Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  “It was a hunter, sir, in the woods.”

  “That is the second good hat that I have lost in this fashion. Strange how he—or they—always aim at the head, which is so hard to hit, and not at the body, which is so much easier a target.” Lincoln gave the hat to Nichols. “Say nothing of this to anyone. Particularly, say nothing to Marshal Lamon.”

  “On condition, sir, that you will not send your escort back before you are inside these gates.”

  Lincoln smiled. “A bargain? Well, today has been bargain day all day, and I guess that’s how it will end. All right, Nichols, I will grant your wish. Now bum the hat. I want no one to see it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Nichols left.

  At the Cabinet the next morning, Seward found the President distracted. Although the Seward-Weed machine did not want Roscoe Conkling to return to the House of Representatives, Lincoln favored him; and Seward had given way. The morning was unusually humid and hot even for the African Capital, as Seward had taken to calling Washington.

  The President moved restlessly about the room. Seward sat slumped in his chair. Stanton combed his beard with two fingers, always finding new and interesting—even Gordian, thought Seward—knots. Blair seemed as if he were not present, no doubt in anticipation of when he would indeed be gone. Fessenden, the new boy, sat very straight; and paid close attention to everything. Nicolay was in and out. Bates had already said that he would be going home after the election, no matter what the result. Usher was present but, to Seward, permanently invisible. Welles made notes. It was rumored that, as a one-time literary man, he was keeping an elaborate journal, which would destroy them all.

  It was Fessenden who was first with the latest ominous news. “I have just learned that General Butler is prepared to run for president on a ticket with Ben Wade.” Seward found Fessenden’s disapproval of his former senatorial colleague and ally most pleasing; but then Seward always enjoyed the sight, no matter how familiar in politics, of even the mildest leopard-spot-changing at season’s change. Senatorial Jacobin was now staunch loyalist.

  “Ben Butler,” the President began; and ended. The subject plainly tired him. Seward wondered, idly, if any of the presidents had been as cross-eyed as Butler or, for that matter, as peculiarly ugly? Old Abe was indeed Apollo next to the squat political general who had earned the nickname “Spoons” Butler, the result of having seized all the valuables that he could get his hands on when he was at New Orleans. Should the radical Republicans be stupid enough to nominate Butler and Wade, Seward knew that their makeshift party would go the way of the Whigs; and McClellan would win.

  There was a general exchange of political information; and all the news was bad. Weed had told Seward that if the election were held as of this day, August 23, 1864, Lincoln would lose New York by fifty thousand votes; and that was without Butler in the race.

  Lincoln read a note from Washburne, who was at Chicago: Illinois was, for the moment, lost. Blair remarked, sourly, that with Cameron and Stevens in charge of Pennsylvania, the Keystone State could also be written off.

  Lincoln sighed. “It is curious. We have no adversary as yet, and we have no friends. I suppose this is a unique situation.” He took his seat at the center of the table; and glanced at a letter. “Mr. Raymond of the New York Times thinks that I am now identified as an abolitionist, thanks, I suppose, to Horace Greeley. He thinks that the only way I can win is to offer—immediately—peace terms to Mr. Davis, on the sole condition of acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution. Everything else, including slavery, to be decided at a national convention.”

  “Shameful!” said Stanton, tearing his fingers loose from his beard, and stifling a cry of pain.

  “One sees his point,” said Bates. “You have gone and made it an absolute pre-condition of peace that the South abolish slavery. Perhaps that question was better left moot.”

  “I freed the slaves as a military measure only.” Lincoln was now on the verge of changing a whole set of very black spots, and Seward hoped devoutly that he would go through with the metamorphosis. But Lincoln dropped the subject; he turned to Nicolay. “Have you the memorandum?”

  Nicolay gave the President a sheet of paper, folded in half and sealed. “I would like you gentlemen to indulge me,” said Lincoln. “Will each of you sign his name on the back of this paper.”

  “What are we signing away?” asked Seward. “Our lives and sacred honor?”

  “Nothing so priceless,” said Lincoln. “It is just in case …” But he did not say in case of what. As requested, the seven men signed.

