Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  “Well, I’ve looked at some. The boys read them for me. It would appear that the Southern papers are jubilant, while Mr. Bennett and Mr. Greeley are saddened and sickened.” The President pulled a cushion into place just back of his head. Seward had often wondered whether or not he should keep a pair of slippers at hand so that Lincoln might enjoy every comfort of home in the Old Club House. Certainly, the President tended to make himself entirely at home both here and at the War Department. Seward wondered if Lincoln put his feet up in Chase’s parlor. Although he rather doubted it, one never knew with this curiously unselfconscious man, who often spoke as if he was simply reporting on the thoughts that crossed his mind just as they were crossing it; yet, simultaneously, it was Seward’s impression that Lincoln never said anything that he did not very much mean to say.

  “I have been studying the art of war,” said the President, dreamily, eyes half shut. “Almost every day I send John down to the Library of Congress to take out books that I see referred to in my reading. You know, there are actually times when I think that I may have the knack, since war is not all that different from politics …”

  “ ‘An extension of politics by other means.’ ” Seward quoted; or paraphrased—he was never certain what the line was. He had come across it a good deal in his own recent reading—of English newspapers.

  Lincoln nodded. “Clausewitz,” he said, drawing out each syllable deliberately and correctly. “Or however he calls himself. John translates him for me. John’s German is first-rate. Anyway, I don’t see why we shouldn’t try our hand at it—in a sort of auxiliary way, of course. I respect McClellan, if only because whatever secret genius I may or may not have for strategy, it stops a mile or two short of training an army and victualing it, the way he does. But, basically, our Young Napoleon is really an engineer, just the way we’re lawyers. Now engineers have their uses, but I wonder if fighting a huge and complicated modern war is one of them.”

  Seward blew smoke rings at the smoky wood fire. “I think he can do it.”

  “I think he can, too. If I didn’t …” Lincoln stretched his long legs so that they were now at a hundred-eighty-degree angle above the sofa. As he stretched, there were a number of crackling sounds. Seward was pleased to note that the President shared at least one of his own afflictions—arthritis. “But I do wonder, from time to time, at his reluctance to use this wonderful—and wonderfully expensive—army that we’ve given him.”

  “It’s possible he has too much to do. After all, he must now do Scott’s job as well as his own. That’s a lot for any man.”

  “In a funny way,” said Lincoln, “I’ve always thought that General Scott was right. This war can only be won in the west. Take Richmond, and what have you? A section of Virginia. But split the rebels in two, and they have no country. You’ve cut Virginia off from its hog and hominy. The Mississippi is the key. That’s why I want us to build a railroad from Lexington to Knoxville.”

  “I don’t think Congress will let you.”

  “Then we must find a way to persuade them. Or just do it ourselves, you know, under our …”

  “Your inherent powers.”

  Lincoln nodded. “East Tennessee is pro-Union, which means the rebels are holding that territory by force. Senator Johnson swears that with the slightest aid from us, the folks back there will drive every last rebel out of the state.”

  “But McClellan has most of the army right here, on the Potomac. General Halleck hasn’t got the means.”

  “You know General Scott’s last official words to me were, ‘Make Halleck general-in-chief.’ But McClellan wanted the job, so he got it. And Halleck seemed the man to take Frémont’s place in the west.”

  “Where he does nothing, either.”

  “At least he’s not gone and freed all the slaves in his district.” Lincoln shook his head. “I have never known such a subtle, calculating total fool as Mr. Frémont.”

  “But you must admit he’s made himself irresistible to every abolitionist in the country, which means he’s popular with the Committee on the Conduct of the War.”

  “On the other hand, Governor, he’s not very popular with me.” Lincoln was mild. “Why, if I’d let that order of his stand, we’d have lost Kentucky and East Tennessee and Missouri …” Lincoln drifted off. How, Seward wondered, not for the first time, did this man’s mind work? “You know, after I ordered Frémont to cancel the order, he sent his wife to me.” Seward knew, of course; everyone knew. But he said nothing, curious to hear Lincoln’s side of the story. “Now you may not know this”—Lincoln shut his eyes—“but when I first ran for the Illinois legislature, I came out, more or less, for female suffrage; not exactly the most popular position to take back then, and in that part of the world.”

