Lincoln (38 page)

At the first sound of artillery, Hay tumbled out of bed; washed his face but did not shave; dressed quickly to the sound of distant cannon-fire,
almost as loud as Nicolay’s snoring in the bed. Hay let the First Secretary sleep on. In these matters, they were often competitive with each other. After all, this was history; and nothing like it was apt to befall either of them again, much less the country, thought Hay, as he entered the President’s office, which proved to be empty. The small telegraph room next to the office looked as if someone had stepped, temporarily, away from the transmitter. Hay then went to the waiting room, where he found a young officer, who was reading a Bible at Edward’s desk. The young officer came to attention when he saw Hay. “Sir, the President’s at the War Department.”

“What’s the news?”

“General McDowell is advancing on Manassas. From Centerville. That’s all we know, sir.”

In the cool morning air, Hay ran from the White House to the War Department, where a dozen carriages were already drawn up, and two companies of infantry stood guard. Breathing hard, he returned, casually, the commanding officer’s salute, and entered the building. He found the President in General Scott’s office. Aides ran from room to room, while down the hall the telegraph transmitter clattered.

Lincoln nodded, absently, at Hay. Scott ignored him. The general stood like a pyramid beside the map of Virginia. Hay noticed that silver stubble glistened like flakes of mica on the dark red cheeks: the commanding general had not shaved either. “General Beauregard’s here on this side of a river or creek that is known, thereabouts, as Bull Run. General McDowell has just moved into position here, to his left.”

“Has only just moved?” Lincoln was as attentive as a prosecuting attorney in a capital case.

“Yes, sir. He was to have moved at half-past two this morning. But he was delayed and now …”

“This is the second delay.” Lincoln began to twist his legs around the rungs of the chair. “He was supposed to have arrived in Centerville Wednesday. Instead he stopped at Fairfax. He’s already lost two days. That means there’s been time for Johnston’s men from Harper’s Ferry to join Beauregard at Manassas.”

“Time, sir. But not occasion. Remember we have General Patterson at Harper’s Ferry. He is a superb commander. He has Johnston penned in. We are now face to face with the enemy here at …” An aide gave General Scott a message. Scott glanced at the message; then gave it to Lincoln, who held it close to his eyes. The Ancient sighed. “That’s two thousand men who won’t fight?”

“Yes, sir. The Pennsylvania Fourth Regiment and the artillery battery
of the New York Eighth … Their three-month enlistments ended at midnight last night, and now these brave citizen-soldiers are going home just as the battle is to begin.”

“That is why,” murmured Lincoln, “I prayed that McDowell would not lose those two precious days. Well, the fault is mine. I should have said three-year enlistments from the beginning.”

“You could not have known, sir.”

“It is my task
always
to know, particularly when I don’t.” Lincoln unwound himself from the chair. As he did, a second message arrived.

Scott read, with a smile that broke his face in two, like a harvest moon neatly halved, thought Hay, feeling lightheaded. He prayed the ague was not about to visit him again, today of all days. “We are successfully crossing Sudley Ford, to the enemy’s left flank. The rebels are falling back. We are now in a position to attack. The plan proceeds, sir, as desired.”

“If not on the day designated.” Lincoln motioned for Hay to accompany him, and they left the old general at his map, explaining to his aides the similarity between today’s complex operation and his own strategy at Chapultepec.

As a hundred men saluted, the President raised his hat, eyes on the road, head and neck pushed slightly forward, always a sign of anxiety, Hay now knew. If Hay could not read the Ancient like a book, he had at least committed to memory a number of much-thumbed pages.

They crossed to the White House without interception. Even the most intrepid office-seekers were still abed. As they entered the President’s Park, Hay asked, “Is there no way you can hold those men in the army, the ones who decided to go home last night?”

“Of course I can hold them. I can oblige them to fight a thirty-year war if I want. But if I do, I’ll never get another volunteer ever again, will I?”

“No, sir.”

Lincoln stared at the ground as he walked. “On the other hand, we’re going to have our problems should we have to conscript men, which is what we’ll be obliged to do if General McDowell doesn’t get that army to Richmond pretty fast.”

“How many men will we need?”

