Gotterdammerung

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

Chapter 125 Under the Candlelight

“I was expecting you, Sheriff Sumner. Come in and have a seat.”

“Thank you, James,” said the Sheriff as he sat down at the parlor table in James’ home. “You know why I am here.”

“The threat to my life? That it is too hot for me to remain in Boston?”

“More than that. Much more. I have reason to believe George Langston was colored passing for white.”

The words from the Sheriff stunned James. He experienced vertigo. At first, he was disbelieving. James had met George Langston. He knew the Chief Justice’s clerk. There was nothing colored about George — no skin tone, no curly hair, no whisper of the plantation in his voice. James knew colored people who appeared white well. There was Gideon who ran the barbershop. One could hear the race in Gideon’s accent. There was Uncle Alexander up in Brownington, Vermont. Uncle Alexander carried a double consciousness of being colored in his sense of self. He just never volunteered he was of colored blood. But George Langston? George Langston???

Disbelief turned to slow rage and anger. Was this why the Chief Justice admitted James to the Bar as a constructive white man? James was putting the pieces of the puzzle together. What had felt like a day of days on July 3 now felt like moral compromise of his people. Was James no better than George Langston?

“Sheriff, I want you to know that I have been prepared for the threats since I started on this path. Your ethics prevent you from sharing your murder investigation with me. My suspicions point in one direction, the foul presence in the shadows of Beacon Hill. One man in this town had motive to terminate a black lawyer passing for white. One man I suspect of being behind the shipwreck of William Babbit Haynes. You know who I am accusing of murder.”

“The case is ongoing. I have good leads for an indictment. However, my concern is for your safety, James.”

“You know, I grew up on Beacon Hill. I came of age in the African Meeting House. My father was a Race Man. I can no longer live a lie.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I am choosing principle over career. If Senator Lynch has challenged my bar admission, I will join in as his ally. My status is not ‘constructive white man.’ I must practice law as a Black American for the good of my people.”

Sheriff Sumner urged James to consider very carefully what he was contemplating. Why throw away years of striving and hardship? Racial progress happened in incremental steps, not one fell swoop. The Senator was a dangerous man.

James would have none of it. If the first black lawyer chose career over principle, what had been gained at the end of the day? James had decided what he must do before Chief Justice White.

*
As the Justices entered the courtroom, the Marshal of the Court began the session with “Oyez, oyez, oyez: All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and this honorable Court.”

James could not bear the sight of the Senator at opposing counsel’s desk. The Senator ignored and refused to acknowledge James across the way.

Once the justices were seated, the Chief Justice addressed the emergency plea for injunctive relief with a simple announcement: “We’ll hear argument this morning in U.S. Senator Robert Lynch v. James Moore Scott.” The Chief Justice uttered the words while shame flooded his mind. He was compromised.

The Senator composed himself, waited for a spell so as to build up anticipation. His eyes bore into the eyes of the Chief Justice directly in front of him. The absence of his trusted clerk, George Langston, haunted the Chief Justice. The situation was intolerable.

Senator Lynch rose slowly and with dignity as if the destiny of the white man was on his shoulders. “Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court.” The Senator paused again before continuing. “Where did we go wrong? When did we go wrong when we decided to admit a colored man to the bar and pretend he was a constructive white man? Irreparable harm has been done to the U.S. Constitution and our State Constitution dating back to 1780. There is no precedent for the admission of a black man to the bar. There is no legal basis for the legal fiction of a constructive white man. We ask the Court to right this wrong before more constructive white men populate this hallowed place of law.”

As Senator Lynch argued that “Colored Americans had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order… and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit,” the Chief Justice thought about George Langston. Was George a Colored American in law and in fact? When did a Colored American become a White American? When was the line crossed? Had George concealed his race all of these years? Maybe, he never knew his race? George was not “an inferior being,” perhaps tiresome at times but not inferior. He had a superior mind about race and the law. A good man was murdered, two men were now murdered and blood was on the Chief Justice’s hands.

He no longer heard the words of Senator Lynch in open court. The Chief Justice wanted to release himself of these awful pangs of conscience. It was all he could feel. Sometimes a man will conduct himself in a manner out of character. The larger world may never know. The wife may never know. The grieving family may never know. But the man knows. And he must unburden himself. Otherwise, he will grow mad with guilt like Louise.

The Senator concluded his argument against a constructive white man fiction and rested his case.

“Counsel for Respondent,” said the Chief Justice.

James rose. He had no time for dramatic pauses.

