Chapter 6: Welcome to New York (2)
TL: Hanguk
The people who get voted the worst presidents in American history are pretty much always the same crowd.
That's just how these kinds of polls go: it's six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Names that even I could rattle off, with nothing but the half-baked studying I'd done before a business trip to the States just to have something to talk about with the locals.
Harding, William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and the rock-bottom of rock-bottom that sits beneath them all: James Buchanan.
And what's astonishing is that no fewer than three of those men straddle the years right around the Civil War.
It just goes to show how sensitive and bitterly divided a period this was in American political history.
Among them, James Buchanan was a peculiar case: a Northern man of the Democratic Party who nonetheless looked favorably on slavery, which was exactly why the Democrats backed him.
Being a Northerner, he could appeal to the North well enough while still representing Southern interests, and so he was held up as the man who could stitch the nation's rifts back together.
On top of that, since the Whig candidate opposing him in the election was split and divided, Buchanan was set to coast comfortably into office as the next President of the United States.
Part of it was that, even now, American public opinion carried a real fear that opposing slavery too forcefully might tear the country in two.
"I'd been wondering just who this young man was, the one who became the Cotton King of Mississippi at the age of twenty, and now that I see him in person, I had no idea he'd be such a strapping fellow. The women begging for a single meeting will be lined up clear down the street."
"I'm only a greenhorn who was lucky enough to inherit a great deal of wealth. There's still so very much I lack, so I hope you'll guide me well in the years to come."
The man in front of me might be destined to be stuffed and mounted as the worst president in American history for generations to come, but he was still the current candidate, and the next man who'd hold the office.
Get on his bad side even a little and the next four years could become hell, so for now I'd better make a good impression.
But the moment his term ended, the Civil War would break out, and staying too close to a man whose reputation was about to hit rock bottom would be suicide too.
Goddammit, how did my life turn into this extreme tightrope walk?
"There's a congressman in our party who was quite struck by what you did in Bloomington. The Whigs, no, now that they've split into the American Party and the Republican Party, I suppose I should say the old Whigs? In any case, he called it a triumph, the way you so scathingly skewered their contradictions."
"You flatter me. I merely rented out a restaurant with money."
"No, no. You took that restaurant you rented with your money and brought in the very slaves who were barred from entering, and fed them dishes that the Black folk of the North will never once taste in all their lives, isn't that so? The Southern congressmen in our party were lavish in their praise, calling it the kind of mettle only a young man could show."
Tsk. Renting out one restaurant in a backwater like Bloomington and throwing a party, and word reaches all the way up to a presidential candidate?
It drove home all over again, painfully, just how sensitive a moment this was in America.
"I hear you also met and spoke with Lincoln of the Republicans?"
"Yes. He seemed very interested in how a young Southern man like myself thinks about slavery."
"Ho ho."
"So I told him honestly. I said that Mr. Lincoln's words sounded like nothing less than a proclamation that he'd spare me, but turn my sons and grandsons into beggars."
"A pathetic man. It's because he spouts nothing but unrealistic nonsense like that that he always loses his elections. The same goes for that Fremont fellow who'll be the Republican candidate."
A rare sight indeed: the man who'd be mounted as the worst president in American history tearing down the man who'd be recorded as the greatest.
Naturally, Buchanan at this point didn't even regard Lincoln as a rival.
Fremont, who'd be running as the Republican nominee, was one thing, but a perennial loser who'd mastered the art of losing elections was no reason for concern to a man who'd served as Secretary of State and Minister to Britain.
"You're quite right, Mr. Buchanan. What good would forcibly abolishing slavery do, except end with the country split clean in two?"
"Exactly so. The only man who can save this nation in its hour of crisis is me. Having the support of young men like yourself, I feel my confidence growing all the more. Heh heh heh."
As he spoke the word "support," his eyes glinted in a curious way, and he continued in an insinuating tone.
"Which brings me to this. I'd like men such as yourself to go on being a firm pillar of the Democratic Party. For the sake of keeping the Union from splintering any further, shouldn't supporters and politicians forge ever closer ties?"
