by Gore Vidal
“I do not think, sir, that the entire rebel army can save Richmond.” Commodore Goldsborough had spread out a number of maps of the peninsula on the wardroom table and the visitors peered at the various points of interest. “General McClellan is now here—at Yorktown. His advance guard has moved to Williamsburg and so, from there, to Richmond, using the York river—here—as his line of communications.”
Lincoln put his finger on the Chickahominy River, a wriggling line that split the peninsula in two parts. South of the river was Richmond. North of the river was Yorktown. “I assume that once General McClellan is established at Williamsburg, he will keep the army south of the river, which strikes me as a good thing because if he puts the army north of the Chickahominy, he will, sooner or later, have to cross the river, a hard thing to do with the entire rebel army between him and Richmond.”
“I’m not in his confidence to that extent,” said the Commodore. “I do know that he has, this morning, landed four divisions here at West Point—which is north of the river. I believe that he will hold that position until General McDowell’s corps descend from Manassas to Fredericksburg to rendezvous with him at West Point. He needs reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements?” Lincoln spoke with a certain wonder. “I cannot believe that General McClellan has too few men for the work at hand.”
Stanton then turned to the Commodore, and fired questions at him. Why had the Monitor not sunk the Merrimack during their first engagement? Why had the Monitor not pursued the Merrimack at least to the beginning of Norfolk harbor? Why had the newly arrived Vanderbilt—a former yacht of the eponymous Commodore now heavily iron-clad—not been brought into the general engagement? With growing temper, the Commodore explained to Stanton the various logistical and tactical difficulties involved, while Stanton, whose own temper never ceased to grow choleric when confronted, harangued the Commodore on the importance of destroying the Merrimack by any and every means. The ship represented a mortal danger to the Union.
As the two men pushed the map back and forth between them, Lincoln walked over to the nearest porthole and looked out at the rectangular Fortress Monroe on its promontory. Chase joined him. Neither had seen this legendary fortress before, this solid anchor to the Union’s effort in the South. “It should be fair tomorrow,” said Lincoln, indicating the clear black sky in which shone a white, small moon.
“I wish I understood better the naval dilemma,” said Chase, as the voices of the Commodore and Mars, as Lincoln had taken to calling Stanton, sounded in the background. Chase noted that Stanton’s voice was now uncommonly dulcet; always a sign that he was working himself into a real fury. “But I do not.”
“Nor do I,” said Lincoln. “But I shall want to see these ships in action tomorrow. We’ll try to call out the Merrimack, and see if the Monitor and the Vanderbilt can’t sink her or drive her to ground. This thing is so new to us—ships made of iron-plate, with turrets that move around, like tin cans on a plate.”
“The London Times is now predicting the end of wooden navies.”
“In that case, I suggest we invest in a lumberyard. The Times usually gets it wrong.”
There was a stir at the door to the wardroom; the commanding general of Fortress Monroe, John E. Wool, made his entrance. He was a grim, lean old man who had served with Winfield Scott in the War of 1812. Slowly but precisely, he saluted the President; then he introduced his staff.
General Wool also had a number of telegrams from McClellan, addressed to Stanton, who thanked him and withdrew to a corner of the wardroom to read them, while the old man took the President and Chase to one side. There were a number of polite but pertinent remarks about the weather. “The rains have been seasonable but unusually intense, and we have been obliged to build corduroy roads to and from Yorktown.” Chase nodded solemnly; he had only recently learned that a corduroy road was one in which planks of wood or branches of trees were set down in the mud of the roadway in order to provide sufficient traction for wheeled vehicles to pass. It was a laborious and costly process. Naturally, McClellan took pleasure in the corduroy road, as he did in any engineering task. He should be back in the railroad business, thought Chase sourly, connecting the east coast to the west, the perennial ambition of a thousand entrepreneurs; and one to which Lincoln often adverted. But as long as the President gave no Federal money to any of the entrepreneurs, Chase did not grudge him his daydream of a railroad line from New York to California.