“Mr. Chief Justice and Members of this Court, I am a Colored American native to Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. I am a citizen of this great Commonwealth thanks to the foresight of Founding Fathers like John Adams in 1780. Our state constitution removed all manner of caste and stigma based upon skin color. That much is clear. The issue before us is whether my admission to the state bar as a constructive white man violates the United States Constitution. Can a colored American as a Colored American be admitted to the bar? That is the question on this emergency appeal.

It may surprise many of my friends and supporters here in Boston and the bar. I join with the Senator in my opposition to the constructive white man fiction. It is a mark of disrespect for my human dignity to pretend I am something I am not. I am not passing for white. I will never pass for white. I demand that this Court overturn the constructive white man fiction. What is the proper remedy? That the Court rule Black Americans, Colored Americans, Negro Americans, whatever, can practice law as Americans of African descent.”

There was dead silence in the courtroom. Had James sealed his own seal?

*

Two old friends of senior status were about to have the talk of a lifetime. The Chief Justice had wanted to bare his soul to U.S. Senator Daniel Webster after the William Babbitt Haynes shipwreck. At the time, the Chief Justice remembered it was poor form to burden a long-time associate with an indiscretion. Now, a second man had been murdered on his call. The Chief Justice could not function otherwise. He needed advice and counsel from a trusted intimate. And that intimate was the other U.S. Senator, Senator Webster.

The Chief Justice sat down in Daniel’s office. Daniel closed the door.

“Walter, you look like hell! What is it?”

Walter felt his eyes well up with tears. Grown men did not cry in these times. “Take your time. When you are ready, tell me what happened.”

I don’t want to burden you with my troubles, Walter thought to himself.

It is like when you have done wrong, and you could choose to keep it to yourself, but you can’t. Your conscience is eaten away when you think of what you did. The world seems off kilter, misaligned. Dinner has lost its taste. Drink has lost its favor. The mind dreams of a young father, husband to a pregnant wife, struggling for life before he drowns in the seas off the coast of South Carolina. One imagines how one’s clerk was flogged like a slave in a living hell. One wants joy again in life through the misery.

It is as if everything good and beautiful in one’s life is pushed aside. Even love has lost its inspiration. All these things Walter felt before he said a single word to Daniel. A single word.

“Daniel, I forgot myself. I am a good man, a good jurist, a good Chief Justice, you know that.”

“Yes, I know,” Daniel offered with the empathy of one accustomed to constituent grievances and complaints. Their friendship had begun in the 1820s when Daniel left Portsmouth, New Hampshire for Boston just like the Langston family.

“It all began one day with a footnote in a book about a Negro preacher. I did not care a damn about the Negro preacher. I did care in the extreme about a footnote in the preacher’s biography,” Walter said as he opened up.

Over the next hour, two old friends descended to levels of intimacy, pain, hurt, rage, corruption and shame few humans have experienced together. Walter told about his controlling nature, how the state bar was his bar, how the Negro preacher’s son William Babbitt Haynes tried to game the system, how Walter wanted the race problem to go away with plausible deniability, how he disassociated himself from the shipwreck, how Lynch compromised the Chief Justice, how Lynch came after George Langston, how Walter gave the word as he was cornered and compromised, he felt like a fraud hearing oral arguments from Lynch in open court, how he wanted to end it all but he couldn’t do that to his descendants.

Walter wept in Daniel’s arms. Daniel sobbed as he knew life was over for his closest friend, Walter.

As the two close friends, a sitting U.S. Senator and a sitting state Chief Justice, composed themselves, Daniel led his friend towards peace at the center. It was the only road towards living going forward. “Daniel, you must bring more good into the world now. It is the only means of redemption. I believe James Moore Scott is right and correct. He is righteous in this matter. Rule that Colored Americans can practice law as Black Americans. The state caselaw is on your side. All praise to John Adams and the state constitution of 1780. You grant a technical win to the Senator on the merits but your remedy is admission of James Moore Scott without condition or caveat. It is your best chance for your legacy. Once Lynch’s emergency motion is granted invalidating the constructive white man fiction, you turn yourself in to Sheriff Sumner. You tell the Sherifff everything you told me, from start to finish. Hold nothing back. It is your best chance to avoid indictment for murder and jail time.”

Daniel was a good friend for his friend.

“Daniel, this conversation never happened, right?”

“Yes, Walter, this conversation never happened. I have forgotten what we were talking about.”

The next day in open court, the Chief Justice made Black American legal history. He granted the Senator’s emergency appeal with the express remedy that Colored Americans, Negro Americans, and Americans of African descent can practice law as Black or Colored or Negro Americans or Americans of African descent. It was immaterial and irrelevant if there was a single African ancestor in the lawyer’s ancestry.

James Moore Scott was stunned and shocked as was the Senator. Allies in the shadows would take care of the Chief Justice, the Senator thought to himself.

