by Gore Vidal
Now Chase stood at Lincoln’s door as the delegates from the Peace Conference fell into place behind him. The Southerners were particularly keen to see the demon. As the clock in the lobby below struck nine, Nicolay opened the door, bowed to Chase, and motioned for the delegation to file into the parlor where Lincoln, quite alone, stood in front of the fireplace.
“Mr. Chase!” Lincoln’s handclasp was warmer than his voice, thought Chase, unable to interpret the auguries in question. He had already heard that Cameron was to have not the Treasury but the War Department; and Lincoln was supposed to be having second thoughts about that. The Treasury—after the presidency—was what Chase most wanted. Bates of Missouri was not suitable; and no Southerner would serve. The Maryland Blairs, mad father and two mad sons, were also at work trying to capture Lincoln, but though Chase was convinced that Lincoln was weak, he was equally convinced that he was extremely wily. Chase had not yet heard any particulars of the Albany Plan. If he had, he would have been in despair. Chase truly feared Seward and his mentor Thurlow Weed.
Chase handed Lincoln a letter from the head of the Peace Conference, former President Tyler. “He sends his compliments, sir. He hopes to call on you at another time.”
“I shall call on him, of course.” Lincoln’s courtesy was perfunctory. He turned to the semicircle of delegates, who stared at him as if he were some sort of rare beast. “Gentlemen, I know some of you personally from the past. I know all of you by name and repute. I am glad that this conference continues, and I will do what I can to give assurance and reassurance to the Southern states that we mean them no harm. It is true that I was elected to prevent the extension of slavery to the new territories of the Union. But what is now the status quo in the Southern states is beyond my power—or desire—ever to alter.”
Although it had been plain to Chase that Lincoln was not the man to lead any sort of crusade against slavery, Lincoln, aided by a powerful Cabinet … As Seward dreamed that he would be Lincoln’s prime minister, Chase saw himself as chancellor, on the order, say, of the Austrian Metternich.
A Southern congressman challenged Lincoln. “Will you uphold the laws, where previous presidents did not? Will you suppress the likes of Mr. John Brown and the Reverend Garrison, who preach war against us and our property?”
“Well, we hanged Mr. Brown, and we put Garrison in prison.” Lincoln was mild. “That strikes me as a reasonable amount of suppression.”
“But the laws of property,” the voice continued …
Chase shut his eyes; he could not wait for his daughter Kate to arrive tomorrow evening. Thrice a widower at fifty-three, Salmon P. Chase’s whole life was now his twenty-year-old daughter; a thirteen-year-old daughter, Nettie, had not yet had the time to lay any great claim to his powerful paternal affections. But the beautiful and gifted Kate had acted as his hostess when he was governor of Ohio, and she would do the same in Washington. To please Kate, he had just rented a large, expensive town house even though he was, as always, in debt. Like his friend Sumner, Chase dealt not in politics but morals. But morals paid poorly. Chase could not remember a time when he had not been as anxious about money as he had been serene about moral issues.
Lincoln’s voice suddenly recalled Chase from his reverie. The President-elect was answering one of the Southerners. “Look, there is only one difference between us. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended. We think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. For this, neither has any just cause to be angry with the other.”
If that was not sufficient honey for the bearish South, what was? wondered Chase.
“Then explain, sir,” ordered another Southern voice, “why is it that since your election, six states—”
“Seven!” from a dozen voices.
“—seven states, counting Texas, officially, today, have left the Union?”
“That’s more for them to explain to me than for me to explain to them.” Lincoln was surprisingly cool under the circumstances. But then he was supposed to be a practised lawyer. Curious, thought Chase, how little anyone really knew about this new President.
“But I should like to remind you that before my election to the Presidency, the governor of South Carolina announced that that state would secede if I were elected. And so they did. And others have followed, as you remind me. Currently, those elements in rebellion against the Federal government”—Chase liked the use of the word “elements” instead of states; the distinction was sufficiently nice to make it possible for second thoughts all round, not that there would be any—“have seized—stolen, to use the precise word …” Lincoln looked in Chase’s direction. For an eerie instant, Chase wondered if his mind was being looked into and read. But the look was casual. Whenever Lincoln spoke, he was always careful to look at every part of his audience. First the dreamy gray eyes would glance to one side; and then, as if he had discovered someone of interest to him, the whole head would slowly turn and follow his gaze. “… stolen, I repeat, three revenue cutters, four custom’s houses, three mints, six arsenals and their contents, and one entire naval yard. All of these are the property of the whole people of the United States and not of any single element of the population.”
Voices were raised. Would the Federal government consider selling the “stolen” property? Lincoln thought it a better idea to return what had been stolen; and to forget about the whole thing. He is leaving them every possible escape route, thought Chase, who inclined to the divine view that evil must be punished. An eye for an eye was his religion.
When asked about Fort Sumter at the entrance of Charleston Harbor, Lincoln commended the courage of its commander, Major Anderson. No, he had prepared no instructions for the major because “I have not yet taken the oath of office. I will say how … impressed I was last month, as was everyone, when General Scott sent a merchant steamer with reinforcements for Fort Sumter and the governor of South Carolina was able to turn back that ship.”
