The Sins of Benjamin Galt

By Michael Crawford

Chapter 1
The Galt Mansion, the home of Benjamin Galt, was set among majestic oaks from which mosses hung like tears. It was surrounded by over an acre of verdant grasses and flower beds. Most people considered it the grandest home in New Orleans. It was three stories high, had 41 windows, was built of granite, and it had three pointed turrets that made it seem a castle. A gravel driveway snaked from the Rue Orpheus to the front entrance. Granite steps flanked by peaceful granite lions descended from a grand, roofed porch splayed with chairs and rockers. It was magnificent yet tasteful in every way but one – all of the 53 well-tended flower beds were planted exclusively with lily’s. Few would guess that its owner was a cheat, a liar, a thief, an embezzler and a murderer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Crawford
• Release date: Sep 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463597538

Michael Crawford

Michael Crawford was born in Kilgore, Texas and grew up in Houston, Texas. He attended John Reagan High School and the University of Houston, from which he took a degree in Marketing. His employment was, in order, The National Shawmut Bank of Boston, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Westinghouse and his own marketing company. "The Sins of Benjamine Galt" is his eighth novel. His goal is to write 12.

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The Sins of Benjamin Galt

Michael Crawford

Copyright 2018

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Contents

Chapter 1 - 1847 New Orleans

Chapter 2 - 52 Years Later in New Orleans

Chapter 3 - 1830 - Seventeen years earlier in Galveston

Chapter 4 - 1831 - The Hardware Store

Chapter 5 - 1830 – 1842 - Galveston

Chapter 6 - 1836-1849 - Central Texas

Chapter 7 -1846 – 1849 - Savanna, Georgia

Chapter 8 - 1847 - Galveston

Chapter 9 - 1848 - Galveston

Chapter 10 - 1849

Chapter 11 - 1849 - At Sea Between Galveston And New Orleans

Chapter 12 - 1849 - New Orleans and Galveston

Chapter 13 - 1849 - New Orleans

Chapter 14 - 1849 - New Orleans

1847 New Orleans

Chapter 1

The Galt Mansion, the home of Benjamin Galt, was set among majestic oaks from which mosses hung like tears. It was surrounded by over an acre of verdant grasses and flower beds. Most people considered it the grandest home in New Orleans. It was three stories high, had 41 windows, was built of granite, and it had three pointed turrets that made it seem a castle. A gravel driveway snaked from the Rue Orpheus to the front entrance. Granite steps flanked by peaceful granite lions descended from a grand, roofed porch splayed with chairs and rockers. It was magnificent yet tasteful in every way but one – all of the 53 well-tended flower beds were planted exclusively with lily’s.

The inside was no less impressive. The rooms were large and the ceilings high, and most were decorated with wallpaper imported from France. Every room, upstairs and down had fireplaces and carpets. The hall floors were kept freshly painted, and the walls, both in rooms and in halls, were decorated with French lithographs. The piece de la piece of the art was the Grand Odalisque, painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, which hung over the fireplace of the living room. Benjy suffered no detail to be less than perfect, for it was not only the worthy expression of his ego, it also housed his memories of his one true love who rejected him almost nineteen years ago.

That day in 1849, a sunny spring day of cool temperatures and gentle breezes, Benjy sat alone in a wicker chair on the porch of his mansion. He had taken to doing that often, for his time was near and he could wrestle with his memories there without disruption from his sponging nephews. He allowed them to live with him for companionship, in his opinion, for torture in theirs. But what else could they do? If they didn’t live with their miserly uncle, they would have to get jobs.

That day, his labored breath and racing heart turned his thoughts relentlessly to his most nagging and emotional frustration: Where was she?

He surveyed his extensive grounds, which were proof of his specialness. No one could argue otherwise. He was probably the richest man in New Orleans. Certainly, he had the most beautiful home, which was not bad for a penniless boy from the backside of New Orleans. With his fingernails worn to the nub, he had clawed his way out of that hell-hole and come a universe away from those awful days. Yet, what he wanted most, he failed to possess.

