“You’ve got to come, Michael. I believe we’ll be witnessing history.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’ve been reading his speeches. He’s a brilliant man. I believe he’s the only one who can address the problem of slavery in a coherent manner.”
“Go, Michael,” Emily said. “You need to get out of the house to do something other than work.”
“Oh, all right. Let me get my coat.”
By the time Michael and Gaylord arrived at the Cooper Institute, a striking five-story Italianate brownstone building located at Third Avenue and 7th Street, it had started to snow. The great hall, capable of holding fifteen hundred people, was already beginning to fill up. Michael was impressed. If so many people were willing to brave such an icy night, perhaps this Mr. Lincoln was indeed a great man.
They found two seats in the fifth row. Within half an hour the great room was filled to capacity.
An elderly gray-haired gentleman stepped up to the podium. After a few brief words about the guest of the evening, he cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege and honor to introduce our speaker tonight. I give you, Mr. Abraham Lincoln.”
Lincoln had been hidden by the lectern. As he stepped up to the podium clutching a sheaf of foolscap papers, there was an audible gasp from the audience. He was a bizarre sight. Michael had never seen anyone so tall nor so angular and awkward. Over six feet, he was wearing a black frock coat that hung from his spare frame. Gaylord had said he was fifty-three, but his deeply lined, clean shaven face made him appear much older. What was impressive were the deep-set eyes which were both sad and hopeful at the same time. But all in all, the man did not present an impressive figure. Was this the great man that Gaylord had been talking about?
Lincoln stood at the lectern with his hands behind his back silently staring out at the crowd. For a moment, Michael thought the poor man had been taken with stage fright, but suddenly, the huge hands grasped the sides of the lectern and he began to speak in a startling high-pitched voice.
“The facts with which I shall deal this evening,” he began, “are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them.”
For the next half hour, he went on to speak of whether the National Government could regulate slavery in the territories. Later in his speech, he gently castigated the South for trying to demonize the Republican party. Finally, as he concluded, he explained why appeasement with the South would not work.
As Lincoln spoke, Michael forgot about the man’s ungainliness, the high-pitched voice, the lurching mannerisms. Lincoln had transformed himself into a forceful man of conviction and purpose. What he said and the way he said it was completely mesmerizing. Michael turned around to see how the audience was receiving the speech. Every upturned face was in rapt attention. A few had tears in their eyes. In a hall of fifteen hundred people there was not a sound, save the high-pitched voice of Abraham Lincoln.
In concluding his speech, he said, “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
For a moment, there was complete silence. Then the crowd that moments before was completely silent, sprang to their feet erupting in applause and wild shouting.
After the speech, Michael and Gaylord retired to McSorley’s Saloon just down the street from the Cooper Institute. The potbellied stove was glowing red and the heat was a comforting barrier against the biting cold outside. The saloon was crowded with men who had just heard Lincoln’s speech and everyone was engaged in animated conversation about what they had just heard and what it meant.
Michael and Gaylord squeezed into a spot at the end of the bar and ordered their ale.
“I have to say, Gaylord, when I first saw your Mr. Lincoln, I was not impressed.”
Gaylord chuckled. “Nor was I. I have read his speeches, but I have never seen a photo of him. It was quite the shock.”
“Still, I have never heard anyone so clear and persuasive before.”
“Will he become president?”
“Lincoln is not yet the nominee for the presidency, but the Republican convention is scheduled for May. I’m confident he’ll be selected.”
“Will this mean war with the South?”
“Tonight Mr. Lincoln spelled out the problem quite eloquently. In the end, we cannot compromise the Constitution or our ideals to satisfy the South’s insatiable appetite for their ‘peculiar institution.’ They demand nothing short of acceptance of slavery in all current and future states. We can never accede to those demands.”
“So, it’s war?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Chapter Thirty
Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth president of the United States on November 11, 1860. Almost immediately secessionists made clear their intent to leave the Union before he took office in March. For the next several months, men of peace sought to find common ground for ways to avoid war between the states. All to no avail. On April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter.
The American Civil War had begun.
In a rush of patriotic fervor, thousands of young men in New York City signed up for the Union Army. By the end of May, more than thirty thousand men had volunteered for service.
These turns of events had an adverse impact on Ranahan Construction. Every day, one or more men failed to show up for work. They had joined the army. In April, the Sixty-Ninth Regiment, composed of mostly Irishmen, marched off to war with the blessing of Bishop Hughes.
Michael wasn’t the only one feeling the loss of manpower. Every contractor on the building site was experiencing the same thing. Worried about the worsening manpower shortage, Michael, Angus Roy, and the contractors had a meeting with representatives of the Hall & Joy Company.
“Will work stop on the cathedral?” Michael asked.
The company spokesman, Willard Colgan, a balding man in his late fifties, was adamant. “Work will not stop. The bishop is well aware that many workers have gone off to join the army, but he insists we continue with the project.”
