Lincoln (19 page)

Blair’s response was a strangled sound. Hay wrote, “strangled sound.”

Chase was appalled by Seward. “I voted yes and no last time we met on this issue. I am now in favor of provisioning Fort Sumter, no matter what the risk.”

When the others had spoken, Lincoln took the vote: Seward, Smith and Bates favored the evacuation of the fort, while Chase, Blair and Welles were in favor of provisioning it.

Lincoln’s knees were now under his chin, the shins pressed against the table’s edge. “You see, gentlemen, the division among you is pretty much like the one inside of my own head.”

Seward listened with despair to this presidential Hamlet. There must be some way, he fretted, of removing Lincoln from the active execution—or, in this case,
non
execution of the office. Perhaps he and Chase could form some sort of regency …

Chase was thinking along the same line. Plainly, the President was inadequate for the task ahead. He lacked entirely that moral foundation without which no great work may be accomplished in the world. He was nothing more than a run-of-the-mill politician of the western sort. He would have made a splendid governor of Illinois; and no more. But here in this room where Jackson and Polk had sat, he seemed—unlikely was the kindest word that Chase could think of. He wondered what Kate and the President had been laughing about at dinner. Mrs. Lincoln had not been pleased; on the other hand, he felt that he himself had made some headway with her. Strange that she should have been in Lexington the day of Eliza’s auction. The South must be destroyed. There was no real alternative anymore. What was the President saying?

“Mr. Welles, I have prepared the following order for you.” Lincoln handed a sheet of paper to Welles, who read it and smiled and nodded until the huge false mane of hair resembled a tidal wave ready to overwhelm the Cabinet table.

“What is the order, sir?” asked Seward, suddenly uneasy. Better a president who did not act at all to one who did the wrong thing in a perilous time.

“I have just ordered Captain Fox to prepare to set sail from New York
Harbor any time before April 6, with the means to provision Fort Sumter, and perhaps more.”

Seward bit in half his cigar, and threw both halves in the spittoon at his feet. “But, Mr. President, I thought the Cabinet was evenly divided on the matter, and that you wanted our considered opinions written and that Captain Fox’s departure should be delayed and that …”

Chase answered for Lincoln. “Mr. Seward, if
preparations
are not made
now
, they can never be made. Isn’t that correct, Mr. President?”

Lincoln nodded, somewhat absently, thought Hay. “Many things can happen between now and the time that Captain Fox’s fleet is at Charleston. But it is better for us to have a range of choice than none at all.”

“I know Captain Fox,” said Blair. “He is a splendid officer. He was at the Naval Academy at Annapolis not so long after I was at West Point.”

To the extent that Seward’s essentially Jesuitical nature allowed him to dislike or like anyone in the practise of his trade, he disliked all the Blairs. But the time was drawing near, Seward knew, when he must drop his mask with Lincoln and speak openly of the dangers of a presidency that was still without direction. He had already fathomed what Blair, plainly, had not: the departure of Captain Fox meant nothing in itself. Fort Sumter would be evacuated, peacefully, long before Captain Fox arrived; or reduced to rubble; or, best of all, forgotten.

“Captain Fox may have some trouble raising money for the ships.” Lincoln turned to Chase. “You may have to go searching in the larder.”

“It is not exactly a full larder that we were left.” Chase understated the case, so pleased was he at the President’s sudden semblance of activity. The Treasury was in a state of total confusion. Should war come, Chase had, as yet, no idea how to finance a military establishment. Through the Cookes, he was becoming acquainted with the magnates of the banking world: he found that their ways were as strange to him as his were to them. One did not even try to sound moral in their presence.

Lincoln rose, undid his tie, yawned. “Gentlemen, I bid you good-night.” The others rose; and remained standing in place until the President was gone. Then Seward turned to Chase. “Will you stroll home with me?”

“Of course. Kate has taken our carriage …”

Seward now occupied all of the Old Club House that looked upon Lafayette Square. The nearby spire of Saint John’s Church was like a dark iron nail against the night sky. “I am able to pray,” said Seward, indicating the church, “at a moment’s notice.”

“Did you ever get the President to go to St. John’s again?”

