by Gore Vidal
On the fourteenth of December, Lincoln wrote out a pass for Emilie Todd Helm and her daughter, Katherine, to return to Lexington. “I’ve also written out the oath of allegiance,” he said, with a smile, “and a pardon.”
“I’ve done nothing that I need to be pardoned for, Brother Lincoln.”
The family was seated at the breakfast table; at least, Lincoln and Mary and Emilie were seated. Tad and Katherine were staring out the window at Tad’s goats.
“Oh, sign it anyway, Emilie,” said Mary. “It’s just a piece of paper.”
“I can’t. I’m still loyal to Ben; and to our country.”
Mary shook her head, wonderingly. There was, again, a sense of total unreality. “Will we ever again,” she asked, “wake up from this nightmare?”
Lincoln tore up the document; and said to Emilie, “When I heard that Ben had been killed, I felt like David in the Bible when he was told of the death of Absalom. ‘Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!’ ”
“Now you will leave me again,” said Mary to Emilie. “Is life to be borne?”
There was no answer to that in the room. Then Tad said, “No,” in a loud voice to his cousin; and shouted to his father, “She says Jeff Davis is president and I say you’re president. You both can’t be president, can you?” Tad’s turn of mind was often legalistic.
“No,” said Lincoln, smiling, “we can’t. And that’s what this big trouble is all about. Anyway, Tad, you know who your president is and Katherine knows who her Uncle Lincoln is; and that’s quite enough.”
It was more than enough for Mary, who fled the room. She had suddenly seen the nimbus of fire about her husband’s head. She was going mad again; and this time she might not return.
THREE
ELIHU B. WASHBURNE failed to be elected Speaker of the House of Representatives despite Lincoln’s secret assistance. The anti-Lincoln Schuyler Colfax, a smiling man of imperfect honesty, won the post and Washburne did his best to appear philosophical as well as statesmanlike. Once Washburne had lost, he himself put Colfax’s name in final nomination; thus, the vote was unanimous. There now was a good deal of work to be done, and a number of new members to help with it, among them an eloquent newspaper editor from Maine called James G. Blaine and Major-General James A. Garfield, the hero or a hero, of the battle of Chickamauga.
But the focus of interest in the Congress was the arrival, January 12, of Major-General Frank Blair, Junior. As a result of Stanton’s best efforts at the War Department and Thaddeus Stevens’s in the House, Frank Blair had ceased to be a general; but he was still a member of Congress.
Lean and tall, with a thick red moustache and beard, Blair made a dramatic entrance into the chamber, and the galleries applauded while Garfield averted his head—Blair was still in uniform, while Garfield wore mere statesman’s black. The business of the House stopped for ten minutes. Blair complimented the Speaker, who welcomed Blair, as did a number of border-state congressmen. The rest opened up their newspapers or sat at their oaken desks and caught up on their correspondence. Thaddeus Stevens limped from the chamber in order to avoid the sight of Blair, even temporarily triumphant.
Washburne led Blair to one of the sofas that lined the semicircular chamber. As the business of the House continued about them, Washburne began to do the President’s work. Lincoln was aware of the Blair capacity for divisiveness. As Speaker, Blair would have been of great use to Lincoln; otherwise, he was better off in the army. Of all the political generals, Blair was the only one to have inspired a modicum of admiration in either Grant or Sherman, the two professional soldiers who now stood above all others in the country.
“You’ve nothing to worry about from Grant,” said Blair, ostentatiously stretching out his long booted legs on the new carpet. Washburne saw that Blair had not removed his spurs on entering the Capitol; they now made tiny holes in the carpet.
“Worry?” Washburne pretended not to know what Blair meant. Actually, as Grant’s congressman, not a day passed that Washburne was not asked by press and politicians about the availability of General Grant for president. Certainly if Grant were the Republican candidate, he would beat McClellan. But, as Washburne liked to point out to the radicals, Grant was a Democrat who had supported Douglas. If Grant were to oppose McClellan for the Democratic nomination, most people thought he would win. Certainly, Lincoln thought so. Lincoln also thought that Grant could get, if he chose, the Republican nomination. In a contest of any kind with Grant, Lincoln felt that he would probably lose. Currently, the press was puffing Grant, who had made no public comment.
