Men of No Property

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  PART VIII

  1

  DENNIS MADE HIS BREAK with Fernando Wood at the State Democratic convention in ’59, merely crossing to the hall of the regulars during the muss at Syracuse. It was as easy a step as he had ever taken. He had always felt about Wood’s Mozart Hall organization that it was like the Episcopal Church: the trimmings were there and the show was fine, but you could tell the minute you walked in it wasn’t the real thing. Tammany gave him the prodigal’s welcome. He was a Hard now, crusting over as the slave agitation grew and the Softs got softer toward Free Soil, and it was the Hard wing of Tammany led the cheers when he came home. They put him up and held him up as a national delegate to Charleston. “And what’ll they want of you for that?” said Norah. “The collapse of Fernando Wood since you ask it.” And Charleston might be the place for it, Dennis thought. Thank God he had been wise enough to prophesy the return of Wood to the mayor’s office with or without Lavery. To have promised his defeat and seen him win, Dennis would have crippled himself entirely. “And what is it you want of them, Dennis?” “All I can get, woman. All an Irishman can get isn’t enough for all the Irishmen he has to get for.”

  Many a man aboard, Dennis thought, as the Charleston packet sailed out of New York, would gladly see him crippled. The upstate men were mostly Softs, but Hard or Soft they feared him: he hadn’t much to lose, and he had more than most of them to gain. They had bound themselves and Tammany to a unit vote—thirty-five or nothing, and they were going pledged to Douglas by the majority feeling. Ah, but there was a trap smuggled on by the Hards if they could manage to spring it—New York must go, its thirty-five strong, for a New York son if such a name came up at the national convention. And here, Dennis knew, was his only power. If Douglas won he would not have a bat’s chance in daylight, city, state, or nation. Douglas, he thought, was the nothing he had to lose. And who was Mother Tammany sending South for Douglas (for if she was Hard at bottom, sure she was a bit Soft atop) ? Aye, Stephen Farrell, Douglas’ own. Oh, mother, mother, wait up for us and see what your boys bring you home from the hunt!

  No one aboard, Dennis knew, could afford more to be merry than himself, and looking at it another way, no one could afford less not to be merry. He poured the whiskey for the delegation and proposed the toasts, and made himself especially agreeable to Delia Farrell who was accompanying her husband to Charleston for a visit home. She was soon inquiring of him about one and another of the delegates, where did they come from and what were their homes like, and was Mr. Belmont as rich as was said? And then sly as a vixen she came round to the point, if she kept it secret would he tell her what he thought Fernando Wood’s chances were of getting his independent delegation seated? “Stephen just won’t tell me anything,” she said, “exceptin’ things don’t matter at all. Why home we ladies take to politics like gossip, Mr. Lavery. You’ll see.” Dennis skipped round the question on Wood and ventured to ask if her father would be there at the convention’s start. “I should think he will,” she cried, “him bein’ practically its host.” “I’m lookin’ forward to his acquaintance,” Dennis said. And Delia smiled encouragement. “He’s partial to Irishmen.”

  Nowhere surely this side of the Atlantic was there a city so graceful and pretty as Charleston. The air was as soft as the eyes of its women, providing they liked what they saw. The houses all wore verandas and the trees were draped round with a lazy moss. There was but one thing he saw Dennis found offensive: the buzzards perched up on the roof of the market, swooping suddenly down for a perishing scrap, tearing it out from the jaws of the woebegone dogs who chanced to come on it sooner. Oh, and one more offense he took—the condescension to him of the niggers. And both were protected by law! Free them? Then God save the Irish when they came swarming north. The dogs had more chance with the vultures.

  The day after their arrival Delia Farrell played hostess to the New York delegates that evening in her father’s house, and an elegant house it was, with servants galore and plenty of whiskey. The senator himself was present and made a warm speech of welcome. But for all his tickish smile, Dennis thought, he was picking over their every word, and before the night was done he knew the insides of all of them. He knew Dennis to be a Fenian and commended him on a speech he had made, and with him, he too came round to discussing Wood’s chances. The executive committee had ruled the mayor and his company out. “I’ll tell you frankly, sir,” the senator said, “I’ll support him on the floor. He’s more national in complexion than what I know of you gentlemen.” Meaning, Dennis thought, that the mayor was willing to coddle slavery. “We’ve men in our delegation who’d not offend you,” he said. “And are they here tonight, sir?” Dennis waited until the old man’s eyes met his. “You’re talkin’ to one now, Senator.” Osborn gave his arm a little squeeze. “Come and see me at the Charleston House in the mornin’, Mr. Lavery.”