“But how long can we go on?” Angus asked. “I’ve lost half of my men and there’s talk among the others that they intend to join up soon themselves.”
Colgan shrugged. “I have no other instructions. Continue your work until you receive instructions to the contrary.”
In the first week of May, they did receive further instructions: Work on the cathedral was canceled until the war was over.
An anxious Emily read the notice from the Joy & Hall Company. “What will you do now, Michael?”
“If I can keep enough men, I still have a few small projects to keep us busy. But I don’t know how I’m going to do even that. There’s war fever out there, Emily. It seems like every Irishman in New York City wants to run off and fight Johnny Reb.”
“Why the Irish?”
“Well, there are plenty of Germans, too. But many of the Irishmen hope that by showing their patriotism to this country, it will stop nativists from saying that Irish Catholics should be denied citizenship.”
“And they’re willing to risk their lives for this hope?”
“It’s not just that. Some of these same men believe that the military training they’ll receive will come in handy in the coming war of Irish liberation.”
“Oh, my God, Michael. There’s no way a ragtag band of Irish rebels can prevail against the might of England.”
“Obviously, they think they can.”
But it wasn’t just the construction industry that suffered. New York City had always had a lucrative trading partnership with the South. The banking industry supplied much-needed loans to southern planters. For their part, the South believed in “King Cotton,” a strategy in which the South convinced itself that the textile mills in the North couldn’t exist without the South’s cotton.
With the onset of the war, all trading with the South ceased, causing the city’s manufac
turing economy to crash. East River shipyards and iron works came to a standstill. Even the ice industry was crippled by a lack of orders from the South.
There was great unrest among the city’s movers and shakers. Many New York businessmen, stung financially by the loss of trade, sympathized with the South. There was even talk of New York seceding from the Union. Mayor Fernando Wood proposed that if the union dissolved, the city should become a “free city”—not subject to the laws of the Federal Government nor the meddling legislators in Albany.
Over the summer months, Michael’s crew was reduced to less than a dozen men. The only reason he had any men at all was because they were too old to fight or had families to support. He struggled to find work even for this handful of men. In desperation, he signed a contract with the city to remove dead carcasses from the city streets. It was filthy, demeaning work, and not well paid, but it was work. It would have to do until the economy recovered. To reduce his expenses, he sold off half of his unneeded horses. At least they were easy to sell because the army had developed an insatiable need for horses.
Michael soon realized that the money from the animal removal contract was not enough to pay his men and keep the business running. As the fall approached, he was seriously considering shutting down the business.
But at the next Sunday dinner everything changed when Gaylord said offhandedly, “The economy is beginning to improve.”
“Not from where I sit,” Michael said glumly. “The only work I can get is hauling away dead animals.” He laughed bitterly. “The only good thing about it is the city will never run out of dead carcasses so there’ll always be plenty of work.”
“Why do you say the economy is improving?” Emily asked.
“The war machine must be fed. It needs wheat to feed the troops and iron and steel to build and repair railway tracks and cannons and muskets. The war has cut off all traffic on the Mississippi and now goods must be transported by train. New York City has become a hub. The piers on both the Hudson and East Rivers are jammed with ships bringing in wheat from the Midwest and iron and steel from the mills of Pennsylvania.”
Michael was listening carefully to what Gaylord was saying. “So, all this wheat and iron and steel has to be shipped to the army by train?”
“Exactly.”
Emily was following her husband’s train of thought and was one step ahead of him. “So, if Ranahan Construction can’t do construction, why not become Ranahan Hauling?”
Michael grinned. “That’s what I was thinking.”
He lost no time in signing contracts with several shipping companies to haul goods from the ships to the railroad yards on the west side of the city. Suddenly, he had more work than he could handle. He managed to hire a few more men and now he regretted selling his horses. With all the work available, he could have used them, but horses couldn’t be bought in the city at any price. They had all been rounded up and shipped south for the war effort. But even without the extra horses, Michael and his men were guaranteed work as long as the war continued.
Chapter Thirty-One
1863
As the war entered its third year, its appetite for more men, more guns, and more food became insatiable. Six days a week Michael’s wagons made their daily round trip from the piers on the East and Hudson Rivers to the railroad yards. The steady wages were so good that Michael was able to increase his monthly payments to Cully. If he could continue at this rate, Emily calculated he would own the business outright within three or four years.
At Sunday dinner, the conversation turned to the economy. “Here’s a thought-provoking fact I came across,” Gaylord said, in his usual manner of bringing up interesting topics. “In 1860, there were fewer than a dozen millionaires in the city, but now, there are several hundred. Some of them worth over twenty million dollars.”
“Why is that?” Emily asked.
“It’s the war. The war has been a tragedy for the men who have to fight it, but for the men who supply the food, the uniforms, the guns and bullets, and everything else needed to keep the war machine going, it’s been a godsend.”
