Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy

by David Gatewood (ed)

  By then, I had absorbed their expectations and managed a passable imitation to accompany my affected accent. Before long, my version of Mr. Lincoln was more authentic and familiar to them than the Kentuckian had ever been when inhabiting the President’s role himself. They had known him for so short a time that any shortcomings in the quality of my performance as his understudy went entirely unnoticed.

  My harshest, most dangerous critic was also my least effective one. But given Willie’s recent death and her well-affirmed affinity for dramaturgy, Mary Todd’s claims that I was not her husband were shunted aside. Few could abide such melodrama in a time of war, their patience for personal histrionics already worn thin by Mr. Lincoln’s genuine—and now my affected—inconsolability for a dead son.

  So it was that Mary posed little threat to my deception. She screamed and raved and ranted, first for Willie’s absence, then in her hysteria that I was not her husband. When threatened repeatedly with the sanitarium, she retreated into oblivion, one sip of laudanum at a time. This proved yet another tragic aspect of the affair, one for which I hold no measure of pride; but it, too, was a necessary evil to enable my covert mission for the French to succeed. I took great pains to treat Mary with kindness, but she often made that difficult. And after a time, we settled into the familiar yet estranged intimacy of a couple who says little to one another, publicly or otherwise.

  As I say, I at first prosecuted my mission for Napoleon III with utmost devotion to the cause. It was my every intention to weaken the Union enough to ensure a Southern victory, even if that might ultimately require the Confederacy to go to war with France. From what I knew first-hand of the South’s fighting spirit—and given my confident conclusion that her Northern neighbor would, in the end, choose to side with the new nation on its southern border over a foreign invader—I reasoned that France’s footprint would be a passing thing on the American continent. I therefore saw my support of the French as a convenience only; a means of securing Southern independence first, with the ramifications of that course to be dealt with at a later time.

  Future history may marvel at how the South stood so long against an aggressor with more resources, men, and industry. Well, it is said that when a ship sinks to the bottom, one must always lay blame for the tragedy on the head of her captain, no matter the actual cause of the disaster. And the Union Army was a massive ship, albeit composed of men rather than wood; and Mr. Lincoln had invested its captaincy with the inept Gen. George McClellan. The general had superbly trained the Army of the Potomac in the early days of the war, but as a commander of Union forces, he was no match for the great Southern minds that stood arrayed against him.

  Still, after I replaced Mr. Lincoln, I soon replaced Gen. McClellan as well; in fact, I took command of the army myself for several months. It would have stood me well in my covert cause to retain such an inadequate commander as Gen. McClellan to captain the nation’s ship of men, but much pressure from my cabinet and lampooning in the newspapers forced otherwise. I could only push playing the fool so far, especially given the necessity of playacting grief at the same time. Impeachment loomed constantly like a specter, and there were times I feared a coup d’état by Seward and Stanton and the others. Appeasing them by replacing Gen. McClellan was the price I paid for retaining their expertise in matters of state—to which my talents and knowledge extended only as far as my briefings by my recruiters. A short walk indeed, that.

  Thereafter I began to rotate Union commanders as often as I could without bringing undue suspicion upon my actions. I was particularly proud at the time—and my handlers at the Sûreté were as well, I must say—when at last I placed the ineffective McClellan back in command to pursue the most important endeavor of the war. His advance up the Virginia Peninsula—if I might use that term, advance, ironically, given his paltry effort—was as lackadaisical and lackluster as I had hoped it would be. I do believe the Southern generals made sport of our “Young Napoleon,” another ironic—yet strangely appropriate given my patrons—name by which he was known. His second nickname, “Little Mac,” always seemed more representative to me of his generalship in the field, however.

  But I digress. As time passed and I replaced McClellan with Burnside, then Burnside with Hooker, then Hooker with Meade, some began to compare my executive strategy with a game of musical chairs. In each case I had good reason; and all my actions seemed dedicated, on the surface at least, to the promise of a Northern victory.

