by John Jakes
“The senator’s wife? Isabel, you constantly astonish me. I didn’t know you were even acquainted with her.”
“Until a month ago I wasn’t. I took steps to arrange an introduction. She was quite cordial today, and I believe I convinced her that I’m a partisan of her husband and his clique—Chandler, Grimes, and the rest. I also hinted that you were unhappy with Simon’s management of the War Department but felt helpless because of your loyalty to him.”
Instantly pale, he said, “You didn’t mention Lashbrook’s—?”
“Stanley, you are the one who commits blunders, not I. Of course I didn’t. But what if I had? There’s nothing illegal about the contracts we obtained.”
“No, just in the way we obtained them.”
“Why are you so defensive?”
“I’m worried. I hope to Christ those bootees hold up in winter weather. Pennyford keeps warning me—”
“Kindly cease your foul language and stick to the subject.”
“I’m sorry—go on.”
“Mrs. Wade didn’t say so explicitly, but she left the impression that the senator wants to form a new congressional committee, one that would curb the dictatorial powers the President is assuming and oversee conduct of the war. Surely a committee like that would make Simon’s removal one of its first orders of business.”
“Do you think so? Ben Wade is one of Simon’s staunchest friends.”
“Was, my dear. Was. Old alliances are shifting. Publicly, Wade may stand fast in support of the boss, but I’ll wager it’s a different story behind the scenes.” She leaned closer. “Is Simon still out of town?”
He nodded; the secretary had gone on a tour of the Western theater.
“Then it’s the perfect opportunity. You won’t be watched too closely. Go see Wade, and I’ll order the invitations for a levee I’m planning for his wife and the senator and their circle. I may even invite George and Constance, for the sake of appearances. I suppose I can stomach her arrogance for an evening.”
“All very fine, but what am I supposed to say to the senator?”
“Keep quiet and I’ll explain.”
Their meal forgotten, he sat listening, scared to the marrow by the thought of approaching the toughest and most dangerous of the radicals. But the more Isabel said—first urging, then insisting—the more convinced he became that Wade represented their means of survival.
Next day he secured the appointment, though it wasn’t until the end of the week. The delay upset his digestion and ruined his sleep. Several times fear prodded him to plead for a different strategy. Wade was too close to Cameron; it would be smarter to approach the President’s senior secretary, Nicolay.
“Wade,” Isabel insisted. “He’ll be receptive, because it’s always possible to do business with scoundrels.”
So it was that Stanley turned up on a bench in Senator Benjamin Franklin Wade’s antechamber on Friday. His stomach hurt. He clutched the gold knob of his cane as if it were some religious object. The hour of the appointment, eleven, went past. By a quarter after, Stanley was sweating heavily. By half past, he was ready to bolt. At that moment Wade’s office door opened. A small, stocky man with spectacles and a magnificent beard strode out. Stanley was too terrified to move.
“Morning, Mr. Hazard. Here to take care of some departmental business?”
Say something. Cover yourself. He was positive his guilt showed. “It’s—actually, it’s personal, Mr. Stanton.” The small but intimidating man who stood polishing his wire-frame glasses was, like Wade, an Ohioan; a Democrat who had long been one of the best and most expensive Washington lawyers, and, more recently, Buck Buchanan’s attorney general. He was also Simon Cameron’s personal attorney.
“So was mine,” Edwin Stanton said. His whiskers exuded a strong smell of citrus pomade. “I apologize that my appointment ran over into yours. How is my client? Back from the West yet?”
“No, but I expect him soon.”
“When he returns, convey my regards and say I’m at his disposal to help draft his year-end report.” With that, Stanton vanished into the Capitol corridors, which still stank of greasy food cooked while volunteer troops were quartered in the building, sleeping in the Rotunda and lolling at congressional desks and conducting mock legislative sessions when the hall was empty.
“Go in, please,” Wade’s administrative assistant prompted from his desk.
