Dearest Rutherford (The Crossroads)

Dearest Rutherford[i] (The Crossroads)

Dearest Rutherford,

I pray this letter finds you well

though perhaps you sleep

beneath the covers of tranquility

at Spiegel Grove[ii], where your heart ever resided.

What thoughts, I wonder, fill your slumber?

Valiant conquest?

Or dreams deferred?

What vagrant thoughts fill now your idle hours?

Do you wake to the cries

of our twice-bound brothers

descending again into ignoble barbarism?

--- into living death?

I must ask

with as much civility as I can muster,

did the thrush sing

as the thin mist rolled like silky tendrils

off the Potomac[iii] that cold April morning?

Did the sun, that glorious ember,

perceive the err of its rising that day?

Were the seeds of acrimony evident

or was the veil of expediency too thick?

Its melody too alluring?

Did you weep

as the troops beat their retreat

across the taciturn Ohio?[iv]

Did you rejoice with each vote cast;

each tacit proclamation?

Did you wail as the tide of Christ-won progress

slipped back into the murky

waters of oppression and despair?

Did the halls echo with Tilden’s[v] laughter

even as your banners flew triumphant?

Did you weigh, upon your noble brow,

the question of enforced morality?

Could you know the cost of complacency?

Or were the gears of patronage

wound too tight,

to grind the seeds of humility

into the meal of progress?

Do they grind still?

Dear friend,

do not misjudge.

I condemn you not,

though angels stand ready for the reaping

and judgment beckons upon the horizon

kissed with the kindled watch-fires.

I wish only to know,

while the Emancipator’s form

lay quiet;

lay cold, in the dust,

while the scores rested

in Arlington[vi],

in Gettysburg[vii],

in Andersonville[viii],

and thousands upon thousands more

made their beds in

unmarked field and furrow,

could you hear the whisper stirring from the pregnant earth?

The cries of the people rising to the Lord?

Could you perceive the provocative voice

beckoning from the crossroads

while the fires of democracy burned low?

Did the stench of purification

descend upon Wormley’s[ix] that day?

What remained when the cheers of adulation fell silent?

With the curtains drawn

and the flames extinguished

and the creak of old wood resounding in the night,

were too your dreams of equality snuffed

beneath the douter[x] of pragmatism?

Where does the corpse of idealism lie?

Forgive me,

my friend,

for my own reproach is heavy,

a weight I fail to bear

and I am crushed beneath the crippling

blows of impotence and despair.

My love I send you,

though you dwell I know not where,

beyond the veil

where sorrow, perhaps

fades and hope swells anew.

Look upon us, we who remain,

whose tears wet the parched earth;

whose feet bear the scars of prolonged sojourning

and whose eyes probe restlessly

for the lamp of justice and salvation.

---

[i] Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19^th President of the United States of America elected in the contested election of 1876 and was confirmed in 1877 through what is known as the Compromise of 1877, an informal and controversial agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties in which Democratic electors would switch their votes to the Republican Hayes, in return for, among other things, the removal of Federal troops from the South (a provision of Reconstruction) and the restoration of ‘home rule’ allowing the Southern states to deal with blacks without Northern influence.

[ii] Spiegel Grove was the estate of Rutherford and his wife, Lucy Webb Hayes.

[iii] The Potomac flows through Washington D.C. where the informal Compromise of 1877 was secured.

[iv] In the pre-Civil War period, the Ohio River served as a dividing line between the slave states to the south and the free-soil states to the north.

[v] Samuel J. Tilden, Democratic candidate for President who lost the election of 1876 despite winning the popular vote.

[vi] United States military cemetery established in 1864 on the former site of the estate of Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s wife, Mary Anna Lee.

[vii] Gettysburg National Cemetery was established in 1863 to inter Union casualties. Also, it was the site of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

[viii] Confederate prison near Andersonville, Georgia designed to house prisoners-of-war. Noted for its brutality and abhorrent conditions, it held approximately 45,000 Union prisoners. Of that number, 13,000 died within its walls largely of malnutrition and disease.

[ix] A five story hotel in Washington D.C. where the Wormley Agreement, precursor to the final Compromise, was signed.

[x] An instrument used in the snuffing out of candles.