’s way, but Anne had intimated to Philip that if he found Emily interesting, he would also find his fortunes enhanced, considerably.

He proved to be such an amiable fellow that the Starrs were happy to have him as a guest. Emily, cognizant of the fact that Anne and Malcolm had gone far out of their way to find him, actually blossomed, to an extent that caused the General to confide to his son: “I think our problems are solved.” But Malcolm warned: “Only if she doesn’t resume that nonsense she was talking.”

One night, while Emily was playing the piano for Philip, the other three Starrs held a council of war in the General’s study, where Malcolm posed the question that had been worrying his father: “If this Rawson is as acceptable as he seems, why hasn’t he married long before this?” and Anne explained: “I wrote to friends in Hartford to ask that same question.”

“And what did they say?”

“The Rawsons are even poorer than I thought. They had two daughters to marry off and there was nothing left for Philip. He makes such a pitiful living as a librarian that he felt he could not fairly ask any girl of good family to marry him.” She paused. “I find him quite acceptable and we must pray that things go well.”

They did. He was enamored of books and introduced Emily to the richly textured works of William Dean Howells. At the end of three weeks, when it had been understood that he would leave, Anne asked him to stay on, and she extended her invitation in such a way that he now knew without question that they wanted him to consider an alliance with Emily. He accepted this invitation so graciously that Malcolm informed the General that night: “I think we’ve solved Lady Emily’s problem.”

And they might have, had not a tempestuous woman stormed into Washington at that moment. She was Kate Kedzie, widow of a Wyoming cattleman and the first woman in America to have voted in a general election. She had waited in a snowstorm to cast her ballot under the Territory of Wyoming’s revolutionary law of 1869 granting woman suffrage. She was short, dynamic and darkened by the Western sun, but she was also intellectually mature, for she had attended college at Oberlin in Ohio, where she had developed her talents in music, physical education and oratory. Upon graduating, she did not return to her Indiana home to marry and raise children; she went instead to Chicago, where she found a job with a publisher and married his son, who had attended Yale. Together they moved west into Wyoming Territory, where they gambled their mutual savings on an enormous spread of almost barren land at six cents an acre. They thrived under frontier conditions, and when she surprised him by saying “I think women should be allowed to vote,” he said. “Why not?” and the two formed the team which initiated and passed the legislation.

Having conquered the prejudices of her own area, Kate, as a widow, branched out into Colorado, where the miners rebuffed her with obscenities, and then into Kansas, where she was well received. Before she was fully aware of the transition, she had become a woman suffragist, working with great leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the apparently fruitless drive to alter the Constitution so that women could vote throughout the nation.

In frantic pursuit of that goal, she had come to Washington to persuade a reluctant Congress that an amendment was necessary, and at one of her first public meetings she made a soul-searing impression on Emily. Using every oratorical trick she had acquired at Oberlin, she finished in a low, pulsating voice:

“We are the forgotten people. We are the abused, the trampled upon, the ridiculed, because we are powerless. But, my friends, a storm is rising, and above it our voices will be heard. Justice, we cry! We demand justice! And…we shall…attain…it!”

Emily did not move forward to speak to her that night, nor on the two nights that followed, but Kate Kedzie was a clever woman. She had spotted reluctant converts before, so at the conclusion of her fourth stormy lecture she reached out, caught Emily by the wrist, and asked: “Who are you, young woman?”

“I live here. Emily Starr.”

“Are you of my persuasion?”

“I think so.” And from that hesitant beginning, Emily became a suffragist who suspected that she might be entering upon a battle that could last the rest of her life. The Constitution must be changed so that all women could enjoy the political and property rights that Kate Kedzie had won for Wyoming in 1869.

Emily’s introduction to the fray was dramatic, for on a June morning in 1886 her father choked on his breakfast eggs, and roared: “Emily, what’s this in the paper?” and there it was:

Among the speakers on behalf of what she claimed were “long-delayed women’s rights” was the daughter of General Hugh Starr, who said in a voice that could scarcely be heard: “We shall fight for the ballot in every known venue until Congress offers the states a chance to vote on an amendment.” Loud boos greeted the challenge, but Miss Starr held her own.

The General was a formidable man, fifty-three years old and in full possession of his considerable force. Should a new war erupt on Monday, he would be ready to ride forth on Tuesday, so he was more than ready to punish his daughter’s assault on decency: “Did you parade yourself in public?”

“Yes,” spoken firmly.

“And you presumed to advise Congress?”

“I did.”

A torrent of abuse followed, scathing in its denunciation of women who wanted to be men and contemptuous of the idea that they might want the vote or know what to do with it if they got it: “Have you ever heard that splendid chain of words invented in Germany not long ago? Kaiser, Kirche, Kinder, Küche. That’s what women really want. Obedience to the ruler. Faithfulness to the church. Care of the children. And supervision of the kitchen and home.”

Emily had hoped to avoid confrontation with her father, but she was so imbued with the daring ideas of Kate Kedzie that she simply could not remain silent: “I think that if our form of government has errors, they must be corrected—”

“Errors? And who are you to determine error?”

“If half the population is denied participation—”

“Participation? You women run the home, highest calling in Christendom. What more do you want? A soldier’s uniform and a gun?”

He was so agitated that he dispatched one of his daughter-in-law’s servants to fetch Anne and Malcolm, and when they appeared in dressing gowns, for they rose late, a triumvirate was formed, three people who would oppose Emily for the rest of her life: General Hugh in the middle, stern and forbidding; brother Malcolm on his left, pallid but always willing to preach; sister-in-law Anne on the General’s right, cool and able and formidable.

The General spoke first: “Our Emily has disgraced herself. Acting up in public. Wants women to be soldiers.” He ranted for nearly five minutes, ridiculing his daughter’s aspirations and lampooning her presumptions: “Suffragists? Is there an uglier word in the language? I would march to the shore and swim away if my country ever encouraged women to leave the sanctuary of the home and dirty themselves in cheap politics.”

He looked to his son for confirmation, but Malcolm, like many indecisive men who have married women wealthier and brighter than themselves, merely nodded and deferred to his wife.

Now another phenomenon of this tense period in American life began to manifest itself. Anne Greer, a woman of privilege with six servants, became a vigorous foe of everything that her sister-in-law Emily was fighting for: “The General is right. Woman’s place is within the chapel of the home, tending it, making it a haven, providing a refuge from the busy cares of the world…” On and on she went about the glories of homemaking, despite the fact that she never performed any of these tasks; her servants did.

But her first outburst was so effective, so filled with cherishable imagery that Emily thought: She’ll be more dangerous than the men. And that would be true, for without waiting for a chastised Emily to disappear, Anne said: “The thing to do is get Philip Rawson down here immediately, and you marry him, Emily, because he’s your last chance.”

Philip, summoned by telegraph, arrived on the first train, and his courtship was both proper and forceful. It was obvious that he had grown to like Emily and dislike the prospect of endless years in a Connecticut library. On her part, Emily appreciated what a decent young man he was and how, on the assured income that Anne promised, they could have a meaningful life together. Malcolm, supervising the strange wooing, reported to his co-conspirators: “I think it’s settled. We can be damned grateful.”

But now Kate Kedzie blustered back into town for her next shouting match with congressmen, and when Emily unwisely invited her home for tea, the other four very tense Starrs, counting Philip Rawson as one soon to be, met uneasily with the type of new woman they had not previously encountered. It was not a pleasant afternoon, especially when Kate told the three men, hoping to enlist their support: “It was actually my husband who got the movement started in Wyoming.”

“I should think,” the General snapped, “that men of any significance in their community would unite to oppose this foolishness,” to which Kate replied with a smile: “But isn’t the real foolishness for men to suppose that they can continue to hold in bondage fifty percent of our population?”

Here Malcolm broke in with a beautiful non sequitur that Nancy and I always chuckle about when we remember it: “Slavery was the real bondage, and my father gave his slaves their freedom even before the war started.”

From there the afternoon degenerated, with Anne making perhaps the most ominous and revealing comment: “You must be aware, Mrs. Kedzie, that women of breeding will oppose the ugly things you’re trying to do, and oppose you with skill.”

“You always have,” Kate said icily, and warfare between these two was declared.

Kate won the first engagement, because when the tea ended, Emily boldly left her family and accompanied the Wyoming suffragist to a public meeting, where she not only spoke with some effectiveness but also tussled with the police and went to jail.

After Anne gave Malcolm the money to pay her bail, the General took Emily into his study, and said fiercely: “Young lady, this has to stop,” and she, hoping to remain friends with him, asked pleadingly: “Father, why were you so generous in defending black slaves? I’ve always been proud of you for that. But now the next reform comes along and you’re dead set against us.”

He saw no anomaly. “Blacks like Hannibal knew their place and I was proud to help them. Everyone has a proper place, and women should not be seen ranting and raving in the streets or lecturing United States senators.”

He felt so strongly about this that he convened a no-nonsense family meeting in which he read the riot act, with Anne delivering the crucial blows: “Emily, if you ever repeat this disgraceful behavior, your father and your brother will not want you to remain in this house. It’s too embarrassing.” Then she turned to Librarian Rawson, who had earlier been informed that the promised dowry for Emily would not be forthcoming if she persisted in her shameful ways. Realizing that without such a dowry, a Rawson-Starr marriage would be impossible, he told Emily in front of the others: “No man can retain his self-respect if a wife acts up in public. Real women don’t want the vote. They want the security of a good home…where they are in command.”

Emily felt dizzy and was afraid she was going to be sick. The forces arrayed against her were too powerful. Her father was remorseless; Anne was too clever; and Philip, the person she had begun to feel might be her partner, had turned traitor. Ignoring the others, she stepped before him and said: “There’s always been a great wrong in this nation and I must try to correct it. I’m sorry, Philip,” and the threatened sickness passed as she left her family and her intended husband.

—

Nancy and I have a scrapbook which someone in our family put together. It shows in ugly images Emily Starr’s turbulent years at the change of centuries, and often Nancy has tears in her eyes as we see this procession of determined women in their long black skirts being attacked and reviled and even spat upon. Nancy says: “I wouldn’t have had the courage,” and I tell her honestly: “I might have reacted just like Malcolm or Rawson. I wouldn’t have been prepared for this.”

In the scrapbook there is one newspaper clipping which summarizes the opposition my great-aunt faced:

Who opposes these Amazon women? Honest politicians resist because they can’t guess how women will vote, dishonest ones because they fear women might support reform movements. The brewing interests pour in vast sums of money lest their saloons be closed, and the South is solidly opposed for fear of what black women might do if they ever voted. Protestant churches which accept St. Paul’s fulminations against women fight tooth and nail, and recently Cardinal Gibbons enrolled his Catholics against them. But the most effective foe is the wealthy woman like Anne Starr who testifies that real women don’t want or need these so-called rights.

When I pointed to this formidable list of enemies, Nancy pushed the scrapbook away, looked up in disbelief, and asked: “Norman, how did she muster the courage to fight such an array?”

I shared a conclusion taught me by my mother, who would, in her day, fight her own battle for a worthy cause: “All Starr children were reared to believe that they had a family stake in the Constitution. Emily saw the document as a national legacy which needed her protection. She said once: ‘If Jared and Simon gave their lives defending freedom, the least we can do in our generation is continue their work.’ Her battle came naturally…inevitably.”

