Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  Plainly, Lincoln was taken aback by the minister’s directness. But he rose to the challenge. “Why else have I asked you here except, as I have said, that I need your help? I am quite aware that many of you have no desire to go. But if intelligent educated men such as yourselves don’t go, then how will the former slaves manage to organize themselves? How will they support themselves?”

  E. M. Thomas took the President’s rhetorical question for a real one. “Well, Mr. President, for three centuries they have done a fine job of supporting themselves and their white masters, so I think we can assume that if they are not obliged to sustain a white population in luxury, they will be able to look after themselves nicely.”

  Lincoln’s jaw set in a fashion that was rare with him; and the presage to the sort of storm that was all the more terrible because it was so seldom unleashed on those who had provoked it. “I do not mean to put this harshly,” he said with his usual mildness, “but I think there is some selfishness here. You ought to do something to help those less fortunate than you. It is exceedingly important that we have men at the beginning capable of thinking as white men and not those who have been systematically oppressed.” Hay noted that one of the beige faces smiled at the phrase “thinking as white men”; because he was more white than colored?

  “I do not,” said Lincoln, “ask for much. Could I have a hundred tolerably intelligent men with their wives and children, and able to ‘cut their own fodder,’ so to speak? Can I have fifty? If I could find twenty-five able-bodied men, with a mixture of women and children—good things in the family relation, I think—I could make a successful commencement. I want you to let me know whether this can be done or not. This is the practical part of my wish to see you.”

  E. M. Thomas was courtly. “We appreciate this opportunity to meet what our slave-brothers call Uncle Linkum …”

  Lincoln laughed. “I am told that at the South, every other colored boy baby born since 1861 is called Abe.”

  “You’ve been told the truth,” said Thomas. “And it is not only in the South that our sons are being called Abraham. You have been chosen to do the work of the Lord in some way that is strange to me, when I look at you like this—a man so worn down by Fate.”

  Hay looked at Lincoln, who had become suddenly very still; absorbed in the writing on the marble wall? Then Lincoln got to his feet, as did the others. He was genial. “Take your full time about this,” he said, as he shook Thomas’s hand. “There is no hurry at all, I’m sorry to say. But we must be prepared.”

  When the last of the colored men had left the room, Lincoln said to Hay, as a convenient surrogate for himself, “Why would any colored man want to live in this country, where there is so much hatred of him?”

  “Perhaps they think that that will change, once slavery’s gone.”

  Lincoln shook his head. “There are passions too deep for even a millennium to efface.”

  But Chase disagreed and, most courteously, on Monday, at a meeting in the White House, he registered his objection to the colonization scheme: “Except, perhaps, as a means of our obtaining a foothold in Central America.” Lincoln had, as courteously, noted their difference of opinion. But the President’s mind was now made up; and he had called together all the great officers of state to tell them that he would now release the Emancipation Proclamation. Of those present, only Blair made any demur. He thought that the effect would be bad in the border-states and in the army. He reminded everyone, yet again, that there would be a congressional election in two months’ time.

  The President was now on his feet, towering over the seated Cabinet ministers and assorted political chieftains. “You know, when the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania was no longer in danger of invasion, that I would issue a proclamation of Emancipation. Naturally, I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have liked best.”

  Chase and Stanton exchanged a look. Only that morning, Stanton had told Chase how McClellan’s inability to move in time had allowed Lee to retire to Virginia, virtually victorious in what had been, the Confederates now declared, no more than a punitive raid on the enemy’s territory.

  Lincoln seemed to divine how opposed the room was to a proclamation, which he was not, he had said, about to alter. “I know that many others might, in this matter, as in others, do better than I can.” Lincoln looked at Chase; and smiled. Chase dropped his eyes, modestly. “And if I were satisfied that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any Constitutional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him.” Chase glanced at Seward, who sat across from him, in full angular and aquiline profile. What a crafty little man! Chase thought. In effect, he was the president; but how he exerted his influence over Lincoln was a mystery yet to be pierced.

