All around him there was devastation. In the brief span of time— less than forty-eight hours—since Jefferson Davis and the other high dignitaries of the Confederacy had abandoned the city, Richmond had plumbed the depths of the inferno. A devil was loosed in the city. Pillage and rapine were rapidly followed by conflagration. Fires, intended by the fleeing Confederates to destroy the warehouses, were whipped by the winds, and ignited the artillery shells. A hundred thousand explosions shook the city to its foundations. After a night of horror the Mayor begged the Union forces to come in to “preserve order and protect women and children and property.”
Lincoln, guarded by a small contingent of sailors, walked amid shattered glass and smoking rubble. The sun was hot as he passed broken walls and houseless chimneys. He took off his overcoat, and was several times seen to remove his hat and wipe perspiration from his brow.
The words, at first, were indistinct.
“Glory to God!”
Soon there were more voices.
“Glory! Glory! Glory!”
First one, then another black man recognized the President. Lincoln was in a short time surrounded by those whom he had liberated. Some of the former slaves knelt to him. Others sang. An old man dropped his spade. “Bless the Lord,” he said, “there is the great Messiah! I knew him as soon as I saw him. He’s been in my heart for long years, and he’s come at last to free his children from their bondage! Glory, Hallelujah.”
So Simeon had sung, many centuries before.
He begged them not to kneel. “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank Him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy. I am but God’s humble instrument.”
Lincoln gazed at Mr. Jefferson’s statehouse, where the Stars and Stripes again flew. He went next to Jefferson Davis’s house. Whatever feelings of triumph he felt he carefully suppressed. He entered the rival President’s study and sat down in a chair. “This,” he said, “must have been President Davis’s chair.” He spoke softly. He wondered whether he might have a glass of water. The Davises’ butler brought him the water. The butler brought, too, a bottle of whiskey; this Lincoln left untouched. There must be no gloating, and no revenge. “I want no one punished,” he said, “treat them liberally all round.”
On April 8 the President returned to Washington on the River Queen. Before sailing he asked the band to play the Marseillaise. He then requested that “Dixie” be played. “That tune is now Federal property,” he said. It was “good to show the rebels that, with us in power, they will be free to hear it again.” On the voyage back to his own capital the President was pensive. He took up a volume of Shakespeare and began to read aloud from it. Macbeth—his favorite play. The tragedy of the man of ambition, the creature of destiny. He recited the lines—
Duncan is in his grave;
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well. . .
Lincoln lingered over the poetry. He tried to fathom Macbeth’s state of mind. The “dark deed achieved,” he said, “its tortured perpetrator came to envy the sleep of his victim. . . .”
The idea of destiny is the great elixir of revolution. Nothing so rouses a people as the belief that their nation has a rendezvous with it. Nothing so legitimizes a ruler or a régime as a myth that purports to offer a nation control of the future. Yet no revolutionary leader can offer such a vision of futurity convincingly unless he has a corresponding feeling within himself, a belief that he has been marked out by fate, a belief that he can, in Bismarck’s words, hear the footsteps of God sounding through events.
Lincoln understood this. The man who surveyed the prostrate capital of his adversaries felt the allure of destiny. But he who steals a glance into the Sibylline books of his country pays for the privilege. Macbeth suffered for his colloquies with the Weird Sisters.
Washington, April 1865
A FEW MINUTES after ten o’clock on Good Friday, April 14, John Wilkes Booth entered the lobby of Ford’s Theatre. He carried with him a Derringer pistol loaded with a .44-caliber lead ball.
Brooklyn, April 1865
WALT WHITMAN, visiting his mother, was awakened by the tolling of bells. Something had happened. He went out for the newspapers. It was a dark, dripping Saturday, redeemed only by the lilacs. They had bloomed early that spring. Their fragrance would linger in his memory to remind him of a day “black, black, black.”