—

It was someone not favorable to suffragists who devised the idea of inviting the two Starr women to debate, first in Washington, then in the major cities, and at first Anne, always gracious and condescending, simply swamped ungainly Emily, whose voice tended to become rasping as the evening progressed. Anne had one trick which delighted audiences and won them to her side:

“I have here in my hand a copy of the noble speech delivered on the floor of the Senate by one of our greatest political leaders, George Vest of Missouri: ‘For my part I want when I go home—when I turn from the arena where man contends with man for what we call the prizes of this paltry world—I want to go back, not to the embrace of some female ward politician, but to the earnest, loving look and touch of a true woman. I want to go back to the jurisdiction of the wife, the mother; and instead of a lecture upon finance or the tariff, or upon the construction of the Constitution, I want those blessed loving details of domestic life and domestic love.’ ”

Invariably when Anne read this, standing erect and looking exactly like the kind of wife the senator had been describing, much of the audience broke into cheers, and Emily sometimes had difficulty getting them to listen to her.

But Kate Kedzie was a fighting woman, and one night when she was in the audience listening to Anne annihilate Emily, a fugitive idea popped into her head, and she spent the next morning in the Boston Public Library. That night the rejuvenation of Emily Starr and her crusade began, for when Anne started reading Senator Vest’s oration on the proper role of women, Emily leaned forward, attracted attention to herself, and nodded warmly as the eight minutes of purple prose soared to its conclusion that women wanted nothing more than what men generously allowed them.

When Anne finished, to the usual applause, Emily went over, shook her hand as if she had surrendered the debate, then strode to the podium in forceful steps, and told the audience: “Like you, I was enchanted by Senator Vest’s ringing advice on how women ought to behave. He says he doesn’t want us to be worrying about the Constitution. Well, you know by now that I do worry about it, a great deal, and I wonder who is the best judge of what women want from the Constitution, Senator Vest or me?”

Then, imitating the way in which Anne produced Vest’s speech on women, she unfolded a paper and proceeded to read another of that same senator’s famous orations:

“ ‘The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and sickness. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains.’ ”

And on and on. As she poured forth Vest’s impassioned defense of dogs, listeners had to realize that he had said much the same about women. Here and there people began to chuckle and then burst into guffaws, for the two speeches sounded identical. Emily’s punch line was devastating: “Senator Vest seems confused as to whether he wants a woman or a puppy dog. I want women who have an interest in their Constitution and who want to amend it so that justice is given to all.” Now the same audience that had applauded Vest’s first speech on women, cheered with real animation Emily’s adroit use of his second speech on his affection and respect for dogs.

Unwisely, Anne tried to continue using the Vest speech on women in Boston and Hartford, but when Emily practically laughed her off the stage with his oration on dogs, she stopped. But Kate Kedzie would not let her escape, and in Pittsburgh, when Anne avoided the Vest speech, Emily said remorselessly:

“Two weeks ago my opponent drew much laughter when she read a senator’s speech ridiculing what we women want. But when I found another speech by the same man proving how ridiculous his words were and how empty, she stopped using hers. Well, because you’ve read about this in the papers, I’m going to read you both speeches, hers and mine, and you’ll see that our opponents can’t tell the difference between real women and dogs.”

She read in tones of such withering scorn, revealing Anne Starr as a pampered woman of curious persuasions, that the enmity between them became mortal. Never again would Anne allow herself to be in the same house or room or debating hall with her sister-in-law. This meant that Emily was now completely cut off from her family, but whenever she went to jail, the papers still referred to her as the daughter of Confederate General Hugh Starr, devoted right-hand man to General Lee.

In early 1918 it looked as if Kate and her indomitable women might gain their victory in Washington just as our male troops were gaining theirs in Europe, but women like Emily Starr underestimated the venom with which leading American politicians would fight against them. William Borah of Idaho thundered, so did William Bankhead of Alabama, James Wadsworth of New York, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Pitchfork Ben Tillman of South Carolina, before he died. Assured of their numbers, these implacable foes grudgingly allowed a Senate vote in early February 1919, and the women lost by one.

Emily, now sixty-one, was so distraught by the defeat and so infuriated by the opposition of religious leaders who trivialized her crusade that she was trapped into a pathetic error which alienated her friends and destroyed her future effectiveness in the movement. When a leading churchman exulted: “The Senate rejection of women’s suffrage proves that the devout people of the United States still adhere to the Christian principles of our Constitution,” she sat in fury reviewing the notes of her great-grandfather Simon Starr and the journal of James Madison. Satisfied as to the truth, she published a pamphlet whose opening sentences made cautious women cringe:

It is time we realized that religion had practically nothing to do with the drafting of our Constitution. Practical human beings wrote it, and since they were subject to every frailty that you and I suffer, if they committed error or oversight, it ought to be corrected.

The outcry was tremendous, but those who did not instantly dismiss the pamphlet as atheism learned something about the genesis of their country:

It is wrong for Reverend Waterson to depict the framers as praying for divine guidance and seeking God’s counsel before composing our Constitution. True, the delegates were religious men and most attended church on the weekends, but once they convened in the meeting hall, they did not allow religious matters to enter their deliberations. Since three of the delegates had been trained for the ministry, religious values must have been taken into consideration, but look what happened to these three would-be clergymen. Hugh Williamson of North Carolina became licensed as a Presbyterian clergyman, but he quit early to become a scientist. Abraham Baldwin of Georgia, after graduating from Yale, was asked to stay on as its chaplain and later was offered a professorship of divinity, but chose instead to become a lawyer-politician. And the great James Madison studied for the ministry at Princeton, found he had no vocation, and turned to politics.

Not one of these men, or any other, sponsored religious positions in the Convention. However, at the close of one long day of angry debate, Dr. Franklin proposed that tempers might be softened if each session opened with prayer. His suggestion brought little support and was not even brought to a vote, but Madison’s cryptic notes suggest that it occasioned a lot of parliamentary maneuvering before it was allowed to die. Curiously, it was effectively disposed of by Clergyman Williamson, who observed dryly that the matter should be dropped because the Convention had no funds to pay a minister.

A careful reading of documents circulating at the time proves that whereas the delegates were in general a religious group, they were terrified of the religious intolerances they had read about in history or observed in their own colonies. They resisted every attempt to insert in their Constitution any flaming reaffirmations of human rights or religious freedoms, and in the end their only reference to religion was the brief, sharp warning that comes at the very end of the substantial part of the law: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

But in their austerity the delegates underestimated the essentially religious nature of the American people. Families went to church. Their children were baptized. Clergymen were respected. Public prayer was common, and there was general obedience to an inherited ethic. However, the infant United States was not a Christian nation and the founders did not so describe it, but it was a nation dedicated to Judeo-Christian principles. Therefore, when a powerful surge of opinion demanded a Bill of Rights, Congress acquiesced, and if it had not, the Constitution would probably have been rejected.

But even in the famous First Amendment, the statement regarding religion is negative and protective: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and not until that safeguard from oppression had been established did the positive promise come: “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The framers were tough-minded practical men who respected religion for the moral balance it contributes to society, but the structure of government they devised was pragmatic rather than religious, and it worked. Now, as pragmatists like our forefathers, we women want to ensure that it still works.

When she was abused from all sides for being an atheist, Emily retaliated with a second pamphlet even more incendiary than the first, for now she argued that all religion was notoriously anti-woman. She cited pagan rites, which sacrificed women to pagan gods; the Jewish religion, which segregated women infamously; the Catholics, who denied women any serious role in the governance of their church; the Puritan religions of New England, which did not protest when their older women were hanged as witches; and she closed with a blast against the Mormons, who denigrated women, and the Quakers, who separated them from men in their Philadelphia meeting houses. She concluded her diatribe with a plea and a threat:

Please cleanse your faiths of antique practices which deny women full partnership, because the women of America will no longer kowtow to the fulminations of St. Paul.

An outcast, she was advised not to be present in the Senate chamber on 4 June 1919 when the final vote was taken, so she did not participate in the joyous applause when women finally won. After a century of struggle, Congress had passed a bill which did not actually establish suffrage; it merely invited the individual states to ratify or reject a simple one-sentence amendment: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

That night there was celebration, to which Emily was not invited, but early next morning she sought out Kate, and warned: “Now our real fight begins. We’ve got to persuade three-fourths of the states to ratify. That’s thirty-six. And the enemy will oppose us with greater fury than ever before.”

She was correct. The fight was brutal, with many of America’s most generous and thoughtful men vilifying women who sought to soil themselves with the vote. Her friends in the movement told her bluntly: “Stay under cover. With the charges of atheism, you do us more harm than good.” So for the remainder of 1919 and early 1920 she traveled back roads, avoiding public meetings and newspaper people, meeting quietly with old friends who needed her fortifying strength: “Keep working. We must have thirty-six, but we can count on only thirty-three.”

Finally, it all depended on what happened in Tennessee, where in a small hill town a twenty-four-year-old member of the state’s lower house, one Harry Burn, was under extreme pressure. His mother preached: “Vote for the women, son. Only decent thing to do,” but the clergymen and the business leaders hammered: “Don’t disgrace yourself with a vote for those Amazons.”

Emily, whose calculations convinced her that the vote might hinge on Burn, quietly stopped by his home to talk with mother and son. With him, she accomplished nothing: “Ever’body tells me it ain’t right for women to mix theirselves in politics.” But with Mrs. Burn, she had a better reception, and long into the night the two women talked. Next morning, when Harry set out for the capital, his mother told him: “Don’t forget to be a good boy. Vote for suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt.”

When Emily reached the capital on the eve of the final vote, she was horrified to learn that the opposition had brought in so much free liquor that the entire legislature was blind-drunk and no vote could be taken. That night she slept in a rooming house where no one knew her, and the hours were endless: Oh no, not back to the beginning again. Fight it once more through the House? Once more through the Senate? I wouldn’t have the strength.

Next day the sobered Tennessee Senate ratified the amendment, and now all focused on the lower house, where the opposition had what they judged to be enough votes to defeat the women one last time: “Harry Burn is with us. Eddie took care of him.”

When Emily slipped into the hall where the legislators would meet, a suffragist recognized her, and whispered: “We think it’s going to be forty-eight to forty-eight. We’ve lost.”

“How about Harry Burn?”

The woman looked at her list, and said: “He went over to the other side. Damn.”

In the breathless counting of votes, there were two surprises. The women lost one vote but picked up two, and if Harry Burn voted with them, they would win. If not, it would be the predicted tie, which would mean that they had lost yet again.

All turned to stare at the young fellow who had been pressured by both sides. When the clerk called for his vote, he replied in a whisper “Yea,” and it seemed as if the entire capital burst into curses and cheers. The Constitution of the United States had been modified in accordance with orderly procedures laid down a hundred and thirty-three years before.

That night Emily Starr, an outcast from her family, her friends and even her own group of crusaders, stood in the smallest bedroom of the little Tennessee boardinghouse, still clad in her long black dress and outmoded hat, experiencing the terrible loneliness that can overtake good people when they have won a significant battle. She felt no sense of triumph. An involuntary cry escaped: “Oh, Philip! It needn’t have been so.”

Then she stiffened, averted her eyes from the small mirror, and said: “It was wrong and it had to be set right.”

RICHARD STARR

1890–1954

Since my grandfather died when I was only three, I can scarcely claim that I knew him, but I do remember his coming to our house and bouncing me on his knee. He was tall and thin, and cranky, except to me, and he smelled of tobacco. I certainly remember his funeral. It was a cold, misty day, and someone said something I can still recall: “The day is as mean as the man.”

He had not always been that way, and some of the stories about him that were repeated in our home bespoke a kindlier young man. But financial reverses in the Great Depression embittered him, and it was his sour behavior in his later years which dominated the stories.

In the early days of his marriage he was well-to-do or even rich, the result of an inheritance from his mother, one of the Greer textile family of New Hampshire, so he never really had to work. He was in what they called at the time “investments,” and since he was neither brilliant nor particularly adept at managing money, his adventures turned out poorly, and the Crash of 1929 damaged him.

