Charleston (24 page)

“Columbia?” Cassandra said. “Now?” Sleet ticked against the dining-room windows. New Year's had brought bleak weather.

“Joel Poinsett needs a confidential document taken to our friends upstate,” Edgar said. “He won't trust it to the mails, and other matters occupy him here.” Poinsett chaired a Unionist committee of correspondence, set up on the model of similar committees in the Revolution, to respond to the nullification threat.

Edgar went on, “Jackson objects to moving Federal troops from the forts to the city in case of trouble. He's sensitive to charges that he's a military tyrant. He'd prefer to have civilians form a posse comitatus, but Poinsett's opposed. If we did it, and we were captured, we wouldn't be treated as military prisoners. So on one hand Joel must refuse the President and at the same time appeal to him for a supply of grenades and small rockets. He saw them used effectively in street fighting in Mexico.”

Cassandra sighed. “Street fighting. Dear heaven.” She sneezed. Alex looked up from her plate of rice and slaw, okra and fresh-baked corn dodgers. She'd heard her mother sneeze several times in the past few hours. Cassandra bathed three times a week, which most of the gentry insisted was harmful, especially in cold weather.

“How many men have you recruited?” Cassandra asked.

“In the state, six or seven thousand. It's less than a third of the number mobilizing on the other side.” Governor Hayne had been granted authority to draft males between
eighteen and forty-five, Unionists included. He wanted an additional force of 2,500 “mounted minutemen” capable of riding to any point in the state within seventy-two hours.

“Promise me you won't go into the streets and fight. Think of your responsibilities.”

In his usual unpretentious way Edgar said, “At this moment my responsibilities are to South Carolina and our country. I'll do what I must.” He sipped coffee, peered at Alex. “Why so quiet, miss?”

“It all seems terribly confused and sad, Papa.”

“There's no confusion in the North. Did you read your brother's letter? National sentiment consigns the Nullies to contempt and infamy. Even some Southern legislatures are voicing objection.” He took her hand. “Are you sure you're well? I hardly hear ten words a day from you.”

Fortunately Alex didn't have to invent excuses; Cassandra's loud sneeze allowed her to say, “It's Mama we should worry about.”

“Just so. Before I leave, I'll ask Dr. Baltus to visit. I want no harm to befall anyone in this family.”

 

Alex regarded Dr. Nigel Baltus, and most physicians, with suspicion tinged with dread. Whereas Xeno Hayward had studied two years at the state Medical College established in 1824, Baltus was of the old school, having learned medicine as an apprentice to Hippocrates Sapp. Dr. Baltus examined Cassandra, put her to bed, then spoke to Edgar and Alex downstairs.

“I fear pneumonia. It's essential that we act aggressively to rid her system of poisons. The nigger girl has instructions to sweat her tonight. I've prescribed calomel and an emetic for tomorrow morning. After that I'll apply leeches to bleed her. We may need to take as much as a half pint per day.”

Alex said, “That's so harsh. Does any of it do any good?”

“Young lady, these treatments were endorsed by Dr. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania. No doctor in America was more highly regarded. Even though he was a Yankee.”

The feeble levity failed. Alex said, “I remember a girl at Miss Fancher's who was treated with calomel. Her teeth and gums rotted.”

Edgar frowned at her. Baltus said, “Oh, are you a medical expert, then? Do you have a more efficacious routine to suggest?”

His abusive tone sent Alex from the table fighting tears. She'd cried a lot lately. She despised her weakness yet couldn't help it. Everything around her seemed to be crumbling.

Edgar knocked at her door as wintry twilight settled. On his shoulder hung a broad holster belt of black leather, with the English blunderbuss pistols his father had carried in the Revolution.

“I must leave at first light. Look after your mother while I'm away.”

“Of course I will, Papa.”

“And look after yourself. I hate to see you so unhappy. Are you still suffering with memories of last November?”

