Lincoln (5 page)

“No, sir.” Seward could tell that Lincoln was prepared for flight. But Old Buck, as the President was popularly and unpopularly known, was inexorable. “Then the Cabinet meets right here, just off the clerk’s office, as you can see, and inside it connects with the President’s office, which is in the corner there, and slightly larger, thank Heaven.”

Buchanan had now thrown open the door to the Cabinet Room. The half-dozen men who were seated at the green-baize-covered table got to their feet as the President ushered Lincoln and Seward into the room. “Gentlemen, the President-elect.”

Briskly, Lincoln shook hands with each man. Seward noticed that he paused for a moment as he shook the hand of the Attorney-General, Edwin M. Stanton, a large, bald-headed asthmatic man with steel-rimmed spectacles and an unpleasant sneer, aimed now at Lincoln, who said, somewhat quizzically, “Well, Mr. Stanton, we meet again.”

“Yes, we do … 
sir
.”

Lincoln turned to the others. “Five years ago we were a pair of lawyers trying to determine whether Mr. McCormick’s reaper was his reaper or someone else’s.”

“I remember … 
sir
.” Stanton stood very straight, his large paunch quivering slightly.

“Yes, Mr. Stanton. So do I.”

Buchanan had now drawn Lincoln over to the window with its view of the southern part of the President’s estate, bounded at the far end by the old canal, now an open sewer, and the Potomac River beyond. “In the summer, sir, the smell from that canal is absolutely unbearable,” said Buchanan. “Drain the canal, I tell them. Or fill it in. Naturally, Congress does nothing. But they do let me use a little stone cottage out at the Soldiers’ Home. I spend the summers there and I suggest that you use it, too, if you don’t want the fever.”

Lincoln was staring at a pile of white marble blocks, at whose center the base of an obelisk rose. “They’ve still not finished that monument to Washington?”

“No, sir. In fact, nothing is ever finished here! No dome on the Capitol. No street pavings. No street lamps. Nothing’s ever done to completion here except, sir, one thing.” The old man’s head now rested on his shoulder and the bad eye was entirely shut as, with a quiet joy, he pointed out the window. “There,” he said. “Look!”

Lincoln stared at a huge red-brick wall. “The one thing that the Executive Mansion has dearly needed since Mr. Jefferson’s time was a proper barn. But not a
wooden
barn, sir. No, sir. Not a barn that will catch fire or get the rot. No, sir. But a
brick
barn, sir. A barn built to outlast time itself. You don’t know the pleasure it has given me these last four years to see this beautiful barn slowly rise from that swamp they call the President’s Park.”

“And watch the Union fall apart,” said Lincoln to Seward as the two men crossed the President’s Park on the way to the War Department.

“He’s well-meaning, Old Buck,” said Seward, pronouncing the ultimate political epitaph. “What was that between you and Stanton?”

Lincoln chuckled. “Well, Mr. Stanton was this big important lawyer on a patent case … sort of
your
territory, come to think of it. And I was the backwoods lawyer that was called in to help him out because I had political connections in Chicago, where the trial was supposed to be. Anyway, when the trial got moved to Cincinnati, I wasn’t really needed, as he made absolutely clear. Fact, he cut me dead.”

“He’s a disagreeable man,” said Seward. “But he’s the best lawyer in the country. And he’s one of us.”

Lincoln gave Seward a sidelong glance. “In what sense? He’s a Democrat. He was for Douglas, or so people say. He never says, I’m told.”

“Last week he told the President that if he lets Fort Sumter go without a fight, he would deserve impeachment.”

“Well, well,” said Lincoln; and no more. The small brick War Department was surrounded by thirty loud geese which a farmer was doing his best to make move on, to the delight of the two soldiers more or less on guard.

“I shall make no references to Rome and the Capitoline geese.” Seward was fond of classical allusions. He knew his Tacitus; loved his Cicero.

“Please don’t.” Lincoln stared with some distaste at the unexpectedly rustic scene.

“Actually, General Scott has got himself a brand-new War Department across the way there, on Seventeenth Street. This building will only be for the army, just as that one over there”—Seward pointed to a second small brick building—“is for the navy. But the whole thing will be run from Seventeenth Street.” Together the two men crossed the frozen mud field that was Seventeenth Street, where stood a large building with no guards at all, not even geese. This was the War Department. As they approached the main door, Seward asked Lincoln who ought to be Secretary of War.

