Our General-in-Chief was racked with rheumatism, but he surveyed the District from an ambulance, and was disheartened by those Comanche yells. He had no one on hand, nothing but his Silver Grays, as he called them, old recruits from some earlier Indian war. They didn’t even know how to yell. The tents on the far side of the Potomac flapped in the wind like grounded white birds. I worried more about Mother than Willie and Tad, who could ride out this insurrection on the roofs. But Mary kept seeing my assassination; it traveled with her, a nightmare that meandered like a river’s bloody wake. Shadows grew out of my beard, my fingers were tall as a tent—Mary’s bosoms flew under her bodice like bowling balls.
General Scott insisted that she evacuate the capital with our two boys. He could insist until his head caught fire. Not even all the Secesh on the other side of the bridge could have told Mother what to do if she didn’t want to do it. Scott had cured her hysterical fit.
“General,” she said, with that Kentucky tartness of hers, “attend to your Silver Grays, and I will attend to my husband.”
Mother followed me often as she could, and the two boys became her accomplices. Tad would interrupt Cabinet meetings, sit on my lap, peruse every face, and then saunter out like a Comanche—not a Rebel in a butternut coat, but a real Comanche, who might attack you at your own peril, but wouldn’t have joined up with the Secesh. He’d race up and down the stairs, ring all the buzzers in the attic, and the servants would collect in a panic, believing the First Lady had summoned them. He had Mary’s hot temper and caprice. He’d stop a maid on the stairs and collect tribute from her, like a highwayman. He’d even harangue my ministers.
“Pay or die,” he’d growl, with a tin pistol that couldn’t have fired a plug of spit. No one dared disobey him, not even his Pa, who was nothing more than a captive President on that planet Tad had created in our halls. The District had tightened into a couple of staircases and an attic where he could count his coins. Willie never joined his brother’s escapades—he didn’t have Tad’s piratical streak.
Tad still had to contend with other pirates, like General Scott’s Silver Grays, who foraged in the deserted streets, stole whatever food they could, and decided to protect the White House on a whim. They camped out in the East Room, scratching their backs against the carpets. These recruits looked ferocious in their frontier uniforms, with feathers in their hair and war paint on their sunken cheeks—yet they serenaded Mary with their own gnarled voices. And it helped lift her. She forgot about the danger we were in—unprotected and utterly isolated from the North—and blushed near the Silver Grays.
“You gentlemen have a lot of sauce—serenading the President’s Lady.”
She brought them little gifts from the pantry, invited them into the Crimson Room, which was her parlor, and talked to them about their kin, while Mrs. Keckly served the last little cakes that were left. Mary was in her element now—she had an audience of raw old men who worshiped that Southern singsong in her voice.
“It’s kind of you to camp here and protect Mr. Lincoln and our little boys.”
They weren’t kind at all; they were bigger rascals than the butternut warriors across the bridge, but they couldn’t have menaced a flea. They didn’t even carry any cartridges, and I’d wager that their scalping knives had never breathed, and were kept in some snug portion of their pants. Meantime a pair of stragglers from a lone Massachusetts regiment snuck across the railroad bridge, wandered into the White House with the yellow eyes of wounded animals, and wolfed down whatever scraps we had.
I looked at them with bewilderment and muttered, “I don’t believe there is a North! It can’t exist. You Massachusetts boys are the only real thing left in the world!”
And just as the unholies were hitting hard, I heard some light thunder outside my window, that telltale rat-a-tat of regimental drums. I went to the window. I couldn’t see anything but a mountain of dust on the Ave, as locals loved to call Pennsylvania Avenue. The mountain of dust commenced to move. Then I could make out that thickening tread of an army—patches of blue emerging from the dust on their coats. The 7th New York had arrived. Somehow I couldn’t heed this parade. I’d lived with those Rebels a little too long—their piebald coats seemed much more real.
