“Mr. Bannerman, please.”
“He says you’re engaged, though. Pity.” He brightened. “Say. He’s not in the city, is he? Your fiancé?”
“Ah, no.” The hectic leaps from subject to subject were dizzying. “No, he isn’t.”
“Then you could perfectly well go to the theater with me.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Well, Miss Hale goes with Hills, and he’s engaged.” He seemed not to notice her sudden unease; or was too much the gentleman to mention it. “And then we shall go to the lake in the summer. You can look at my father’s collection, and I shall introduce you to New York society. How does that sound?”
“Sir, I am not … I mean …”
“Say. What do you think of Bessie Hale, anyway?”
“I … I don’t really know her.”
“I thought I saw you talking to her a moment ago. Didn’t I rescue you from her clutches? Well, you must return the favor. Not for me. For Hills. She is after him, and we have to protect him, you and I. We are his friends, and that woman is a monster.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Every time Hills has been out with her, he tells me some fantastic story she came up with. Some piece of evidence the House Managers have in their possession. Some rumor. I think Bessie is most likely lying through her teeth to snare young Hilliman, the way she snared Robert Lincoln. He would have married her, you know, but Mrs. Lincoln would not permit it. Mrs. Lincoln considered the young lady a trollop.” His eyes brightened, as though the whole matter was hilarious. “And it’s true that Miss Hale has had a number of beaux. Came after me, as a matter of fact, but I’m rather impervious. And then, of course, there was Booth. Poor Bessie. He broke her heart.”
“Who is Booth?” Abigail asked shakily. Her head was spinning. Octavius this afternoon, Fielding Bannerman tonight, Jonathan mooning every day. She had never been popular with men, the way Dinah was, or even Judith: why this sudden embarrassment of beaux?
“You know. Booth. The actor. The one who shot Mr. Lincoln in the head.”
“Wilkes Booth? Is that who you mean?” She stared. “Are you telling me that John Wilkes Booth and Bessie Hale were … were …”
“Involved,” said Fielding. A chuckle. “One story even claims they were engaged. They say that Booth was carrying a photograph of Bessie when he was caught, but nobody has ever produced it, and I am inclined to think the story isn’t true. Still, she has had quite a life, has our Miss Hale.” He saw the look on her face, and laughed. “Oh, it’s a lot worse than that. The reason her father took her to Spain in the first place, the whole reason he left the Senate, was to get his daughter out of this city and away from rumor. But she couldn’t stay away. This is her city, Miss Canner. Bessie Hale knows everybody and hears everything. Washington is like a giant web to her, and she loves nothing more than catching men in it. Spinning those tales is part of how she snares them.”
Abigail found her voice. “So her stories … those things she tells Jonathan … Mr. Hilliman … are you saying she makes them up?”
“No idea. But that would be her style.” He shook his head. “She can’t stand Mr. Lincoln, you know. Her father used to be an enemy, too. Now I’m not so sure. Lincoln gave him the appointment to Spain.” That throbbing chuckle again. “I will say this for him. He is a man of integrity.”
“I have not had the honor of meeting Mr. Lincoln, but I would be inclined to agree.”
“Not Lincoln. Hills.” He had a hand on her elbow, steering her away from the crowd once more. “The pressure he’s under, I mean. Standing up to his family, all that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Nobody’s told you? Oh dear. I’m not sure it’s my place.” A cautious look over his shoulder. “Mother owns the business: Elise Hilliman. Heard of her? She’s a harridan. Uncle runs it; he’s a thief. But they know how to get what they want. They want Hills to quit and come back home to Rhode Island. Know why?” He did not wait. “They’ve switched sides, that’s why. They were for Lincoln in ’60 and ’64, and now they’re against him. Thrown in with the soft-money crowd. The family business is deeply in debt. Easier to pay back with soft money than hard. They are worried that Lincoln is listening to the hard-money people, low-tariff types—the bankers, say—people like my dad—and so they want him out of office. Wade is more a soft-money type. High tariffs. The family likes that. Their business is textiles, and they only sell in the States, so the tariff protects them. They hate that Hills is in there defending Lincoln. Most likely he’ll be disinherited.”
