Lincoln (99 page)

“For what reason?”

“Patriotic, I think. The premise was suitably vague.”

“They will put up—who?”

“They will try Grant.”

Seward poured himself brandy. “They are insufferable fools.”

“Insufferable, they are. Foolish …?” Lincoln’s voice trailed off, as from exhaustion.

“I concede that we
could
lose,” said Seward. “But as long as our army
occupies the border-states, and the reconstructed rebel states, we can squeak through—I think. After Kentucky, I’m not so sure.”

“That does not strike me as exactly what I meant when I spoke of government by the people.” Lincoln was suddenly droll; he sat up, and the huge feet crashed onto the floor.

“It may not be by the people but it is certainly
for
the people, since you insist on using rhetorical triads, though God alone knows what
of
the people means, since no government can be anything else but of them, unless the lions and the tigers take over.”

“Or the race of eagles …” Lincoln murmured, half to himself, half to no one at all.

As Seward did not understand the reference, he did not ask for an explanation. In any case, he had a constitutional dislike of being told things that he did not know, as opposed to ferretting them out. “The only danger, as I see it, is General Grant deciding to run.”

“I don’t think there’s any chance of that, unless he’s taken Richmond, in which case I’ll be like the fellow who didn’t especially want to die but if he had to, well, that’s the way he’d like to go.” Midge rested her muzzle on Lincoln’s knee. He scratched her ears, as required. “But there’s one curious thing I noticed when Grant was just here. We got onto the subject of the election—I can’t imagine how! Anyway, when I said what a splendid team I thought he and I were, he didn’t say a thing.”

“That is ominous.” Seward knew that in politics nothing speaks more loudly than the unspoken. “You think that he will not endorse you?”

“I know he won’t. Oh, I can understand why. If I’m defeated, he will be obliged to work with the next president. He won’t want an enemy in the White House, though I can’t see him lasting a day with McClellan.” Lincoln was now ready to leave. “But I was still somewhat hurt that he did not respond.”

“There is time.” Seward was soothing.

“No, Governor. There is no time left. Or rather, this is the time. Well, now I must go back to work.”

“And I must let Midge take me for my evening stroll.”

At the Mansion, Thaddeus Stevens was coldly vehement. “We are pleased with Andy Johnson, we are not pleased with any Blair.”

Zach. Chandler went even further. “The only way the true Republicans can be got to vote for you and not Frémont, or whoever they come up with at Cincinnati, will be the elimination of the Blairs from your Administration.”

“But there is only one Blair in the Administration,” said Lincoln, reasonably.

“He must be gone before the election,” said Simon Cameron, “if we are to hold our own in Pennsylvania.”

“Hold our own?” Lincoln repeated.

“As opposed to lose outright,” said Stevens; the stiff wig set off his hard white face like an oaken frame.

“I am not convinced, Mr. Stevens, that my reelection depends on whether or not there is a Blair in the Cabinet.” Lincoln towered over the three men, who were lined up on the sofa opposite the fireplace.

“Then let us say, sir, that the vigor with which the party leaders work for you in Pennsylvania will be affected if Mr. Blair stays.” Stevens was icy.

Lincoln was amused. “There is useful vigor, and there is useless vigor, Mr. Stevens, as you well know.”

This reference to Stevens’s attempt to swing Pennsylvania from Lincoln to Chase was duly noted by all, and appreciated by all save Stevens, who said, “Without us, Mr. Cameron and me, working together, as peculiar as that combination must look to the innocent—if such exists—eye, you will not carry Pennsylvania and without Pennsylvania you will not win the election.”

“That is my view,” said Cameron, staring at Stevens with familial dislike.

“You must get rid of Blair.” Chandler was harsh. “Now!”

“So you mean to dictate to me my Cabinet?” Lincoln appeared more bemused than angry. “Does this mean that I am now your puppet? that once elected, thanks to this peculiar combination,
you
will govern?”

“Surely, the giving up of one measly Blair does not constitute puppet-hood,” said Stevens.

“It’s more like a bargain,” said Cameron, yawning.

“I take a different view, gentlemen. For four years this or that faction had tried to govern me, and none has succeeded. Naturally, I want to be reelected since I have not done what I set out to do.” Lincoln turned to Cameron. “I am also quite capable of making a bargain, as you know.” Cameron nodded pleasantly; he was quite incapable of embarrassment even at this direct acknowledgment of the way that he himself had come to the Cabinet. “But I am not about to allow any faction to dictate to me who is and who is not in my Administration, or to be told that I must or must not do certain things.”

