A Hope Beyond (22 page)
Joseph shook his head. “I didn’t say James couldn’t love. In fact, I believe more strongly than ever that he was in love. But not with Virginia.”
“If not Virginia, then who?” Leland felt a hopefulness course through him. Perhaps there was another prestigious family who would see his James as a suitable match.
“Between you and me?” Joseph questioned and Leland nodded. “I believe James was in love with Carolina.”
Leland gasped. “Your Carolina?”
“Yes. I believe further that Carolina was in love with James, although neither one ever acted anything but completely proper. I doubt they even realized their feelings were mutual.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” Leland began, then shut his mouth tightly.
“As have I, but they are unfounded and untrue.” He looked at Leland as if defying him to suggest otherwise.
“Of course.” Leland fell silent, not knowing what else to say.
“It is of little matter now,” Joseph said with a heaviness that matched his expression. “I don’t hold malice toward James. I actually admire him for backing out of a situation that seemed wrong to him. He has great conviction, and perhaps charted in the right direction, he will go far. If you’re worried that I somehow hold you responsible, then let your mind consider it no longer.”
Leland exhaled loudly and nodded. “It has been uppermost in my mind.”
Joseph got to his feet. “Then put it from you. I must be going. Thank you for helping me with the railroad. Oh, please don’t hesitate to send the progress reports. Carolina goes over them with a fine-toothed comb, and I would very much like her to remain actively engaged in this matter. In fact, it would give me a great deal of happiness if you might continue to meet with her occasionally. She’s a brilliant young woman, Leland, and I feel many of her ideas merit consideration.”
“Certainly,” Leland replied, not for once planning to go through with such a suggestion.
Joseph paused at the door and glanced around the room. “They say things are always darkest before the dawn.”
“That’s true enough,” Leland agreed. “But the sun always rises, and it will for you this time, as well.” He struggled to come out from behind his desk, his rotund body giving him pain as he crossed the room to shake his friend’s hand. “Don’t hesitate to call upon me if there is anything I can do for you.”
“Thank you, Leland. You have been a true friend.”
Leland managed to contain a grimace as Joseph departed the bank. Leland realized he wasn’t a good friend at all. He wasn’t even a good banker. It should bother him more that he was deceiving people who trusted him. And it did bother him, but the way things were playing into his hand, it also gave him a strange sense of exhilaration. Closing his office door, Leland began to smile in spite of himself, and he felt for all the world like a new man. Joseph would no longer be looking over his shoulder, and in his place, a seventeen-year-old girl would review the materials of operation. He chuckled and waddled back to his desk. If he couldn’t pull the wool over the eyes of Carolina Adams, he might as well give up the business altogether. She might be intelligent, as her father said she was, but she was still a youngster and a female, and neither was much of a threat to Leland Baldwin.
The sign was tacked temporarily into place by Leland himself:
BANK CLOSED
Stepping back, he gave a last look at his former place of business and felt a surge of mixed emotions. Anger was high at the top of the list. Anger that the economy had failed him. Anger that the President and Congress had made success impossible. May 10, 1837, would forever live in his mind as the day the world went completely mad.
“What do you mean by this?” a customer yelled from the growing crowd. “What about our money?”
“Yeah? What are we supposed to do now?” another called out.
Leland faced them with a fixed expression. “I assure you this is only a temporary precaution. There is no reason to concern yourselves unduly.”
Tucking his satchel under his arm and leaning heavily on his walking stick, Leland made his way to his carriage amid boos and name-calling. He ordered his driver home and fell back against the leather upholstery. There was a great deal to be considered. The banks had been suspended by prearranged agreement, but it didn’t help matters at all. Leland still faced the inevitable audit, which would show his bank terribly out of order in the contrast of reserves versus loans. The previous summer’s Distribution Bill had forced him to part with a great portion of the bank’s solid assets. It had crippled the bank of legitimate moneys, but Leland hadn’t allowed that to stop business. He merely produced false bank drafts through his brother Samuel’s less-than-legal procedures. It was enough to see the bank through, but when the second distribution had come due in April, Leland barely remained solvent.