“No, but I’m working on it. I believe that he goes now to the Presbyterian
church.” As they crossed the damp, wooded park, the lights were going off in the Executive Mansion, while a single street lamp served the entire street that edged the park.

As the two men entered the house, they were greeted by Seward’s large, enthusiastic dog, Midge, heiress to many canine bloodlines. Midge led them into the downstairs study where Seward’s son, Frederick, sat by the smoldering fire; at work in his shirt-sleeves. The young man greeted Chase; and excused himself. While Chase sat in a sofa beside the fire, Seward poured himself a goblet of brandy. “I am as thirsty as the great Sahara,” he said.

“I have not the habit,” said Chase. “Nor the thirst,” he added, precisely.

Seward sat opposite Chase, twisting the goblet between his hands. “You and I disagree on Fort Sumter, but only as to means, and timing.”

“We disagree, perhaps, about the urgent need to abolish slavery,” said Chase mildly.

“You would go to war for that?”

“If it was necessary, yes.”

“Wouldn’t you rather go to war against Spain, and acquire Cuba? Against the French, and acquire Mexico?”

“I would rather acquire Charleston.”

“But we would have outflanked the cotton states.” Seward was persuasive; and elaborate. Chase listened, carefully. The concept was ingenious. The famed two birds that it was always his dream with one stone to kill might, at last, be snared.

“Let us say,” said Chase, when Seward had finished with his design for empire, “that I am open to the idea in general. But in particular …”

“There is a log in our way, Mr. Chase. Or should I say a rail?”

Chase nodded. “It is plain to me that Mr. Lincoln is a well-meaning but inadequate man.”

“And it is plain to me that you and I, together, could administer the country better than he, and if war comes, we could prosecute it better than he.”

“I agree.” Chase had never liked Seward or his morals—or lack of them. But Seward was the consummate politician of the age. Between Seward’s wiliness and his own high moral purpose, they could indeed conduct a successful administration and prosecute, if necessary, a winning war. Chase said as much. “But”—he added the obvious—“
he
was elected President.”

“Because he was elected, we have lost—or will lose—close to a third of our population. Seven states are gone. Others will go. The minority that elected him disunited the country. Should war come, then such a high
emergency would dictate that some combination—with his agreement, of course—would be called upon to direct the government.”

“He has us, the
compound
Cabinet.” Chase came as close to irony as his temperament would allow.

“He has you and he has me. Do we have him?” Seward squinted through cigar smoke.

“In what sense?” Chase began to feel not unlike Cassius listening to Brutus. Or was it the other way around?

“Mr. Chase, I am going to propose to him, openly, that either you or I or both be allowed to direct the Administration. No more votes of three to three. No more funny stories. No more procrastination—”

“
You
will ask him to abdicate?”

“Of course not. He will continue to be what he is, the President. But the engine of this Administration will be us.” Seward was surprised at his own magnanimity in allowing Chase to share with him, as it were (each now tended to think in Roman terms), the consulate. But he knew Chase to be a formidable figure; and not easily put aside.

“I shall be curious to see what he has to say to your proposal.” Chase was always slow to take to new ideas. But once absorbed, they became a part of his very flesh. On this noncommittal note, Chase lifted his considerable flesh from the sofa, and asked that a hack be summoned. In politics, as in love, opposites attract, and the misunderstandings that ensue tend to be as bitter and, as in love, as equally terminal.

T
HOMPSON’S
Drug Store shut at noon on Sunday, April 14. Ordinarily, the pharmacy would not have been open at all on a Sunday but there was so much excitement in the city that Mr. Thompson could not bear to shut up shop when, after the bar at Willard’s, Thompson’s Drug Store was one of the city’s finest rumor centers. Already that morning the doorkeeper to the Executive Mansion, Mr. McManus, had come with a prescription to be filled for Mrs. Lincoln, whose
nerves craved laudanum, and an extra supply of blue mass to move yet more urgently the presidential bowels.

While David made up the prescription in the back room, Mr. Thompson and a half-dozen of the shop’s regulars questioned Mr. McManus closely.

“What will the President do, do you think, sir?” Mr. Thompson treated with deference anyone connected with the great house across the avenue.

