Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  “It is monstrous,” Chase said to Jay Cooke, who was staring through the light rain that fell now between the Treasury and his bank. “There are no specific charges of any kind. Just …” Chase could not finish; his heart was pounding; he had just become fifty-six years of age, and he had the sense that at any moment life could take wing from his aging body.

  “Well, Pomeroy’s circular hasn’t helped us,” said Cooke. “That’s for sure. But we’ll be hanging Mr. Blair in due course, and in the same place.”

  “But the damage that this does me! True or false don’t matter when this speech is spread all around the country. I must resign.”

  “Don’t you think that you should wait to hear what the President has to say?” Chase knew that Jay Cooke did not believe in anticipating trouble. But then Cooke did not understand how politicians communicate with one another.

  “Mr. Cooke,” said Chase, lowering himself into his teakwood throne, to be abdicated more soon now than late, “we have already heard from Mr. Lincoln.”

  “He’s written you?”

  “No, he has not written me. He has sent me his message through Frank Blair.”

  Jay Cooke shook his head with disbelief. “He controls Frank Blair?”

  “Mr. Lincoln, in his strange, shifting, weak way, controls almost everyone. You see why I cannot stay.”

  “Wait for his letter, Mr. Chase.”

  The President had finished the letter in question and was rereading it when Robert, home from Harvard, came into the office. Lincoln handed him the letter and said, “How does this sound to you? It is to Mr. Chase, who thinks he should resign over the Pomeroy circular.”

  “He should. Don’t you agree?”

  “Read.”

  Robert read; then asked, with some wonder, “You’ve never read the circular?”

  “No. There are some things it is often better not to know.”

  “Just curiosity would drive me to look at it.”

  “I think I lack that bump,” said his father.

  Robert finished the letter. “You’re keeping him in the Cabinet?”

  Lincoln nodded. “In a sort of casual way. I think Frank Blair has pretty much taken the wind out of Mr. Chase’s sails. He can never win the nomination now. Find a messenger and send this over to the Treasury.” Robert took the letter and left the office. Seward entered from the Cabinet Room.

  “Well, Governor, I’ve just gone and patched things up with Mr. Chase.”

  “After ordering his execution on the floor of Congress.”

  “Well, you know the Blairs.” Lincoln stared vaguely out the window at the truncated monument to the first President, dirty white against the dark wintry sky.

  Seward took a deep breath; and then he told Lincoln of John Watt and the three letters. He was now happy to report that Sickles had been successful. Threatened with Fort Lafayette, the price had dropped from twenty thousand to fifteen hundred dollars, which Sickles had paid. Seward had the letters. As long as the war was on and habeas corpus suspended, Watt could never speak out. Once the war was done, it made no difference.

  As Seward spoke, Lincoln leaned against the window frame; his face did not change expression, but since the face in repose was always deeply melancholy, he seemed now, to Seward’s eye, a graven image of sorrow. He showed no surprise at any part of the story. When Seward was finished, Lincoln said, “Have you the letters?”

  Seward gave the three letters to Lincoln, who promptly put them, unread, in the fireplace, where they swiftly turned to ash. Then Lincoln went to his writing desk and wrote out a personal check in the amount of fifteen hundred dollars and gave it to Seward. “Repay Sickles or whoever provided the actual money.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a long silence as Lincoln stared into the fire and Seward examined, yet again, the furious face of old Andrew Jackson, so very like, in expression, that of Mr. Blair, Senior. Finally, Lincoln said, “You know, Governor, that I do not ever discuss personal matters with anyone, as they tend to be painful for me and I see no need to share the pain. But as you have become so intimately involved with my family, I think I should give you my view of all this, and that is that the … caprices of Mrs. Lincoln, I am satisfied, are the result”—Lincoln rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, as if not to see what he was about to say—“of partial insanity.”

  Since nothing that Seward could say on the subject would be of any use, he simply replied, “I am glad we could be helpful. The episode is over.”