  Lincoln suddenly made a startling admission. “I am quite aware that I have not so much the confidence of the people as I had sometime since. On the other hand, I do not know that, all things considered, any other person has more.” Again the gray eyes rested, almost quizzically, on Chase, who felt the blood rise in his neck. “In any event, there is no way in which I can have any other man put where I am. I am here. I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.”

  “With that, the President read us the proclamation.” Chase was at the window of his office, watching not without a simple pleasure the autumnal rains wet the passers-by as well as, more ominously, the ambulance-carriages of the Sanitary Commission, which had formed a cortege along Pennsylvania Avenue, bearing to hospital the wounded from Antietam. The losses were greater than suspected. The Union was now bemoaning the loss of blood as well as of money.

  Henry D. Cooke sat on the sofa beneath the painting of Hamilton. Chase always found Henry D.’s presence comforting. They had been good friends even before Cooke became editor of the Ohio State Journal, where he had supported Lincoln rather more strenuously than the state’s governor, Chase, had bargained for. But all that was now behind them. Henry D. was the head of the Washington branch of Jay Cooke and Company, a highly successful bank, with many distinguished depositors, among them the Secretary of the Treasury himself. Although Jay Cooke had made Chase a number of personal loans, Chase had paid them off most scrupulously, excepting the matter of the coupé, which Chase had accepted, finally, as a gift for Kate. Jay Cooke was a shrewd investor; and Chase allowed him a free hand with his finances. The previous year Cooke had lent Chase thirteen thousand dollars, which had now grown, magically, to fifteen thousand dollars: nearly twice his annual salary. Without Jay Cooke, Chase could not survive financially, nor could the Union. It was Jay Cooke who had taken over the selling of war bonds, not to the bankers, who were out to bleed the Treasury, but to ordinary citizens. Jay Cooke’s ability to sell issue after issue was a source of wonder to Chase, who understood all too well the fragility of the paper money that they had so blithely invented. But Jay Cooke’s mastery of publicity had made enticing the bonds; and thus the war was financed. Meanwhile, Henry D. remained in the capital as a link between the financial genius and the Treasury head, who now spoke, seriously, of resignation. “I don’t see how I can remain any longer in this Administration.” Chase turned from the rain to the gaslit interior of his office. “The President is losing what popularity he had. Seward encourages him to keep McClellan and all the other incompetent generals simply because they are fellow-moderates, and agreeable to the border-states. Imagine fighting a war with the enemy’s generals commanding your army! Well, that is exactly what Lincoln is doing.”

  Henry D. was soothing. “McClellan can’t last much longer. Brother Jay is selling your war bonds in astonishing quantities; and we should do well in the November elections.”

  “No.” Chase had already worked out the Republican losses. “We shall lose more than
forty seats in the House, and what can I do? I am already being held accountable for other people’s blunders and errors of policy. I think I should resign, now.”

  Henry D. shook his head vigorously. “Where would this Administration be without you?”

  “Look at where it is with me?” Chase sat at his desk. “Yes, I have been able to finance the war, thus far. But how can we keep on selling bonds without victories? Pretending that Antietam was a victory did not fool the marketplace. No, I must go.”

  “Where?”

  “Back to the Senate. If I resign now, I can be returned at the next election.”

  “I would not do it, Mr. Chase.” Henry D. was firm. “You are the second most powerful man in the country …”

  “After Governor Seward.” Chase could not restrain his bitterness. “But I am a true abolitionist, a … a radical, as we are called. Well, I am not ashamed to be what I am. But I am ashamed to belong to an Administration that is indifferent to everything that I hold dear. Has there ever been a document more cynical than the President’s proclamation? Or a policy more misguided than that of shipping the freed slaves as far away as possible?”

  Chase had been shifting papers on his desk. Suddenly, he uncovered his new treasure and his mood lightened. There on a sheet of notepaper were the British royal coat-of-arms and the legend “Windsor Castle” at the top of a letter addressed to President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. In Queen Victoria’s own handwriting, she advised the Lincolns of the marriage in July of her daughter the Princess Alice to the nephew of the Grand Duke of Hesse. Chase stared, lovingly, at the positive signature: “Victoria R.”