“We had hoped you would be a little more easy with us,” said Cameron, frowning. “You know it’s not as if we had us a real political party, and everyone knew what he had to do. We are just a hodgepodge, more or less united behind you.”

“Then I hope you will be more united, because if you are less, we all lose. In any case, gentlemen, rather than accept the disgraceful terms you would force on me, I would decline the office.”

“That seems to be that,” said Stevens, getting to his feet.

“Yes,” said Lincoln. “That is that.”

The two Pennsylvanians shook hands—Stevens grimly, Cameron mournfully. Chandler remained behind. “There is something they don’t know that I do.”

“What is that, Mr. Chandler?” The sun was setting now behind the monument, and Lincoln’s eyes kept straying to the billows of rose and saffron clouds as they flowed across the sky.

“I have spoken to General Frémont. He told me to tell you that he will pull out of the race,
if
you drop Monty Blair.”

Lincoln studied Chandler’s huge, homely brick of a face, where colonies of whiskey-broken veins had left their memorials as red crosshatchings. “I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Chandler.”

Chandler nodded; and took his leave.

It was dark when Lincoln mounted his horse. Then, at the center of a company of cavalry, he rode out to the Soldiers’ Home, by way of Fifteenth Street, where a huge transparency proclaimed: “The Star of Canterbury Never Sets.” Stanton had so devised the President’s horseback excursions that, due to the physical bulk of the cavalrymen on either side of him, the President was not visible to anyone in the street.

At the turnoff to the low hill on which stood the Soldiers’ Home, Lincoln reined in his horse; and dismissed the escort. For a moment horse and rider were an integral part of the dark stillness of woods and warm, windless, starless night. Once the sound of the retreating cavalry escort had ceased, only crickets and tree toads sounded. For a moment, Lincoln took deep breaths of the scented summer air.

Then, finally, reluctantly, he rode up the driveway to the stone gates of the Soldiers’ Home. When he was halfway to the gates, a rifle was fired; and the horse bolted through the gates at a panicky gallop. In a grove of cedar trees where peacocks now shrieked, a soldier grabbed the horse’s reins and coaxed it to a standstill.

As Lincoln dismounted, he said, casually, “He got the bit in his teeth before I could draw rein. I’m glad you caught him, Nichols. I was getting set for a fall.”

“Something startle him, sir? asked Nichols; he had guarded the President before.

“No, no.” Lincoln ran his hand, absently, through his hair.

“You’ve lost your hat, sir.”

“So I have. Well, good-night; thank you.”

Lincoln went inside the stone cottage, where he was greeted by the orderly assigned to him. Lincoln asked for tea, an unusual request for him. He then sat in the small parlor of the cottage, and began to read by kerosene lamp a copy of Artemus Ward. But before the first smile, much less laugh, had been produced, Nichols appeared, carrying Lincoln’s hat. “We found this, sir, in the road.”

“Oh, good. Put it in the hall.”

“Sir.” Nichols held the hat so that Lincoln could see clearly two small round holes an inch below the crown. “This is where the bullet entered; and here is where it came out,” said Nichols.

“I heard a rifle shot.” Lincoln was neutral. “I thought it was a coon hunter, maybe, in the woods.”

“It was a
hunter
, sir, in the woods.”

“That is the second good hat that I have lost in this fashion. Strange how he—or they—always aim at the head, which is so hard to hit, and not at the body, which is so much easier a target.” Lincoln gave the hat to Nichols. “Say nothing of this to anyone. Particularly, say nothing to Marshal Lamon.”

“On condition, sir, that you will not send your escort back
before
you are inside these gates.”

Lincoln smiled. “A bargain? Well, today has been bargain day all day, and I guess that’s how it will end. All right, Nichols, I will grant your wish. Now bum the hat. I want no one to see it.”

“Yes, sir.” Nichols left.

At the Cabinet the next morning, Seward found the President distracted. Although the Seward-Weed machine did not want Roscoe Conkling to return to the House of Representatives, Lincoln favored him; and Seward had given way. The morning was unusually humid and hot even for the African Capital, as Seward had taken to calling Washington.

