New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [226]
For if the upper classes of Europe were proud of their military prowess, the rich men of the Northern states of America had no such illusions. In England, aristocrats and gentlemen, especially younger sons, crowded into the fashionable regiments, paid money for their officers’ commissions, and thought themselves fine fellows when they paraded in their uniforms. Were they not—in fact, or at least in theory—descendants of the barons and knights of medieval England? The aristocrat did not trade. He did not draw up your will, or cure you of sickness. God forbid. That was for the middle classes. The aristocrat lived on the land and led his men into battle. And in America, too, among the old landed families from Virginia southward, some echo of that tradition might still be found. But not in Boston, Connecticut or New York. To hell with that. Pay your money and let the poor fellow be killed.
The poor fellows knew it of course.
“It’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight,” complained those who could not afford the fee. And the city authorities had been concerned that the draft might lead to some trouble.
Accordingly, that Saturday morning, they’d chosen to begin the selection at the Ninth District Headquarters, which was an isolated building set among some empty lots up at Third and Forty-seventh, well away from the main body of the city. Frank Master had gone up there to take a look, and found a large crowd watching the marshal draw names from a barrel. But they’d seemed quiet. And after a while, evidently relieved, the marshal had stopped, announcing that selection wouldn’t resume until Monday.
“You don’t look very pleased,” Frank remarked to Hetty.
Still his wife said nothing.
“You actually want Tom to go and fight in this damn fool war? Because he doesn’t want to, I can tell you.”
“He must make his own choice.”
“He did,” said Master firmly, in a voice that clearly implied: “So you’re on your own.”
If Frank and Hetty Master’s marriage had been under strain at the time of the Cooper Institute speech, events since had not made things any easier between them. Lincoln had become the Republican candidate, and he’d run a shrewd campaign.
“Whatever your mother believes,” Frank had explained to young Tom, “the truth is that people in the North are against slavery on principle, but they’re not that excited about it. Lincoln can include the slavery issue on his platform, but he knows he can’t win on it.” As the elections of 1860 had drawn near, “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men” was the Republican motto. Hard-working Northerners, supported by the government, should take over the western lands, build railways and develop industries, while the men of the South, morally inferior through their support for slavery, would be left behind. “He’s offering free land and government aid,” Frank had remarked drily. “A pretty good inducement for doing right.”
The election had been close, but Lincoln had squeaked in. Upstate New York had voted Republican. But not the people of Democratic New York City—they’d voted Lincoln down.
For whatever ticket Lincoln ran on, he was going to cause trouble with the South. And if the wealth of the merchants depended on the South, so did the jobs of every working man. Tammany Hall knew it. Mayor Fernando Wood knew it, and said so loudly. If Lincoln wanted to put the city’s jobs at risk, he declared, to hell with him.
The working men of New York weren’t too sure how they felt about the Republicans in general, either. Republican free farmers, with their notions of individual effort and self-help, were no friends to the working men’s unions, whose only bargaining power lay in their numbers. Working men suspected something else too. “If Lincoln has his way, there’ll be millions of free blacks—who’ll work for pence—headed north to steal our jobs. No thank you.”
Hetty Master was disgusted with this attitude. Frank thought it understandable. He was also proved right in his fears about the secession.
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina had left the Union. One after another, the states