“Oh, no, that's past.” It wasn't a lie; he had been referring to the street brawl. She was suffering because of Henry's exile. She dared confide in no one, not even Maudie.

 

Five days later the weather moderated. The clear skies and mild temperatures that could make a Charleston winter so pleasant returned. Alex decided on a sail, hoping it might banish her gloom.

She visited Cassandra first. The darkened sickroom smelled of sweat and a full chamber pot. Cassandra was asleep, drawing slow, labored breaths. Alex grieved to see her mother so feeble. The doctor's purging and bleeding—he'd substituted his surgical knife for leeches—appeared to be doing no good. She vowed never to surrender herself to such barbarism. She kissed Cassandra's damp forehead and stole out.

On Broad Street she passed one of the military units drilling in anticipation of February 1, “the Fatal First,” as people called it. The Charleston Silver Greys were a volunteer company of Nullifiers over fifty. Few had muskets
or rifles; many used walking sticks to prop themselves up. Blue cockades decorated their hats, palmetto buttons their shabby militia blouses.

She sailed into the harbor past Castle Pinckney, avoiding the wake of a side-wheeler outward bound across the bar. The cargo ship flew the Stars and Stripes upside down, a defiance of Washington widely seen in the city.

On Sullivan's Island she beached the skiff and walked the deserted strand. Sitting in the pale sunshine, she listened to the ocean's soothing rush and thought of Henry.

After their lovemaking she'd worried about her personal situation, which was a rarity for her. Henry had had no condom of sheep or pig intestine to protect them—they cost a dollar—and Cassandra believed pessaries unhealthful, so Alex had resorted to a douche with alum. For a week she lost sleep, until her monthly cycle began.

She longed to hold Henry again, or just hear news of him. Mary Strong had taught her son to write an elegant hand, but Alex knew he wouldn't send a letter, out of some tenuous fear of linking the two of them.

She pulled off her shoes and waded in the cold surf. Black-headed gulls swooped around her, hoping to be fed. She raised a hand to greet them. They flew off.

She wished she could be so free, escape so easily from the burdens of emotion and conscience. She thought of running away with Henry to find a new life far from the workhouse and ranting politicians and doctors who tormented patients with cruel and useless treatments. Charleston seemed benighted; surely somewhere the sun rose on a better, brighter day.

When she returned home, she stood awhile before the portrait of Joanna. Slow footsteps came down the stairs. “Mama, should you be up?”

Cassandra wore slippers and a quilted robe over her flannel gown. She was pale and perilously thin.

“The bed linen needed changing. I'll go back up shortly.” She stroked her daughter's hair. “You do so like that picture.”

“Yes. She was a brave woman, wasn't she?”

“Your father says so.”

“How does a person find bravery?”

“Why, I suppose by delving deep into themselves when courage is called for.”

“I worry that I'm not brave. That I'll fail some crucial test someday.”

“Dear Alex. You've been a creature of worry ever since you were little. You worry over everything but yourself. That's another way you're different. Most young women worry about their wardrobes, their figures, their beaux, their marriage prospects—”

“I can't help what I am, Mama.”

“No, and I love you for caring about others. I'm feeling a trifle weak, would you help me upstairs?”

 

Edgar returned after ten days. “The situation's tense,” he told the family, “although Hayne and his crowd are desperate to avoid acts of provocation. They realize that if they seize goods or jail customs collectors, sympathy will go immediately to the President.”

In a message to Congress on January 16, Jackson presented his program for dealing with nullification. It outlined measures for avoiding armed confrontation while ensuring compliance with Federal law, but even so, it quickly became known as the Force Bill. Calhoun rose in the Senate to fulminate against it. Governor Hayne said that if the bill passed, he would recall the Nullification Convention and recommend secession. Jackson let it be known that should that happen, he would try Calhoun for treason and “hang him as high as Haman.”