I scampered up to the roof with my telescope and tall hat. And what I saw stupefied me. The white tents had scattered like macabre trees on a windy plain. The dust cleared a little, and the dwarfs I had imagined with their red flags were child buglers; else it’s possible the dwarfs had disappeared and were replaced by children with wrinkled faces, their bugle cries much more plangent than the Rebel call. Black servants ran across the fields with piles of ammunition on their shoulders. The Parrott guns were gone, and there was a great flurry of butternut coats, and not a single one of the horses I saw had a rider. The horses leapt into dust clouds with their rippling flanks—every muscle as secure as silver. It was my first Rebel retreat.
24.
Spotted Ponies
CUT ME TO PIECES after what folks in the District started to say about Mary. They called her the Traitoress, just because some of her brothers and half brothers had decided to join the insurrection. Mrs. Keckly was kind enough to act as my secret agent in matters that concerned the welfare of my wife.
“They’re vicious,” she said, “these high-blood Washingtonians.”
Her nostrils flared up, but neither of us had the perspicacity or the power to keep my wife away from the bear traps those highfalutin ladies had set for her, or the traps she sometimes set for herself. The White House had fallen into ruin under President Buchanan and his niece. Miss Hallie had the finest chandeliers installed in the public rooms, but she paid no mind to the President’s quarters, which had all the idle charm of a second-rate hotel. The oilcloth on some of the floors creaked and was just about as unpredictable as a swollen sea; the walls were peeling, the lamps were chipped. The furniture looked like refugees of some old curiosity shop. And it troubled Mary’s own esteem.
Congress had set aside a whopping sum of twenty thousand dollars to prettify the Mansion, and she meant to eat into that fund as much she could. In May, after the District was secured, Mary decided to visit Philadelphia and New York with one of her little cousins and William Wood, our new commissioner of buildings. She was in some kind of duel with her mortal enemy, Miss Kate, who had already gone to Manhattan to buy carpets for her father’s E Street house.
Mary had put on her war bonnet—she was screaming for a fight. I’d kept her out of politics, she said, shoved her to one side. Mother was once my secretary of war and peace, but I would have been crucified had I allowed the First Lady to haggle with my Cabinet and General Scott. And she was wild to see Bob, as she always was. She’d visit him at the tail end of her shopping tour. I missed my child-wife after she left for the depot with all her sundries. I paced that creaky oilcloth in my office.
I found a pair of spotted horses in the White House stables after my wife returned from the trip—ponies they were, for Willie and Tad.
“Oh, they’re anonymous gifts,” she said.
I knew what anonymous meant. Mother had done some serious horse trading on her own, without considering how it might compromise me.
“Who gave them to you, Mary?”
We’d had our quarrels, but for the first time in our marriage she avoided my glance, like a scheming little girl.
“I can’t recall,” she said. “I was at a dinner with some bankers and I happened to mention that we might have to sell the manure in our stables—that’s how strapped we were.”
I wanted to slap her for such an outright lie, but I was haunted by the image of my father’s angry red face—like a poker iron that was piping hot. She shouldn’t have made up that tale about manure. Mother counterattacked, said I was handing out postmasterships and other prizes while we lived like paupers with holes in our carpets. I deflected her attack, or we would have had to discuss every damn scoundrel at our door.
“Now what did you promise t
hese men?”
“Nothing. I said they could write to me. They had my permission. They’re friends of Mr. Wood’s. And they would be obliged if Mr. Wood received a permanent appointment as commissioner of buildings.”
“And is that why you got the ponies? On the promise of that appointment?”
“I promised nothing,” she said.
I wanted to return the twin ponies to these bankers, but it would have made even more of a ruckus. And I didn’t want to undercut Mother’s rôle as Lady President. The boys would have been heartsick without their new ponies. I thought at least I’d get something, that Mother might have some news from our older boy.
“And what about Bob?” I had to ask. “Is he still enamored of Harvard?”
She looked away again, like a waif now, not a scheming child, as if I’d caught her in some skullduggery.
“Oh, I didn’t have time to see him. There were too many dinners, too many things to buy. And Bob just couldn’t break away from his classes. But he promised to come down to see us—the moment he has a chance.”
