by John Jakes
George boarded the noon train to Philadelphia, speaking to no one.
At the War Department, a captain named Malcolm went through the ritual of sympathy. He asked, “There’s no sign of this madman?”
“None. He’s disappeared. I’d have caught him if the goddamn train hadn’t been late—”
George stopped. He tried to relax the hand gripping the chair arm in Malcolm’s office. Color returned slowly to his fingers and wrist. He wished he could tear the barbed if’s from his mind. It was impossible. He wished he could be man enough to do what Virgilia talked about: grow up; look at the beast. He’d looked, but it was destroying him.
Captain Malcolm saw his visitor’s state and remained silent. Malcolm himself was under great strain, along with every other staff officer unlucky enough to be posted to Washington. The whole department had been in turmoil for months, following Johnson’s suspension of Stanton as Secretary of War last August. Since a suspension was expressly prohibited by the Tenure of Office Act, Mr. Stanton, both a Radical and a clever lawyer, denied the validity of the suspension. Grant, nevertheless, was rather reluctantly serving as interim secretary.
The President had suspended Stanton to test the Tenure Act and defy the Radicals, and they were after him for it. Early in December they had introduced an impeachment bill in the House. It had failed, but Malcom was assured the question would not be dropped. He understood the Senate was preparing to formalize its rejection of the suspension, and that might well provoke another attempt to oust Stanton. All of this made life difficult; Malcolm didn’t know which of his departmental colleagues could be trusted with any remark beyond a pleasantry. At least this tragic man seated on the other side of the desk was not a part of the conflict.
Presently George said, “I’ve hired the Pinkerton agency. I want to give them all available information.”
“I have a man searching the Adjutant General’s personnel records now. Let me see how he’s coming.”
Malcolm was gone twenty minutes. He returned with a slim file, which he laid on the cluttered desk. “There isn’t much, I’m afraid. Bent was charged with cowardice at Shiloh while temporarily commanding a unit other than his own. Lacking conclusive evidence in the matter, General Sherman nevertheless ordered a notation in his record and exiled him to New Orleans. He remained there until the end of General Butler’s tenure.”
“Anything else?”
Malcolm went through it. “Created a disturbance at a sporting house owned by one Madam Conti. Apprehended stealing a painting that was her property. Before Bent could again be brought up on charges, he deserted.
“There is one final entry, a year later. A man answering Bent’s description worked briefly for Colonel Baker’s detective unit.”
George knew the work of Colonel Lafayette Baker. He recalled newspaper editors thrown into Old Capitol Prison for dissent about the war or criticism of Lincoln’s policies and cabinet officers. “You’re referring to the secret police employed by Mr. Stanton.”
Malcolm lost his cordiality. “Mr. Stanton? I have no information, sir. I can’t comment on that allegation.”
George had seen enough bureaucrats to recognize the self-protective mode. Bitterly, he said, “Of course. Is that everything in the file?”
“Almost. Bent was seen last at Port Tobacco, where it’s presumed he was arranging illegal entry into the Confederacy. There the trail runs out.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’ll convey the information to Pinkerton’s.” He added a polite lie. “You’ve been very helpful.”
He shook Malcolm’s hand and left. He felt his gut boiling, and barely reached Willard’s Hotel before he was again stricken with violent intestinal trouble.
Virgilia found a doctor for him. The man sent to a chemist’s for an opium compound that tightened up his gut but did nothing to stem the sudden fits of weeping that struck him at highly inopportune moments. One such attack took place when he was escorting Virgilia to Willard’s dining room for a farewell supper.
With an exertion of will, he recovered his composure. His sister talked throughout the meal, trying to divert him with information about her work at Scipio Brown’s home for black waifs, and the mounting Radical frenzy to remove the President by impeachment. George heard little of it, then nothing when he put his face in his hands and wept again. He was mortally ashamed, but he couldn’t stop.