“A stern retaliation, you may be sure. But I must not say, of course, what form it will be taking.” McManus always affected to know the inner councils of the Presidency; and Mr. Thompson thought him an oracle, though in David’s few encounters with the old Irishman he had never heard him say anything that he could not have read in a newspaper.

“What will happen to Major Anderson and the garrison?” asked a customer.

“There is talk of the rebels holding them for ransom like common bandits.” David doubted this; whatever the faults of his countrymen, and so he regarded the South Carolinans, they were not bandits but men of honor.

“It was heroic,” said Mr. Thompson, arranging the patent medicines on their special shelf, each according to size. He was devoted to symmetry. “Thirty-four hours of bombardment from the rebels. The flag in flames. The fort in flames …”

“It would’ve been a whole lot more heroic if they’d fought to the death,” said a distinctly Southern voice.

“To what point?” asked McManus. “General Beauregard has thousands of men in Charleston Harbor. Why, I’ve seen the map in the President’s office. He keeps it on an easel, like it was a picture.”

“Why,” asked Thompson, a copy of the
Star
in front of him, “didn’t the ships arrive in time to provision the garrison?”

“They did arrive, Mr. Thompson, they got there just when the bombardment started.”

“So why didn’t they go and fire back at the … rebels?” said the mocking Southern voice.

David entered the front part of the store, two packages in hand. McManus was getting more red in the face than usual. “Because they was stopped by the tide. There is this sandbar at the harbor entrance. Until the tide comes in, you can’t enter the port.” This was
not
in any of the papers that David had read. Perhaps McManus did know something after all, and if he did … David gave Mr. McManus the packages. “Thank you. Good-day, Mr. Thompson, gentlemen.”

Mr. McManus left the shop. “I’ve never seen so many people at the White House, on a Sunday,” said one of the regular customers. “Every big frog in the town has come to call.”

“I reckon there’s a lot of croaking going on across the street,” said the Southerner, with quiet malice. Mr. Thompson made a soothing noise. He made it a point never to take sides politically; he sold his pills and powders and tonics to all.

As Mr. Thompson and David proceeded to shut up shop, David received the unpleasant news that he was to go across the river to Alexandria that afternoon. “I got this urgent message from old Mrs. Alexander herself; the town’s named for their family, you know, and I’m the only one who can make up the exact prescription she needs so as to lose the water she must lose for the dropsy. It’s right here.” Mr. Thompson indicated a package next to the porcelain jar that contained essence of pure mint. “The address is written on it.”

“But this is Sunday, Mr. Thompson …” David began; and shortly thereafter ended. He was to go by foot to Alexandria, across the Long Bridge. No, he could not have the money for a hack. He was young; while the exercise was worth all Mr. Thompson’s wares rolled into one vast pill, said the proprietor, whose hatred of walking was so great that he had been known to wait an hour for the horsecars to take him from Tenth to Fifteenth streets.

The day was mild; the air warm. The first white lilacs had opened in the President’s Park. David paused in front of the White House gate. Open and closed carriages were depositing stout, solemn figures at the portico, where Mr. McManus stood, bowing them inside. The war had started at last. Although David knew which side he would be on, the notion of serving in an army, anyone’s army, did not delight him. Nor did he want to join the wild boys, who had so signally failed to assassinate Mr. Lincoln on March 4: “There was these guards at the Long Bridge, and they wouldn’t let us back in the city till it was too late,” one of them had whined. In any case, most of the wild boys had already gone South to join the new Confederate army. Perhaps he could be some sort of spy. He was well placed at Thompson’s Drug Store. When Annie got back from Surrattsville, he would ask her advice. He knew that Isaac had vanished—into Virginia, people said. But neither Mrs. Surratt nor Annie ever mentioned Isaac. They were a close-mouthed family, unlike his own. David groaned aloud at the thought of the house of women—nice women—to which he had been, by fate and his father’s thoughtless death, consigned and condemned.

As the carriage containing a small, thick-chested, large-headed man
clattered past David and through the gate, he turned and made his way, slowly, toward the Long Bridge.

Mr. McManus bowed very low to the short man. “Senator Douglas, the President is waiting for you, sir. In the Red Room.”