by John Jakes
Now, groggy from exhaustion—he had slept little more than two hours—he confronted catastrophic weather. He felt suicidal.
He staggered to his bureau and picked up the admission cards for the ball. They were as big as the pages of a commercial almanac, gaudily lithographed with a heroic bust supposed to combine the features of President-elect Grant and Vice President-elect Colfax. It looked like neither. “Vile,” Isabel called it. Stanley had whined for twenty minutes to convince her that he had had nothing to do with it. Head down, he stood there wondering whether all this travail was worth it merely to provide Isabel with one more opportunity to maintain her social contacts and ply her devious and hypocritical brand of flattery. As usual, he had no say in the matter.
He swung his head toward the window like a great ox in a yoke. He listened to the drizzle and wished it would grow torrential and wash away all of today’s events, and his snoring wife too.
The procession to the Capitol began at ten minutes before eleven. General Grant, a small, compact, retiring man in his forty-seventh year, wore sturdy, sober American black, like all of the gentlemen attending. He rode in an open carriage. Boisterous people who eluded the police lines and dashed into the muddy street reached into the carriage to touch him. He didn’t seem to mind.
His escort consisted of eight divisions of marching units. The Washington Grays Artillery of Philadelphia, forty-eight muskets, marched. The Philadelphia Fire Zouaves marched with their twenty-two-man drum corps. The Eagle Zouaves of Buffalo marched, as did the Lincoln Zouaves of Washington, the Butler Zouaves of Georgetown, and the Lincoln Zouaves (colored) of Baltimore. These last were brilliant in white leggings and blue flannel jackets with yellow trim.
The Hibernia Engine Company marched, together with the Naval Academy Band, the Government Fire Brigade and Hose Company Number 5 of Reading, Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court marched. So did the Philadelphia Republican Executive Committee, the Lancaster Fencibles, and Ermentrout’s City Band, seventeen pieces. The Grant Invincibles of California marched, along with the Montana Territorial Delegation and the Sixth Ward Republican Club, whose horse-drawn car featured a miniature Constitution complete with anchors, chains, and cannons manned by youths in sailor suits. This car was the clear hit of the parade, generating riotous applause among the throngs on Pennsylvania Avenue.
President-elect Grant seemed pleased and entertained by the spectacle. President Johnson’s reaction was unknown; he was still at the White House, signing bills.
Under skies showing ragged gaps in the clouds and occasional swatches of blue, Stanley deposited his wife in their reserved seats. These were directly in front of the platform built over the steps of the Capitol’s east front. The platform was crowded with chairs and festooned with bunting and evergreen boughs.
“Where are you going?” Isabel demanded. She wore a dusty-peach jacket and skirt. Colors were more festive this year.
“Inside, to pay my respects. Perhaps shake hands with the general.”
“Take me with you.”
“Isabel, it’s far too dangerous. Look at this unruly mob. Besides”—it was one of the few points he could score with relative impunity—“these public rites are principally for men.”
Her equine face wrinkled. “So was the procession, I noticed.”
“You sound like a suffragist.”
‘‘God forbid. But don’t you forget who made a success of Mercantile Enterprises!” Stanley cringed, hands raised. “And watched the books, supervised every expansion, saw to it that our estimable fraud of a lawyer, Dills, didn’t rob us of every—”
“Please, Isabel, please,” he whispered, his jaundiced complexion fading to paper-white. “Don’t say those things, even among strangers. Don’t mention that company. We have no connection with it, remember.”
Isabel started to reply, realized he was speaking prudently, and said, “All right. But you had better not be gone long.”
Clutching his tall hat with one hand, his special ticket with the other, Stanley started through the huge, generally jocular crowd of standees. He wriggled around mounted marshals and passed through a cordon of Capitol Police with heavy batons. Rumpled, his pearl-gray cravat hanging out of his matching waistcoat, he at last reached the noisy corridor behind the Senate chamber.
He darted onto the Senate floor but saw no sign of his mentor, Ben Wade. The galleries were already packed with a thousand or more spectators. He thought he glimpsed Virgilia but quickly looked away. He wanted no contact.
