Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  Sullivan nodded. Absently, he cleaned the rough wood of the table with a rag. “One of the wild boys took a shot at Old Abe last August on Seventh Street road, and when the Colonel heard what he had done he was mad as could be.” The nameless Colonel was someone whom David had yet to see, that he knew of. He was the link between Richmond and the Confederate agents in Washington. Sometimes David thought that Sullivan himself might be the Colonel; certainly, he quoted him often; and seemed to know him.

  “Why was he mad?” asked John. “It would be a righteous thing to shoot the man who thinks he’s going to free our niggers.”

  “It may be righteous, but the Colonel said that with President Lincoln in charge of this war, it is as good as won for us.”

  John laughed. “Well, he may have a point there. But if the time comes to kill him we’ll let Davie here do it.”

  “Me? How?”

  “Put poison in his medicine. That’s how. Couldn’t be simpler.”

  “But Mr. Thompson would know it was me.” Actually, David had often thought how easy it would be to poison the President—or anyone else who frequented Thompson’s. As it was, between Mr. Thompson and himself, a number of untimely deaths had taken place due to carelessness in the prescription department. Fortunately, as Mr. Thompson liked to say of the medical profession, “Theirs is the only other profession that is allowed to bury its mistakes.”

  “Anyway, for now,” said Sullivan, “Mr. Lincoln is the South’s chief weapon. We must treasure him.”

  The South’s treasure was awake most of that night. He lay on the lounge in his office and received a series of callers. Hay was present when, toward midnight, Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania appeared. Curtin had come straight from Fredericksburg. Lincoln rose to greet him. Hay had never seen the Ancient so ancient and fragile and distraught.

  As the excited Curtin paced the room, Lincoln half stood and half lay against the mantelpiece. Hay noted that in this position Lincoln’s head and the portrait of Andrew Jackson were side by side; and they looked alike now—Old Abe every bit as old as Old Hickory.

  “I saw our men tom to pieces before my eyes. Yet they kept on advancing. I’ve never seen such bravery. Or such butchery.”

  “I know. I know.” Lincoln rubbed his eyes from weariness. “What are the casualties, thus far?”

  Curtin removed a sheet of paper from his pocket. “I was given this by General Burnside’s adjutant. These are the estimated losses for each of the grand divisions. General Sumner’s. About five hundred men killed. About five thousand wounded …”

  “Dear God! That is only one division?” Lincoln was now the color of the dead fire at his back.

  “Some eight hundred missing.” Curtin continued, “General Hooker’s division. There are more than three hundred dead. And three thousand wounded. And eight hundred missing.”

  “This is too much, Governor. Far too much. The country cannot endure these losses. I cannot endure them. Oh, this was madness!” Lincoln struck the mantelpiece with his fist. “To attack.” He struck it again. “In winter.” And again. “Across a river. With the entire rebel army entrenched and waiting. It was a trap.” Lincoln turned from the fireplace. “I see it all now. I did not see it then. Burnside insisted. You understand? So Halleck and Stanton and I gave way. You must give way to a general who fights …”

  “Fights, sir, but does not think. The man is incompetent. Worse, he knows that he has not the competence to command a great army. He asked you, he told me himself, not to appoint him.”

  Lincoln was now walking about the room as if in search of some hitherto unseen door through which he might escape. Hay recalled Herndon’s story of the time that Lincoln had been mad. Was there to be a repetition?

  As Lincoln moved frantically along the wall, feeling his way like a blind man, Curtin continued his account of the dead and the wounded and the missing. Hay tried to divert him, with a gesture of “no.” But Curtin ignored him. He too seemed to be on the verge of madness. “And so this defeat cost us, finally, sir, in dead and wounded and missing, roughtly fifteen thousand men. I saw the wounded from one of our Pennsylvania regiments. I saw young boys of fifteen with their stomachs hanging out of them. I saw …”

  “You saw, sir?” Lincoln opened and then shut the door to the Reception Room with a crash. “Think what I see! Think how I must watch as all this blood fills up this room and now is near to drowning me. You have no responsibility, sir, no oath registered in Heaven. Well, I do!” Lincoln’s voice had gone so high that it broke on the word “do.” Hay leapt to his feet. “Mr. President,” he said in what he meant to be a soothing voice; but his own voice broke with emotion. Dumbly, the three men stood in a circle at the room’s center.