  On August 29, the friendless President at least gained an official adversary when the Democratic Party nominated George B. McClellan for president at Chicago. Lincoln and Seward sat in the Telegraph Room of the War Department as the news came through. From time to time they were joined by Stanton, who could now neither see without weeping nor breathe without choking.

  As the news of McClellan’s nomination came clattering into the room, everyone expected, at the least, pro forma joke from the President. But there was none. Lincoln sat on a plain wood chair so low that his knees touched his chin while the huge hands grasped his shins.

  Finally, Seward broke the silence. “I think they may have done themselves in, allowing Vallandigham to play so large and visible a part. After all, he is as close to being a traitor as the war has produced.”

  Lincoln nodded; but said nothing. Plainly, that curious mind was elsewhere, threading a labyrinth that led, at the very least, thought Seward, to a whole herd of minotaurs. Seward was already preparing, in his own less curious but no less subtle mind, a series of attacks on the Democrats for having accepted as a delegate the banished traitor Vallandigham, who had written a peace-at-any-price platform for McClellan, the warrior, to stand and run on.

  The telegrapher reported that Governor Horatio Seymour would deliver the official notification of nomination to General McClellan. Meanwhile, the convention was eager to hear McClellan’s response. For the first time, Lincoln smiled. “I hope they don’t all decide to stay in Chicago until they hear from him. If they do, they had better start looking around for permanent lodgings.”

  Seward laughed, more from relief that the President was himself again than from amusement. “One thing,” said Seward, “the Democrats are even more divided than we are. The New Yorkers and McClellan mean to continue the war for the Union, ignoring the slave issue, while the Vallandigham people want an instant peace. I suspect that long before the election, their party will have split in two.”

  “As ours is doing now?” Lincoln was quizzical.

  “It should be noted that the group that met two weeks ago in New York with an eye to holding a new convention was supposed to meet again tomorrow. But my spies tell me that they have no plan to meet. I suspect even Horace Greeley has accepted the fact that you are all that we have.”

  Lincoln made no response.

  Four days later, David Herold was staring, somewhat vacantly, out the window of Thompson’s. In the back room, Mr. Thompson was trying to achieve yet another tonic for Governor Seward, whose morning malaises no longer yielded to the usual mixture of elm bark and bicarbonate while Seidlitz powders had long since been abandoned.

  As David watched, he saw the familiar figure of the President cross from the War Department to the Mansion; he was accompanied by Gideon Welles and Marshal Lamon. Sadly, David thought of the recent opportunity that had been missed by a matter of inches, if Mr. Sullivan’s story was true. Everyone was now agreed that it was curious indeed that a man who wandered about as freely as did the President could not be more easily shot. Plainly, Old Abe was a lucky man.

  But David did not know how lucky Lincoln was. As the President walked, he held in his hand the flimsy copy of a characteristically dry telegraph message from Grant at City Point: “A dispatch just received from Superintendent of Telegraph in Dept. of Cumberland of this date announces the occupation of Atlanta by our troops. This must be by the 20th Corps, which was lef
t by Sherman on the Chattahoochee whilst with the balance of his army he marched to the south of the city.”

  At the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue, the three men paused as the horsecars went by. A number of riders recognized the President. There was a mixture of cheers and boos. Cheerfully, Lincoln raised his hat.

  “Every last one will be cheering you tomorrow,” said Lamon, as a single red maple leaf floated toward them on the cool autumn wind.

  At the gate to the Mansion, they were stopped by a messenger on horseback. He gave the President a second flimsy. “Mr. Stanton said you would want to see this, sir.” The messenger saluted; and departed.

  Lincoln glanced at the message; then broke into a great smile. “It is from Sherman himself. He says ‘Atlanta is ours and fairly won.’ Well, Neptune, I think I shall now declare a day of thanksgiving in honor of Sherman.”

  “Don’t forget Admiral Farragut. The navy’s occupied Mobile Harbor.”

  “Neptune will be celebrated as well as Mars.”

  “And Jupiter?” asked Welles, as they walked up the driveway to the portico. “What of him?”

  “Jupiter,” said Lincoln, “has regained his thunderbolts.”