“What condition are the men in?” asked Lincoln.
The old man frowned. “They arrived in April, as fine an army as I have ever seen. But then the weeks spent before Yorktown took their toll.”
“In what sense?” asked Chase.
“The fever, sir. Half the army is ill.” Wool turned to Lincoln. “We feed them quinine the way you feed horses hay. The air of these marshes is poisonous in the extreme.”
“So the army is not what it was. And the fever beats us.” Chase recalled that after the death of Lincoln’s son, the President had taken to his bed—for the first time—with Potomac fever; and so had Stanton. Chase alone of the Cabinet seemed exempt from Washington’s fevers. But then he had served a term in the Senate, and was almost as inured to the climate as a native.
“It is not that bad, sir. But the advance does not go as swiftly as it ought.”
“Tell me, General, how many rebels were there at Yorktown, all this month?”
Although Wool looked somewhat embarrassed, Chase did not feel in the least sorry for him. He had suspected all along the answer the old general now gave. “At the most there were never more than ten thousand men. They waited until all our earthworks and roads and artillery batteries were in place, and then they moved out.”
“So we outnumbered them ten to one,” said Lincoln; and Chase knew then that McClellan’s career was finished unless, in a swift and totally uncharacteristic blaze of activity, the Young Napoleon were to seize Richmond and end the war.
“Tactically, less than ten to one, sir. But certainly four to one.”
“We could have broken through?”
Wool nodded; but said nothing. Stanton joined them, telegrams crumpled in one hand. “General McClellan is upset that McDowell has not reinforced him.”
“That sounds familiar,” said Lincoln. “Is he well established at West Point?”
“As of this morning, yes. There are no later dispatches. Tell me, General Wool, is there any information from Richmond?”
“Yes, sir. There is panic in the city. The Confederate … I mean the rebel congress has adjourned. All the government files—and the gold from the Treasury—are loaded on railroad cars. They expect to lose their capital.”
“We are so close,” said Lincoln, softly. “So very close.”
The next day the President did his best to hasten the end. He stood with General Wool and Commodore Goldsborough on the wall of Fortress Monroe, facing due south across the James River to Sewell’s Point, a pale yellow-green promontory in the misty light. To the right of the point was the entrance to Norfolk harbor, where the Merrimack lay in wait. The Union ships were now in a line close to the point. The Monitor—looking very odd to Chase’s eye—waited nearby, turret aimed at the harbor mouth.
“It would be a good thing,” said the President, removing his hat, to Chase’s relief, as he made a perfect tall target when he stood, unmistakably his giant self, against the sky, “if we were able to sink the Merrimack today.”
“Yes, sir,” said the Commodore, plainly uneasy. “But we are not certain if that is possible …”
Stanton was curt. “It is two iron-clad ships to one. Not to mention our wooden ships …”
At that, there was a terrible roar, as the Union ships opened fired on Sewell’s Point. During the intervals between bombardments, Lincoln tried to extract from General Wool the strength of the garrison at Norfolk. General Wool conceded that no one knew for certain but there had been a rumor that when the rebels abandoned Yorktown, they had also abandoned N
orfolk.
“But you are not certain?”
“No, sir.”
“Then,” said the President, “I suggest that we do our best to find out, and should there be no great garrison, occupy the town.”
“Naturally, sir, our intelligence will …”
There was a cry from the soldiers farther along the high wall. The Merrimack had come into view, low and sleek and ominous.
“The monster!” said Stanton, as if there was indeed something supernatural about the curiously iron-plated, prowed ship. As the Union’s wooden ships began to move out of range, the Monitor swung in an awkward arc toward the Merrimack while its turret turned in order to sight the monster, which moved, first, directly toward the Monitor but then, abruptly, swung to starboard and disappeared round Sewell’s Point.
