He’d been eloquent when talking to the soldiers. With Lee, he sounded like a storekeeper inviting a customer in to haggle over the price of potatoes. Caudell was instantly suspicious of such a chameleonlike shift of style. But Lee said, “Of course, Mr. President. I’m sure one of my men will hold Traveller’s head.” As he dismounted, three dozen men sprang forward for the privilege.
A colored servant brought in a pot of coffee and two cups on a silver tray. “Sit down, General, do sit down,” Lincoln said.
“Thank you, Mr. President.” Robert E. Lee took the chair to which Lincoln had waved him. Lincoln poured the coffee with his own hands. “Thank you, sir,” Lee said again.
Lincoln’s chuckle held a bitter edge. “A fair number of generals have sat in that chair, General Lee, but I’ll be switched if you’re not the politest one of the lot.” Still standing himself, he peered down at Lee. “I think this country would be a good deal better off if you’d sat down in it some years sooner.”
“You honored me by offering me that command,” Lee said. “Having to decline it tore my heart in two.”
“When you declined it, I think you tore the United States in two,” Lincoln answered. “Set against that, your heart’s a small thing.”
“I am in the end a Virginian first, Mr. President,” Lee said.
“You come out with that so coolly, as if it explained everything,” Lincoln said. Lee looked at him in some surprise; he thought it did. Lincoln went on, “I take the view—I have always taken the view—that the interest of the several states should count for more than the interest of anyone of them.”
“There we disagree, sir,” Lee said quietly.
“So we do.” Rather to Lee’s relief, Lincoln sat down. A good-sized man himself, Lee did not care to be towered over, and Lincoln was as tall as any of Andries Rhoodie’s friends. He reached out a long arm to tap Lee on the knee. “Something I want you to think on, General: You’ve taken Washington for the moment, but can you keep it? There are many more Union soldiers around the city than Confederates in it. Can you stand siege here?”
Lee smiled, admiring Lincoln’s audacity. “I’ll take the chance, Mr. President. The beef depot and slaughterhouse by the Washington Monument could alone subsist my army for some time, and it is far from the only such source of supply in the city. To us, sir, having come here, we feel we are entered into the land flowing with milk and honey. We’ve made do with very little in the past.”
“Yes, you can find milk and honey here, I expect, though you’d better watch out that the sutlers and commissary officers don’t adulterate’ em before they ever get to your men.” Lincoln studied Lee. “But where will you get more cartridges for those newfangled repeaters your men carry?”
“We have a sufficiency,” Lee said, more calmly than he felt. That one sharp question was plenty to dispel any lingering doubts about Lincoln’s ability. The man understood what war required. Lee wondered if the Army of Northern Virginia did have enough ammunition for another big fight. The men had spent it like a drunken sailor throwing away money after six months at sea.
Lincoln’s eyes bored into him. He remembered that the Federal President had been a lawyer before he took up politics. He was practiced at sniffing out falsehood hiding behind a mask of rectitude.
Lee said, “Let me ask you something in turn, Mr. President, if I may: Are you prepared to destroy Washington City to drive us out of it? That is what you would have to do, you know; already we are looking to our own defense here. Would your countrymen support you in such an action, especially at a time when Confederate arms are gaining successes against other Federal forces besides the Army of the Potomac?”
“My countrymen elected me to hold the Union together, General Lee, and that I shall undertake to do by whatever means necessary so long as there is any hope of this war’s success,” Lincoln said. Lee felt a slight chill as he gauged the big man in the velvet-upholstered chair. Here, even more than with General Grant, he at last encountered a Northern man with strength of purpose to match his own and President Davis’s. Lincoln continued, “If the only hope of saving the Union is to make this city into a funeral pyre and then immolate myself upon it, that I shall do, and let the voters judge come November whether I did right or wrong.”
If he was bluffing, Lee was glad never to have met him at a poker table. And yet the game they were playing now was poker on a grander scale, with the fate of two nations pushed onto the table for stakes. This time, though, Lee knew he was holding aces. He turned a new one face up, drawing a telegram from his pocket and handing it to Lincoln. “Mr. President, you say you will carry on so long as you feel you can win the war. Here is a dispatch I received this morning which may shed some light on your chances of doing so.”
To read the telegram, Lincoln slipped on a pair of gold-framed spectacles much like Lee’s own. That was hardly surprising; the two leaders were only two years apart in age, and a man’s sight grew long in the middle years, regardless of whether he was born in mansion or log cabin.
The Federal president peered over the rims of his glasses at Lee. “This paper is genuine”—he pronounced it genuwine—”General?”
“You have my oath on it, Mr. President.” Lee had not thought of offering Lincoln a false telegram. Had it occurred to him, the stratagem would have been a good one. But Lincoln was more ready to counter deception than he was to offer it.
“Your oath I will accept, General, though those of few others—in gray or blue—under these circumstances,” Lincoln said heavily. “So Bedford Forrest with thirty-five hundred men has beaten our General Sturgis with over eight thousand north of Corinth, Mississippi, has he?”
