by Max Byrd
At the bottom of the steps some of the neighbor men were waiting to tip their hats and fall in with him for a few blocks. He listened to their chatter, as if from a distance. Mike Lebron was there, who used to have a jewelry store across Main Street from the Grant leather store, and he was evidently in a reminiscing mood as well, because right off he started telling the others, “I was just recalling, General, how you came to Chetlain’s grocery store one night not long after you’d moved to Galena.”
“Moved from St. Louis,” Grant said.
“It was a chilly night and some of the lawyers had come in to take a drink or two from the barrel and sit by the stove and one of them said to you, ‘Stranger here, ain’t you?’ And you said, ‘Yes.’ And the lawyer said, ‘Travelled far to get here?’ And you said, ‘Far enough.’ ”
Grant remembered the story now, but of course he let Lebron finish it up his own way.
“Then the lawyer said, ‘Look pretty rough, look as though you might have travelled through hell.’
“ ‘I have.’
“ ‘Well, how did you find things down there?’
“ ‘Oh, much the same as in Galena—lawyers nearest the fire.’ ”
Lebron laughed hardest because he had told the story, but the others laughed too, and even Jesse, who had graduated just the year before from the Columbia Law School, chuckled.
They turned down Ninth Street toward the river and Lebron started some other story, but this time Grant didn’t pay any real attention. There was the smell of moving water and wet rope and wet boards coming up from the wharves. His mind turned far off, toward Chicago. He started to think hard about Elihu Washburne and what to do about ingratitude.
CHAPTER FOUR
ON SATURDAY, JUNE 5TH, THE OPENING PRAYER WAS DELIVERED punctually at nine A.M., but Exposition Hall was barely one-quarter full at that hour, and those few yawning delegates present seemed more hollow-eyed and weary than ever.
Trist observed them sympathetically from his chair at the reporters’ table. The convention had sat for sixteen straight hours the day before, its third official day in session, and yet so far not one single name had been placed in nomination for President. Worse, the printed program for the day listed only more resolutions and reports, not a syllable about nominations.
He propped himself awkwardly on his elbow, over a cup of coffee—“Blaine Coffee” or “Sherman Java,” he couldn’t remember—and listened sleepily to the first of the scheduled credentials resolutions. That morning, just after sunrise, he had tramped through the empty streets to the Western Union office in the Grand Pacific Hotel and telegraphed a short paragraph that he knew would please Hutchins. Thanks to a marathon session yesterday a serious anti-Grant rumor had begun to make its indignant rounds—Roscoe Conkling and Don Cameron were said to be forcing votes on every individual credential and resolution, for the sole purpose of prolonging the convention into another week. Lord Roscoe apparently believed that many delegates couldn’t sustain the expense of staying in Chicago over a long period; his calculation was that they would very soon be in a mood to stampede for Grant, before their railroad tickets expired.
At ten-fifteen, while yet another delegation went through its individual report, district by district, Trist followed an Alabama delegate he had befriended down from Exposition Hall to Union Station. There he listened while the delegate pleaded with the stationmaster to extend the validity of all railroad tickets to three days after the end of the convention. The stationmaster had a telephone instrument in his office. As Trist and the delegate drank more coffee in the cavernous old waiting room he rang up each of the railroad companies in turn and received their approval. At eleven-thirty, from the station itself, Trist telegraphed an addendum to his story—an exclusive now, putting the Post ahead even of the New York Tribune—and returned to the convention just in time to see it adjourn for lunch.
At two o’clock the gavel rapped again. The delegates took their seats. Cadwallader slipped into the chair next to Trist and spat, accurately, into the brass spittoon on the floor between them.
“Once saw an Indian chief come into the Palmer House lobby,” he said. Over their heads the chairman of the convention, Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, announced that the clerk would now read the report of the party platform committee. “Beautiful manners. Took one look at that fine oriental carpet on the floor, spat on his hand instead.” Trist grimaced and laughed at the same time. “But not the one he used for shaking,” Cadwallader said. “Exquisite manners. This is the crucial day, you watch.”
But the platform yielded no crises, no surprises of any sort. It denounced the Democrats and Chinese immigration. It was silent, as expected, on the subject of civil service reform, though that was one of Rutherford Hayes’s few known passions. “Conkling calls it ‘snivel service reform,’ ” Cadwallader informed the reporters’ table, whose resulting guffaws brought a reprimanding rap of the gavel down from Senator Hoar.
On the convention floor somebody offered an amendment asking that reform of civil service be “thorough, radical, and complete.” A delegate from Texas rose in immediate and angry opposition. “Texas has had quite enough of the civil service,” he said to growing laughter. “What are we up here for? I mean that members of the Republican party are entitled to government jobs, and if we’re victorious, why, by God we’ll have them.”
At six o’clock the convention adjourned again for dinner—one hour only, Hoar warned as the room stood and stretched and shook itself awake.
