by Gore Vidal
As the conversation became desultory, Chase struck one of his themes. “In the matter of the currency …”
Lincoln gave a long sigh; and all the others save Stanton smiled.
The President’s inability to cope with even the idea of the national finance was a sign, if nothing else, of his incompetence, thought Chase, who did understand the precarious nature of fiat money in general and of the so-called greenbacks in particular. “I know,” said Lincoln, “that in the matter of the currency, we have, always, too much of it, which means too little of it. This is highly metaphysical, as my old law partner, Billy Herndon, would say.”
Hay had a sudden image of Herndon at Sal Austin’s; and he wondered if the old man had married the young girl that he had been courting; and if he had, he wondered if Herndon had given up whiskey, as promised. He hoped so, for the Tycoon’s sake.
“I did not mean to advert to the metaphysical,” said Chase, with what he hoped was a polite smile. “I did not want to bring up again to the Cabinet my personal desire to have printed on our bank notes the same phrase that I devised for our coinage. I mean, of course, ‘In God we Trust.’ ”
“Surely,” said Bates, a constant antagonist in these matters, “the Constitutional separation of church and state makes such a phrase highly irregular if not illegal.”
“Well,” said Lincoln, getting to his feet, “if you are going to put a Biblical tag on the greenback, I would suggest that of Peter and John: ‘Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee.’ ” In the ensuing laughter, the President withdrew to his office and Chase realized that, once again, he had not managed to get a straight answer from the President on an issue of signal importance to every God-fearing Unionist.
Seward put his arm through Chase’s, a gesture that Chase deeply disliked but endured, as he did so much else, for his country. “The President is not the free-thinker you may suspect he is.”
“I suspect nothing.” Chase was aware of the smell of stale cigar smoke from the small figure at his side; also, a hint of port upon the breath.
“Well, you have your emancipation,” said Seward comfortably, as the two men made their way down the crowded hallway. Every step or so, a petitioner or well-wisher stopped one or the other or both. Seward’s responses were merrily elliptical. Chase’s responses were gravely vague.
“It is not my emancipation. There are still the border-states. I would have freed all the slaves everywhere.”
“Then I pity your poor Secretary of the Treasury, because he’d never sell another Treasury bond anywhere on earth.”
Chase gave Seward what he hoped was a cold eye; certainly, it was an eye that was nearly blind in its central vision. On the other hand, the peripheral vision saw everything with fine clarity.
Saw Kate, radiant, in the front parlor, with the young Ohian general who had just moved into the house for the summer. He sprang to his feet as Chase entered the room. He was tall, with blue eyes and a quantity of curling golden hair as well as an equally golden beard. When Kate had suggested that he had gilded at least the beard, he had cut off a lock, suitable, he said, for analysis or a locket or both. Kate had declined the trust on the ground that he must be as true as gold, if not steel, to his young wife, Lucretia, back in Hiram, Ohio. If only, Chase had thought more than once, William Sprague had half the charm and learning of James A. Garfield or, put another way, if only General Garfield had a tenth of Sprague’s fortune, he would indeed, at the age of thirty and unmarried, be a suitable son-in-law. But nothing is ever as it should be. Garfield was married; and poor.
Kate presided over lemonade; asked her father what had happened at Cabinet; listened attentively to his report, which did not include the secret emancipation proclamation.
“I’m receiving today,” said Kate, finally, as Chase drank deeply of the lemonade. “I said I’d be home to what’s left of the town, now that Congress has gone.”
“Well, there’s the military left,” said Chase.
“Worse luck,” said Garfield. “Everything’s beginning, at last, to happen and I’m here in the city—waiting.”
“Well, it’s nice for us, if not the war,” said Kate.
“You won’t wait long,” said Chase. But he stopped speaking while the manservant dressed in a linen coat with gold braid and gold buttons—Kate’s latest innovation—put out cakes on a tea-stand. When the man was out of earshot, Chase murmured, “I think I’ve got you the Florida command. But it’s a secret.”