In an age without television or the internet, securing the backing of local notables was the most basic of basics in an election.
But let's be honest, wouldn't anyone with a vote in Mississippi be casting a blind, no-questions-asked landslide ballot for Buchanan?
There was no real need for me to help with his campaign, and that wasn't what he wanted either.
"Ha ha, of course. Your election won't just be my wish, but the wish of all of us living in Mississippi."
Of course, flattery like this, all talk and nothing else, has zero effect.
Let's be blunt: why else would Tammany Hall, the very embodiment of money-driven elections, have summoned me?
The message was, don't be dense enough to make me spell it out, just take the hint and show some "sincerity."
That said, handing money straight to Tammany Hall here was far too big a risk.
The moment I opened my wallet here, I'd have to pay a sum befitting my standing, and a sum that large would land in the Finance Committee's records right away.
It might be fine now, but I couldn't leave room for some later sniping along the lines of, "That James Sergent, he's a downright scoundrel!"
So the best play was to give the donation while keeping it off the official record.
"Mr. Buchanan, this is a payment draft used by Duncan, Sherman & Co., the firm I primarily do business with in New York."
After signing this slip of paper, which serves the role of a modern check, I filled in the amount where only Buchanan could see it.
"Heh heh, my good man. This sort of thing belongs with the election committ, hm?"
[Please pay the sum of 10,000 dollars to the Democratic candidate James Buchanan.]
"T-ten thousand?"
A colossal sum, amounting to one-seventh of my annual net income.
A donation so enormous it might feel like several million dollars or more in modern terms, and even the great Buchanan's face twitched.
Because this wasn't given to Buchanan's election committee, it was a donation to Buchanan the politician, personally.
"Ahem! This, well, I'm deeply grateful for your sentiment, but a sum this large is by rights meant to be received through the proper channels."
"I considered that as well, but I thought it might place an undue burden on you. Wouldn't it look as though a great magnate who inherited slaves on a vast scale were funneling money to the Democratic Party far too openly?"
"Ah, that's, true enough."
"You have the tremendous advantage of being a Northerner. But your opponents will try every which way to dilute that advantage by painting you as a man fingering money soaked in slavery. To prevent that very thing, I'd rather not leave a record of my donation."
Easy enough to say, but the human heart begrudges parting with even a single cent on anything that brings no benefit to itself.
True to the seasoned politician he was, Buchanan kept up a favorable smile while slyly probing to dig out my true intent.
"Having received such a large sum, it's only fitting that I reward you in turn, no? What post would you like?"
It might seem strange to a modern person, but the America of this era was rife with a graft-ridden Spoils System.
The spoils. As the word literally suggests, public office was treated as plunder won through the hunt.
In modern public administration, the Spoils System is usually savaged as the very incarnation of corruption, but even so, in those days it came closer to a necessary evil.
Before the Spoils System, after all, a cronyism in which a particular class monopolized every high office wholesale had run rampant.
Still, that was precisely why Buchanan must have been assuming I'd plunked down a sum as huge as ten thousand dollars on him with some intention in mind.
Demur too much here and I might draw suspicion instead.
"I have no desire to take public office. If I did, I'd have paid the donation formally, through the party. If a young pup like me were to buy a high post with money made off the backs of slaves, it'd hand the opposing party far too good a line of attack. They'd be watching like hyenas, waiting for me to slip, and the instant they saw an opening, they'd tear right in."
"Hmm. I'd been thinking it might be nice to set you up with a U.S. Marshal's post or something in the customs service."
"I'm not cut out for public office. This isn't quite a substitute, but, around next year I'm planning to buy up a large parcel of land over in Pennsylvania. There are signs the brine business is going to boom. And while I'm at it, I figure if I set up a large transshipment warehouse too and tie in a lumber business, it could turn a fair little profit."
"Buying land in Pennsylvania?"
If my memory served, Titusville in Pennsylvania was definitely a region where oil came up out of the ground.