  The South—with its more talented general staff and absolute desperation to rid itself of its unwanted houseguests in blue—took more chances and fought more effectively for the greater share of the war. This claim is not meant to tarnish the sacrifice nor call into question the bravery and dedication of the Northern soldier. To the contrary, I return to my analogy of a ship’s captain and point out again that, no matter how valiant its crew, ultimately the ship sails only as well as her captain commands. In short—and all to the acquittal of my mission—the South simply out-generaled the North in many respects, despite the distinct and unassailable bravery of the common Northern soldier.

  I had maintained my diligence to the Southern (and French) cause for the greater part of a year and a half, my every effort aimed at stymieing a Union victory. Then, a change of conviction was effected in me, not unlike Paul’s on the road to Damascus. It was, to the point, a sudden thing.

  Though quick in execution, my conversion manifested as a reversal of the Apostle Paul’s circumstance. If Paul was struck blind, I suppose I was struck sighted. And my illumination occurred not on the road to Damascus, but on the War’s long and tortuous road through a destination much nearer to home: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

  As to the reasons for my change of heart, I can only speculate. Perhaps I played my role so long and so well that I began to believe as Mr. Lincoln had, even as I inhabited his political and personal skin. I have never been a particularly religious man, as any number of saloon keepers and brothel matriarchs in New Orleans can attest. But I’ve always been fond of the Book of Psalms. Perchance that portion of ourselves that hears God speaking and remembers, on occasion, to pursue His teachings rather than our own selfish ends—that is to say, our moral conscience—was awakened in me somehow.

  But as to the event itself—one evening in July of 1863, after retiring to my room, I opened up the Book of Psalms and turned, as if guided by a Divine Hand, to Psalm 67. In part, the psalm tells us to follow the way of God and spread it to all nations as a way of reducing the suffering of the multitudes. As it happens, just upon that day I had, as Commander in Chief, been reviewing an account of the dead and wounded from Gettysburg.

  Although I had of course seen reports of casualties throughout my time on the stage as President, something about that engagement—how it began as a small affair, then escalated, then culminated in so many brave men, North and South, losing their lives in the brutal folly of that final, desperate charge across open ground—all of it worked on me like no other bloody battle—not Antietam Creek, not Fredericksburg—had been able to do. As I reviewed that butcher’s bill, the words of Psalm 67 pounded in my head like a preacher’s fist on the podium.

  After reading those reports and seeing Mr. Brady’s photographs of the bloated bodies of young men seeming to reach for God’s Grace with rigored hands, I realized that my part was not, after all, that of a mere actor in a covert play. I was that Prime Mover of events that were, in fact, within my control. I was manipulating history for no better reason than my disdain for Northern Aggression and my hopes that France, with its broader shoulders, could help my fledgling Confederate States of America take its place upon the world stage as Mr. Shakespeare’s Undiscovered Country of the future.

  Whether by divine inspiration or not, I realized in that moment—that single, fateful moment—that my course in aiding the French was precisely wrong. So many multitudes had suffered and died as a direct result of my deception. The thought of continuing in my course as the Prime Mover in this manifes
t American tragedy became anathema to me. And, should I ever pause to question that revelation, I have this portion of the psalm written on a paper I keep inside my hat and reference on occasion of need.

  That Your way may be known on earth,

  Your salvation among all nations.

  Yes, Gettysburg struck me sighted in a way no other scene in our national conflict had before. I became not so much a champion of the North—though many would call me now a traitor to the South—as I became a believer in the constancy of the Union, a political stitching together of a patchwork of states as a bulwark against such tribal inhumanities as I now saw commonly demonstrated on the continent.

  I recalled the ideals of France’s Revolution of 1789:

  Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité.

  Were these the values I saw Napoleon III—more closely resembling, in his ambitions, his conqueror-namesake than a champion of Republican values—expressing through my actions? I concluded they most assuredly were not. That my illumination came as the result of reflection upon the values of the French Revolution… the irony was not lost on me.