  Lincoln glared for a long moment at Curtin, who took a step backward, as if alarmed by what he saw in the President’s eyes. “I am sorry, sir. To distress you like this. I only wanted to answer your questions. I am overwrought, I fear. Because of what I saw. Certainly I would give anything to deliver you of this terrible war.”

  “Me?” Lincoln shook his head like a man who has suddenly awakened from a bad dream. “Oh, Governor, I don’t matter. I am done for anyway. I was chosen to do a certain work, and I must do it, and then go. But I do need help. There’s no doubt of that.” The Ancient’s face lightened; as did his mood. Hay saw that he was about to tell a story; and was deeply relieved. “This reminds me, Governor, of an old farmer out in Illinois, who had two mischievous boys called James and John. Or maybe John and James. Anyway, the farmer bought a mean-tempered prize hog, and penned him up, and told the boys they were to stay clear of the pen. Naturally, James let the hog out of his pen the next day and the hog went for the seat of James’s trousers, and the only way the boy could save himself was by holding onto the hog’s tail. So they went round and round a tree a number of times until the boy’s courage began to fail, and he shouted to his brother, ‘Come here quick and help me let this hog go.’ ” Lincoln chuckled. “Well, Governor, that is exactly my case. I wish someone would help me let this hog go.” On that amiable and characteristic note, Lincoln bade Curtin, “Good-night.”

  After the governor had gone, Lincoln stood staring into the remains of the fire.

  “Shall I have them make a new fire?” asked Hay.

  “No, John. You go to bed now. Let Edward guard the fort. All is well now. That is, all will be well. Because, you see, it is like this. Should we lose the same number of men tomorrow as today, and they the same. And we the same the day after, and they the same. And so on, day after day after day, we shall have won. For we have more lives to give than they do, and we shall keep on giving these lives of ours until—yes, all of them, if need be—are dead.”

  Before Hay went to his room, he crossed into the living quarters, where Lamon sat at the door to the President’s bedroom, armed to the teeth, and sound asleep. “Mr. Lamon,” Hay whispered. Lamon raised first his derringer; then his eyelids. “Tell Mrs. Lincoln to get the President to bed. He’s about at the end of his rope.”

  Lamon nodded. He rapped three times on the bedroom door. From within Madam’s wide-awake voice sounded. “Yes, Mr. Lamon?”

  “We think you should get the President to his bed.”

  “Yes,” said the voice. Hay went into his own room, where Nicolay snored softly.

  Mary opened the door to the President’s office. Lincoln was stretched out on the lounge, reading a book. “Why, Mother, what are you doing up so late?”

  From the sound of her husband’s voice, she could tell that he was indeed at the edge of his strength. “You come to bed, Father. It’s no good staying up all night.”

  “But they keep coming to me from Fredericksburg; and I must listen to them all.”

  “No, Father, you must not listen to them all. You’ve listened to too many, as it is. The battle is over. There is no more news tonight. Come on.”

  Lincoln got to his feet. He put down the book. “It is by Artemus Ward,” he said. “Powerful funny.”
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br />   “I know, Father.” She took his arm; and led him into the dimly lit hallway. Edward was at his desk. “You go home, Edward,” said Mary.

  “Yes,” said Lincoln. “We’re shutting up shop for the night.”

  “Good-night, Mr. President.”

  As Lincoln and Mary passed the guard on duty, he saluted the President and said, “Good-night, sir. Sleep well.”

  “Thank you. Thank you, my boy.”

  But once husband and wife were in their bedroom, Lincoln shook his head and said, “I’m better off awake tonight.”

  “Don’t be foolish! You can hardly keep your eyes open, you are so tired.”

  “True. But I don’t dare sleep.”

  “Are your dreams so bad?”

  “Yes, Mother. They are so bad.”