Lincoln’s response was sharp. “Certainly,
not
the man best qualified. I think that is already understood, isn’t it?” For all Lincoln’s serene amiability, Seward detected a sudden edge of true bitterness. As a minority president, Lincoln could only reign by placating certain great powers and dominations. As for ruling … It was Seward’s view, on the morning of Saturday, February 23, 1861, that Lincoln would be fortunate if he could last out his term as the figurehead president of a mere rump of the dis-United States. Since the wealth and talent of this remaining fragment of the original Union was almost entirely in the north—specifically, in New York and New England—the inexperienced outlander from the west would need a knowledgeable prime minister, a man from the wealthy part—himself, the party’s leader. But Seward was in no hurry to impose himself and the so-called Albany Plan upon Lincoln. He was convinced that in the next nine days tumultuous events would make him so necessary to the new president that he would then be able to assert his dominance in order to avoid the war with the South that Lincoln might blunder into, exclude Chase and the Democrats from the Cabinet, and begin the creation of the new North American—South American and West Indian, too; why not?—empire that Seward felt would more than compensate them for the loss of the slave states.

Seward was no longer the abolitionist he had once been. He was now
both more and less ambitious than when, in the very year that Lincoln was attacking Polk for making war on Mexico, he was telling an audience in Cleveland that, “slavery must be abolished and you and I must do it.” Now Seward was conciliatory on the matter in general; and beautifully vague in particular. On the other hand, Lincoln was still struggling with the words that he had so proudly hurled in the face of President Polk: “Any people anywhere,” Representative Lincoln had proclaimed to the Congress, “being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government …” Seward knew this so-called right of revolution speech by heart, as did every Southerner; and not a day passed that these words were not used to taunt the tall, awkward-moving man who was entering the War Department for the first time.

At seventy-four, Winfield Scott was general-in-chief of the Union armies and at six feet four and a quarter inches, he was a quarter-inch taller than the new president. Estimates of his legendary weight seldom dropped below the three-hundred-pound mark.

General Scott received the Commander-in-Chief-elect in his ground-floor office—he was too large and too old to climb stairs with any ease. Although he suffered from gout, he still loved food and wine; loved glory and himself. The bejowled, red face was huge and mottled; a spider’s web of tiny purple lines had netted the nose. Scott wore an elaborate uniform of his own design, gleaming with gold braid and massive epaulets. Like a glittering mountain he stood now before a painting of himself as the hero of the War of 1812. As Lincoln entered the room, the general waddled forward; they shook hands beneath a painting of Scott conquering Mexico in 1847.

“You have come, sir, when, as a nation, we are at the razor’s edge.” The old man’s voice was still deep; but there was a tendency to quaver whenever he summoned up emotion, either real or simulated.

“It’s a great privilege to meet you, General.” Lincoln glanced at the painting of Scott storming Chapultepec—and looked away. Not an auspicious beginning, thought Seward. Lincoln had detested the Mexican War.

“Sit down, sir.” Scott eased himself into a throne that had been designed for a very fat man to get in and out of with relative ease. “I must confess, sir, I did not vote for you—”

“Because you are a Virginian?”

“No, sir. I am a loyal Union man, which is why I am so relieved that you are here to prevent more dis-Union. I did not vote for you because I never vote.”

“Well, General,
I
voted for you in 1852, when you were the last Whig candidate for president, and I was just about the last good Whig in
Springfield.” Seward wondered whether or not this was true. In the course of the morning, he had duly noted that Lincoln had the gift of flattery, a form of insincerity that Seward tended to think of as being peculiarly his own most delicate art. In any case, Seward regarded Scott as his own handiwork. After all, it had been Seward’s idea to run the man for President; and Seward had written every single speech that Scott had delivered in the course of a disastrous campaign.