  “Mr. Lincoln gave me this.” Chase held up the letter. “I must say, as a man, he is the soul of kindness and originality, for all his weakness and want of policy. It is very rare to find a holograph letter by the Queen. I was much moved when he said that I could have it. I shall hang it next to Gladstone’s, which should please neither of them.”

  Henry D., again, objected to the notion of Chase leaving the Cabinet. “Certainly, it will be a blow to my brother Jay, if you go.”

  Chase duly noted the significance of his banker’s objection. “Yet I would still be able, after two years in the Senate, to secure the Republican nomination for president.”

  “That’s possible, Mr. Chase. But if I were you I’d stay where you are, out in front of the pack with your face on the one-dollar bill.” On that particular note, they parted.

  Chase did not seriously intend to resign, tempting as the prospect was. He was aware that his present position was preeminent; on the other hand, he ran the risk of being so identified with Lincoln and Seward that when he did win the nomination he would be defeated at the general election by the Democratic candidate. He called for his carriage.

  In an undecisive and somewhat querulous mood, Chase sent his coachman into Mrs. Douglas’s house to see if she was at home. At the door, a maid shook her head. The coachman returned to the carriage. “Mrs. Douglas is not home. The maid wants to know who wants her.” Chase took out a one-dollar bill, and tore it in half. The part with his picture on it he gave to the coachman. “Give the maid my card.”

  As the carriage rattled across F Street, ripped up to accommodate new railway tracks, Chase wondered whether or not remarriage was a good idea. As long as Kate was with him, it was pointless. They were—the two of them— a happy couple. But, presumably, she would marry Sprague; and move out. Then what would become of him? Adéle Douglas, widow of the Little Giant, was the handsomest of Washington’s ladies; and highly congenial. She would make a superb First Lady; in fact, had the Democratic Party not split in two in 1860, she would now be that lady and Stephen Douglas would still be alive. It was Chase’s view that men who get what they want in the world seldom die, prematurely, of pneumonia in Chicago.

  At Sixth and E, Chase was greeted by Kate, only recently home from Philadelphia, and William Sprague, just arrived from Providence. “Mr. Chase, did you talk to Mr. Hoyt?” That was the greeting the Secretary of the Treasury received from his putative son-in-law.

  “It’s good to see you again, Governor.” Chase was serene as he shook the young man’s hand. “I trust Katie is doing the honors?”

  “Oh, I am bearing up against the governor’s onslaught. I now know more about the fluctuations in the price of cotton than I had ever dreamed possible.”

  “Oh, it’s bad. Mr. Hoyt said he was going to see you today.” Sprague stared, accusingly, through his pince-nez.

  “Whoever Mr. Hoyt is, he did not, I fear, see me. Or if he saw me, he did not talk to me. We have been busy all day freeing the rebel slaves.” Chase sat in his rocking chair. Slowly, he rocked back and forth until his mood began to harmonize with the chair’s regular pleasant motion. He tried to recall who Hoyt was, the name was familiar; the connotation unpleasant.

  “I guess he couldn’t get in to see you.” Sprague frowned. “It’s like this. Harris Hoyt is from Texas. But he’s a good Union man. He’s got a letter from Johnny Hay, recommending him to everybody. He’s all right, let me tell you.”

  But Mr. Hoyt was not all right. Chase suddenly remembered a most disagreeable meeting with a tall Southerner, who claimed to be recommended by the President. The man had wanted a permit to sell Texas cotton to the New England mills. Since this was expressly forbidden by a law that was now being enforced with some rigor by the Union’s naval blockade of the rebel states, Chase had said that there was nothing he could do. The man had then become excited; had said that he would report what Chase had said to his partners, of whom one was Governor Sprague. Chase had ordered Mr. Hoyt out of his office with the stern admonishment: “I wish you to understand that these gentlemen don’t control me.”