  “Well, this episode is over.”

  In the front parlor of Sixth and E the political managers of Salmon Portland Chase had just accepted, somberly, the end of a crucial episode. All pretense that Kate did not involve herself in politics had been dropped. It was she who stood before the fireplace like the conductor of an orchestra, while Chase slumped passively in his usual chair and the brothers Cooke sat side by side on a loveseat. Sprague poured himself brandy from a decanter. In the five months that he had been married, he had several times given up drink for good. Senator Pomeroy folded and refolded a handkerchief, as if it were the Union’s own sacred flag.

  “I cannot believe that Ohio has deserted us.” Kate was white with anger.

  “Well, they have,” said Henry D. “I always said one of us should have gone back last month and rallied the legislators …”

  “But Father was there himself in October. I’ve never seen such crowds, and now they have all turned against us.”

  “I’ve written my friend Mr. Hall of Toledo a letter saying that I wish no further consideration of my name.” Chase himself did not find it hard to believe that his old friends and allies had turned from him to Lincoln. That was the nature of politics. Lincoln was the president; and the president controls the party apparatus. Six months earlier, when the military news was bad, Chase might have prevailed. But since the war was now going well, the Republicans were not about to switch horses in the midst of history’s stream. On the other hand, there was an excellent chance that the people of the country might be inclined to elect a Democrat in November. Already Chase had received a hint or two from leading Democrats displeased with McClellan. But Chase knew that it would take a political miracle for him to gain the Democratic nomination; and miracles were in peculiarly short supply at Sixth and E.

  “We did our best, Mr. Chase.” Pomeroy folded his handkerchief yet again. “We are nowhere near finished, of course. I have talked to many Republican leaders, and they believe that our strategy should be to lie low for the time being, while working with the Frémont faction in the party. Then, at the convention itself, we should be able to stop Lincoln. Once he is eliminated, who else is there but Mr. Chase?”

  “That seems sound,” said Jay Cooke; he turned to Chase. “What was the President’s response to your letter about the circular?”

  “He waited until after Frank Blair’s attack on me, then he wrote to say that he agreed with me that neither of us could control his friends and that I should remain at the Treasury.” Chase had wanted to tear up the letter; but dared not. He knew now that he would have to remain where he was and endure in the most public way the humiliation of one who had tried and failed to supplant a rival who had, in the most public way, outwitted him. Within three days of the publication of the circular, Lincoln had arranged for the Republicans in the Ohio legislature to reject their native son, Chase, and unanimously support the President. Within five days of the circular’s publication, Lincoln had inspired Frank Blair to accuse his own Secretary of the Treasury of corruption. Then, two days later, Lincoln wrote Chase his friendly but, to Chase, highly condescending letter—of victory.

  “Was all that stuff of Frank Blair’s about trade permits true?” asked Sprague suddenly.

  “Certainly not!” Sprague’s wife answered for her father. “That people sell permits back and forth to one another is something Father cannot control. Certainly he does not benefit.”

  “We have a pretty good case against Frank Blair now,�
� said Henry D. “We’ll spring it on him next month. In the House.”

  “Too late,” said Kate.

  “Revenge is never too late,” said Senator Pomeroy with a gentle smile. “We shall also show that he and Lincoln are in cahoots to destroy Mr. Chase. Some good will come out of it, never fear.”

  Chase listened to his friends talk as if he were, somehow, present at his own funeral. Everything was now past tense. Henry D. was off to Europe for a rest cure: or to avoid indictment in the Hurtt affair. Jay Cooke was winding up the affairs of the Chase campaign in which some ninety thousand dollars had been spent. Sprague continued to finance Sixth and E, but he was now less than generous when it came to political funding. As Chase had feared, Kate and Sprague were ill-matched. She was too intelligent; he too dull. She was also far too distracted by her father’s collapsing political future to give Sprague the attention that he needed. As Chase listened to the far-off funereal voices, he composed his political epitaph: “I believe that I would rather that the people should wonder why I wasn’t president than why I was.”