Far away, down a gravel driveway that entered from the street and was planted on its sides by moss-draped live oaks, came a distant sound of children laughing. The little buggers, they were at it again. Go to the devil! he shouted weakly. He tried to rise and swing his cane but his heart beat wildly and he slumped back into his chair. As his heart calmed down, he leaned his head back, and, like Autumn leaves tumbling in the wind, he recalled the past with awe for his time in it and for his passage from rags to riches, much like the heroic, majestic waves of history propelled his country into riches and freedom…In 1718, fifty-seven years before his birth, the colony of New Orleans was founded by the French. In 1762, New Orleans was ceded by France to Spain. In 1764, the first Acadians from Nova Scotia, or ‘Cajuns,’ as the Orleanais call them, settled downriver in the swamps. In 1774, one year before he was born, the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. And on April 19th, 1775, the ‘very day that he was born’ (so he claimed,) the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought in faraway Massachusetts, which began the American War of Independence.

His mother was a French woman and his father was a German man, but the date and place of his birth were not officially recorded and neither his mother or his father were literate or interested enough to record it. So, he was never certain of his birth date. But he chose the heroic date because a special person deserved a special birthdate…he had a high opinion of himself.

New Orleans at the time was in effect two colonies, one of educated people, laws and relatively nice homes on straight streets behind a high, rectangular wall made of tree trunks. The other colony was of illiterate people, no laws and extremely modest shacks that sprawled on the backside of the wall. That part of New Orleans housed deported galley slaves, fur trappers, abandoned mistresses, and cast away sailors of many countries. And the shallow swamp just beyond the slum was home to alligators, serpents and occasional visits of a nasty and highly lethal wee beasty called ‘malaria.’ His birthright was lawlessness, desperation and illness, scythes that separated the strong from the weak.

Benjy was the fourth child of Mama Galt to survive birth. His other brothers, Adrian and Daniel, both died of malaria before they were ten, and his parents were both dead by the time he was nine years-old. An older, surviving sister of Benjy’s was twenty-five at the time, and Francis, who had a long string of ‘husbands’ mothered the boy until he was twenty-one years old. She then succumbed to malaria at the age of thirty-five, which left Benjy and her surviving children, Eugene, Frank, and George, none of whom liked each other, to fend for themselves. As they grew older, his nephews became healthy and accomplished hustlers of the ‘swamp people,’ which earned them the rarest of currencies: Respect. But Benjy despised them, for he was superior in strength and mind to almost all men, especially his nephews.

It was hard to remember exactly when he decided that he deserved a ‘good’ life like that of the merchants that worked in the ‘proper colony.’ But how to do that was not obvious to him in the beginning. So, he quietly made a study of the differences between the survivors and the weaklings in his neighborhood and he concluded that good health was not endowed but was the reward of the behaviors that earned it – namely, stealing, maiming, fighting, trapping, lying, hiding, sneaking, threatening, extorting and short-changing, to name the more important ones. His study was limited to the men in his neighborhood. Thus, he did not at first realize that those were the same attributes that made successful merchants. But he did realize that he was capable of the behaviors, not only mentally, but also physically. He was good looking, taller and stronger than average, quick, charismatic, supremely confident, shrewd, highly competitive, ruthless, and certain that his destiny was to achieve great things. Therefore, it was absurd to live among the riff-raff when a young, handsome, intelligent person like him could earn his fortune where the money was -- in the Colony itself.

But doing so wasn’t the pursuit of happiness.

At that time, most businesses were Spanish owned, and they had no need of an ill-dressed, polyglot youngster even though he was as strong as a bull and trilingual in English, Spanish and French. But he couldn’t read or write in any language, nor could he cipher. Thus, Spanish merchants spat and told him in a florid stream of invective that they did not hire French frogs; and the few French merchants still left in the Colony called him ‘unwashed,’ and a spawn of cockroaches. It was not the reception he expected, but he didn’t quit. He turned to the only employers for whom he was a perfect match -- the warehouses where goods were received, stored, loaded and unloaded into ships by illiterate slaves. A hustler, he signed on for daily stevedore labor with whichever shipper was short of slaves. Employers marveled at his ability to work all day, and, as his reputation grew, and as his willingness to work with slaves under the brutal sun of summer and in the cold rains of winter, many shippers took him on, and even competed with other shippers for his labor. Whenever possible – and he was very careful when he did it – he ‘liberated’ skins, cloths and food from the ships that he helped load. Nor was he ever caught cheating at cards. He was clever at such things.