It was then that he developed the great passion of his life, for he became known as “the man who hated Roosevelt.” When I was a boy the letters F.D.R. were anathema in our house, for my grandfather had said that he had tried to turn America into a Communist state.

“It began with those damn-fool amendments,” he stormed. “Why meddle with the Constitution? Like they say, ‘Why fix it if it ain’t broke?’ ”

He described the Seventeenth Amendment, which called for the election of senators by popular vote, a tragic mistake: “In the old days you had men of property and breeding in the state legislatures, and they could be depended upon to appoint men like themselves, men of substance, to the Senate.” He believed that to allow the general public to determine the character of our upper chamber was the first step toward revolution: “Just watch what comes out of the Senate now,” and when the first laws were enacted, he went about crying: “The rot has begun!”

His opinion of the Nineteenth Amendment was sulfurous: “The brightest day in the history of the Starr family was when my grandfather, General Hugh, cast his lot with Robert E. Lee…the darkest was when that crazy daughter of his, Aunt Emily, started working for women’s suffrage.” Of course, he inherited his impression of the infamous Emily from his mother, Anne Greer, whose scornful memory of her sister-in-law intensified as the years passed. She once told my grandfather of that hideous night when Emily had made a fool of her: “She mimicked me, she laughed at me, humiliated me in every way, and I never spoke to her again as long as she lived. She was a dreadful person and she introduced alien ideas into American politics.”

But my grandfather’s harshest abuse fell on the Sixteenth Amendment, which authorized the collection of income taxes: “If that damn thing hadn’t been passed, you’d be a rich man, Thomas,” he used to tell my father, overlooking the fact that his own unskilled investing had been the cause of his misfortune, not the income tax.

What gave him special cause for remorse was the fact that each of these amendments had been passed in his lifetime: “If I’d been paying attention, maybe I could have stopped them. Maybe we patriots were caught napping.” Repeatedly he lectured my father on this point: “Thomas, never let them meddle with the Constitution. It’s perfect as it is,” and he cited the nonsense over how the Eighteenth Amendment tried to stop drinking: “We let a lot of do-good women and teary-eyed ministers inflict it on us, and as soon as it came into effect, every sensible person knew it was a monstrous mistake that had to be corrected. Thank God, in due time men like me were able to get rid of it, but it should never have been sneaked into the Constitution in the first place.”

Before I discuss the event which gave my grandfather what he interpreted as a personal victory, I must explain just how deep his loathing of President Roosevelt went. In 1944, when the Twenty-seventh Division was removed from Saipan under humiliating circumstances, my father, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Starr, lost a leg in the fracas and won himself the Congressional Medal of Honor, than which there is none higher. Grandfather, ecstatic to know that another Starr had behaved with honor, drove about Washington and northern Virginia telling everyone about Tom’s heroism.

He was invited, of course, to the White House to share in his son’s glory when the medal was presented, but when he realized that the conferring would be done by President Roosevelt, he refused to go: “Any medal that son-of-a-bitch touched would be contaminated.” And when my father brought it home, Grandfather wouldn’t touch it. But he did like to point to it when strangers dropped by.

In 1933 and ’34, Grandfather had an especially bad time, for it was in those bleak years, when it looked as if our nation might fall apart, that F.D.R. initiated his radical reforms. Were such swift changes necessary to save our society? Who knows? Had I been living then, I think I might have supported the innovations, but who knows?

Grandfather knew: “Roosevelt is a Communist. He’s a worse dictator than Mussolini.” At one point he bellowed: “Someone should shoot that Commie,” but Grandmother warned him: “You say that where people can hear you, you’ll go to jail.” If he did temper his public threats, he never relaxed his private hatred, and what he seemed to object to most was the intrusive way in which the regulations of Roosevelt’s N.R.A. impinged on his life: “National Recovery Act! Leave things alone, they’ll take care of themselves. Meddling into everything, this is dictatorship at its worst.”

There was a popular song at the time, a silly jingle, “Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long,” and one morning Grandfather saw this crazy headline in his newspaper:

SAM, YOU CAN MAKE THE PANTS LONGER OR SHORTER BUT YOU BETTER NOT CHARGE MORE THAN $2.50

“My God,” Grandfather shouted, slamming his paper to the floor. “Now he’s interfering in the work of tailors.”

And then, in his moments of apparent defeat, came triumph. It was a Supreme Court decision handed down in 1935 during the depth of the Depression, and it bore the curious title Schecter Poultry Corporation v. United States, and Grandfather claimed: “It’s the greatest case in the history of the United States. Saved this nation.” And in later years I’ve found others who felt somewhat the same.

The facts were clear. N.R.A. officials appointed by Roosevelt, not Congress, had issued a regulation, not a legally passed law, saying that you could not move sick chickens from one state to sell in another. The Schecter people found the order somehow oppressive and refused to obey. They continued to move chickens, well or sick, from New Jersey and into New York, so they had to be arrested. The case went to the Supreme Court, which declared 9 to 0 that the whole N.R.A. was unconstitutional in that it allowed the President to enact law, rather than Congress.

Well, when I first heard this story about Grandfather, I could understand little and I suspected my parents might have the facts garbled, but when I later learned the interpretation Grandfather gave the case, I tended to agree with him. He went about Virginia telling everyone: “Roosevelt was a dictator, make no mistake about that, and the N.R.A. was his trick for fashioning chains of steel about our necks. Now, the history of the world is filled with cases in which dictators have used a temporary crisis to install illegal, crisis legislation. ‘The times demand it,’ they bellow, but mark my words, when the crisis ends, the dictators never leave office. They hang around until they destroy their countries.

“The miracle of the United States, we’ve just had our dictator, a dreadful man, but when the crisis was over we had an agency, put in place more than a century before, which could say: ‘Crisis is over. Hand back the reins. We play by the rules again.’ Read about Cromwell in England. He came in just like Roosevelt, had many of the same kinds of laws. To get rid of him, they had to have a civil war. We did it with our Supreme Court.”

Roosevelt, outraged by the Schecter decision, which struck at his effort to restore the nation’s economy, retaliated petulantly. He tried to pack the Supreme Court with additional judges guaranteed to vote his way, and when Grandfather heard of this plot he went berserk. An old man, still living in Virginia when I went off to West Point, told me: “Your grandfather, always a patriot, assembled a group of us who knew something about politics, and we toured the South lambasting F.D.R. as a dictator and calling for impeachment. Your grandfather was especially effective, for he could shout at the crowds: ‘My ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence and helped write the Constitution and fought at the right hand of Robert E. Lee.’ The crowds cheered, believe me. And then he shouted: ‘We must defend the Constitution as written and stop Roosevelt in his tracks!’ But when we talked late at night as we drove on to the next town, I found that your grandfather was pretty picky about how much of the Constitution he was willing to defend. He was happy with only the first part. He wasn’t too keen on the Bill of Rights, he distrusted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which gave the colored folk more rights than they needed, and he positively loathed the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Nineteenth. But with the help of a lot of others, we defeated Roosevelt’s plan and saved the nation.”

Our family has clippings of the time Grandfather hit the headlines in a big way. His wife, that is, my grandmother, was a minor official in the Daughters of the American Revolution, and when someone that Grandfather called “a misguided do-gooder and weeping heart” arranged for the splendid singer Marian Anderson to give a concert in Constitution Hall, my grandmother, who considered the Hall her property, canceled the permission on the grounds that “it would be highly improper for a Negress to appear in such a hallowed place.” When public outrage exploded, Grandfather leaped to his wife’s side, with a pronouncement which hit newspapers and radios across the nation: “Constitution Hall is sacred to the memory of those patriots who wrote the Constitution and their descendants, and so far as I know, there were no Negroes in that Convention.”

And finally, my favorite story about the crusty old gentleman. He was born on 12 April 1890, and on that date in 1945—But let my father tell the story, since he was there: “Proud of the way I was learning to manipulate my new leg, I was in the garden when I heard the kitchen radio announce that F.D.R. had died. Hobbling to my father’s study, I cried: ‘Dad, have you heard? F.D.R. just died!’

“He waved me away: ‘You’re teasing. Just saying that to make me feel good on my birthday.’ ”

RACHEL DENHAM STARR

1928–

One of the joys of my life has been that my wife, Nancy, gets on so amiably with my mother, Rachel Starr. Of course, this hasn’t been difficult, because my wife has good sense and my mother by herself would be justification for the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the vote. She’s one of the all-time winners.

On Sundays it was our custom for Nancy to leave our place in midafternoon, go over to my mother’s, and help prepare a cold supper which all four of us would share at seven. I encouraged this because I found constant joy in talking with both my father and my mother.

So I was alone Sunday afternoon when Zack barged in without phoning first. He was obviously agitated, and quickly told me why: “Norman, I’ve been with the big brains of our profession all yesterday afternoon and this morning, and they all think the situation is so clear that it presents no alternative.” He rose, walked about the room, and came to rest standing over me like an irate father: “I said, they all said, there’s no escape.”

“What’s that mean?”

He walked some more, cleared his throat, then drew up a chair so that he could sit opposite me and very close: “Norman, you aren’t going to like this, but tomorrow morning you’ll have to take the Fifth to protect yourself against incriminating yourself.”

I felt dizzy. From the days of the Kefauver Committee, which coincided with my birth, our family had scorned the criminals and spies and shifty ones who “took the Fifth,” and one of my earliest memories is of my irascible grandfather shouting: “Only thieves and crooks take the Fifth, so anyone who does should be shot.” I could not imagine any Starr in the past taking it, and for me to stand up in public and do so was unthinkable.

“No way I can take the Fifth,” I said.

I’m sure Zack must have known how I would react, but since he did try to persuade me, we sat in grim silence, neither knowing what to say next. At this moment Nancy returned to fetch something from the kitchen that my mother needed, and as soon as she saw us she cried: “You two look like the hearse just passed,” and it was Zack who blurted out: “It did. I just advised Norman that tomorrow in the Senate hearing he must take the Fifth.”

She stood stock-still, framed in the doorway, her pugnacious little chin pointed upward as always, and then she asked a totally unexpected question: “Will they have whole batteries of television cameras, Zack?” And he replied: “They will.”

She remained in the doorway, wreathed in sunlight, and I could not guess what she might say next, for she really knew only three things about my work. I was not involved with Iran. I was up to my neck in Nicaragua. And although I was under the command of Rear Admiral John Poindexter, I’d had only minimal contact with Colonel Oliver North. But what exactly I had done, and how much legal danger I might be in, she did not know, nor did any civilian, not even Vice-President Bush, for whose drug task force I had performed various lawful assignments that were on the public record and to the public benefit.

But she had strong opinions, this young housewife and community helper, and I could see that she was about to voice them: “This nation has watched a Navy admiral take the Fifth, an Air Force general take the Fifth, and a Marine colonel. And they’re fed up. If one more military man stands there and takes the Fifth, it would sicken them. I do not want my husband to be the hero who finally makes them throw up.”

Zack, having expected such a rejection from me, was not surprised at my wife’s outrage, but he knew how to deal with it: “Nancy, sit down and stop the heroics. Your husband can go to prison if we don’t handle this right, and by we, I mean all of us, you included. Now shut up and listen.”

From his papers he extracted his copy of the Fifth Amendment: “…nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself…It’s there to protect everyone, innocent and guilty, from what governments used to do to extract testimony.” And in solemn tones he described the kinds of extracting of information that used to occur: the cutting off of ears, the dislocation of limbs on the rack, the hot oil in the ear, the incarceration in a cell too cramped to permit standing or sleeping. “One of the noblest provisions in the Bill of Rights is the Fifth Amendment. And your husband is exactly the kind of person it was intended to protect.”

