Men of No Property (59 page)

Dennis was aching for action. He had been from one to another of the New York Hards each unbeknownst to the other, exploring their views on available candidates. The choice by the most was for Dickenson—including Dickenson’s choice—but except for him, they were all persuadable that he could not carry even his own delegation. The one name Dennis picked up and cherished was Horatio Seymour, the only man, he was told, whose candidacy could budge Dean Richmond from his loyalty to Douglas. Well, if he couldn’t budge a mountain, Dennis thought, at least he could tremble the foothills. He was ready and waiting the message from Senator Osborn. His only surprise when it came was that it was in his daughter’s handwriting—a social invitation. But that was the way of the South, making even politics gracious.

The gabled manor was aglow with lights when Dennis walked up. Nary rig, cart nor carriage had he found for hire. And the music of strings floated out to meet him. While Farrell was locked in debate, his wife was frocked for receiving. Dennis tried to remember her gown to describe it to Norah, a blue silk that was frosted in lace, and her hair bedecked with jeweled white combs. There was no mourning here, Dennis saw in a wink, the tunes rather struck up for rejoicing.

“How nice to see you here, Mr. Lavery,” Delia said, giving his hand a soft squeeze of welcome. “It would be a great pity to have you go home rememberin’ us by nothin’ more than that terrible convention.”

“And glad I am to come,” said Dennis, “for I’m sick of their company.”

“Poor Stephen,” Delia said. “But then bein’ of the mind he is I don’t reckon he’d be at home here either tonight.”

Dennis was sure of it, but he didn’t say so. “’Tis a lovely place to be at home in.”

“Yes,” Delia said, her eyes wandering in chase of her thoughts. Some couples were dancing a waltz in the room beyond. “I suppose we could live here most times if Charleston was the capital.” Dennis looked at her, not understanding, and Delia recalled herself. “That’s just dreamtalk, Mr. Lavery. You must meet some people. Then papa wants to see you in the library. But don’t you let him keep you there all night with his old fogies. Supper’s goin’ to be in the garden.”

The drawing room was crowded, mostly with young men whom Delia spoke to by first name and some she called her cousins. The weakest as well as the sturdiest bore themselves as though they thought they were giants, and Dennis was not long in their company when he caught the gist of what Delia had meant by “dream-talk.” A Southern republic was in all their minds’ eyes, with its own representatives over the world. Choosing up places, these lads were, with their belles clapping hands in approval. Youth, Dennis thought, making love to the future. Delia, reconciling herself to her husband’s position, envisioned the day he would represent the North in the Southern capital…when everybody would be friends again. Well, Dennis thought, since dreams were in order, he wouldn’t mind taking such a place for himself!

He straightened his back and had his presence announced to the gentlemen in the library. He had never before been in company like this, he realized hearing the names, the biggest party men of the South, or maybe the loudest, but what odds that for they were the ones who’d be heard. He was not quite at ease until one of them mentioned the Fenians. That turned the talk to the Irish, and a question was then put to Dennis he had never set his mind to before: why did the Irish, by and large, favor the Southern cause. “There’s some that don’t, you know,” he said with a little smile and rubbed his chin.

“Oh, I know that for a fact,” Senator Osborn drawled. The other men laughed.

“It’s like askin’ me why I’m a Catholic,” Dennis went on, exploring his own mind as he went. “I’ve always been one, and maybe a better one for the abuse I’ve taken on that account. And that, gentlemen, I’d say is the heart of the matter. I’ve never known an Abolitionist yet who had a good word for an Irishman. Aye, scratch an Abolitionist and you find a Native. They wouldn’t raise their hand against enslavin’ the Irish, but they’d take the nigger into their beds with them.”

Someone commented on the friendship between Seward and Archbishop Hughes.

“The Archbishop isn’t in politics,” Dennis said, “so he can afford to have friends on both sides. And sure, Seward’s in nothin’ else, so he can’t afford not to.”

Dennis was probed then on the depth of the Douglas loyalty in the New York delegation and he told them. “It’s the damn unit vote that’s holdin’ at least a third of us in his name now. We’d revolt in a minute for a favorite son.”

“And the rest, what would it take to move them?”

“There’s a few die-hards, like your son-in-law, Senator Osborn, so bound up now with Free-Soilism, they’re but a nudge away from the Republican Party. Take Douglas away from them and they’ll run into Seward’s arms.”