Hadn’t realized how much I’d been looking forward to hearing about her visit with Bob, the cream cakes they had, the lobster bisque, the chats with his tutors and all his chums. What could have held her in Manhattan? Midnight suppers with War Democrats? Yachting parties with bankers and publishing tycoons? Bottles of perfume and swatches of drapery from some owner of a dry goods emporium? She’d always made time for Bob. Manhattan must have been too much of a thrill, even for Mother, who had to use up some of her charm to secure twin ponies for Willie and Tad.
25.
The Picnic War
HE WAS A general with a gigantic appetite—could fart like a furnace and eat six roasted quail at one sitting—but didn’t have much of an appetite for war. He’d rather feast at Gautier’s with his family and their brass spurs, or spend the night at his favorite bawdyhouse. Half the town seemed to know his battle plans; that’s how many Rebel spies we had in the District. There were no secret maneuvers in the dark. McDowell left in the early morning, on the sixteenth of July, under a blazing sun, and he didn’t leave alone with his thirty thousand troops. He had a wagon train of followers—six United States Senators, ten Congressmen, a gaggle of journalists and Washington wives with their own carriages and supplies—umbrellas, opera glasses, and picnic baskets. Every available wagon had been hired in advance of the battle. The capital’s caterers charged a fortune for the simplest baskets and hampers they had, with or without a bottle of wine. There was a kind of giddy joy that we were stopping at Manassas Junction to duel with the Rebels a bit and then march all the way into Dixie Land. I couldn’t deal with romance in this first real engagement of the war. We had one mission—to dislodge the Rebels from their works behind the meandering mud of Bull Run Creek and break their will, else the insurrection would fall into some distant romance and never end.
I despised a wagon train that could turn war into an opera in the countryside, but I couldn’t discourage all the carriages. The excitement of the ladies was like a terrible plague. They’d be out picnicking while men died. But the Senators had their war committees, the journalists their sketchbooks, the photographers their Shadow Boxes, and I was back home in the White House with Mary and the boys, far from the thunder and flying red spit.
For one darn moment I wished I was aboard that caravan, moving into Virginia, past the deserted farmhouses and dusty roads in the wake of war. There weren’t only fools and Senators on the wagon train; there were soldiers’ sweethearts and wives, with bandages and rum, and vivandières—young female sutlers—carrying fresh pies and the colors of some company that had adopted one or two of them. Yet I didn’t want to be on some hill overlooking the battle around Bull Run, with all the Senators and the Washington wives with their opera glasses and roast chicken, like spectators at a bloody game of bowls.
The despatches that came in over the wire talked of one little victory after the other, as the Rebels were pushed back deeper and deeper into the woods. No one talked of bedlam, and the impossible tug of war. And that’s what scratched at me, all the hurrahing and the hoopla. There were runners who posted each new despatch on the Willard’s front door and read the despatches aloud while folks predicted McDowell and his men would break through Manassas Junction and arrive in Richmond tomorrow. They dreamt of Mr. Jeff Davis roped up on the White House lawn like a monkey on display.
The Rebel yell couldn’t have had much shrift at Manassas. We all expected a rout. I went to the Navy Yard with Willie and Tad, to talk with the yard’s commander about our gunboats. Sailors saluted us as we went into that maze of sheds and dismantled ships. Willie and Tad wanted to carouse among the torpedoes, but I couldn’t carouse. There was a message from Secretary Seward waiting for me at the White House.
The day is lost.
I couldn’t make much sense of it all. McDowell had smashed the Rebel line. How could battle lines leap around like that? I didn’t rush to headquarters. I waited a bit. General Scott wasn’t snoring on his gigantic couch. He looked very grave in his gold buttons and feathered hat. The Rebel cavalry arrived from nowhere, swarmed out of the woods in a lightning raid—like ghosts, it seems, and swept our boys right out of the battle. Some of the Rebs were wearing Union blue. And that’s what befuddled our boys, who expected the strict neutrality of butternut or blue that would allow any bluecoat to leap right into our lines. Others swore that these diabolical cavalrymen were all black. I dared not believe it.