Legislatures throughout the South condemned South Carolina. The Force Bill became law. Then, as the Fatal First approached, Congress enacted a compromise tariff bill transferring many protected goods to the exempt list and lowering rates gradually over the next nine years. Edgar rode to Columbia again, this time in Judge Porcher's coach.

The Unionists watched from a convenient hotel as Hayne reconvened a slate of delegates inclined to be con
ciliatory. Conservative Nullifiers repealed the November ordinance that had precipitated the crisis, though in a last, meaningless defiance, they also voted to nullify the Force Bill.

“A victory for the republic,” Judge Porcher declared. “Old Hickory has shown us the future. The majority rules.”

“While the South becomes an isolated minority,” someone grumbled. “Surely this same little drama, these threats of secession, and war, will be repeated in the future. The antislavery crowd won't let up. If anything, Jackson's victory encourages them. The next confrontation may not end with a fizzle but a cannonade.”

“Not in my lifetime, I pray God.” As the judge changed position in his chair, his face screwed up in pain. He pointed to his gouty left leg. “Edgar, I must rest here in Columbia a few days. You're welcome to my coach.”

“Thank you, no, I'll find a horse at a stable.”

On his homeward ride Carolina's capricious weather dropped the temperature thirty degrees in an afternoon. Black clouds filled the sky. Gale winds tortured trees and every living thing, including Edgar and his hired mare. A downpour caught them ten miles below the Congaree River. Edgar decided he'd better find a place to shelter for the night.

He cantered onto a wood bridge over a shallow stream. Rain falling on the bridge froze instantly. The mare slid sideways, neighing. Her withers broke the rail; a forehoof slipped over the edge. As the mare bucked and scrambled to stay on the bridge, she threw Edgar sideways into space.

A slave hurrying home at nightfall found the mare standing head down at the edge of the stream. Edgar lay half submerged in a crust of ice, his neck broken.

Edgar's pistols were safe and dry in his saddlebag. The sheriff of the parish returned them to Charleston with his body. Alex begged to have them. Cassandra agreed, though she couldn't understand why her daughter would want souvenirs of a tragedy. Nor could Alex, grief stricken, explain it adequately.

The funeral was delayed a week until Ham sailed home. He'd been in Charleston less than twenty-four hours when he drew Alex aside to say he wouldn't be returning to Yale. He'd already visited Edgar's friend Petigru, who had agreed to let him read law in St. Michael's Alley.

Alex tried to argue him out of it. Ham was firm. “I can't go back. Look at Mama's condition. She's so weak, she can barely raise her head. You and I are the only ones left to run things, care for her.”

“I want no part of Bell's Bridge, Ham. I won't spend my life operating a business that employs slaves.”

“Nor will I. We'll find someone. I'll attend to it.”

He discharged Dr. Baltus and asked Xeno Hayward to take Cassandra as a patient. “I know your affection for our cousin Ouida, and the lack of friendliness between the branches of our family. This is a matter of higher import. A matter of my mother's life.”

It took no further persuasion. Hayward stopped the calomel and the bleeding and put Cassandra on a regimen of fresh air and ample rest. “She survived pneumonia no thanks to my colleague,” he told Ham and Alex. “His so-called treatment severely damaged her constitution. I
don't know whether she'll ever be as robust or active as she was before.”

At the mortuary where Edgar lay, Simms, Bethel, Ouida and Gibbes presented their condolences. Ouida stumbled about without glasses as usual. Only Dr. Hayward's arm saved her from a bad fall.

Gibbes cornered Alex and folded his white-gloved hands around hers. He mouthed platitudes, as though the incident in the pine grove hadn't happened. Now sixteen, Gibbes was undeniably handsome. He knew it and carried himself with a smug air. The two-year difference in ages was minimized by his height and maturity.

As the family departed, Simms piously declared, “Political differences are trivialities in the eyes of the Lord.” Alex wanted to scream that her father hadn't died in the service of trivialities. She struggled for calm and murmured something unintelligible.

