Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  “The unspeakable Stanton?” Robert tended to blame the Secretary of War for keeping him out of the army when, actually, it was his mother who had seen to that.

  “The War Department, anyway. For once, Stanton isn’t tearing his hair out. But things are bad. Yesterday the rebels whipped us at Monocacy Bridge …”

  “Why, that’s practically here in town!” Robert frowned. He had nicked his chin. There was now a drop of blood forming. Hay found it interesting that such an important defeat had not been mentioned by the Ancient to his family at the Soldiers’ Home. But then Madam was easily excited.

  Hay proceeded to alarm Robert. “Rebel pickets were seen last night in Georgetown, while the Blairs have fled yet again from Silver Spring.”

  “You know, in a way, it would be nice if they burned this bloody city to the ground,” said Robert, the Boston Brahmin. Carefully, he dried his face with Hay’s only towel, leaving a thin streak of fresh blood on the clean side. “It was a terrible notion, having the capital of the country in this stinking swamp—and in the South.”

  “Well, the swamp certainly stinks today,” said Hay, as a warm summer breeze filled the bathroom with a particularly sickening odor of stagnant canal, jasmine and offal from the slaughterhouse.

  “Anyway, you’ll be up in Saratoga, cutting a swathe,” said Hay, folding the towel to hide the royal blood. Robert had just graduated from Harvard. Madam had attended the ceremonies. Now he was enrolled in Harvard Law School because Madam had said that if he were to go into the army, she would go mad. Since no one doubted her word, Robert was the most famous and sullen “shirker” of the war.

  “At least, Father says I can go down to Fortress Monroe next week and watch the war.”

  Hay found the Tycoon in his office, spyglass in one hand, studying the river for signs of the reinforcements from Grant at City Point. The Tycoon was as angry as Hay had ever seen him. “What goes on in Stanton’s mind is sometimes unfathomable to me. He obliges me to flee in the middle of the night from the Soldiers’ Home, and now he’s trying to evacuate me from the capital.”

  “I think that was Admiral Porter’s idea.”

  But Lincoln had put down his telescope. “I can get no news from the War Department. No one seems to know where the rebels are. When I ask Halleck—”

  Edward ushered in the Postmaster-General, whose Blairian rage made Lincoln’s anger seem like high good humor. “General Jubal Early’s men are now burning my house at Silver Spring. They are burning my father’s house. But first the bastards stole everything they could get their hands on, from the silver to all my father’s papers. You can see the smoke from here.”

  “We seem to have been outsmarted again,” murmured the Ancient.

  “It is Halleck. He is a coward. He is a traitor. He should be hanged.” There was much more of this Blairesco to which neither Lincoln nor Hay gave much attention. As callers began to arrive, Lincoln did his best to try to understand what had happened.

  Apparently, Jubal Early and John C. Breckinridge had been given an army of no one knew how many men. They had come swiftly up the Shenandoah Valley, seized yet again Harper’s Ferry and, yet again, isolated the capital; then, on Saturday, they had defeated General Lew Wallace at Monocacy Junction, and burned much of Silver Spring. They were now encamped two miles north of the Soldiers’ Home, with only the somewhat ramshackle defenses of Fort Stevens between them and the Seventh Street Road, at whose terminus was the White House itself. Hay began to look with a more friendly eye on the nearby gunboat.

  Grant’s troops were expected to arrive sometime during the early morning, but no one knew when. “If they are not here by noon, it is all over,” said Blair. “Because we don’t have the men to stop them. How,” he exclaimed, “could this have happened?”

  Lincoln’s response was that curious mocking smile which Hay had noticed at other moments of crisis. “I think, Mr. Blair, we should first find out what is happening. The ‘how’ we will explore at our leisure.”

  Blair gave a sudden cry of rage. “My father’s papers! The letters from Andrew Jackson! From Henry Clay! All gone!”

  “I think I may have written him, too,” said Lincoln, who was again at the window. Then he beamed: “Here they come! The transports from City Point.” He turned back into the room. “I think I’ll go down and meet our rescuers.”

  “But if General Early breaks through Fort Stevens—” Blair began.

