New York - The Novel

Hardly the fault of the black men, who wouldn’t have been welcome in the strikers’ unions anyway. But of course they’d been blamed.
    But that was nothing to the effect of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
    “Free the damn niggers in the South, so they can come up here and steal our jobs?” the laboring men of New York protested. “Dammit, there’s four million of them.” The fact that Lincoln had not actually freed a single slave was overlooked. But then politics was seldom about reality. “Our boys are fighting and dying so that their own kith and kin can be destroyed? No more they ain’t.”
    Lincoln’s war had been anathema for many months now, in the Saturday-night saloon.
    And now, the tall, gawky president and his Republicans, with their rich abolitionist friends, were going to force them to fight for these damn niggers, whether they liked it or not.
    “We, the working men, will be the cannon fodder. But not the sons of the rich abolitionists. Oh no. They’ll send a poor man to die for them, or pay a fee to stay home and play. That’s Lincoln’s deal.”
    Yesterday it had come to a head. More than a thousand names had been chosen in the lottery that day. During the process, it had been quiet enough, but by the evening, people had had a chance to compare names and take stock of the process. In the saloon last night, everyone seemed to know at least three or four of them.
    “My nephew Conal,” cried one man, in a fury, “that was due to be married next week … Shameful!”
    “Little Michael Casey, that couldn’t shoot a rabbit at five yards? He won’t last a week,” joined in his neighbor.
    Some men were cursing, others were in a sullen rage. At the end of the evening, when he came upstairs to bed, Sean delivered his verdict to his wife.
    “I could save the Prince of Wales,” he said, “but I tell you, if Abraham Lincoln had come into the saloon tonight, I couldn’t have done a thing. They’d have strung him up.”
    And tomorrow, Monday morning, the draft selection was to resume.
    Broadway was quiet as he and Hudson walked along. The sun was bright. They crossed Canal Street. Still no sign of trouble. But Sean knew that didn’t mean a thing. Having got Hudson safely to Prince Street, he said to him as they parted: “Come straight back to the saloon after church. And when you get home, fix the bar on those shutters.”
    From Prince Street, he kept walking north. After a little while, he wentright for a block, then picked up the Bowery. He was watchful as he walked. Still not many people about. At East Fourteenth, he turned right, then up Irving Place, into Gramercy Park.
    He hadn’t been to the Masters’ house for some time. It was quite a few years now since his relationship with Mary had ceased to be a secret, and he’d come to see her there once in a while. Everyone knew that he could well afford to look after her, but she was perfectly happy where she was. He’d have liked to see her married, but she’d told him not to interfere, and he reckoned she was old enough to know what she wanted.
    He encountered Frank Master from time to time. He’d long since repaid Master’s kindly treatment of him back in ’53, with an offer to buy into some property the mayor was releasing at a sharply discounted price. And a year after that, chancing to meet him down on South Street, Master had done him another good turn.
    “There’s a fellow I know who’s got room for one more investor in a small venture,” he’d told Sean. “Profits might be high, if you don’t mind a little risk.” Sean had only hesitated a moment. Trust the man, was his credo.
    “I’d be interested,” he’d said.
    Sean had taken quite a bit of cash out of his strongbox to make that investment. And returned three times that amount to the box, a few months later. Since then, he and Frank Master had done small favors for each other, from time to time. In fact, he’d done a discreet service for Master just the other day.
    Sean went to the front door, not the tradesmen’s entrance. He always made a point of doing that. A maid came to answer it. But in reply to his question, she told him that Mary wasn’t there.
    “She went to Coney Island with her friend. She’ll be gone all this week.”
    He’d known about the plan, and that they’d delayed it for a while. He felt slightly annoyed that Mary hadn’t told him before she left. On the other hand, he was glad that she was out of the city just now. And