In his suite, Virgilia held him close before they parted. Her arms felt strong, while he felt weak, sick, worthless. She kissed his cheek gently. “Let us know where you are, George. And please take care of yourself.”
He held the door open, pale in the feeble light of low-trimmed gas.
“Why?” he said.
She went away without answering.
In New York he booked a first-class stateroom on the Grand Turk for Southampton. He was carrying the name of a London estate agent with good contacts in Europe, particularly Switzerland. The estate agent recommended Lausanne, on the north shore of Lake Geneva, saying that any number of American millionaires suffering from ill health had found benefit there. George had indicated that he needed a restful haven.
In cold and damp January twilight, he stood at the rail among first-class passengers who were waving, chattering, and celebrating. A steward handed him a glass of champagne. He muttered something but didn’t drink. Soul-numbing despair still gripped him. He had lost twenty pounds, and, because he was a short man, the loss seemed severe, lending him a wasted look.
Trailing smoke, her whistle blasting, the great steamer left the dock and moved down the Hudson past the Jersey piers and the shanties surrounding them. George’s hand hung over the rail. A slight pitch of the vessel spilled the champagne. It dispersed in the air, the droplets not visible by the time they reached the oily black water.
How like the life of poor Constance, and that of his dead friend Orry, was the spilled champagne. A moment’s sparkle, an accident, and nothing.
He walked to the stern, the fur collar of his overcoat turned up against the chill. With dead eyes he watched America vanish behind him. He expected he would never see it again.
MADELINE’S JOURNAL
January, 1868. Back from Lehigh Station. A sorrowful trip. George not himself. Virgilia, reunited with the family after long estrangement—she is much softened in temperament—said privately that she fears for G.’s mental stability. G.’s lawyer, Smith, warned us that the murderer, Bent, might strike any one of us. It is too monstrous to be believed. Yet the fate of poor Constance warns us not to dismiss it.
Surprised to find that the C’ston Courier carried a paragraph about the murder—Judith sent it to Prudence in my absence. I assume the story traveled widely because of its sensational nature. Bent is named as the culprit.
Also found a letter from a Beaufort attorney who proposes to visit soon. The discovery at Lambs, still creating furor, will prove our salvation, he claims. …
Written on the 12th. Andy leaves tomorrow to walk to C’ston for the “Great Convention of the People of South Carolina”—the same gathering Gettys’s wretched sheet calls “the black and tan meeting.” Though I can ill afford it, I spent a dollar at the new Summerton junk shop for trousers and a worn but serviceable frock coat, dusty orange, that was once the pride of some white gentlemen. These I gave to A. Jane has sewn other garments for her husband, so he needn’t be ashamed of his clothes.
Prudence found and presented Andy with an old four-volume set of Kent’s Commentaries on American Law, which law students now use in place of Blackstone’s. A. longs to study and understand the law. He reveres its power to protect his race. He will study solely for personal satisfaction, since he knows that even under the most liberal of regimes, it is likely that no man of his color would be able to practice profitably in Carolina. Indeed, his very presence at the convention with others of his race is an affront to men like Gettys. …
After midnight on January thirteenth, Judith carried a taper to her husband’s study at Tradd Street. She
found him amid a litter of newspapers, his reading spectacles on his nose and a book in his lap. It was a book she hadn’t seen him open for years.
“The Bible, Cooper?”
His long white fingers tapped the rice-paper page. “Exodus. I was reading about the plagues. An appropriate study for these times, don’t you think? After the plague of frogs and the plague of lice, the swarms of flies and the boils and the killing hail, Moses brandished his rod again, an east wind rose and blew all night, and in the morning it brought a plague of locusts.”
Dismayed and alarmed by his fervency, Judith put down the taper and crossed her arms over her bed gown. Cooper picked up the Bible and read in a low voice. “Very grievous they were. Before them there were no such locusts as they … they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.”
He took off his spectacles. “We have a north wind instead. Blowing in a plague of Carolina turncoats, Yankee adventurers, illiterate colored men—and they’re all going to sit down in that convention tomorrow. What a prospect! Ethiopian minstrelsy. Ham Radicalism in all its glory!”