“That’s what I most want!” The youthful face was animated—Apollo, the ladies called General Garfield. “The war will be decided when the western troops join the eastern troops below Richmond.”
“But, first, we must wait for General Halleck to arrive. He’ll make the final decision. Stanton likes him, and the President thinks that he will like him.”
“Oh, he’s first-rate, Old Brains. A born general-in-chief, if not a born field commander. Everything that we’ve won in the West was actually won by Grant …”
“… and Pope,” said Chase.
“Your latest enthusiasm,” said Kate.
“Pope, too,” said Garfield, politely. “But I was with Grant at Shiloh, on the second day, the bloody day. I saw the way he was pounded and pounded …”
“… the way he killed and killed,” said Kate, shuddering.
“Yes,” said Garfield, “that is what we do in a war.”
Kate’s guests began to arrive; and Chase withdrew to his study, missing John Hay, who arrived just as the sun began, gloriously, to set.
Hay had seen Kate several times during the summer. They had gone three times to the theater, twice in the company of others. But the last time, the two of them had attended an operetta, followed by supper at Wormley’s. Hay found Kate endlessly attractive in her person. He found less attractive the shrewd political mind that never ceased to plot, so reminiscent of the Tycoon if Herndon were to be believed; and certainly reminiscent of her father, who was constantly alert to his own advancement. Yet Hay liked the way that Kate would often ask him a direct question of the sort that no lady would but a politician might.
Hay now sat beside her, aware that the saffron light of the setting sun had turned each to gold. In the front parlor, the bebuttoned servant was lighting candles. “We must go riding Sunday,” said Hay; he could feel the heat of her forearm on his left hand which now clutched, modestly, his right elbow.
“Oh, Atalanta’s being shoed then, poor beast!” Kate looked at him and her ordinarily golden-hazel eyes were now like Spanish doubloons in the spectacular last light of day. “But during the week, if I haven’t gone North …” As she raised her arm to indicate that Garfield should join them, the smooth skin touched Hay’s fingers for an instant and he felt an electrical shock to his system.
Garfield, all gold to begin with, looked somewhat brazen in the light. Hay found him amiable enough; but then Hay was also somewhat jealous. Of course, Garfield was older than he—thirty, at least; and married. But Garfield, who had been a state legislator, was now a distinguished general; and the President’s second secretary felt very small in that glittering presence. Worse, Garfield possessed a most good-humored if highly generalized charm. “I know your uncle,” he said to Hay’s surprise. “I saw him last in Columbus, where we all used to live.” He turned to Kate, who smiled at him as if, thought Hay, she were in love, always a sign, he now knew, that she was not. Kate Chase loved only her father; and, perhaps, herself.
“Some of us lived there more happily than others,” she said. Kate turned to Hay. “If Atalanta’s shoed in time, we could go riding in the afternoon.”
“I’m always at your disposal,” said Hay.
“The one man who is not.” Garfield was amiable. “You keep late hours at the White House. I’ve seen your lights on at midnight—and after.”
“The confusion never stops,” said Hay, affecting a weariness that he only occasionally felt.
“How is Mrs. Lincoln?” asked Kate, with a wo
rried frown that Hay had come to know meant that she was up to mischief.
“She’s at the Soldiers’ Home now, she and the boy.”
“Still in deep mourning, they say.” Garfield seemed genuinely sad.
“She speaks to the child.” Kate’s frown did not alter. “I know. I’ve met Mrs. Laury, the medium. Apparently, the boy is happy on the other side.”
Garfield responded in Greek. The voice was musical; and the accent precise. But then he had been a professor of Greek and Latin literature before he went into politics.
“What is that?” asked Kate, not as “finished by school” as Hay had supposed.
“It is Achilles in the underworld,” said Hay. “He is telling Odysseus he would rather be a serf among the living than king of all the dead.”
“What paragons I know!” Kate was enchanted; and, thus, enchanting. But the golden evening light had gone. The candles were now lit. Through the windows fireflies flashed in the backyard. William Sanford presented himself to Kate, who smiled, and said, “We were speaking Greek, Captain Sanford.”
