The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

My father looks stricken, as though begging me to go back to being a little girl, uninterested in the sordid aspect of life that, I increasingly see, has been his purview all along. I suppose he wants to protect me. I can imagine a world where my father thinks his own compromised morality will keep his children safe from the truth.

My moment of triumph wavers. I realize with appalled recognition that I have no wish to see my father this way. I loved him. My banker father, with his noble Dutch roots and political aspirations. My father, who knows important men and discusses important things. I don’t want to know that he’s just a flawed man, like any other.

“It’s . . . it’s complicated,” he falters.

“Try me,” I say, folding my arms over my chest.

“The government,” he says. “They couldn’t put up all the money. You see? It’s a huge project, the canal. You can’t even imagine how big. No one’s ever attempted anything like it. It’s like . . . it’s like asking the governor to pay for a slingshot to send some argonaut to the moon. Who’d invest in such folly? Who’d explain to the people why their taxes should be spent on such things? Don’t even have enough to eat, most of them. The common man lacks vision, Annie. He can’t look any further than tomorrow. Sometimes not even that far.”

“I don’t think that’s true, Papa,” I say.

He smiles drily at me. “Of course you don’t. Oh, my dear. How young you are.”

He moves away from the window, which has become blocked anyway by the back of a ragged woman begging with a child at her breast. My father crosses the room to me, and places his hands on my shoulders.

“We formed a corporation, to solicit private investment. We had to raise the money some way, don’t you see?” He’s using his now-let’s-be-reasonable voice. Nothing drives me to greater distraction.

“From whom, Papa? Who did you go to for money?” I demand, staring him in the face.

“Why, from all sorts of people. Businessmen here in town. Some additional syndicates, as well. Syndicates from farther quarters.”

“Southern syndicates, you mean,” I say. “Plantation owners. Slaveholders. They gave you the money.”

He nods. Ever so slightly.

“But what do they care for the canal?” I exclaim. “They’re hundreds of miles away!” I try to twist myself free of my father’s grip, but he holds me fast.

“The grain, Annie,” he says. “The price of grain will plummet once the canal is open. Use your head. Slaves are expensive. They have to eat. Not well, I admit, but eat they must. No planter will let his stock starve to death. They’re expensive to buy, and expensive to maintain in bulk. But they’ll get cheaper to keep, fed on bread from grain moved on our canal. Have you any idea how cheap these goods will become, once our canal opens? How much harder they can then be made to work? How rich their trade will make this city? The cotton cargo coming through New-York will expand ten times over. Why, my bank alone holds mortgages on hundreds of slaves. We’ll triple our investment in a day!”

“These goods,” I spit, and this time I do break myself free from his grip. “I thought you said you’d outlaw slavery, in the city, when you become mayor!”

“And so I shall, my dear. The laboring classes will insist on it. Free white men need wages, or they’ll starve and riot in the streets. They can’t compete with slave labor. Look at this.” He gestures to the beggar woman outside the window, who’s waylaid a stovepipe-hatted young man who’s trying to shake her loose from his sleeve. “Can’t you see how they’ll benefit? And in any case, they vote. In this city, abolition is what the masses want to hear, so that’s what I sell them. And if cotton stays cheap, why, so much the better.”

I’m so revolted by what my father’s saying that I fear I’m going to be sick.

“But, Papa,” I say through the bubble of disgust quickening in my chest. “They’re not goods. They’re people.”

He looks on me with pity, and shakes his head.