“You are jesting.”
But the look in his eyes, for the first time that evening, was entirely serious. “That’s why Meg is on him to go home. Doesn’t want him to lose the business, you see. Always wanted to marry rich, my cousin did. Like Bessie. And Hills—well, this is what he always does. He keeps his mouth shut and does what he thinks is right.” Fielding brightened. “But, say. On a happier subject. When can you go to the theater? Let’s fix a date, shall we?”
VI
As for Jonathan Hilliman, he spent Saturday in Philadelphia, attending to minor affairs for two of the firm’s clients. Dennard, although skeptical of the young man’s purposes in making the trip, had assigned him the work. On Sunday morning Jonathan attended Presbyterian services with Margaret Felix and her father, and joined them afterward for breakfast. That evening he escorted Meg to the theater. On Monday morning he took the cars for New York, uneasy at the multiple deceits he found himself practicing. Meg thought he was returning to Washington today, and Dennard and Abigail and the rest thought he was staying another night in Philadelphia. Only Lincoln and Noah Brooks knew where Jonathan was really going.
As the train pulled out, Jonathan told himself that all would be well. He had already selected a quiet rooming house on Sixth Avenue, far from the places frequented by people who might know him. He watched the sooty towers of the city slip past and reviewed his plans. He would remain secluded until evening, when he would walk to Belmont’s mansion for the meeting. In the morning he would board the cars for Washington City with nobody the wiser—
“Mr. Hilliman? Is that you? It is!”
At the sound of his name, Jonathan looked up in astonishment; and dismay. Beside him in the aisle stood nervous Plum, David Grafton’s clerk.
“Such a pleasant surprise to see a friend,” said Plum, seating himself in the row just behind. He patted a heavy valise. “I’m on my way to Manhattan to deliver papers to a client, and of course the earlier train never arrived. No explanation, as usual. Sabotage. I’m sure it’s sabotage. I keep telling people that the rebels are massing in the mountains, preparing a strike at the capital, but does anyone listen?” Plum ranted on, never bothering to ask why Jonathan was headed to New York, and so sparing the young man the necessity of a lie. But Jonathan was shaken all the same, and wondered what might go wrong next.
CHAPTER 21
Financier
I
AUGUST BELMONT LIVED in a stately four-story mansion at 109 Fifth Avenue, at the corner of Eighteenth Street. On Monday evening, Jonathan sat with the great financier in his study, the two of them in facing chairs set near the bay window. The night sounds of the city drifted faintly through the thick glass. The room was sweltering from the enormous fire in the grate, and smoky as well, although a lot of the smoke was from the cigars. Jonathan was not a smoker but considered it unwise to do anything but indulge his host. Including his host’s penchant for quick judgments, and his dislike of being disagreed with.
“You’re a peculiar young man,” Belmont said. He was a stout, broad-chested man who favored waistcoats and fashionable burnsides, although his chin was nearly clean-shaven. “You come from a fine family, but you’re with Lincoln. Why?”
Jonathan squirmed. “I’m not sure what you mean, sir.” When Belmont just kept staring, the young man tried another tack. “I’m reading law. My uncle arranged for me to read in Mr. McShane’s office, and Mr. McShane too
k on Mr. Lincoln as a client.”
“He’s dead,” said Belmont, meaning McShane, Jonathan supposed, although, on the other hand, the financier might have been commenting on the trial.
“Yes, sir. But Mr. Dennard took me over, and took over representing Lincoln, and—”
“Dennard’s a Democrat.” Belmont waited to be contradicted. “He’s what they called a War Democrat. So was I. We didn’t support the Republicans, but we supported the Union. We supported the war. Well, you know that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Belmont was studying his cigar. His nostrils flared with distaste. Although he made no obvious signal, a servant at once slipped into the room, replacing the offensive cigar with a fresh one. Jonathan tried to form a conception of the mountain of money on which a man like Belmont must sit, and the much larger mountain that he influenced and controlled—tried, and failed.