The President moved restlessly about the room. Seward sat slumped in his chair. Stanton combed his beard with two fingers, always finding new and interesting—even Gordian, thought Seward—knots. Blair seemed as if he were not present, no doubt in anticipation of when he would indeed be gone. Fessenden, the new boy, sat very straight; and paid close attention to everything. Nicolay was in and out. Bates had already said that he would be going home after the election, no matter what the result. Usher was present but, to Seward, permanently invisible. Welles made notes. It was rumored that, as a one-time literary man, he was keeping an elaborate journal, which would destroy them all.

It was Fessenden who was first with the latest ominous news. “I have
just learned that General Butler is prepared to run for president on a ticket with Ben Wade.” Seward found Fessenden’s disapproval of his former senatorial colleague and ally most pleasing; but then Seward always enjoyed the sight, no matter how familiar in politics, of even the mildest leopard-spot-changing at season’s change. Senatorial Jacobin was now staunch loyalist.

“Ben Butler,” the President began; and ended. The subject plainly tired him. Seward wondered, idly, if any of the presidents had been as cross-eyed as Butler or, for that matter, as peculiarly ugly? Old Abe was indeed Apollo next to the squat political general who had earned the nickname “Spoons” Butler, the result of having seized all the valuables that he could get his hands on when he was at New Orleans. Should the radical Republicans be stupid enough to nominate Butler and Wade, Seward knew that their makeshift party would go the way of the Whigs; and McClellan would win.

There was a general exchange of political information; and all the news was bad. Weed had told Seward that if the election were held as of this day, August 23, 1864, Lincoln would lose New York by fifty thousand votes; and that was without Butler in the race.

Lincoln read a note from Washburne, who was at Chicago: Illinois was, for the moment, lost. Blair remarked, sourly, that with Cameron and Stevens in charge of Pennsylvania, the Keystone State could also be written off.

Lincoln sighed. “It is curious. We have no adversary as yet, and we have no friends. I suppose this is a unique situation.” He took his seat at the center of the table; and glanced at a letter. “Mr. Raymond of the
New York Times
thinks that I am now identified as an abolitionist, thanks, I suppose, to Horace Greeley. He thinks that the only way I can win is to offer—immediately—peace terms to Mr. Davis, on the sole condition of acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution. Everything else, including slavery, to be decided at a national convention.”

“Shameful!” said Stanton, tearing his fingers loose from his beard, and stifling a cry of pain.

“One sees his point,” said Bates. “You have gone and made it an absolute pre-condition of peace that the South abolish slavery. Perhaps that question was better left moot.”

“I freed the slaves as a military measure only.” Lincoln was now on the verge of changing a whole set of very black spots, and Seward hoped devoutly that he would go through with the metamorphosis. But Lincoln dropped the subject; he turned to Nicolay. “Have you the memorandum?”

Nicolay gave the President a sheet of paper, folded in half and sealed. “I would like you gentlemen to indulge me,” said Lincoln. “Will each of you sign his name on the back of this paper.”

“What are we signing away?” asked Seward. “Our lives and sacred honor?”

“Nothing so priceless,” said Lincoln. “It is just in case …” But he did not say in case of what. As requested, the seven men signed.

On August 29, the friendless President at least gained an official adversary when the Democratic Party nominated George B. McClellan for president at Chicago. Lincoln and Seward sat in the Telegraph Room of the War Department as the news came through. From time to time they were joined by Stanton, who could now neither see without weeping nor breathe without choking.

As the news of McClellan’s nomination came clattering into the room, everyone expected, at the least,
pro forma
joke from the President. But there was none. Lincoln sat on a plain wood chair so low that his knees touched his chin while the huge hands grasped his shins.

Finally, Seward broke the silence. “I think they may have done themselves in, allowing Vallandigham to play so large and visible a part. After all, he is as close to being a traitor as the war has produced.”

Lincoln nodded; but said nothing. Plainly, that curious mind was elsewhere, threading a labyrinth that led, at the very least, thought Seward, to a whole herd of minotaurs. Seward was already preparing, in his own less curious but no less subtle mind, a series of attacks on the Democrats for having accepted as a delegate the banished traitor Vallandigham, who had written a peace-at-any-price platform for McClellan, the warrior, to stand and run on.