“That was not the battle that I had in mind.” Lincoln spoke with some disappointment. He turned to Wool. “I’d like a good map of the Norfolk area.”
“I’m afraid, sir, there is no such thing.”
“We can get you a pilot’s map, sir,” said Goldsborough. “They are exact—reasonably exact—for this area.”
Lincoln turned to Wool. “As I see the exercise, we must move as quickly as we can with all available men to Norfolk. Speed is necessary because we must occupy the Navy Yard before the Merrimack can stop us or escape or whatever.”
Chase thought the aged general looked more than usually aged as the full morning light came glittering across the water—the famous Hampton Roads.
“I can produce six regiments, sir. They are here and at Camp Hamilton and near the town of Hampton.”
Lincoln then said that he would like to review the troops; and a dozen orderlies hurried off to send the word to the surrounding camps that the President was coming to inspect them.
Chase and Stanton and Viele rode behind Lincoln through the ruins of the town of Hampton, put to the torch by the retreating rebels. As Lincoln would approach a regiment, lined up for inspection, Chase and Stanton would remain to one side while the President, accompanied by General Wool and the regiment’s commander, would ride past the rows of men in dark, dingy blue uniforms. At the first regiment—in a muddy field outside Hampton—the President appeared awkward and tentative and most, thought Chase, sternly, unmartial. But then, as if Lincoln himself had come to the same conclusion, the President removed his top hat; and when the men got a fair look at the familiar, lean, bearded face of the President, a spontaneous cry went up for “Old Abe” and Chase was both moved and alarmed. If Lincoln could carry the military vote in the next election, he would be electable and if he was electable, he and not Chase would be nominated. Grimly, Chase watched a Lincoln he had not seen before—a smiling and almost youthful war god, cantering past lines of uniformed cheering men.
But Chase’s moment of glory came that night. Aboard the Miami, Lincoln and Stanton had studied with Chase a pilot’s map of the Norfolk area. General Wool had suggested that a landing be made close to Sewell’s Point, but Chase had found on the map what looked to be a well-protected place close to the city. “Surely,” said Chase, “this is more practical and the men will be less exposed to fire, if there is any.”
General Wool had finally got word that although Norfolk was being evacuated, no one knew how many troops remained on the other side of the Elizabeth River to guard the Navy Yard. Chase had then gravely measured the distance on the map—held at a distance of one inch from his left eye—from the landing place that he preferred to Norfolk. “Less than nine miles,” he had said. “And there appears to be a good road.”
General Wool continued to look uncommonly aged—and superior. “These pilot maps are never to be relied on when it comes to inland roads.”
“In that case,” Chase had declared, the fierce blood of a hundred generations of Christian warriors now coursing through his large, rejuvenated frame, “let us go ashore now, and ascertain the condition of the road, and the principal features of the landing place.”
Before General Wool could object, Lincoln had said, “I see no reason why we shouldn’t at least send a ship’s boat ashore, to scout Mr. Chase’s landing place.”
The Miami was now some five hundred yards off the coast. The moon blazed in the sky and had Chase been able to see anything at all with his new and more than usually unsatisfactory spectacles from Franklin’s, he would have been able, quite alone, to determine the state of the shoreline. As it was, a boat was sent to the shore. Then, while Lincoln and Stanton stood beside Chase on the deck—my deck, he thought—the ship’s boat suddenly turned back.
“I think they’ve sighted an enemy picket,” said Lincoln, the only one of the three statesmen who could see objects in the distance. At best, Stanton was nearly as blind as Chase. At worst, as now, he was suffering from opthalmia. He had already confided to Chase that he was probably going blind. Chase had quoted Scripture; and Stanton had been, Chase was certain, comforted.
The ship’s boat was now beneath the deck. An officer called up, “We have found an enemy patrol, sir.”
“Come aboard,” said Wool.
“Not so fast,” said Lincoln, peering across the moon-spangled water to the dark tangle of low trees back of the driftwood-strewn beach. “Someone looks to be waving a white flag. And there are colored people coming down to the water. Unless, of course, I am hallucinating.”