Mourners packed the pews of St. Michael's for the service. All of Edgar's Unionist friends and their families attended, along with the city intendant and members of council. Governor Hayne appeared in his state carriage, bringing Senator Calhoun's letter of sympathy to the family of “my worthy adversary.”

Maudie, Titus, and the other house slaves looked down from the gallery. The Strongs sat there without Henry. Scattered around them were some two dozen black men, many with wives. Whether freedmen or slaves they had all worked at Bell's Bridge at one time. The number of Negroes paying respects to Edgar showed Alex that he'd been a decent master.

One front pew at the church sat empty. It belonged to the Larks. A beautifully inscribed card with a black border had arrived the day before.

The message infuriated Alex. Lark had the gall to pretend friendship. She burned the card without showing it to her mother.

The coffin went into the ground. The bells of St. Michael's tolled. Alex didn't cry. She'd cried at the mortuary, alone, lying with her arms over her father's bier. She wouldn't cry again.

Ham threw the first handful of dirt on the coffin. With a soft moan Cassandra slipped from his supportive grasp and collapsed on the winter-browned grass. Ham and Dr. Hayward carried her limp body to the carriage.

Rage overcame Alex. She blamed the radical Nullifiers for Edgar's death. She blamed Calhoun, Robert Rhett, Hayne and Hamilton, the whole rotten lot. She blamed every person in South Carolina who tolerated black bondage and imperiled their immortal souls for the sake of profit.

She blamed herself.

She blamed Charleston.

 

On a sunny Tuesday in the spring of the following year, 1834, Morris Marburg of the Crescent Bank sat at his great oak desk facing a large ground-floor window that overlooked busy Broad Street, the town's legal and financial heart. A row of oval miniatures decorated the desk: portraits of his lovely coffee-colored wife, Naomi, his daughters, Helena, Sophia, Margaretta, and Gerda, and the baby, Marion, nine, already chosen by his father to be the bank's next president.

At forty-one Marburg was an important citizen of the city he loved, albeit with reservations. His wide-ranging interests had furnished the office with a large globe, a wall map of the expanding nation, marble busts of Washington and Jefferson, Plato and Voltaire. Marburg was a devout Jew but a confirmed deist. He believed in a rational universe of natural laws whose existence verified the presence and power of a supreme being. He believed in reason as the path to resolution of mankind's problems. He grieved
that so many in Carolina had forgotten that, or chose to ignore it.

Working in front of the window, Marburg sometimes waved to acquaintances or strangers passing by. He believed that visibility of the president promoted confidence in the bank's solidity and helped lure new depositors.

At the moment he wasn't waving at anyone but studying income statements of the 136-mile Charleston & Hamburg railway. The figures didn't satisfy him. The bank needed to sell its shares before the line collapsed.

A familiar carriage rolled up outside. Out stepped Simms Bell, a picture of prosperity in an English-cut knee-length coat, double-breasted white waistcoat and matching cravat, striped trousers, and tall beaver hat. Shortly, pop-eyed Simms occupied the visitor's chair.

“How can the Crescent Bank serve you today, my friend?”

Simms drew off his white gloves. “I drove in from Prosperity Hall to buy a book for Bethel's birthday. That new English thing. Butler-Somebody.”

“Bulwer-Lytton.
The Last Days of Pompeii.
Naomi's engrossed in it.”

“I went to your bookshop, hadn't been there in a while.” Simms Bell read nothing but account books, Marburg knew that much. “It's a well-appointed store.”

“Mr. Watkiss is an excellent manager.”

“Effeminate, but seems to know his trade.” Marburg said nothing. “I came to speak to you about a particular work offered for sale. It displeased me.”

“Alas, we can't please every customer with every book. But the right of every opinion to be aired, even the frivolous or mischievous, is essential. Thomas Cooper of the state college argued that cogently in his treatise on free expression. He maintains, correctly, I believe, that circulation of ideas is usually suppressed to protect the interests of those in authority.”