He roamed among the dignitaries, shaking hands like the important Republican stalwart he was supposed to be. He was somewhat daunted by the rows of gold braid—Sickles, Pleasonton, Dahgren, Farragut, Thomas, and Sherman were already present—and he didn’t attempt to greet such famous men. He did congratulate the magisterial Mr. Sumner, about to be sworn in for his fourth Senate term. He greeted Senator Cameron, now returned to power and office; the Boss acted as if he hardly knew Stanton.
He next spoke to Carl Schurz of Missouri, the first German-born citizen to reach the high office of senator. Without preamble, Schurz started to discuss the debt, one of Grant’s chief concerns. As a student, Schurz had joined the 1848 revolution, and he was still a political zealot. He talked about greenbacks and specie and fiscal honesty until Stanley excused himself. He found men of conviction such as Schurz intimidating, perhaps because his own convictions were so few and so ordinary. He believed that his wealth would never bring him happiness. He believed his wife was repulsive and his two sons worthless. Levi, whose college career had consisted of one week of study followed by expulsion for knifing a fellow student in a dispute over dice, now owned a half interest in a saloon in New York’s Tenderloin, and was also, by his own boast, a successful pimp. Levi’s twin, Laban, had managed to get through Yale despite an equally riotous disposition and a bad case of the pox in his second year, and was now establishing himself as a high-status thief, a term Stanley applied to all lawyers.
He went to Wade’s office and squeezed up near the closed door. “Sorry, sir,” an usher said, “Senator Wade is closeted with General Grant until the ceremonies begin.”
“But I am Mr. Stanley Hazard.”
“I know,” said the usher. “You can’t get in.”
Smarting, Stanley retired.
Before going outside again, he whisked a slim silver bottle from an inner pocket and refreshed himself with his fifth drink of the morning. At his seat, he told Isabel he had met the President-elect, theoretically a coup because Grant had done little personal campaigning and had attended few party functions. He promised to introduce Isabel at the ball.
“You’d better.”
The crowd stretched away on either hand, with the usual hat-throwing and hip-hip-hurrahing punctuated by screams whenever a tree branch gave way and dropped those whose weight had broken it. At 12:15, approximately the hour Andrew Johnson was to shake hands with his cabinet and depart by carriage from the front portico of the White House, the official platform party emerged from the Capitol.
Grant looked dignified in his black suit and straw-colored gloves. Justice Chase nervously administered the oath. Grant took it, bent to kiss the Bible, then delivered a brief address. Isabel’s comment on the entire proceeding was, “Pedestrian.”
PEACE
The great motto burned in the dark high above. Stanley stood admiring the committee’s handiwork. The special illumination was created by gas jets across the front of the Treasury Building. It had been expensive to design and erect, but the effect was spectacular. There, for Washington and all the world to see, was the Republican presence, the Republican pledge.
While Stanley gawked, Isabel complained of the delay. They had joined other formally dressed couples hurrying inside.
A string orchestra serenaded from the balcony of the enormous Cash Room. In a stately setting of Siena and Carrara marble, the specially commissioned allegorical painting “Peace” was on display. The easel was surrounded by a good-sized crowd. Stanley an
d Isabel unexpectedly bumped into Mr. Stout, just returned to the Senate for a full term. On his arm was a hard-looking woman, much younger, with a tiara of sapphires in her hair. Very coolly, Stout said to them:
“I believe you know my wife, Jeannie?”
Isabel was enraged. This was the young woman who had been Stanley’s mistress until Isabel discovered it and ended the affair. She was Jeannie Canary then, a variety-hall singer.
“Ah, yes—” Flustered, Stanley straightened his white tie. “I had the pleasure of watching her, ah, perform on many occasions.”
Stout didn’t immediately catch the inadvertent double meaning. When he did, he reddened, as if ready to call Stanley out for an old-fashioned duel. Jeannie looked equally piqued. Isabel pulled her husband away. Her eyes were misty. Stanley was astonished; his wife never wept.
“You foul-mouthed beast,” she whispered, tearfully looking straight ahead. For once he was too thunderstruck to take the slightest pleasure.