Darmstadt and Saint Petersburg, April-May 1865
REFLECTING ON THE life and death of his fellow liberator, Tsar Alexander spoke of Lincoln’s “noble career.” “Tried himself,” Alexander wrote, “by a woeful loss” (the death of Niks), he sympathized with Americans in their hour of bereavement, and he asked that his condolences be conveyed to Mrs. Lincoln. He commanded that a solemn requiem be chanted in Kazan Cathedral at Saint Petersburg. When someone objected that Lincoln was not a communicant in the Orthodox Church, the Tsar became angry. “He was the noblest and greatest Christian of our generation,” Alexander said. “He was a beacon to the whole world— nothing but courage, steadfastness and the desire to do good.”
Berlin, April 1865
NORMAN BUEL JUDD, the American Minister at Berlin, learned the news from a telegram dispatched by Minister Adams in London. A few days before, Judd, a fifty-year-old Illinois lawyer, had hung out his banners to honor the triumph of Lincoln’s statesmanship. Now he draped his Legation in black in memory of his friend’s life. Berlin, he said, talked of nothing else, and there was much weeping.
But in at least one house no tears fell. In the Wilhelmstrasse, the eyes of Bismarck were dry. Lincoln’s cause was not his, and the condolences he extended to the American people were perfunctory. The Minister-President did, however, attend a memorial service for Lincoln in Saint Dorothea’s Church.
In the Prussian Chamber of Deputies the news was very differently received. On the floor of the Chamber, Dr. William Loewe, who had once found refuge from despotism in New York, bowed his head before “the modest greatness” of Lincoln. He asked the Chamber to unite with him in paying tribute to the dead President’s memory.
The address the Prussian lawmakers framed described the joy with which they had, a short time before, hailed the triumph of “right and law” in America; and it expressed the sorrow they felt upon learning that the architect of that triumph was no more. More than two hundred deputies subscribed their names to the document, and a delegation of the most eminent members carried it to the American Legation.
Chapter 23
SHAME
Paris and Biarritz, September-October 1865
THE WEATHER IN EUROPE was unseasonably warm, and there had been no rain for weeks. Asiatic cholera, issuing from the swamps of the Ganges, was carried westward along the trade routes to Damascus and Acre. The pestilence raged at Beirut and Jaffa, and was brought by Levantine shipping to the ports of the western Mediterranean, to Tripoli, Malta, and Gibraltar. At Rome, the Holy Father, Pius IX—Pio Nono—proclaimed a quarantine. In Toulon, the disease appeared with startling suddenness. The blackened corpses of four Italian sailors were found in a soiled garret, and from that moment the progress of the plague was violent and rapid.
Caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, Asiatic cholera is one of the swiftest of death’s messengers. The most fortunate victims perish within two or three hours of the onset of symptoms. Others, less happy, linger in agony for a few days. Weakened by ricewater stools and incessant vomiting, they appear like hideous changelings, with sunken eyes and a ghastly coloration. Their skin, which emits a foul odor, is cold to the touch, yet the sufferers feel themselves to be inwardly burning. Early in October there were reports that the disease had reached Paris.
Bismarck, undeterred, rode the train to the French capital. He had absented himself from felicity for too long. He must go to Biarritz and see Kathi Orlov again. He had recently been raised by King Wilhelm to the rank of Count, and for the moment his power was secure. His health, moreover, was bad. The loyal Roon, with an eye on “Otto’s Herculean indu
stry,” said that his friend had “now to reckon with the rebellion of his truest and most submissive subject, his stomach.” Bismarck, alarmed by his “deranged digestion” and “tortured nerves,” needed a vacation. Sunshine, Moët and beer (he liked to mix the two in a concoction he called “Black Velvet”), and Kathi Orlov were the medicines he required.
He found Paris hot and dry. The waters of the Seine were at the lowest point in memory, and mudlarks dug in the flats which the receding river had exposed. The drains and sewers of the city were stagnant, the fountains were dry, diarrhea was rife. Visitors were advised to drink seltzer water, and the wards of the Charité and the Hôtel-Dieu swelled with the sick. Yet a kind of levity prevailed, and at nine o’clock in the evening the dining gardens of the Moulin Rouge and the cafés of the Champs-Elysées were crowded. Bismarck went to the Quai d’Orsay to pay his civilities to Drouyn de Lhuys, the French Foreign Minister. Drouyn, a sixty-year-old career diplomat in the French service, was the friend of Austria, not Prussia, and the rumor went round that Bismarck spoke to him “in a very bellicose and proud way.”