Would Lincoln try to reinforce Fort Sumter? He would not answer. Meanwhile, he took seriously Virginia’s effort to make peace between the regions of the country. He was in communication with the pro-Union elements in both Virginia and Maryland, whose governor was a Union man. No, he had not read the speech that Jefferson Davis had delivered when he became President of the Confederate States of America five days ago. “But I just read a newspaper account of my old friend and colleague in Congress Mr. Alexander Stephens of Georgia.”
“You mean Vice-President Stephens?” asked a challenging voice.
Lincoln affected not to hear. “Mr. Stephens admitted that Thomas Jefferson, a founder of the Union, thought that the principle of slavery was wrong. But Mr. Stephens said that the elements that he adheres to have come to the conclusion that the exact opposite is true, that the correct principle is that since the black man is inferior to the white man, he must be the white man’s slave. I mean no disrespect to my old friend when I say that between his brand-new and to me highly peculiar principle and the old-fashioned principle of Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, I must support my predecessor in the office of President of the United States.”
Which way will he go? wondered Chase, as the delegates filed past the tall man, who had a word for each. To Chase, he said, “I look forward to a continuation of our Springfield conversation.”
Several imprudent answers occurred, as always, to Chase and, as always, were replaced with that habitual prudence for which he was never entirely not admired. “So do I, sir. The Virginians—” Chase lowered his voice, as several were nearby, and Lincoln lowered his head, the better to hear him. Chase noticed that Lincoln’s thick, coarse hair was as black as an Indian’s, with no sign of gray. “They will stay in the Union if you let Fort Sumter alone.”
“One state for one fort?” Lincoln smiled. “I think that’s a pretty good deal for the fort-owner.”
“Yes, sir.” Chase moved on. He had got the answer that he had feared, but expected. Lincoln would give in to the South, after a certain amount of calcu
lated bluster.
Mary was awake in bed when Lincoln joined her. The last of the peace delegation had gone, as he put it to her, “in a state of belligerency.”
“Come to bed. You look so tired.”
“You must be tired, Molly.” Lincoln began to undress.
“I thought I was. Then I got into bed, and tried to sleep, and couldn’t. Too tired to sleep. Too excited, I guess.”
Lincoln turned off the gaslight overhead. The lamp beside the four-poster bed cast a blue-and-white glare across Mary’s face.
“What did you think of the Old Club House?” asked Lincoln, pulling on a nightshirt that was too short for him; but then all store-bought nightshirts were too short for him. Mary wanted to have some made to order; or she herself would make them to order. But Lincoln was perfectly content to wander about with long legs bare—just like a stork, she’d say, in disapproval.
“The Old Club House? Oh, Governor Seward’s Old Club House. An appropriate name.”
“Well. It was a real clubhouse till recently.” Lincoln stared at his beard in the glass; idly, he parted it.
“I know. That’s where they brought poor Mr. Key to die, after he was shot. I could never trust that man. Never!”
“The late Mr. Key? Or his murderer Mr. Sickles?” Lincoln removed the part from his beard.
“Governor Seward, Father. You know what I think of him.”
“Well, I noticed you did quite well by his dinner.”
“Oh, the food was splendid! I do have a sufficiency of flesh, don’t I.” Glumly, Mary squeezed her right upper arm and watched, with sorrow, as the resulting bulge stretched taut the white lace of her nightdress.
“Well, you look in your sufficiency sufficiently beautiful to me.”
“Oh, Father, you’d say that if I looked like … like General Scott.”
“Of course, I would say that. But I would not mean it.” Lincoln stepped into the adjoining bathroom, where the commode was. Mary had remarked on Willard’s comfort and modernity. No chamber pot was necessary in any of the parlor suites. Would the White House be the same?
“Father,” she called, “do I nag you about appointments?”
“Yes,” came the voice from the bathroom.
“Oh, I don’t! It’s the vampire press that says I do because I’m Southern and supposed to believe in slavery when I’m the only abolitionist in the family and you are just—mild and meek.”
Lincoln returned, drying his face with a towel decorated with the W of Willard’s. “I suppose any man named Watson or Wilcox would feel justified in stealing one of these towels,” he said.
“Or Washington. Did you give Governor Seward your speech to read?”
Lincoln nodded. “He said he’d make notes.”
“Don’t listen to him.”
“I listen to everyone. I like him, all in all.”
“He thinks he’s so clever.”
“Well, he has every right to think that. He is clever. Though not clever enough to get rid of Simon Cameron for me.”
“I thought you’d decided to keep Cameron out of the Cabinet.”
“I did. Then I was un-decided. Anyway, I kept him out of the Treasury.” Lincoln got under the covers. “He’ll be at the War Department.”
“Then I suggest you avoid fighting a war.”
“I mean to, Molly.”
“Who’ll be at the Treasury?”
“Salmon P. Chase.”
“That crazed abolitionist! He wants to be president.”
“They all do. That’s why I’m putting the whole lot where I can see them. In the Cabinet,” Lincoln sighed.