Stunned by the force of Zack’s description of what trials used to be, even in Colonial America, Nancy took the chair he indicated, and asked: “So he gets on the stand like all our other military heroes and crybabies?”

“No,” Zack said patiently, “he protects himself, as Simon Starr’s Constitution invites him to…no, wants him to.”

“And then he begs the Senate Committee to grant him immunity?”

“Not beg. But I will certainly seek it for him…and get it!”

“Then what?”

“Well, he’s supposed to tell all he knows, assist the committee.”

“You mean rat on his associates?” Nancy has the habit of reducing evasions to basics, and Zack did not like what he heard.

“Now you must understand…” he fumbled.

Nancy cut him short. Folding her hands in her lap and smiling warmly, she said: “Zack, you’ve known us a long time without really knowing us. It’s clear you don’t understand Norman and me. He will not evade responsibility, never. And if facing up to the truth gets him in trouble, I can always go back to that data-processing I did when we got married. So if you think my husband, to save his own neck, would…”

It was a brave speech, but it did not impress Zack. He was a fighting redhead and he had coddled us long enough. Standing over us, he said: “Yesterday morning, before I had the all-day session with our top lawyers, who know more about Washington than I ever will, I was one kind of guy and you were two ordinary people. Well, compadres, that’s changed.”

“How?” Nancy asked, always ready for a fight.

“Because at the meeting this morning a man from one of the top law firms informed us that he had certain proof that the Senate panel had someone who was going to blab about an affair in Nicaragua…maybe just over the border in Honduras, called Tres Toros.”

I remained perfectly calm, but both Zack and Nancy had to see that my knuckles had whitened. To Zack it was what he had expected, but to Nancy it was like a fire bell clanging at night. It terrified her, and suddenly the pugnacious battler became a trembling wife eager to protect her husband. She did not ask what Tres Toros was or what it signified; in a low voice she asked: “What are we to do, Zack?”

He smiled at her as if he loved her, and said: “We stay calm, all of us. Your husband takes the Fifth, and for one very good reason that supersedes all others.” And here his voice rose almost to a shout: “To save his goddamned ass.” Then he sat down, wiped his forehead, and said quietly: “There is no other way, Nancy. And with luck, I think I can bring this off. But Norman and I must have your support.”

I shivered, because when he had talked with me only that morning, he had said: “I’m sure I can save your neck.” But after Nancy’s outburst and the surfacing of the Tres Toros, his boast had been downgraded to: “I think I can…”

—

It was a chastened pair of Starrs who drove to my parents’ home for Sunday-night supper. Since Nancy was driving, I sat hunched in the shotgun seat pondering gloomily the things that faced me tomorrow. We rode in silence, through snow-plowed streets, for this was the time of year when Eastern states and especially Washington were hit by tremendous snowfalls, and the white icy night meshed neatly with my personal storms.

When we reached a place in the streets where a wide swath had been plowed, Nancy slowed, turned toward me, and said: “Okay. What was Tres Toros?”

I remained silent for some time, then reminded her of the family rule we had agreed upon at marriage: “The house is your domain. The Army is mine.” But then, like a clever lawyer, she cited the elaboration which she had insisted on: “I can ask two questions in the area of the subject, and you must answer them unless they touch too close to secret matters. Do you agree that I’m entitled to my two questions?”

“I do.”

“Were you authorized to do whatever you did?”

“I play by the book. You know that.” But after reflection, I added: “Zack thinks I’m in trouble mainly because those who gave the authorization have already publicly denied it.”

“Was money involved?”

“A great deal. But I don’t have to tell you that none stuck to my fingers.”

“Did the money come from the Iran caper?”

This question I was not allowed to answer, so I merely said: “That’s three strikes, and you’re out.”

Suddenly she pulled the car over to the side of a snowbank, stopped it, turned toward me, and flung her arms about my neck. After kissing me, she whispered: “Oh, Norman, I love you so much. You’ve always been so damned decent.” We sat there for some minutes, each aware of how tremendously important the other was, and my storm subsided.

Our gesture of mutual reassurance was rudely broken by two burly men who flashed bright lights into our car and growled: “What’s going on in there?” They were police, and to them we were suspicious prowlers in a residential district.

On the spur of the moment I said: “My wife felt a little faint,” and after inspecting us closely, the older cop asked: “Well, if she’s dizzy, shouldn’t you be driving?” and I had to agree, so I got out in the snow, walked around the car, and started to get in the driver’s side while she scrunched over to mine without leaving the car.

“I’m sure you have a driver’s license,” the lead cop said. “And your registration.” Couples our age stopped in a snowbank at dusk aren’t too common, so I brought out my license, and when they saw my address they whistled.

“You a professor or something?”

“Army major.” The younger cop saluted and said: “Sorry to have caused you any inconvenience,” and off they went.

When we reached my parents’ snug house and felt the warmth of both the place and the occupants, we relaxed, and since the Sunday papers had been full of the fact that I was to testify tomorrow, Mom and Dad had to be aware of my tension, but they were almost amusingly casual, careful to avoid any mention of Iran, the contras, or the man they knew to be my associate, Oliver North.

As they moved about setting the table while I read the sports pages, I thought how truly American they were and how close they stood to the heart of our mainstream. My father was a certified military hero with a wooden leg to prove it, and my mother…that quiet, powerful lady was a civilian heroine laden with her own kind of honors.

—

Born on the edge of Philadelphia to a family of little means, Rachael Denham went to a public school, where her marks were so striking that she won a scholarship to Bryn Mawr, but because she could not afford a college dormitory or buy even a used car, she had to commute each day on the Pennsylvania Railroad, walking six blocks to the station and a long distance from the Bryn Mawr platform to the college. The travel must have done her good, because she earned phenomenal grades and a better scholarship each year.

As a military man I didn’t like Bryn Mawr very much because it was one of those Quaker schools which preach pacifism, and that never gets a nation very far. But it is also a college which requires students to write term papers, and I don’t see how anyone can get a serious education without doing that. Anyway, in the winter term of her junior year, in 1948, a serious professor—as you can see, I like that word serious—gave her a political-science assignment that baffled her: “In the decades ahead, malapportionment is bound to be a red-hot political issue. Find out the facts about Pennsylvania.” That was all. He’d never discussed apportionment of any kind in class, so she was on her own.

Well, I’ve seen her paper. It could have been published, because in her dogged way she reported not only on Pennsylvania but on nine other states, too, revealing just what her professor hoped she would: that across America people who lived in cities and large towns were grotesquely discriminated against in favor of people who lived in small towns or on farms. As the professor had known when he assigned the paper, her home state of Pennsylvania was among the worst. It had sixty-seven counties, many of them wooded rural areas with few people, many more deer, and of great value only in the four weeks of hunting season. It also had two big cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with large populations. But because there was a tradition that each county must have its own representation in the lower house, ridiculous imbalances occurred which the rural legislators would not allow to be corrected. When my mother saw the raw data, she cried: “Find me an adding machine!” and with it she produced a series of charts whose squiggly lines portrayed an ugly situation:

For example, here is Forest County with 4,944 and it has its representative, and here’s the city of Chester with 66,039, but it also gets one seat. So a farmer voting in Forest has 13.36 times as much civic power as the city clerk in Chester. I think conservative Pennsylvania, afraid of what it calls “the corruption of big cities,” wants to keep it that way.

Her charts demonstrated that in the state Senate, which exercised great power, the situation was equally unfair:

I show you three small counties with a combined population of 101,210, and they have one senator, but here is an urban area with 441,518 people, and it has one senator too, which means that the farmer is four times as important as the city man.

Mother prepared figures showing how an absurdly small minority in the rural community could determine what happened in the legislature. She concluded by pointing out:

And because Pennsylvania sends congressmen to Washington in accordance with local districting, our federal legislature is also grossly affected by the overrepresentation of rural areas and underrepresentation of cities. This imbalance results in national legislation that is sometimes absurd.

I’m told that many young people have the course of their lives determined by the term papers they write in college, and that was certainly the case with my mother. The facts she uncovered in researching this one paper so captivated her that she spent what should have been her senior year as an aide to a Pennsylvania senator in Washington. In her next year back at Bryn Mawr, she organized a conference attended by students from all parts of the nation: “Malapportionment in State Legislatures,” and her opening speech to the delegates dealt with “The Refusal of the Tennessee Legislature to Reapportion.”

My wife and I have a copy:

The Tennessee constitution requires a fresh reapportionment of districts following each decennial census, but rural legislators, who vastly outnumber urban, refuse to make any changes which might diminish their numbers. The result? Since 1901 there has been no reapportionment in Tennessee, and the cities suffer. Is there any force within the state capable of making the state conform to its own law? None.

It was the long discussion conducted at that convention which convinced my mother, and many bright young people like her, that the only agency powerful enough to make the states obey their own laws—and there were half a dozen as badly out of balance as Tennessee—was the United States Supreme Court. “Because,” she pointed out, with an astuteness far beyond her years, “the federal Congress is itself voted into power by districts which are also just as badly unbalanced.”

“Not senators,” a young man from Alabama corrected. “They’re elected statewide,” and she replied: “You’re right. But most of them get to be senators by being congressmen first. They band together to protect the bad old system which produced them.”

By accident my mother had stumbled upon her life’s work. Before she left Bryn Mawr she was an expert in apportionment, and by the time she got her Ph.D. from Smith, she was being invited to address various state legislatures and counsel on problems facing them when new census figures came in. Her numerous publications on the subject attracted such favorable attention that she was offered positions at various universities, including Chicago, but because she wanted to be near Congress, she chose Georgetown, which made it easy for her to heckle the government in its shameful failure to do what clearly had to be done. In an article published in 1960 she wrote:

I am totally frustrated. Every concerned man and woman in the United States knows what ought to be done to assure justice to the people of the cities, but there is no way to force action. What in common sense can we do? Congress will never take steps to launch a constitutional amendment. State legislatures refuse to cleanse themselves. You and I are powerless to do anything. Where can a citizen look for help?

But she did not allow her obsession to become a monomania: “Always I kept before me the example of Emily Starr, who sacrificed her personal happiness on the altar of political reform, and I wanted none of that. I kept my voice down when consulting with legislators. I wore good-looking clothes and was deferential to elderly men who had spent their lives in government. But when the going got tough…boy, did I stick it to them!”

One of the most vivid memories of my life is sitting with her and my two sisters and hearing her tell how she met our father, “the war hero” as she always referred to him when teasing: “I was an underpaid, undernourished beginning professor at Bryn Mawr, just getting my feet wet in the academic world. And to tell you the truth, I was a wee bit desperate about finding a husband. Then your father appeared on campus to speak at an assembly of some kind. Marvelous uniform, medals on his chest, wooden leg adding mystery. Oh, did I ever fall in love.”

“Did his leg sort of off-steer you?” my sister once asked, and Mother gave a remarkably frank answer: “Some women in the faculty club asked that, and I told them: ‘So far as I know, the left leg has nothing to do with love or the production of fertile sperm,’ and you adorable kids are the proof of that.”

Then came the exciting news. The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments regarding the failure of state legislatures to reapportion, and what state do you suppose they chose as the prime example? The very one my mother had identified years before: Tennessee! The case was called Baker v. Carr, and Mother was invited to testify as an amicus curiae, informed friend of the court, or as she told us: “In my case an amica curiae, since I am a woman.”

We have copies of her argument:

When the American people can find redress in no other agency of government, none, and we have exhausted them all, we must throw ourselves on the mercy of this Court, which was established to provide remedy in just such impasses. You are our defense against frustration and despair. Only your Court can order justice to be done.