  “We’ll have a real fight on our hands, won’t we?” The Tycoon motioned for Hay to accompany him; and motioned for Blair to stay. In the outer office, there was a messenger from the Treasury. “Sir, before the telegraph went out, gold was being quoted at two hundred eighty-five dollars. Mr. Fessenden wants to know what we should do.”

  “Personally, I would shoot every last devilish gold-dealer. But since I’m not allowed to, tell him that we’ll shoot rebels today, and then the price of gold will fall back.”

  Pennsylvania Avenue was dusty and full of flies. The streetcars had ceased to run. For once, there were no soldiers in view. Every able-bodied man, and a good many from the hospital who were not, had gone to the various forts that encircled the city. “The city is never so tranquil,” observed the Tycoon, “as when it is being besieged.”

  “It also helps that Congress has adjourned.”

  “Yes, that is a blessing.” To Hay’s amazement, Lincoln was now more interested in Ben Wade’s bill, which had passed both houses of Congress, than he was in the danger at hand. It was as if he knew, instinctively, what was truly dangerous and what was not. A rebel raid on the capital was embarrassing. But unlike Blair, he was not unduly agitated. Although he had made up his mind some time ago that the war would be absolutely won, he was still not certain on what terms the Union would then be restored. He knew what he wanted; but he also knew that he was in a minority within his own party’s vengeful congressional majority.

  As the sky to the north grew dark with smoke from Silver Spring, and the sounds of artillery and rifle fire echoed in the valley between Seventh Street Road and the Capitol, Lincoln spoke of the radical problem. “They are trying to force me to devastate the rebel states, which I will not do. Naturally, I will punish certain individual rebels but I cannot—and I will not—punish a whole people. That’s why I shall stick to my ten-percent formula.”

  “But Congress has rejected that.”

  “So I must use what weapons I can. In wartime, my proclamations must be obeyed. As President, I could not free the slaves. I had not the right; and neither has Congress. But as a military necessity, I could free them; and did. Now I want a Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, which will take care of that problem once and for all. I’m also satisfied that we now have acceptable government in Louisiana and Arkansas.”

  “But Congress isn’t satisfied; and Congress can keep the Louisiana and Arkansas delegations from taking their seats.”

  “Well, the whole thing is very curious. Since I accept a part of Ben Wade’s bill, I won’t veto the whole. But since I don’t accept the rest of it, I won’t sign it.”

  “So what happens?”

  “Well, if I don’t sign it, it isn’t a law. So I guess I’ll just stick it in my pocket.”

  “Is this Constitutional, sir?”

  Lincoln smiled. “There is no Constitutional question that I know of.”

  Hay was convinced that Lincoln’s refusal to act directly in regard to the Wade Bill was a not-so-subtle declaration of war on the radical faction of the party, who were now certain to put up their own candidate for president. As Frémont was already a Republican candidate and Lincoln a National Union candidate, the addition of a radical Republican—Mr. Chase?—would split three ways their party and the Democrat McClellan would win, as a minority president, in just the same way that Lincoln had won in 1860 when the Democrats broke in two. On the one hand, Hay admired the Tycoon’s formidable response to Congress; but he also saw only too clearly that barring some extraordinary military victory, Lincol
n would soon join James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce and all the other one-term mediocre presidents of the last third of a century.

  At the Sixth Street wharf, they stopped. The first of the transports was now drawn up to the dock. As Lincoln climbed onto a small reviewing platform, the disembarking troops began to cheer. Lincoln raised his hat. The cheering was taken up by the men in the second transport; the sound was thunderous. As always, Hay was mystified by the magical effect that the Ancient had on the troops. Since they had no way of fathoming him except through newspapers, which, knowingly or unknowingly, misrepresented him, it was nothing short of miraculous that Old Abe or Father Abraham could inspire so much affection. Of course, it did not hurt that he looked very much like that somewhat ambiguous cartoon figure “Uncle Sam.”

  Lincoln had now removed his hat, which he held in his left hand. As he stood, very straight for him, brown face glowing, wide mouth smiling, he waved with his right hand to the men who filed by him down the gangplank. Presently, he was joined by the Sixth Corps commander, Major-general Horatio Wright, who saluted him; and said, “Reporting for duty, sir.”