  “It is still not the most popular issue anywhere in the world, thank God.”

  “Well, Mrs. Frémont comes to see me late at night—right off the cars from the West—and threatens me to my face with an uprising against the government, led by the Frémonts and their radical friends. So I called her, in the nicest way, I thought, ‘Quite a lady politician,’ and she was madder than a wet hen and went and told everyone that I’d threatened her!” Lincoln sighed. “Is it possible that female suffrage may not be the answer to every human problem?”

  Both men were silent. From the street came the sound of Negroes singing Christmas hymns. Seward felt in his pocket for coins. It was the custom in Washington, he had been told by his officious secretary in charge of protocol—what the President called white gloves and feathers—to give no more than a dollar to any one of the numerous groups of singers who went from house to house, celebrating the birth of the Lord.

  “I gave General McClellan the fruit of my latest reading. I even devised a plan for him to use our army in both a frontal and flank attack on Manassas but …” Lincoln stopped.

  “He told you that he had a better plan, which he would execute before the end of this month.”

  “Exactly!” Lincoln swung his legs to the floor. “Has he told you just what this better plan is?”

  Seward shook his head. “No. He hasn’t confided in me since the unfortunate day when I alone seemed to know how many men we had on duty in the army.”

  “Yes, that was a most unfortunate day. It lost us General Scott.”

  “I wanted only, as always, to be helpful. It is my impression”—Seward’s eyes filled suddenly with tears: an unexpected icy draught had blown his own cigar smoke into his own face—“that he confides in Mr. Chase.”

  “Perhaps.” Lincoln was always noncommittal on the subject of the rivalries within the Cabinet.

  “Mr. Cameron has also abandoned me for Mr. Chase.”

  “Well, Governor, you should be relieved.” Lincoln rubbed the back of one hand across the deep-set small gray eyes, as if to erase all thought of Cameron. “I regard Cameron’s appointment as the most … disgraceful thing I have ever done, or had to do, in my life.”

  “But isn’t that how you got the nomination?” Seward kept his voice at the most casual level.

  “No,” said Lincoln, “that is not how I got the nomination but that is what people say, which is what matters. Actually, Judge Davis may take full credit for our alliance with Cameron. Just as I must take full blame for honoring an agreement to which I was not a party. Anyway, we must get him out of the War Department fast. What does he want?”

  “The key to the Treasury.”

  “He can have it, once I’ve changed all the locks. What else?”

  “I’ll sound him out. I think you should send him some place far away …”

  “Make him minister to France?”

  “No. He’s not got the right sort of keys for that. I was thinking maybe … Russia.”

  Lincoln roared with sudden laughter. “Why, Governor, that is capital! Cameron in Russia! Oh, that is real inspiration. I can just see that white bent face of his in all that snow they’ve got up there, trying to sell watered stock to the poor Czar. Well, that’s
your department. You clear the way for him.”

  “I’ve already taken it up with Baron Stoeckl, who doesn’t object too strenuously. Now if I can persuade Mr. Chase that it was all his idea, the rest should be easy.”

  Lincoln leaned forward and picked an apple from a large silver bowl, a form of rude sustenance that did not much appeal to Seward but since Lincoln was addicted to every sort of fruit, Seward kept the bowl filled for presidential visits. As usual, Lincoln encircled with thumb and forefinger the apple’s equator and then, no doubt in honor of the new envoy to Russia, he took a bite out of the apple’s North Pole. As he chewed, slowly, methodically, like a horse, he talked: “Father Bates took me aside after Cabinet this morning and said that I was far too disorganized for my own good. He thought I should have military aides who would take down what I said, and then keep following up to see that what I wanted done was done; and then keep me informed, and so on.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose any man is ever entirely wrong.” Of the Cabinet ministers, after Blair and Welles, Seward disliked Bates most. “You know what Mr. Bates called me?” Seward shook his head with wonder. “An unprincipled liar. And here I am one of the most heavily principled men in politics.”

