calling to me: “Michener! What in hell are you doing back at the scene of your crime?”
It was Matthew Gouger, a Texas free-wheeler who had drifted north to make a fortune in various businesses and whom I had got to know when we served together as delegatesto Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Convention earlier that year. He was a big man, big in speech, big in metaphor, big in spending, and big in Mississippi riverboat graciousness. At the convention I had known him for three days before I realized that he was a Democrat; by every external standard he should have been a conservative, big-hearted, and sensible Republican, but something had gone awry and he had come out of his extensive business experience a profoundly liberal Democrat. In the convention he had astonished me by the courage he displayed in taking on the established powers one after another in frontal assault. He was castigated on the floor, abused in private, and respected by everyone. I shall not soon forget how, after Matt and I had stood together on a dozen different matters, I finally put forth one that was rather close to my heart and then sat down to hear him tear it to shreds on a weakness which I had overlooked.
He was a mime, and at his copious dinner parties he used to entertain us with outrageous yarns in which various leaders appeared in ridiculous postures; he was also a professional Texan, with stories of the range that went on like the Texas horizon. I had not known that Matt Gouger was to be a member of the Electoral College, but when I saw him I felt strangely relieved. I said to myself as he started a yarn about his last trip to Texas, “If there had been a brawl in the College, Matt’s the kind of man we would have needed to fight it to an honorable conclusion.”
I was about to confess my apprehensions as to the propriety of my being in the College when Matt clapped a hand on my shoulder and said, “Jim, the papers are making fun of thisCollege as a useless thing. But believe me, I went through hell because of it. The anguish started last August at the Chicago convention. I came home heartsick at what our party had done to itself. And when they asked me to serve as an elector I wanted no part of it. But then I began to see that this could be a critical election. Wallace looked so strong that I thought he’d surely pick up enough votes to throw it into the House. And when the word got out that I was considering serving, men from all over, Republicans and Democrats alike, sought me out and said, ‘Matt, you’ve got to accept. We don’t know how this thing is going to end. And if the Electoral College becomes important, we want someone like you in there.’ So I accepted, and then the sweating began, because I knew that if this fracas turned out to be inconclusive and threatened to go to the House, I was going to do everything in my power to bring the two major parties together to settle it in the Electoral College.”
I asked, “Wouldn’t that have been illegal?”
Matt said, “It would have been obligatory.”
I asked, “How would you have started?”
Matt said, “I’d have started with you.”
I asked, “What could we have accomplished?”
Matt said, “We could have destroyed any party that tried a corrupt deal. Because Republicans of like mind would have joined us.”
I asked, “Do you think we could have won?”
Matt said, “It would have been a colossal brawl.”
At this point I confided what my own plans had been, and like two conspirators we spent the hour prior to the openingof the College discussing how we had intended using that College for a commendable purpose. It became apparent as we talked that there would have been across the nation many like us, so concerned with the safety of our nation that we would have done whatever was legal to insure that safety. We were satisfied, each of us, that what we had proposed to ourselves was legal; and we were sure that it was necessary. We were struck by the fact
It was Matthew Gouger, a Texas free-wheeler who had drifted north to make a fortune in various businesses and whom I had got to know when we served together as delegatesto Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Convention earlier that year. He was a big man, big in speech, big in metaphor, big in spending, and big in Mississippi riverboat graciousness. At the convention I had known him for three days before I realized that he was a Democrat; by every external standard he should have been a conservative, big-hearted, and sensible Republican, but something had gone awry and he had come out of his extensive business experience a profoundly liberal Democrat. In the convention he had astonished me by the courage he displayed in taking on the established powers one after another in frontal assault. He was castigated on the floor, abused in private, and respected by everyone. I shall not soon forget how, after Matt and I had stood together on a dozen different matters, I finally put forth one that was rather close to my heart and then sat down to hear him tear it to shreds on a weakness which I had overlooked.
He was a mime, and at his copious dinner parties he used to entertain us with outrageous yarns in which various leaders appeared in ridiculous postures; he was also a professional Texan, with stories of the range that went on like the Texas horizon. I had not known that Matt Gouger was to be a member of the Electoral College, but when I saw him I felt strangely relieved. I said to myself as he started a yarn about his last trip to Texas, “If there had been a brawl in the College, Matt’s the kind of man we would have needed to fight it to an honorable conclusion.”
I was about to confess my apprehensions as to the propriety of my being in the College when Matt clapped a hand on my shoulder and said, “Jim, the papers are making fun of thisCollege as a useless thing. But believe me, I went through hell because of it. The anguish started last August at the Chicago convention. I came home heartsick at what our party had done to itself. And when they asked me to serve as an elector I wanted no part of it. But then I began to see that this could be a critical election. Wallace looked so strong that I thought he’d surely pick up enough votes to throw it into the House. And when the word got out that I was considering serving, men from all over, Republicans and Democrats alike, sought me out and said, ‘Matt, you’ve got to accept. We don’t know how this thing is going to end. And if the Electoral College becomes important, we want someone like you in there.’ So I accepted, and then the sweating began, because I knew that if this fracas turned out to be inconclusive and threatened to go to the House, I was going to do everything in my power to bring the two major parties together to settle it in the Electoral College.”
I asked, “Wouldn’t that have been illegal?”
Matt said, “It would have been obligatory.”
I asked, “How would you have started?”
Matt said, “I’d have started with you.”
I asked, “What could we have accomplished?”
Matt said, “We could have destroyed any party that tried a corrupt deal. Because Republicans of like mind would have joined us.”
I asked, “Do you think we could have won?”
Matt said, “It would have been a colossal brawl.”
At this point I confided what my own plans had been, and like two conspirators we spent the hour prior to the openingof the College discussing how we had intended using that College for a commendable purpose. It became apparent as we talked that there would have been across the nation many like us, so concerned with the safety of our nation that we would have done whatever was legal to insure that safety. We were satisfied, each of us, that what we had proposed to ourselves was legal; and we were sure that it was necessary. We were struck by the fact
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