by Gore Vidal
“Ah, but the avenues, Miss Kate!” Garfield dried his golden beard with a lace napkin. “Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and Rhode Island …”
“There is a peculiar lack of imagination in this place. At least back home we have Elm and Oak and Pine streets. Father, why is Washington so dull?”
“Dull? I thought that we both found the city uncommonly interesting—even too interesting, at times.” Chase picked up the latest copy of the Revue des deux mondes. He had become interested in spiritualism, which the French had also taken up with their usual intrepid cleverness.
“Oh, our lives are interesting. I only meant why is there no sense of mystery or romance or even much history here? Just the corner of Sixth and E and … and the Patent Office!”
“It’s still a new city,” said Garfield. “It’s still a new country.”
“Surely a century is long enough to have produced something to go with Lafayette Square, and he died practically yesterday. I would like,” said Kate, thoughtfully, “a cathedral, a serious Gothic cathedral …”
“You shall have it!” Garfield was exuberant. Why, Chase wondered, had this admirable young man got himself married at such an early age?
“It will be located on a hill somewhere,” said Kate, “and it will be approached by Chase Avenue.”
“Oh, come now, Kate! I don’t really want to be an avenue.” Chase wanted, actually, to be a city. After all, even the highly corrupt Senator Dayton had had a now-thriving city named for him. Chase, Ohio, sounded right. But was he perhaps too modest? There were bound to be at least a dozen new states in the next few years. If he were to be president, might he not be a state, after all? Particularly if he gave his particular blessing to one of the territories that currently aspired to statehood. But then if there was a state called Chase might there not be one called Lincoln or Seward? Someone had actually suggested that West Virginia be named Lincoln. Although Chase had been quick to make light of the proposal, for an instant he had known fear.
Happily, Kate and Garfield were adding opera houses and palaces and libraries to the city, and naming them after the worthies of the day. It was Kate who was inspired to christen the pink marble (in imitation of Venice’s doge’s palace) Cotton Exchange, Sprague Hall.
Chase wondered what she really thought of the man who was bound to be, more soon than late, her senatorial husband—and source of endless wealth.
But the source of endless wealth had convinced himself that he was soon to be ruined by the blockade. Harris Hoyt did nothing to allay Sprague’s fears as they drank gin together in the long barroom at Willard’s, and watched Zach. Chandler get slowly and quietly drunk by himself at the opposite end of the room.
“Just how firm is Mr. Chase’s no?” asked Hoyt.
“About as firm as can be. Who the hell is General Garfield?” Sprague let, first, the end of one moustache float in the glass of gin; then the other. When each had been thoroughly soaked, he chewed the ends and drank the gin, interestingly strained by facial hair.
“I don’t know one Union general from another. Did you make the point how important it is to get cotton out of the South when it can be done without giving aid and comfort to the enemy while providing relief to the Union?”
“Made the point ten times. I should make a speech on all this.”
“I wouldn’t.” Hoyt was alarmed.
“I don’t mean on our Union-relief dodge. I’m not crazy, Hoyt. No, a speech on the necessity of limited trade, for the Union’s sake.”
“Well, you’re still the governor of Rhode Island. Go back to Providence and make the rafters ring.”
“Can’t.” Sprague shook his head sadly. “He’s been shot.”
“Who’s been shot?”
“Fred Ives. He writes for the Post back home. Well, last week he was shot at Sharpsburg.”
Hoyt was mystified. “So what’s that got to do with you giving a speech?”
“He writes them for me. That’s what that has to do with my making a speech. You don’t think I wrote all that stuff in the magazines about Bull Run, do you? It was Fred. I think the world of Fred. Always have. Always will.” A single alcoholic tear appeared behind the pince-nez. “Listen, I’ve talked to my cousin Byron. He’s pretty much running the business. He thinks it’s too risky.”
Hoyt shrugged. “Of course, it’s risky. But I don’t see what else you can do. Or I can do, for that matter. The deal is simple enough. I bring into Galveston arms and ammunition for the rebels there, and then they will let me install as much cotton-carding machinery as I like. They’ll then help me get the cotton out to you.”