Michael nodded in agreement. “I’m a bit ashamed to say it, but I have been doing very well since the war started.”
“You’re not the only one.”
“There’s been talk of war profiteering,” Henrietta interjected.
“No doubt there has.”
“What exactly is war profiteering?” Letta asked.
“It’s when an unscrupulous merchant overcharges for his merchandise,” Gaylord explained.
“Or when he sells shoddy merchandise,” Henrietta added.
“That’s true. A shoe manufacturer in Albany has been arrested for selling inferior footwear to the army. Within days the boots fell apart.”
“He should be shot for doing that to our boys,” Cully said, slamming his hand on the table.
“I agree,” Emily said. “Gaylord, how is the war really going? I don’t think we’re getting the complete story in the newspapers.”
“You’re not. The government and the military have cracked down on what kind of news we can write about. Even though I’m a newspaperman and completely opposed to any censorship whatsoever, I can understand the reason for it. It seems the Confederate generals are avid readers of our northern newspapers.”
“I am going to volunteer as a nurse’s aide,” Emily announced, surprising everyone around the table, and no one more so than her husband.
“What brought this on?” he asked.
“I’ve read that more and more war wounded are being shipped north and there is a great shortage of staff to tend them. Isn’t that true, Gaylord?”
“Regrettably, it is. Besides a fearful loss of life, there are thousands and thousands of wounded on both sides.”
“Every day I see more and more men on the streets who have lost arms and legs. I just feel I have to do something.”
“What hospital will you go to?” Henrietta asked.
“The Central Park Hospital.”
Michael frowned. “All the way up on a Hundred and Second Street?”
“The army will provide transportation for all volunteers.”
Henrietta patted Emily’s hand. “My dear, have you thought this through? I have heard that in those hospitals there are dreadful sights of men with amputated arms and limbs and worse.”
“I understand. During the famine, I volunteered at a fever hospital. I can assure you, I saw more than my shared of dreadful sights.”
Michael was aware of that. But he also knew that she’d lasted only a few weeks in that deplorable place. He was worried about her. He was glad she wanted to contribute to the war effort in some way, but would she be able to do this? Rather than dwell on that possibility, he asked, “What about the children and their schooling?”
“I can still do that. It only takes a couple of hours to give the children their lessons.”
“I’ll take care of them the rest of the time,” Letta offered. “Claire is seven now and can practically take care of herself. The others are no bother.”
“There then,” Emily said with a nervous smile. “It’s settled.”
It was a gray March morning and Emily stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street waiting for the wagon. Five minutes later, a covered army wagon pulled by a team of mules arrived. A sergeant jumped down and saluted Emily.
“Are you Mrs. Ranahan?”
“I am.”
“Thank you for your service, ma’am,” he said as he helped her into the back of the wagon.
Two women were already there. The first, an older woman with her hair in a tight bun, thrust her hand out. “Good morning,” she said in a no-nonsense Irish brogue. “Milly Ambrose.”
“I’m Emily Ranahan.”
The second woman, a thin young woman in her twenties, smiled shyly. “Hi. I’m Martha Litton.”
“What brings you here?” Milly asked Emily.
Emily shrugged. “I just want to do my part for o
ur soldiers.”
“Same as me. I’ve been a nurse for forty years. Retired last year, but from the newspapers it’s clear they can use my experience.”
“I’m sure they can. What about you, Martha?”
“My husband’s in the army. I would hope that if my William was wounded, someone would tend to him.”
“I’m sure they would, Martha.”
They rode for a good while in silence. As they passed the unfinished St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Emily said, “My husband was working on the cathedral before the war ended construction.”
Milly grunted. “Hughes’ Folly. That’s a good name for it.”
“You don’t approve?”
“Look around you, child. There’s nothing here but pigs and squatters. Where’s his congregation to come from I ask you? The bishop could have put that money to better use helping the poor souls in the Five Points and other slums around the city. He should heed the words of the Holy Bible. ‘Vanity, all is vanity.’ That fits him right enough.”
At One Hundred and Second Street, the wagon stopped. The sergeant came around to the back. “Here we are ladies,” he said as he helped each one out of the wagon.
The three women looked up at a striking five-story structure located just inside the park. What used to be Mount St. Vincent’s Academy had been taken over by the army in 1862 and converted into a military hospital.
When they came into the lobby, waiting for them was a tall, stiff-backed, dignified gentleman with gray mutton chop sideburns. Emily couldn’t help but notice with alarm that the front of his white apron was stained with blood, but he seemed to take no heed of the way he looked.
“Good morning, ladies. I am Dr. Thaddeus Scott, a colonel in the Union Army and the medical director here. On behalf of the President and the army, I welcome you and thank you for whatever assistance you can offer. I must caution you that you are going to see and hear things that will be quite disturbing. You should know—”
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