Irving Wallace - The Man

“Then you’re innocent. Go in there and show them.”

“Show whom?” said Dilman bitterly. “Those House advocates-managers-who prosecute me? The full Senate that sits as a jury on me? They’re not experienced and uncommitted magistrates. They’re elected representatives of the people, mostly voted in for their popularity rather than for having common sense, and so they’re the mass public’s alter ego. They hear the voice of the people, and they echo that voice. If they don’t, they’re out on their behinds come next election. I tell you, it boils down to the emotional, unthinking public in the final analysis. Remember, I’ve been out on the hustings, tramping through the grass roots, these last four days-five days, counting this morning when my hotel in Sioux City was picketed for giving shelter to a Communist traitor-”

The Judge gave a nasal trumpet of disgust and waved his hand in dismissal. “Forget those provincial farmers. Any stranger who comes around these parts, who’s been to Paris twice and Moscow once, he’s an international scoundrel and Soviet spy. I know my Middle Western brethren. Except for some of our fringe progressive movements, these boneheads are traditional, conservative, close-minded, all hoarding, saving, clinging to one-hoss-shay ideas in their silo heads. But they’re not all bad either, only slow. Give them time, a warm stove to sit around, a chance to reason in a language they understand, and they come around, they come around. A section of the country that nurtured Battling Bob La Follette, John Peter Altgeld, Eugene Debs, even produced nuts like Ignatius Donnelly, can’t be written off. There’s hope for it, and hope for you.”

“Too little hope too late, Judge,” persisted Dilman. “Let me finish. My fate is in the hands of the voting public right now, and for four days I’ve seen that public up close, cheek by jowl, and I don’t know if any President ever endured such unanimous vilification and hatred. The voice of the people wants me out, and that voice will call the Guilty’s in the Senate.”

The Judge touched a match to his corncob and said, “I declare, Douglass-and this I didn’t altogether expect from you-you’re becoming what the Missus’ fancy books call a paranoid, meaning you’re down on yourself because you’ve built up a case for believing the whole world’s against you, and you won’t allow nothing to bring you up.”

“I’m facing the harsh facts, Judge-what I’ve seen firsthand.”

“Bah,” said The Judge. “You’re so beat-up inside, you can’t handle a fact when one comes along. Here’s a few real facts, the way I see them. I read about your speeches in Cleveland, Los Angeles-where else?-Seattle. You got rough-handled, for sure, but there were lots of people, lots, who weren’t booing and stomping their boots against you. There were some clapping for you, I read, not many, but some, and there were lots who were silent, listening, giving you a chance, withholding judgment. There’s that part of the public you can’t ignore. Then there’s that impeachment vote in the House yesterday. Sure, the majority voted against you. But there were plenty who spoke up on your behalf, and out of 448 members there were 161-no small number-who voted for you. They’re the people’s voice, too. Now, we got the Senate next week. What were most of the senators before they were elected? Most were attorneys-at-law; the Senate’s top-heavy with lawyers. That means you’ll have more educated men than in the House hearing your trial. Then, also to be considered is the fact that the House is pretty much overturned every two years and a lot of new members are elected, so the old members have to parrot their constituents word for word if they want to avoid being replaced come next election time, true? Those senators, though, they’re in for six years, and they don’t have to parrot, knowing in six years their constituents won’t remember much or will maybe have mellowed. So you got a body that has its share of donkeys from the North, and linen suits and Panama hats from the Confederate South, but you got a body of judges apt to be more independent of public hysteria. Young fellow, you remember this: old Andrew Johnson got impeached by the House, but there was no twothirds against him in the Senate, and contradicting the asinine House, the Senate set Andrew Johnson free.”

Dilman shook his head. “No comparison, Judge. Andrew Johnson had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at him, and he barely squeaked by. Me, I’ve got everything and the kitchen sink thrown at me-because, Judge, cards on the table, President Johnson wasn’t black, and I am. The electorate and the Congress simply won’t have a Negro running their affairs in Washington. They never have and they won’t allow it today.”

“The hell they never have, Douglass.” The corncob in The Judge’s hand now went up and down like a schoolteacher’s ruler. “Don’t tangle with me on matters of history, young fellow. There were fourteen colored congressmen in the House of Representatives between 1869 and 1876, and there are eleven in the House this year. There were two Negroes in the Senate between 1870 and 1881, and there are three in the Senate today. Maybe the public crawls along the way, but each decade it gets a bit closer to the State House in Philadelphia where the Constitution was drafted, signed, and sealed. Americans let some Negroes run their affairs far back as the 1870s and-”

“And what happened right after?” Dilman said. “You’re telling half the story. I’ll tell you the rest. For sure, no one lived happily ever after. The unreconstructed Southern Democrats powered Hayes into the Presidency, and he paid them back by pulling Federal troops out of the South, troops who’d been protecting Negro voters, and then came the Klan and segregation and the Negroes were niggers again.”

“Today it’s different,” insisted The Judge, “because today Negroes are gaining their rights by using the ballot, not by relying on the force of Federal troops. I don’t say you’ve gotten enough fast enough. What’s the old mammy spiritual of yours?-yes-you ‘keep inchin’ along.’ The public’s more prepared to allow a Negro to govern than ever before. Maybe not this morning, because they’ve been whipped into a frenzy against you. But maybe two weeks from this morning, when your side of the case is aired for the first time, maybe then their temper will change and their intelligence be restored. Maybe it’s a long shot. I say it’s at least a shot. You’ve still got a good chance.”

Dilman had listened thoughtfully, and now he pushed his chair back, hardly aware of the act, and stood up and went to the window. “All right, Judge,” he said. “It’s no use beating around the bush any longer. I’ll tell you what compelled me to come here. But before that, I’d better fill you in on how this impeachment came about.”

Quietly, half facing the pondering ex-President, Dilman recounted the entire story, beginning with the CIA report on Baraza that had been withheld from him by Secretary of State Eaton and Governor Talley, and including Miss Watson’s effort to help Eaton by her bizarre espionage in the Lincoln Bedroom. Then he told of how he had summoned Eaton to his office to ask him to quit his Cabinet post, and described what had followed-Eaton’s refusal to quit, Eaton’s demand that, instead, Dilman either resign from the Presidency outright or back off because of a pretended disability and turn the reins of government over to T. C.’s crowd, or prepare himself to face impeachment and trial.

Dilman took a few steps toward The Judge. “At first I braved it through, Judge, because I couldn’t believe the House would even consider their phony case. Now I see how wrong I was. I misunderstood their consuming need to believe the charges against me, I miscalculated the degree of their hatred of me, and the public’s hatred. I was stubbornly optimistic, and the vote yesterday proved me a fool. Since yesterday I’ve been faced with one last decision-”