by John Jakes
He thought of Elkanah Bent, Tillet Main, and his own sister. He could believe in must. But will? He had great doubts about that.
Book Two
Friends and Enemies
Human beings may be inconsistent,
but human nature is true to herself.
She has uttered her testimony
against slavery with a shriek ever
since the monster was begotten; and
till it perishes amidst the execrations
of the universe, she will traverse
the world on its track, dealing her
bolts upon its head, and dashing
against it her condemning brand.
THEODORE DWIGHT WELD,
American Slavery As It Is1839
17
GEORGE WAS CEREMONIOUSLY WELCOMED home with a Christmas party. It gave him a chance to observe all the changes that had taken place in the family in a relatively short time. Some he found quite surprising.
His brother Billy, for example, looked and acted grown-up at twelve. His face had filled out, taking on the broad, sturdy appearance common to adult males of the family—Stanley excepted. Billy’s brown hair was darker than George’s, his blue eyes less pale and forbidding. He had an appealing smile, but there was no sign of it while he asked sober, intelligent questions about the war. Who was the better general, Taylor or Scott? How did the American and Mexican armies compare? What did George think of Santa Anna?
Billy couldn’t be as serious as he seemed, George thought. But then, he recalled being pretty serious about some of the scrapes he’d gotten into when he was Billy’s age. Some of them had involved young women. Was Billy similarly entangled? If so, George disapproved.
Then he laughed at himself. He had changed along with the rest of the Hazards.
Virgilia chattered constantly about the anti-slavery movement, which she referred to as her work. She had become not only fanatical about it but self-important. Naturally George didn’t say that aloud, but neither did he conceal his anger when he told everyone that Orry would be his best man and Virgilia replied by saying, “Oh, yes—your slave-owner friend. Well, George, be warned. I shan’t smile and fawn over someone like that.”
It threatened to be a wretched wedding. Virgilia was apparently determined to spoil Orry’s visit; and Stanley’s new wife made several cool and sarcastic references to Constance Flynn’s religion, as well as to the site of the ceremony—the tiny and unprepossessing Catholic chapel down by the canal.
Stanley had married a little more than a year ago, while George was on his way to Mexico. Isabel Truscott Hazard was twenty-eight, two years older than her husband. She came of a family that claimed its founder had been a colleague and friend of William Penn’s. Although she had been occupied with a pregnancy during most of her first year in Lehigh Station, her husband’s last name and her own ambitious nature had established her as a social leader of the community.
George tried to like Isabel. The effort lasted about five minutes. She was homely as a horse, which wouldn’t have mattered if she had been intelligent or gracious. Instead, she openly bragged about never reading anything except social columns.
George could have pitied her, but why bother? She thought of herself as perfect. She also had that opinion of her home, her wardrobe, her taste in furnishings, and her twin sons, born almost nine months to the day after her wedding. She had already informed Stanley that she would bear no more children, having found the entire procedure distasteful.
With great pride, George showed the family a little daguerreotype of Constance. A few minutes later, while a footman served rum punch, Isabel remarked to him, “Miss Flynn is quite lovely.”
“Thank you. I agree.”
“They say that down South men admire physical beauty without, shall we say, substance. I hope your fiancée isn’t so naive as to think the same holds true in this part of the country.”
George reddened. Evidently Isabel had decided to condemn Constance because she happened to be beautiful.
Maude Hazard didn’t like her daughter-in-law’s remark. Stanley noticed the instantaneous frown on his mother’s face and scowled at Isabel. That silenced her for the evening, though George was sure it wouldn’t shut her up for good.
For Christmas the broad white living-room mantel had been decorated with mountain laurel leaves. So had all the doors and windows. On the mantel stood the family’s pride, a massive twenty-four-inch-tall goblet blown in the 1790s by the great John Amelung of Maryland. William’s father had bought the goblet in a flush time. On the glass the artisan had engraved a shield and an American eagle with spread wings. A ribbon bearing the words E pluribus unum fluttered from the eagle’s beak. It seemed fitting that, toward the end of the party, Maude should step to the mantel, near this splendid artifact, and there make a short speech to the gathering.
“Now that George is home for good, we must make a change in the management of Hazard’s. From now on, Stanley, you and your brother will have equal responsibility for operation of the furnace and the mill. Your time will come eventually, Billy, don’t worry.”
Stanley struggled to smile, but he looked as if he were sucking a lemon. Maude went on, “With the family expanding, all of us can’t possibly continue to live under one roof, so we must make some adjustments there, too. Henceforward, this house will belong to Stanley and Isabel. I’ll stay here with you, and for the time being so will Billy and Virgilia.”
Her eyes fixed on George. From the mantel she took a folded document he hadn’t noticed before. “One of your father’s last wishes was to provide you with a home of your own. So for you and your bride—this. It’s a deed to a portion of the land on which we’re standing. The plot is a large one, right next door. Your father signed this two days before he was stricken. Build a home for Constance and your children, my dear. With our love and best wishes.”