  Nicolay met them on the portico. He, too, had heard the news. He shook the President’s hand as if they had not been together all morning. “You will be elected unanimously!” In Nicolay’s excitement “will” had become “vill”; he was again a six-year-old Bavarian child, newly arrived in America.

  Old Edward also shook the President’s hand. “A number of those newspaper writers are upstairs,” he said. “I have told them that you are much too busy winning the war to see them.”

  “I shall tell them exactly the same thing,” said Lincoln; and repeated aloud the magical phrase: “ ‘Atlanta is ours and fairly won.’ ”

  SEVEN

  IN THE President’s bedroom, Hay helped Lincoln arrange the pier glass so that the light from the window struck it head-on. Lincoln then pushed the mirror back and forth until he got the exact angle that he wanted. “Yes,” he said. “That is just about the way it was yesterday.” He squinted at his own reflection. “And the way it was back in Springfield.” He pulled an armchair in front of the mirror and placed it just off-center. Then he seated himself. “Now, John, you stand so that you can look in the mirror and see me but so I don’t see you.” Hay kept moving, tentatively, to the right until Lincoln told him to stop. “You can see my reflection?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now then …” Lincoln stared intently at his reflection in the glass. Hay noticed that the Ancient’s hair and beard both needed trimming; he was also thinner than ever and, more than ever, thought Hay, a doughnut-brown.

  Lincoln cocked his head; and shut one eye. Then he shut the other eye. Then he frowned. “I cannot see it,” he said at last. “It is the strangest thing. You see nothing?”

  “No, sir. Only you, in the chair.”

  Lincoln was disappointed. “Yesterday I thought it was happening again, the way it did four years ago at Springfield. For an instant, I saw myself twice, one image was clear; the other was paler and shadowier. In Springfield, it looked as if I was sitting next to my own ghost.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, sir?”

  Lincoln smiled. “No, I’m too earthy for that. But don’t tell Mrs. Lincoln. She gets great comfort from charlatans. If she thinks Willie comes to her every night, let her think it. But I am interested in phenomena—physical phenomena. I’d hoped to demonstrate this one, with a witness. Because if I saw me and my other self and you did, too, why we would both be scientific ring-tailed wonders. But I don’t; and you don’t.”

  “What makes the effect, do you think?” Hay also believed in phenomena; a category that could include almost anything, not to mention everything.

  “Well, I was planning how to find out. I suspect it is the way that the light strikes upon the glass, doubling the image, but I tell you the effect is just like you are seeing your own ghost.” Lincoln stood up. “I will say that I do put some faith in dreams. But then dreams are the self talking to the self. I have one recurring dream that always comes to me the night before some great event. I just had it the night before Atlanta fell.” Lincoln stared at himself in the mirror, as if it were indeed the ghost of himself that he saw; or, perhaps, he was the ghost addressing the mirrored, still-incarnate flesh. “I am on a raft, without a pole or a rudder of any kind. I’m at the center of a river so wide that I cannot see either shore, and since the current is a swift one, I am drifting … drifting … drifting.” He stared dreamily into the looking glass.

  “Then what happens?”

  “Then …? Oh, I wake up.” The Ancient smiled. “To find that while I was dreaming, the raft has come triumphantly aground, and Atlanta is ours and fairly won.”

  “Did you dream your dream the night before last? When Sheridan was massacring Jubal Early at Winchester?”

  “No. I think the dream is rationed. Only turning points require its presence.”

  The President then went to the Friday Cabinet, while Hay went to Nicolay’s office. Nico was in New York, trying to find Thurlow Weed, who had recently vanished. Stoddard was at the small table that Hay himself used when Nico presided over the secretary’s desk. The usual pile of correspondence had been dumped, as usual, on the floor. The latest consignment of newspapers was stacked on the central table. Back and forth, in the hall, supplicants marched. Some asked to have a word with Major Hay. Hay enjoyed the handsome women; often they flirted with him. Yet Nico claimed that no woman had ever once flirted with him. Hay had said that was because they could see, upon his brow, in letters of fire, the sacred name, “Therena.”

