Congressman Stout was Virgilia's lover. For some time he'd kept her in a four-room cottage on Thirteenth Street, up in the Northern Liberties. He refused to do more than that, refused to be seen in public with her, because he was married to a flat-chested drab named Emily, and because he had enormous ambition. This morning he was on the threshold of a great step upward. His speech was intended to remove any doubt about his qualifications.
During the first ten minutes, he had reiterated the familiar Radical positions. The South had in fact seceded, and Lincoln had been wrong to call the act constitutionally impossible. By seceding, the Confederate states had "committed suicide" and so were subject to regulation as "conquered provinces." Virgilia knew the argument, and the key phrases, by heart.
Knuckles white on the podium, Stout built to his climax. "And so, a philosophic chasm separates this deliberative body from the chief executive. It is a chasm so broad and deep, it cannot, perhaps should not, be bridged. Our opponent's view of the Constitution and the attendant political process epitomizes all that we reject — most especially a leniency toward the very people who nearly destroyed this republic."
He expected reaction there, and got it. Below, in special seats on the House floor, several senators led the applause. Among them Virgilia recognized the aristocratic Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, caned by a South Carolina hotspur at his Senate desk before the war; he'd almost died of the injury. So different from Sumner and Thad Stevens in some respects, Sam Stout was like them in one essential way: he believed in the moral lightness of Negro equality, not merely in the political exploitation of it.
"I have a vision for this nation," he said after the applause subsided. "A vision I fear the chief executive does not share. It is a vision in which I see a willful and arrogant people humbled and rendered powerless, their corrupt society overturned, while another people, an entire race, is lifted from enforced inequality to a new and rightful position of full citizenship. It is a vision the leadership of this Congress must and will fulfill, while casting into ignoble disgrace and ruin any group or individual daring to oppose it."
His dark eyes raked the audience. "The chief executive has employed time and the calendar to circumvent the elected representatives of the people. While Congress was in recess, he implemented his own illicit program. So let there be no misunderstanding. His actions cannot go unnoticed. Nor can they be forgiven. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down. God bless and promote the noble crusade of this Congress. He will surely bring us victory. Thank you."
Virgilia rose for the standing ovation. Warm and not a little aroused by the rhetoric, she couldn't wait to speak to Sam and praise him. The speech had become more openly hostile to Johnson since he'd read her the draft last Saturday. She clapped so hard her hands hurt.
George's sister was forty-one now, and had the sort of mature, full-bosomed figure that a majority of men considered the ideal. Her monthly allowance from her lover enabled her to dress well, though she was careful never to attract attention with gaudiness. Today her dress and Eton were a deep maroon. Her fur-trimmed winter bonnet, cape, and gloves were a complimentary dark gray. She had learned to use cosmetics to minimize facial scars left by childhood pox.
A tide of frock-coated admirers threatened to engulf Stout on the House floor. Watching, Virgilia was touched with a familiar longing. She loved Sam and still wanted to marry him and bear children for him, even though her age, and his ambition, made the dream hopeless. Worse, she'd lately heard gossip about his seeing another woman. By not speaking to him about it, not confronting him, she was trying to deny the existence of the rumor. Trying and failing.
The Speaker gaveled for a recess. Virgilia fought her way downstairs, where she exchanged enthusiastic words with Senator Sumner. "Brilliant," he declared. "Exactly on the mark." As usual, his tone prohibited disagreement.
Stout came through the doors, colleagues behind him, journalists and well-wishers converging in front. Virgilia joined the rush but suddenly pulled up short, her heart plummeting. Stout's eyes met hers and immediately shifted away, without recognition. She knotted her gloved hands together and watched her lover vanish in the crowd.
A voice startled her. "Wasn't that a tocsin, Virgilia? Wasn't that a call to war?"
She turned, struggling to smile. "It surely was, Thad. How are you?"
"Much better since I heard Sam speak. The schism with Congress is entirely in the open now. Johnson will soon be on the run."
Virgilia had met Thad Stevens at a government function in the spring. He knew her family, and their shared ideals had quickly drawn them together. He had soon become her confidant; he was the only person she had told about her relationship with Stout, and her earlier one with the escaped slave, Grady. There was a new word for mixed marriage, "miscegenation," but it didn't apply to her. She and Grady had lived together out of wedlock. Stevens was understanding because of his principles and his great affection for his mulatto housekeeper, Lydia Smith.
He guided her outside to the cool, pale sunshine washing over the Hill. At the other end of the muddy mall stood the unfinished monument to George Washington. Stevens said, "Governor Morton is a wise man to entrust Sam with the appointment."
Joy animated Virgilia's face. "You mean it's definite?"
"By this evening it will be. Sam must leave the Committee of Fifteen because we require nine House members, but he'll continue to guide our work behind the scenes."
"I can't wait to see him and congratulate him." Stout had promised to take supper with her that evening.
"Yes, well —" Stevens coughed, a curious uneasiness in his eyes. "It would be wise not to expect too much of Sam for a while. He'll be overwhelmed with the details of the new appointment."
Virgilia heard the warning but she was too excited, and too ardent about her lover, to pay serious attention.
When the war broke out, Virgilia Hazard had been adrift and emotionally exhausted. The grief of loss coupled with almost twenty years of abolitionist activity had drained her.
During those two decades she'd quarreled often with others in the Hazard family, especially George, over his friendship with the Mains, a clan of slave-owning Southerners. Her strong views had eventually driven her away from the family and into her relationship with Grady, who had been the property of Ashton Main's husband before Virgilia helped him escape. She and Grady had joined John Brown's small band of militant abolitionists, and had taken part in his raid on Harpers Ferry in '59. Army bullets had ended Grady's life there.
Soon after the start of the war, Virgilia had joined the Union nurse corps. In a field hospital, driven by a need to avenge Grady, she'd let a wounded Confederate soldier bleed to death. Only Sam Stout's covert intervention had spared her arrest and almost certain imprisonment. After that, they had become lovers.
At the time, Virgilia had thought that what she'd done was entirely right and justified. She had seen herself as a soldier at war, not a murderess. Lately, though, exhausted by regret and a strengthening wish to call back the deed — restore the soldier's life — she had found a new idealism; an idealism purified by the guilt she expected to live with for the rest of her life.
She no longer despised her brother George for liking Orry Main, or her brother Billy for marrying Brett. She had no wish to punish the South, as Sam and other Republicans did. Merely putting some of the key Republican tenets into law would be punishment enough. That was evident from the so-called Black Codes the various states were enacting to thwart the Freedmen's Bureau.