“Not only beaten him but wrecked him, Mr. President. His men are in full flight toward Memphis, with Forrest in pursuit. From his report, he has captured two hundred fifty wagons and ambulances and five thousand stands of small arms, not that those latter are of much concern to us. Do you suppose you can keep his cavalry off General Sherman’s supply line much longer? Do you suppose Sherman can long survive with the railroads wrecked as Forrest’s men are in the habit of wrecking them?”
Lincoln bent his head, covered his face with his large, bony hands. “It is the end,” he said, his voice muffled. “I wish one of your rebels had shot me out there, so I should never have to live past this black day.”
“Don’t think of it so, Mr. President. Call it rather a new beginning,” Lee said. “The Confederate States never wanted more than to go their own way in peace and to live in peace with the United States.”
“No right cause impelled you to dissolve the Union, only fear—misguided fear, I might add—that I would act precipitately against slavery. I was willing to let it remain in place where it was and slowly to wither there.”
“Mr. President, I hold no brief for slavery, as you may know. But I do believe the rights of a state to be of higher importance than those of the Federal—or Confederate—government.”
“This war has undermined the powers of the separate states, North and South alike,” Lincoln said. “Both Washington and Richmond levy direct taxes and directly conscript men, no matter how the governors moan and bellow like branded calves. Can any separate state hope to resist their power? You know the answer as well as I.”
Lee stroked his beard. Lincoln had a point. Even his precious Virginia, by far the greatest of the Confederate states, followed first the will of the national government, then its own. He said, “I am but a soldier; let those wiser in such matters settle them as seems best.”
“If you were ‘but a soldier,’ General Lee, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking with each other right now.” Lincoln’s mouth twisted in that melancholy grin of his.” And I wish to thunder that we weren’t!” His gaze sharpened again. “Weren’t for those repeaters you’ve broken out with like a dog’s new spring fleas, I don’t think we would be, either. If I knew where you were getting ‘em, I’d buy a batch for my own side, I tell you that.”
“I believe yo
u, Mr. President.” Lee meant it. Lincoln was an inventor of sorts; he’d once patented a device for getting riverboats across stretches of low water. Anyone in the North who came up with a new rifle or cartridge made a beeline for the White House, hoping to impress him with it. Lee went on carefully,” As for our new rifles, we do not import them from overseas. They come from within the Confederacy.”
“So say the rebels we’ve captured,” Lincoln answered. “I own I find it hard to credit. The rifles are better than any we make, and you Southerners haven’t a tithe of our factories. So how did you turn out so many so fast?”
“The how of it is not important, Mr. President.” Lee could not discuss the Rivington men and their secret with his nation’s chiefest enemy—with the man, indeed, who was his nation’s chiefest reason for existing. Oddly, though, he found he wanted to. Of all the men he’d met, Lincoln seemed least likely to call him a lunatic; the Federal President had a breadth of vision that might be wide enough to take in the notion of men corning back from 2014. Lee’s brows came together. Again, how could the man before him be capable of the outrages Andries Rhoodie ascribed to him? Lee shrugged. That how was not important, either. “What is important is that my men and I are here. As I said before, I believe we can stay here, and that other Confederate armies are likely to continue to win victories. Your war to subjugate the South has failed.”
“I will not give it up,” Lincoln said, stubborn still.
“Then the United States will give up on you,” Lee predicted. “But the choice is not altogether in your hands, sir. When I leave the White House, my next call will be at the British ministry, to pay my respects to Lord Lyons. Since I shall be in the position to do that, how can he fail to recognize the Confederate States as a nation which has succeeded in winning its independence?”
He did not say—he did not need to say—that if Great Britain recognized the Confederacy, France and the other European powers would surely follow her lead…and not even the stubbornest U.S. President could continue war on the Southern states in the face of that recognition.
Lincoln’s long, sad face grew longer and sadder. Even now, though, he refused to yield, saying, “Lord Lyons hates slavery. So do the British people.”
“Britain recognizes the Empire of Brazil, does she not, despite its being a slaveholding land? For that matter, Britain recognized the United States before the start of our unfortunate war, and does still, in spite of your continuing to hold slaves—last year’s Emancipation Proclamation was remarkably silent on the subject of Northern Negroes in bondage.”
Always sallow, Lincoln turned a couple of shades darker. “They are being attended to. Come victory, all in the United States would have been free.” He cocked his head at Lee. “And you have just claimed to be no great friend of slavery yourself, General.”
Lee lowered his eyes, acknowledging the hit. “The most I will say for it is that, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, it may be the most practicable means for blacks and whites harmoniously to live together in this land.”
“It is an evil, sir, an unmitigated evil,” Lincoln said. “I shall never forget the group of chained Negroes I saw going down the river to be sold close to a quarter of a century ago. Never was there so much misery, all in one place. If your secession triumphs, the South will be a pariah among nations.”
“We shall be recognized as what we are, a nation among nations,” Lee returned.” And, let me repeat, my being here is a sign secession has triumphed. What I would seek to do now, subject to the ratification of my superiors, is suggest terms to halt the war between the United States and Confederate States.” Lincoln refused to call Lee’s country by its proper name. As a small measure of revenge, Lee put extra weight on that name.
