"Stormy," Wadsworth said. "Issues that go all the way back to Wade-Davis remain unresolved, and the leadership of our party is dedicated to settling them." Wade-Davis, a bill drafted in response to Lincoln's moderate plan for Reconstruction, set much tougher requirements for readmission of the Confederate states. Lincoln had let the bill die with a pocket veto, thereby goading Congressmen Wade and Davis to restate their case in their so-called Manifesto, a blistering document asserting the right of the Congress to control postwar reunification. The Manifesto, published in Greeley's ferociously Republican New York Tribune, marked out the lines of the battle to which Wadsworth referred.
"Stormy, eh?" Dills mused. "Rather a dramatic word." He was thinking melodramatic.
"But entirely appropriate," the congressman said. "Look at the forces already in motion." He ticked them on his fingers. "In both the House and the Senate we have successfully denied seats to the elected representatives from the traitor states. Compliance by those states with the President's few requirements is not enough reparation for the crime of rebellion. Not nearly enough. Two, we have formed the Joint Committee on Reconstruction —"
"The Committee of Fifteen. A direct affront to Mr. Johnson. Really, though, do you construe it entirely as a radical apparatus?
Most of the members are moderates or conservatives. Senator Fessenden, the chairman, is far from radical."
"Oh, come, Jasper. With both Thad Stevens and Sam Stout on the committee, do you have any doubt of its direction? To continue" — he folded another finger down — "Lyman Trumbull is already drafting a Senate bill to extend the life of the Freedmen's Bureau. If that doesn't provoke His Accidency, I'm Marse Bob Lee."
"I'll grant you that one," Dills said, nodding. Johnson's opposition to the Bureau, on grounds that it interfered with the rights of the separate states, was one of the great running fights of his administration. Dills was reasonably familiar with the Bureau, because of a client, a rich political hack named Stanley Hazard. He was a member of the Pennsylvania family that included George Hazard, the second of Elkanah Bent's declared enemies. Stanley had hired Dills for secret legal work involving ownership of some highly controversial property.
"A friend of mine," Dills continued, "close to the Bureau says they're hearing all sorts of horror stories from the South. Stories of Negroes tricked into signing work contracts that are virtually slave labor agreements."
"Yes, precisely," Wadsworth said. "Mississippi enacted its Black Code in November. Among other things, they stipulate that a Negro can be arrested, even beaten, if he's accused of vagrancy. Who's to say what that is? Is it occupying the same sidewalk as a white man? Merely passing through a town? It now appears that each of the erring sisters will enact similar codes, to guarantee a docile work force. They're fools down there, Jasper, arrogant fools. Apparently the war taught them nothing. Those of us in the Congress must take over their instruction."
"Johnson will continue to resist."
"Of course. And when you speak of him, you raise the great central issue to which all the others are related. Where does political sovereignty rest? Not with the President or his army, in my opinion. Military conquests made by the United States, whether foreign or domestic, can be policed only by the Congress. I believe that, Thad Stevens believes that, Ben Wade believes that. And we have a three to one majority in Congress to make our view prevail. Over the corpse of Mr. Johnson's political future, if need be," Wadsworth concluded with a smug smile.
"Perhaps your word stormy hardly covers it, then. Should we say cataclysmic?''
Wadsworth shrugged. "Label it however you wish. Andrew Johnson is headed for disaster."
That subject exhausted, Wadsworth remarked that he had just returned from New York, where he'd seen Joe Jefferson starring in his own adaptation of Rip Van Winkle. "Friends saw it in September at the Adelphi in London. They said it was a huge hit, not to be missed. I concur. You must see it, Jasper."
Dills replied that the theater didn't interest him.
"Literature, then? Have you read that amusing story about the California jumping frog? It's being reprinted everywhere. It's by some young sprout of a writer named Clemens."
Dills said he didn't like fiction. He didn't deem it immoral, as many clerics did; he only thought it inconsequential, unrelated to the real world.
Wadsworth rose and consulted his pocket watch. "My dear Jasper," he said wryly, "does anything in the world interest you?"
Seated in the plush chair, his tiny feet inches above the carpet, Dill said, "Power interests me. Who has it? Who is losing it? Who is scheming to regain it?"
"Then you've certainly spent your life in the right town. And you've got a damn good show ahead of you. If you're a gambler, bet on my side — to win. Oh, by the way, I saw the announcement on the members' board. Happy birthday, Jasper."
Wadsworth left, his final words serving as the only celebration for Jasper Dills this year. No matter; Dills was content with his clubs, his whiskey, his stipend from Bent's mother — and his choice seat for the coming struggle.
"Cataclysmic" might not be an exaggeration, he thought. As Wadsworth said, one merely had to consider the forces involved, and the stakes. They were enormous. Nothing less than political control of Southern legislatures and Southern votes, which in turn meant control of Southern land and Southern wealth. In the course of Dills's recent work for Stanley Hazard, his oafish client had shown some figures that vividly illustrated just how rich the pickings were.
His imagination liberated by a second drink, Dills tried to foresee events. Certainly the issue of the Freedmen's Bureau would touch off a new civil war. But the poor clod from Tennessee would be outgeneraled by a Stevens, a Wade, a Stout, a Sumner. Johnson merely wanted to be fair and constitutionally correct; they wanted to turn a minority party into the ruling party, with Negro votes tipping the balance. Johnson fought for principle, as did a few of the radicals. But the radicals as a group, fought for a more inspiring cause: their own craving for power.
Suddenly, pleased and smiling, Dills murmured, "A circus. That's a better metaphor than weather, or war." He immediately refined it to a Roman circus. With Mr. Johnson the Christian surrounded by ravening lions.
There was no doubt how the contest would end. But it would certainly be worth watching. He must step up his pardon work, his influence peddling in connection with Army commissions, and even the number of letters perpetuating the fictions about Elkanah Bent. All of it would help him hold on to his box seat for the bloody spectacle soon to be enacted in the Washington arena.
Congress passed a bill; the President refuses to approve it, and then by proclamation puts as much of it in force as he sees fit. ... A more studied outrage on the legislative authority of the people has never been perpetrated. ... The authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected.
19
The voice reached the remote corners of the House floor and every seat in the packed gallery, including Virgilia Hazard's in the front row. It was the morning of January 8, 1866.
Virgilia had listened to the speaker many times. Even so, he still had the power to send a shiver down her spine. Those who heard Representative Sam Stout, Republican of Indiana, for the first time always marveled that such a magnificent voice issued from such an unlikely body. Stout was round-shouldered and pale as a girl kept out of the sun. His thick brows and wavy, oil-dressed hair looked all the blacker by contrast.