Lincoln (79 page)

When the Cabinet met next on Tuesday, July 14, the euphoria of Vicksburg had begun to evaporate. Lincoln was cold and deliberate. “General Meade, on Sunday night, against my advice, held a council of war to ask his commanders what he should do next.”

Seward sat in the President’s usual chair, his knees under his chin. Seward had other things on his mind. Unlike the President, he had already written off Meade. Union generals assigned to the Army of the Potomac invariably became cowardly or worse.

Seward saw a much greater danger at hand. The day before, in New York City, a well-organized mob had wrecked the house of the Republican mayor; burned a dozen buildings, including the draft office; murdered dozens of Negroes; hanged a captain of the state guard and severely wounded the Superintendent of Police. They then assembled barricades in First Avenue between Eleventh and Fourteenth Streets, as well as in Ninth Avenue. All to show their fury at the Conscription Act. Since dawn, Seward had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get word to his friend Archbishop Hughes, the only man who could control the almost-entirely Irish mob. Even though many of the Irish were just arrived in the United States, to a man they hated both Negroes and the Republican Administration. Ordinarily archbishop and governor kept them in line. But someone very shrewd indeed had been at work. Shortly after the available New York militia had left the state for Gettysburg, the mob had struck. The city’s fifteen hundred policemen were soon routed; telegraph offices were seized and the wires cut, while railroad and streetcar lines were disrupted. Carefully, the city was isolated from the rest of the state and country.

Seward could not, for the life of him, figure out who was behind this remarkably well-executed revolution. There was a rumor that Vallandigham was in the city; but Seward doubted if that Copperhead demagogue had the skill to overthrow so vast a city. But who had? Or was it simply a spontaneous uprising on the part of a citizenry enflamed by such newspapers as the
Daily News
and the
World
, which day after day, denounced the government, the draft and the Negroes.

Seward thought, somewhat wryly, of the secret overtures that he and Thurlow Weed had been making toward Governor Seymour, Lincoln’s choice as the Democratic-Unionist president. Luckily, Seymour had proved to be vain and dull, a highly resistible combination in Seward’s view. Worse, on the Fourth of July, Seymour had told a large audience at New York’s Academy of Music that the government was destroying the rights of the citizens with midnight arrests, the shutting down of newspapers, the suspension of
habeas corpus
and the right of trial by jury. Nicely, the governor lit the fuse; and the city went up in flames.

Lincoln was now comparing General Meade to McClellan, the beginning of the end for Meade, thought Seward. “Meade is making the same mistakes. Like calling for a council. I warned him that no council has ever wanted to fight; and I am afraid that the one he has called is no exception.”

Stanton entered the room. “May I see you, sir?”

Lincoln moved into his office; and Stanton followed, shutting the door behind him. Seward looked about the table at his colleagues. “Let us have an informal council behind the President’s back. As of this morning, how
many here agree with me that we should have shot or, perhaps, hanged Vallandigham?” The response was properly bloodthirsty. Even Chase was moved to denounce in harsh terms the President’s unaccountable leniency. They were exchanging items of news or gossip from New York City when Lincoln and Stanton returned.

Usher asked Stanton if there was bad news. Stanton gasped a negative. Then Welles asked if there was any truth to the rumor that Lee had already crossed the Potomac into Virginia. Stanton said, “I know nothing of Lee’s movements.”

“Well, I do,” said the President; and he gave Stanton a hard look. “If Lee has not got all of his men across the river by now, he soon will.” Lincoln turned back to Stanton. “I want to see Halleck. At the War Department.” Without a word, Stanton left the room.

“About the rioting in New York City,” Seward began.

But Lincoln cut him off. “I don’t think we’re in any mood—or at least
I
am not in any mood—to continue this meeting. I’ve now got two volcanoes on my hands.”

“How do you plan,” asked Bates, “to answer Governor Seymour’s request that the draft be suspended in New York City?”

“I don’t know,” said the President; and he left the room with Welles, who walked him part of the way across the White House lawn. Just as Welles was about to return to the Navy Department, Lincoln stopped in his tracks and took his arm. “Mr. Welles, there is something excessive strange here. There is bad faith somewhere. General Meade has been pressed and urged by us to pursue Lee and cut him off. But only one of his generals favored an immediate attack. What does it mean, Mr. Welles? Good God, what does it mean?”

“Did you ever directly order Meade to attack?”