General Viele now trained a telescope on the shore. “The President is right. We have a welcoming committee. They seem to be colored and as far as I can tell they are all women.
“Then let us go ashore,” said Lincoln. “We shall be well-met by moonlight.”
Stanton’s wheezings began; then ceased. “This could be a trap,” he warned. But Lincoln, backed by Chase, overwhelmed Stanton and Wool; and so the three statesmen got into the tug and were rowed ashore. “After all,” as Lincoln pointed out, “no one is about to open fire on three sedate old lawyers out for a midnight excursion on the waters.”
“More to the point,” said Chase, “no one will know it is us.”
So it proved. The women paid no attention to the three lawyers but they were most attentive to Generals Wool and Viele, and they assured them that they were in favor of the Union, not to mention the abolition of slavery—their own condition. Yet when General Wool proposed to the women that they be taken across to Fortress Monroe and freedom, they said that they preferred to stay home, and be freed in due course. They did confirm the rumor that the day after Yorktown had fallen, the rebel garrison had begun to abandon the city. But there was still a detachment of troops at the Custom’s House, while no one knew whether or not there were troops at the Navy Yard, where the Merrimack was tied up.
Lincoln and Chase strode up and down the beach, while Stanton sat on a piece of driftwood, applying cologne from a pocket flask to his whiskers. “This looks,” said Lincoln, finally, “as good a place as any on the map, Mr. Chase.”
“That is what I thought when I located it on the chart.” Chase wanted the discovery to be remembered always as his.
“Yes, you’ve chosen well. We’ll send the troops ashore first thing tomorrow under”—Lincoln lowered his voice—“the ancient Wool. I am amazed he is still in the service.”
“I should like to go ashore with him.” Chase cast what he hoped looked like an eagle’s eye at where he was fairly certain the road to Norfolk ought to be.
“By all means, General Chase. I’d go with you, too, only Mr. Stanton is already beginning to threaten me with house arrest.”
“Well, sir, you are a conspicuous target,” said Chase, so cocking his one adequate eye that he could make out with some clarity the tall, thin, top-hatted figure beside him, black in the white moonlight. The President was unmistakable—except to the slave-women, who were kindly but ignorant.
The next morning when Chase again set foot on the shore, General Viele and an orderly were waiting for him. “You will want a horse, Mr. Chase? Or a carriage?”
“A horse, General.” Chase had never
felt so alert; yet he had not slept all night in his excitement. Was it too late, he wondered, to resign from the Treasury and accept the commission of major-general, in command of the Ohio troops? With a victory or two in the field, and his face on the one-dollar bill, he could take the nomination from Lincoln, assuming that that kindly, modest man would even want to stand in his way. Chase felt a genuine liking for Lincoln on this cool May morning, as he rode toward Norfolk, General Viele at his side and a squad of dragoons behind them. Along the road, the colored people were lined. There were cheers for the Union army; and an occasional homemade Union flag was displayed. There was also sullen silence from the occasional white person glimpsed, and Chase was suddenly aware of what a very large, not to mention tempting, target he himself presented in his frock coat, surmounted by the second most-famous face in the United States, which included, in his case, the rebel states, where his greenbacks were often used as tender. If shot by a sniper, he could think of no end more worthy of a Christian warrior.
“General Wool has gone on ahead with four regiments,” said Viele.
“I thought there were to be six.” Chase began to wonder whether or not their informants had been accurate. Could it be that there was still a large rebel garrison in Norfolk? Could this be a trap?
“I don’t know why the other two regiments were not sent over.” Viele did not think much of Wool. Neither did Chase, when, on the outskirts of Norfolk, they found the bridge, which had looked so integral on the map, newly destroyed. Worse, up ahead, the sound of artillery. “The rebels are still here,” Chase observed, as coolly as possible.