“I received,” said the general, the voice of military command taking on a politician’s tone, “one million three hundred eighty-six thousand five hundred and seventy-eight votes. Franklin Pierce”—as the old man said the name, the red face darkened—“got two hundred twenty thousand more votes than I. And now we are faced with a civil war. Because, sir, had I been elected, I would have strengthened the Federal forts in the south. There would have been no trouble at Fort Sumter because I would have made nearby Fort Moultrie impregnable, and Charleston would still be what it is meant to be—a harbor of the United States.”

“What is to be done?” Lincoln’s voice was soft.

Scott motioned to an aide, who set up a map of the Union on an easel. Scott then picked up a ferule that lay beside his throne and pointed to the various military establishments throughout the South. He presented the bad news directly. With the exception of Forts Sumter and Pickens, the rest of the Federal forts either were in rebel hands—or would soon be. Seward then expected Scott to follow their agreed-upon line: Lincoln should say to the South, “Wayward sisters, go in peace.” Although Scott said no such thing, he was hardly sanguine. “We have no fleet to speak of. This Administration has deliberately weakened our military forces. But then Mr. Floyd, the late Secretary of War, is a secessionist and a traitor. You do not object to my candor, sir?”

“No, General. I had come to the same conclusion myself. Now if war
were
to come …” Lincoln paused. Seward sat on the edge of his chair. It had never occurred to him that Lincoln might actually have a plan and that that plan might involve a military action against the rebel states. Like most intelligent men, Seward thought that all intelligent men, given the same set of facts, would react as he did. During the last few hours, he had come to appreciate Lincoln’s intelligence if not the rustic western style; now this sallow-faced man, sprawled in an armchair, knees working their way to his chin, was saying, “If war were to come, how long would it take us to raise an army, build a fleet, make all necessary preparations?”

“Six months, sir. What we lack now are good officers. The best of our West Pointers are Southerners. From Jefferson Davis himself, the President of the Confederacy, to—”

Lincoln cut the old man short. “General, that is a title that I do not use nor acknowledge, while the Confederacy is a place that does not exist. Is that clear?”

Seward sat bolt upright. This man Lincoln was hard, all right; or so he sounded. Intelligent men were pliant; or so Seward chose to believe.

“Yes, sir. You are right, sir. Anyway, from Mr. Davis to Colonel Lee, all our best officers are Southern.”

“Maybe you should’ve promoted a few more Northerners—and Westerners.”

“Well, sir …” Vaguely, Scott gestured with his ferule, which in turn reminded him of the map. “Sir, I have already devised a plan, should it be necessary to restore the Union by force.” Scott paused for some response from Lincoln but there was none beyond attentiveness.

Scott continued without, as it were, the looked-for sign. “If Virginia and Maryland go out of the Union, we shall then be obliged to move the capital to Harrisburg or to Philadelphia …” Scott paused. Lincoln made no response; the face was impassive. Seward was growing definitely uneasy. What was this man’s game? Seward, who enjoyed poker, rather thought that Lincoln was simply indulging himself in the card-player’s bluff. Certainly, he hoped that that was what it was.

Scott, signless again, proceeded to divide the South with his stick. “I do not think that a straight assault on Maryland and Virginia will succeed. Virginia is the most populous of the Southern states, the wealthiest, the most ready for war. We should inflict what damage we can upon Virginia but I would say, sir, that our hope is in the west. The Mississippi River is the key. Seize the river. Knock Mississippi out of the war and whatever sections of Tennessee and Kentucky may stand against us. Split the South into two parts, and each part will die for lack of the other.”

Scott paused. Lincoln slowly straightened up. “Well, I guess we’d better persuade Virginia and Maryland to stay in the Union a while longer.” Seward gave an audible sigh of relief. This was the Lincoln that he had been inventing for himself ever since the election: the cautious vacillator—a Western Jesuit, in fact.

As Lincoln rose, an aide pulled Scott to his feet. “By the way, General, what would you do about Fort Sumter?”

“I would hold out as long as possible.”

“And then?”

“I would evacuate the fort. Otherwise, Major Anderson and all his men will be killed or seized. We have not the sea power to dominate Charleston harbor.”

“An honor to meet you, General.” Lincoln turned to Seward. “My wife and family should be arriving any minute now.”

“Well, the mayor will be at the depot, even if you won’t be.”

Lincoln frowned. “I should have stayed with the rest of the party.”