On 26 March 1962, when I was eleven years old, Mother sat with us at home listening to the radio as the news came that the Supreme Court had agreed with her, 6 to 2, meaning that at long last, the states would be forced to break the logjam which had imprisoned the cities. She did not exult. She listened to several different stations giving guesses as to what Baker v. Carr meant, then she prepared supper.

That night fellow professors and newspaper people trooped in to congratulate her, and she told them: “The tools are always there to mend our democracy. Problem is, find someone to use them.”

“Won’t you be pretty busy now, advising the various legislatures?” a reporter asked, and she said: “That’s what I’ve been doing for the past dozen years, and frankly, I didn’t accomplish much. The decision promises nothing. It’s how we use it that counts.”

—

After supper we sat for a while, talking about everything but what I would be doing the next day. When Nancy and I left, Mother walked with us to our car, and said quietly: “Norm, your father and I were tremendously proud when you were invited to work in the White House. We hope we can be just as proud of the manner in which you leave.”

NORMAN STARR

1951–

On Monday, Nancy Rose early, laid out my uniform, and attached the neat rows of colorful ribbons which attested to my years in service. The American military hands out decorations the way a Sunday School gives awards for attendance, but they do impress civilians, and that was the purpose today. But if I did wear some medals for actions of only routine consequence, I had no medal testifying to the considerable contributions I had made to the security of our nation in Central America. You win some, you lose some.

While I was shaving, Nancy sprang a surprise which I did not appreciate. She called into the bathroom: “I asked Dad to stop by for breakfast,” and I was about to groan “Not today,” when I restrained myself, because Professor Makinowsky was a major reason why his daughter was such an admirable wife and citizen.

I had courted Nancy Makin for nearly two disorganized years before I learned that she had shortened her name, but as we became more serious, she said one day: “I want you to meet my father. He’s something, professor of history in a jerkwater two-year college, and a great man. Name’s Makinowsky from a corner where Poland and Czechoslovakia touched.”

When he appeared that day, he was a professor out of Central Casting: short like Nancy, big head of unruly black hair, inquisitive like her, and a joy to talk with. His degrees were a mixed bag, one from Prague, two from those big, grubby institutions in New York City that don’t play football, so he never progressed beyond the little school in Maryland, where he became the most popular teacher on campus.

Now, when he looked at me standing there in my uniform with its rows of bright ribbons, he broke into laughter: “When we landed in England on our way to Normandy in World War II with our medals glaring, a British Tommy shouted: ‘Blimey! Their whole bloody army is heroes!’ ”

Nancy interrupted, because like always, she was determined to talk sense: “I wanted Father to tell you a story, Norman. One that’s influenced me profoundly.” Nancy uses the word profound a good deal, because she likes to allocate her time to profound subjects.

Makinowsky, holding his coffee cup in both hands, peered over the rim, pondering how to start. Then, coughing deferentially, he said: “One of the most reassuring court decisions of my lifetime has attracted little attention. But I stress it with my students. The facts were straightforward. A married couple in a Western state, I think it might have been Utah. They weren’t nice people, really, ran a house of prostitution, using three older women whom they treated abominably. Then one Fourth of July they suddenly decided to give the ‘girls’ a vacation, all expenses paid. Drove them to Yellowstone Park, treated them to a great time, and as they drove home to put the girls back to work, they said ‘Girls, we appreciate your help,’ and the girls said ‘Thanks.’

“Well, the Utah authorities arrested the couple for violating the Mann Act, bringing the women back across the Utah state line for immoral purposes. Caught dead to rights, no contest, big fine and long prison sentences for the culprits.”

“What’s the point?” I asked, my irritation showing at such a rambling interruption on a day of some importance to me.

“Like I said, it went to the state court, and some judge wrote a most moving decision. Said the facts in the case were irrefutable, the Mann Act had been transgressed, a crime had been committed, and the punishment was not unreasonable. But, he added, sometimes the law hands down a judgment which offends the rule of common sense. This was an example. The state of Utah could properly have arrested this couple at any time during the past dozen years for wrongs that they were committing, but they waited until the pair was doing the right thing…bringing their girls back from a paid holiday. The sense of propriety on which society must rely had been offended. Case reversed. Couple set free.”

My father-in-law’s narration hit me like a round of mortar fire. The sense of propriety had been offended. I looked at this grizzled fighter, survivor of the dreadful wars of Central Europe, patient teacher of young Americans who were striving to formulate their own judgments of right and wrong, and I suddenly understood what he was saying: “You think that for United States military officers to stand before the public in full uniform and take the Fifth Amendment offends the rule of common sense?”

“Norman, you have every right to take the Fifth. Tens of millions of people in Europe and around the world wish their governments gave them such a right. No more tortures, no more of what the Soviets did to my brother to make him incriminate himself.”

“But for military officers whose job it is…” My voice trailed off.

“Yes, it is offensive. Your job is to protect the nation, not yourself.”

It must have been apparent to Nancy and her father that I was frightened of what might happen to my wife if I went to prison, for they both started to offer solutions at once. Nancy prevailed: “I told you I can still handle data processing. I can sweat it out,” and her father said: “I have savings.”

I dropped my head and mumbled: “Takes a refugee from God-knows-where to teach me my own law.”

Makinowsky said reassuringly: “Norman, in the Watergate crisis it required an Italian judge, Sirica, a Polish lawyer, Jaworski, and a black congresswoman from Texas, Jordan, whose grandfather had probably been a slave, to sort things out. And maybe save our Union. You don’t always have to find a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant whose ancestors served in the Revolution to do the job. Maybe it takes some simple peasant from Czechoslovakia to point out the truth.” His voice became sharp, and with his daughter beside him, he repeated: “Some things are offensive to the rule of common sense. And what you’re about to do is one of them.”

At this moment Zack McMaster came into the kitchen, saw me in my uniform, ribbons in order, and said: “Good, I see you’re ready.”

I was indeed, but not for what Zack wanted me to do, and as I looked at him in his proper three-piece suit, I was struck by one of those blinding flashes which can sometimes illuminate a human life, or, I think, the life of a nation. I knew that I would not face the Senate Committee alone. With me would be: Old Jared Starr defiantly signing a declaration which might have caused him to be hanged. Simon Starr, silent in the great debate, powerful in the nighttime argument. Fat old Edmund Starr, sometimes not sure of the legal facts but always determined to uphold what John Marshall assured him was the reasonable decision. Hugh Starr, faithfully supporting Robert E. Lee in a forlorn cause. And courageous Emily Starr, standing alone, against scorn and humiliation and abandonment, to do a job which had to be done.

They were my peers, my counselors, they and my wife and my good father-in-law, and I had come perilously close to ignoring them. I now saw the Constitution which my ancestors had helped create, interpret and enlarge as a treasured legacy whose provisions bind the various regions and interests of our nation together. Philosophically as evanescent as a whispering wind, structurally more powerful than steel cables, that superb document will be effective only if each new generation believes in it—and keeps it renewed.

Slipping out of my military blouse and into an ordinary suit jacket that more or less went with my trousers, I told a startled McMaster: “I’m ready,” and off we marched to the Senate.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

ARTICLE I

SECTION 1 All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

SECTION 2 (1) The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature.

(2) No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty-five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

(3) Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons. The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each State shall have at least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to choose three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

(4) When vacancies happen in the representation from any State, the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.

(5) The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment.

SECTION 3 (1) The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.

(2) Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three classes. The seats of the Senators of the first class shall be vacated at the expiration of the second year, of the second class at the expiration of the fourth year, and of the third class at the expiration of the sixth year, so that one third may be chosen every second year; and if vacancies happen by resignation, or otherwise, during the recess of the legislature of any State, the executive thereof may make temporary appointments until the next meeting of the legislature, which shall then fill such vacancies.

(3) No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

(4) The Vice President of the United States shall be president of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

(5) The Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a president pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the office of President of the United States.

(6) The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: and no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present.

(7) Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.

SECTION 4 (1) The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.

(2) The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

SECTION 5 (1) Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties as each House may provide.

(2) Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.

(3) Each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either House on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the journal.

(4) Neither House, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

SECTION 6 (1) The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

(2) No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no person holding any office under the United States, shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office.

SECTION 7 (1) All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.

(2) Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

(3) Every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the same shall take effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the rules and limitations prescribed in the case of a bill.

SECTION 8 (1) The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

(2) To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

(3) To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;

(4) To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

(5) To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

(6) To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

(7) To establish post offices and post roads;

(8) To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

(9) To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

(10) To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

(11) To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

(12) To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

(13) To provide and maintain a navy;

(14) To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

(15) To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

(16) To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

(17) To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the State in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, dockyards, and other needful buildings; and

(18) To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

SECTION 9 (1) The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.

(2) The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

(3) No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.

(4) No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

(5) No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State.

(6) No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another: nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another.

(7) No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.

(8) No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign State.

SECTION 10 (1) No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.

(2) No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws; and the net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any State on imports or exports, shall be for the use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Congress.

(3) No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.

ARTICLE II

SECTION 1 (1) The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows:

(2) Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.

The electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a list of all the persons voted for, and of the number of votes for each; which list they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the president of the Senate. The president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such majority, and have an equal number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately choose by ballot one of them for President; and if no person have a majority, then from the five highest on the list the said House shall in like manner choose the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each State having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two thirds of the States, and a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a choice. In every case, after the choice of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them by ballot the Vice President.

(3) The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.

(4) No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.

(5) In the case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as president, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

(6) The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.

(7) Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

SECTION 2 (1) The President shall be commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

(2) He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.

(3) The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.

SECTION 3 He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.

SECTION 4 The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

ARTICLE III

SECTION 1 The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

SECTION 2 (1) The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;—to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;—to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;—to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;—to controversies between two or more States;—between a State and citizens of another State;—between citizens of different States;—between citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants of different States, and between a State, or the citizens thereof, and foreign States, citizens or subjects.

(2) In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a State shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.

(3) The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.

SECTION 3 (1) Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

(2) The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

ARTICLE IV

SECTION 1 Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

SECTION 2 (1) The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.

(2) A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.

(3) No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

SECTION 3 (1) New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

(2) The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

SECTION 4 The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

ARTICLE V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

ARTICLE VI

SECTION 1 All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

SECTION 2 This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

SECTION 3 The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several State legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

ARTICLE VII

The ratification of the conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same.

DONE in Convention by the unanimous consent of the States present the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, and of the independence of the United States of America the twelfth.

In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

President and deputy from Virginia

New Hampshire.

JOHN LANGDON

NICHOLAS GILMAN

Massachusetts.

NATHANIEL GORHAM

RUFUS KING

New Jersey.

WILLIAM LIVINGSTON

DAVID BREARLEY

WILLIAM PATERSON

JONATHAN DAYTON

Pennsylvania.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

ROBERT MORRIS

THOMAS FITZSIMONS

JAMES WILSON

THOMAS MIFFLIN

GEORGE CLYMER

JARED INGERSOLL

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS

Delaware.

GEORGE READ

JOHN DICKINSON

JACOB BROOM

GUNNING BEDFORD, JR.

RICHARD BASSETT

Georgia.

WILLIAM FEW

ABRAHAM BALDWIN

Connecticut.

WILLIAM SAMUEL JOHNSON

ROGER SHERMAN

New York.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

Maryland.

JAMES MCHENRY

DANIEL CARROL

DANIEL OF ST. THOMAS JENIFER

Virginia.

JOHN BLAIR

JAMES MADISON JR.

North Carolina.

WILLIAM BLOUNT

HUGH WILLIAMSON

RICHARD DOBBS SPAIGHT

South Carolina.

JOHN RUTLEDGE

CHARLES PINCKNEY

CHARLES COTESWORTH PINCKNEY

PIERCE BUTLER

Attest:

WILLIAM JACKSON, Secretary

ARTICLES in addition to and AMENDMENTS of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth article of the original Constitution.