Isabel wouldn’t speak to him thereafter. She shook her head to offers of food or wine and refused his limp invitation to waltz. She did follow along when President and Mrs. Grant appeared and Stanley, lemminglike, rushed with dozens of others to present himself. Damnably, Stout and his wife were with the Grants.
Eventually Stanley and Isabel got their turn. Stanley mumbled their names, which Stout repeated. Isabel stared at her husband in a hostile way while the President shook Stanley’s hand.
“Ah, yes, Mr. Hazard. The Pennsylvania Hazards. I know your brother George. You were a liaison officer with the Freedmen’s Bureau, were you not?”
“Yes, Mr. President, until the end of ’67. At that time I retired to oversee my business investments. I must say, sir, your program for the economy is very sound.”
“Thank you, sir,” Grant said, and turned to greet the next couple.
Isabel was even angrier than before. “You lying wretch. You didn’t meet him this morning.”
“No. They wouldn’t let me into Wade’s rooms.”
“You’ve humiliated me sufficiently for one evening, Stanley.” She had also seen, and been seen by, everyone important. “Take me home.”
Stanley was the first of the Committee of Managers to depart.
Grant noticed. To his wife Julia he said, “Very likable, that Hazard fellow. Strikes me as a man of intelligence and substance.”
Senator Stout overheard. If Mr. Grant believes that, we have a naïve dolt in our highest office. God save the republic.
___________
Marie-Louise and Theo have at last settled in a tiny cottage on Sullivan’s Island, found for them by the man who hired Theo for a better job than Mont Royal could offer. The man is another Yankee carpetbagger.
The city is considerably restored, but much more remains to be done. Gullible travelers alighting at the pier are still asked, “Would you like to see Mr. Calhoun’s monument?” If they say yes, the cynic points to the city.
Theo’s employer has been part of the slow rebuilding process. He arrived in the autumn of ’65, saw a need, and set up a firm to construct new sidewalks with sturdy curbs to protect them from vehicle damage. His crews also fill and repair numerous bog holes, and the shell craters left by the Swamp Angel, etc. The glories and excitements of lavish balls, secession conclaves, and romantic farewells have given way to road-mending and other mundane matters.
The Yankee road-mender is prospering. He has developed large city contracts locally, and in Georgetown and Florence. Theo replaced the Yankee’s first foreman, who ran off to Brazil with a mulatto girl. Theo works 12-14 hours a day, 6 days per week, supervising black work gangs, and declares that he and M-L are now quite happy. They were not earlier. Upon returning from Sav., and following Cooper’s rebuff of them, they lived for some weeks in a poor cabin in the palmetto scrubs here on the plantation. The only thing that made it possible for them to survive was the job I provided. Theo was an excellent supervisor, and I hated to lose him, but I could not refuse his request to leave.
The young couple’s relations with C. are. not improved, however. C. will not receive them, or in any way recognize their presence in the city. Judith must visit her daughter secretly, the way she visits me. I appreciate that the war damaged many lives: But there is a point where pity yields to impatience. Cooper’s new politics, and his treatment of his family, put him beyond sympathy. Beyond mine, anyway. …
… Sim’s boy Grant, a young man now, was caught by the Klan near the crossroads last night. He and two friends were held captive for an hour, forced into what the robed men called a jigging contest. The three danced at gunpoint with pails of water balanced on their heads. It all sounds so childish. Yet Grant came home wild-eyed and demoralized. At least he was not harmed. Last week, Joseph Steptoe was whipped by some of the same men. Bleeding copiously, he was wrapped in a sheet smeared with salted lard and left at the roadside. He and his wife vanished from their cabin near the Episcopal chapel next day; not seen since. Joseph S. was a corporal of the district’s colored militia. Grant is a member too.
I do not know how a band of men can be ludicrous and menacing at the same time, but that is the puzzling nature of this “Klan.”
To C’ston, to see Theo and M-L, and once more plead with Dawkins. …
“No,” the obese man said. Amid the correspondence and sheets on his desk, Madeline saw a cheaply printed paperbound book, Your Sister Sally. She had seen a copy before. An import from Mississippi, the book contained exaggerated descriptions of the ruin and rapine whites could look forward to under a black-dominated legislature. Gettys sold copies at his store.