  Meanwhile, Washburne was staring at the one man in the United States who could be elected president by acclamation, burying Lincoln and all the rest. The short, slight man was at the reception desk at Willard’s. Washburne had just come from the barbershop when he heard General Ulysses S. Grant say to the clerk, “I’d like a room. For myself and my son here.” The son was a weedy boy of fourteen, who was staring about the crowded lobby with a certain wonder.

  The clerk said, wearily, “I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve got nothing at all except a small room on the top floor.”

  “Well, we’ll take what we can get.” Grant filled out the registration card. The clerk took it; glanced at it perfunctorily; then said, without the slightest change in his manner, “You shall have the presidential suite, General Grant. It will be free within the hour, if you don’t mind waiting.”

  “No,” said Grant, “I don’t mind. We’ll get something to eat.”

  “I’ll join you,” said Washburne.

  “Well, how did you know I’d be here?” asked Grant, a smile just visible beneath the thick brown beard.

  “I didn’t. I was in the barbershop. Where’s your escort?”

  “I don’t have one. I’ve only got two staff members with me, and they’ve checked into the National. This is my son Fred.”

  Washburne shook the boy’s hand warmly; and was relieved to see that he had not inherited his mother’s startlingly crossed eyes. As they walked through the lobby, Grant said, “Since there was nobody from the War Department at the depot, we just hailed a cab and came on here.”

  They entered the large dining room. Washburne told the head waiter that they would like a quiet corner, which was found. In that huge, noisy, roast-meat-smelling room, no one paid the slightest attention to what was easily the shabbiest of a hundred Union officers at table. Even the two stars on each shoulder strap excited no interest: Washington was filled with major-generals.

  But Grant was about to be a lieutenant-general; and Washburne took seriously his role as the congressman of the Union’s greatest general. “I finally got the bill through the House, allowing for such a rank to be revived. It was not easy.”

  “I suppose not.” Grant did not seem very interested. The pale-blue eyes were alert but somewhat bloodshot. Washburne wondered if the general might have been drunk on the cars from Nashville. At the moment he was drinking quantities of water and eating bread as they waited for the waiter to bring them the day’s soup. Fred was chewing his nails and counting the number of generals in the room.

  “Well, there hasn’t been such a rank since George Washington. Winfield Scott’s lieutenant-generalcy was more … emeritus?”

  “Brevet,” said Grant, precisely.

  “That’s the word. Garfield thought the honor too great for any man while the war is still going on.”

  “Did he?” Grant smiled, and chewed bread.

  “He did. Anyway, I got the bill through and tomorrow the President will give you your commission. We don’t anticipate any trouble from the Senate.”

  “I have a condition of acceptance,” said Grant. “I will not make my headquarters here.”

  Washburne was surprised. “But you will be commanding all the armies …” The soup arrived.

  “I can do that from the west.” Grant proceeded to eat the soup like a man digging a ditch. The spoon was there to empty the plate, and so the spoon was used; and thus the plate was emptied. He was, as soldier and man, all of a piece, thought Washburne.

  “You know there is a lot of speculation going on about you.” Washburne paused so that Grant might ask, of what nature? But the general simply stared at the spoon, which now lay in the center of the empty soup plate. “Speculation as to whether or not you’ll be tempted to run for president in the fall. Certainly, the Democrats would nominate you, and perhaps even the Republicans.” This was not, Washburne realized sadly, the most subtle political approach that he had ever made. But Grant was not a man for the usual political ellipsis.

  “I’ve said I don’t want the job.” Grant looked up from the plate. “I hate this city. Sherman warned me against Washington.” Grant lowered his voice so that Fred could not hear. “Worse than Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said. “Besides, I like what I’m doing. Tell Mr. Lincoln he has nothing to fear from me.”