ARTICLE I*[1]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

ARTICLE II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

ARTICLE III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

ARTICLE IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

ARTICLE V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

ARTICLE VI

In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

ARTICLE VII

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

ARTICLE VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

ARTICLE IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

ARTICLE X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

ARTICLE XI*[2]

The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign State.

ARTICLE XII*[3]

The electors shall meet in their respective States and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the president of the Senate;—The president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;—The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each State having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two thirds of the States, and a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.—The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

ARTICLE XIII*[4]

SECTION 1 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

SECTION 2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

ARTICLE XIV*[5]

SECTION 1 All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

SECTION 2 Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial offices of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

SECTION 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two thirds of each House, remove such disability.

SECTION 4 The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

SECTION 5 The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provision of this article.

ARTICLE XV*[6]

SECTION 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

SECTION 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

ARTICLE XVI*[7]

The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

ARTICLE XVII*[8]

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

ARTICLE XVIII*[9]

SECTION 1 After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

SECTION 2 The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

SECTION 3 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

ARTICLE XIX*[10]

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

ARTICLE XX*[11]

SECTION 1 The term of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3rd day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

SECTION 2 The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3rd day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

SECTION 3 If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

SECTION 4 The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

SECTION 5 Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.

SECTION 6 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

ARTICLE XXI*[12]

SECTION 1 The Eighteenth Article of Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

SECTION 2 The transportation or importation into any State, Territory or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors in violation of the laws thereof is hereby prohibited.

SECTION 3 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

ARTICLE XXII*[13]

SECTION 1 No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which the Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

SECTION 2 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

ARTICLE XXIII*[14]

SECTION 1 The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct:

A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purpose of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

SECTION 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

ARTICLE XXIV*[15]

SECTION 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

SECTION 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

ARTICLE XXV*[16]

SECTION 1 In case of the removal of the President from office or his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

SECTION 2 Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take the Office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both houses of Congress.

SECTION 3 Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

SECTION 4 Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments, or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department, or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within 48 hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within 21 days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within 21 days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

ARTICLE XXVI*[17]

SECTION 1 The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age, or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of age.

SECTION 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

PROPOSED ARTICLE XXVII

SECTION 1 Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

SECTION 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

SECTION 3 This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Proposed to states for ratification 22 March 1972, with terminal date 22 March 1979. Extension of three years and three months granted 6 October 1978. Amendment failed of ratification 30 June 1982, and became dead as of that date.—J.A.M.

*[1] The first ten Amendments were adopted in 1791.

*[2] Ratified in 1795; proclaimed in 1798.

*[3] Adopted in 1804.

*[4] Adopted in 1865.

*[5] Adopted in 1868.

*[6] Adopted in 1870.

*[7] Adopted in 1913.

*[8] Adopted in 1913.

*[9] Adopted in 1919. Repealed by the 21st Amendment.

*[10]Adopted in 1920.

*[11]Adopted in 1933.

*[12]Adopted in 1933.

*[13]Adopted in 1951.

*[14]Adopted in 1961.

*[15]Adopted in 1964.

*[16]Adopted in 1967.

*[17]Adopted in 1971.

BY JAMES A. MICHENER

Tales of the South Pacific

The Fires of Spring

Return to Paradise

The Voice of Asia

The Bridges at Toko-Ri

Sayonara

The Floating World

The Bridge at Andau

Hawaii

Report of the County Chairman

Caravans

The Source

Iberia

Presidential Lottery

The Quality of Life

Kent State: What Happened and Why

The Drifters

A Michener Miscellany: 1950–1970

Centennial

Sports in America

Chesapeake

The Covenant

Space

Poland

Texas

Legacy

Alaska

Journey

Caribbean

The Eagle and the Raven

Pilgrimage

The Novel

James A. Michener’s Writer’s Handbook

Mexico

Creatures of the Kingdom

Recessional

Miracle in Seville

This Noble Land: My Vision for America

The World Is My Home

WITH A. GROVE DAY

Rascals in Paradise

WITH JOHN KINGS

Six Days in Havana

PHOTO: FRANK E. SCHRAMM III

JAMES A. MICHENER, one of the world’s most popular writers, was the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the best-selling novels Hawaii, Texas, Chesapeake, The Covenant, and Alaska, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.

Read on for an excerpt from James A. Michener’s

Hawaii

I

FROM THE BOUNDLESS DEEP

Millions upon millions of years ago, when the continents were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others. It was a mighty ocean, resting uneasily to the east of the largest continent, a restless ever-changing, gigantic body of water that would later be described as pacific.

Over its brooding surface immense winds swept back and forth, whipping the waters into towering waves that crashed down upon the world’s seacoasts, tearing away rocks and eroding the land. In its dark bosom, strange life was beginning to form, minute at first, then gradually of a structure now lost even to memory. Upon its farthest reaches birds with enormous wings came to rest, and then flew on.

Agitated by a moon stronger then than now, immense tides ripped across this tremendous ocean, keeping it in a state of torment. Since no great amounts of sand had yet been built, the waters where they reached shore were universally dark, black as night and fearful.

Scores of millions of years before man had risen from the shores of the ocean to perceive its grandeur and to venture forth upon its turbulent waves, this eternal sea existed, larger than any other of the earth’s features, vaster than the sister oceans combined, wild, terrifying in its immensity and imperative in its universal role.

How utterly vast it was! How its surges modified the very balance of the earth! How completely lonely it was, hidden in the darkness of night or burning in the dazzling power of a younger sun than ours.

At recurring intervals the ocean grew cold. Ice piled up along its extremities, and so pulled vast amounts of water from the sea, so that the wandering shoreline of the continents sometimes jutted miles farther out than before. Then, for a hundred thousand years, the ceaseless ocean would tear at the exposed shelf of the continents, grinding rocks into sand and incubating new life.

Later, the fantastic accumulations of ice would melt, setting cold waters free to join the heaving ocean, and the coasts of the continents would lie submerged. Now the restless energy of the sea deposited upon the ocean bed layers of silt and skeletons and salt. For a million years the ocean would build soil, and then the ice would return; the waters would draw away; and the land would lie exposed. Winds from the north and south would howl across the empty seas and lash stupendous waves upon the shattering shore. Thus the ocean continued its alternate building and tearing down.

Master of life, guardian of the shorelines, regulator of temperatures and heaving sculptor of mountains, the great ocean existed.

—

Millions upon millions of years before man had risen upon earth, the central areas of this tremendous ocean were empty, and where famous islands now exist nothing rose above the rolling waves. Of course, crude forms of life sometimes moved through the deep, but for the most part the central ocean was marked only by enormous waves that arose at the command of moon and wind. Dark, dark, they swept the surface of the empty sea, falling only upon themselves terrible and puissant and lonely.

Then one day, at the bottom of the deep ocean, along a line running two thousand miles from northwest to southeast, a rupture appeared in the basalt rock that formed the ocean’s bed. Some great fracture of the earth’s basic structure had occurred, and from it began to ooze a white-hot, liquid rock. As it escaped from its internal prison, it came into contact with the ocean’s wet and heavy body. Instantly, the rock exploded, sending aloft through the 19,000 feet of ocean that pressed down upon it columns of released steam.

Upward, upward, for nearly four miles they climbed, those agitated bubbles of air, until at last upon the surface of the sea they broke loose and formed a cloud. In that instant, the ocean signaled that a new island was building. In time it might grow to become an infinitesimal speck of land that would mark the great central void. No human beings then existed to celebrate the event. Perhaps some weird and vanished flying thing spied the escaping steam and swooped down to inspect it; more likely the roots of this future island were born in darkness and great waves and brooding nothingness.

For nearly forty million years, an extent of time so vast that it is meaningless, only the ocean knew that an island was building in its bosom, for no land had yet appeared above the surface of the sea. For nearly forty million years, from that extensive rupture in the ocean floor, small amounts of liquid rock seeped out, each forcing its way up through what had escaped before, each contributing some small portion to the accumulation that was building on the floor of the sea. Sometimes a thousand years, or ten thousand, would silently pass before any new eruption of material would take place. At other times gigantic pressures would accumulate beneath the rupture and with unimaginable violence rush through the existing apertures, throwing clouds of steam miles above the surface of the ocean. Waves would be generated which would circle the globe and crash upon themselves as they collided twelve thousand miles away. Such an explosion, indescribable in its fury, might in the end raise the height of the subocean island a foot.

But for the most part, the slow constant seepage of molten rock was not violently dramatic. Layer upon layer of the earth’s vital core would creep out, hiss horribly at the cold sea water, and then slide down the sides of the little mountains that were forming. Building was most sure when the liquid rock did not explode into minute ashy fragments, but cascaded viscously down the sides of the mountains, for this bound together what had gone before, and established a base for what was to come.

How long ago this building took place, how infinitely long ago! For nearly forty million years the first island struggled in the bosom of the sea, endeavoring to be born as observable land. For nearly forty million submerged years its subterranean volcano hissed and coughed and belched and spewed forth rock, but it remained nevertheless hidden beneath the dark waters of the restless sea, to whom it was an insignificant irritation, a small climbing pretentious thing of no consequence.

And then one day, at the northwest end of the subocean rupture, an eruption of liquid rock occurred that was different from any others that had preceded. It threw forth the same kind of rock, with the same violence, and through the same vents in the earth’s core. But this time what was thrown forth reached the surface of the sea. There was a tremendous explosion as the liquid rock struck water and air together. Clouds of steam rose miles into the air. Ash fell hissing upon the heaving waves. Detonations shattered the air for a moment and then echoed away in the immensity of the empty wastes.

But rock had at last been deposited above the surface of the sea. An island—visible were there but eyes to see, tangible were there fingers to feel—had risen from the deep.

The human mind, looking back upon this event—particularly if the owner of the mind has once stepped upon that island—is likely to accord it more significance than it merits. Land was finally born, yes. The forty million years of effort were finally crowned by the emergence of a pile of rocks no larger than a man’s body, that is true. But the event was actually of no lasting significance, for in the long history of the ocean many such piles had momentarily broken the surface and then subsided, forbidden and forgotten. The only thing significant about the initial appearance of this first island along the slanting crack was the fact that it held on and grew. Stubbornly, inch by painful inch, it grew. In fact, it was the uncertainty and agony of its growth that were significant.

The chance emergence of the island was nothing. Remember this. Its emergence was nothing. But its persistence and patient accumulation of stature were everything. Only by relentless effort did it establish its right to exist. For the first ten thousand years after its tentative emergence, the little pile of rock in the dead, vast center of the sea fluctuated between life and death like a thing struck by evil. Sometimes molten lava would rise through the internal channels and erupt from a vent only a few inches above the waves. Tons upon tons of material would gush forth and hiss madly as it fell back into the ocean. Some, fortunately, would cling to the newborn island, building it sturdily many feet into the air, and in that time it might seem as if the island were indeed secure.

Then from the south, where storms breed in the senseless deep, a mighty wave would form and rush across the world. Its coming would be visible from afar, and in gigantic, tumbling, whistling, screaming power it would fall upon the little accumulation of rocks and pass madly on.

For the next ten thousand years there would be no visible island, yet under the waves, always ready to spring back to life, there would rest this huge mountain tip, rising 19,000 feet from the floor of the ocean, and when a new series of volcanic thrusts tore through the vents, the mountain would patiently build itself aloft for another try. Exploding, hissing, and spewing forth ash, the great mountain would writhe in convulsions. It would pierce the waves. Its island would be born again.