Osborn gave a nod that that was his very thought.

“I could better stomach the party without them,” a man said, washing the taste from his mouth with whiskey.

“Do you think there’s a chance they’ll quit this convention, Mr. Lavery?”

“Not willin’,” said Dennis.

“Suppose the platform offends their free-soilism?”

Dennis shook his head. “The platform reported by the majority, I know you can swing that, gentlemen, but it won’t go down with the convention if there’s a slave plank in it. If a minority of one even brings in a mild platform the convention will stand on it and so will Douglas. If he can get a foot on it at all, he’ll stand this time until he’s knocked down. But I’m tellin’ you somethin’ you know better than me. Let me talk about the New York delegation. At the opposite end of free-soilism, there’s the Hards like myself. The only way we were brought into line at the state level was on the promise that the New York votes would go to a New York man if one was nominated here. And between the head and the tail there’s the middle, canny, good business men who call you gentlemen friends and ’ud go a long way to keep peace with you.”

“And who would you say, Lavery, would be the candidate with whom best to wean them from Douglas?”

Dennis let on to be thinking about it and accepted a cigar while he thought. He was determined if he could prompt it to have them put the name in his mouth.

“Then let’s put it this way, Lavery, would Fernando Wood have a chance?”

“God help us,” said Dennis, “have you no better way of puttin’ it than that?”

All the men present laughed.

“As I can foresee the country’s need, to say nothin’ of the needs of the party,” Dennis started over the same grounds again spelling out his meaning, “we should head the ticket with a Northern man of your likin’, gentlemen, who could carry as well as New York one or two other states North, and run with him a Southern Union man. That would make the cheese more bindin’.”

“So it would,” said Osborn, “but suppose he turned out to be another John Tyler?” The other men nodded.

“I must’ve been cradled in Ireland then,” Dennis murmured.

“It’s twenty years ago,” said Osborn. “My God, twenty years. Tyler was elected vice president with Ben Harrison, both Whigs. But Harrison died soon after election, and Tyler turned Democrat while he was in office.”

“I suppose you heard what Sanders is tellin’ about Douglas?” Dennis said then, referring to one of the New York men who was striving by another tack to come out with a winner. “He says Douglas’ health is in such a state that he’ll oblige with the same performance you spoke of. It’ll be the vice president runs the country if Douglas is elected, accordin’ to Sanders.”

“Sir, I would not put it past Douglas to have started that rumor himself. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to get the nomination.”

“Gentlemen, I have a ticket I should like to propose for your consideration.” As Dennis recalled his introduction, the man speaking was from Mississippi. “Horatio Seymour of New York and Breckenridge of Kentucky.”

“Seymour is a fine, conservative gentleman,” Dennis said blandly. “We’ve got no sounder.”

“To my tastes, we’ve sounder men than Breckenridge,” someone said.

“Not for this purpose,” Osborn said, putting his hand on the wrist of the speaker. “He recommends our good faith in compromise.” Osborn looked about. “Horatio at the bridge: Mr. Lavery should be able to make something of that, eh, gentlemen?”

They all seemed content in it.

Osborn touched Dennis’ elbow. “When the time is propitious, Mr. Lavery, I think you may propose to your delegation that certain gentlemen of the South are willin’ to meet them on the bridge.”

On the fifth day of the convention at a little before noon the resolutions committee returned, tired, raw-nerved men. The very looks of them hushed the hall, for they came in like doom-ladened prophets. The ladies of Charleston crowded the gallery and their laughter rang last on the hush. Farrell stopped and looked up and then came on to his place. Ah yes, my boy, Dennis thought, your belle’s hanging high today. The printed reports, majority and minority—for they had not managed a compromise—were passed from hand to hand. The murmuring rose to a din. They could have written it better, Dennis thought, never leaving the hall.

The majority, signed by the slave states plus California and Oregon, declared that neither Congress nor territorial legislature had the power to abolish slavery or to impair its propagation, that rather it was the duty of the national government to protect even on the high seas the rights of persons and property.

The minority reaffirmed the principle of popular sovereignty, and admitting the difference of opinion within the party on the rights and duties of Congress, resolved that the convention abide by the Supreme Court on questions of constitutional law.