  This was almost too direct for Washburne’s taste. “Well, I’m not sure exactly what General Sherman had in mind in his characterization of Washington, but this is a city devoted to intrigue, and with an election approaching, it is more than usually mephitic.”

  Grant was now carefully slicing up the entirety of a steak, preparatory to eating it. Fred reported that five major-generals and eighteen brigadiers were in the dining room. “But you outrank ’em all, Pa.”

  “If the President wants me to, and the Senate agrees, I do. Otherwise, I don’t.” Grant was not about to tempt fate.

  “The President is curious to know if politics tempt you. You know, perhaps, after the war …” Washburne was amazed at his own maladroit-ness. Plainly, there was something in Grant’s blunt, matter-of-fact nature that brought out a certain crudeness in his own.

  “Well,” said Grant, speaking and chewing at the same time, “I do have a certain political interest for after the war. If I survive this business, I mean to run for mayor of Galena and, if elected, I intend to have the sidewalk fixed up between my house and the depot.”

  Suddenly, there was a cry, “General Grant!” To Washburne’s amazement and Grant’s discomfiture, half the diners in the room were now converging on their table. Grant had been recognized. He stood at his place and shook hands until it was plain that he was not going to be allowed to finish his dinner. Suddenly, he blurted out, “Let’s go, Fred.” With that, the general, followed by Fred and Washburne, cut through the crowd to the lobby, where Grant said to Washburne, “I think I’ll hide out in my room now.”

  “But you’ll be seeing the President this evening, won’t you?”

  “I’m not invited.” Absently Grant continued to shake a series of proffered hands while never once looking up to see to whom the hands belonged.

  “It’s the weekly reception. Everyone’s invited.”

  “Oh.” Grant seemed to think a moment. Then he said, “What time?”

  “I’ll come and pick you up at nine-thirty. We’ll walk over together.”

  “Can I come, Pa?”

  “No,” said General Grant.

  At nine-thirty, Grant’s two aides were waiting for him at the White House portico. One of them said, “Word’s got around that you might be here. There’s quite a crowd in there.”

  Grant looked at Washburne, as if to ascertain what to do next. Then he entered the Mansion first.

  In the entrance hall, guests were milling about. At first, the arrival of three shabby officers and one rumpled familiar member of Congress interested no one. Also, when it came to generalissimos, the capital was used to white
-haired or at least grizzled commanders. At forty-one, Grant’s hair was still entirely brown—and all his own, unlike that of Gideon Welles, who was the first to recognize Grant as he and Washburne made their way to the Blue Room, where the President and Mrs. Lincoln were receiving their guests. Welles bowed to Grant, who gave him a half salute. Grant insisted on joining the long line in front of the Blue Room. When Washburne suggested that he go straight in to the President, Grant said, “No.” Grant seemed very fond, Washburne decided, of that monosyllable.

  As Grant stepped up to the President, Lamon started to ask him his name so that he could make the presentation, but Lincoln had recognized the small figure. “Why,” he said, with a smile that was all white teeth, “here is General Grant!” He shook Grant’s hand warmly. “Well, this is a great pleasure for me.”

  As Grant mumbled something in reply, Lincoln motioned for Mary to come forward and shake the general’s hand, which she did with genuine interest. “We have looked forward, sir,” she said, “to seeing you here, sir, for quite some time.” Then the line disintegrated, and everyone rushed into the Blue Room. Washburne was shoved to one side, and only the formidable Lamon was able to keep the Lincolns from being physically overwhelmed, while only the quick-thinking Seward saved Grant from being trampled.

  From nowhere, Seward had suddenly materialized at Grant’s side. Small as Seward was, he could, through gestures alone, appear to occupy a large space or, in this case, create a sufficient space about himself and Grant. Arms flailing the air, Seward shouted, “This way, General! To the East Room!” He then propelled Grant out the door, followed by everyone else. In less than a minute the Lincolns were left alone with Lamon.

  “I have never seen anything like that!” Mary was truly astonished.