“Grant wants only to fight. The last thing he wants is to be a politician.” Blair was definite. But then he was always definite.
“I find that hard to believe,” said Washburne. Congress was already beginning to fill up with generals; and the war was far from over. Yet Washburne often felt like an impostor on the subject of Grant. He was acknowledged, as Grant’s congressman, to be an authority on the subject, but in actual fact he barely knew the man. Luckily, at the beginning of the war, he had proposed Grant for brigadier-general simply because Grant was a West Pointer who happened to be living in Washburne’s hometown of Galena. Grant had been, and continued to be, grateful to his congressman. Recently, at Lincoln’s request, Washburne had sent for a friend from Galena who was known to be close to Grant. The friend had reported to Lincoln that Grant would support him for a second term. The President was relieved. But the New York Herald continued its campaign for “the people’s candidate, Ulysses S. Grant.”
“What does the President want me to do?”
“That is up to you.” Washburne was tactful.
“I think,” said Blair, “I should go back to the army, if Stanton will let me. I’m told that there is a new law, which means that I’ve lost my commission for good by coming here today.”
“That’s true. But the President’s willing to write you out a new commission whenever you want it, and you can go back to your corps.”
“Will he do this?” Blair gave Washburne a hard look.
Washburne nodded. “I speak for him.”
Blair was relieved. “Then I’ll do some work here; and go back. I assume Grant will be assigned to the East.”
“I don’t know. I do know the President wants to put him in command of all our armies.”
“What about Old Brains?”
“He will serve under Grant.”
Blair whistled. “That’ll be trouble. What about Meade?”
“I think the President will want Grant to take over the Army of the Potomac, where all is quiet, as usual.”
“Grant wants to stay in the West. You know his plan. To strike at Atlanta and Savannah. Then move north to Richmond.”
“Sherman can do that while Grant takes on Lee in Virginia. But I am not in the confidence of the War Department.” Washburne turned to Blair, who was now staring at the back of Stevens’s wig: the owner had returned to his seat. “One thing we’re all curious about. Why didn’t Grant telegraph Stanton the news about Vicksburg? Why did we have to wait three days before we heard about it, and then it was from an admiral?”
Blair grinned. “Because the wires from Grant’s headquarters to Washington had been cut.”
“Well, it’s no great thing to repair the wires, particularly with the rebels all dispersed.”
“Oh, Mr. Washburne, don’t you know about us in the West? It isn’t the rebels who cut the wires to Washington, it’s General Grant.”
Washburne was stunned. “Grant cuts his own wires?”
“To Washington, of course. Since we never know what damn fool orders Stanton or Halleck or Old Abe, bless him, may be sending us, whenever there’s a real crisis brewing, like the fall of Vicksburg, Grant just breaks off all communication until it’s over.”
“Don’t tell the President,” said Washburne.
“Oh, I’ll tell him, or Grant will. It’s Stanton who must never know. He’ll have us shot.”
Then Washburne got down to the principal business between them. “Your speech at St. Louis last fall caused a certain sensation here, as you know.”
“I took the nigger question head-on, I’ll say that.” Blair looked grimly satisfied with himself, an almost habitual expression, thought Washburne, who made it a point to deal with the Blairs, singly or collectively, as if with a leaking cask of dynamite on a hot summer day. “The problem isn’t slavery, which is ending, and would have ended without a war. The problem is the Negro, who must leave our shores.”
“Of course,” said Washburne, who had no great interest in Blair’s racial views. “Naturally, you caused a stir; and your brother, Monty, did the same when he spoke at Rockville during the election.” Montgomery Blair had elaborated on his brother’s remarks. He, too, had spoken of colonization as the only answer to the racial problem. He had denounced Sumner and all the abolitionists who opposed the removal of the colored population, painting a horrendous picture of a future nation of hybrid mulattoes if the North did not make common cause with the loyal white Southerners, while punishing only turbulent seditious politicians and slave-holders. “Treason was not committed by any state,” said Monty Blair, echoing Lincoln in private, “but by the individuals who made use of the states and attempted to dismember the government.”