“What? Oh, yes—thanks.” Numb from the unexpected encounter with Stanton and mortally afraid of the encounter to come, he entered and shut the door. His palms felt as if they had been dipped in oil.
Ben Wade, once a prosecutor in northeastern Ohio, still had that air about him. He had come to Washington as a senator in 1851 and remained for a decade. During the crisis of Brown’s raid, he had carried two horse pistols to the Senate floor to demonstrate his willingness to debate Mr. Brown’s behavior in any manner his Southern colleagues chose.
Stumbling toward the senator’s big walnut desk, Stanley was intimidated by the scornful droop of Wade’s upper lip and the gleam of his small jet eyes. Wade was at least sixty but had a kind of tensed energy that suggested youth.
“Sit down, Mr. Hazard.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I recall we met at a reception for Mr. Cameron earlier this year. But I’ve seen you since. Bull Run, that was it. Paid two hundred dollars to rent a rig for the day. Disgraceful. What can I do for you?” He fired the words like bullets.
“Senator, it’s difficult to begin—”
“Begin or leave, Mr. Hazard. I am a busy man.”
If Isabel was wrong—
Wade locked his hands together on the desk and glared. “Mr. Hazard?”
Feeling like a suicide, Stanley plunged. “Sir, I’m here because I share your desire for efficient prosecution of the war and appropriate punishment for the enemy.”
Wade unclasped his hands and laid them on the burnished wood. Strong hands; clean, hard. “The only appropriate punishment will be ruthless and total. Continue.”
“I—” It was too late to retreat; the words tumbled forth. “I don’t believe the war’s being managed properly, Senator. Not by the executive”—Wade’s eyes warmed slightly there—“or by my department.” The warmth was instantly masked. “I can do nothing about the former—”
“Congress can and will. Go on.”
“I’d like to do whatever I can about the latter. There are”—his belly burning, he forced himself to meet Wade’s black gaze—“irregularities in procurement, which you surely must have heard about, and—”
“Just a moment. I thought you were one of the chosen.”
Baffled, Stanley shook his head. “Sir? I don’t—”
“One of the Pennsylvania bunch our mutual friend brought to Washington because they helped finance his campaigns. I was under the impression you were in that pack—you and your brother who works for Ripley.”
No wonder Wade was powerful and dangerous. He knew everything. “I can’t speak for my brother, Senator. And, yes, I did come here as a strong supporter of our, ah, mutual friend. But people change.” A feeble grin. “The secretary was a Democrat once—”
“He is ruled by expediency, Mr. Hazard.” The pitiless mouth jerked—the Wade version of a smile. “So are all of us in this trade. I was a Whig until I decided to become a Republican. It’s beside the point. What are you offering? To sell him out?”
Stanley paled. “Sir, that language is—-”
“Blunt but correct. Am I right?” The frantic visitor looked away, his cheeks damp with cold sweat. “Of course I am. Well, let’s hear your proposition. Certain members of Congress might be interested. Two years ago, Simon and Zach Chandler and I were inseparable. We made a pact: an attack on one would be considered an attack on all, and we’d carry retaliation to the grave if necessary. But times and attitudes—and friends—do change, as you have sagaciously observed.”
Stanley licked his lips, wondering whether the unsmiling senator was mocking him.
&nbs
p; Wade went on: “The war effort is foundering. Everyone knows it. President Lincoln’s dissatisfied with Simon. Everyone knows that, too. Should Lincoln fail to act in the matter, others will, much as they might regret it personally.” A brief pause. “What could you offer to them, Mr. Hazard?”
“Information on contracts improperly let,” Stanley whispered. “Names. Dates. Everything. Orally. I refuse to write a word. But I could be very helpful to, let’s say, a congressional committee—”
A verbal sword slashed at him. “What committee?”
“I—why, I don’t know. Whichever has jurisdiction—”
Satisfied by the evasion, Wade relaxed slightly. “And what would you ask in return for this assistance? A guarantee of immunity for yourself?” Stanley nodded.