  Lincoln chuckled. In every way, making allowances for regional differences, Seward’s humor was not unlike his own. “And since you’re a smart man, Governor, you never actually lie. Smart men never have to.” Lincoln put down the apple core; locked his fingers behind his head; stretched his back. “Which reminds me of this rich man from Lexington, Kentucky, who used to travel all over the world with his own servant, a white man. Now the rich man was a monstrous liar, and he knew it, and the servant knew it, and everyone in Lexington knew it. So, finally, after they got home from Europe one time, the rich man says to the servant, ‘Now I want you to sit next to me tonight at dinner and if I start to spread it too thick, I want you to sort of nudge my foot with yours under the table.’ So they go out to dinner and the rich man starts to describe one of the Egyptian pyramids which was, he says, ‘made mostly of gold.’ So, under the table, the servant kind of taps his shoe. ‘So how high is it?’ asks somebody. ‘Oh, about a mile and a half,’ says the rich man. As the servant’s foot comes crashing down hard on his foot, someone else asks just how wide is this pyramid, and our man says, ‘Oh, about a foot.’ ”

  Laughter plainly invigorated Lincoln. It also acted as a challenge to Seward, himself no mean story-teller of the western New York variety. They swapped tales until, sides aching, lungs gasping for breath, Seward rose and opened the door to the parlor and said, “Come on in, boys!” And the boys did as they were told.

  Hay had been pleased to hear Lincoln’s laughter. Lately, there had not been much to laugh about. Whatever reservations Hay had about Seward—and they were many—he knew that the bright little man could relieve the President’s mind, unlike Chase, who only added to his native gloom.

  “Sir, I’ve written you a sonnet,” Hay said to Seward.

  “But, John, it is still six weeks to Valentine’s Day.”

  “But it is today that war with England was averted, which is my subject.”

  Since the Tycoon and Seward insisted that Hay read his sonnet, he did, resonantly, to great applause. “I’ll just take that for safekeeping,” said Seward, slipping the poem in his pocket. “I shouldn’t be surprised if our Johnny was a famous poet one day.”

  Seward then sent for champagne. “It is Christmas, after all.” When Seward offered the President a glass, Lincoln took it, to Hay’s surprise; and when Seward proposed a toast to the Union, Lincoln drained the glass. “I believe,” he said, putting down the glass, “that that is enough champagne to last me the year …”

  “Which ends six days from now. An eternity for me. Did you never drink, Mr. President?”

  Lincoln straightened first his hair and then his coat. “Governor, I am a product of the Kentucky backwoods of forty years ago. I don’t think there has ever been such heavy drinking anywhere in the world as there was back then—the men, the women, even the children.” Lincoln looked suddenly somber in the flickering firelight. “Of course, I tried whiskey, like every other boy. But I could not bear the effect that it has on the mind, which is all I had in this world. You see, I never had more than a year of schooling and that was ‘in littles,’ as we called it—a month here, a week there. Anyway, when I saw what the drink was doing to so many of my friends, I said, no, it is not for me. So except for a glass of champagne kindly offered me once a year, I am usually dry as the African desert. But I am entitled to no great credit for abstinence, since I really hate the stuff.”

  “Hear that, son?” Seward turned on Frederick with mock ferocity. “If you would only do as your President does!”

  “I was taught, sir, to imitate my father in all things,” said Frederick, pouring himself and Hay champagne.

  “ ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth …’ ” Seward began; then stopped and turned to Lincoln, curiously: “You were never temperance, were you?”

  Lincoln laughed. “No. I am not given to oaths; and I never prescribe for others in these matters.”

  “I am relieved.” The Premier was in a rare good humor and Hay was pleased that he had managed, for a time, to divert the Ancient from his cares. When Lincoln said, at last, that it was time to go, the Sewards, father and son, led them to the door. As Lincoln and Hay returned to the White House, they passed through a group of Negro singers who, much to Lincoln’s amusement, did not recognize him. Solemnly, Lincoln proceeded to give them all of the coins in Hay’s pocket. Hay had never known the Tycoon to carry money.