It was said in a friendly way, but phrase by phrase it reddened Simms's face and bulged his eyes. “I expect the good doctor will soon change his mind, given the flood of filth flowing into South Carolina.” Simms
shoved a thin paper-covered volume across the desk. Marburg read the title. “
A Disquisition on Servile Labor
. Reverend Justus Drew. I'm not familiar with the author, or this work.”

“He's another of those damned Boston clergymen who want us dancing to their tune.”

“You mean he favors abolition of slavery.”

“He promotes the destruction of our way of life. I ask you to stop selling this kind of material.”

Marburg's thick reddish brows knitted together. “At one time certain people tried to burn my father out over a similar issue. He resisted. I must do the same. I'm sorry, I can't honor your request.”

Simms bridled. “Then beware. Decent Christian citizens will unite against you. Senator Calhoun says unity is the only defense against the South's enemies. Frankly, I anticipated your reaction. I intend to ask the city council to enact a law making it a felony to pass this sort of material through the Charleston mails.”

Tempers were rising; Marburg seethed. “I should think the Federal government might have something to say on that.”

Simms jammed his tall hat on his head. “I give you notice. I am closing my account at this bank.”

“So be it, Simms. I regret it, but the bank will survive.”

Simms stormed out. The banker sighed. Outside voices, contrary opinions, increasingly threatened those who owned vast lands and large numbers of slaves. Specters of Vesey, Nat Turner, and financial ruin haunted their dreams. Resistance was the tenor of the times.

 

A month later, early May, there occurred one of those misfortunes of timing that change lives. At the outset it seemed anything but a misfortune.

Barefoot, Alex was at work in the garden. A few years earlier the annual bombardment of seedpods from neighborhood magnolia trees—grenades, she called them—had planted a volunteer by the wall separating the garden from a new residence under construction next door. The tree
was now five feet high. Alex had decided it should remain, a pleasant addition to the flower beds, stone sculptures, and the indestructible live oak that dominated the garden with its shade.

She used shears to prune half a dozen low branches, no more than thin green stalks, so the tree would grow. On a nearby bench Cassandra watched placidly. Despite Dr. Hayward's treatment she hadn't recovered her strength. She deferred to Ham and Alex in household matters and slept a great deal. Alex knew people called her an invalid, which was not far wrong. She wasn't the strong, vibrant woman Alex remembered so fondly from childhood.

A little bell on the street gate jingled while the saws and hammers were temporarily silent next door. “Marcelle,” Alex cried, jumping up. Henry's sister, still pudgy from childbearing, stepped into the garden clutching the hand of her two-year-old boy. His father, known only as Roger, was one of many Negro seamen who crewed on cargo ships that plied the coast. He'd come ashore once, then again seven months later when Marcelle was nearing her term. Seeing the result of their dalliance, he slipped away and vanished.

Hamnet and his wife were bitterly disappointed in their daughter when she bore a bastard at fourteen. They nevertheless welcomed the child into the family. Marcelle called him Roger. She always pronounced the name with a certain wistfulness.

Today her face glowed. “Alex—oh, wait. Roger, you stop. Pull up your pants, you can't pee in Miss Alex's garden.” Roger desisted. “Wanted to tell you right away, Alex. That judge, he said Henry could come back. Pa took the pony cart to Beaufort yesterday. They should be here late tomorrow.”

Alex fairly danced. “Oh, how wonderful. I'll go see him right away. It's been more than a year.”

“Best you be a little careful 'f it's daylight.”

“Marcelle, your brother's my friend. More than a friend.” She weighted her words so Marcelle would be sure to understand. “I care about him very much.”

“Oh, Lord. I wondered if it might be that way. Never said a word to Henry or anybody. Told myself a fine educated white lady like you would have more sense. Lord, Lord.”

She shook her head, despairing.