Tears welled in George’s eyes as he accepted the deed. Billy started the applause. Stanley and Isabel joined in without enthusiasm. George understood the reason for their behavior. Stanley wasn’t the sort to share family leadership with a brother he considered inexperienced and reckless.
Constance and her father came north at the end of March, and the young people were married on a mild day in early April. By then George had already been discharging his new responsibilities for three months.
Growing up, he had done odd jobs throughout Hazard Iron. But now he looked at the operation with a manager’s eye, not that of a bored boy who wanted to be elsewhere. He roved through the furnace, the finery, and the mill at all hours, getting to know the men and hoping to demonstrate that they could trust him. He asked questions, then listened with total concentration to the answers. If an answer identified a problem that he could solve, he did so.
Many a night he stayed up until dawn, reading. He dug through past correspondence of the company, struggled with turgid metallurgical manuals and technical pamphlets. His curiosity irked Stanley. George didn’t care. What he read was informative—and sometimes infuriating. The material from the files showed that whenever their father had given Stanley responsibilities for a decision, Stanley had chosen the risk-free path. Fortunately William Hazard hadn’t delegated too much to his eldest son. Had he done so, George was convinced the business would have stumbled back to the eighteenth century by now.
He did find time to hire a Philadelphia architect to survey his homesite and draw plans for a residence. Italianate villas were the rage. The architect designed one, an asymmetrical L-shape with an elaborate lookout tower rising in the angle. This tower, or belvedere, suggested the name for the showy stone mansion; the architect said belvedere meant “beautiful view,” and the completed house would certainly offer that. The foundation had just been dug when the Flynns arrived.
Constance quickly grew aware of Isabel’s scorn. She smiled and made the best of it. And if Orry felt insulted by Virgilia during the wedding festivities, he kept the reaction hidden. The newlyweds departed for their h
oneymoon in New York. The family carriage took them past the old trading station that had given the town half its name, but George and Constance never saw the scenery. Inside the carriage they were wrapped in each other’s arms. They had one night alone, in Easton—a blissful night—before a messenger summoned George back for what turned out to be the first of many quarrels with his brother.
One of the furnaces had burst from the stress generated by the tremendous forces penned up inside; it was not an unfamiliar kind of accident. Two Hazard workmen had been crushed to death by falling debris. After George completed his inspection, he confronted Stanley in the office.
“Why weren’t the wrought-iron bands installed on the stacks? The files say money was appropriated for them.”
Stanley looked pale and exhausted. Annoyance edged his voice as he replied, “That was Father’s idea, not mine. After he died I canceled the installation. Shipments were off slightly. I felt we couldn’t afford it.”
“You think we can more easily afford two dead bodies and two families without fathers? I want those bands installed. I’ll write the order.”
Stanley tried to assume a tone of indignation. “I don’t believe you have the authority to write—”
“The hell! Your authority exceeds mine in just one area. You’re the only one empowered to sign bank drafts. Those bands are going on. And we’re paying a thousand dollars to each of the families.”
“George, that is utterly stupid.”
“Not if we want to keep good workers. Not if we want to sleep nights. You sign the drafts, Stanley, or I’ll collect a hundred men and lay siege to your house until you do.”
“Damned upstart,” Stanley muttered, but when the two drafts for the families of the dead men were drawn, he signed them.
By the time he told Maude of the plan to go ahead with installation of the protective bands, he made it appear the idea was his.
Zachary Taylor won the presidential election in November 1848. That same month workmen finished Belvedere, and George and a very pregnant Constance moved in. Not long afterward, William Hazard III was born in their canopied bed.
Husband and wife loved the new house. Constance first furnished the nursery, then filled all the other rooms with expensive but comfortable pieces whose function was to be used, not admired. In contrast, Stanley and Isabel maintained their home as if it were a museum.
George discussed every major decision with Constance. She knew nothing of the iron trade—not at first, anyway—but she had a keen, practical mind and learned rapidly. He confessed that he was probably courting failure by acting too quickly, even rashly, on many questions on which he had little except instinct to guide him. But he believed progress could be achieved no other way. She agreed.
Soon the expanding grid of American railroads was consuming all the rails the mill could produce on a twenty-four-hour schedule—and this despite a poor economic climate. But George had to fight his brother at every step, on virtually every important issue.
“For God’s sake, Stanley, here we are in the middle of a prime hard coal region, and you seem oblivious. It’s been merely a hundred and fifty years since the Darbys started smelting iron with coke in Britain. Is that still too experimental for you?”
Stanley looked as if George were demented. “Charcoal is traditional and eminently satisfactory. Why change?”
“Because the trees won’t last forever. Not at the rate we use them.”
“We’ll use them till they’re gone, then experiment.”
“But charcoal’s filthy. If it does this”—he swiped an index finger over Stanley’s desk; the fingertip showed black—“what do you suppose it does when we inhale the smoke and dust? I would like your agreement to build an experimental coke-burning—”
“No, I won’t pay for it.”
“Stanley—”
“No. You’ve pushed me on everything else, but you will not push me on this.”