  TWO

  IT WAS Kate’s notion to celebrate Boxing Day, which no one in Washington had ever thought to do before on the sensible ground that since Christmas was bad enough, it seemed perverse to celebrate yet again the next day. But Kate decided that this holiday, observed with such affection by the British, ought to be equally celebrated by their American cousins, particularly now that the Trent Affair had been solved.

  Lord Lyons agreed. “Much the nicest of all the holidays,” he said. “At home, anyway,” he added, peering into the second parlor, where what looked to be most of the Senate was mingling with most of the generals in front of a huge crystal punch bowl that contained stimulants highly displeasing to the host, for whom water had been provided.

  “You won’t think our giving up the rebels a sign of total surrender to England?” Kate took the minister’s arm and guided him away from the French minister, whom he did not much like, and toward General McDowell, whom he did.

  For an English diplomat, Lyons could be surprisingly diplomatic. “Both sides surrendered to reason.”

  “Then you bear no grudge?”

  “Oh, we hold no grudges in England. We never do, you know.”

  “I never knew!”

  “Well, now you know, Miss Kate. I thought we all behaved marvelously well. Mr. Seward and I were particularly brilliant, if I may say so, controlling public opinion both here and at home.” Lyons frowned. “But our greatest ally was Prince Albert.” Queen Victoria’s husband had died twelve days earlier. The British legation was in mourning. “It is too sad,” he said.

  “It is sad, his death,” Kate answered, “but the end is happy, anyway.” Then Kate turned and saw John Hay, smiling at her. For Hay, she was, simply, the most attractive girl in the town; of her sort, of course, which meant that she would be easily outshone at Sal Austin’s, an unthinkable thought that he liked thinking about. “Oh, Mr. Hay!” Kate’s teeth were small but even; and reasonably white. “Will the President be coming?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s still recovering from the Trent Affair.”

  “Lord Lyons thinks that it was he—and Mr. Seward—who saved the day.”

  “As long as the day is saved, let them think it. Do you ever go to the theater?” Hay made his move.

  “Naturally, I go. As often as possible. What you mean is, will I go with you?”

  “Will you
?”

  “Will I?” Kate gave a small sigh. Then she was suddenly alert; eyes on the parlor door. “Here comes the Young Napoleon!” The room was suddenly still as General McClellan and his wife made their entrance, accompanied by half-a-dozen brilliantly uniformed aides. Hay noticed that the French princes were not among them. Usually, the princes were in close attendance upon McClellan in order to learn, firsthand from a master, the art of war. There were three of them: the Count of Paris, who was the rightful king of France (and known, locally, as Count Parry), his brother, the Duke of Chartres (known as Captain Chatters) and their uncle, the Prince of Joinville (seldom known to anyone). This evening they were elsewhere, to the relief of the French minister, M. Mercier, who represented the man who had usurped their throne, the Emperor Napoleon III.

  McClellan stepped away from wife and aides and, solitary in his glory, he walked to the center of the front parlor, where Chase shook his hand. Kate curtseyed. Hay watched, grimly. Both Nicolay and Hay had come to the conclusion that the Young Napoleon was a fraud. But neither dared breathe a word of this to anyone, particularly to the Tycoon, who seemed, most of the time, under the spell of this small muscular young man, whose flashing eyes now took in the room as though it were the field at Austerlitz.

  “I am here,” he said, as if he had won some incredible victory.

  “So you are, unmistakably,” said Kate, with a delicate malice that warmed Hay’s heart.

  “I am happy that you could tear yourself away from camp,” said Chase, to Hay’s amusement. McClellan lived in a small house in H Street, not far from Seward’s Old Club House. Although Little Mac—the soldiers’ affectionate name for their commander—was constantly on the move from encampment to encampment, usually in the company of journalists and Democratic politicians (he was already spoken of as the Democratic candidate for president in ’64), he spent no time at all in camp much less in confrontation with the enemy. All quiet on the Potomac, thought Hay, as he returned to the punch bowl.