“Through the blockade?”
“Through the blockade.” Hoyt smiled a bright pirate’s smile. “After all, it’s my neck.”
“That don’t matter.” Sprague was to the point. “But it’s my money.”
“Well, that’s an exchange in your favor. All I’m asking for is one hundred thousand dollars …”
“What I spent on that regiment.” Sprague sounded wistful.
“Yes, sir. With that money, I can buy up a lot of Confederate money for next to nothing right here in town. Then my friend Charles L. Prescott here, who’s a shipfitter and an engineer, will buy the necessary ships …”
“Your friend where?”
“Down the bar. See the red-haired fellow? Drinking alone next to Senator Chandler. That’s him.”
“Zach. Chandler’s a drunk.” Sprague ordered more gin; then he dried his moustaches with his sleeve. “All right, Hoyt. You’ll get the money from Byron and me. But you’ve got to start fast.”
Hoyt motioned for Prescott to join them. Prescott had already found a schooner in New York. “It’s a sweet ship, Governor. Called Snow Drift. We could load all … our gear in New York and then go on to Havana, which is Spanish and neutral, and then from there to Galveston.”
“Through the blockade,” said Sprague.
“Through the blockade.” Hoyt smiled, as if happy at the thought of danger.
“There’s not that much in the way of a blockade,” said Prescott. “The Yankees have only got around one hundred ships in all, and there’s over three thousand miles of Confederate coast. I’ve slipped through many a time. Fact, that’s how I’m here right now in enemy country.”
“Enemy country?” Sprague gave the red-haired man an icy stare. Hoyt was quick. “He’s a Texan, too. But he’s a good Union man.”
“Yes.” Sprague stared at Zach Chandler, who was having trouble getting off the barstool. One of the colored waiters hurried over to him, and took his arm. Since the drafting of men for the army had begun, there were no longer many white waiters at Willard’s. “We go up to New York tomorrow,” Sprague commanded. “Byron’s there, waiting. I’ll take you to the bank. I’ll want to see this schooner.” Sprague set his pince-nez firmly on the bridge of his well-shaped nose. “If you get caught, I never heard of you.”
“I hope before then your future father-in-law will have given us a trade permit.”
“You can hope anything you like, Hoyt.” Sprague rose. “We’ll take the cars at noon. You know what it means, your shipping arms to the rebels?”
Hoyt looked innocent. “I know it’s the price that they asked me in exchange for my receiving a charter to establish a cotton mill.”
“Whatever,” said Sprague, even more flatly than usual. “Bringing arms to the enemy in wartime is treason. They shoot you for that, if they catch you.”
“Well, Governor, we are Texans. Technically, we could call ourselves patriots, trying to get arms to our own people. So for us it’s not at all like it is for you, sir, a Union man, a governor and a general and soon-to-be a senator. I mean, sir, if there’s any treason being committed …”
“I don’t know you. That’s the way it’ll be, if you get caught.” Sprague left the barroom. Zach Chandler looked him full in the face, but plainly did not recognize his future colleague, which was just as well.
EIGHT
MARY sat at a r
ound mahogany table. Across from her was the Roman emperor Constantine, in the plump form of Mrs. Laury of Georgetown. Constantine was Mrs. Laury’s personal friend in the world of the dead, and if not otherwise engaged, he was wonderfully cooperative in delivering and transmitting messages between the world of light where he existed and that world of darkness and pain where the living are. “I saw Willie only this morning,” said Constantine, whose deep voice was entirely different from Mrs. Laury’s ordinary fluting tones. “He wants to know about his pony, and has Tad learned to ride it yet?”
“Oh, yes! Tad needs help, of course. But tell him the pony’s fine, and every day Tad rides, with Mr. Watt next to him, to keep him from falling off. Did you ask Willie if he has seen little Eddie?”
Mrs. Laury-Constantine nodded gravely. By the light of the single candle on the table, Mrs. Laury looked very like a Roman emperor ought to look if he happened to be an elderly woman with dyed auburn hair. “At first they did not know each other. How could they? But in the world of light all things are clear at last and, suddenly, the two boys knew each other, and they were so excited and thrilled … Oh!” Mrs. Laury-Constantine’s voice dropped to an even lower register. “There is danger.”