“Three hundred thousand, says General Scott. That means every American man between eighteen and forty-five will have to have his name registered by his local sheriff. Then all the names will be written out on slips of paper and a blind man—or a man with a blindfold if the real thing’s not available—will start drawing the names.”

Hay had followed the Cabinet debates on the subject. There had been much speculation on what should be done to those men who refused to
go. It was agreed that the local authorities could handle individuals who would prefer a long prison term to military service. But suppose, said Mr. Bates, that large numbers of men refused? There were a number of solutions to this problem, and the Tycoon seemed ready to choose what Hay thought was the worst. “I incline to letting any man who doesn’t want to serve pay a certain amount to a substitute who does want to go, or will go, at least …”

“Father!” Madam’s voice sounded as if from Heaven, and assisted by the treble voices of cherubim, all hailing, “Paw, Paw, Paw!”

Lincoln and Hay looked up. On the roof of the White House stood Madam, Willie, Tad and Lizzie Grimsley. Tad shouted, “Come on up, Paw, and see the war!” Lincoln waved noncommittally; and entered the White House.

Mary held a telescope in both hands, and she trained it on the distant low green hills behind where the guns still sounded at irregular intervals. Against the pale hazy morning sky, she could make out puffs of smoke like new cotton growing in a pale-blue field. From time to time, flashes of fire lit up the sky, stormless lightning to go with the stormless thunder.

“Let me look!” Tad grabbed for the telescope. Mary cuffed him hard. Tad howled.

“Serves you right.” Willie was, as always, a moralist. “Say ‘please.’ ”

“Shut up,” said Tad, and kicked his brother.

“Stop that!” Lizzie Grimsley grabbed each by an arm and separated them. “Imagine scuffling up here with no railing or anything. Oh, Mary! I think I have the vertigo.”

Mary gave the telescope to Lizzie. “We are certainly high up,” she agreed, looking across the black tar-covered roof, whose numerous fissures were filled with stagnant water from the last rain. “
I
have no fear of heights,” she said, with serene bravado.

“Well,
I
have no fear of thunderstorms.” Lizzie trained the telescope on Virginia.

“I do.” Mary shuddered. Since childhood, she had always known that she would one day—or worse, one night—be killed by a bolt of lightning. Even if she were in the basement of a large house, covered with an eiderdown beneath a four-poster bed, the lightning would find her. On the other hand, she had no fear at all of cannons or of gunfire, or of rebels.

The President appeared on the roof. “Mother, come on to breakfast.”

“What’s the news?” Mary tried to keep Tad from climbing his father like a tree; and failed. The black formal Sunday suit was now developing a set of new creases, as Tad took his place, triumphantly, on his father’s shoulders.

“We’ve begun our attack. That’s all I’ve heard.”

Lizzie gave Lincoln the telescope. With a practised gesture, he held it to his eyes and carefully swung it from left to right. “We can’t tell anything yet,” he said, putting down the telescope. He cocked one ear; and frowned. “We have stopped our covering fire. I wonder why?”

“Do we know any of the soldiers?” asked Willie. “You know, like poor Ellsworth.”

Lincoln and Mary exchanged a glance. “I can’t say that we do,” he said, finally. “Of course, there’s General McDowell. We all know him. And …”

“I mean boys,” said Willie, who had grasped, at the age of ten, the difference between that race of stout men with beards and gray in their hair and the others with hair all one color and fresh faces, narrow waists, who still liked to play games with ten-year-olds; and laugh.

“No.” Mary was stern. “We don’t know any of them.”

“What about the Southern boys? The ones from Kentucky?” Willie was persistent.

“Come on to breakfast.” Mary put her arm around Willie’s shoulders; they were now the same height.

“Willie wants to write another poem like the one about Ellsworth, who got killed!” Tad roared with laughter from high atop his father’s shoulders.

“Wait till you get down,” said Willie.

“Let’s all go down,” said Lincoln. “And get ourselves ready for church. It’s my favorite time of the week, as the convict said when they …”

“We know the story, Father.” Mary took his arm, aware that Lizzie was close to swooning as they walked in single file along the White House roof to the trapdoor where steep stairs led to the interior. “And speaking of your favorite time of the week, Lizzie and I were just discussing the Reverend Dr. James Smith …”

“Oh, no!” Lincoln groaned.

