Advise and Consent (23 page)

Chapter 2

It had begun, like so many careers in American politics, with a speech. The story is a familiar one in the annals of the Congress: there was a high-school valedictory, and the hero delivered it with extraordinary fire and brilliance; or there was a debating contest, and the hero defeated ten other eager lads and carried off all honors; or the featured speaker at the county political rally dropped dead and the hero took his place with an impromptu oration that made strong men weep and maidens swoon; or casting about for a speaker at the annual Fourth of July picnic, somebody said, “Why not get young Seab Cooley? He’s just back from law school and ought to know a thing or two.” And they did, and there was awe and shouting and dancing in the streets.

“I told them,” Seab would say now, looking back through sleepily narrowed eyes over fifty years, “that
they
were responsible for America. Yes, sir, I surely did. When all is said and done, I said,
you
are responsible for America, so don’t pass the buck to anybody in Washington. It’s your country, your vote, and your responsibility. So they quickly elected me to the House of Rep-re-sen-tat-ives and they’ve been passing the buck to me ever since. Yes, sir. Of course,” he would add with a mischievous little chuckle, “of course when I worked so hard to get the invitation to make that speech I rather intended them to do exactly that. They thought it was all accident, but it wasn’t. No, sir, they didn’t know it, but it wasn’t. Don’t quote that, though. They’re mostly all dead now, but I wouldn’t want it to get out that my first venture into politics was a calculated thing. I don’t like people to think I calculate. You don’t think I calculate, do you, young man? Well, that’s good, because I
never
calculate. No, sir.”—the sleepy smile would become even sleepier—“no,
sir
.”

Sometimes, trying to search back into the depths of time beyond that first hot, dusty day in Barnwell (he could still remember the intimation he received at the moment he arose to speak, that he was seeing the story of his life in a second, an endless procession of massed, attentive audiences and upturned, seeking faces) the interviewer or reporter, usually from
Time
or
Newsweek
or some other publication not disposed to be friendly to the Senator, would have the feeling that there was something being hidden, something concealed, for Seab would always turn aside those queries with a comfortable chuckle and a deliberate concentration on the chronological record. Sometimes he would give his earnest questioner the impression that he had lived from birth to twenty and from twenty-six, when he entered the House, to date; but that from twenty to twenty-six he had been somewhere else. It was not that he concealed the outlines of those years, but he never filled them in; and in the present era there was no longer any way, for there was actually no one still living known to his interviewers to help them, to find out what had happened then. Everybody agreed that somewhere in those years there must be “the key to Seab,” but nobody ever found it; and part of the sly pleasure he took in concealing it was his knowledge that, terrible as it had been for him, the experience really was very common to the human race and nothing so very unusual when all was said and done. That, and the fact that it could still hurt him across all those decades of pomp and power since.

Outwardly, of course, the story was factual and complete and in many ways standard for that time and section. His father had been a country storekeeper, raising seven children by the gift of gab and the grace of God and enough hard work to keep a little food in the cupboard and the necessary minimum of clothing on their backs. Living on the edge of poverty had imposed on all the children the obligation to go to work young, and Seab, first child and first son of four, early began to help his father in the store. This, begun at nine, plus odd jobs for neighbors and other businessmen around Barnwell, had soon given him an ease with grownups and a familiarity with their world which rapidly sharpened an already highly active native intelligence to the point where he presently came to be regarded as one of the most promising youths around the countryside. His grades in school bore this out, for he had no trouble at all in leading his class consistently through grammar school and the first two years in high school. Then his father died, and there was no solution to the problem this posed except to drop school and take over the store to support his mother and the family. A year after this, driven to an almost frantic restlessness by the certainty that he had abilities far beyond storekeeping and the knowledge that he was not making use of them, he answered a high-school-by-mail advertisement and by dint of rising religiously at five every morning and studying until eight when he opened the store, and then studying again from immediately after supper until 11 p.m., he managed to complete his high-school course and received an accredited diploma in a year and a half. By then his next oldest brother was fifteen and able to take an increasingly active part in running the store (he kept at it all his life, and when he had died three years ago Cooley Stores, Inc., in which the Senator still held a sizeable share of stock, had branches in fifteen cities in the Carolinas, six in Georgia, and four in Alabama), and Seab began to think seriously about college.

Along about that time came his first association with the Cashtons, still operating Roselands ten miles out of Barnwell on the five hundred acres left after the war’s debts and ravages had been paid off. Colonel Tom Cashton, who had been in the store a thousand times before, came in one day in 1908 and remarked, during a casual purchase of corn, that he had long had his eye on Seabright and he thought Seabright should be
encouraged to go to college. Seabright, much pleased by this, said he had the same idea but no money to do it with, and Colonel Cashton, like many another southerner of means obsessed with the idea that the South’s bright young men should be fostered and pushed ahead if the country was to come back eventually to parity with the North, offered as naturally as passing the time of day to finance the venture. He was nearing sixty, he had no sons, neither Amy nor Cornelia showed much interest in an education over and beyond that of any gracious and well-placed southern lady, and thanks to the colonel’s luck and shrewd management, and that of his mother before him, Roselands had come back rather sensationally from the bitter night when General Kilpatrick had invited the tight-lipped, white-faced, dry-eyed ladies of Barnwell to come dance with his officers while his men set the countryside alight with their houses. He had the money, and he felt he should do something constructive with it for the South, and Seabright seemed the most obvious thank-offering at hand.