  Well, Fernando, Dennis thought, in my position you’d do the same thing. It was you taught me: before you can bargain you got to have something to sell.

  There was some precedent for Wood’s claim to half the New York seats. Syracuse had been riotous, and four years before the Cincinnati convention had settled a similar situation by recognizing two New York delegations and splitting the state’s vote amongst them. If Wood got support on the floor he still had a fighting chance. Dennis confided to his brother delegates what he proposed to do: reduce to the bone Wood’s Southern support, and most of the boys approved it. But not Stephen Farrell. And that, Dennis thought, was how it would be all the way down the line. “You don’t know him like I do,” said Dennis. “He’s bland as cream and he’s already put up a good case.”

  “I am not one,” Farrell said, “to underestimate either Mr. Wood or yourself, Lavery. Or for that matter, my father-in-law. What’s his price for dropping Wood?”

  “Wouldn’t you credit me with an ounce of persuasion?” said Dennis. “I hope to persuade him Wood’s not worth the fight.”

  “As long as there are men like you in the regular New York delegation?” Farrell said evenly.

  Dennis could feel his temper flare, but as he had taught himself his best control was to put a smile on it. “Would you begrudge a little gesture of friendship in the beginnin’, Farrell, when it’s plain there’ll be so little of it at the end?”

  “I am not opposed to compromise,” Stephen said. “I expect to make more than most men before this is over. But I do not like to expose our weakness by asking unnecessary favors. If we have to beg help in order to stand up against Fernando Wood, gentlemen, we may as well go home.”

  Farrell found support for that sentiment, and the truth was Dennis agreed with him, but he badly needed this wedge for himself that trading with Osborn would give him. “Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill,” he said, “and believe me, boys, that’s all I’ve got here. But it’s always been my experience, you unarm a man by askin’ his help. Oh, there’s other ways, too. I could spit in the senator’s eye, but it wouldn’t seem decent after his hospitality…or was it yours we were enjoyin’ last night, Mr. Farrell?”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Dean Richmond said, and since Richmond was their chairman, Dennis apologized. Thereupon the chairman ruled that he be allowed to consult with Senator Osborn. When it came to political infight, Dennis would meet Farrell anywhere any time.

  Oh Lord, Dennis thought, as the convention opened, home was never like this. There were men from the North and men from the West, and even their faces the color of gold, and some with voices like eagles, screaming out to be heard on the floor; the pages were flying with word to the chairman, and him pounding the head off his gavel. And when finally he got enough quiet for business you still couldn’t hear a thing that went on, for the traffic outdoors was a torture. Boulders studded the streets, bold as eggs in a basket, and the clatter of wheels thumping round them would jar loose the soul from your body. Nothing more was achieved than the grinding of tempers till cartloads of sawdust were spread in the street. The only name D
ennis heard while he waited was Douglas—Douglas here and Douglas there, up with Douglas or down with Douglas, it was Stephen Douglas everywhere. If the West was near solid behind him, the South was his rockbound opposition.

  We’re off, thought Dennis, when at last he could hear the gavel. A Mr. Fisher of Virginia soon rose to the purpose of seating Fernando Wood. Poor Fernandy: when he couldn’t get a good man behind him, he needed to go with a poor one, and Fisher had the voice of a mouse, aye and soon it was seen, the temper of a lion, a grievous mixture in any politician. Fisher was speared on a point of order, and Fernando asked to stay on as a guest! Dennis’ cigar did not even go out, so unvexatious was the matter, and for his part in it he concealed his pride by keeping his eyes before him. Before the day was out, he had trouble keeping them open. If the last judgment was run according to parliamentary procedure Iscariot would escape hell on a point of order. It came down in the end to the convention’s waiting for the resolutions committee’s report. Dennis watched the committee withdraw, Farrell going out from New York, to work on the party platform. A jolly time he’d have there with his Free Soil notions, for the South held the committee majority.

  Day after day they stayed out, working night and day by reports—all, Dennis thought, to the choosing of delicate words, as though words now would accomplish a thing. The longer the convention waited them, the less their platform would mean, for men North and South were spouting, over and over the same thing like a fountain, states’ rights and constitutional rights, and the higher law under God. Ah, the wonder of political men, each one thinking he was saying something new and everyone else of the opinion that he had said the same thing himself and better, and at the first chance, asking to be heard say it again!

  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.”