by Gore Vidal
“Well, I am here as the Republican leader—and President—to tell you that I believe John Watt’s story, and that I want you to believe it, too. Otherwise, in the middle of a war which we are only, this very day, beginning to win—Fort Donelson has fallen …”
There were spontaneous cheers from all but Hickman.
“… you will deeply embarrass me personally if you persist in allowing every sort of gossip and troublemaker and secret secessionist to use your committee to make newspaper sensations. You will damage our brand-new political party. You will put at risk our majority in this House come November’s election. Finally, you will give great comfort to the rebels at the South. Well, I am telling you what you can do. But I know that you will not do it, because I know that I can count on you—as Republicans and as Unionists—to do the right thing.”
Seward admired Lincoln’s unexpected mastery of what was, in principle, a hostile group. They might all call themselves Republicans, but the word was too vague to describe a former Democrat turned Jacobin abolitionist like Hickman or a former Whig moderate like himself—or the President, for that matter.
Finally, Hickman said, “You guarantee, sir, that Watt’s story is true?”
“Oh, Mr. Hickman, I guarantee nothing on this earth that I’ve not experienced firsthand, and even then the sharpest eye can fail you. I think Watt’s testimony is true. I also think that there will never be a story more interesting, nor to the dramatic extent that some would like.”
Seward saw that Hickman was furious but there was nothing now that he could do. Lincoln’s reminder to the Committee members that they would be up for reelection in nine months’ time had neatly done the trick. To damage mortally the leader of their party would so help the busy Democrats that a number of those present might be abruptly removed from public life. “Thank you, Mr. President,” said Hickman, “for your courtesy—and your candor.”
Lincoln was now shaking each congressman’s hand. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for letting me drop in on you like this. Or to quote the preacher who said …”
AS MARY HURRIED down the corridor to Willie’s bedroom, Watt suddenly stepped in front of her, as if he’d materialized from nowhere like a ghost. Mary cried out with surprise; and some alarm. Watt was pale and grim. “Mrs. Lincoln,” he began.
“Mr. Watt, no one’s supposed to be in this part of the Mansion. My boy is very ill …”
“I know. I’m sorry. I did what I was told to do. I did what they forced me to do.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Watt. I can’t talk now.” At the far end of the corridor, she saw Nicolay, watching her with some curiosity.
“My wife has just given up her job as stewardess. I have resigned as chief groundsman. I was supposed to receive a commission in the army. But it was revoked today. I shall go off the payroll at the end of the month. Now, I have done everything that I could …”
“Mr. Watt, you will always have a friend in me, as well as in our common friends at New York City. The greenhouse that you have always dreamed of, the one that we saw in Fourteenth Street, is available …” Mary spoke rapidly; and to the point. She had rehearsed this speech before. She told Watt that she was grateful to him for his support; and that she would repay him. When Mary had finished, Watt gave a little bow.
Mary tried but failed to smile. Then she crossed into Willie’s room, where one of his playmates was seated solemnly beside the great bed. Willie’s eyes were shut.
“Has he spoken?”
The boy shook his head. “But he recognizes me sometimes. He squeezes my hand a little.”
Mary sat in a chair next to the boy, whose presence plainly comforted Willie in his rare conscious moments.
Mary now had the sense that she was dreaming; and that she had been dreaming for quite some time. Soon she would wake up and all would be well. They would be back in Springfield; and she would report, over breakfast, her nightmare that Lincoln had been elected President and that the Union had been dissolved and that Willie was dead—no, dying—no, alive—still. That morning the doctor had said that there was no longer anything to be done. But that was the way things were in nightmares, and she was an expert on dreams and their significance. Dreams work mainly in opposites, she knew. Willie dying meant Willie thriving.
Finally, it was Keckley who told Hay that he should fetch the President from the War Department. When the cries from the living quarters of the Mansion had begun, Nicolay ordered everyone out of the waiting room and told Old Edward to stand guard at the top of the stairs to fend off all intruders.