George also wanted to invest some capital in an effort to duplicate the now-lost process by which the Garrard brothers had produced high-quality crucible steel in Cincinnati in the 1830s. Cyrus McCormick had thought enough of Garrard steel to use it for the blades of his first reapers. But a lowering of import duties during Jackson’s administration had permitted an inrush of European steel to meet the small domestic demand, and the infant American steel industry had been wiped out.
Today America produced only about two thousand tons of high-carbon steel each year. As the country expanded, however, George foresaw a growing need and a growing market. The problem was not how to make steel—that had been known for centuries—but how to make it rapidly enough that production was profitable. The old cementation process took almost ten days to yield a minuscule quantity. The Garrards had reportedly found a better way. So George quietly surrendered on the coke issue, saving his resources for the fight that would surely ensue over his proposed investigation of steelmaking.
No doubt egged on by Isabel, Stanley said no to nearly all his younger brother’s proposals. That was the case with the one concerning steel. George was in a rage for days, rescued from it only by Constance’s announcement that she was carrying their second child.
In the summer of 1849, Stanley and his wife received a visitor from Middletown. The guest stayed overnight. George and Constance were not invited to dine, Virgilia was in Philadelphia, and Maude had taken Billy to New York on a holiday. The privacy seemed planned.
George was unconcerned from a social standpoint, but he was curious about the purpose of the visit. He immediately recognized the tall, dignified man of fifty who alighted from a carriage and disappeared into Stanley’s house for the rest of the evening. Simon Cameron was widely known in Pennsylvania and over the years had profitably involved himself in printing, banking, railroad development, and even the operation of an ironworks.
George sensed it was a completely different interest that had brought the visitor to Lehigh Station. Politics, perhaps? Cameron had finished a partial term in the Senate but had subsequently been passed over by the state Democratic caucus when it considered the current full-term appointment made by the state legislature, where the party had a majority. That night as George lay in bed with his hand resting on his wife’s stomach, he suddenly formed a connection between Cameron’s situation and another fact:
“Good Lord. I wonder if he could be the recipient of those drafts.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear.”
“I haven’t had time to tell you. I’ve just discovered that during each of the past three months Stanley’s written a draft for five hundred dollars. No name—the drafts are written to cash. Maybe he’s trying to help Cameron get back on his feet.”
“You mean return to the Senate?”
“Possibly.”
“Under the Democratic banner?”
“No, he couldn’t do that. He displeased too many people by straying from the party line. Old Jim Buchanan was one he displeased. On the other hand, you don’t get rid of Cameron simply by saying no. That only spurs him on. I must find out whether Stanley’s handing him money to help him build a new organization.”
Gently she kissed his cheek. “All these quarrels with Stanley are making you old too fast.”
“What about you and Isabel?”
She turned away with a shrug too exaggerated to be genuine. “She doesn’t bother me.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to say anything else. But I know she does.”
“Yes, she does,” Constance said, abruptly breaking down. “She’s vicious. God forgive me, but I wish the earth would swallow them both.”
She huddled against his neck, one hand flung across his chest, and cried.
“Yes, I’m donating to Cameron,” Stanley admitted the next morning. He waved a hand in front of his face. “Must you smoke those rotten weeds in here?”
George continued puffing on the Cuban cigar. “Don’t change the subject. You’re giving away company funds. Money that should be retained
in the business. What’s worse, you’re giving it to a political hack.”
“Simon’s no hack. He served with distinction.”
“Oh, did he? Then why did the Democrats repudiate him for a second term? I must say the repudiation didn’t surprise me. Cameron’s voting record is a crazy quilt. No one can be certain of where he stands or what party he supports—unless, of course, it’s the party of expediency. What’s his current affiliation? Know-Nothing?”
Stanley coughed hard to register displeasure with the smoke and to play for a bit of time to find an answer. Outside the window of the little wooden office building, dirty, bedraggled men were filing down the hill—the night shift from the furnace. A train of six connected wagons carrying charcoal creaked in the other direction.
“Simon’s building a state organization,” Stanley said at last. “He won’t forget those who help with the task.”
“Stanley, the man’s a trimmer! You know the joke they tell about him—his definition of an honest politician: ‘Once bought, he stays bought.’ You want to associate yourself with someone like that?”
Stanley was unperturbed. “Simon Cameron will be a power in Pennsylvania. In the nation, too. He just had a few temporary setbacks.”
“Well, don’t help him overcome them with our money. If you continue, I’ll be forced to put the matter before Mother. Regrettably, that’s the only way I can stop you short of mayhem.”
His brother glowered, not finding the sarcasm funny. George intimidated him. Stanley chewed his lip, then muttered, “All right. I’ll consider your objection.”
“Thank you,” George snapped, and walked out.
He knew he had won. He had used a weapon, a threat he had never employed before. He disliked using it; only a fool subjected other men to humiliation. A humiliated man often struck back—and in vicious ways. That risk was increased with someone like Stanley, who was inwardly aware of his own ineptitude.
Still, in this case, George had no other choice.
Constance was right, he thought as he trudged uphill toward the furnaces. The endless battles were wearing him out. This morning, standing in front of his shaving mirror, he had spied several white hairs above his forehead. And he was not yet twenty-five.