“Leverett,” she said with forced composure. “Mont Royal is earning money. Even rebuilding the house, I have enough to pay off substantially more of the mortgage every year. I hate to see so much interest flow out unnecessarily.”
The office was dark wood and deep green plush; Dawkins’s special chair was upholstered with the material. “I reiterate the bank’s stated policy. No prepayment.” He licked his lips, “If you refuse to be flexible, so do we.”
“Flexible.” Madeline gave it a bitter ring. “You mean close the school. You were a liberal man once. What are you so opposed—?”
“Because these nigger schools are not schools at all. They’re centers for political action. All Conservatives oppose them.” Conservative was the new label of the anti-Republican coalition of Democrats and former Whigs.
“Wade Hampton’s running a school on his plantation. He’s an avowed Conservative.”
“Yes, but tainted by certain unfortunate views. There is no point in discussing General Hampton. He is a unique case.”
He means untouchable. Which I am not.
“Leverett, I wish I could understand. Why are you so completely averse to giving people a decent education?”
“Not people. Nigras. The idea is poisoning South Carolina. First we got those Yankee women teaching down at St. Helena. Then your free school. Now we have public ones. As a result, not only do we have vengeful inferiors trying to govern us, but we have a crushing financial burden in the form of obnoxious school taxes.”
“So it comes down to money. To greed.”
“Justice! Fairness! The provision in the state constitution calling for public schools was none of my doing. None of Mr. Cooper Main’s, either, I might say. We dined together at my home only last week, and I know his state of mind. And the various circumstances responsible for it,” he added, flashing her a sharp look. She supposed the banker was referring to Marie-Louise’s marriage.
“Your brother-in-law and I are in complete agreement about the schools,” Dawkins continued. “Since they were forced upon us by the Federal government, let the Federal government pay for them.”
“I get no government money, Leverett.”
“But I understand you get many visits from Yankee clerics and bureaucrats who think your school is a model of Radical action. I am surprised the Kuklux have not returned. I don’t advocate violence, but you will ha
ve only yourself to blame when they do.”
… Such remains the prospect for the future. Sometimes I beg God to deliver me from everything connected with “the Reconstruction!!”
57
“PRETTY?” BENT SAID. “PRETTY, Gus?” He reached across to his left ear and shook the teardrop earring.
The small fire crackled and snapped in the March wind. They were camped on a barren slope in the Wichita Mountains, granite peaks that rose abruptly from the plain. Two days earlier, north of the mountains, Bent had sighted a cavalry column moving east to west ahead of him. He identified it as cavalry and not an Indian band because of its orderly march, and the colors and guidons raised above it. He’d dragged little Gus to the ground and forced the dapple gray to lie down until the column passed from view. He hadn’t felt safe about building a fire until this evening.
He turned his head slightly, presenting the left side of his face to the boy, extra temptation as he jiggled the earring again. “Isn’t it pretty?”
In a face unwashed for days, Gus’s eyes shone like polished brown stones. Bent’s discipline had left its mark in those eyes. It had also left a scabby welt on Gus’s chin, another on his forehead, and a bruise like a splatter of mud around his right eye. Bent had reduced the boy to a state of perpetual fear and total dependence; the four-year-old was grateful for every scrap of stale beef and every swallow of tepid water his captor allowed him. He hardly said a word, afraid of goading Bent to anger. He’d learned quickly that the man’s anger could flare without clear cause.
Bent kept jiggling the earring. Gus didn’t know what his captor expected of him. Bent smiled and the boy decided he wanted him to touch the earring. He flexed his fingers. Raised his hand. Extended it tentatively—
Bent struck him so hard he fell over. He yanked Gus up by his hair, slapped his face twice. “Bad boy. Mustn’t grab. If you’re a bad boy, then my friend wakes up.”
From the pocket of his filthy claw-hammer coat he took the straight razor. Flicked it open. Gus scooted backward, mouth open. He made no sound; Bent whipped him if he was noisy. But he’d seen the razor before. He’d been cut by it.