Hay hurried across to the War Department, where he found Lincoln in Stanton’s office. Since Nashville was about to be part of the Union, Lincoln had spent the morning working on a statement welcoming East Tennessee back into the Union. But when he saw Hay in the doorway, he let the papers in his hand fall to the floor. Stanton looked at Lincoln, somewhat irritably; looked at Hay, and understood. Stanton began to choke from asthma. Lincoln stood up, his eyes on Hay, who could not speak. Lincoln nodded, and Hay was relieved that he had not been obliged to tell the Ancient that the boy was dead.
The Mansion was silent. Hay assumed that Mrs. Lincoln had been drugged by now. Certainly, no one could have endured much longer her cries, which were neither screams nor sobs but an eerie keening, addressed to the underworld itself; to that voracious darkness which had robbed her yet again.
Hay stood in the doorway and watched as Lincoln crossed to the bed, where lay the small shrouded figure. Slowly, Lincoln pulled back the sheet. The boy’s eyes had been closed; the hair combed. Delicately, with a forefinger, Lincoln touched his son’s brow. Keckley pushed a chair in place so that Lincoln might sit. As he lowered himself into the chair, Hay saw that the tears had begun to flow down leathery cheeks that looked as if they had never before known such moisture. “It is hard,” Lincoln whispered. “Hard to have him die.”
Then Robert entered the room. Lincoln looked up at him, for a moment disoriented. “The doctor has given her morphine. She is asleep.” Lincoln looked back at Willie. Robert started to go to his father; but then thought better of it. He left the room.
Lincoln addressed the dead boy, in a voice that was oddly conversational. “We loved you so.”
In tears, Hay left the room, bumping into Robert, who said, urgently, “We must get my aunt here, as fast as possible. Can you telegraph her?”
Hay blew his nose; and used that gesture as an excuse to dry his eyes. “Of course. Which aunt?”
“Elizabeth Edwards. She is the best with Mother. You must tell her to start today. Because if she doesn’t …”
“If she doesn’t, what?”
“If she doesn’t, my mother will go mad.”
FIVE
AS CHASE held out his mug to receive the fresh coffee, the ship gave a sudden leap and the coffee came toward him, slowly, it seemed to Chase, making an arc from spout to what was no longer cup but his own unprotected face. Fortunately, a second shudder of the ship caused the jet of coffee to avoid his cheek; even so, he could feel its warmth, as it made its way to the deck with a splash not entirely drowned out by the sound of water cascading off the Treasury cutter’s bow.
Chase looked down the table at the President, who was holding onto the edge with one hand while in the other he held a fork that had been aimed at a plate which was now skittering along the table, depositing its contents impartially between the lap of Stanton and that of General Viele. Once the mess-boy was certain that all of the coffee had left the tin pot, he put it down on the table, where, as waves again struck the ship’s bow, the pot retraced the course of the presidential plate and struck Lincoln full in the chest.
“I don’t think,” said the First Magistrate, thoughtfully, “that I’m all that hungry, anyway.”
The commanding officer of the Miami apologized. “I’m sorry, sir. It shouldn’t be this rough. But you never know with the Chesapeake.”
“How much longer,” gasped Stanton, “before we are at Fortress Monroe?”
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“By eight this evening, sir.”
Stanton shut his eyes. Lincoln smiled, wanly. Chase felt vigorous; and alert. But then this was his ship: a cutter of the U.S. Treasury, and the President and the Secretary of War were his honored guests.
Chase turned to the captain. “I’m sure we’ll be able to do justice to this delicious meal that your cook has prepared for us,” he said, graciously; then, to his alarm, he saw that a second mess-boy had appeared from the galley with a tureen of steaming soup. “But I would suggest that we forego the …”
A great wave broke over the bow; and the soup was foregone. Happily, it missed the President, who was now the color of chalk. “I believe,” said Lincoln, “that I shall lie down for a while.” With-the aid of the captain, the President lurched across the salon to a long locker on which a pallet had been placed. Here he stretched himself out and shut his eyes. Stanton staggered to his feet and hurled himself toward the mess-boy, who caught him in midflight, and deposited him on a second locker, where he lay, gasping softly, eyes red-glazed behind the pebble glasses.