This was the restless surge of the universe, the violence of birth, the cold tearing away of death; and yet how promising was this interplay of forces as an island struggled to be born, vanishing in agony, then soaring aloft in triumph. You men who will come later to inhabit these islands, remember the agony of arrival, the rising and the fall, the nothingness of the sea when storms throw down the rock, the triumph of the mountain when new rocks are lifted aloft.

For a million years the island hung in this precarious balance, a child of violence; but finally, after incredibly patient accumulation, it was established. Now each new lava flow had a solid base upon which to build, and inch by inch the debris agglutinated until the island could be seen by birds from long distances. It was indeed land, habitable had there been existing men, with shelters for boats, had there been boats, and with rocks that could have been used for building homes and temples. It was now, in the real sense of the word, an island, taking its rightful place in the center of the great ocean.

But before life could prosper on this island, soil was needed, and as yet none existed. When molten lava burst upon the air it generally exploded into ash, but sometimes it ran as a viscous fluid down the sides of mountains, constructing extensive sheets of flat rock. In either case, the action of wind and rain and cooling nights began to pulverize the newly born lava, decomposing it into soil. When enough had accumulated, the island was ready.

The first living forms to arrive were inconspicuous, indeed almost invisible, lichens and low types of moss. They were borne by the sea and by winds that howled back and forth across the oceans. With a tenacity equal to that of the island itself these fragments of life established themselves, and as they grew they broke down more rocks and built more soil.

At this time there existed, on the distant continents visited by the ocean, a well-established plant and animal society composed of trees and lumbering animals and insects. Some of these forms were already well adapted for life on the new island, but were prevented from taking residence by two thousand miles of open ocean.

Consequently, there began an appalling struggle. Life, long before man’s emergence, stood poised on distant shores, pressing to make new exploratory journeys like those that had already populated the existing earth with plants and animals. But against these urgent forms stood more than two thousand miles of turbulent ocean, storm-ridden, salty, and implacable.

The first sentient animals to reach the island were of course fish, for they permeated the ocean, coming and going as they wished. But they could not be said to be a part of the island. The first nonoceanic animal to visit was a bird. It came, probably, from the north on an exploratory mission in search of food. It landed on the still-warm rocks, found nothing edible, and flew on, perhaps to perish in the southern seas.

A thousand years passed, and no other birds arrived. One day a coconut was swept ashore by a violent storm. It had been kept afloat on the bosom of the sea by its buoyant husk, traveling more than three thousand miles from the southwest, a marvel of persistence. But when it landed, it found no soil along the shore and only salt water, so it perished, but its husk and shell helped form soil for those that would come later.

The years passed. The sun swept through its majestic cycles. The moon waxed and waned, and tides rushed back and forth across the surface of the world. Ice crept down from the north, and for ten thousand years covered the islands, its weight and power breaking down rocks and forming earth.

The years passed, the empty, endless, significant years. And then one day another bird arrived on the island, also seeking food. This time it found a few dead fish along the shore. As if in gratitude, it emptied its bowels on the waiting earth and evacuated a tiny seed which it had eaten on some remote island. The seed germinated and grew. Thus, after the passage of eons of time, growing life had established itself on the rocky island.

Now the passage of time becomes incomprehensible. Between the arrival of the first, unproductive bird, and the second bearing in its bowels the vital seed, more than twenty thousand years had elapsed. In another twenty thousand years a second bit of life arrived, a female insect, fertilized on some distant island on the night before a tremendous storm. Caught up in the vast winds that howled from the south, she was borne aloft to the height of ten thousand feet and driven northward for more than two thousand miles to be dropped at last upon this new and remote island, where she gave birth. Insects had arrived.

The years passed. Other birds arrived, but they bore no seeds. Other insects were blown ashore, but they were not females, or if they were, not pregnant. But once every twenty or thirty thousand years—a period longer than that of historic man—some one bit of life would reach the island, by accident; and by accident it would establish itself. In this hit-or-miss way, over a period of time that the mind can barely digest, life populated the island.

One of the most significant days in the history of the island came when a bird staggered in from some land far to the southwest, bearing in its tangled feathers the seed of a tree. Perched upon a rock, the bird pecked at the seed until it fell away, and in the course of time a tree grew. Thirty thousand years passed, and by some accident equally absurd, another tree arrived, and after a million years of chances, after five million years of storms and birds and drifting sea-soaked logs bearing snails and borers, the island had a forest with flowers and birds and insects.

Nothing, nothing that ever existed on this island reached it easily. The rocks themselves were forced up fiery chimneys through miles of ocean. They burst in horrible agony onto the surface of the earth. The lichens that arrived came borne by storms. The birds limped in on deadened wings. Insects came only when accompanied by hurricanes, and even trees arrived in the dark belly of some wandering bird, or precariously perched upon the feathers of a thigh.

Timelessly, relentlessly, in storm and hunger and hurricane the island was given life, and this life was sustained only by constant new volcanic eruptions that spewed forth new lava that could be broken down into life-sustaining soil. In violence the island lived, and in violence a great beauty was born.

The shores of the island, weathered by the sea, were stupendous cliffs that caught the evening sun and glowed like serrated pillars of gold. The mountains were tall and jagged, their lower levels clothed in dark green trees, their upper pinnacles shod in ice, while the calm bays in which the grandeur of the mountains was reflected were deeply cut into the shore. Valleys and sweet plains, waterfalls and rivers, glades where lovers would have walked and confluences where towns could have been built, the lovely island had all these accouterments, these alluring invitations to civilization.

But no man ever saw them, and the tempting glades entertained no lovers, for the island had risen to its beauty long, long before the age of man; and at the moment of its greatest perfection it began to die. In violence it had been born; in violence it would die.

There was a sudden shudder of the earth, a slipping and a sliding, and when the readjustment was ended, covering a period of thousands of years, the island had sunk some twelve hundred feet lower into the ocean, and ice nevermore formed upon its crests. The volcanoes stopped, and no new lava poured forth to create new soil to replace that which had sunk into the sea. For a million years winds howled at the hills, the ocean gnawed away at the ramparts. Year by year the island withered and grew less. It began to shred away, to shatter and to fall back into the ocean from which it had sprung.

A million years passed, and then a million more, and the island which had grown so patiently at the northwest tip of the great crack in the ocean floor slowly, slowly vanished. The birds that had fed upon its hills went elsewhere, bearing in their bowels new seeds. From its shore fertilized insects were storm-blown to other islands, and life went on. Once every twenty or thirty thousand years some fragment of nature escaped from this island, and life went on.

But as the island subsided, a different form of life sprang into increased activity. In the warm, clear, nutritious waters that surrounded the shores, coral polyps began to flourish, and slowly they left behind them as they died their tiny calciferous skeletons, a few feet below the surface of the sea. In a thousand years they built a submerged ring around the island. In a thousand more they added to its form, and as the eons passed, these tiny coral animals built a reef.

Ice melted in the north, and the coral animals were drowned in vast weights of unexpected water. The seas changed temperature and the animals died. Torrents of rain poured down from island hills and silted up the shoreline, strangling the tiny coral. Or new ice caps formed far to the north and south, pulling water away from the dying island. Then the coral were exposed and died at once.

Always, like everything to do with this island, throughout its entire history, the coral lived precariously, poised between catastrophes. But in the breathing space available, the coral built. And so it was that this tiny animal, this child of cataclysm, built a new island to replace the old as it gradually wore itself away and sank into the sea.

How terrible this passage of life and death! How meaningless that an island that had been born of such force and violence, that had been so fair upon the bosom of the great ocean, so loved of birds, so rich in trees, so willing to entertain man, should he ever arrive…how wasteful it was that this island should have grown in agony and died in equal agony before ever a human eye had seen its majesty.

Across a million years, down more than ten million years it existed silently in the unknown sea and then died, leaving only a fringe of coral where sea birds rest and where gigantic seals of the changing ocean play. Ceaseless life and death, endless expenditure of beauty and capacity, tireless ebb and flow and rising and subsidence of the ocean. Night comes and the burning day, and the island waits, and no man arrives. The days perish and the nights, and the aching beauty of lush valleys and waterfalls vanishes, and no man will ever see them. All that remains is a coral reef, a calcium wreath on the surface of the great sea that had given the island life, a memorial erected by the skeletons of a billion billion billion little animals.

—

While this first island was rising to prominence and dying back to nothingness, other would-be islands, stretching away to the southeast, were also struggling to attain brief existence followed by certain death. Some started their cycle within the same million years as did the first. Others lagged. The latest would not puncture the surface of the sea until the first was well into its death throes, so that at any moment from the time the first island began to die, man, had he then existed, could have witnessed in this two-thousand-mile chain of islands every sequential step in the process of life and death. Like an undulating wave of the sea itself, the rocky islands rose and fell; but whereas the cycle of an ocean wave is apt to be a few minutes at the most, the cycle of the rising and falling of these islands was of the nature of sixty million years.

Each island, at any given moment of time, existed certainly and securely within that cycle: it was either rising toward birth and significance, or it was perishing. I do not mean that man, had he been able to witness the cycle, could have identified which part of the cycle a given island was in; there must have been periods of millions of years when no one could have ascertained that condition. But the impersonal, molten center of the earth knew, for it was sending that island no new supplies of lava. The waiting sea knew, for it could feel the cliffs falling into its arms a little more easily. And the coral polyps knew, because they sensed that it was now time to start erecting a memorial to this island which would soon be dead…that is, within twenty or thirty million years.

Endless cycle, endless birth and death, endless becoming and disappearing. Once the terrifying volcanic explosions cease, the island is already doomed. Peace and calm seas and the arrival of birds bearing seeds are pleasant to experience, but the residence of beauty is surely nominated for destruction. A song at night of insects, the gentle splash of surf against the sand, and a new ice age is beginning which will freeze out all life. Limitless cycle, endless change.

—

Toward the end of the master cycle, when the western islands were dying and the eastern were abuilding, a new volcano pushed its cone above the surface of the ocean, and in a series of titanic explosions erupted enough molten rock to establish securely a new island, which after eons of time would be designated by men as the capital island of the group. Its subsequent volcanic history was memorable in that its habitable land resulted from the wedding of two separate chains of volcanoes.

After the parent volcano had succeeded in establishing an island, its mighty flanks produced many subsidiary vents through which lava poured; whereupon a greater volcano, separated from the first by miles of ocean, sprang into being and erected its own majestic construction, marked by an equal chain of events.

For eons of time the two massive volcano systems stood in the sea in fiery competition, and then, inevitably, the first began to die back, its fires extinguished, while the second continued to pour millions of tons of lava down its own steep flanks. Hissing, exploding, crackling, the rocks fell into the sea in boundless accumulations, building the later volcano ever more solidly, ever more thickly at its base on the remote floor of the ocean.

In time, sinking lava from the second master builder began to creep across the feet of the first, and then to climb its sides and finally to throw itself across the exposed lava flows that had constituted the earlier island. Now the void in the sea that had separated the two was filled, and they became one. Locked in fiery arms, joined by intertwining ejaculations of molten rock, the two volcanoes stood in matrimony, their union a single fruitful and growing island.

Its soil was later made from dozens of smaller volcanoes that erupted for a few hundred thousand years, then passed into death and silence. One exploded in dazzling glory and left a crater looking like a punch bowl. Another, at the very edge of the island, from where it could control the sea approaches, left as its memory a gaunt headland shaped like a diamond.

When the island was well formed—and what a heavenly, sweet, enchanting island it was—some force of nature, almost as if by subtle plan, hid in its bowels a wealth of incalculable richness. It could not be diamonds, because the island was 250,000,000 years too young to have acquired the carboniferous plant growth that produced diamonds. It could not be either oil or coal, for the same reason. It wasn’t gold, for neither the age nor the conditions required for the building of that metal were present on this island. It was none of these commonly accepted treasures, but it was a greater.