  “Look!” Stoddard’s usual worried frown had shifted to a scowl. He gave Hay an official-looking sheet of paper, which proved to be a letter from Frémont, posted the day before, September 22. Frémont was withdrawing as a candidate for president. He would support Lincoln. Nevertheless, he could not approve Lincoln’s course, which had been a failure … Hay read no further. He hurried across the corridor, stumbling over an admiral, who reached for his sword. But before Hay was stabbed through, he was safely inside the Reception Room. All heads turned toward him. Silently, he gave the Tycoon the message. Silently, the Tycoon read it. Silently, Hay left the room.

  Seward did his best to guess the contents of the letter. Obviously it was important, or Johnny would not have broken in on them like that. If it had had anything to do with the military, he would have given it to Stanton or Welles first. So the message was political. But Sherman and Farragut had knocked the bottom out of the Chicago nomination convention. McClellan was finished. There was still a faint possibility that the radicals might yet nominate Butler, who was more than willing. Perhaps that was it. Meanwhile, Seward was very much aware that Montgomery Blair had been glowering at him ever since the beginning of the meeting. Although the Blairs tended, as a family, to glower on principle, Seward was uncomfortably aware that today he alone was the innocent object of the family’s collective wrath.

  Lincoln ended the Cabinet with a reading from Petroleum V. Nasby’s latest book of drolleries. Everyone laughed uproariously at the jokes except Stanton, who muttered, to Seward’s amazement, “Goddamn it to hell!” Plainly, Chase’s work of Christian conversion was not complete in the case of the War god. As the meeting broke up, Seward started toward the President, but before he could get to him, Monty Blair was at his side; and the two men vanished into the President’s office.

  As Lincoln shut the door to the Reception Room, he said, “I’m sorry it had to happen so suddenly.”

  “So am I.” Blair held a letter in his hand, signed by Lincoln. “This was waiting for me when I came in from Silver Spring.”

  “I had no choice, Monty. Your father also agrees.”

  “I will write out my official resignation this afternoon. I see Seward’s hand at work.”

  Lincoln shook his head. “He has nothing to do with it. I let Chase go, and offended all th
e radicals. Ever since, they have been after me to let you go— Anyway, we must unite the party, and when it comes to a lot of folks, you and Frank are like a suit of red underwear to a bull.”

  “Then I go.”

  “Monty, if it could have been otherwise, I would keep you with me to the end. Your kindness to me has been uniform; and I am deeply grateful.”

  “As I am to you,” said Blair.

  “What will you do now?”

  “Make speeches for you. What else can I do?”

  “That is the most, certainly. I am grateful; and will not forget.” On that note, they parted.

  Hay entered the office. “Is it true Mr. Blair is resigning?”

  “Yes, John. It is true.”

  The moment that Frémont withdrew from the race, Blair was let go. Plainly, the Tycoon was now beginning to behave like Machiavelli; and about time, thought Hay. “You knew about Frémont already?”

  Lincoln nodded. “I was told last night. Mr. Stanton has just given me this.” Lincoln unfolded a telegram. “ ‘John G. Nicolay, unemployed, has been drafted into the army at New York City. Signed General Dix.’ ”

  “My God! Poor Nico. What do we do?”

  “We don’t do anything except keep quiet about it. I’ve sent word to Nicolay, through Dix, to buy himself, as secretly as possible, a substitute.”

  “Let’s hope Mr. Greeley doesn’t get word of this.”

  “He is the least of our problems now.” It was true. Ever since the disaster at Niagara Falls, Greeley had been all-out for Lincoln. In person, Hay had found the famous editor odd, but charming. Once it was clear that the peace-mission was nonsense—disavowed even by Jefferson Davis—Greeley had come around to Lincoln. The Tribune was now entirely pro-Lincoln; and had been so even before Atlanta—or B.A., as Nico now termed the dark ages of the Administration, while A.A. designated the new victorious era. It also had not hurt that Greeley had, somehow, got the impression that if Blair should leave the Cabinet, he would be the next Postmaster-General. In fact, when the Tycoon had been asked recently by a number of New Yorkers if he would consider Greeley, they had been told that, after all, another editor by the name of Benjamin Franklin had been pretty successful in the job. Greeley, who lusted for public office, had taken the bait; and his editorials now oozed honey.