  A veil had been raised from my eyes. I was disenthralled from my previous delusion. And, now sighted, I could not un-see. Now educated, I could not un-know.

  Thus, I had two choices: I could announce my part in the conspiracy to my Vice President and Cabinet and let the Constitution care for those for whom it was written. Or, I could continue the pretense, but now with a new and greater purpose. The preservation—rather than destruction—of the Union.

  The decision was not as hard as one might imagine. I looked back on my part in furthering French ambition and was appalled. I had but one course: to un-do what I had done. And I could trust no other—no person or happenstance—to accomplish it for me. Thus it was not only for reasons of self-interest that I elected not to confess my sins to the nation—though I cannot deny that this course of action spared me the horrors of incarceration and, no doubt, execution. No, this was my mission now—to remedy all that I had caused ill before. No one could accomplish it but me.

  I now began a second wolf’s charade wrapped within the sheep’s clothing of the first. Throughout my brief career as Chief Executive, I had kept contact with my French handlers in the Sûreté through actors that played upon the stage in Washington. Who better to effect disguise and sleight of hand than passing troupes of dedicated deceivers?

  One actor of some repute in particular, a Mr. Booth, became my principal liaison through the Southern connection to the French in Mexico. Instead of explaining how I was advancing Napoleon III’s agenda by weakening the Union, I now found myself explaining how fate was throwing dice in the Union’s favor. Such was the case on the day after Gettysburg, appropriately enough on the 4th of July, when Gen. Ulysses Grant took Vicksburg. Of a sudden, a rolling tide of gray that had seemed about to overwhelm the North turned upon itself and slaked slowly back into the sea as Bobby Lee retreated across the Rappahannock.

  Despite this upturn in the fortunes of the North, my handler gave me leeway to weather fate’s breeze for the time being, having no apparent cause to suspect my duplicity.

  Months passed, and in this time, despite a Confederate victory at Chickamauga, I believe Mr. Booth began to get suspicious. His debriefing of my actions to further his cause became more pointed. His manner, less cordial. The South was bleeding, he said. It would not last another year, he claimed. Why was I arming Negroes and injecting the idea of race as a moral cause into the war?

  He was referring, partly, to the Emancipation Proclamation of the year before. When I first championed it, I was still an agent for the French. My reasoning had been, what better way to sap the strength of the North than to advance a cause for which half its own people—and all the South—had little stomach? More dissension in the North could only help the South, no? But after Gettysburg, as with all else, I began to see the moral rightness of the cause I had used only as a distraction before.

  Liberty, equality, fraternity.

  Applied to all.

  I realized the South could not sustain itself with such a large force of its population clapped in irons, motivated only by the whip. Thus, in the month following Gettysburg, I met with Mr. Douglass, and my ears opened to the voices of those who argued for arming Negroes to fight for the freedom of their race.

  By the fall of 1863, whenever we met in secret, Booth’s suspicions moved from pointed inquiries to barbed criticisms. I reassured him that my first strategy was the correct one. Bringing the Negro to the central point of the cause was the easiest way to undermine support for the war in the North. And that, again, could only help the fortunes of the South.

  Though he seemed unmoved by my ratiocination, perhaps Booth found himself like that Southern gambler I referenced earlier, whose reserve of chips is low but his need to win made all the greater by that very circumstance. Committed to his course and with no understudy in the wings, he was compelled to leave me onstage.

  Nevertheless, I began to fear he knew me as the turncoat I was and might seek to end my life. In November—perhaps because Providence has an ironic sense of humor—I was asked to give remarks upon the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg to honor the Union’s fallen. So, when I was asked to speak at the ceremony—an invitation I could by no means turn down, either practically or personally, given my newfound devotion to the idea of reuniting the Union—I decided brevity was the better part of bravery and kept my remarks short.