Lincoln sighed. This was the moment he had tried to evade, but there was no evading it, not with the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia in his parlor. “Name your terms, General,” he said in a voice full of ashes.
“They are very simple, Mr. President: that Federal troops withdraw from such parts of the territory of the Confederate States as they now occupy. As soon as that is done—perhaps even while it is being done—we shall depart from Washington City, and U.S.A. and C.S.A. will be at peace.”
“Simple, eh?” Lincoln leaned forward in his chair, the picture of a man determined not to be cheated in a horse trade. “What about West Virginia?”
“That is a delicate area,” Lee admitted. When Virginia left the Union, its northern and western counties refused to go along; Federal guns had protected them in their secession from secession. Now the area was one of the United States in its own right. Lee could not doubt that was what the bulk of its people wanted, even if Virginia still claimed the territory. He countered, “What of Missouri and Kentucky?”
Both states sent representatives to the Confederate Congress as well as to Washington. Kentucky was the birth state of Lincoln and of Jefferson Davis, too, while Missouri’s civil war was as much neighbor against neighbor as North against South. Lincoln was right. Deciding borders wouldn’t be simple.
“Well, what about Missouri and Kentucky?” the Federal President said.” Asking me to leave the valley of the Mississippi, where we as yet remain supreme, is hard enough. But if you expect us to pull off our own soil so you can walk in, you can think again, sir. Emancipation is already far along there as well—you may not want those states, for you will have to fight a new war to restore their colored folk to servitude.”
It was Lee’s turn to sigh. That might be true wherever the Federal armies had gone. But it was a worry for politicians, and for the future. Now—”This sort of talk gets us nowhere, Mr. President, save to the spilling of more blood, which is what I now seek to prevent. Will you undertake to remove your soldiers from all disputed territory but those two states and what you people call West Virginia, with the status of those areas to be settled by negotiation at a later date?”
“Have you the authority to offer such terms?” Lincoln asked.
“No, sir,” Lee admitted at once. “As I said before, I shall have to submit them to Richmond for my President’s approval. I was speaking informally, in an effort to bring the fighting to a close as quickly as possible. If you could arrange to reconnect the telegraph lines between here and Richmond, you would be able to treat directly with President Davis, without my serving as intermediary.”
Lincoln waved a hand. “Reconnecting the telegraph’d be simple enough.” Lee knew that was so only for a nation with the abundant resources the United States enjoyed, but held his peace. Lincoln continued, “Still and all, I think I’d sooner talk with you. You have sense enough for a whole raft of Presidents, seems to me.” If he noticed he’d included himself there, he gave no sign of it.
“As you wish, Mr. President,” Lee said. “My feeling is, if the bloodshed once stops, we can then sit down across from one another at a table and settle these remaining issues. They may bulk large in your vision now, but they are of small importance when set beside the main question of the war, which is whether the South should be free and independent.”
“They look plenty big from over here, but then, what you rightly call the main question has been answered the wrong way.” Lincoln shook his head. “And now I have to make the best of it for my country. Very well, General Lee, if we cannot bring you back—and it seems we can’t—we shall have to learn to live alongside you. I’d sooner do that talking than shooting.”
“So would I, sir,” Lee said eagerly. “So would every soldier in the Confederate army, and, if I might make so bold as to speak for them, very likely the soldiers in your army as well.”
“You’re very likely right, General. How is it that soldiers are always so much more willing to pack in a war than civilians?”
“Because only soldiers actually fight,” Lee answered. “They understand how much of what is afterwards called glory is but memory trying to put a good face on terror and torment.”
“General Lee, I wish to heaven you’d chosen the Northern side,” Lincoln burst out. “You see clear enough to have won this war for us before the South ever started turning out these cursed repeating rifles that have sent so many of our lads to their graves too young.”
“Too many on both sides have gone to their graves too young,” Lee said. Lincoln nodded; at last the two men had found a point upon which they agreed without reservation. Lee stood to go. Lincoln rose from his chair in sections, like a carpenter’s fancy ruler unfolding. Looking up at him, Lee added, “It is decided, then? You will order an armistice and withdrawal on the terms I outlined?”
“I will.” Lincoln’s mouth twisted on the: words as if they were pickled in vinegar. “Would you be so kind as to put them in writing, to prevent any misunderstanding?”
Lee reached into his waistcoat pocket. “I have pen and paper, at least an order pad. May I trouble you for ink?” Lincoln waved him to a desk against the wall. He bent to use the inkwell, wrote rapidly. When he was done, he handed the pad to the President of the United States.
Lincoln read rapidly through the couple of paragraphs. “They are as you said, General. Will you be kind enough to lend me your pen?” He set his signature beside Lee’s. “Now let me have that second copy, if you please.”
Lee tore off the original, gave Lincoln the sheet below it. The Federal president folded it and put it away without looking at it, as if he had already seen more of the words on it than he cared to. Lee dipped his head to Lincoln. “If you will excuse me—?”
“You don’t need to wait on my leave,” Lincoln said with more than a little bitterness. “Conquerors, after all, do as they please.”
The Guns of the South Page 24