After some hesitation, for he did not wish to become too obligated to anyone, the seventeen-year-old storekeeper accepted the offer and went off to the University of South Carolina after his first visit to Roselands, an uncomfortable evening for which he had taken ten hard-earned dollars and bought himself a new suit, and prior to which he had lain awake nights for a week worrying how he would act. As it turned out he acted very well, with an earnest if somewhat stiff dignity at which Amy, just turning fifteen, had poked a little mischievous fun, but which Cornelia seemed to think was quite all right. The colonel too seemed to approve and assured Seab he had no misgivings about their bargain. All he wanted, Colonel Cashton said, was for Seabright to do his best and come home with a degree and do his part for Barnwell, Carolina, and the South. Seab had promised with all the fervor of youth and deep gratitude to do exactly that, and had ridden his horse off into the night with their final waves and good wishes from among the great white columns sounding sweetly in his ears. To this day he could see them smiling and calling and waving still.

There had followed four good years, indeed excellent years, at the university. The colonel’s largesse, while not ample, was sufficient, and with the diligence, persistence, and intense application to detail that were to characterize him all his life, he had devoted himself to justifying the colonel’s belief in him. In his own mind he had decided at that time that what the South needed most was education, and he pointed his studies toward becoming a teacher; to go home, bring learning where it was needed, lead the young, perhaps in his way do as the colonel had done with him and find a protégé or protégés to carry on the work and go on to do great things, seemed to him the best use he could make of his talents. Because he was good-looking, sociable, likeable, and gregarious, and had also an intelligence which soon carried him to the top of the campus world, this objective began to gather about it, almost without his knowing it, a broader aspect and implication. By his junior year, when he was on the football team, about to become chairman of the debating society, president of the junior class, and the inevitable choice to become president of the student body in the following year, his roommate finally voiced the obvious and suggested that he go into law and then into politics. This idea, which like many other ideas that would be mentioned to him later, already had come to life in his own thoughts, appealed to him powerfully and he said so with candor. But some reluctance holding him back, his obligation to the colonel, his feeling that the colonel might not approve of this course, kept him true to teaching and after a successful year as head of the student body during which he built with contacts and popular policies the foundation of his subsequent political career-forming along the way close friendships with the scions of some half-dozen of Charleston’s leading families, without which his political ventures, while as successful, might not have been as comfortably easy as they turned out to be—he got his teaching certificate and went home to Barnwell.

There he found his brother in good health, the store doing well, his mother and family getting along in modest but steadily rising economic comfort, and the Barnwell school, by one of those happy happenstances that often characterized his later career, needing a new superintendent. To this post, with the help of Colonel Cashton and his friends, who comprised most of the leading men of the community, he was appointed at the age of twenty-one and moved into charge of three classrooms, two ancient maiden-lady teachers, and a grand total of forty-three pupils in eight grades.

For two years this kept him busy; but during this time the idea of going into politics became steadily more insistent and the suggestions of those who visualized him in such a setting steadily more pressing. The Congressman from the district was in his mid-seventies, there was the presumption that he would either die or retire before long, and there seemed a good chance the job presently would be there for the taking. There was some opposition, some other ambitious men of more mature years who indicated they might be interested, but he was confident he could beat them if he really went after it. There was still the colonel, however, and his almost superstitious gratitude and obligation; and it was not until he had been teaching for almost a year and a half, and only after six more increasingly intimate visits to Roselands, that suddenly one night the colonel made it as simple as he had made college by looking at him shrewdly over a late brandy and asking bluntly, “Why don’t you go into politics?” Quite surprisingly to the colonel, for neither he nor anyone around with the exception of Seab’s mother and possibly one other had any conception of the depths of emotion that lay in the school superintendent’s heart, tears had welled up in his eyes and he had been unable to speak for several silent moments while the colonel looked tactfully at a china closet full of dried flowers and there managed to conceal an answering emotion of his own.

When Seab could finally speak, he said simply that this was his greatest dream and ambition and that he would give anything in the world if he could do it. But, he said honestly, he felt he was just a little young for it right then, and he felt he should go to law school first. Under the circumstances existing in the district, he went on candidly, he thought there would be just the right lapse of time in which to do it if he began in the coming fall. The colonel again offered financial help, but by then the store was doing well enough, and a second was about to be opened, so that Seab was able to refuse with heartfelt gratitude and thanks. He would, however, he said, appreciate it if the colonel could keep an eye on things for him otherwise while he was away. The colonel chuckled and said he would see to it that the incumbent Congressman ran again, which would have the effect of foreclosing anyone else’s ambitions for the time being; the Congressman didn’t really want to, the colonel said, but under the circumstances he would be persuaded. Seab thanked him deeply again and went off, this time to Harvard and the great world which he would never leave again.

At Harvard the story was much the same as it had been at the university: many friends, great personal popularity, intensive application, outstanding grades. By the time he came back to Barnwell from his second educational venture there were a good many people in the world who thought that Seabright B. Cooley was a young man with a great and worthy future. Happily for his political plans, a great many of them were concentrated in his home town and its neighboring areas.

From that point forward nothing stood in the way. There was an annual Fourth of July picnic and when its chairman asked about for suggestions for a speaker Colonel Cashton looked up lazily and asked, “Why not get young Seab Cooley? He’s just back from law school and ought to know a thing or two.” The immediate reaction was that of course this was the obvious choice and how could anybody have overlooked it. The invitation was offered, was quickly accepted, and after writing and rewriting and practicing day and night for three weeks, Barnwell’s most promising young man stepped to the lectern and delivered an address so polished and effective that ever after, despite many later speeches on the same occasion to virtually the same audience, “Seab’s Fourth of July speech” always meant just one thing, that first ringing, challenging, idealistic, and overpowering onslaught upon their minds and emotions in which man and destiny came together on an afternoon when the temperature stood at 101 and the trumpets of the future sounded among the moss-hung oaks.