“Cooper, the convention must meet. A new constitution’s the price for readmission to the Union.”
“And a new social order—is that another price we must pay?” He picked up a Daily News and read, “The demagogue is to rule the mass, and vice and ignorance control the vast interests at stake. The delegates may well create a Negro bedlam.” He tossed the paper down. “I concur.”
“But if I remember my Bible, soon after the locusts came, there was a west wind to cast them back in the Red Sea.”
“And you remember what followed next, don’t you? The plague of darkness. Then the plague of death.”
Judith wanted to weep. She couldn’t believe that this spent, embittered man was the same person she’d married. Only by immense will did she keep emotion from her face. “Are you planning to observe any of the proceedings?” she asked.
“I’d sooner watch wild animals. I’d sooner be hung.”
In the morning, he left early for the offices of the Carolina Shipping Company. Judith felt sad and helpless. Cooper was indeed becoming a stranger to her. He no longer had anything at all to do with Madeline.
Marie-Louise wasn’t much better company for her, though the reasons were different. Judith found her daughter at the sunny dining table, her chin on her hands, her breakfast untouched, her eyes fixed dreamily on some far unseen vista. She was neglecting her studies and she talked of scarcely anything but boys. Marie-Louise especially admired some of General Canby’s occupying soldiers. Whatever the other consequences of military Reconstruction, it was quite literally robbing Judith of a family.
Of the one hundred twenty-four delegates who convened on January 14, seventy-six were black. Only twenty-three of the white delegates were Carolina-born, but of those a fair number were former hotspurs. Joe Crews had traded in slaves. J. M. Rutland had collected money for a new cane when Preston Brooks broke his over the head of Charles Sumner, almost killing him. Franklin Moses had helped pull down the American flag after Sumter surrendered.
Andy sat among the delegates in his dusty orange frock coat, the first volume of James Kent’s Commentaries on his knee. He was very erect, proud to be at the convention, but overawed, too; many of the Negro delegates were far better educated than he was. Alonzo Ransier, a native-born freedman, had chatted with him at length about the sweeping social changes the convention would produce. The most intimidating Negro was a handsome, tall, portly chap named Francis Cardozo. Although his skin was the color of old ivory, Cardozo, a free-born mulatto, proudly seated himself among the black delegates. He was an example of what a man could make of himself if he had unlimited opportunity, Andy thought. Cardozo had graduated from the University of Glasgow and formerly held a Presbyterian pulpit in New Haven, Connecticut.
To overcome feelings of inferiority, Andy frequently recalled some earnest words that Jane spoke when she said goodbye to him at the river road. “You’re just as good as any of them if you prove you are. You all start out equal in the eyes of God. Mr. Jefferson said so, and that’s what the war was really about. Whether you end up ahead of where you started is up to you.”
She’d hugged him then, kissed him, and whispered, “Make us all proud.” Remembering it, he sat a little straighter.
There was none of the predicted “Negro bedlam” on the convention floor, though enthusiastic black spectators in the gallery had to be gaveled to silence by the temporary chairman, T. J. Robertson, a well-respected businessman of moderate views. The noisiest part of the hall was that occupied by members of the press, most of them Yankees. Many were dressed in plaid suits and gaudy cravats. Andy saw one reporter spit a stream of tobacco juice on the floor. He felt smugly superior. Earlier, Cardozo had remarked to him and some other black delegates, “The reporters have come down here to measure this convention against Northern morality. They’ll measure our utterances and our behavior as well. Take heed and act accordingly, gentlemen.”
Robertson’s gavel brought the hall to order. “Before I turn the chair over to our great and good friend Dr. Mackey”—he was another respected local man—“I should like to remind those assembled of our high purpose. We are gathered to frame a just and liberal constitution for the Palmetto State, one which will guarantee equal rights to all, and gain us readmission to the Union.”