  Chase stopped rocking. “Yes, Governor, I do recall Mr. Hoyt. I thought his tone to me was somewhat … offensive.”

  “Oh, he’s Southern. You know what they’re like. But he’s a loyal Union man. He says the cotton’s there at Galveston, piled up on the docks. Bale after bale of it. We need that cotton, Mr. Chase. Fact, if we don’t get it, the mills will shut down all over Rhode Island—all over New England, and all of the out-of-work workers will go and vote Democratic.”

  Chase seldom thought of Sprague as any sort of a logician but he was obliged to agree with this brutal political analysis. For some time, the Cabinet had been divided on the issue. He himself had thought that where it was advantageous to the Union, trade permits should be given to responsible parties. The President inclined to the same view. But Gideon Welles had taken an unrelenting line. There must be no trade at all with the enemy, particularly now that the much-expanded navy was beginning seriously to isolate the rebel states. “Yes,” Welles had said, “it will hurt us in New England but it will kill them in the South. To make any exceptions now will simply prolong the war.” Stanton had sided with Welles. Seward had given the subject no thought. Chase let the majority prevail, but at the price of being tormented by the boy-governor, who kept on cannonading him with dire statistics until the appearance of General Garfield in the parlor was like the rising of the sun after a night of terrible gloom.

  The two young men had not met before. Kate told each about the other. Sprague was distracted. Garfield was his usual radiant self. “I have been, again, to see General Hooker at the insane asylum.”

  “He crazy, too?” asked Sprague, brightening at the thought. “He commanded me at Williamsburg.”

  Garfield laughed. “He appears sane. He was wounded in the foot at Antietam, and they have put a number of officers in the asylum, to recuperate. He is positive that if he could have stayed another three hours on the field at Antietam, our victory would have been complete.”

  “He’s a very confident and forceful man,” said Kate. “I quite like him. Father and I went to see him yesterday.” She turned to Sprague. “He said that he was with McClellan when the order came to withdraw from the Peninsula, and that he told McClellan to disobey the order and let him take Richmond. McClellan agreed but then, just a
s General Hooker was finally ready to attack the city, McClellan ordered him to leave the Peninsula. Hooker was furious because he knew that he could have occupied Richmond just the way that Father took Norfolk.”

  “Last week,” said Chase, the martial mood again upon him, “I asked Mr. Welles to let me volunteer to take the fleet up the James River. He thought there was merit in the idea.”

  “I know there is,” said Garfield. “You have the presence and, Heaven knows, the intelligence to command. After all, what are the rest of us? I’m a college president, a classics professor …”

  “And a politician,” said Kate, with every appearance of fondness.

  “Well, I’m a businessman, about to go bust.” Sprague was on his feet. He excused himself. “Must see these men at Willard’s.”

  “You’re welcome, as always,” said Chase, benignly, “to stay here.”

  “Yes,” said Sprague; and departed.

  “An abrupt young man.” Chase smiled at Garfield. “But he means well.”

  “Do you think so, Father?” Kate frowned. “He does go on and on about those trading permits.”

  “Who wouldn’t,” said Garfield, “in his place? With all those empty mills.”

  “About Eastern Florida,” began Chase, as Kate presided over fresh tea. “The President is now willing to create a department of Florida with Mr. Thayer as its governor, and you as the commanding general—major-general.”

  “This is your doing!” Garfield was delighted. “How do I thank you?”

  “Do your duty. That is all.” Chase was quietly Roman.

  Kate was practical. “You could then bring Florida back into the Union, and come here as its senator.” Kate gave Garfield tea. “The way they are about to do with those westernmost Virginia counties. Father, what is that new state to be called?”

  “When last we discussed the matter, it was decided to name the new state West Virginia.”

  “How dull!” Kate handed her father his heavily sweetened tea. “Those Norths and Souths were bad enough. Now we are getting Easts and Wests. Like the streets here: A and B and C and D. And First and Second and Third …”