Scott explained the tactics behind that puzzler. Officers often rode into battle with their servants on the same horse. And such servant might thrash about with a wooden saber and blind some Ohio boy. I’d never understand modern war. Black Hawk might have scalped soldiers and civilians, but he wouldn’t have dressed his braves in soldier blue, or had his own white prisoners and slaves carry toy tomahawks. He wouldn’t have demeaned a man like that.
Scott read one of the despatches. “The routed troops will not re-form. Save Washington and the remnants of this army.”
I’m not sure how long I stayed at the War Department, with McDowell’s wires recounting the chaos. His army had become a confused mob. Soldiers fled with that broken caravan of Senators and Washington wives in what was soon known as the Great Skedaddle. Some of the boys must have gone berserk; they were carrying dead men’s boots in their arms like leather babies while they hopped around on hardscrabble with their toes peeking out of torn socks. A drummer boy with a bloody eye beat a wild tattoo that sounded like a devil’s dance; no human could have marched or run to that rat-a-tat. Women and wounded men dropped near the roadside, begging for a drink of water. That dazed caravan passed them right by. Soldiers sang their regimental songs in a hoarse whisper, but couldn’t recollect most of the words. A Congressman was captured and led away to Richmond, in a wooden cage no less. Fancy hats, jars, umbrellas, and opera glasses were strewn along the road, as grim reminders of that picnic war, but it was even harsher than that—crinolines and umbrellas caught fire in all the panic, and one of the ladies burned to death in her gown.
I didn’t have to wait around for any more of those despatches.
I returned to the White House. It had the familiarity of a morgue. I could hear the rattle of ambulances filled with wounded men. I saw them from my window—listless, half-dead men leaning over the sides of ambulances, like the parched crew of a whaler, wearing knotted handkerchiefs on their heads. I went out in the middle of the night to meet with some of the soldiers, giving them cups of water and whatever grub I had. Felt as if I myself had managed this war with a picnic basket, watching the battle at Manassas on some imaginary hill.
I could hear the random roar of rain on the roof, like the drumrolls of an incoherent army. Soldiers kept returning in tattered coats; a whole lot of them limped into Washington without boots. Old Fuss & Feathers arrived early at the White House. His eyes were swollen, and his hands shook. He stuttered in the cavernous tomb of the East Room. Took him a whole minute to coll
ect himself. He wiped the spittle from his tongue. As the nation’s General-in-Chief he’d assumed the right to assemble Mary and the boys. He told her flat out that the Rebels could be rushing to Washington this minute. It was no longer safe for her to be here with Willie and Tad.
“Mrs. Lincoln, I’ll have members of my own guard ride with you to Philadelphia, if you prefer.”
Mary was wearing her war bonnet with strings she had knotted with her own hands. She’d made a tent for Willie and Tad, clutched them under her shawl, as if that little dark tunnel might deliver them from the Secesh. She was worn through, hadn’t slept since Manassas, and couldn’t even answer the General. Mary turned to me.
“Will you go with us, Mr. Lincoln?” she asked. She knew I’d never skedaddle, not after the rout at Bull Run, with soldiers caught in the drizzling rain. But I was a little formal in front of Old Fuss & Feathers.
“Most assuredly, Mrs. Lincoln, I will not leave at this juncture.”
She was just as formal, though her eyes darted, and I could sense she was at the limit of whatever little control she had left.
“Then I will not leave you at this juncture,” she said, and marched upstairs with my two boys under that tent of hers.
26.
Yib
THE WHITE HOUSE had its own schoolroom, but the boys were always playing tricks on their teacher, swiping his hat or setting one of his shoes on fire. That damn school became a sore spot between Mrs. Keckly and me, and the subject of our first altercation. The children of our servants often played with Willie and Tad, and were part of their own little band, the Union Jacks. And once, after this wild band took possession of the attic, Keckly came to see me. I was in my office, scratching around with the kitten she gave Tad as a gift, though that kitten, I suspect, was as much a gift for Tad’s Paw. She must have sniffed my isolation, that singular loneliness of a Commander-in-Chief after Bull Run.
I Am Abraham Page 19