by Gore Vidal
“And nothing to save him but a horse tethered across the way.” Spangler shook his head. “He’ll never get off that platform alive.”
“That’s if he ever gets onto it.” Ordinarily, Wilkes made excellent sense, even if he often sounded as if he were acting in a play that he hadn’t yet learned. But, in the last few days, Wilkes’s speeches had begun to alarm David. It was plain that Wilkes was perfectly capable of killing Old Abe in front of the whole world, and then getting himself shot with a last testament to be published by his sister to whom he had given, he had told David, a sealed envelope to be opened only at his death. David was dazzled by the splendor of it all. This was history. This was life lived to the full, and to a thunderous climax. But he was not entirely certain that he wanted to be a part of what, after all, was not David Herold’s apotheosis so much as the unique death scene of the world’s youngest star.
Booth’s quarry was now seated in the gallery of the Senate, chin resting on his hand, and face expressionless. Below him, in front of the Vice-President’s chair, the Vice-President-elect of the United States, Governor Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, stood, blind drunk.
A one-time tailor, Johnson was a cleanshaven, square-jawed, severe-looking man. Seward had served with him in the Senate before the war and always found him affable if somewhat dim. But neither the face—scarlet—nor the manner—wild—was dim today. Behind Johnson sat the outgoing Vice-President, Mr. Hamlin, who did not seem to know which way to look. Just before the ceremony, Hamlin had whispered to Seward that Johnson had been drunk ever since he got to Washington. As Johnson was only just recovered from typhoid fever, the combination of whiskey and physical disability had proven lethal. The members of the Supreme Court, to Johnson’s left and right, all looked stunned, save Chase, who sat as one graven in marble and thus indifferent to the backwoods oratory that now flowed from Johnson’s lips.
The distinguished audience, glittering with gold and silver braid, with full-dress swords and epaulets and feathered hats, with bright stars and chains, was now drawn into Johnson’s confidence. He was, he pointed out four times, plebian. At the fourth use of the word, Seward whispered to Welles, who was at his side, “Surely, he protests too much.”
“Disgusting,” said Welles. This seemed the general view. A low murmur began in the chamber as the speech went on, and on. Although Lincoln did not change expression, Seward noticed that the President had begun to contract in his chair, as if he were willing himself elsewhere. Meanwhile, Hamlin was now visibly and sharply tugging at Johnson’s coattail.
Undaunted, Johnson shrieked, “Tennessee has bent the tyrant’s rod! She has broken the yoke of slavery!” The secretary of the Senate, Forney, now moved, tactfully, toward Johnson, a humble smile set on his lips. “No state can go out of this Union!” proclaimed Johnson.
“That is true orthodoxy,” said Seward, enjoying Welles’s horror, not to mention Stanton’s constant refrain: “The man is crazed.”
“And, moreover, Congress cannot eject a state from the Union!” The loud bray went on until, in a sudden concerted movement, Vice-President, Chief Justice and Senate secretary managed to swing Johnson around, so that his broad back was to the distinguished assembly, thus making it possible for the chalk-faced Chase to administer the oath of office. But unwilling to let go forever a moment so marvelous, Johnson turned once more to the Chamber and, holding up the Bible, he roared, “I kiss this book in the face of my nation of the United States!”
By then, the President was halfway up the aisle. As he passed Seward, the premier said, “I believe that Mr. Johnson is overcome with emotion on his return, in so dramatic a manner, to the Senate.”
Both Lincoln’s eyebrows were, for an instant, raised; then he turned to Major French, who was to lead him onto the portico. “Do not let Johnson speak outside,” he said. Then the President left the chamber, and Seward and Cabinet followed.
In the rotunda, they all paused; and waited to be joined by the Supreme Court—and Andrew Johnson, assisted by Forney. “Your hat, Mr. Vice-President,” said Forney, giving the statesman his tall silk hat. Johnson took the hat and with a beatific smile put it not on his head but over his face.
“Disgusting,” said Stanton.
“But not unwise, considering,” said Seward, as they marched between the lines of policemen onto the portico; where a cold wind now blew and the sky was mottled with leaden clouds.
Since Booth had been unable to find a seat, he stood in a crowd at the foot of a statuary group, some thirty feet above the government of the United States. Booth’s hand was in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat, fingers wrapped about the stock of a pistol.
As Lincoln rose to speak, he presented a perfect, unmissable target. But Booth was distracted, as was everyone, by the sudden emergence of the sun. The President now stood in a circle of dazzling unexpected light.
“Fellow countrymen!” The familiar high voice echoed and reverberated in the open plaza. From where David stood, he could just make out Lincoln’s right hand, in which he held a half-sheet of foolscap on which his speech had been printed in two columns. “At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first.”