“That seems to leave just us, General,” said Chase, cheerily, to Viele, who seemed at ease. As best they could, they dined. Meanwhile, the plate and cutlery had taken on a sinister life of their own. “Rather like a spiritualist’s séance,” Chase remarked. Lately, conversation with the dead had become the rage at Washington; and the city was filled with mediums of all sorts. It was rumored that Mrs. Lincoln had summoned to the White House a particularly fashionable medium; and that she had been able to speak to Willie, the only bright—or even sane, if gossip was to be believed—moment in her bereavement.
The White House had been in deepest mourning ever since the child’s funeral, which had been held, three months earlier, in a storm so terrible that Chase had been put in mind of one of those Shakespeare plays where all the elements do conspire to presage some terrible—more terrible, that is—tragedy.
General Viele discussed the previous month’s seizure of Fort Pulaski, just outside Savannah; and Chase said that he only prayed that McClellan would be inspired by the numerous Federal victories all around the country; and himself move. General Ben Butler had occupied New Orleans. General John Pope had seized a crucial island in the Mississippi River, known, somewhat ingloriously, as Island Number Ten. General Grant had sustained great losses—some thirteen thousand men when he was surprised by the rebels at Shiloh Church on the Tennessee River. Grant had managed, barely, to survive. Subsequently, he had been denounced by a former commandant of the United States Military Academy as a common gambler and drunkard. Lincoln had ignored the denunciation.
But Lincoln could hardly ignore the denunciation of McClellan from the radicals in Congress; and of himself and Stanton from the reviving Democratic Party in the North. When he had finally ordered McClellan and the Army of the Potomac into action, he took the occasion to remove McClellan as general-in-chief on the ground that he could hardly command all the other armies while he himself was in the field. McClellan had accepted this loss of command with rather more serenity than Chase had anticipated. Halleck was given the Western command and, to please the radicals, Frémont was revived and given something called the Mountain Department.
Between March 17 and April 5, 1862, more than one hundred thousand Federal troops were moved by water down the Potomac River to the so-called Yorktown peninsula, a marshy strip of land between the York and the James rivers, dominated at its eastern tip by Fortress Monroe and at its center by Yorktown, that historic village where the War of Independence had been, finally, won—by the French fleet. Now the rebel troops occupied the remains of the British fortification at Yorktown.
McClellan’s “Urbana plan” had been abandoned when, in a surprise movement, the Confederate Army had abandoned Manassas and Centerville in order to regroup along the Rappahannock River, thus making it impossible for McClellan to effect a successful landing anywhere near Urbana. McClellan had then announced that he would use Fortress Monroe as the center of his operations, first, against Yorktown; then against West Point, some twenty-five miles southeast of Richmond; and, finally, against Richmond itself. In a joint operation with the navy, under the command of Commodore Goldsborough, McClellan would now put a prompt end to the rebellion.
Unfortunately, modern naval science had deranged McClellan’s plan. The Confederate navy had succeeded in raising a forty-gun Union frigate, sunk at the beginning of the war so that it might not fall into their hands. The frigate’s hull was then plated with metal, while a cast-iron ramrod was attached to its bow. On the morning of March 9, this frigate—renamed the Merrimack—had sunk two Union ships in the Hampton Roads just off Norfolk, and had driven the Minnesota aground. Chase had never seen Stanton so entirely demoralized.
“They will sink every Union ship in every Union harbor!” Stanton had then sent word to the northern ports to be on their guard against this terrible new weapon. “There is no doubt,” he had said in a dramatic voice, “that this one ship will be able to destroy the city of Washington.” But, as Welles kept reminding them, a Union ship of equally radical design was on its way to the rescue. This curious flat metal ship had a revolving turret, containing cannon. On the evening of March 9, the Monitor engaged the Merrimack in an inconclusive battle, which did not end until the Merrimack withdrew to the safety of Norfolk harbor. Nevertheless, the fact that the Merrimack still existed made any sort of naval operation more than usually hazardous.
McClellan had now laid siege to Yorktown. During April, he erected elaborate batteries with which to destroy the enemy’s fortifications. The expense of McClellan’s engineers alone had given Chase many a sleepless night. Although McClellan claimed to have only ninety-three thousand men, Chase believed that he had a hundred fifty-six thousand men. But no matter how many men he had, he was always certain that he was outnumbered by the enemy. Hence, the elaborate preparation for a siege which had ended two days ago, when the Confederate Army simply abandoned Yorktown; and it was then that Lincoln decided that the time had come for him to pay McClellan a visit. Thus far, the Army of the Potomac had taken only two Confederate strongholds—Manassas and Yorktown; and each had been given up by the enemy. Worse, at Manassas, the famed, feared fortification turned out to be logs of wood painted black to resemble cannons.