“Oh, yes!” Mary was the first to start down the steps. “He’s our favorite minister in Springfield.”

“Then we must keep him there.”

“But, Father, he’s Scotch.”

“All the more reason. He will preach against extravagancies, and the vanities of this world, and land speculation.” Mary’s head was now below the roof. But her voice was clear. “He must go to Dundee in Scotland. As our consul.”

“Yes, Brother Lincoln,” said the pale Lizzie, clutching at the trapdoor, while her foot searched for the step. “He is a perfect choice.”

“On a day like this, Cousin Lizzie, you corner me—your President—for a consulship?”

“It’s not the first time.” Mary’s voice came from far away. “But you always put us off.”

Lizzie was now inside. Willie followed. Then Lincoln, with Tad on his shoulders. “Well, first, you ladies must get me a certificate of good behavior for him. For all I know your Reverend Smith drinks, smokes and swears, and is a libertine.”

“What’s a libertine?” asked Tad, as his father descended the stairs.

“A libertine is a man who loves liberty only a little bit instead of a whole lot like us.”

The cannon-fire had ceased. The puffs of smoke had now been dispersed in the general haze of the high summer sky, at whose edge rain clouds had begun to mass.

Hay and Nicolay took advantage of the peace in the executive offices to answer mail, write letters for the President’s signature, file newspapers. Hay was aware that the preliminary signs of the ague had begun: heaviness in the eyes, which were unnaturally dry; a heaviness in the region of the liver; a heaviness of the skeleton itself, as if the bones longed to be freed of flesh. Sooner or later, everyone in the city suffered from Potomac fever, save the natives, who seemed inured from birth to their miasmic climate unlike most Southerners, who tended to be lifelong sufferers from the ague, as Madam was—and the Ancient not.

When either Hay or Nicolay came down with the fever, their common bed was left to the healthier one while the valetudinarian was obliged to sleep on a military cot, wrapped in sheets and blankets, shivering and sweating until the thing had run its course.

“It is my gay old delirium come back,” said Hay, as he held out an arm that had begun to shake of its own accord.

“The cot for you,” said Nicolay, without much sympathy, eyes on a mountain of correspondence. “The boy-governor is back in town.”

“The war is won.” Hay loosened his collar; and felt better. “What is to be done with him?”

“McDowell has let him go to Virginia, as an observer. Why is it everything of importance around here happens on a Sunday?”

“It is the Lord’s will, I suppose.” Hay took a long pair of scissors and began to cut from a Richmond newspaper a story about the convening of the Confederate Congress which had taken place, presumably, yesterday. “I also suppose that we will be hearing a lot from the preachers about the blasphemy of fighting a battle on a Sunday.”

“If we win, who will listen?”

“If we lose, who will care?”

ALTHOUGH
Hay was in the first stage of the fever, he stayed on the job for the rest of the day and night. He accompanied the President to General Scott’s office, where the general received them on a bed that had been placed beneath the painting of the War of 1812. He apologized for not rising. Plainly, he had been sleeping off one of his enormous dinners. Lincoln dismissed the apology with a gesture. The soft thud of cannons was plainly audible everywhere in the city, and the bar at Willard’s was crowded, as the latest “news” was discussed while a crowd had gathered in front of the Treasury, hoping to coax—if coaxing was ever necessary—some oracular statement from Mr. Chase. There was no crowd at the White House, where irritable troops stood guard in front of the gates, and let no one through without a military pass. Hay had never seen the Mansion quite so tranquil.

“The guns seem close to us, General,” said Lincoln; and pointed, oddly, to the window, as though the battle was in the street. Although the battle was not, the noise of the battle was.

Scott listened a moment. Then shook his head. “The wind plays tricks, sir. Anyway, our artillery is in place, as is theirs. I cannot imagine that any artillery will now be moved, or if moved, set up again.”

Lincoln removed a number of telegrams from his hat. “This last dispatch from Fairfax Court House says that the rebels have fallen back.”

“Better than that, sir. At three o’clock, they were in retreat.”

“
But
that it is possible that they may be reinforced.” The left eyebrow went up. “How?” Hay was aware of the effort it took Lincoln to maintain his usual air of calm if melancholy authority.