A short speech, thought Seward, comfortably looking out across the plaza at the dark umbrellas, tall silk hats, low military hats, bright bayonets. It was hard to believe that four years had passed since last they were on this platform. Of course, with age, time appears to go more swiftly than it does in youth. Even so, Seward half expected to see baleful old Winfield Scott in his carriage on the hill opposite, as well as young—what was his name?—the Zouave who was killed at the start of the war. He had been such a hero. But since then there had been so many killed that Seward could no longer take seriously the idea of anyone’s death. Doubtless, men must have responded in such a numbed fashion to the Great Plague of Europe. As for political survival, only two members of the original Cabinet were still in office, himself and Welles. Even the newcomer Fessenden would soon be gone: he had been reelected to the Senate, and his place taken by Hugh McCulloch, who …
Seward had now begun to listen to—as opposed to hear—Lincoln’s speech. “While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation.” How seriously, thought Seward with wonder, they had taken those arrogant, foolish Virginians. “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.”
Suddenly, there was a slow but gathering wave of applause across the plaza. Lincoln stopped, as if unprepared for this response. He looked out over the audience until there was again silence. Then, in the silence, he continued to wait until Seward feared that he had lost his place. But Lincoln had not lost but found the place to say the four words that brought tears even to Seward’s eye. “And the war came.”
At the back, Hay blew his nose. He had not seen the final speech, nor had Nicolay. They had studied the scraps of pasteboard that had come their way, but it had all been a puzzle, rather like the war itself.
“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.”
Mary sat, with Robert at her side; and listened, carefully, as she rarely did to speeches since most speakers were, as her Kentucky father had always said, mere bags of wind. “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.” Mary liked the way that the President constantly linked North and South as both or as each. “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the swea
t of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.” Mary began to weep. Had not Ben said the same thing to her at Mrs. Laury’s last séance? “The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.”
“The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses.’ ” In his black silk robe, Chase murmured along with the President the Biblical text. He had always taken the President for an infidel, but now, on this solemn occasion, Lincoln seemed ready to revert to the true religion of their fathers. Yet it was odd that although the President now spoke freely of God and the Almighty, he never once mentioned His Son, who was crucified and born again. Chase wondered if, perhaps, Lincoln saw himself as that Son; but then, quickly, he dismissed the thought. Lincoln’s essential simplicity and humility combined with a total absence of the historical—much less religious—imagination made such an ambition beyond him. Lincoln was cunning mediocrity at its most, to Chase, dispiriting.
Booth’s forefinger was now on the trigger to his pistol. It was nothing to die upon a stage. In fact, it was slightly ludicrous, as his father had once notoriously demonstrated. But to actually kill and be killed in such a place as this and at such a time …
The voice rang out, louder and clearer than its slight echo from across the plaza. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the war we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
The President put down the speech. The applause roared all about him. Booth aimed the pistol in his pocket at this most visible of targets; and pressed the trigger.
The President turned to Chase, who had risen, open Bible in his hand. In a loud voice, Chase administered the oath. He had practised the short speech so many times that he did not once lisp. Then, for the second time, hand on the Bible, Lincoln declared with a new resonance, darkened by all the blood that had been shed, thought Chase, the famous oath writ in Heaven: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend …” This time, Hay noted, the key word “defend” was not so strident as the first time. “… the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”
As the cannon boomed a twenty-one gun salute, Booth’s fingers inside his pocket examined the pistol: he had forgotten to release the safety catch.
TEN
ON THE evening of March 24, 1865, the River Queen cast anchor in the James River off City Point. On the deck stood the President, Mrs. Lincoln and Tad, who held a pistol in one hand and an American flag in the other. All around them ships of every size rode at anchor while the river bank was massed with arms and provisions. On a bluff, an improvised city of tents and huts and sheds was visible in the light of fires and kerosene lamps. From the main deck, Captain Robert Lincoln waved to his parents; then he hurried off.
“I expect he’s going to fetch General Grant.” Lincoln pointed to the bluff above the river port. “Grant’s headquarters are up there.”
“Is Robert a real captain?” asked Tad, aiming his revolver at the Commander-in-Chief.
“Of course, he is, Taddie,” said Lincoln. “And don’t aim guns at people like that.”
In due course, General and Mrs. Grant and Robert were rowed alongside the River Queen. “How common she looks,” murmured Mary.
“Now, Mother.” Mary did not like the way that Lincoln had used exactly the same tone with her that he had used with Tad.
Mary embraced Robert while Tad climbed onto his shoulders. Grant shook hands with the President first; then with Mary. She noted that he did not look either of them in the eye. On the other hand, Julia Grant was not able to look anyone in the eye since one eye was permanently turned toward her aquiline nose while the other looked as if it would like to escape the wild gaze of its neighbor.
Lincoln led the Grants into the salon, where all the lamps had been lit. “We were poisoned by the ship’s water on the way down,” said Lincoln. “But we got us some decent water at Fortress Monroe.”
“The water’s foul here,” said Grant. “We boil it.” Mary wondered if Grant ever actually drank a substance so insipid. In the full light of the salon she studied him carefully. He appeared to be clear-eyed and sober. Of course, the presence of Mrs. Grant was known to be a guarantee of sobriety.
