by Gore Vidal
“Well, it’s the first time the folks have ever got a look at a really successful general,” said Lincoln. “It’s sort of like Tom Thumb all over again.”
From the East Room, there was a sound of cheering. “Come on, Mother, we may as well see the sights, too.”
The Lincolns arrived at the door to the East Room just as Seward was coaxing the red-faced Grant onto a sofa, where he now stood, swaying slightly, in plain view of everyone. “Father,” said Mary, deeply alarmed, “he is running for President!”
“Well, Mother, he has said that he has no such base ambitions.”
“Everyone says that.” Mary could not believe that here in the Mansion the President was entirely ignored, while what looked to be a dry-goods clerk was staggering about on a newly reupholstered crimson sofa, and everyone in the room was cheering him and trying to shake his hand, while Seward more than ever resembled an eccentric parrot, hopping about the hero of the hour. “They would nominate him, wouldn’t they?” Mary was upset.
“If he were to win the war for us before June, of course they would. But as that’s only four months from now, I don’t think he’s apt to defeat General Lee all that fast. If he does, of course, I’ll help him get elected.”
“Don’t say such a thing!” The thought that Lincoln might not be reelected was the worst of Mary’s night terrors. She was close to thirty thousand dollars in debt, and now, without John Watt to help her borrow money in New York, she was at a loss how to pay her personal bills, many of them years overdue. As long as it looked as if she would be First Lady for another four years, she could intimidate her creditors. But at the first sign that her husband might be defeated, they would fall upon her like wolves. Keckley had begged her to tell the President; but she could not. He had already had to endure so much on her account. Could she bear, she wondered, to part with the new diamond-and-pearl earrings that she was wearing? They had cost three thousand dollars. She touched one of them with her forefinger. She thought of the matching brooch which she had declined to buy. She could show restraint, she knew. Besides, one of the Republicans who owed so much to Mr. Lincoln might buy it for her. Since so many men that he had appointed to office had made fortunes, it was only justice that they provide for her when she was financially embarrassed. One of them, William Mortimer, had just given her a gold-and-enamel brooch with forty-seven diamonds. She still had friends. But would they remain friends if the President were not reelected? The thought made her shudder.
Seward was now proposing three cheers for the victor of Vicksburg, and the East Room echoed with a thousand voices, including Lincoln’s if not Mary’s. Then Grant got off the sofa. As the crowd that circled him tried to shake his hand, he visibly shrank from them. “I don’t think he’s running for president just yet,” said Lincoln, whose practised eye was taking in the scene. “He’s too scared of the folks. But once he gets the knack of handling them, there’ll be no stopping him.”
“Let us hope that that won’t be until after next November.”
Lincoln nodded. “Let us hope so. Because there is nothing on this earth quite as useless in a war as a general who is running for president. On that subject, I am the world’s greatest—and saddest—authority.”
Seward took the same view. Clearly, Grant was as ambitious as all the others and like all great men and a good many not so great, he had no modesty. He had been spoken of as a presidential candidate ever since the battle of Lookout Mountain. The American public had a curious appetite for military leaders in politics and though Seward tended to deplore this peculiar craving, he would cater for it if he had to. If Grant won the war, he could be groomed. But did Grant truly understand his situation? That was the question.
Lincoln seemed to think that Grant did. The two men were seated in the President’s office. In the next room, Cabinet and interested parties were gathering for Grant’s investiture as lieutenant-general in command of all the armies of the United States.
“Grant seems a sensible fellow,” said the President, holding up a plaster copy of the curiously ugly gold medallion that Congress had ordered to be struck in the general’s honor.
“They are all sensible until …”
“Until the presidential grub starts to gnaw.” Lincoln put away the plaster disk. “I didn’t have many words with him last night but I think he understands that he needs me, as president, as much as I need him as general. He has had victories. But he’s also had defeats. I covered up for him over Shiloh. If he is to be … what he would like to be”—how typical of Lincoln, thought Seward, to leave unrevealed his own deepest estimate of Grant—“we must support each other. Thanks to me, he holds George Washington’s rank. Now he must be worthy of it.”
“He must win the war, of course,” said Seward, adding, pointedly, “He himself must win the war, not any other general. Will that be a problem?”