“I know that we speak for the President,” said Blair, “and hardly anyone but us dares to go up against Sumner and Greeley and the rest.”
“But you do. You do.” Washburne began to caulk, as it were, the barrel of dynamite. “I think what interested many of us here were your allegations against certain Treasury agents in Missouri …”
“Allegations? I have the proof, Mr. Washburne. They are up to their eyes in corruption. And so is Chase himself, selling permits to trade with the enemy.”
“It is interesting,” said Washburne, quickly, the dynamite contained and now ready to be used in a controlled way, “what you have to say about Mr. Chase. Perhaps you could elaborate.” Thus the fuse was lit.
CHASE LOOKED ABOUT his half-furnished office and was half-pleased. The pearl-gray carpet of his first days as Secretary had long since been drowned in tobacco juice; and removed. Now a newly tessellated marble floor waited for an Axminster carpet, currently being woven especially. Although the teakwood furniture, re-covered, was still in place, new gilded furniture was being fashioned in Philadelphia by a cabinetmaker highly vouched for by Jay Cooke. Most satisfying of all, in Chase’s view, was the recently completed marble bathroom adjacent to his office. Of its useful sort, it was unique in Washington; and much envied by the First Lady, who often alluded to it—euphemistically of course—as the subject was not a polite one.
The young Ohio journalist and war correspondent Whitelaw Reid sat on the sofa beneath Hamilton’s portrait, a copy of Chase’s elegant little book Going Home to Vote in his hand. For some time, Reid had been helping Chase with his speeches. When Chase had taken his triumphal swing through the west in October on behalf, officially, of the Republican Party, Reid had gone along in order to write of the statesman in the loftiest of terms and of the man in the homeliest and most appealing ones.
Reid had described the loving way that the people had hailed Chase as “Old Greenbacks,” a name that seemed to him to be far more resonant and appealing than “Old Abe.” To compete with the cunningly wrought image of “Old Abe the Rail-Splitter,” one John T. Trowbridge had now assembled yet another book about Chase: the dangerous phrase “campaign-biography” was never used by the conspirators. Since on more than one occasion, at the age of twelve, Chase had ferried passengers across the Cuyahoga River, it was Trowbridge’s inspired notion to combat the image of the rail-splitter with that of a humble, hard-working child. The result was now on Chase’s desk. Entitled The Ferry Boy and the Financier, the book made Chase somewhat uneasy. Although Chase never lied, he preferred to tell only as much of the truth as was useful. Would the occupation of several days in his twelfth year truly compete with Lincoln’s largely mythical yet entirely adult rail-splitting? Much had been made, and would be made again, of the fact that of all the presidents, Lincoln alone had worked for a living with his hands after he was grown. But Trowbridge’s work was in print; and could not now be altered.
Senator Pomeroy of Kansas sat in the chair beside the secretary’s desk. Pomeroy was at the head of the thus far secret committee to secure for Chase the Republican nomination. Others said to be on the committee were Senators Sumner, Wade, Sherman and Sprague as well as Congressman Garfield, while of the nation’s great editors, Horace Greeley supported Chase. On the other hand, the abolitionist William Cullen Bryant did not.
“Mr. Greeley thinks that with Hiram Barney at the customs, you’ll have the entire New York delegation. He thinks it’s easy.” Pomeroy was a smooth creature not at all to Chase’s liking. Pomeroy was thought to have obtained his own election to the Senate by corrupt means. But he was a splendid political manager, according to Sumner, who would not know, and to Wade, who would. Chase was not about to tell either Pomeroy or Greeley that Hiram Barney, his own appointee, was for Lincoln.
“Nothing is easy, Senator,” said Chase, returning to his chair.