“What danger?” Mary shuddered. “Danger to whom?”
“To the President. There is a dark cloud over him. A deep darkness. Danger.”
As the two women sat in the small parlor of the stone house next to the Soldiers’ Home, Lincoln was riding alone, toward the Soldiers’ Home. In the bright moonlight, he was a perfect target, while Seventh Street was nothing more than a deserted country lane at this hour. As the horse—called Old Abe, too—trotted past a grove of willow trees, the wind suddenly stirred the moonlit branches. Menacing shadows danced. The horse shied. As Lincoln leaned forward to soothe the skittish horse, a shot rang out. Lincoln’s hat was blown from his head. Reflexively, he lay forward atop the horse; and spurred him into a rolling canter. There was no second shot.
Both horse and Lincoln were breathing hard when they arrived at the stone cottage. The sergeant on duty helped the President dismount. “You’ve had a mighty good run, sir,” said the man, somewhat disapprovingly: the horse’s flanks were steaming in the moonlight.
“Yes. You’d better walk Old Abe around a bit, to cool him down.” The President entered the cottage.
“Father!” Mary greeted him at the door to the parlor. “Where’s your hat?”
“I seem to have mislaid it. Is that Mrs. Laury?”
“Yes. Come in. Sit down. Talk to her. Though it’s actually the Emperor Constantine I’ve been talking to. He’s been with Willie, who’s met Eddie at last.”
“Well, that must be nice for the codgers.” Lincoln sat at the table.
“Oh!” Mary frowned. “He says that there’s some sort of danger, involving you. There’s a dark cloud over you. Isn’t that right, Constantine?”
Mrs. Laury-Constantine nodded gravely. “There is a plot to take your life, Mr. President.”
“I’m sure that there are quite a few, Emperor. I read about them every day in the papers. People like such sensations. But then you know how it is—or was, back in your day, too.”
“Father! Don’t joke. The Emperor has some very good advice, too. Don’t you, sir?”
Mrs. Laury-Constantine spoke in a stern voice. “You must replace a general who will not fight. You must replace a member of the Cabinet who would be president. You must beware of a small man with a large nose …”
“Well, Mr. Chase is a large man with a small nose, so that rules him out …” Lincoln began.
But Mary stopped him, irritably. “It’s Seward. Who else? And don’t joke about these things. The Emperor Constantine thinks that Mr. Sumner would be a splendid secretary of state, and so do I.”
“What about Mrs. Laury?”
“Mrs. Laury is in a trance, and she will remember nothing of what’s been said between Constantine and us.”
Ward Lamon was at the door to the parlor, holding the President’s top hat. “Mr. President, I found your hat.”
“Oh, good. Excuse me, Emperor.” Lincoln joined Lamon in the entrance hall. “The hat fell off in the road, when the horse shied.”
“No, sir,” said Lamon, grimly. “It didn’t fall off.” Lamon held up the hat. From left side to right side, three inches above the brim, a bullet had made its way. “That bullet just barely missed you.”
“Take the hat away, Ward,” said Lincoln in a low voice. “Show it to no one. Tell no one.”
“On one condition, sir. That you will never again ride out here, or anywhere else, without guards.”
Lincoln nodded, gloomily. “I see now that I’ll have to.”
“Pinkerton says there are at least three plots against you.”
“If Pinkerton says there are three that means one and a half. He doubles the enemy’s numbers from habit.” Lincoln put his forefinger through the bullet hole. “From the size of the hole, I’d say that’s from one of our new rifles. The problem, Ward, is not my being killed. If that happens that happens and there’s no way to stop it. I am a fatalist in this matter. But there is one recurring plot that I don’t much care for, and that is being captured by the rebels and held for ranson.”
“All the more reason for guards at all times, especially when people know in advance where you’re going to be going.”
Lincoln nodded. “I agree. If I could prevent the government from paying a ransom for me, I would. But I know what sentiment is at such times. They would go and pay no matter what I might want.”