Lincoln smiled. “Why, Governor, you make me feel like Napoleon with a hundred brilliant field-marshals, when all I’ve got’s one general and a half.”
“Named Sherman?”
Lincoln nodded. “Grant thinks more highly of Sherman than I do. Last night Grant was eager to go back to Nashville and continue his plan to strike at Mobile and Atlanta, but I talked him out of it. The heart of the rebellion is at Richmond and the victory to be won is over Lee. He grasps that now.”
“He will move here?” asked Seward.
Nicolay now was at the door. “Everyone’s ready, sir.”
“I’ll be right in.” Lincoln picked up a sheet of paper. “I want this to sound exactly right on both sides. I gave him a copy of my little speech last night, and I told him he should write out his answer since the wire-services will carry everything we say. I suggested that he say something that would make the other generals feel a bit less envious …”
“You will have us in there for several hours.”
“Something brief, I said. Also, I felt that he should, somehow, praise the Army of the Potomac, since that is our principal … weapon.”
As it was, Grant followed neither of the President’s suggestions. After the President’s gracious presentation of the commission, with an “under God” added by Seward, Grant rose and read, with difficulty, from a piece of paper on which he had scribbled a number of lines with a lead pencil. Grant invoked Providence rather than God; and praised the armies but not their commanders. Seward found the performance disappointing.
Chase barely listened; his mind was elsewhere. Grant was Lincoln’s general; and would never be his. Since his own career seemed at an end, he was not much interested in the ascendant stars of others. He tried to console himself with a Pauline homily but only the cadences of Jeremiah sounded in his head.
When the meeting broke up, Lincoln introduced everyone to General Grant and his son Fred. Then Grant and Lincoln and Nicolay went into the President’s office. If Stanton or Halleck were distressed at being overlooked, neither showed it.
Lincoln came to the point. “The object of the exercise is now Richmond—and the defeat of General Lee. I know that you would rather be in the West, but it is too far away for you to take personal charge of such a great undertaking.”
“I agree. I would like Sherman to take my place in the West.”
Lincoln nodded; then he said, “General Halleck has resigned as general-in-chief. So you are now that as well.”
“I would like him to continue,” said Grant, “if he would, as chief of staff to me. He can coordinate matters here better than I, since I don’t expect to be in Washington all that much.”
Lincoln’s left eyebrow slowly raised. “You will not take a house in the city then?”
“I’ll have to find something for Mrs. Grant and the children. They will have to move here now. But I will live with the Army of the Potomac.”
Lincoln clapped his hands, eyes to Heaven or Providence. “I have waited three years to hear a general say that!”
Grant ignored this moment of Providential rapture. “I shall keep General Meade
where he is.”
Lincoln frowned. “The Joint Committee wants him replaced. They want Hooker to replace him, because Hooker is a good abolitionist.”
Grant said, “I’d better go talk to General Meade now.”
“I’ll send for him.”
“No, I’ll go to him. Besides I want a look at the Army of the Potomac. If that is all …?”
Lincoln shook Grant’s hand. “I have only one suggestion, General. Wherever Lee’s army is, there you should be, too.”
“That is about right, sir.” Grant left the office.
When the door had shut behind the new lieutenant-general, Lincoln said to Nicolay, “At least he is not like any of the others.” Then he added, as ever cautious, “No matter what he proves to be like.”
FOUR
SHORTLY before midnight, May 13, John Hay was finishing an entry in his diary when the door to the bedroom swung open, and there stood the Ancient in his nightshirt. “I saw your light on,” he said.
The Ancient had taken to roaming about the White House late at night: sometimes he wore an old wrapper, sometimes nothing but a topcoat, sometimes just his shirt, which was now all bunched up in the back, giving him the look of a highly comical sort of ostrich with long, brown, bony legs.
The Ancient settled comfortably on the corner of the bed, the usual War Department dispatches in his hand. “Well, the rebels have just abandoned Spotsylvania, and Grant keeps moving. I’ve never seen anything like it, the way he keeps on, no matter what!” The Ancient’s face grew somber, as he added, “And no matter what his losses.”