“Well,” said the rich young man, “that’s Greek to me.”
“Oh, three paragons!” Kate exclaimed; then leapt to her feet. “It is General Pope!” The hero of the hour was indeed in her parlor; but not to see her. Plainly a busy and preoccupied man, he greeted the guests en masse and disappeared into Chase’s study. As the door closed, Garfield said, “There’s the key to the lock. He is our best general—in the West, at least,” he added with a politician’s care.
“Better than Grant?” asked Hay, genuinely curious. He could not make up his mind which set of generals was worse—the West Pointers who had spent their careers making money in the railroad business or the politicians on horseback, looking for renown. Although Grant was a West Pointer, he had gone into the saddlery business, where he had attractively failed.
“He’s a better all-round general than Grant. But Grant is best in the field. I know you disapprove, Miss Kate, of how he never lets up but that’s the way it’s done. The two sides lost more men at Shiloh than were ever before lost in a single day of modem warfare. That was because Grant would not retreat, even though the rebels had the advantage.”
In Chase’s study, Pope was saying the opposite. “Grant is hopeless. When not drunk, he is in a sort of stupor. At Shiloh, he was surprised by the enemy. He was unprepared. He barely survived. He is no general. But then McClellan’s worse.”
Chase nodded. “I have come to the conclusion, General—and this is just between the two of us—that McClellan has no intention of harming the South in any way. If possible, he would like them back in the Union by ’sixty-four, so that he could then get their votes as the Democratic candidate.”
Pope combed his thick black beard with thick red fingers. “I would not be surprised if you are right. Certainly, he has acted curiously. Imagine being within six miles of Richmond, and not taking the city. I don’t think he wants to fight at all, and your reason is the best I’ve heard—cowardice to one side. But I mean to fight. I’ve told the troops not to worry about lines of escape and all the rest of it. We shall see only their backs, I promise you, I said.” Pope strode up and down the study, and Chase felt confidence at last—or at least for the first time since McDowell. He thanked Heaven yet again that the general who would defeat the South was a dedicated abolitionist; and partisan to him.
Pope wanted to know exactly where Lincoln stood on the matter of abolition. “I shall be inheriting thousands of black souls as I lead the Army of Virginia into Virginia. What am I to do with them?”
For an instant, Chase was tempted to tell him what he had sworn not to tell—about the Emancipation Proclamation. But that weak instant passed. “I would,” said Chase, voice very low, “in the wake of victories—and I expect you to take Richmond with or without McClellan’s aid—I would free the slaves on my own initiative and include them, if possible, in your army, even arm them if you choose. That is what I would do, of course. I concede that. It is not what Mr. Seward would do.”
“Which means the President?”
“Which means the President.” Chase nodded. The seed had now been planted. He prayed that it would take proper root and flourish. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation would then be a legislative afterthought to Pope’s bold freeing of the slaves.
“I understand you, Mr. Chase.”
“I think we understand each other, and what Heaven commands us to do. In my small way, I know what it is like to conquer an enemy city—as I did at Norfolk—and to see the black slaves all around me, beseeching me to strike their chains. But I had not the authority that day. You will. Your victories in the field will be your orders.”
“I shall not disappoint you, Mr. Chase.” Pope took Chase’s hand in both of his. They were allies, committed to Heaven’s work.
During their solemn pledge, William Sanford proposed to Kate in the front parlor. “I plan to leave the army the first of the year. We could go to France. There is a house there I’ve had my eye on since before the war. At St. Cloud, near Paris. We could have a wonderful life. I’d study music. You would be at court, if you wanted that.”
Kate’s eyes glowed in the candlelight. “You are good to ask me, Mr. Sanford. I am honored. I am touched. If there was no war, and if my father were not so deeply involved in public affairs, I cannot think of a happier life …”
“It is Governor Sprague, isn’t it?” Sanford scowled; the rosy lips pouted.