“Welcome to City Point, Mrs. Lincoln.” Julia Grant was gracious in a way that Mary did not entirely like. It was as if City Point—and the army—were hers.
Mary smiled and bowed; and did not answer. Lincoln wanted to go ashore right then and there, and though Grant told him there was little to see at night, the President insisted.
Mary was then left alone with Mrs. Grant, who proceeded to make herself at home by sitting down on the only sofa in the salon. Mary said nothing; but she was certain that her glare was sufficient to convey to Mrs. Grant the enormity of her breach of etiquette. No one could sit, unbidden, in the presence of the First Lady. Slowly, and silently, Mary lowered herself onto the sofa. The two ladies were now so close to each other that their skirts overlapped.
Mary sat erect, looking straight ahead. After a moment’s uneasy silence, Mrs. Grant moved from the sofa to a small chair opposite. “Did you have a pleasant journey?” asked Mrs. Grant.
“Yes,” said Mary.
There was another, somewhat longer, silence; then Mrs. Grant said, “I believe General Sherman arrives tomorrow. He comes by sea from North Carolina. It will be the first that we have seen of him since he took Atlanta and Savannah.”
“That will be nice for you,” said Mary. But then she could not resist adding, “I hope he will explain why three months after he occupied Atlanta, he then burned the city down.”
“He thought it was necessary, to protect his rear as he moved north.”
“Obviously, he must have thought it necessary. But he has made negotiating a peace much more difficult for my husband.”
“I do not think, Mrs. Lincoln, that there will be a negotiated peace now. The war will not end until my husband has taken Richmond.”
“How often have we heard that!” Mary gave Julia Grant a wide smile; and blinked her eyes, to show what a good humor she was in. She was pleased to see Mrs. Grant grow somewhat red in the face. A highly satisfactory silence settled in the salon; and remained settled until Tad came rushing in to say that he had been ashore. “But I came right back. We were stopped, Mr. Crook and me, by soldiers who said, ‘Who goes there?’ and ‘What’s the password?’ and things like that. When I said, ‘It’s me,’ they didn’t know me. So I told Mr. Crook we better come back here before they shoot us.”
“Such a … charming boy,” said Mrs. Grant.
“Yes,” said Mary, aware of the calculated hesitation before the adjective. “We have met your oldest boy,” she added; and characterized that supremely plain child not at all.
Three days later Lincoln, Grant, Sherman and Admiral Porter met in the ship’s salon while Mary took to her bed with certain preliminary signs of The Headache.
“I cannot tell you gentlemen what a pleasure it is to get away from Washington,” said Lincoln.
“That’s why I asked you, sir,” said Grant. “I had a feeling you might want to take a trip, and get some rest.”
“And what more restful place to be than at the front?” Lincoln smiled.
“We expect Sheridan any time now.” Grant had placed a map of Virginia on a table. “He is making an arc from the valley here to Harrison’s Landing there. At the moment he is crossing the James River just below us. Once he and his cavalry arrive, we should be able to take Petersburg—at last.”
“At last,” Lincoln repeated. He turned to Sherman. “Certainly, when your army joins that of General Grant, it will be all over.”
“Yes, sir.” Sherman was a slight wiry man, with uncombed wiry red hair and the pale eyes of, suitably, a bird of prey. “There’s nothing left of the rebellion, except Johnston in North Carolina and Lee up here, and Lee can’t have more than fifty thousand men.”
“So we outnumber him three to one right now.” Lincoln looked at Grant, who nodded. “Then there will be one more battle, at least.”
Grant nodded, again.
“It would be good to avoid it, if we can. There’s been so much bloodshed.” Lincoln turned to Grant, “When Richmond falls, or even before, what is to prevent Lee and his army from getting on the cars and going south to North Carolina, and joining up with Johnston? They could live off the country down there and go on fighting us for years.”
“For one thing, sir, they won’t be able to take the cars.” Sherman’s voice was light but emphatic.
“What’s to prevent them? They still control at least two railroad lines to the south and to the west.”
“They don’t control them where we have been, and we’ve been everywhere now except this last stretch from North Carolina to here.”
“Yes,” said Lincoln. “You have been there but you are now not there. You are here, or you soon will be. Well, the railroads are still where they were.”
“Oh, the roads are still there,” said Sherman, “but the rails are gone. We have torn them up. They can’t be used.”
“It’s not hard to put the rails and the ties back down again. We did that at Annapolis when the war was new.”
Sherman chuckled. “I don’t think you understand my boys. What was wood they burned, and what was metal they put in the fire and made corkscrews of. There’s not a railroad out of Virginia that Lee could ever use.”
Lincoln whistled, comically. “You don’t do things by halves, do you?”
“No, sir,” said Sherman. “You remember when we first met four years ago?”
“Of course I do.” Lincoln spoke somewhat too quickly. “With your brother Senator Sherman, wasn’t it?”