“Mr. Belmont, if I might—”
“What do I want? That is what you are trying to find a way to ask. Very well, Mr. Hilliman. I will tell you what I want. I want the Radicals not to win. I want a President strong enough to keep them under control.” Making a fist to illustrate the point. “We won the war. The Union won, through the sacrifice of its people. Slavery has been vanquished. Now is the moment to bury the past. But that isn’t what the Radicals want. Instead of restoring the Southern states to their constitutional rights, instead of trying to wipe out the miseries of the past by a magnanimous policy, dictated by humanity and sound statesmanship, the Radicals have placed upon the South the iron heel of the conqueror.” Belmont was gaining energy as he pressed his point. Jonathan had the sense that the great man was trying out language for a speech. “Military satraps instead of civilian courts. A race just released from servitude is placed in authority. And, meanwhile, the national legislature seeks to trample executive and judicial alike under its feet. The impeachment trial shows the lengths to which these men will go. What the Radicals really want is to usurp all the functions of government, and enforce their edicts by the bayonets of a military despotism. No,” he said, forcefully, as if Jonathan had contradicted him. “That cannot be permitted. A free and intelligent people will never stand by while such measures are taken. And I will be for any man who is against them.”
Jonathan was not sure what answer was expected of him. His instructions were to feel Belmont out. The great financier was thought to be working behind the scenes for Chase. It seemed unlikely that a lowly law clerk could win him to Lincoln’s side. Jonathan did not understand why the task had been entrusted to him.
“When I say that I will be for that man,” Belmont murmured, “do bear in mind that the resources I command are in essence limitless.”
So that was it. He was offering to throw the Belmont interests behind Lincoln. That meant the New York World and its huge readership, along with any number of interlocking firms. A man like Belmont could send a single telegram, and a factory in the home state of a politician who opposed his will would shut down, constituents out of work and angry: it had happened before. Such power boggled the imagination. Jonathan’s family was decently off, and Fielding Bannerman’s rich beyond belief, but beside August Belmont they were paupers. Yet there must, he knew, be a quid pro quo. Jonathan had been around Washington long enough to learn that no offer was ever exactly what it seemed. A hidden motive always lurked behind the stated one, and a secret motive beneath the hidden one. Beyond all that was the true motive, almost never discovered.
Belmont, moreover, was a Democrat, and a fiery one. A decision on his part to support Lincoln might push wavering Republican moderates into the Radical camp. Indeed, Belmont was known to despise Lincoln: not merely to oppose him or dislike him but actually to despise him. In a speech just three years ago, the financier had referred to Lincoln and his advisers as “the fanatical disorganizers”—a reference to the Administration’s supposed incompetence—and had insisted that Lincoln’s election had been procured “in an evil hour” by “the madness of sectional fanaticism.”
On the other hand, this was politics, where men changed conviction as often as convenient.
Belmont wanted something. They both understood that. And now he told Jonathan what it was.
“You are familiar of course with the Morrill Tariff.” Belmont swirled his brandy but did not sip, so neither did Jonathan. “Our blockade of the Southern ports during the war nearly caused the states of Europe to recognize the Confederacy. I had it from Lord Palmerston himself. Do you want to know what Palmerston said to me? ‘We do not like slavery, but we want cotton.’ And it was not merely the cotton. The unfortunate Morrill Tariff was also part of the reason the Europeans grew restless. As simple as that, Hilliman. I myself wrote to Secretary Seward to warn him of this risk, and to Baron Rothschild, among others, to express my concern. The Europeans hate our tariffs, obviously, because the tariff makes it harder for them to sell us their goods. The tariff originally passed under Mr. Buchanan, of course, not Mr. Lincoln. But Mr. Lincoln has retained the tariff, and even increased it. I know, I know”—again answering an objection Jonathan had not raised—“the tariff was increased because of the war. But now the war has ended, and the tariff can be repealed, can it not?”
Jonathan advanced cautiously, sniffing for traps. “I should explain that I have no influence in these matters.”