  But, in the end, Lincoln slept; and it was Mary who stayed awake the night to comfort him, if need be. She knew the horror of dreams.

  CHASE READ the newspaper article, with lips pursed. Then he gave it back to Ben Wade. “I fear that for all his good qualities, the President lacks dignity.”

  “Dignity!” Wade threw the newspaper into the brass spittoon beside his chair. “Imagine on a day as tragic as Fredericksburg to compare his position to that of a boy with a pig by the tail. Well, I’m for helping him let it go. So is the Senate. We’ve just held our Republican caucus.”

  “With what result?” Chase pretended that he did not already know.

  “Well, our faction carried the day. The moderates want both Stanton and Seward to go. But we said the departure of Seward was enough for now. With Seward gone, the Cabinet can be reorganized.”

  “Seward is too much a politician for my taste.” Chase arranged the papers on his desk in a neat line with the top of the blotter. “He has a sort of back stairs influence on the President that strikes me as dangerous. They constantly … joke with each other.”

  “Oh, he’s a card, the governor,” said Wade. “But I don’t mind the jokes so much as I do the way he acts on his own, without consulting the President or the Cabinet, like that letter of instructions he wrote to Adams in London, mocking us abolitionists. Then, he goes and publishes it in that damned fool book of his. When Sumner showed the letter to Lincoln, he said he had never seen it before, and that it didn’t reflect his own policy. Now that is serious.”

  “Seward does as he pleases. But then so do many of the other Cabinet ministers. Our meetings are a mockery. The real business is decided between Lincoln and Seward at the Old Club House, over brandy. The rest of us are seldom consulted. Worst of all, I suppose,” said Chase, coming to the point, “is not so much the fact that Seward is the master of Lincoln. After all, someone must fulfill that function; and Seward is the leader of our party. No, the problem is much more serious. Mr. Wade, Governor Seward does not believe in this war. That is why we sustain one defeat after another. He has always thought that, somehow or other, the Southern states will return. Now that there is the possibility of a war with France over Mexico, he will try to abandon our civil war for an external one.”

  Wade nodded. “That is also my view, Mr. Chase, and that is why we have been meeting in the greatest secrecy. We have now drawn up our terms, which we’ll present to Mr. Lincoln tonight.” Ben Wade looked most pleased with himself. “I am sure that they will come as a surprise to Mr. Seward.”

  But Seward had already sustained his surprise at home. New York’s senator, Preston King, had left the caucus while it was in session; and he had gone straight to his old friend Seward with the news. Seward had acted promptly. “I will not let them embarrass the President,” he said; and wrote on a slip of paper: “Sir, I hereby resign the office of Secretary of State, and beg that my resignation be accepted immediately.” Then Seward shouted to his son in the next room. “Fred!”

  “Yes, sir?” Frederick Seward appeared in the doorway.

  “We’re resigning, the two of us. Write out your resignation, and give it to Senator King.”

  The young man did as he was told; he was every bit as cool as his father. Then King went across to the White House and gave the President the message. King explained what had happened. Lincoln thanked him, politely. But when King had gone, Hay could see that the Tycoon was about to become very Tycoonish indeed. “They want me out,” he said. “I’m half tempted to oblige them.”

  “Half tempted, sir?”

  Lincoln saw Hay as if for the first time that day. “Somewhat less than half. I’ll see the senators at seven tonight. Then call a Cabinet meeting for tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Seward was expecting the President. In fact, he had been sitting at his study window, looking out at the cold muddy expanse of Lafayette Square, and waiting for the tall, slouched figure to cross from the Mansion to the Old Club House accompanied by two soldiers from Company K of the 150th Pennsylvania Regiment, known as “Bucktails,” now permanently assigned to guard the President. Just as the gaslights were being lit along the avenue, the President appeared.

  Seward opened the door himself; and showed Lincoln into the study. The President took off his top hat and placed it on the head of Pericles, a marble bust on a column that ornamented one corner of the room. “Well, our friends have been busy on the Hill.” Lincoln poured himself a glass of water from a crystal decanter, and helped himself to an apple from the sideboard where Seward’s numerous restorative bottles were kept. Then the President sat beside the fire and turned his gaze upon Seward, who noted that Lincoln had aged a decade in the last month; plainly, a number of harsh additional years were now about to be added to that unhappy decade. Midge rested her head on the President’s knee and gazed up at him with deep solicitude.