Fortunately, oil wasn't worth money yet, but there was no doubt that day wasn't far off.
A Southern magnate buying up land on a large scale was nothing out of the ordinary, so there'd be nothing to suspect.
Was there any better stepping stone to cross over before switching industries down the line?
"Would there really be anything for me to lend my weight to, just for buying some land?"
"Pennsylvania is a place where Northern sentiment runs strong. I worry that a Southerner like me buying land there might get me nitpicked over this and that for no reason. I thought even a letter of recommendation from a senator or the relevant agency might keep that from happening."
"Heh heh. You really are a man without greed. That's truly all you need?"
"Yes."
There were no campaign finance laws whatsoever at this point, so whether I gave ten thousand dollars or fifty thousand, there was nothing that could trip me up legally.
Buchanan, thoroughly satisfied, tucked the check I'd handed him into his breast pocket.
"I'll wish your new venture in the North well too."
He'd issued me what amounted to a permit.
Keep it off the record while staying in the good graces of a Democratic president.
Wasn't that a pretty solid success, all things considered?
Either way, it was power that was guaranteed to go bust, so the best move was not to get carried away and to be pegged as nothing more than a moderately likable acquaintance.
So from here on out, just like this...
"Ah, but wouldn't a respectable title help with the land purchase too? Even just taking on some postal duties would make it far easier to exert influence."
Ah, Buchanan, my man, please!
I told you I don't want to do anything with your side!
Please, just erase me from your memory!
***
As the banquet ripened further, James Sergent excused himself partway through, apologizing that he'd kept his sister waiting too long.
Perhaps deeply impressed by the man who'd shown a brief but unmistakable presence, James Buchanan said nothing for a while.
Augustus Schell, the New York State Democratic Party chairman, drifted naturally to his side, gave a soft chuckle, and raised his glass.
"That donation the young man left behind, it seems it rather astonished you?"
"It was weighty indeed. And yet what he wanted was so modest it took me by surprise."
"I heard it from beside you as well. He wants to buy land and asked for help getting some convenience from the relevant agency. Frankly, that's about the bare minimum show of asking for anything."
"A clever young man. He inherited an immense fortune, so there are bound to be those who envy him, and he judged that taking public office would be poison in the long run. He's still young, too."
A precise analysis.
In truth, Augustus had already secured a promise to be made Collector of the Port of New York if Buchanan became president.
Which was exactly why that young man, who'd drawn such a firm line in saying he had no intention of accepting any office, struck him as remarkable.
At first he'd wondered whether there was some hidden agenda, but from James he'd felt a genuine, unshakable resolve that he truly didn't want to enter public life.
When Buchanan confirmed that Augustus had arrived at the same judgment as his own, he smiled contentedly and clinked his glass against the other's.
With a clear ring, Buchanan gazed at the swirling liquid and laughed.
"I called him in thinking it'd be good to get acquainted, and he's far more to my liking than I expected."
"Then will you give him an important role? He said he didn't want one."
"That's exactly what makes me covet him all the more."
If Buchanan and Augustus had both made the same judgment at once, then the way James had carried himself a moment ago was absolutely not an act.
And if it had been an act, then so much the better.
It would mean the young man had the ability to so easily fool the two of them, men who'd been rolling around the political arena for over a decade.
"There are plenty who put on an act of having no interest in power, but those who truly feel that way are only a tiny few, aren't they? If that young man grows up well, he could become a fine politician to lead the Democratic Party one day."
"I'm of the same mind as you, Mr. Buchanan."
If there were even the slightest chance of his becoming a rival, they'd stamp him out ahead of time, but Buchanan and James were a full forty years apart.
It's only human nature to want to nurture a young man who can't become a competitor yet looks to be so capable.
Buchanan was convinced that if the Democratic Party meant to hold onto power going forward, young men like James had to be able to rise and stand out.
It was the moment a pack of grizzled, set-in-their-ways old codgers wet themselves with glee at the appearance of a promising newbie.
*****
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