“Don’t be absurd, Hilliman. I know exactly who you are.” A wave of the famous cigar. “I knew your father well. We did business together. He was a fine man.”
Solving at least one mystery: how Jonathan became the emissary.
“Very kind of you, sir.”
“During the war,” Belmont resumed, “many of the great European syndicates considered loaning money to the Confederacy. You are aware of this, of course.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You may also be aware that my advice, if I may say so, was instrumental in persuading them to do otherwise. The rebels might have been much better financed had I, and other like-minded men of business, not taken a strong stand in Europe against buying their bonds. They call us ‘silk-stocking,’ I know, but there must be someone, Hilliman, someone who has the common sense to limit the extent to which politics is able to upset commerce. It is commerce that will build the better future, Hilliman. Not politics.” He paused as if waiting for Jonathan to write this down. “It is commerce that saved the Union. It is commerce that won the war. I do not trust many people, Hilliman, but I trusted your father, and I have generally found that if you can trust a father you can trust a son. There are exceptions, to be sure. The rule, however, is a sensible one, much proved by experience. You tell me that you wield little influence. Frankly, I don’t care. I trust you to be honest. With me and with Mr. Lincoln both. Therefore, I ask again: can the tariff be repealed or not?”
Jonathan chose his words with care. He knew full well—and assumed that Belmont did, too—that his own family, along with other textile makers, was fighting furiously behind the scenes to keep the tariff in place. “I would suppose that such a thing might be possible.”
“Correct,” said Belmont, and Jonathan had the uneasy sense of having made a commitment without meaning to. “Few things are impossible, I have found. And those few, someone will tomorrow invent a means to accomplish.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then there is the matter of the money itself.”
“Sir?”
“Consider, Hilliman. During the war, the Europeans bought our bonds. Now we sell them here at home. The savings of the rich and poor, the widow and the orphan, are confided to the safekeeping and custody of the United States at the low rate of four percent. It would be the most disgraceful breach of public faith if these bonds or their interest were to be paid in anything but gold.”
The currency again. First Fielding Bannerman, now August Belmont. They shared a common understanding of the battle between President and Congress. From their point of view, the struggle had nothing to do with the freedmen or the Reconstruction or the proper
allocation of power between the executive and legislative branches. For the great men of business, impeachment was simply another investment opportunity. They had to decide whether buying or selling Lincoln shares would deliver the higher profit.
“I see,” said Jonathan finally. The permutations were dizzying. He found himself wishing that he could talk to Abigail. She had a way of explaining things.
“Excellent,” said Belmont. “Then we have an understanding?”
“I will do my best to convey your views, sir.”
“One can ask no more.”
II
Jonathan assumed that the séance was over. Forgetting protocol, he even made to rise. His mind was foggy from the smoke, and he was starting to worry that, should he stay any longer, he would say the wrong thing. He did not imagine for a moment that Lincoln would accept Belmont’s offer, and not only because it was obvious and stupid. Lincoln was simply not that kind of man.
And yet all of this was so clear that Jonathan could not understand what he was doing here, why Belmont had sent for him. Surely the financier was smarter than he, and could easily work out the unlikelihood that his offer would be accepted. And it was this realization—that Belmont was by no means finished with him—that planted Jonathan firmly back in his seat.
The banker looked amused, as if he had read the struggle on Jonathan’s face. “How is your father?” Belmont said, suddenly.
Jonathan was, for an instant, thrown. “He died, sir. Nine years ago.”
“Did he?” Belmont seemed lost in thought. The cigar smoke drifted around his smoothly shaven chin like a soft gray beard. Jonathan wondered whether he had even heard. “Is it difficult for you? Day after day, sitting in Washington City, watching Mr. Lincoln’s presidency crumble? I should have thought by now you would have resigned your position and returned to Newport to run the family firm. I know that was your father’s wish.” So he had heard after all. “You may not know this, Hilliman, but Belmont & Co. own a certain interest in the Hilliman firm. Were you aware of this?”
The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln Page 21