In the crowded Sherman hospitality suite, now moved again from the Palmer House to a set of rented rooms upstairs in the Hall, Trist took a cup of coffee—eating with one hand would be impossible—and stood with his back pressed against the wall. His Alabama delegate emerged briefly from the crush of people to tell him that Conkling had done this sort of thing before—in the ’76 convention at Cincinnati, after Ingersoll had made a powerful speech for Blaine, somebody (and it had to be Conkling) had secretly turned off the gas supply and plunged the house into darkness. Another delegate showed Trist the afternoon Chicago Record featuring his own railroad ticket story reprinted from the Post and credited to him. With his fifth cup of coffee of the day (served in a Sherman souvenir ceramic cup) came another rumor, that Hoar had decided to press on that evening to the nominations, no matter how long it took, no matter how much Conkling stalled. And as if to confirm it, candidate Sherman himself climbed on a chair and urged them all first to have another drink, and second, to hold fast.
“My niece says you live in Paris.” Mrs. John Sherman clutched a copy of the Chicago Record in one hand and her niece’s arm in the other. Around them a few supporters were making preparations to return to the floor, but most were still gathered happily beside the long buffet. “The City of Light,” Mrs. Sherman explained. She was constructed, as Trist’s father used to say, along American lines. She was tall, even taller than her husband, with her gray hair stacked in a kind of Empire bun, broad-shouldered, generous-figured, ample-hipped. She wore an expensive dress of gunmetal gray, cut low at the bodice to show off an ivory brooch the size of the souvenir coffee cup, and next to her Elizabeth Cameron looked as slender and willowy as a girl. Mrs. Sherman patted her niece’s arm. “She speaks excellent French herself. She was schooled in Boston.” This seemed not precise enough. “On Mount Vernon Street.”
Trist put down his cup and bowed respectfully to Mount Vernon Street.
“But I suppose you miss Paris terribly now.” Mrs. Sherman was politely sad on his account. “Especially in this dreadful Chicago heat.”
“Well, I have to go back for good in the fall,” Trist said, “so I haven’t really thought so much about it.”
“In the fall?”
“After the election.”
“Mr. Trist,” said Elizabeth Cameron, bending forward to make herself heard over shouts of “Sherman Forever,” “has come here as a French magazine correspondent, just to write about the campaign.”
“Ah. I
thought you were with one of our newspapers.” Mrs. Sherman was a candidate’s wife. French correspondents had no role to play in holding fast. She looked at his empty sleeve. Her smile faded to a pinpoint. She nodded once, rudely, and turned away.
“Don’t ask me to speak French,” Elizabeth told Trist.
“No.”
“She’s my uncle’s wife. I’m very fond of my uncle.”
“You’re a Sherman,” Trist said, “of course.”
“You should have seen me in Montana, in my wild Indian war dress.”
“I can picture you now.”
Elizabeth looked quickly to the right, toward her aunt, and the color rushed to her cheeks. Impulse, desire rose like a flame in Trist’s throat. As the crowd swirled, bumped, jostled around them, he reached his hand forward and touched her waist. Her chin came up, her mouth opened. His hand moved lower, to her hip—he couldn’t believe that no one saw, no one was watching—she took half a step closer. Loud applause broke out near the door, where Sherman was raising both arms in a victory clench. “Sunday.” Her voice was hoarse, rasping, her face still turned away in profile. “Sunday, Centennial Park, noon, meet me.” She turned to follow her aunt, took two steps, and then turned back. “I hate it when they condescend to you,” she whispered.
AT THE REPORTERS’ TABLE A MAN FROM THE NEW YORK HERALD was passing around a set of old clippings. The galleries and balconies were packed now to capacity. Somebody had suspended a new “James G. Blaine” banner between two pillars directly in front of Trist; a Blaine band in the rear of the Hall was playing an exuberant version of “Wait for the Wagon.” In the special section of the balcony just to the right, reserved for dignitaries’ wives, a number of ladies sat with souvenir umbrellas inexplicably open.
“Seen the clippings?” Cadwallader dropped into the chair on his left. Trist shook his head. “You’re red as a beet. Fellow covers Conkling in New York, brought his scrapbook, all his stories about Conkling and Kate Chase Sprague.”
There were four reporters’ tables just beneath the speaker’s podium. Cadwallader’s pencil pointed at a pasty-faced man in green tweed at the farthest one. “You ever hear about Conkling and Kate Sprague in Rhode Island?”
Trist shook his head again, knowing that Cadwallader was about to tell him.
“Conkling went to pay a visit to her two years ago. The little drunk husband was supposed to be away on a trip. But he comes home late that night, unexpected. Next morning goes downstairs, there’s Conkling sitting at the breakfast table, reading the paper. Sprague grabs his shotgun, Conkling takes off like a rabbit. The Herald ran the story for weeks, never cost Lord Roscoe a vote.” He stirred a cup of something brown with his pencil. “Ruined Kate Sprague,” he said.
At seven-thirty-five, as the Blaine band marched away into the corridors, the convention wearily came to order again, and the clerk began to read the final, amended platform.
At nine o’clock, platform read and voted, Trist made his way upstairs to the telegraph room and sent a short, uninspired report to the Post.
And at ten o’clock, at last, Hoar’s gavel rapped briskly three times and the clerk announced that the floor was open for nominations.
