Lincoln (113 page)

“Anything else you need?” asked Lloyd.

Booth said, “Nothing more. But I will tell you some news, if you want to hear it.”

“I’m not particular,” said Lloyd.

“I am pretty certain,” said Booth, spurring his horse, “that we have assassinated the President and the Secretary of State.”

With that, Booth and David were gone. This was what David had dreamed of for as long as he could remember. To do some heroic deed, and then ride all through the night, his true brother at his side. Wilkes’s words to Lloyd kept reverberating in his head: “We have assassinated the President …” What greater work could a Confederate hero do?

At four-thirty in the morning they arrived at the house of a doctor friend, who attended to Wilkes’s ankle, which was broken in such a way that the bones were at a right angle to one another. Then Wilkes asked for a razor; and shaved off his moustache.

Later, when it was daylight, the nervous doctor said that they would have to move on. Word was beginning to spread through the area, not to mention the world, that John Wilkes Booth had murdered the President. There was no news, David was sorry to hear, of Mr. Seward. Anyway, all that mattered was that Wilkes thought that he, David Herold, had done as he was told, and that they were now, the two of them, friends and true brothers, immortal.

A
LTHOUGH
Eugénie, empress of the French, must have been about forty years of age, John Hay never ceased to find her as attractive as he found her husband, the Emperor Napoleon III, repellent. At the reception for the diplomatic corps on January 1, 1867, in the palace of the Tuileries, Hay kept to the splendid drawing room where Eugénie held court and avoided the statelier room where the emperor and his ministers stood, next to an elaborate, gilded throne in which the emperor never sat.

Eugénie’s hair had been naturally dark red, and was still red; while her complexion had always been pale, and was still pale. The sad eyes were gray. She wore a ruby-red dress of velvet, cut low to reveal an explosion of diamond necklaces. Hay did his best not to stare, and could not take his eyes off her. But then he had spent four years in Washington, watching women imitate Eugénie; now he was able to look with awe upon the original herself. As the Spanish-born empress stood beneath a life-size portrait of her predecessor Marie-Louise, the wife of the real Napoleon, she used an ivory fan subtly to communicate with others. Hay regarded her with all the pleasure that he might have found in watching a splendid sunrise or, perhaps, considering the chronic fragility of the French political system, sunset.

All around the gold-encrusted room, gold-encrusted diplomats stood while members of the palace staff in violet uniforms tried, without success, to make themselves useful. At regular intervals, members of the emperor’s personal guard were placed, at attention, like so many statues in blue and gold. Although it was still light outside, the chandeliers were ablaze; and wood fires burned in every marble fireplace. Hay was pleased to be conspicuous in plain black; but then he was more than ever a dedicated republican, not to mention implacable foe of despots, even a despot whose wife was a perfect sunset.

The outgoing American minister, John Bigelow, came toward Hay Bigelow was accompanied by a stout, pink-cheeked old man and a beautiful young girl, definitely more sunrise than sunset. “Mr. Hay is my first secretary,” said Bigelow to the old man and young girl, who turned out to be the American historian Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler and his daughter Emma, the Princesse d’Agrigente, a lady celebrated for her salon at which one never found her husband, the heir to the great Napoleon’s
marshal. Although Hay had never before met the splendid princess, he knew all about her unhappy marriage; and knew that absolutely no one was sorry for her in a city where unhappy marriages were the rule. The prince lived elsewhere with his mistress. The princess lived with her children, as if she were a wealthy widow; lived untouched by any scandal, which was not the rule in Paris.

But then Emma herself was rare, decided Hay, when she turned her dark eyes on him and said in softly accented English, “I am a true American, yet I have never set foot in the United States.”

“It is my fault,” said the amiable Mr. Schuyler. “I left New York in ’thirty-six, to be, like you, a diplomat. Only I went to Italy where I was married, and …”

“… and you never went home,” said Emma. “Well, I cannot wait to go.”

“Nor can I,” said Bigelow. “How I miss New York!”

“You will be missed here,” said Mr. Schuyler. “After all, if it hadn’t been for you, Mr. Seward would have had us at war with France by now.”

“Oh, now you exaggerate.” Bigelow was appropriately modest. But Hay knew that if Bigelow had not exactly averted a war with France over Mexico, he had certainly contained a crisis.

