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America’s Last Emperor: Foreclosure
Chapter Thirteen
May 15th, 1855
Norton read the paperwork with a grim look on his face. Nearly three years of legal wranglings had led to this moment. He paused for a second, and looked around the room.
He was sitting in William T. Sherman’s office at Lucas, Turner and Co. bank. The angry looking man watched him as he read the document, making him all the more nervous.
Hall McAllister’s best arguments were all for naught, and the judge decided against Norton. He was on the hook for twenty thousand dollars. The years of fighting the contract in court had dumped most of Norton’s money into McAllister’s pocket. His rice mill sat unused, and the dry goods store on the opposite corner had folded when the gold petered out. The final insult was the foreclosure. The courts put a lien on all of his properties, and the final result was more money than they were worth. Sherman determined that it was time to confiscate the properties for the bank to pay Norton’s debt, after a year of refusing to lend him the money to get out of his predicament.
He looked up at Sherman, who was watching him intently.
“Does it all make sense?” asked Sherman.
“Do you mean literally, or in a more general sense of how the world works?” asked Norton.