“Oh, it’s no one, I promise you, but my father and me,” said Kate with, for once, perfect candor. Then General Pope swept through the room; and out into the night, and his destiny.
Hay was now at Kate’s side. He had a fair notion of Sanford’s conversation. The younger set in Washington was much aware of Sanford’s passion for Kate. Some thought she should marry him; and never again worry about money for herself or her father. Others thought that she should settle for Sprague and his money, and remain with her father. Hay thought that she would make him an admirable consort, even though there was no money at all between them, and he was not certain that he had the knack of making it. “How do you like your new commander, Captain Sanford?” Hay asked Sanford the question but looked at Kate, who was staring, idly, at Garfield.
“General McDowell likes him well enough,” said Sanford, who was still on McDowell’s staff. “But General Frémont won’t serve under an officer he outranks. So Frémont has quit.”
“That’s a bit of luck,” said Hay, aware of his tactlessness; after all, the President had done everything in his power to keep content the absolutely incompetent but highly popular Frémont, who had been the first Republican candidate for president; thus, outranking, in a sense, the second candidate, Lincoln.
“That’s what General McDowell thinks.” Sanford continued to stare at Kate, who looked more than usually lovely and untouchable—but not untouching, for Hay could still feel on the back of his hand the smooth skin of her arm.
“What is the plan?” asked Kate. “Or is that secret?”
“We know very little,” said Sanford, glancing at Hay. “The Army of Virginia will probably join up with the Army of the Potomac and together they’ll occupy Richmond.”
“I’m sure,” said Kate, “that that is not what will happen. By design or plain incompetence something else is bound to take place, and the enemy already knows everything.”
SEVEN
DAVID HEROLD, enemy of the Union and occasional spy—far too occasional for his taste—made his way through the crowded Center Market. The first cool wind of autumn was in the air; and the first hogs had been slaughtered. The pig-ladies were all of them busy, each at her stall beneath the vast roof of the market which was neither enclosed nor open air. The entire high structure was a fretwork of beams set in brick half-walls. The market was the center not only for the women of Washington, but many of the ladies, too. Everyone came to look at the produce from the surrounding farms as well as every sort of fish—preserved, fresh and
alive in tanks. There were barrels of oysters from the Chesapeake, but none from the Rappahannock, now lost forever to the Union capital, thought David, well pleased that the latest Confederate victories had deprived the Yanks of the world’s best oysters.
Chickens dead and alive overflowed Mr. Henderson’s stall, where several Henderson women, bright-eyed and beak-nosed, wrung the necks of living chickens; then plucked and eviscerated the corpses with extraordinary speed and skill, all the while smiling to themselves like cannibals sated. Ladies in crinolines and huge hats stood alongside black women in bandannas. The Center Market made sisters of them all. Where a thousand men and women sold quantities of food, no degree was observed other than that of food-seller to customer. David’s mother had known some of the countryfolk all her life. One old woman from Fairfax had sold fruit not only to David’s mother but to his grandmother and great-grandmother as well. As a result, there were always barrels of apples going bad in the cellar of the Herold house.
“I reckon you’re looking for a stewing chicken, for your mother.” Mr. Henderson began each meeting in the same way; and with the same words. Then he would motion for David to join him in the back of the stall, where he would produce a number of plucked chickens and he would caress them as he and David talked, their voices low—not that any voice lower than a shout could be heard on a bright Monday market morning in September.
“We’ve taken Harper’s Ferry back,” said Mr. Henderson, bright eyes on the crowd of women who had gathered around his wife in order to pinch and poke the superior-to-all-others Henderson fowls.
“They say General Lee’s headed for Philadelphia.” David repeated the latest rumors. “And only McClellan can stop him, which means there is nothing to stop him.”
“He’s gone from the town?”
David nodded. “Week ago today. I took some medicine over to his house, and almost broke my neck on these telegraph lines he’s got running all along the floors and up the stairs. He was fixing to go, I could tell from what he was saying to these aides who kept coming in and out, and he was blaming Old Abe and the Pope for the fix he’s in.”