Lincoln Page #11

SEWARD:

The President is never to be

mentioned. Nor I. You're paid for

your discretion.

33.

W.N. BILBO

Hell, you can have that for

nothin', what we need money for is

bribes. It'd speed things up.

SEWARD:

No. Nothing strictly illegal.

ROBERT LATHAM:

It's not illegal to bribe

Congressmen. They starve

otherwise.

RICHARD SCHELL:

I have explained to Mr. Bilbo and

Mr. Latham that we're offering

patronage jobs to the Dems who vote

yes. Jobs and nothing more.

SEWARD:

That's correct.

W.N. BILBO

Congressmen come cheap! Few

thousand bucks'll buy you all you

need.

SEWARD:

The President would be unhappy to

hear you did that.

W.N. BILBO

Well, will he be unhappy if we

lose?

A WAITRESS brings in a platter of roasted crabs, which she

slams down on the table, and leaves.

SEWARD:

The money I managed to raise for

this endeavor is only for your

fees, food, and lodgings.

W.N. BILBO

Uh huh. If that squirrel-infested

attic you've quartered us in's any

measure, you ain't raised much.

RICHARD SCHELL:

Shall we get to work?

Bilbo takes a mallet to a crab, smashing it!

34.

INT. FLOOR OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES - DAY

A gavel slams down on a sounding block in an attempt to

silence the raucous tumult in the large chamber. It subsides

enough for Colfax to be heard from his chair atop the central

DAIS:

SCHUYLER COLFAX:

The House recognizes Fernando Wood,

the honorable representative from

New York.

TITLE:
THE HOUSE DEBATE BEGINS

JANUARY 9

Floor and balcony are full, although the desks of

representatives from seceded states are bare and unoccupied.

On the Democratic side, 81 members applaud FERNANDO WOOD (D,

NY) as he takes the podium. The Democratic leadership,

including GEORGE YEAMAN (KY), has gathered around House

minority leader GEORGE PENDLETON(OH). On the Republican side

of the aisle, enraged booing from the 102 Republicans,

including HIRAM PRICE (IA), GEORGE JULIAN (IN), Vintner

Litton and Ashley, all gathered around Stevens's desk.

FERNANDO WOOD:

Estimable colleagues. Two bloody

years ago this month, his Highness,

King Abraham Africanus the First -

our Great Usurping Caesar, violator

of habeas corpus and freedom of the

press, abuser of states' rights -

HIRAM PRICE FERNANDO WOOD

(loud:
) - radical republican autocrat

If Lincoln really were a ruling by fiat and martial

tyrant, Mr. Wood, he'd'a had law affixed his name to his

your empty head impaled on a heinous and illicit

pike, and the country better Emancipation Proclamation,

for it! promising it would hasten the

end of the war, which yet

rages on and on.

Murmuring from the floor and the balcony, in the front row of

which Mary and Elizabeth Keckley sit. Mary turns her gaze

from the floor to watch Latham and Schell, a few seats away,

scrutinize the floor, whispering, Latham taking notes. Schell

holds the leather prospectus folio in his lap. Bilbo sits

behind them.

They study the other NY Democrats - CHARLES HANSON, NELSON

MERRICK, HENRY LANFORD, HOMER BENSON, GILES STUART - who

35.

comprise a cluster of glum uncomfortable passivity on that

side of the aisle.

FERNANDO WOOD (CONT'D) ROBERT LATHAM

He claimed, as tyrants do, (whispering to Schell:)

that the war's emergencies The New York delegation's

permitted him to turn our looking decidedly uninspired.

army into the unwilling

instrument of his monarchical

AMBITIONS -

Wood points at Stevens, granite-faced. Stevens's eyes burn

back at Wood.

FERNANDO WOOD (CONT'D)

- and radical Republicanism's

abolitionist fanaticism!

This prompts shouts and boos from the Republicans.

FERNANDO WOOD (CONT'D)

His Emancipation Proclamation has

obliterated millions of dollars'

worth of personal property rights -

Schell examines the Pennsylvania Democrats: an openly

appalled ARCHIBALD MORAN, AMBROSE BAILER, and, chewing his

thumb, a painful fake grin pinned to his face, ALEXANDER

COFFROTH. Schell leans in to Latham.

FERNANDO WOOD (CONT'D) RICHARD SCHELL

- and "liberated" the Over in Pennsylvania - who's

hundreds of thousands of the sweaty man eating his

hopelessly indolent Negro thumb?

refugees, bred by nature for

servility, to settle in ROBERT LATHAM

squalor in our Northern Unknown to me. Seems jumpy.

cities!

RICHARD SCHELL:

Perhaps he'll jump.

Cheering and booing.

In the Connecticut delegation, JOHN ELLIS winds his pocket

Rate this script:2.9 / 8 votes