Wade leaned back, brought his hands up beneath his nose, fingertips touching. The jet eyes bored in, pinning his caller, expressing contempt. Stanley knew he was finished. Cameron would hear of this the instant he returned. Goddamn his stupid wife for—
“I am interested. But you must convince me you’re not offering counterfeit goods.” The prosecutor leaned toward the witness. “Give me two examples. Be specific.”
Stanley burrowed in his pockets for notes Isabel had suggested he prepare to meet such an eventuality. He served Wade two small helpings from his tray of secrets, and when he finished, found the senator’s manner distinctly more cordial. Wade asked him to speak to the assistant outside and arrange a meeting at a more secure location where Wade could receive the disclosures without fear of interruption or observation. Dazed, Stanley realized it was all over.
At the door, Wade shook his hand with vigor. “I recall my wife mentioning a levee at your house soon. I look forward to it,”
Feeling like a battle-tested hero, Stanley lurched out. Bless Isabel. She had been right after all. There was a conspiracy to unseat the boss, either through congressional action or by presentation of damning information to the President. Was it possible that Stanton was in the scheme, too?
No matter. What counted was his deal with the old crook from Ohio. Like Daniel, he had walked among lions and survived. By midafternoon he was convinced it was all his doing, with Isabel’s role incidental.
38
HIS NAME WAS ARTHUR Scipio Brown. He was twenty-seven, a man the color of amber, with broad shoulders, a waist tiny as a girl’s, and hands so huge they suggested weapons. Yet he spoke softly, with the slight nasality of New England. He had been born in Roxbury, outside Boston, of a black mother whose white lover deserted her.
Early in his acquaintance with Constance Hazard, Brown said his mother had sworn not to surrender to the sadness caused by the man who had promised to love her always, then left, or by the way her color impeded her even in liberal Boston. She had spent her mind and her energy—her entire life, he said—serving her race. She had taught the children of free black men and women in a shack school six days a week and given different lessons to pupils in a Negro congregation every Sunday. She had died a year ago, cancer-ridden but holding her boy’s hand, clear-eyed and refusing laudanum to the end.
“She was forty-two. Never had much of a life,” Brown said. It was a statement, not a plea for pity. “No braver woman ever walked this earth.”
Constance met Scipio Brown at the reception for Dr. Delany, the pan-Africanist. In his splendid dyed robes, Delany circulated among the fifty or sixty guests invited to the Chase residence, enthralling them with his conversation. It was Delany who had brought young Brown to the reception.
Falling into conversation with Brown, George and Constance were fascinated by his demeanor as well as his history and his views. He was as tall as Cooper Main, and though he was not well dressed—his frock coat, an obvious hand-me-down, had worn lapels and sleeves that ended two inches above his wrists—he didn’t act self-conscious. The clothes were probably the best he owned, and if people were scornful, the problem was theirs, not his.
When Brown said he was a disciple of Martin Delany, Constance asked, “You mean you’d leave the country for Liberia or some equivalent place, given the chance?”
Brown drank some tea. He handled the cup as gracefully as anyone present. “A year ago, I would have said yes immediately. Today, I’m less certain. America is viciously anti-Negro, and I imagine it will remain so for several generations yet. But I anticipate improvements. I believe in Corinthians.”
Standing with his head back a few degrees, which was necessary when George conversed with extremely tall men, he said, “I beg your pardon?”
Brown smiled. His head was long, his features regular but unmemorable. His smile, however, seemed to re-sort those features into a shining amber composition that was immensely attractive and winning. “Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. ‘Behold, I shew you a mystery. We shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall all be changed.’” He drank more tea. “I just hope we don’t have to wait until the last trump, which is a part of the verse I left out.”
George said, “I grant that your race has suffered enormous tribulation. But wouldn’t you say that- you personally have been fortunate? You grew up free, and you’ve lived that way all your life.”
