Drinking with Roscoe Conkling

“Meet me down at the bar,” Conkling insisted, “I’ll give you some background for your readers. What paper were you with?”
Thinking on my feet, I told him, “Oh, the San Francisco Bulletin. I’m here to cover the Santa Clara case.”
“Yes, of course,” he bellowed. “I do believe I’m still listed as counsel for them. Those gentlemen defending the railroad paid me a pretty sum to argue for them.”
Conking was trying to get a look at the books on my bed, but I certainly did not want him to see a 21st century date. I feigned (well, actually I wasn’t feigning) that I had to use the pot, and if he would excuse me. Conkling left me to my business, which I shall not describe (boy, am I glad to have been born in the reader’s century). Anyway, I walked down three flights of stairs and found my way to the bar. A bar that looked like what I thought a bar should look like in the gilded age – heavy woods, lots of brass, and a bartender with a handle-bar mustache wearing a white apron. Conkling was sipping some sort of whiskey at the bar, and I approached.
“Mr. Conkling, how do you do?”
“Sit down; let me get you a whiskey.”
Conkling wasted no time in getting right to his famous argument in San Mateo. “You know,” he said, “everyone thinks they were so smart in ratifying that 14th Amendment. They all thought it was about granting rights to the Negro; however, not only was I a United States Senator, but I was also a railroad attorney. In fact, the Supreme Court and the last few cabinets were flush with railroad men. Why, even Lincoln was a railroad attorney in the 1850s. He even sued the Illinois Central for a $2000 fee. I must say though, Lincoln only represented the railroad after the county refused to hire him. The railroads paid very well, indeed.”
Conking goes on, “You know this has been a long journey for me, but I still feel the energy as when I was admitted to the bar at age 21. I think that that was in 1850. Lincoln and I were contemporaries you know, except that I was immediately appointed district attorney in Albany. Please excuse me for my verbiage, but I’m known for my oratory.
Conkling took a swig of whiskey, and said emphatically, “Before I go on, you do know that I’m a Free-Soil Republican. I despise slavery, and I abhor the South and their hypocritical institutions. I was elected to the U.S. Congress and served three terms. After the war, I relished the opportunity to serve on the Committee of Reconstruction. Yes, like I said, I was a member of the Committee of Fifteen, and we hammered-out the Fourteenth Amendment. Yes, I wanted to assure the safety and rights of the freedmen – that was the major concern. Of equal importance to me was to represent the interests of my law clients, namely the railroads! Protecting the rights of big business was equally as important – and that paid!”
Conkling’s getting s bit liberal with his words, “Persons and citizens, there is a difference you know. If I had allowed the Committee to use that word “citizen,” well, where would that leave my clients and their rights? ‘…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…’ that was my insistence. Person is ambiguous you know, it could mean natural person, as in citizen, or artificial person, as in corporation. Leaving it ambiguous, left the sentence interpretable that, well, corporations are persons with the same protected rights, privileges, and immunities!
Conkling rested his arm on the bar, “My Supreme Court arguments were easy. My friends are on the court, even that Justice Fields – he’s a racist, you know – but he’s still a railroad man. Good God, even the court reporter was a former railroad president. This will all make sense and coalesce, as you shall see. I must warn you, though, that much of what I tell you is off the record!”