  “We are relieved, General,” said the Tycoon. “In every sense.”

  Lincoln might have stayed there all morning had not the stern Lamon appeared with the President’s forgotten military escort. “I shall resign, sir, if you go off like this again,” grumbled Lamon.

  “I’m sorry, Lamon. But we could not stay put, Mr. Hay and I.” Lincoln then turned to General Wright. “I think, General, you should install yourself at Fort Stevens as soon as practical.”

  “That is my plan, sir.”

  “If the rebels were to make a push now, before you get there, there could be a lot of breakage at the Capitol, which we’ve only just finished fixing up.”

  When General Wright asked where the rebels were mainly concentrated, the President said that no one knew but he suspected at Silver Spring, just three miles north of Fort Stevens. As Lincoln and Hay, surrounded by the President’s cavalry guard, rode back to the White House, Lincoln said, “There is only one danger now …” He stopped, to take a satisfied look at the Capitol’s new dome.

  “The rebels will steal everything that’s not nailed down.” Hay knew that this had been going on for several days: guns, horses, silver, gold, food … The nearby towns of Rockville and Tennalytown had been stripped by the rebels; and the frightened inhabitants had fled to Georgetown, where they were obliged to sleep in the open.

  “No,” said Lincoln. “It is the seventeen thousand prisoners that we’re holding at Point Lookout. That’s what Lee wants more than anything, and that’s what he must never get.”

  The next day all the telegraph lines to the city were down, and the railroads were blocked. For the second time in the war, the capital was isolated. But this time, the mood was cheerful at the White House. The President himself had visited Fort Stevens the day before; and he had watched as Early’s men exchanged fire with the newly arrived Union troops. It was the first action that the Tycoon had seen during the war.

  After a brief noon meeting of the Cabinet, Lincoln was eager to return to the action; and Major Hay was eager to go with him. But it was not Hay but Madam who went forth to battle on the afternoon of July 12.

  Although Mary had been suffering from a bilious attack, the thought of a military outing cleared her head most wondrously. The President had said, firmly, that under no circumstance was she to go with him to Fort Stevens, while Lamon had said that under no circumstance would he allow the President to return to Fort Stevens. So, as a compromise, all three now rode up Seventh Street Road, with a company of cavalry, sabres drawn.

  For Mary, the thought of battle was, mysteriously, a tonic. Mysteriously because the most homely of thunderstorms could set her to screaming, usually from beneath the nearest bed. Now Mary would face real guns with real bullets. Defiantly, she wore a dark-red dress. “To disguise my bloody wounds,” she had said to Keckley, who gasped.

  Lamon spoke to neither President nor First Lady. Furious at the needless risk, he simply glowered at them.

  ? mile before the Soldiers’ Home, the street became a road and then a dusty trail through sparse unsettled woods.

  “That’s where my carriage struck the trees!” Mary recalled, without panic, the swift deathlike darkness. “Did they ever decide who it was who loosened the driver’s seat?”

  Lincoln shook his head. “There are so many people in and out of the stables.”

  “There were,” said Lamon.

  As they passed the Soldiers’ Home, they could smell the smoke of burning houses up ahead; and hear artillery’s peculiar slamming sound.

  A cart piled high with furniture passed them, with a large farmer and larger wife in the driver’s seat. Behind the cart, a half-dozen children shepherded a procession of livestock. The President raised his hat to the farmer and his wife, who stared, stonily, at the source of their ruin.

  “How ungracious!” Mary exclaimed. “How ungrateful!”

  “Well, Maryland has never been exactly my state,” said Lincoln, putting his hat back on.

  “How could General Grant have let this happen?”

  “Well, he is down near Richmond, Mother. This is more General Halleck’s department.”

  “He’s hopeless, too!” Mary could never understand Lincoln’s tolerance of bad generals. Mary’s original high hopes for Grant had ended when he lost more men at Cold Harbor than anyone had dreamed could be lost in so short a time. The man was a butcher—of his own men. For some time, Mary had had her own ideas of how the war should be prosecuted but no one took her seriously. As for Halleck, everyone agreed that he was hopeless but there he remained at the War Department, with his huge watery, drug-dilated eyes. Others might suspect that Halleck used opium, but Mary knew that he did. After all, there was little that she did not know about drugs. For years doctors had liked to experiment with her during The Headache and its painful aftermath.