Within the hour, the Chief Justice knocked on the office door of Sheriff Sumner.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr. Chief Justice?”

“Charles, I ask you to arrest me for the murder of William Babbitt Haynes and George Langston. It is your duty.”

The Sheriff was stunned. “Tell me what in blazings for? Why?”

The Chief Justice told all over the course of an hour. He confessed and released his burdens in this world.

*
“It must be control. Control on my mind. Control will make you happy, Control will make you happy inside,” the Senator sang to himself in his office. He had destroyed the constructive white man fiction, he controlled the compromised Chief Justice, and now it was only a matter of signaling to his allies what needed to be done with the persistent James Moore Scott. His days were numbered on God’s green earth. He day dreamed about the delicious ways a man could be tortured. He smoked a Virginia cigar for effect.

There was a knock on his office door. Strange that his secretary had not announced a visitor. The Senator forgot about dreams of removing James from life. There was another knock on the door.

Now, the Senator was a little miffed. What could be so urgent? And where was his secretary? He opened his office door.

“Charles, I am surprised!” said the Senator. The life of power and privilege was now over for the son of a former slave owner in Massachusetts.

“Senator Robert Lynch, you are under arrest for the murder of William Babbitt Haynes and George Langston and the threatened murder of James Moore Scott. Turn around please.” Sheriff Sumner handcuffed the shocked Senator. He was speechless.

The underworld in Boston was a small, dirty world. Word traveled fast along the backways and alleyways of slavecatchers and kidnappers of men. The allies fell into the shadows of the criminal underground. A month later, they had made it to Montreal like many runaway slaves. They were outside of U.S. jurisdiction and would never face punishment for their seedy crimes against humanity.

In the Sheriff’s Office, the Senator warned he had allies in the shadows who would seek their revenge if harm came to him. The Sheriff replied, “I do not desire your execution for a double murder and threat of murder. I am much more content with doing my duty as an officer of the court. But know this Senator…if harm should befall me, my deputies would avenge my death—and some of them are abolitionists.”

The Senator went silent as the reality of execution settled in.

The District Attorney filed an indictment for two counts of murder and one count of threatened murder. To avoid the gallows, the Senator was willing to lose all. He chose life over possible hanging. In the plea bargain which was sealed by agreement of the state and the Senator, the Senator would resign from political office and be barred from ever holding a public office or office of trust for his life. The price for life was political destruction, a forced resignation from the U.S. Senate and reputation ruined. There was some grumbling in the District Attorney’s Office, however, securing a death sentence of a powerful U.S. Senator from any judge might be nearly impossible.

The District Attorney did the best he could with what he had.

Once the Senator resigned in a one-sentence resignation letter to the good people of Massachusetts, the Chief Justice resigned out of conscience the same day. The Chief Justice never explained the reason for his sudden resignation. Both Senator Webster and the Sheriff kept the Chief Justice’s confidence so as to save his dignity and reputation. A story was created in the White family for descendants to remember.

*
In his last public act, the Chief Justice and fellow justices of the Massachusetts State Supreme Court admitted James Moore Scott to the state bar as a Colored American, citizen of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States of America. The ceremony was a small, private affair before the burial of clerk George Langston as a Black man.

That evening, James wrote his Uncle Alexander in Brownington, Vermont about his admission to the state bar. The orphaned William C. wrote Rev. Alexander Twilight about the human condition and family.

*
A few days later, Rev. Twilight returned home from a vigorous day in the classroom. He enjoyed teaching his students. His mission in life was to develop the best boarding school in Vermont. Many educators believed he had already accomplished his goal. Rev. Twilight led a charmed life, many felt. He might have a little colored blood in him but so what? He was a blessing to the small border town of Brownington. Twilight retrieved his mail for the day and prepared his sermon for Sunday’s service. He was inspired by a Jane Austen novel to preach about prejudice and perseverance. He worked into the late afternoon with the occasional apple cider to keep him company. Life was good.

As the sun was about to set in the western sky, Rev. Twilight saw among his correspondence a letter from William C. Nell in Boston. He went outside onto his porch and watched the sun rays disappear below the green mountains. He closed his eyes and thought about his nephew, James. Any day now, James would be admitted to the Bar, the first colored lawyer. He imagined what little Alex must look like by now. A part of his sister lived on in Little Alex. Little Alex would grow up with two strong brothers to protect and guide him. Rev. Twilight drifted off to sleep.

An owl awoke Rev. Twilight with a start. It was now dark but the moonlight gave a lunar glow to the surrounding fields and meadows. Twilight placed on his reading glasses and lit an outdoor candle. He began to read the letter from William C. under the candlelight.