In November, Hay had personally decoded Seward’s ultimatum to Napoleon, calling upon him to withdraw his troops from Mexico, as previously agreed, even though it could mean the death of that unfortunate French puppet the Emperor Maximilian. Bigelow had decided to substitute for Seward’s harangue a polite note, highly acceptable to the French, who were duly appreciative. Mr. Schuyler himself had written of Bigelow’s diplomatic coup in the
Atlantic Monthly
. Now Bigelow was going home, his place to be taken not by His Satanic Majesty James Gordon Bennett, who had decided that he preferred to reign in New York’s hell than serve in diplomacy’s heaven, but by General John A. Dix, the same general who, at Stanton’s insistence, had dropped all charges against Senator Sprague and his fellow traitors.

The fact that Dix was quite aware that Hay knew all about the Sprague affair had cast a certain pall over their first meeting. At a second meeting, when Hay had offered his resignation, he had been disappointed when it was promptly accepted. But Seward had come to the rescue; and Hay was to return to Washington as a special assistant to the Secretary of State. Nico remained relatively secure at the consulate, despite constant rumors that President Johnson wanted his own man to fill the magnificent rooms at number 47, Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

Bigelow moved away, leaving Hay with the splendid princess and her father. “You look so young,” she said, “to have been the President’s secretary.”

“I am … or I was at the time.” Hay was still quite used to being called young. On first being presented to the emperor, Napoleon had said to him in English, “Are you not young to be colonel?” Hay’s brevet-rank. Then the empress had gazed at him with eyes almost as beautiful as those of the princess and said, “Are you not young to be
a
colonel?” The imperial court was not noted for its wit, though the emperor could, when he chose, drop the devastating brick. Lately, he had taken an almost personal dislike to the buildings that were being constructed for the great world exhibition. Of the main hall he had said, “It looks like a gasometer!”

Both father and daughter questioned Hay at length about Lincoln. What sort of man had he been? They seemed surprised when Hay said, “He was always very sure of himself.” As Hay spoke, he thought of the highly unsure little emperor in the next room. “From the beginning, he knew that he was the first man in the country, and that he was bound to get his way,
if
he lived.”

“You surprise me,” said Schuyler. “One always thinks of him as being so … humble.”

“Humble men never rise so high nor do so much.”

“Who killed him?” asked the princess, with entirely American directness.

“The actor Booth,” said Hay, smoothly. “With the help of a group of fools that he had gathered around him. Then Booth was killed in a Virginia barn, and the fools were all hanged, including a lady called Mrs. Surratt, who was probably innocent. But at the time, Mr. Stanton was hanging everybody in sight. Anyway, Booth had already made a sort of confession in a letter to his brother-in-law.”

“I cannot believe,” said the princess, with entirely Parisian suspiciousness, “that it was just one mad actor—and some fools. Surely, the Southerners were behind the plot?”

“They deny it, and I believe them. They had nothing to gain by the President’s death, and everything to lose. After all, only Lincoln could have controlled the radicals in Congress. Mr. Johnson has—” Hay remembered that he was a diplomat. “Mr. Johnson has his problems with the radicals.”

“What has happened to Mrs. Lincoln?” asked the princess, changing the subject in order to show Hay that she was not taken in by his highly diplomatic response.

“She lives in Chicago. The President left an estate of nearly a hundred thousand dollars. Of course, she spends a good deal of money.”

To Hay’s surprise it was the father not the daughter who returned to the subject of the plot. “I hear so many intriguing rumors from old friends,” he said. “For instance, I have heard it suggested that there was indeed a plot in which the actor, Booth, was simply used by certain radical elements in Congress.”

Hay smiled. “If that could be proved, don’t you think that Mr. Stanton would be the first to want to hang Senator Wade or Senator Chandler or General Butler, the three likeliest conspirators?”

“But I had heard,” said Mr. Schuyler, almost apologetically, “that Mr. Stanton was involved, too. Hence, the speed—and secrecy—with which Booth’s allies were tried in Mr. Stanton’s own military court; and then hanged.”