Unexpectedly, Brown showed anger. “Do you honestly think that makes any difference, Major Hazard? Every colored person in this country is enslaved to the fears of whites and to the way those fears influence white behavior. You’re fooled because my chains don’t show. But I still have them. I am a black man. The struggle is my struggle. Every cross is my cross—in Alabama or Chicago or right here.”
Bristling slightly, George said, “If you consider this country so wicked, what’s kept you from leaving?”
“I thought I told you. Hope of change. My studies have taught me that change is one of the world’s few constants. America’s hypocritical picture of the freedom it offers has been destined to change since the Declaration was signed, because the institution of slavery is evil and never was anything else. I hope the war will hasten abolition. Once I was foolish enough to think the law would accomplish the task, but Dred Scott showed that even the Supreme Court’s tainted. The last resort and shelter of despotism.”
George refused to surrender. “I’ll grant much of what you say, Brown. But not that remark about American freedom being hypocritical. I think you overstate the case.”
“I disagree. But if so”—the smile warmed away any antagonism—“consider it one of the few privileges of my color.”
“So it’s hope of change that keeps you here—” Constance began.
“That and my responsibilities. It’s mostly the children who keep me here.”
“Ah, you’re married.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then whose—?”
A call from Kate Chase interrupted. Dr. Delany had consented to speak briefly. The secretary’s attractive daughter wanted the guests to refill their cups and plates and find places.
At the serving table, where a young black girl in a domestic’s apron gave Brown an admiring glance, George said, “I’d like to hear more of your views. We live at Willard’s Hotel—”
“I know.”
The statement astonished Constance, though it seemed to pass right by her husband.
“Will you dine with us there some night?”
“Thank you, Major, but I doubt the management would like that. The Willard brothers are decent men, but I’m still one of their employees.”
“You’re what?”
“I am a porter at Willard’s Hotel. It’s the best job I could find here. I won’t work for the army. The army’s running its own peculiar institution these days: hiring my people to cook and chop wood and fetch and carry for a pittance. We’re good enough to dig sinks but not good enough to fight. That’s why I’m a porter instead.”
“Willard’s,” George muttered. “I’m dumbfounded. Have we ever passed one another in the lobby or the hallways?”
Brown led them toward chairs. “Certainly. Dozens of times. You may look at me, but you never see me. It’s another privilege of color. Mrs. Hazard, will you be seated?”
Later, realizing Brown was right, George started to apologize, but the lanky Negro brushed it away with a smile and a shrug. They had no further opportunity to talk. But Constance remained curious about his reference to children. Next afternoon at the hotel, she searched until she found him removing trash and discarded cigar butts from sand urns. Ignoring stares from people in the lobby, she asked Brown to explain what he meant.
“The children are runaways, what that cross-eyed general Butler calls contrabands. There’s a black river flowing out of the South these days. Sometimes children escape with their parents, then the parents get lost. Sometimes the children don’t belong to anyone, just tag along after the adults making the dash. Would you like to see some of the children, Mrs. Hazard?”
His eyes fastened on hers, testing. “Where?” she countered.
“Out where I live, on north Tenth Street.”
“Negro Hill?” The soft intake of breath before the question gave her away. He didn’t react angrily.
“There’s nothing to fear just because it’s a black community. We have only our fair share of undesirables, same as down here—I take it back, you have more.” He grinned. “You also have the politicians. Truly, you’ll be perfectly safe if you’d care to come. I don’t work Tuesdays. We could go during the day.”
“All right,” Constance said, hoping George would agree to it.
Surprisingly, he did. “If anyone could protect a woman anywhere, I have a feeling it’s that young chap. Go visit his community of waifs. I’ll be fascinated to know what it’s like.”
George paid a livery to bring a carriage to Willard’s front door on Tuesday. The lout delivering it glowered when he saw Brown and Constance sit side by side on the driver’s seat. The Negro was a companion, not a servant. The lout muttered something nasty, but one glance from Brown cut it short.
“When did you come to Washington?” Constance asked as Brown drove them away from the hotel into the perennial congestion of omnibuses, military wagons, horses, and pedestrians.