The spectators demonstrated their approval. Again Robertson gaveled them down before continuing.
“We do not claim any preeminence of wisdom or virtue. We do claim, however, that we are following the progressive spirit of the age … and that we shall be bold enough, honest enough, wise enough to trample obsolete and unworthy laws and customs underfoot, to initiate a new order of justice in South Carolina. Let every delegate turn his thoughts, and his utterances, solely to that purpose.”
He means my thoughts, Andy said to himself. All right, he’d speak up. If he was wrong about something, he’d learn. Without making a few mistakes, how could you lift yourself from what you were to what you wanted to become?
He straightened in his seat, hand firmly on the law text. A rush of pride renewed his courage and restored his confidence.
“Now, ma’am,” said Mr. Edisto Topper of Beaufort, “this is why I urgently requested a meeting.” Standing beside Madeline in the pale January sunshine drenching the fallow rice square, the small, dapper attorney broke open the blue-gray lump of clay.
Madeline stepped back from the familiar stench. “I’ve always called that our poisoned earth.”
Topper dropped the clay lumps, laughing. “Poisoned with riches, Mrs. Main.” He turned to his young and servile clerk. “Gather several of those nodules and put them in the bag. We’ll want an assay.”
Madeline’s forehead glistened with perspiration. When Topper’s carriage had come rattling up the lane, she was busy brushing a new coat of whitewash on the pine house. Specks of it stippled her hands and the bosom of her faded dress.
“I can hardly believe you, Mr. Topper, though I’d certainly like to do so.”
“Do, my good woman, do. The rumors are true. There is mineral treasure hidden along the Ashley and Stono rivers, and in the riverbeds as well. Your so-called poisoned earth is phosphate-bearing.”
“But it’s been here for years.”
“And not a soul realized its worth until Dr. Ravenel of Charleston assayed samples from Lambs last fall.” Topper swept the vista of rice fields with a flamboyant gesture. “Mont Royal could run as high as six or eight hundred tons of marl per acre. High-grade marl, sixty percent tricalcic phosphate, ten percent carbonate of lime—far richer than the marls of Virginia.”
“It’s very welcome news. But a little overwhelming.”
He laughed again, and dry-washed his hands. “Understandable, dear lady. After years of defeat and privation, we are quite literally stand
ing upon the economic rebirth of this section of the state. It’s there in those foul-smelling nodules. That’s the smell of money. That’s the smell of fertilizer!”
They returned to homemade chairs on the lawn in front of the whitewashed house. From his valise, lawyer Topper produced reports, assays, surveys which he thrust at Madeline, urging her to read every word.
“Already there’s a positive stampede to buy mineral rights from property owners. I represent a group of investors organized as the Beaufort Phosphate Company. All fine Southern gentlemen; Carolina natives, like myself. I’m sure you’ll feel more comfortable knowing that when we do business.”
Madeline brushed back a stray strand of graying hair. “If, Mr. Topper. If.”
“But you have the complete advantage in the matter! It’s our capital what will be at risk, whereas all you give up is temporary use of your land. We handle everything. Dig the pits, build a tram road for horse carts, install steam-driven washers to separate out the sand and clay. We assume full responsibility for freighting or barging the washed rock to drying yards. Then we negotiate a favorable sale price. Mr. Lewis and Mr. Klett have already capitalized one processing firm to crush the rock and convert it to commercial fertilizer. Competing companies are sure to spring up soon. We’ll be in a splendid position.”
It was all too perfect. She kept searching for flaws. “What about men to dig the rock?”
“Likewise our responsibility. We’ll hire every available nig—ah, freedman. Pay them twenty-five cents per foot dug, rock removal included.”
She shook her head. Topper looked puzzled. “Something wrong?”
“Very definitely, Mr. Topper. There are black families starving all along this river, and I don’t exclude Mont Royal. If you’re going to mine my land, you’ll have to create jobs that are worthwhile. Shall we say fifty cents per foot dug?”