Rachel, After the Darkness

Chapter Fourteen —Cherished Sins

As usual, the long, hard day ended with Oscar Alexander and Rachel in deep conversation, their final talk of the day. He turned up the gaslights and stoked the fire then stepped to the bay windows that faced the street. With his customary perfected and concerned look, he spoke.

“Rachel, you know the gala is on Friday, and you’re going to meet a lot of prominent people whose names and newspapers you will recognize from what you’ve read. They are editors and journalists who had a lot to say during and after the war, for and against Lincoln and the Radicals. And for and against the so-called Rebellion. New York has an amazing history. Not everyone thinks alike.”

“I must remember, the war’s over,” she said with not the slightest hint of weariness in her voice, though the sun was setting over the Hudson River and it would soon be dark.

“Yes, and some of the rhetoric will make you feel you are being singled out and that the war is still on. Just remember, those people don’t know you, and don’t forget, I’m going to introduce you as Rachel Beauregard. For a few weeks they will just have to wonder who this R.E.B. Payne is. I don’t know how much you know about The Journal of Commerce or The Herald, The Tribune, or The Times, all New York papers, of course, and there are many more.”

Rachel smiled, and said. “Oh, yes, I have spent hours on end memorizing the words of Horace Greeley and Gordon Bennett, though I know Greeley died in November.”

“Splendid, Rachel. You’re going to fit in. Amazingly so.”

“I hope so,” she said. “I shiver thinking about it, and I would probably not want to be in the same room with Horace Greeley were he still living. However, he did give me reason for hope the day I found out that he, along with Cornelius Vanderbilt and Gerritt Smith, posted Jefferson Davis’ bail bond of $100,000. Why do you suppose they did that?”

“For reasons you already know. They were angered that Lincoln ordered General Dix to take possession, by military force, of the New York World and the New York Journal of Commerce and to arrest and imprison the editors, proprietors, and publishers at those newspapers. That was in May of 1864. Gerritt, incidentally, had supported the abolitionist John Brown. Now that’s radical. Can you believe Gerritt was so incensed at the mistreatment of the press that he would put money up for Davis? I guess he thought Lincoln’s radical actions called for some of his own.”

“Sounds like some more of that political indecisiveness.”

“It does, indeed, Rachel. So much happened in those days, and so much is going on now, especially in New York City, that says a lot of prominent people have not forgotten what Lincoln did. Arresting those men was stretching it way too far in my opinion.

“The New York Times is in the middle of covering the Tammany Hall Democratic Party Machine. They’ve done their fair share of exposing Boss Tweed and his scandalous political shenanigans, ousting him from City Hall.”

Rachel knew a little about Boss Tweed; mostly that he was still around, that his trial had begun in January, and that the jury couldn’t agree on a verdict. She was not going to worry about that. Not right now.

“Do you need proper attire for this occasion, Rachel?”

“No, but thank you for asking, Mr. Alexander. I’ve brought some things my mother sent me from Natchez. She’s quite proper herself. I will do my best to fit in.”

“I’m not the least bit worried. It’s just that I’ve heard about poverty in the South and I didn’t want you to—”

“Mr. Alexander, I have never seen poverty in the South to the extent of poverty on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.”

He looked perplexed and was momentarily speechless.

“Surely you’ve been down there, sir.”

“Why, yes, but not in many years.”

“Well, just because proper New Yorkers are living in the Gilded Age doesn’t mean the poor immigrants in the tenements are not suffering the kind of poverty and much worse than the South endured during and after the war. We live in farm houses with acres and acres between us. The tenement dwellers are stacked like sardines in a tin. Hungry, sad, lonely, needing a loving touch, a helping hand, a morsel of food.”

“How do you know that, Rachel?”

“I went down there.”

“You went down there!”

“Yes, and I will remember it until the day I die. And I hope to go again. Those people relinquished their family and friends and all hope of ever returning to their homeland just to come to this country. Yes, they are free from the fear of oppression. At least I hope so, but they are not free from hunger and seeming hopelessness. The sight of it broke my heart.

“We fought the Revolutionary War for the right to do that ourselves. And I could really take the stump to rant about how badly the South wanted to be free of the Radicals, but it was not to be for us. There doesn’t seem to be too much equity in the treatment of people sometimes. Don’t mistake what I’m saying. I’m a capitalist. I do not believe in the ideology of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and I loathe their Communist Manifesto—and I’ve read it all. We in the South have always believed in hard work and personal sacrifice to provide for our own families and our extended families and anyone around us who may fall on hard times. We never wanted or expected a handout, neither did we expect the levy of high taxes the Union placed on our cotton. And because of that, the North was making it impossible for us to exist. Ordinary people at the North probably do not realize that cotton is our lifeline in the South.”

“Rachel, every time we talk, I become more enlightened.”

“The same is true with me, Mr. Alexander. I’m learning so much from you and this great city. I just have to be careful to keep everything in the right perspective for me. I have to return home to The Olde South!

“Now tell me, where will this gala be held?”