“How much, do you think, the rebels would ask for you?”
Lincoln smiled. “It’s not how much, Ward. It’s how many. They want their men back. The ones that we’re holding prisoner. Sooner or later, they’ll run out of men. Something we never will; and that’s how we’ll win. Well, to exchange one secondhand president for a hundred thousand soldiers, now that would be very tempting to Jeff Davis, or whoever decides such things at Richmond.” Lincoln gave the hat to Lamon. “Funny how Old Abe—the horse, not me—knew that there was a rifle, trained on us. If he hadn’t shied when he did …”
ON QUITE a different horse, the President, as Commander-in-Chief, rode toward Harper’s Ferry, situated in its dramatic gorge and ringed, no less dramatically, by the tents of the Army of the Potomac. Soldiers’ washing hung on lines between the tents. The sound of the blacksmiths never ceased. A man with a banjo sang a plaintive song, addressed to one Juanita.
The October noon was intense and clear; and flocks of birds wheeled in the bright blue air, on their way south, a direction that Lincoln duly noted when he turned to Washburne, who was riding beside him: “Let’s hope the Young Napoleon is inspired by those birds to move in a southerly direction.”
Washburne laughed. “You’re about the only bird big enough to get Little Mac to move.”
Washburne had been delighted when Lincoln had asked him if he would like to pay a call on the army above the Antietam River. Except for Stanton and Mrs. Lincoln, no one knew that the President had left the city. “Spur of the moment,” said Lincoln, vaguely, as they travelled by the cars to Harper’s Ferry, accompanied by a dozen officers, mostly from the Western command. Lincoln wanted their professional impression of what McClellan was doing and not doing. Thus far, the West had provided the Union with its only good news; and Washburne’s constituent, Ulysses S. Grant, was now Lincoln’s favorite general. Washburne had been tact itself in explaining Grant to Lincoln. But then Washburne could not explain to himself the extraordinary military success of a man who had spent a dozen years failing as a farmer. There were times when Washburne wondered if there might not be two Grants. One was the intermittently hard-drinking, somewhat grubby little man whom he had known in Galena; the other was the hero of Fort Donelson and Shiloh.
Lincoln had hoped to take McClellan by surprise but the Little General had been duly warned that the President was approaching; and now the two men, each at the center of a phalanx of aides,
were riding one toward the other over a stubbled cornfield, where bright-colored leaves swirled in the wake of horses’ hooves.
The huge Ward Lamon rode in front of Lincoln while the small detective Pinkerton rode to his right. Washburne remained at the President’s left as the two groups met at the center of the field. McClellan and his officers smartly saluted the President, who raised his new hat a moment; and then replaced it.
Washburne had not seen McClellan in some months. The little man was somewhat plumper than he had been; and the eyes were, not surprisingly, anxious. He took Pinkerton’s place to the President’s right.
“Welcome, Your Excellency, to the Army of the Potomac.” The voice was as firm and as commanding as ever. “You’ll want to see the battlefield, of course, at Sharpsburg.”
“Yes, I’d like that, I think.” Although Lincoln was genial, the two men hardly spoke as they rode. Washburne tried to overhear what they did say; but failed. At one point, McClellan seemed to be describing his famous victory; and the President seemed to be listening.
The sun was setting splendidly over the Maryland Heights, when dinner was served them on tables in front of McClellan’s tent. A separate tent had been provided for Lincoln alone; but Lamon had insisted that he spend the night with the President, derringer at the ready. In the next tent, Washburne was billetted with three colonels from the Western army. Washburne’s questions about Grant were answered directly. Yes, he drank, occasionally. But whenever things got out of hand, Mrs. Grant would be sent for; and all drinking ceased.
They dined by starlight, and Washburne ate all the pheasant that Lincoln chose not to eat. As usual, the President ate frugally—a slice of bread and a piece of burned beef; and that was it. Washburne thought Lincoln too thin and too frail. Yet when Washburne had taken Lincoln’s arm to help him across a muddy creek, the muscles of the President’s arm were like steel cords.