Ten days earlier, Grant had begun his move into what was known as the Virginia Wilderness. He had sustained astonishing losses. Some thirty thousand Union men were dead or wounded. But then Lee had suffered equally; and Lee had fewer men. What Grant could not win in a set battle, he would win through numbers and endurance. The country had been both horrified and thrilled by this dreadful new kind of warfare: not that either country or President had been taken into Grant’s confidence. At one point, Grant and his army of one hundred twenty thousand men simply vanished without a trace, and Stanton’s difficulty in breathing became even more pronounced, not to mention contagious, for even the Ancient grew short of breath. But now the reports had begun to come in. There had been a head-on battle between Grant and Lee at Spotsylvania Court House. Grant had a two-to-one advantage. After great losses on both sides, Lee had withdrawn.
“One thing about General Grant, he doesn’t turn back,” said Hay, shutting his diary.
Lincoln nodded. “I believe if any other general had been at the head of that army, after such losses, he would have been high-tailing it back across the Rapidan by now. But he grinds on and on, and when he gets hold of a piece of ground, he acts like he inherited it. Poor Wadsworth,” he said suddenly; and shut his eyes. Among the casualties of the Wilderness had been General James S. Wadsworth, a good friend of the Ancient. Wadsworth had left the army to be Republican candidate for governor of New York. Defeated by Horatio Seymour, he had gone back to the army. “There is … there was … no other like him. He was not in the army for glory or personal advancement. He was there because he thought it the right thing to do; thought it his duty. In this world of calculating lagos, he was truly noble. He was also the only general who wanted to cut off Lee after Gettysburg, but Meade …” The Ancient stopped; let that be ancient history. “Now, John, you are a poet—”
“Oh, sir! If only I were.”
“No. I liked that poem you wrote about Key West.” The Ancient settled himself comfortably on the pillows and Hay, dizzy with fatigue, realized that the Ancient, like Coleridge’s Mariner of the same affix or prefix, intended to recite poetry. “I was thinking about Hamlet while I was waiting for news from Grant. Now it is fashionable to admire Hamlet’s ‘To be, or not to be’ soliloquy, but I have never cared for it, save the last part: ‘The undiscover’d country’ is most chilling. I have always preferred ‘O!, my offence is rank …’ ”
Lincoln gave the entire speech. He then demonstrated how most actors misunderstood the irony and bitterness of Richard III’s “Now is the winter of our discontent …” He acted Shakespeare rather more subtly than most actors—at least those arias that appealed to him. Half an hour passed. Did the Ancient never sleep anymore? Hay tried to keep his eyes open; but failed. He had now missed most of Richard II’s “Let us sit upon the ground, And tell sad stories of the death of kings.” The Ancient laughed; and got off the bed. “Go to sleep, Mr. Hay. I seem to have lost the knack for sleep lately.”
“Well, sir, the amount of underpinning you have seems to have improved.” Hay indicated the legs, which were somewhat less bony than they had been just after the bout of smallpox.
Lincoln nodded. “I now weigh a hundred and eighty pounds.” Thus, thought Hay, “Honest Abe” had finally lied to him. “Good-night.”
At Sixth and E, Honest Abe was not only a sulfurous epithet but a hideous irony. Chase sat alone in his study, waiting for news from Cleveland of a convention composed mostly of his admirers, fellow radicals who wished to undercut the Republican Party’s regular convention, where Lincoln was expected to be renominated if Grant’s name was not, somehow, put in nomination.
In regard to Lincoln, Chase’s fury—there was no other word, save, perhaps, his own word “wrathy” to Jay Cooke—was now absolute just as the Blairs’s control of the President was now absolute. Admittedly, Chase’s allies had blundered in the matter of Frank Blair. The “evidence” of Blair’s corruption at Vicksburg had been somewhat clumsily forged, as Blair himself had pointed out in a fiery speech on the floor of the House, where he attacked Chase and all his works and minions. But then, most pointedly, the President, instead of supporting his own colleague, sent for Blair, gently chided him for “kicking over the beehive”; and sent him back to the front as a major-general.