“I suppose you’re right, Father. You usually are. Eventually, anyway. Oh, Cousin Lizzie is going to stay on for the first few weeks we’re in the President’s House. She’s wonderful with upholsterers and all that sort of thing. They say the mansion has been let go to rack and ruin. Just like this country, I said, which I hope the vampire press does not pick up, true though it is. Mr. Buchanan has been a disaster and, thank God, it’s you who’ll take his place and not Judge Douglas, brilliant as he is. Strange how I might have married him! You know, everyone thought I should. Even I thought I should but then I met you at the dance at our house, and you came up to me and you said, by way of introduction, that you wanted to dance with me, ‘in the worst way,’ you said, your very words, and so you did dance with me, and I told everyone, it was truly in the worst way! Oh, Father!” Mary smiled at the memory, and turned to her husband only to find him sound asleep on his back. From force of habit she touched his brow—she touched all the brows of those close to her, to detect signs of the fever that had killed her three-year-old Eddie; but Lincoln’s face was cool to the touch. Suddenly, he took a deep breath and then, as he exhaled, he moaned.
“Poor man,” she said to her sleeping husband; and wondered if his dreams were now as terrifying as hers had been, unknown to him, for so many years.
SIX
THE NEXT morning, grip-sack in hand, Governor Seward arrived at Willard’s Hotel, fought his way through the crowded lobby and up crowded stairs and then down the crowded corridor to Parlor Six, where Lamon admitted him to a room crowded with two small boys playing tag while Lincoln sat beside the window, glasses on his nose, reading the newspapers.
“I see your admirers are filling up the hotel.” Seward gave Lincoln the grip-sack.
“I had never realized how many men are eager to serve their country in high-paid positions that are within my gift.” Lincoln took the grip-sack, plainly relieved to have it once more in his hand.
“How do you deal with them?”
“My two secretaries, poor boys, are interviewing the lot. Everyone who wants an appointment from me goes to them in Parlor One and leaves his credentials. Speaking of credentials, what do you think of mine?” Lincoln tapped the grip-sack. Willie tapped Tad on the head. Tad screamed. Lincoln turned to Lamon. “Take the boys to their mother.” Despite loud cries of defiance, the huge Lamon carried both boys from the room.
“Well, sir, it is a finely argued case.” Seward took his time lighting a cigar. He was still not certain that he understood either the speech or its author.
“It is no more than a legal case?” Lincoln showed an author’s dejection, which amused Seward.
“Of course it is more. You have made the point, once and for all, that you were not elected president in order to abolish slavery in the South …”
“I cannot say that enough, can I? But the more I do say it, the more violent the Southerners become.”
“They think, in time, we intend to do away with slavery and so they mean to do away with us first—by leaving the Union.”
“Which they cannot do. I am clear on that, am I not?” Seward nodded; and removed from his tailcoat pocket the notes he had made on the inaugural address. “I take this passage to be the centerpiece of your … brief.” Seward smiled; Lincoln did not.
Seward read, “ ‘I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.’ ”
“Yes, that is at the heart of my ‘brief.’ ”
“But the Southern states regard the organization of the Union as a more casual affair. As they entered it of their own free will, so they can leave it.”
“But no provision was ever made in the Constitution for their leaving it.”
“They say that this right is implicit.”
“Nothing so astounding and fundamental would not be spelled out in the Constitution.” Lincoln’s voice grew slightly higher. Seward had read somewhere that when Lincoln made a speech his voice was like a tenor trumpet—a tenor trumpet of war, Seward thought, suddenly aware, for the first time, that war had now become a possibility and that the traditional uses to which his sort of man was put—in particular, the task
of conciliation and accommodation—would be of no avail. So many people had spoken for so long of the irrepressibility of conflict, to use his own phrase, that the fact that conflict might now be at hand made the cigar clenched between his teeth lose its savor. Worse, the whole matter might well be decided by the tall, thin figure sitting opposite him, profile silhouetted by winter light. At all costs, the Albany Plan must succeed.
Seward was beginning to get Lincoln’s gauge; and he was afraid. He looked back down at his notes. “Your reasoning is good.” Then he read, “ ‘If a minority … will secede rather than submit, they make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own number will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority.’ That is plain.”
“It is all so plain, Mr. Seward. That is the hard part. But I do my best to spell it out when I say, physically speaking, we cannot separate. It’s not like a husband and wife getting a divorce and dividing up the property.”
Seward nodded; and read, “ ‘Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.’ That says it all, I guess.”
“But to say is not to do.”
“To say what is true is to do a lot in politics.” Seward laughed; for some reason, the mood of panic had gone. “Not that I’ve had much experience along those lines.”
Lincoln, to his relief, laughed too. “Who has?”
“I am afraid of your ending,” said Seward, coming to the point.
“Too harsh?”
Seward nodded, and read, “ ‘In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.’ ” Seward looked up. “Let them fire the first shot, if shots are to be fired, which I pray not.” Seward continued to read. “ ‘You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect and defend” it. With you and not with me, is the solemn question of “Shall it be peace, or a sword?” ’ ”