He wasn’t alone. Most of the other private banks had positioned themselves in the same hole. The federal government had put deposits on hold with a variety of private banks, but these deposits were to remain as reserves. Everyone, including the President and Congress, had looked the other way as the banks did business with federal moneys. It was thought of as harmless, and the private banks felt they were entitled to such usage. But within two years the United States had gone from being completely debt free to hopelessly entangled in an economic crisis.
Bankers were running scared and desperate, doing whatever they had to in order to face the fewest consequences. Loans were called in, stock dividends were suspended, bank-draft usage was restricted to those notes that were written against well-known institutions of finance. But there was no apparent way to stop the downward spiral. Leland doubted that very many legitimate bankers would have finagled the same resources and solutions as he had. Counterfeiting and fraud wasn’t a game for the faint of heart.
As one bank after another was forced to admit defeat, many began to cry out for the guidance of Nicholas Biddle, president of the now state-owned Bank of the United States. Despite the fact that Biddle was looked upon as the savior of the country, having pulled the nation out of great economic turmoil following the War of 1812, Biddle’s bank was now doing just as poorly. Having made a last attempt at remaining chartered and solvent, the Bank of the United States had brought itself, in March of the previous year, under the protection of the state of Pennsylvania. This appeared to be the answer for keeping Biddle in a position of power, and the bank appeared to have thrived. But that was before the Distribution Bill had demanded the redistribution of some forty million dollars in surplus federal funds to the states.
Biddle is probably having a good laugh right now, Leland thought as the carriage came to a stop. Biddle had warned the public that destruction of the Bank of the United States would render the country in crisis. He had warned too that it was not only unconstitutional, but foolish banking to redistribute the federal moneys.
It was even said that Biddle had visited President Van Buren on more than one occasion to convince him of the wisdom of reinstating the Bank of the United States, in the hope that he could turn this new economic crisis around. Leland doubted it would result in anything Biddle wanted to hear. Van Buren was Jackson’s man through and through. It would matter very little that the merchants of New York had banned together to request Biddle assume leadership of the bank once again. It would probably not affect Van Buren’s decision either to know that the general public saw the banking troubles as something the President had complete control over.
So long as Jackson continued to write letters advising Van Buren to preserve the Specie Circular—Jackson’s emergency action to put an end to paper money purchases by land speculators—Biddle didn’t stand a chance. It was, for all intents and purposes, Jackson’s third term in office, via Martin Van Buren.
To Leland it didn’t matter who was in charge. He could become friendly with either side when it suited him. He could become bosom companions when it profited him, or mortal enemies if such folk crossed him. His main interest was to find the most advantageous position and execute it to the fullest. He could see this newest crisis as both a blessing and a curse.
His footman opened the carriage door and stepped back. Leland struggled to descend and make his way into the house. The gout was ever present in his right foot and crippling him so that without the use of a sturdy walking stick, he was nearly incapable of passing from one room to the next. Even so, it was of little consideration at the moment. There were plans to be made and a future to be decided.
“Mr. Baldwin,” Edith called out as her husband entered the house. “Is it true? Have the banks closed?”
“True enough,” Leland replied, tossing his hat onto the entryway table.
“I dared not to believe such hideous gossip,” Edith said, sounding quite shaken. “Whatever will we do? Are we completely without funds?”
Leland looked at her worried expression for a moment, then shook his head. “Not at all, Mrs. Baldwin. Have you ever known your husband to be without proper assets?”
Edith smiled weakly. Leland offered her his arm and led her into the front sitting room. “I have a great deal of work to be done in my study. Will you see to it that I’m not disturbed?”
“Of course,” Edith replied. “Would you like any refreshment?”