Chase’s usual allies were now speaking more and more of Grant as a replacement for Lincoln. To Chase’s sorrow and surprise, they had taken his withdrawal from the race with more seriousness than loyal friends ought to have done. He did not enjoy being told that he should wait for the death of the Chief Justice. Besides, even that ghoulish watch might not prove fruitful. Since relations between him and the President were so strained, Lincoln was now perfectly capable of appointing an inferior man Chief Justice. For once, Chase was truly eager to resign from the Cabinet. Unfortunately, Lincoln needed him; and so the uneasy relationship continued. Once Lincoln was reelected, Chase would be dismissed if he had not already gone on his way to the Chief Justiceship—or home to Ohio. The unfairness of life could only be borne, thought Chase grimly, by a rapt contemplation of the Savior’s agony.
Kate swung open the door to announce: “They’ve nominated Frémont. There were only about four hundred people at Cosmopolitan Hall. They’ve all gone home.”
“Well, let us hope he fights the good fight.” Chase was startled by his own indifference.
“Oh, it is all a joke, says Mr. Sumner.”
Sumner entered the study. Chase rose to greet his friend and ally who had recently managed to deal so well in morals and so ill in politics that he had helped, with his Olympian advice, to shipwreck Chase’s career. “I mistrust all generals,” said Sumner. “But Grant could be nominated at Baltimore.”
“If he agrees,” said Kate. “And he won’t. Anyway, he’s bogged down in Virginia, just like McClellan. There he is, nine miles or whatever from Richmond, but Lee won’t fight.”
“Still, Grant is the man of the hour,” said Sumner, unperturbed, as always, by inconvenient detail. “The common people trust and revere him.”
“But should we?” asked Chase, in a tone sharper than he had ever before used to Sumner. “Ought we? Who is Grant? Where does he stand on abolition? Where does he stand on the readmission of the conquered states?”
“I only make the point that he can defeat Mr. Lincoln,” said Sumner. “If he can be captured for the Republican Party.”
“T
here is no such thing,” said Kate. “Have you heard what they mean to call the convention at Baltimore?”
Sumner frowned. “Surely, it is the Republican … Well, the National Republican Party convention?”
“No, Mr. Sumner. The word Republican will not be used at all because of us. Mr. Lincoln has decreed—”
“The Blairs, Katie,” Chase interposed.
“The Blairs,” Kate corrected herself, “have renamed our party. It is now the National Union Party.”
“This is unspeakable!” Sumner shook a lock of straw-colored hair from his eyes. “This also means that we are now absolutely obliged to hold our own convention—a Republican convention.”
For some time, Chase’s allies had discussed, in a more or less desultory way, the possibility of breaking away from the Blair-Lincoln party. The Frémont convention had been a futile enterprise, if only because of Frémont himself. But a full-scale convention of true Republicans, endorsed by Governor Andrew of Massachusetts and Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, and directed by the congressional leadership might very well eliminate the Blair-Lincoln element. Sumner had now caught fire. “We shall wait until after the Democrats meet at Chicago. That will be the end of August. Then we shall persuade poor Mr. Lincoln to step aside, so that we can call a new convention for late September. It should be somewhere in …”
“Ohio,” said Kate. “Cincinnati, I should think.”
“Exactly! Then”—Sumner threw his arms wide as if to embrace both Chase and the world itself—“you shall take up our fallen standard!”
Chase felt the first stirring of hope in some time. “It is conceivable,” he said, “that, by then, the country will turn to us.”
“Oh, Father! Where else? Who else?”
“In hoc signo,” intoned Sumner, “vinceremus.”
President Chase, thought Chase. It was again a possibility. So near at hand!
The actual President sat at his desk, reading a report of the Frémont convention, which Seward had brought him. Seward had been alarmed. But Lincoln had been amused. He was particularly amused, he told Seward, to read that although thousands had been expected to fill up the Cosmopolitan Hall, there had been only four hundred casual men who had wandered into the building and said that they were delegates. “Four hundred,” said Lincoln, putting down the report, and reaching for a copy of the Bible which he kept in the same pigeonhole as Horace Greeley’s correspondence. “That strikes a note, Governor.” Lincoln riffled through the Bible until he found what he wanted. He read aloud, “ ‘And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.’ ” Lincoln shut the Bible; took off his glasses. “I should be surprised if Frémont ever gets around to running. No, Governor, I’m more concerned about these meetings they’re holding in New York to honor, as they put it, General Grant.”