“I urged. I exhorted. So did Stanton, I think. Halleck was always waiting to hear from Meade.”

“Halleck was only four hours away by rail from Meade. Why didn’t he go to him at Gettysburg and tell him that he was to attack?”

Lincoln did not answer. The bright sun made his face more than ever sallow; and the eye sockets were now cavernous.

“Sir, I think that General Halleck is the problem. He is inert, at best. At worst, he is not competent.”

Lincoln sighed. “Halleck knows better than I do. He’s a military man, has a military education. I brought him here to give me military advice. It’s true that his views and mine are widely different. Even so, it is better that I, who am not a military man, should defer to him rather than he to me.”

Welles shook his head. “I disagree, Mr. President. Halleck has
no
ideas, that I ever heard of. He originates nothing. You have the overall view of the war in your head, with all its ramifications, political and military. You must never fear to give the lead to those who must be led.”

Lincoln seemed not to have heard any of this. He spoke as if to himself. “When we got word that Vicksburg had fallen, and the Potomac was in flood, and Lee was desperately waiting for the waters to fall so that he could cross, I saw that the rebellion was at an end. But the generals voted not to attack him, and now the war goes on and on—and on.”

Then Lincoln turned, abruptly, and set off, alone, to the War Department. Welles crossed to the Navy Department. Mrs. Lincoln’s cow moaned. One of the Bucktails asked the cow to shut up. The heat was intense. Gnats filled the summer air.

Robert Lincoln entered Nicolay’s office as Nicolay was preparing to depart for the West. Hay had already moved into Nicolay’s office. “Well, the prince at last!” Nicolay exclaimed.

“What became of you?” asked Hay.

“I was caught in the rioting. The beginning of it, anyway. Luckily, I had a friend at the Fifth Avenue Hotel who had his own carriage. He got me across the city to the ferry before they stopped the service. I was on the last cars for Baltimore.” Robert looked thirty years old, thought Hay, somewhat enviously; and he sounded like a Boston Brahmin. “Where are they?”

“Your father’s at the War Department, as always,” said Nicolay, giving Hay a small key. “To the strongbox. Don’t lose it.” Nicolay turned to Robert. “And your mother’s now out at the Soldiers’ Home. She’s better, they say. The infection’s clearing up.”

“Everything’s happening at once down here.”

“We try never to have an idle day,” said Hay, blithely.

“Isn’t the town awfully crowded for summer?” Robert studied the stack of newspapers. They were from everywhere in the Union; and Richmond, too.

“Vicksburg,” said Nicolay, with some satisfaction. “All the faint-hearts have come to town to rally round the victorious president.”

Robert inquired after mutual acquaintances but Hay knew that he was interested in only one, the daughter of the hardware magnate; and so Hay took a deep breath and said, “Miss Hooper is to be married this month.”

Robert swallowed hard; inquired if Mr. Watt was to be found; was told that Mr. Watt had gone to the army.

“What started the rioting?” asked Hay.

“Who knows?” Robert was vague; his mind elsewhere, in Georgetown.
“At first, it looked to be organized. The Irish were all set to kill every Negro in the city. Oh, they are animals!”

“The Negroes?” asked Hay, mischievously.

“No, the Irish. Damned drunken papists!” Robert was very much the Boston Brahmin. “They are calling this a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”

“They are not so far wrong,” said Nicolay. “It’s certainly not fair to let a man stay out of the war because he’s got three hundred dollars to pay for someone else to go. There’s bound to be trouble.”

“There
is
trouble,” said Robert. “It’s like the French Revolution, what’s going on up there, with people being hanged from lampposts.” Edward announced that the carriage was ready to take Robert to his father. “Well, I’d
give
three hundred dollars to be allowed to fight.”

“Give it to your mother,” said Hay. “She’ll let you join up in a flash.” Hay was icily aware that he had gone too far. But Robert only laughed; and left.

“That was hardly tactful.” Nicolay frowned.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, I don’t think he knows about Madam’s mysterious ways of raising money. Curious, how little like either of them he is.”

Nicolay took down the map of Pennsylvania from which all pins had been removed. “I think he’s very much a Todd.”

Hay suddenly recollected a conversation that he had had with Herndon on his last trip to Springfield. “Old Herndon says that he believes that all the rumors about the Ancient being illegitimate aren’t true but that the Ancient himself told Herndon that
his
mother—someone called Hanks—was illegitimate, and the daughter of a Virginia grandee.”

