"They wish we'd all go away," Gabe Hamilton said at breakfast one morning at his hotel. "They wish we'd never come in the first place, matter of fact." He popped a piece of bacon into his mouth, then turned to the waiter, whom he knew. "Isn't that right, Heber?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Hamilton; I wasn't listening," Heber said blandly. "Can I get you and Mr. Lincoln more coffee?"
"Yes, thanks," Hamilton told him, whereupon he went away. Sighing, the sharp little Gentile spoke to Lincoln: "What do you want to lay that every word he wasn't listening to goes straight into John Taylor's ear before the clocks chime noon?"
"I don't know what Mr. Taylor is in the habit of doing of a morning," Lincoln answered. "That aside, I'd say you're likely right."
"Or which of his wives he's in the habit of doing it to, do you mean?" Hamilton said, winking. Mormon polygamy roused some people to moral outrage. It roused others to dirty jokes. So far as Lincoln could tell, it left no one not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints indifferent.
He said, "I am glad to have had the chance and taken the opportunity to have learned more about other aspects of the Mormons' way of life while here. I did not know, for instance, that they formerly practiced what might be described as a communistic system during their earlier years in Utah."
"You mean the Deseret Store?" Hamilton waited for Lincoln to nod, then went on, "I'd call it syndicalism myself. People brought their tithes to the store, and it sold what they brought to whoever needed it. The church-and that meant the government-kept some of the profit, too. Brigham Young didn't die poor, Mr. Lincoln, I'll tell you that. I expect you've seen the Lion House?"
"The long, long building where he housed his wives? One could hardly come to Salt Lake City and not see it." Lincoln paused to eat a couple of bites of tasty ham. "I do thank you, by the way, Mr. Hamilton, for arranging lectures hereabouts to tide me over and help keep me going until other engagements come through."
"Think nothing of it, sir, nothing at all," Hamilton replied. "You're educating the workers about labour and capital, and you're educating everybody else about the war. I can't think of anybody who'd know more about it who doesn't wear stars on his shoulders."
"The proper relation of labour to capital has concerned me since before the War of Secession," Lincoln said, "nor has defining and, if need be, regulating it grown less urgent since the war. The Mormons seem to employ the strictures of religion to lessen its harshness, but I do not think that a solution capable of wider application. The Mormons are the godly, pious folk we profess ourselves to be."
"That's a fact." Gabe Hamilton's eyes twinkled. "They won't skin each other, exploit each other, the way capitalists do-or the way they do with Gentiles, come to that. What they skin each other out of is wives."
He couldn't leave that alone. Few of the Gentiles who lived in Utah Territory could leave it alone, from what Lincoln had seen. That was why Utah had several times failed of admission to the Union as a state. Although the Book of Mormon spoke against it, the Latter-Day Saints would not renounce polygamy, while those outside their church could not countenance it.
After looking around to make sure Heber the waiter was out of earshot, Hamilton said, "I'm just glad the Confederates have even less use for the Mormons than we do. If they didn't, Utah would rise up right in the middle of this war, and that's a fact."
Remembering some of the things John Taylor had said at their supper meeting, Lincoln replied, "Don't be too sure they won't rise up on their own, taking advantage of our distraction with the CSA and with the European powers. I think President Blaine was shortsighted to pull the soldiers out of Fort Douglas here."
He didn't care whether or not Heber took his words to John Taylor. He rather hoped the waiter would, to let the Mormon president know someone wondered about his intentions. He did not mention that he also found Blaine shortsighted for involving the USA with England and France. In his administration, he'd done everything he could to keep the European powers out of the struggle against the Confederacy. Everything he could had not included enough victories to keep the Confederate States from bludgeoning their way to independence.
"I'd be glad to have some bluecoats around myself, I'll tell you that," Gabc Hamilton said. "Sometimes I thought they were the only thing keeping the Mormons from riding roughshod over us."
"They've behaved themselves well thus far," Lincoln said. Laternot much later-he would remember the optimistic sound of that.
"So they have," Hamilton said grudgingly, as if he were talking about a spell of good weather in late falclass="underline" something pleasant but unlikely to last. Remembering Brigham Young's loyalty during the War of Secession, Lincoln dared hope the Gentile was worrying over nothing.
After breakfast, Lincoln said, "Mr. Hamilton, would you be kind enough to drive me to the Western Union office? I want to send my son a wire."
"I'd be happy to, sir," Hamilton said. "What's your son do, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Robert? He's a lawyer in Chicago -a lawyer for the Pullman Company, as a matter of fact." Lincoln 's long, lugubrious face got longer and glummer. "And he doesn't approve of his old pa's politics, not even a little he doesn't." His expression lightened, just a bit. "We don't let that come between us, though, not for family things. We aren't so foolish as USA and CSA, you see."
Hamilton chuckled appreciatively. "I like that-though the Rebs wouldn't. To hear them talk, they're as old as we are, and the only tie is that they decided to stay in the same house with us for a while before they moved on to a place of their own."
"I prefer to think of it as knocking down half our house, and using its floors and walls to build their own." A rueful smile creased Lincoln 's face. "Of course, the Confederate States don't care what I think." As he rose from the table, he stuck up a forefinger in self-correction. "No, that's not quite so."
"Really?" Gabriel Hamilton raised an eyebrow. "I didn't reckon you'd have to qualify that statement in any way, shape, form, color, or size."
"Color is the proper term," Lincoln said. "I have heard that certain of my writings are popular with the handful of educated Negroes in the Confederacy, their race's labour being exploited even more ruthlessly-or perhaps just more openly-than any in the United States."
"Isn't that interesting?" Hamilton said. "How do they get hold of your speeches and articles and books, do you suppose?"
"Unofficially," Lincoln answered, picking up his stovepipe hat and going outside. "I am given to understand that my works are on the Index Expurgatorum for Negroes in the CSA, along with those of Marx and Engels and other European Socialists. I hope you will forgive my taking a certain amount of pride in the company in which they place me." He climbed up into Hamilton 's carriage.
"You deserve to be there." Hamilton unhitched the horses and got into the carriage himself. "Won't be but a couple of minutes," he said, flicking the reins. "We're just four or five blocks away."
Lincoln coughed a couple of times at the dust the carriage-and all the other buggies and wagons and horses on the street-kicked up. It tasted of alkali on his tongue. Dust was the biggest nuisance Salt Lake City had.
"You can drop me off, if you want to go on about your own business," he told Hamilton when they got to the telegraph office. "I expect I can find my way back to the hotel without too much trouble."