“Perhaps later,” he said, helping her to a chair. “I must go for now, but perhaps this evening we will find time to talk.”
He left Edith to stare at him in some confusion and sought the solace of his study. Locking the doors behind him, Leland tossed the satchel onto his desk.
It wasn’t as if the demise of the banking system was a surprise. There was no way of predicting exactly how long it would last, or what the ultimate outcome would be, but it wasn’t a surprise to those involved in the industry.
His chair groaned in protest as he settled his enormous mass upon it. One thing would work in his favor. With a depressed economy and the banks having closed their doors, Leland knew he was in the perfect position to postpone the progress of the P&GF Railroad indefinitely. Investors would be notified that most of their investment moneys had been devalued or lost in the wake of the panic.
He smiled at his own genius. Months ago he had meticulously plotted to turn his paper money investments into coin, particularly gold. Taking a letter opener from his desk drawer he went to the fireplace and thrust the opener between two loose bricks. They came apart slowly, and while Leland inched them from position, his smile only broadened.
With the two bricks removed, Leland could reach into the opening and feel the multiple bags of gold. His investment. His future.
A scream broke the morning silence, and Leland felt his heart race in dread. Edith! He quickly replaced the bricks, double-checking to make sure they were secure before going in search of his wife.
Hurrying to the front room, Leland stopped in stunned surprise. The letter opener he’d used to tap the bricks back into place fell from his hand and clattered noisily onto the oak floor.
“James!”
In spite of the failing financial structure of the country’s business world, Washington society moved forward to forget its troubles in any way it could. Edith Baldwin had seen the summer charity ball as the perfect way to reintroduce her son to genteel company, but James was uncertain.
Home for less than a week, James had struggled through the days trying to make his parents understand his decision to break his engagement with Virginia Adams. From his mother came complete absolution of guilt and sin, but from his father came another attitude entirely. James had not only disobeyed his father’s instruction, but knowing full well the impact it would have on his family, he had chosen his own way over the well-being of his parents. This was something for which Leland would probably never forgive him. And James found himself crumbling in the face of his earlier resolve. Making things right wasn’t going to be easy.
“James, you must stop hiding back here,” his mother said, pulling him from one of the side rooms into the main ballroom. A full orchestra sent up the rhythmic melody of a waltz, while hundreds of people danced beneath the crystal chandeliers of the Gadsby Hotel.
“I can’t say that I’m comfortable with this situation,” James replied. “No doubt there are going to be questions, which I hardly feel like addressing publicly.”
“Then don’t,” Edith replied and, spying Julia Cooper standing alone, thrust James forward. “Julia dear, have you had a chance to greet my son? He’s just returned from duty with the railroad in the far frontier.”
Julia Cooper’s dark eyes expressed surprise. “Why no. I hadn’t realized Mr. Baldwin was in attendance.”
James was rather confused by the expression on her face. She seemed to be studying him as if weighing a serious matter. Since she was Carolina’s closest friend, perhaps she’d been privy to more information about James’ departure than most.
Bowing before Julia, James was unaware that his mother had slipped away, until turning to speak with her, he found her gone.
“I believe my mother fears the party will suddenly stop if she pauses for even a moment.”
Julia smiled. “Well, Mr. Baldwin, how long have you been back?”
James took a deep breath. “Nearly a week. Mother felt it absolutely necessary that I accompany her here this evening, especially in light of my father’s illness.”
“Oh? I did not know he was sick. I pray it is nothing serious.”
“As do I,” James replied. “I feel his worry about the economy is taking its toll upon him.” He used this in place of the real reason. His father refused to attend any function with James, and since Edith wanted to use this particular soiree as a way to expose her son in a popular light, Leland declined to attend.
“So no one has yet been informed of your return?” Julia asked, daintily fanning herself.
“No.” James’ eyes scanned the dancing partners and found a dozen or more people he knew. “I suppose it will be a shock to everyone.”