“Mr. Herndon is very good at quashing rumors that no one else has heard.” Nicolay did not take a friendly view of the President’s law partner.

Hay was thoughtful. “I don’t think he ever lies. But he does like to speculate. He thinks that the Ancient knows who his real grandfather is, but he would never tell Herndon.”

“The Ancient is nothing if not wise.”

“So Herndon is now of the opinion that the shadowy grandfather is none other than that great advocate of slavery, the aristocratic John C. Calhoun.”

“God help us!” Nicolay was appalled.

“ ‘They even,’ said Herndon happily, ‘look alike.’ Is that for your book or mine?”

Hay and Nicolay had each had, on his own, the idea of writing a
biography of Lincoln. Lately, they had been discussing such a book as a joint effort.

Nicolay shut his desk. “Upon the two of us, John, must fall the noble task of telling the world who Abraham Lincoln really was. This means that we are obliged to leave Billy Herndon out.”

“But, Nico, do we know who he really was—or is?”

“We know what we know, which is a good deal, I think.”

“I wonder,” said Hay. “The Tycoon is a mysterious man; and highly secret.”

“That’s because he’s smarter than anybody else. Nothing mysterious about that. Where’s the key?”

“Here in my watch pocket.”

“Guard it well; and the Republic, too.”

“To the death, Nico.”

Hay sat with the Tycoon in the President’s Office, waiting for Seward to usher in the latest delegation from New York. Lincoln sat on the window-sill, gold glasses on the end of his nose; and read from Artemus Ward: “ ‘Any gentleman living in Ireland who was never in this country, is not liable to the draft, nor are our forefathers.’ ” Lincoln chuckled, and looked at Hay over his glasses. “That has the statesman’s ring to it.” Then he read on. “ ‘The term of enlistment is for three years, but any man who may have been drafted in two places has a right to go for six years. The only sons of a poor widow, whose husband is in California, are not exempt, but a man who owns stock in the Vermont Central Railway is.’ ” Lincoln threw back his head, and roared with laughter. Hay marvelled at the Tycoon’s power of recovery. Whatever fire that kept this extraordinary engine going was plainly unquenchable if fuelled by laughter. “ ‘So also are incessant lunatics, habitual lecturers, persons born with wooden legs and false teeth, blind men, and people who deliberately voted for John Tyler.’ ” Hay and Lincoln were now both laughing, uncontrollably, as Edward opened the door and announced, solemnly, “The Secretary of State, Senator Morgan and Mr. Samuel J. Tilden of New York.”

Seward had heard the laughter; saw the copy of Artemus Ward. “I shall want that next,” he said to the President.

“It is a tonic, let me tell you. President Tyler died, didn’t he?”

“A year ago January, in Richmond. He’d just been elected to the rebel congress. Mr. President, allow me to present Senator Morgan, whom you know, and Mr. Tilden, whom you don’t.”

Lincoln shook hands with each man; and to Tilden, a small, spare, cleanshaven man of about fifty, he said, “You were an associate of Martin Van Buren …”

“
He
died a year ago this month,” interjected Seward, settling into his usual place at table.

“I know that, Governor.” Lincoln turned to Tilden. “You worked with Mr. Van Buren?”

“I helped him as best I could during his presidency. I wrote many briefs for him.” Tilden stifled a belch. Senator Morgan had assured Seward that although Mr. Tilden’s acute and chronic dyspepsia had ruled him out as a candidate for office it did not prevent him from being an adroit manipulator behind the scenes.

“Well, I did not support Van Buren in ’forty-eight but he was plainly the best of the lot, as it turned out. And once upon a time he had favored Negro suffrage, too.” Lincoln chuckled. “When I read that out to Judge Douglas, a Van Buren man through and through, I thought he’d have a fit. ‘Where did he say that?’ he asked in front of this huge crowd. So I gave him the book, open to the passage, and the Judge said, ‘I want nothing to do with that damned book,’ and threw it on the ground.”

Seward allowed Lincoln a few more reminiscences; then he brought up the subject of the meeting. “We were able, Archbishop Hughes and I, to turn off the mob on the third day.” Seward felt that he deserved full credit for having so bombarded the archbishop with telegrams that His Eminence had been obliged to summon the faithful to his house on Madison Avenue, where he had scolded and soothed a crowd of some five thousand men, mostly Irish. As a result, the city was tranquil—for the present.