  As for Stanton, he had made clear his true allegiance. He had asked Chase to be godfather to his new daughter. Worse, they sang hymns together. Mary was positive that Stanton was working secretly for Chase. Why else did the war go so badly? Lately, Mary had sensed that her husband was beginning to resign himself to defeat in the coming election. The thought made her frantic. At present her debts were more than his annual greenback salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a year—worth, before tax, less than ten thousand dollars in gold, which he would not take. For Lincoln to be both an ex-president and a bankrupt—thanks to her—was more than she could bear. Fortunately, she was now most subtly at work on Mr. Thurlow Weed to get a mutual friend, Abram Wakeman, appointed surveyor of the port of New York, a rich post which Wakeman was more than willing to pay her for. She would then be able to settle her accounts with the New York stores, particularly with A. T. Stewart, who was long-suffering, but not eternally so. With each Union reverse, not to mention hint that the President might fail of reelection, the bills had become more urgent and their tone more insolent. But once Wakeman got his job, Mr. Stewart’s account would be promptly settled. Meanwhile, she had her eye on a black camel’s-hair shawl from India that Stewart had offered her for only three thousand dollars. As the carriage drove up to Fort Stevens, Mary wondered if she might not, with luck, be shot this very day through that source of all her pain and anguish, the head.

  Fort Stevens proved to be not so much a proper fortress as a series of earthworks. Mary had envisaged something with stone walls and parapets and towers, on the order of Fortress Monroe. Instead, at the Fort’s center, there was a mound of earth like a loaf of bread on its side, shored up by wooden latticework. Artillery was in place to left and right.

  As the fort commanded the countryside to the north, she was able to see the butternut-gray of the rebels in the pinewoods up the road, and in the two small farmhouses which had, until two days ago, been in the Union and were now, thanks to Jubal Early, out of the Union.

  Just back of the earthen breadloaf, th
e presidential carriage was met by General Wright, who looked with some displeasure upon Mary. “There are rebel sharpshooters, Ma’am, all around us.”

  As if to demonstrate his point, there was a sudden volley from the two houses; to which the Federal troops responded. Mary noted that most of the Union soldiers were from Massachusetts. “Sir, I shall stay well back,” she said, politely. Then she accompanied the President to the top of an earthwork where wooden shields provided an irregular parapet. From this altitude, they could see a green, dusty landscape beneath a gray, smoking sky.

  “You know who is just a mile from here?” Lincoln pointed to the woods that served as cover for the main body of rebels.

  Mary knew. “Cousin John Breckinridge. I suppose he’s come to take over the White House for the Davises.”

  “Well, he’s just one day too late, thanks to General Grant.”

  A surgeon from a Pennsylvania regiment showed them the sights; and gave his opinions: “As I see it, sir, this is more in the nature of a raid now. Once all the men General Grant sent are here, they will high-tail it into the brush. But I’m sure that if General Wallace hadn’t held them up for one whole day, fighting the way he did at Monocacy Bridge, they would have swept right into town, because there never were enough of us to—”

  The surgeon did not finish what had promised to be a lengthy analysis. Rifle fire sounded. The surgeon gave a sudden cry and fell in a heap at Mary’s feet. To Mary’s amazement, she did not herself scream. Instead, she looked down at the man whose face was now twisted with pain. “Sir …?” she began.

  But two orderlies had appeared. The surgeon looked up and said to Mary, “It is not serious. My left ankle’s struck.” To the orderlies: “Help me up. Do forgive me, Mrs. Lincoln.”

  “Of course, sir. I am sorry, sir.” Mary was uncertain as to what was proper battlefield etiquette. Then Lincoln put his arm around her. “I think you better go back to the carriage.”

  “Oh, no, Father! Not now. I want Cousin John to get a good look at me. Remember how I told him they’d have to fight me personally before we gave up the Mansion? Well, give me a gun, and I’ll start shooting.”