But he had one experience that baffled him and challenged his core beliefs to their very foundation – as he lugged merchandise onto and off ships in the heat and humidity of summer, he began to feel empathy for the slaves he worked with, the only class beneath his own. Whipped, cursed, poorly fed, chained together at night, sometimes killed for reasons unfathomable, the blacks suffered in silence, even as Benjy, a white slave, whispered encouragements to them.

The feeling injustice never left him.

As his income slowly increased to a level that would satisfy most young men of his age he was certain that he would not be a stevedore all his life. He was capable of much more, but what that ‘more’ had eluded him. In the meantime, his odyssey of personal discovery led him to a profound, life-changing realization, that money was a store of power. It could buy meals and clothes, sure, but it could also buy warehouses, ships, fancy homes, and the souls of men. Moreover, those who had it had incredible power over those who didn’t. It was a life-changing discovery, and the relationship of money to power appealed to Benjy enormously. But at that moment, his only ‘currency’ was his labor. Yet, he must have the other, his destiny demanded it; so, he began acquiring money in the oldest ways possible.

For starters, he saved most of his pay. He slept beneath the stars as often as possible and he ate his meals in black restaurants, which were not uncommon in the warehouse district, nor were they too expensive for a day-laborer. He was always welcome in them, for the blacks were far better Christians than the whites. To that admirable behavior, he added a highly profitable business that required no start-up funds -- robbery. He hid away as the sunset and waited for the gate guards to fall asleep. Then he sneaked into the homes of his betters in the depth of night to steal money and food. He was quite good at it, and it gave him a rush of pleasure, especially when he stole firearms, for which there was a rich market among the swamp people. Truthfully, stealing in the colony would make a nice profession for many. Yet, it was not the life that Benjy envisioned for himself. Rather, it was the life he was stuck with.

Daily, as he carted skins, salted fish, cotton and minerals from and to warehouses, he observed ship’s masters and warehouse owners doing business, whipping slaves, laughing about it, drinking wine and eating fresh food, and his contempt for the classes above him festered, even as he wanted to be just like them. The push-me pull-you of his desires and experiences and their attendant emotions of envy and hate created a cauldron of mental bile that he could barely contain. He was certain that he was unique among men. But in his lowest moments, he seemed not to be a unique winner, but just another loser, a slave cursed to exist beneath the soles of his better’s feet.

It was then, in his lowest moment, fate wrapped him in its golden wings. One day, as he wandered on the street behind the warehouses, he heard a shouted argument so loud that it could be heard over the bumps of ships against the wharf, the booming commands of officers and slave masters, the aye ayes of sailors, the raucous cry of seagulls, the cacophony of cartwheels squeaking, slaves grunting, moaning, some singing dolefully, and masters cursing and whipping them, none of them aware that behind the warehouses, on a street of small merchants, a pot-bellied, demeaning, thick bearded American in dungarees and blue cotton shirt berated an angry French saddle maker in a stream of florid condemnation.

"Son of cochon? I’ll show you who’s a cochon, you spawn of frog!"

The rasp-mouthed, bull-like American raised his cane to strike the helpless saddle maker. He had a short neck and a big head that settled closely to his shoulders, his face was dominated by high cheekbones, and his protruding stomach gave him an egg-like appearance. Atop his head, he wore a shabby black hat with a low crown and a modest rim. Given his dress and behavior, most students of behavior would not detect that the man was a romantic. He appeared to know what he was doing. But, in truth, he was a business neophyte, a fellow who inherited a great deal of money and who set out from New England to the golden west, intending to multiply his fortune by rounding up Longhorn cattle that freely roamed the range in ‘Tejas’ and selling them to a hungry nation.

Talk American or I’ll plant this cane between your eyes! said the furious American.

Benjy was not worldly wise at that moment of his life and did not recognize the man as an oddball. Sensing an opportunity to earn a dollar or so, he walked over, stood by the American, smiled and said, Sir, can I help you? I speak French.

The American looked Benjy up and down through eyebrow-furrowed, hostile eyes and beheld a six