“Mr. Lincoln thinks the same. He is worried about you. He is worried about Grant. He told a friend of mine that if ‘the disaffected elements in the party,’ his exact words, ‘should be combined in one strong candidate,’ he would be done for. Well, Grant ain’t a candidate; and you are …”
“No, no. I am not, in any ordinary sense, a candidate or …”
“That’s right. That’s right.” Pomeroy spoke through him. “Anyway, we’re fixing to bring together all the disaffecteds, which is just about everybody. Now I think we should follow up Senator’s Sherman’s little pamphlet ‘The Next Presidential Election’ …”
“He was much criticized for sending that out under his frank,” said Chase, staring at his own face as it looked up at him, winsomely, from the pages of The Ferry Boy and the Financier.
“He was; and he don’t give a damn, if you’ll forgive me. But he was writing against Lincoln, and not in favor of you. Now our committee has it in mind to do something a bit more dignified, putting forth your views and so on; and then letting it sort of leak into the press.”
“I should not want to see it in advance, of course,” said Chase. “I am a member of the Administration still. But I do think—and I will say so openly any time and anywhere—that the practise of the last thirty years should be adhered to. No president should serve two terms. In fact, I would pledge myself to be a single-term president.”
“That will be much admired, sir,” said Whitelaw Reid.
At the door, a clerk announced Mr. Henry D. Cooke. As Henry D. entered the office, he looked about to see who was present. When he saw only loyalists, he said, “Well, Frank Blair has done it.”
“Done what?” asked Pomeroy.
“He’s just asked for an investigation of the Treasury Department. He wants a committee of five to investigate what he says is a long list of crimes or allegations of crimes committed by Treasury officials and by …” Henry D. sat down uninvited on the sofa beside Reid.
“By me?” Chase was pleased at his own coolness under what was, after all, as real fire as ever came a soldier’s way.
“By you, sir,” said Henry D.
“What am I supposed to have done?” Chase tried to recall a relevant passage from St. Paul’s correspondence with the Ephesians; but failed.
“I’m sure that Frank is pretty vague,” said Pomeroy, who had lived through so much of this sort of thing, but, unlike Chase, as the guilty party.
“Yes, he was vague as to specifics. But he is saying that he has reason to believe that you have given—or sold—permits, secretly and illegally, to various businessmen in order to trade with the enemy, and that if this is true and if the enemy has been aided, then you must be impeached and tried for treason.”
Chase felt, for an instant, as if he might faint—with fury. Then he t
ried to console himself with the marvelous irony of it all. He may, at times, have gone to the outer edge of propriety but no further. On trade permits he had been impeccable, as his own son-in-law knew most bitterly. “I believe,” said Chase, focussing his anger, “that it is now necessary for us to destroy Mr. Frank Blair, Junior, and break once and for all that … infernal family.” Chase rang for his secretary. When the man appeared, Chase said, “Bring me the specified Frank Blair file, the Vicksburg file and the specified Montgomery Blair file.” The secretary disappeared. Chase turned to Pomeroy. “We shall see to it that General Blair is charged with defrauding the government at Vicksburg. I shall also explore, one by one, his shady associates in Missouri. As for Montgomery Blair …”
Pomeroy raised his hand. “Now then let’s hold our horses for a moment. I agree, Mr. Chase, that you should pile up all the ammunition you can. But we hold it for now. We keep our powder dry for now.” Pomeroy turned to Henry D. “Blair has asked for a committee of investigation, you say?”
“Yes, Senator. There’s been no vote yet. But …”
Pomeroy smiled. “If there’s been no vote yet, that is the end of that.” He turned to Chase. “Privately, the Speaker opposes Mr. Lincoln’s reelection. Privately, he supports you. Publicly, he dislikes the Blairs, as who does not? Between the Speaker and General Garfield, there will never be an investigation. Consider the resolution as dead. I know the votes we got. The House will split seventy-something to sixty-something in your favor.”
In a sense, Chase was relieved. But, in another sense, “How will it look if my friends block an investigation of my department?”
“Why like nothing at all, Mr. Chase. Just yesterday’s wind across the lonesome prairie.”
“It would be good to be exonerated—” Chase began.
But Henry D. finished for him, “—but a bad idea to have the business of the trade permits gone into. You have done nothing illegal, Mr. Chase. But we have seen to it that, by and large, permits go only to men who are loyal supporters of your candidacy. That’s what Blair hopes to reveal—at the least.”