There was nothing new in the arguments then, only more noise, and by late afternoon the biggest noises of all were about to shoot off. When word reached the gallery that Mr. Yancey of Alabama had asked to speak, the excitement was such a lady fainted with palpitations. Farrell did not even look up. Dennis stepped outdoors for a breath of fresh air. Gone was the gentle weather, the rain coming down in a steady pour. His own spirits were as damp as the day. He missed the children and Norah. Without his family a man was nothing. And he could not get Farrell out of his mind, the last man in the world he had ever expected to pity. With a family like his what was he? A man should rule his own wife…or stay at home her prisoner. Dennis spat in the puddle at his feet, returned to the convention and at the door joined a cheer for Yancey. In his seat, however, he followed the example of his delegation and sat on his hands until Pugh answered for the North. He’d have sat on them then as well by his own inclination.

The Lord’s Day was given to plots and negotiations so the vote on the platform didn’t come till Monday morning. As Dennis foretold, the minority version carried, 165 to 138, over a roar of voices trying to hold it back with points of order. Then the Douglas forces, the complacent arrogant fools, Dennis thought, consented to vote resolution by resolution. The first point carried, reaffirming popular sovereignty, the border states voting with the North. The Southerners then got their wind up and began to blow hot and hard. That brought a quick motion to table the rest of the platform and get on to the nominations, where, Dennis swore, they should have started in the first place. Farrell rose and spoke to its second. “Before it is too late, gentlemen,” he shouted. “It was too late when you put it in,” a Southerner cried. Dennis threw away his cigar. “Aye, the God’s truth,” he cried into the din, “he brought it in by the front door and now wants to sneak it out by the back.” And the split in the New York delegation showed wide enough to seat the South between them. Dean Richmond marched his thirty-five New York delegates out for consultation. As they passed the Illinois seats, the cry went up, “Stand fast!”

Farrell was bristling mad in their conclave. If there was to be a vote on the Supreme Court resolution, then for God’s sake vote in its favor. Do not yield the last honorable point on which Douglas could stand.

Dennis made his move. Most of the delegation was willing now to yield on the resolution and Farrell himself in his desperation was exposing Douglas’ weakness. “Gentlemen,” Dennis said, never having spoken softer, “if Douglas cannot stand, there are men who can.”

“No, no,” Farrell cried. “One thing at a time.”

“I’m thinkin’ of only one thing,” said Dennis. “There isn’t a one of us doesn’t know the platform won’t be worth its paper if we don’t elect the president. Tear up the platform altogether, and stand by a man who can stand without it.”

“Who, who?” rose now over Farrell’s protests.

“Horatio Seymour of New York. Douglas’ll be hard pressed to get two-thirds of this convention, aye, even a simple majority, and you know it, Farrell. Let them ballot themselves till they’re weary. Then we can put Horatio at the bridge as they say, and he’ll hold it. Don’t you forget it, gentlemen of the Softs: you pledged yourselves to a New York man if the convention found one, Douglas or no. Now I’ll give you a ticket that was proposed to me and with the solemn pledge of at least a dozen Southern votes to prime the rest: Seymour of New York and Breckenridge of Kentucky.”

You could see the change coming into their faces, Dennis thought. They’d been given a draft of hope. There wasn’t a man, even Farrell himself, wasn’t worn by the care of nursing Douglas through the sick convention. Bury him, gentlemen, Dennis said to himself, bury him quick for he’s dead.

“Let me ask you, Lavery,” Farrell said, and with cold quiet now himself, “did you propose it to them or did they propose it to you?”

“As God is my witness, it was them said the name first.”

“Then I ask you why did they not name Dickenson? I’ll tell you why: they know he could not break New York’s vote for Douglas. And that’s what they want, gentlemen. Not Seymour.”

“But I should want Seymour if I could have him,” Richmond said, and an easy majority of the caucus agreed. Dennis needed say no more.

“I tell you,” Farrell cried, “they will not be here to vote for him. I have lived in the house with them. I know. The young people the night you were there, Lavery, you heard them—yes, I knew you were there, I saw you leave—a Southern republic, that’s the sentiment of the South. Not the blandishments they handed you in the library.” Farrell lifted his fists in the air and shook them. Playing the priest again, Dennis thought. “Gentlemen, we have been too long cursed with available candidates, little, little men, whose only-recommendation is ignorance or absence. The people are wiser than you think. And they are stronger than you know. We are indeed at the bridge, and we shall have a strong president now whether he comes from this convention or not. Do you forget there will be another convention in Chicago? Whether or not they name Seward, Seward will carry New York state for them—unless Douglas is the man against him.”