The volcanic basalt from which the island was built was porous, and when the tremendous storms which swept the ocean struck the island, the waters they disgorged ran partly out to sea in surface rivers, seeped partly into the heart of the island. Billions of tons of water thus crept down into the secret reservoirs of the island.

They did not stay there, of course, for since the rock was porous, there were avenues that led back out to sea, and in time the water was lost. But if any animal—a man perhaps—could penetrate the rocks, he could intercept the water and put it to his use, for the entire island was a catchment; the entire core of the island was permeated with life-giving water.

But that was not the special treasure of this particular island, for a man could bore into almost any porous rock on any island, and catch some water. Here, on this island, there was to be an extra treasure, and the way it was deposited was something of a miracle.

When the ice came and went, causing the great ocean to rise, when the island itself sank slowly and then rebuilt with new lava—when these titanic convolutions were in progress, the south shore of the island was alternately exposed to sunlight or buried fathoms deep in ocean. When the first condition prevailed, the exposed shore was cut by mountain streams which threw their debris across the plain, depositing there claylike soils and minute fragments of lava. Sometimes the sea would wash in bits of animal calcium, or a thundering storm would rip away a cliff face and throw its remnants over the shore. Bit by bit, over a hundred thousand years at a time, the shore accumulated its debris.

Then, when next the ocean rose, it would press down heavily upon this shelving land, which would lie for ages, submerged under tons of dark, green water. But while the great brutal ocean thus pressed down hydraulically, it at the same time acted as a life-giving agent, for through its shimmering waves filtered silt and dead bodies and water-logged fragments of trees and sand. All these things, the gifts both of land and sea, the immense weight of ocean would bind together until they united to form rock.

Cataclysmically the island would rise from the sea to collect new fragments washed down from the hills, then sink beneath the waves to accumulate new deposits of life-building slime. But whenever the monstrous ocean would beat down heavily upon the shore for ten thousand years at a time, new rock was formed, an impermeable shield that sloped down from the lower foothills and extended well out to sea. It was a cap rock, imprisoning in a gigantic underground reservoir all that lay beneath it.

What lay trapped below, of course, was water. Secretly, far beneath the visible surface of the island, imprisoned by this watertight cap of rock, lay the purest, sweetest, most copious water in all the lands that bordered upon or existed in the great ocean. It lay there under vast pressure, so that it was not only available, should a man deduce its secret hiding, but it was ready to leap forth twenty or thirty or forty feet into the air, and engulf with life-giving sweetness any man who could penetrate the imprisoning rock and set it free. It waited, an almost inexhaustible supply of water to sustain life. It waited, a universe of water hidden beneath the cap rock. It waited.

—

The adventurous plants and insects that had reached the earliest northwest island had plenty of time in which to make their way to the newer lands as the latter rose to life. It might take a million years for a given grass to complete its journey down the chain. But there was no hurry. Slowly, with a patience that is difficult to comprehend, trees and vines and crawling things crept down the islands, while in other parts of the world a new and more powerful animal was rising and preparing himself for his invasion of the islands.

Before the two-volcanoed island with its trapped treasure of water had finished growing, man had developed in distant areas. Before the last island had assumed its dominant shape, men had erected in Egypt both mighty monuments and a stable form of government. Men could already write and record their memories.

While volcanoes still played along the chain, China developed a sophisticated system of thought and Japan codified art principles that would later enrich the world. While the islands were taking their final form, Jesus spoke in Jerusalem and Muhammad came from the blazing deserts with a new vision of heaven, but no men knew the heaven that awaited them on these islands.

For these lands were the youngest part of the earth’s vast visible surface. They were new. They were raw. They were empty. They were waiting. Books which we still read today were written before these islands were known to anyone except the birds of passage. Songs which we still sing were composed and recorded while these islands remained vacant. The Bible had been compiled, and the Koran.

Raw, empty, youthful islands, sleeping in the sun and whipped by rain, they waited.

Since, when they were finally discovered, they were destined to be widely hailed as paradises, it is proper to study them carefully in their last, waiting moments, those sad, sweet, overpowering days before the first canoes reached them.

They were beautiful, that is true. Their wooded mountains were a joy. Their cool waterfalls, existing in the thousands, were spectacular. Their cliffs, where the restless ocean had eroded away the edges of great mountains, dropped thousands of feet clear into the sea, and birds nested on the vertical stones. Rivers were fruitful. The shores of the islands were white and waves that washed them were crystal-blue. At night the stars were close, great brilliant dots of fire fixing forever the location of the islands and forming majestic pathways for the moon and sun.

How beautiful these islands were! How shot through with harmony and peace! How the mind lingers on their pristine grandeur, a grandeur that nothing so far devised could permanently destroy. If paradise consists solely of beauty, then these islands were the fairest paradise that man ever invaded, for the land and sea were beautiful, and the climate was congenial.

But if the concept of paradise includes also the ability to sustain life, then these islands, as they waited in the time of Jesus and Muhammad, were far from heavenly. They contained almost no food. Of all the things that grew on their magnificent hillsides, nothing could be relied upon to sustain life adequately. There were a few pandanus trees whose spare and bitter fruits could be chewed for minimum existence. There were a few tree ferns whose cores were just barely edible, a few roots. There were fish if they could be caught and birds if they could be trapped. But there was nothing else.

Few more inhospitable major islands have ever existed than this group. Here are the things they did not have: no chickens, or pigs, or cattle, or edible dogs; no bananas, no taro, no sweet potatoes, no breadfruit; no pineapple, or sugar, or guava, or gourds, or melons, or mangoes, no fruit of any kind; no palms for making sugar; no food. The islands did not even have that one essential, that miraculous sustainer of tropical life, the coconut. Some had drifted to the shores, but in salty soil along the beaches they could not grow.

Any man who came to the islands would, if he wanted to live, have to bring with him all food. If he were wise, he would also bring most of the materials required for building a civilized society, since the islands had no bamboo for decorating a home, no candlenuts for lamps, no mulberry bark for making tapa. Nor were there any conspicuous flowers: neither frangipani, nor hibiscus, nor bright croton, nor colorful orchids. Instead of these joy-giving, life-sustaining plants there was a hidden tree, useless except that its wood when dried yielded a persistent perfume, and this was the tree of death, the sandalwood tree. Of itself, it was neither poisonous nor cruel, but the uses to which it would be put on these islands would make it a permanent blight.

The soil of the islands was not particularly good. It was not rich and black like the soil which Russian peasants were already farming, nor loamy and productive like that known to the Dakota and Iowa tribes of Indians. It was red and of a sandlike consistency, apparently rich in iron because it had been formed of decomposed basalt, but lacking in other essentials. If a farmer could add to this soil the missing minerals and supply it with adequate water, it had the capacity to produce enormously. But of itself it was not much, for the minerals were absent, and so was the water.

Tremendous quantities of rain did fall on the islands, but it fell in an unproductive manner. From the northeast, trade winds blew constantly, pushing ahead of them low clouds pregnant with sweet water. But along the northeast shores of each island high cliffs rose, and mountains, and these reached up and knocked the water out of the clouds, so that it fell in cascades where it could not be used and never reached the southwest plains where the red soil was. Of the flat lands that could be tilled, fully three fourths were in effect deserts. If one could capture the wasted water that ran useless down the steep mountainsides and back out to sea, bringing it through the mountains and onto the flat lands, then crops could be grown. Or if one could discover the secret reservoirs waiting in the kidneys of the islands, one would have ample water and more than ample food. But until this was accomplished, men who lived on these islands would never have enough water or enough food.

And so these beautiful, inhospitable islands waited for some breed of men to invade them with food and courage and determination. The best that could be said of the islands, as they waited, was that they held no poisonous snakes, no fevers, no mosquitoes, no disfiguring diseases, and no plagues.

—

There was one additional aspect that must be remembered. Of all the growing things that existed in these islands at the time of Jesus, ninety-five out of every hundred grew nowhere else in the world. These islands were unique, alone, apart, off the main stream of life, a secluded backwater of nature…or, if you prefer, an authentic natural paradise where each growing thing had its opportunity to develop in its own unique way, according to the dictates and limitations of its own abilities.

I spoke of that adventurous bird that brought the first seed in its bowels. It was a grass seed, perhaps, one whose brothers and sisters, if the term may be used of grasses, stayed behind on their original islands, where they developed as the family had always done for millions of generations. On those original islands the grass maintained its standard characteristics and threw forth no venturesome modifications; or, if such mutations were offered, the stronger normal stock quickly submerged them, and the dead average was preserved.

But on the new islands the grass, left alone in beauty and sun and rain, became a different grass, unique and adapted to these islands. When men looked at such grass, millions of years later, they would be able to discern that it was a grass, and that it had come from the original stock still existing elsewhere; but they would also see that it was nevertheless a new grass, with new qualities, new vitality, and new promise.

Did an insect from one of the huge continents reach these islands? If so, here he became a different insect, his legs longer or his nose more adapted to boring. Birds, flowers, worms, trees and snails…all developed unique forms and qualities in these islands.

There was then, as there is now, no place known on earth that even began to compete with these islands in their capacity to encourage natural life to develop freely and radically up to its own best potential. More than nine out of ten things that grew here, grew nowhere else on earth.

Why this should have been so remains a mystery. Perhaps a fortunate combination of rainfall, climate, sunlight and soil accounted for this miracle. Perhaps eons of time in which diverse growing things were left alone to work out their own best destinies was the explanation. Perhaps the fact that when a grass reached here it had to stand upon its own capacities and could not be refertilized by grasses of the same kind from the parent stock, perhaps that is the explanation. But whatever the reason, the fact remains: in these islands new breeds developed, and they prospered, and they grew strong, and they multiplied. For these islands were a crucible of exploration and development.

And so, with these capacities, the islands waited. Jesus died on a cross, and they waited. England was settled by mixed and powerful races, and the islands waited for their own settlers. Mighty kings ruled in India, and in China and in Japan, while the islands waited.

Inhospitable in fact, a paradise in potential, with almost no food available, but with enormous riches waiting to be developed, the islands waited. Volcanoes, still building the ramparts with fresh flows of lava, hung lanterns in the sky so that if a man and his canoe were lost on the great dark bosom of the sea, wandering fitfully this way and that, he might spot the incandescent glow of the under side of a distant cloud, and thus find a fiery star to steer by.

Large gannets and smaller terns skimmed across the waters leading to land, while frigate birds drew sharp and sure navigation lines from the turbulent ocean wastes right to the heart of the islands, where they nested. If a man in a canoe could spot a frigate bird, its cleft tail cutting the wind, he could be sure that land lay in the direction toward which the bird had flown at dusk.

These beautiful islands, waiting in the sun and storm, how much they seemed like beautiful women waiting for their men to come home at dusk, waiting with open arms and warm bodies and consolation. All that would be accomplished in these islands, as in these women, would be generated solely by the will and puissance of some man. I think the islands always knew this.

Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish.

But if you come with growing things, and good foods and better ideas, if you come with gods that will sustain you, and if you are willing to work until the swimming head and the aching arms can stand no more, then you can gain entrance to this miraculous crucible where the units of nature are free to develop according to their own capacities and desires.

On these harsh terms the islands waited.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction by Steve Berry

Contents

The Starrs

Jared Starr 1726–1787

Simon Starr 1759–1807

Justice Edmund Starr 1780–1847

General Hugh Starr 1833–1921

Emily Starr 1858–1932

Richard Starr 1890–1954

Rachel Denham Starr 1928–

Norman Starr 1951–

The Constitution of the United States

Other Titles

About the Author

Excerpt from Hawaii