  I drafted the words on the train to the ceremony, though creating them was a bit like growing corn in a field that has suffered drought for a season. To the point: my mind was fallow. And so as the train rumbled, I recalled my change of heart—of my inspiration by French values, themselves motivated by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. That gave me the lead, as the newspapermen say, for my speech. My commitment to preserving the Union, despite all my previous efforts to see it ended, gave me the body. And my desire to reconcile both opponents—bloodied, bruised brothers who are, nevertheless, still family—stitched all of the pieces together.

  After the event, I felt this rather improvised speech inadequate at a mere two minutes compared to Mr. Everett’s two-hour tribute, but concern for my own safety, I admit, ruled my judgment in curbing its length. Mr. Everett was a much more proficient orator, for a certainty, so allowing him to sit atop the playbill seemed most agreeable to everyone.

  By last year, 1864, I determined that my earlier strategy of rotating generals—so as to keep any one of them from properly learning a thing that might secure future victories—had done its work too well. Rosecrans’s defeat at Chickamauga was the proof of that. But when all the pigs in the pen are ugly, the prettiest sow stands out as the débutante. And such was the case with Ulysses Grant.

  After Forts Henry and Donelson in the west earned him the nickname “Unconditional Surrender”; after the siege of Vicksburg, where his tenacity proved what waiting can achieve—in contrast to McClellan, who seemed content to sit and wait to no proper end whatsoever; after Chattanooga, where his thickheadedness, as much as his troops’ courage, swept the Rebels from their positions on the high ground; after, in short, victory seemed to become a habit with Gen. Grant, I appointed him General in Chief of the Army.

  Though some argued against my decision on the grounds that Grant had a reputation as a drunkard, I answered them with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek: “Should a disproportionate love for alcohol make this man so effective on the battlefield, might I suggest the War Department requisition whiskey for the entire army?”

  Grant began pressing the South on all fronts. The Wilderness. Spotsylvania. Cold Harbor. He threw Union boys at Southern lines with a grim determination to end the war, one way or another. As if, perhaps, the fighting would end when both sides merely ran out of men to send to the slaughter pen.

  Booth was insane with rage each time we met in the summer of ’64. At every turn he questioned my commitment to my mission. It took all the skills I’d
learned as a politician since replacing Mr. Lincoln to hold his wolf’s teeth at arm’s length. On one occasion that very summer, I barely escaped what I firmly believe was the Sûreté’s attempt to relieve themselves of my burdensome presence.

  That August was hot and sweltering, and as we so often did, we stayed a few miles away from the White House at the Lincoln Cottage at Soldiers’ Home. Late one night, not much in advance of midnight, as I was riding my favorite horse, Old Abe, a shot reported not fifty yards hence. I felt a thump up top, and my stovepipe hat flew off my head. Abe, like his rider, deigned not to linger, and we took off across the field, the imposter upon his back more prostrate than presidential.

  I related the story to my good friend Mr. Lamon, but cast it as a simple accident, perhaps by a hunter, who must have mistaken my bobbing shadow for a hoot owl; or so I said. Mr. Lamon expressed his concern that it had, indeed, been an assassination attempt, but I assured him surely not, laughingly asserting that bullets cost money but ballots are free.

  He was unconvinced by my levity, and I must admit, so was I. But I was determined neither to let the assassin gain satisfaction nor to let my countrymen suffer anxiety for my sake by hearing of the event in the newspapers. Nevertheless, when traveling near the cottage in the future, I did so in a carriage, surrounded by boys in blue.

  But time grows short, and I have rambled on. Mrs. Lincoln has made plans for us this evening. Whether she has finally accepted the reality I have staged these past few years, I confess I cannot tell. But I can say, for better or worse, she seems now to accept me in the role of her husband, if not as the actual man. Given all the suffering I have caused that woman, I will not disappoint her by missing the performance tonight. Not now that all is done and the war is over. Now is a time to rebuild in all things.