Side by side, Chase and General Viele clung to the ship’s railing, and watched the waves precede them; the wind was leeward now. “We are making excellent speed,” said Chase, quietly expert—his cutter.
“A summer storm.” Viele pointed to the dark receding clouds in the distance. “Weather’s fickle.”
“It will,” said Chase, cocking an old salt’s eye at the pale sun, “still be light when we make landfall.”
In absolute dark, the Miami anchored off Fortress Monroe. Fortunately, at sunset, the waters of the Chesapeake had grown as still as glass and the cutter was, thought the contented Chase, exactly like a painted ship upon a painted ocean.
The President was now in good spirits. Although Stanton’s eyes were bothering him, even he was amiable, as they were helped from the cutter into a tug that would take them to Commodore Goldsborough’s flagship, the Minnesota.
In absolute stillness, the tug came alongside the towering, floating wooden fortress, ablaze with lights—a tempting target, Chase could not help but think, for the Merrimack.
The ship’s side looked to Chase like a mountainside, smelling of tar and burnt gunpowder. A ladder of incredible fragility descended from the ship’s deck high above them. A sailor stepped forward and held the bottom of the ladder. He looked, expectantly, at Lincoln. “You first, sir?”
Stanton’s authoritative voice sounded in the night. “Naturally, military etiquette requires that the President go first. Then the Secretary of the Treasury. Then the Secretary of War. And the others, each according to rank.”
“On the theory,” said Lincoln, steadying the two parallel guiding ropes which flapped against the ship’s side, “that should the ladder not hol
d, each of the remaining officers would move up one rank.” On that sardonic note, the President put one large foot on a rung of the wooden ladder; and like, thought Chase, disrespectfully, the Original Ape, Lincoln rapidly ascended the ladder. Then Chase put a foot carefully on the nearest rung and, slowly, pulled himself up. The warm May night enveloped him like a shroud. He knew that if he looked down at the dark sea, he would fall and drown. So he looked ever upward at the shining stars, not to mention the kerosene lamp a sailor on deck held, presumably to light his way while, simultaneously, blinding him. But the perilous journey finally ended; and Chase was able to take some pleasure in the gasps and groans of the Secretary of War, who lurched up the ladder calling out, piteously, for aid.
Commodore Goldsborough was a stern self-confident officer of what Stanton liked to call “the old school, which means you can teach him nothing now that school’s out.” The Commodore showed the great officers of state into the low-ceilinged wardroom, where lamps made bright the dark wood interior. He was particularly attentive to Chase, who had once considered marrying the Commodore’s wife. In Chase’s youth in Washington, he had got to know the Attorney-General William Wirt, a famous lawyer who had begun his career as one of the prosecutors of Aaron Burr for treason. Wirt’s five daughters had enthralled Chase. But duty—and necessity—had made marriage impossible then. Nevertheless, he still enjoyed the company of Mrs. Goldsborough; and the Commodore.
Lincoln shook hands with a number of naval officers, who seemed genuinely pleased to gaze upon Old Abe. The President’s continuing popularity with the military forces was a mystery that Chase had yet to solve. It was not as if they ever had any dealings with him as opposed to McClellan, who worked mightily—and successfully—to make the army love him; or Stanton, who worked equally hard—and successfully—to make himself feared. But, somehow, the vague, gentle President had captured the imagination of the troops in a way that the face on the one-dollar bill, Salmon Portland Chase, had not. But then Lincoln was not an abolitionist politician. Like Lincoln, the troops were fighting for the Union, while Chase was fighting for the abolition of slavery and the glory of Christ. Curiously enough, Stanton had, lately, come round to Chase’s view. At least, he had started to go to church; and read the Bible; and question Chase at length on the fine points of Scripture. But then Stanton’s baby son was dying, most horribly; nevertheless, a soul might yet be saved.