Afterwards he took the train to Biarritz. He was chagrined to learn that Kathi Orlov had canceled her visit. Fearful for the health of her children, she had decided to take her holiday in England, at Sid-mouth, instead. Although Bismarck did not know it, he was not to see her again.
In the absence of Kathi, he devoted his energies to revolution. He went to see Napoleon III, who was in residence at Biarritz. The weather had by this time changed. The barometer had fallen, the sea was rough, and the wind blew from the northeast. The horizon was black as Bismarck drove up to the Villa Eugénie. An autumn storm lashed the coast, and the surf foamed as the two potentates exchanged greetings.
Bismarck found the French Emperor in a poor state. Louis-Napoleon’s bladder was an agony to him. His face was ashen. He walked with difficulty. Wherever he looked he saw danger. France was querulous. Mexico was a quagmire. His protégé, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, had sailed, the preceding year, to Vera Cruz to take his seat on the throne of Louis-Napoleon’s Mexican Empire; but the blond Prince was innocent of those arts which are indispensable to the politician who finds himself in a difficult position. Maximilian’s only resource, when confronted with an obstacle to his will, was a peevish obstinacy. Before the birth, in 1858, of a son to Franz Josef, Maximilian had been next in line to the throne of Austria. With the birth of the dark-starred Rudolph, however, he was relegated to second place in the succession. It was assumed, at Vienna, that he would relinquish his rights to the Austrian Crown upon accepting Louis-Napoleon’s invitation to sit on the throne of Mexico. But as the day of his departure drew closer, it became evident that Maximilian had no intention of surrendering his chance of a second empire. There were unpleasant scenes in the baroque antechambers of Vienna; archducal potentates lost their tempers; and Maximilian, after a hot exchange with Archduke Rainer, the President of the Council of Ministers, quitted the city in disgust. Only when General Frossard brought a stern warning from Louis-Napoleon himself did Maximilian relent.
The willful Prince was by that time absorbed in another dispute, this one concerning his right to the throne not of Austria but of Mexico. Maximilian contended, a trifle fancifully, that in taking up the Mexican crown he did but avail himself of his hereditary prerogative as the right male heir of the body of Charles V, the Habsburg Emperor who had united in his person the crowns of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. By contrast, Louis-Napoleon insisted, with perhaps even less justice, that Maximilian’s authority derived from the will of the nation of Mexico. The quarrel was resolved in favor of Louis-Napoleon, whose advance of twenty-five million francs enabled Maximilian to purchase, among other necessary items, the liveries in which he and his consort, Archduchess Charlotte, intended to dress the imperial household at Mexico City.
The prospect brightened, for a moment, when Maximilian reached Vera Cruz, and all had at first gone well for the Habsburg adventurer. Indians and mestizos had pressed adoringly around the imperial carriage. Maximilian’s appearance was the fulfillment of a prophecy the Indians had long cherished. A fair-haired prince, it was said, would one day liberate them from the yoke of the hacendados. “You are the white man with light hair and blue eyes,” the Indians told him, “whom we have been so long expecting.” But Maximilian’s prospects were darkened by the triumph of Lincoln’s revolution. The establishment of a foreign despotism on the ruins of the Mexican Republic alarmed Americans. Already a knot of millionaires in New York had formed a committee dedicated to ensuring that “this continent is for ever devoted to the cause of liberal institutions and republican government.” More ominously, General Grant had dispatched, to the vicinity of the Rio Grande, Philip Sheridan, with orders to assemble an army.
