New York - The Novel

like slavery, but they had no designs against the existing slave states. In order to reassure the South, they must support the runaway slave laws and return slaves to their Southern owners.
    Having said these words of political caution, he ended with a brief summary of his party’s moral position. Let slavery alone in the South, because it is already there and necessity demands it, but Republicans still stand by what they believe. And he rounded off with a brief but ringing peroration.
    “Let us have faith that Right is Might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
    He was given thunderous applause. And Frank was no less impressed than most of the audience. He had seen a brilliant speaker, a politician who was moral but also a realist. Behind Lincoln’s words, he thought he sensed a certain puritan contempt for the South, but if so, that was hardly surprising.
    As they started home Hetty turned to him and asked: “Well, Frank, tell me honestly, what did you think of him?”
    “Impressive.”
    “I thought so too.” She gave him a smile. “I’m glad we can agree on that.”
    “So am I,” he responded kindly.
    “I believe he will be president, Frank.”
    “Could be.” He nodded, and offered her his arm as he had done before. As she took the arm, she gave it a little squeeze.
    So he did not add what was really on his mind: that if Lincoln became president, he viewed the future with dread.

The Draft
1863
    I T WAS A lovely day in July. Not a cloud in the sky. Mary was so excited that she hugged Gretchen, as they sat in Mrs. Master’s handsome open carriage and were driven round the park.
    “I have a surprise for you,” said Gretchen.
    “What?”
    “Before we take the ferry. Wait and you’ll see.”
    You’d hardly guess that the city was at war at all. Not a soldier in sight, and the park looking so splendid and so green.
    Two weeks earlier, it had been a different story. At the end of June, when General Lee and his Confederates had crossed the Potomac River and pushed into Pennsylvania, New York had been in a ferment. Every regiment in the city had been sent southward to bolster the Union army. “But if Lee defeats them, or gives them the slip,” Master had pointed out, “he could be here in days.”
    By the start of July, a big battle had begun down at Gettysburg. At first no one knew who was winning. But on the fourth, last Saturday, news came up the wires that the Union had gained a great victory. And by Thursday, Mrs. Master had told her: “I think, Mary dear, that it’s safe for you to go on your holiday now.”
    Free at last. The holiday had been planned the month before. Gretchen’s husband had insisted that she needed a week of rest. He’d continue to mind the store, while their three children would stay nearby with Gretchen’s parents. It had also been agreed that Mary should go with her,so that Gretchen could travel with safety and propriety, and the two friends keep each other company. A respectable hotel had been booked out on Long Island. Before they took the ferry that afternoon, Mrs. Master had kindly told them to use her carriage as they liked, and so they had begun with a whirl through Central Park.
    What with Gretchen’s children and a store to run, it wasn’t possible for the two friends to see each other as they had in the old days—though they always kept in regular touch, and Mary was godmother to one of the children. They were both delighted, therefore, with this chance to spend a week away at the beach together, and already they were laughing like a pair of girls.
    “Look at us fashionable ladies going round the park,” cried Mary.
    She loved Central Park. It was only a few years since the great, two-and-a-half-mile rectangle had been laid out to the inspired design of Olmstead and Vaux, to provide a much needed breathing space, the “lungs” in the middle of what would clearly, one day, be the city’s completed grid. Swamps had been drained, a couple of ragged hamlets swept away, hills leveled. And already its lawns and ponds, woods and avenues provided landscapes quite as elegant as London’s Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne beside Paris. Why, the contractors had even done their work without any graft. No one had ever seen anything like it.
    And the two women were certainly well dressed. Gretchen could afford it, but Mary had some nice clothes too. Servants in New York made twice as much as a factory worker, with