The crowd stirred. In some corners it came visibly awake. Delegates sat up straight. Cigars were extinguished. The Blaine band played a few separate discordant notes. Blaine would be the first man named, and everyone knew that Blaine, who had come very close to stealing the nomination from Rutherford Hayes four years ago, wanted Robert Ingersoll to give the nominating speech again, but his campaign manager had just decided on the spur of the moment that Ingersoll’s increasingly notorious atheism would spoil the good effect of his oratory. (Ingersoll had recently held up to a New York audience a greenback dollar bill, which promised to pay the bearer in gold or silver, and shouted, “I know that my Redeemer liveth!”) Instead, Ingersoll now mounted the speakers’ platform waving a red shawl while the unannounced official nominator walked head down, with a hangdog look, to the podium.
“James P. Joy,” Trist muttered, glad to be able to tell Cadwallader something.
“Detroit businessman,” Cadwallader said. “Millionaire. Hopeless speaker.”
And in fact Joy began to speak in a dull, barely audible, certainly joyless voice. He apologized for taking up the convention’s time. He regretted that he had been chosen to give the speech, since he thought his words would benefit the candidate but little. He said that Michigan was a safe state for the party and would vote Republican no matter who was the nominee. Finally, glancing nervously at the clock, he declared it was his pleasure to present the name of James S. Blaine.
Ingersoll lowered his shawl in disgust. In the Maine delegation half a dozen men came to their feet, shaking their fists—“James G. Blaine, you fool!”
When the shouts and music had died down, Hoar rapped for order. Senator William Windom of Minnesota was nominated next, to perfunctory cheers. Then a long pause followed. The Blaine band had already skulked out of the Hall, but a new and bigger band could be seen gathering behind the last row of chairs. Some delegates were on their feet, expectant. The low rumble of background talk and whisper and rustling cloth and scraping chairs that had come to seem part of the air itself now slowly died away.
John A. Logan was senator from Illinois, yet another Civil War general. In 1868, when Grant had received 650 of 650 convention votes, Logan had nominated him for his first term as President. His shock of white hair was caricatured by every political cartoonist in Chicago and instantly familiar to every delegate in the Hall. Now he made his way at a steady pace down the aisle from the Illinois delegation; mounted the steps; spoke right away without introduction or notes: “In the name of our loyal citizens, soldiers, and sailors—in the name of loyalty, of liberty, of humanity and justice I nominate Ulysses S. Grant for President!”
A stupendous cheer exploded over his last words, drowning out even the band. In the aisles, on the balconies, Grant Stalwarts roared in a swirling chaos of streamers and confetti. On the railing above Hoar’s platform a young woman dressed in red, white, and blue sang, unheard, at the top of her lungs, as friends clutched her ankles to keep her from falling. Trist sat hunched at his table while the wave of sound rolled and broke over his head, watching a group of men in the balconies open and release umbrella after umbrella, thinking the French would never believe a word of it. He glanced over once at Cadwallader, who was sitting back, lighting a cigar. He squinted up toward the galleries to see if Elizabeth Cameron was there. His mind made a curious leap toward the book he had been reading, Democracy. This was it, he thought, this was the unreal democratic thing itself.
Logan had long since disappeared from the podium. As the crowd noticed, its cheers began to fade, little by little, into individual shouts, then murmurs, then a low, tense, nearly palpable silence. Could this be all? Was this the whole of the nomination? The band lowered its instruments. Here and there someone cleared his throat or coughed.
From the second row of the New York delegation now emerged the splendid figure of Roscoe Conkling. He was dressed in a coat of deep, rich burgundy, a yellow cravat, crisp blue trousers. His red hair was curled around his brow, his red beard was combed and thrust forward, bristling with virility. He walked slowly, confidently toward the riser that led to the reporters’ tables. At a gesture one reporter stood and offered his chair. Conkling braced his hand on the man’s back and vaulted from chair to table in a single motion. The vast silence of the Hall grew deeper still, a drawn breath, held. Every eye was on him. He looked to the left, the right. And then at the moment of absolute maximum suspense his clear voice suddenly burst out:
“And when asked what State he hails from,
Our sole reply shall be,
He hails from Appomattox,
And its famous apple tree!”
The roar that followed was total bedlam, a tumult of noise that went on twice as long as before, till Conkling himself finally held up his arms imperiously. The delegates
fell panting back into their chairs.
“The need that presses upon this convention,” he cried in the same ringing tones, “is of a candidate who can carry doubtful states both North and South. And believing that he, more surely than any other man, can carry New York against any opponent, and can carry not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. Never defeated in peace or in war, his name is the most illustrious borne by living man!”
The Hall was now entirely under Conkling’s spell. He raised his arms again for quiet, then launched into a long, detailed account of Grant’s career, the hero’s relentless, unparalleled drive toward military victory, his magnanimous terms of peace to Lee, his service in Reconstruction, his great courage in 1875 in vetoing the inflation bill, wherein, as the present prosperity showed, he had been exactly right. The criticism of corruption in Grant’s administration he dismissed with a sneer: “We have nothing to explain away. We have no apologies to make. The shafts and arrows have all been aimed at him, and they lie broken and harmless at his feet.”