Louis-Napoleon was unwilling to be drawn into a contest with the United States. In October 1865 he thought only of extricating his troops from Mexico in the least humiliating way. Maximilian he must leave to his own devices. This abandonment of a friend would doubtless cost the French Emperor a pang, and leave a stain upon the scutcheons of the Bonapartes; but he saw no other way. The situation in which his unfortunate vassal would find himself, after the last French battalion embarked at Vera Cruz, would, indeed, be one from which even the most dexterous statesman might shrink. And Maximilian, in abilities and mental power, did not exceed the limits of mediocrity. His days were passed in vain pageantry, in fruitless tourism, and in the prescription of elaborate rules of etiquette for his court. The real work of directing the administration was carried on not by the Mexican Emperor, but by the French commander, François-Achille Bazaine, the soldier upon whom Louis-Napoleon had recently conferred the highest military gift in his power. Bazaine was now a Marshal of France, one of the few men promoted from the ranks to attain that dignity. Benito Juárez, who with the rest of the Republic of Mexico had retired to the hills, respected the potent truncheon of Bazaine. But the barren scepter of Maximilian excited only his contempt.
At the Villa Eugénie, Louis-Napoleon roused himself from his Mexican despair to receive Bismarck. What passed between the two men is not exactly known, but it is certain that they discussed the deteriorating relations between Prussia and Austria. Ostensibly Berlin and Vienna were partners in the occupation of the Danish duchies they had together overrun. By the terms of a recent treaty, Prussia was to administer Schleswig, while Austria was to govern Holstein. In fact Bismarck was determined to carry out his plan of expelling Austria from northern Germany; and a factitious dispute over the duchies might well enable him to accomplish this.
The attitude of the French towards such a quarrel was likely to be dispositive. What, Bismarck asked Louis-Napoleon, would France do in the event relations between Berlin and Vienna came down to a “war to the knife”?
Europe was agitated by rumors that the two men struck a sinister bargain in the Villa Eugénie. Bismarck, the newspapers observed, emerged from the meeting pleased, a circumstance which could only excite unease in many places on the Continent. In fact, he had extracted from Louis-Napoleon a promise of French neutrality in the event of a war between the two German powers.
What could Bismarck have offered the French in exchange for so valuable a pledge? Some speculated that Louis-Napoleon promised him that, should Prussia emerge victorious in the contest with Austria, he would reward France with a slice of Rhenish territory, or assist her in the subjugation of Belgium. Louis-Napoleon himself, who kept details of the talks a secret even from his closest advisers, later said that Bismarck did indeed promise him territorial compensation. But the bargain was never reduced to writing. Prussia, Louis-Napoleon believed, was certain to be defeated. When Austria emerged the winner, he could go to Bismarck’s aid—and name his price.
Chester, South Carolina, April-June 1865
SHE HAD TO KEEP MOVING. South by southwest. Out of the enemy’s grasp. The train raced on, carrying Varina Davis deeper and deeper into what remained of the shrinking Confederacy. She detrained at C
hester. Mary Chesnut, who had fled to the town to escape the advancing armies of Sherman, met her at the station. She found the First Lady of the South was “as calm and smiling as ever.”
Chester was at this time filled with the élite of the Confederacy. One encountered them like shades in Hades, pale copies of their former selves. The town took on the desperate qualities of a diaspora camp. Living space was at a premium. Men of high rank slept on stairwells and under dining room tables. Tubs of water cluttered the rooms as the fugitives did their best to keep themselves clean. Everyone strained their ears for the sound of approaching guns. And everyone dreaded the proscription they feared would follow all too swiftly the arrival of the enemy’s columns. Most civil ruptures, they knew, are sealed with the blood of the losers.
Mrs. Davis’s reception at Chester threw a curious light on human nature. Some who had quarreled with her in her prosperity treated her, in her adversity, with a delicate consideration. Others who had obsequiously flattered her greatness now scorned her fallen dignity. A few still rose from their chairs when she entered a room. Others kept their seats.
She could not remain long in the town. She went off, cherishing the hope that she would soon be reunited with her husband. Jefferson Davis was, at this time, at Danville, Virginia. But his situation there was becoming every moment less tenable, and he was preparing to quit the town. He intended to abandon his railroad cars and light out for the West, accompanied by a squadron of Tennessee cavalry. Refusing to surrender to the despair he must inwardly have felt, he spoke of leading an irregular offensive against the Federals. But the vision of a guerrilla campaign, conducted by a peripatetic government in the hills, was already passing into the realm of fantasy. Shortly after Varina Davis left Chester, a friend dashed into Mary Chesnut’s rooms.
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