  “You know,” said Seward, “this may be difficult for anyone to believe, but I cannot wait to get back home to Auburn and private life. This is no joy to me, what we do here.”

  “Well, that’s all very well for you, Governor. But I am like the starling in Sterne’s story: ‘I can’t get out.’ ”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Naturally, I will listen to the senators. I’ve already had the pleasure of an interview with Thaddeus Stevens, who believes that only you stand between us and victory in the war.”

  Seward shook his head, with true wonder. “I am the author of the notorious—not to mention revolutionary—concept that there is ‘a law higher than the Constitution,’ and though our Constitution may allow for slavery, that higher law does not. Now our Jacobins consider me indifferent to the issue and, secretly, pro-rebel.”

  “Mr. Seward, the inability of men to grasp an obvious truth is a constant in political life. I seem to spend most of my time explaining what should be obvious to all. Now what is obvious to me is that you are of no particular interest to the Senate. But I am. They wish to remove me; and they don’t know how. So they strike at you.”

  “Well, I am gone. So when they tell you tonight that you must throw me out, you can say that the governor, with that largeness of spirit and grace of character for which he has been ever known, has withdrawn to his ancestral acres in New York, where his prayers will never cease to rise to Heaven that the Union be reassembled as of old.”

  Lincoln laughed. “Your forensic powers are what they always were.”

  “Yes,” said Seward, grimly, “and I wish that I still had the right to appear in the Senate, like Cicero, and drive these Catalines into the night.”

  “I think there’ll be no need.” Lincoln was about to say more; but did not.

  Seward was now intensely curious. “What will you tell the senators?”

  “I shall listen a good deal. I shall be listening particularly for Mr. Chase’s voice.”

  “You will hear a good deal of it. He and Ben Wade are the chief conspirators.”

  “I know. On the subject of the presidency I sometimes think Mr. Chase is a bit crazed. Well …” Lincoln put his feet on the fire-tender. The great black shoes always made Seward think of a pair of coffins for babies.r />
  “Governor, I think it most unlikely that I shall be reelected. We have had one disaster after another, and I am held—quite rightly—responsible.” Midge turned her back on the President and curled up in front of the fire.

  “But these things change rapidly. A victory or two, and you will be a hero again.” But Seward agreed, privately, with Lincoln’s estimate of the matter. As a political force, the President was burnt out; and nothing could reignite the fire. The collapse of Burnside in the mud of Virginia was the end of the Administration. The fact that the pusillanimous Senate now dared to dictate to the President was a sign that all true authority was gone.

  “It seems pretty plain that McClellan will be the Democratic candidate; and I suspect that if he is, he’ll be the president; and if he is the president, this entire bloody and costly enterprise will have been for nothing because he will make a quick and shameful peace with the South, and slavery will continue a while longer.”

  Seward nodded. “In New York City, at this very moment, the bosses are fixing it for him to be the candidate. If he wins, which I doubt, he’ll do as you predict.”

  “If things are as bad in ’sixty-four as they are now, I shall not even try to be nominated by our party. That means it will go to Mr. Chase …”

  “Heaven forbid!”

  “It has been my experience that Heaven can be highly unreliable,” said Lincoln. “Well, there are worse men than Chase. But since the country will never accept his extreme views on slavery, McClellan will beat him.”

  Seward was drawn to one of the decanters. Political intrigue so stimulated him that he craved the soothing properties of port.

  As Lincoln was staring into the wood fire, Seward watched him closely. Whatever the President’s shortcomings as a war leader, he was a master politician. It takes one, thought Seward, sipping the port, to understand another. But Seward was not prepared for what came next. “Tell me about Horatio Seymour.”

  “Well, he defeated our man pretty soundly in New York. Thurlow Weed likes him, though he is a Democrat. Weed thinks he’ll make a good governor. And, of course, he is a strong Union man. Why?”