Hay thought that he had heard every possible Lincoln rumor; but this was new. Certainly, Stanton was the most compulsively devious man that Hay had ever dealt with. He was, also, very close to the radicals in Congress. As a result, there was great tension, currently, between him and President Johnson, who was pursuing Lincoln’s moderate policy toward the South, with his Secretary of War undercutting him at every turn. Politically, Stanton and Lincoln would have fallen out, if the President had lived. But since all that Stanton was in the world he owed to Lincoln, Hay thought it most unlikely that he would conspire to kill the President.

Certainly Hay could never forget the scene in the East Room, when the President lay in state. All day mourners filed past the casket on its black catafalque. Hay was standing near the door, Tad’s hand in his, when Stanton entered; and Tad said—very clearly for him—“Mr. Stanton, who killed my father?” Stanton had given a sort of cry; and hurried from the room. In fact, Stanton was so enraged and demoralized by the murder that he had ordered Ford’s Theater to be forever shut, an eccentric gesture in the eyes of many but typical of the bereaved odd man who was now being mentioned as party to the murder of, perhaps, the only man that he ever liked.

Hay tried to explain Stanton to Mr. Schuyler; but it was never easy to explain Stanton to anyone.

Fortunately, Hay was able to fuel somewhat the European love of intrigue. “One interesting thing, which might relate to what you have heard. We do know now that there was a
second
plot afoot. We also know that Booth got wind of it, and he was afraid that others might strike before he did.”

“Now that,” said Mr. Schuyler, “might be the solution. Do you think that the radical element in Congress would be capable of such a plot?”

“Oh, yes!” Hay was delighted at the prospect of a future trial of Wade and Chandler and Butler—and Sumner, too. Why not? Hang every last one of them. “After all, the daughter of one of the radical senators was a close friend of Booth’s; and actually got him a ticket to attend the Second Inaugural.”

“Oh, you must write about all this, Mr. Hay!” The princess was now properly stimulated.

“I think I probably shall, with Mr. Nicolay, the President’s other secretary.”

“Where,” asked Mr. Schuyler, “would you place Mr. Lincoln amongst the presidents of our country?”

“Oh, I would place him first.”

“
Above
Washington?” Mr. Schuyler looked startled.

“Yes,” said Hay, who had thought a good deal about the Tycoon’s place in history. “Mr. Lincoln had a far greater and more difficult task than Washington’s. You see, the Southern states had every Constitutional right to go out of the Union. But Lincoln said, no. Lincoln said, this Union can never be broken. Now that was a terrible responsibility for one man to take. But he took it, knowing he would be obliged to fight the greatest war in human history, which he did, and which he won. So he not only put the Union back together again, but he made an entirely new country, and all of it in his own image.”

“You astonish me,” said Mr. Schuyler.

“Mr. Lincoln astonished us all.”

“I rather think,” said Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler to his daughter, “that we should take a look at this new country, which plainly bears no resemblance to the one I left, in the quiet days of Martin Van Buren.”

“Well, come soon,” said Hay. “Because who knows what may happen next?”

“I have been writing, lately, about the German first minister.” Mr. Schuyler was thoughtful. “In fact, I met him at Biarritz last summer when he came to see the emperor. Curiously enough, he has now done the same thing to Germany that you tell us Mr. Lincoln did to our country. Bismarck has made a single, centralized nation out of all the other German states.”

Hay nodded; he, too, had noted the resemblance. “Bismarck would also give the vote to people who have never had it before.”

“I think,” said Mr. Schuyler to the princess, “we have here a subject—Lincoln and Bismarck, and new countries for old.”

“It will be interesting to see how Herr Bismarck ends
his
career,” said Hay, who was now more than ever convinced that Lincoln, in some mysterious fashion, had willed his own murder as a form of atonement for the great and terrible thing that he had done by giving so bloody and absolute a rebirth to his nation.

H
OW MUCH
of
Lincoln
is generally thought to be true? How much made up? This is an urgent question for any reader; and deserves as straight an answer as the writer can give. I have introduced fewer invented figures in
Lincoln
than I did in
Burr
and
1876
. All of the principal characters really existed, and they said and did pretty much what I have them saying and doing, with the exception of the Surratts and David Herold (who really lived and worked at Thompson’s, which was actually closer to New York Avenue than to Pennsylvania Avenue.) As David’s life is largely unknown until Booth’s conspiracy, I have invented a low-life for him.