by Gore Vidal
“Don’t you think, sir, I’m more use where I am? In the city, working at Thompson’s.”
“Working at Thompson’s?” Mr. Surratt poured himself a whiskey. “Right across from the White House?”
“Yes, sir. The Lincolns and the Sewards and the Blairs and the Welleses all get their medicine from us. Fact, Mr. Seward lives almost next door to us, and Mr. Welles is a few doors from him, while the Blairs …”
They were joined by the stout man, the tavern’s owner. “Who’s this?” he asked, indicating David.
“Davie Herold. He’s all right. He’s with us. I’ve known him all his life.”
The stout man poured whiskey for the three of them. “Well, I think after what you just now gave me, we drink a toast.” He held up his glass. “To the Confederate States of America.”
David drank his whiskey in a single gulp, just the way the wild boys did.
“When that message of yours gets to Richmond, which, I reckon, will be about ten minutes from now, Virginia will secede.”
“It’s about time.” With an effort, Mr. Surratt held back a new series of coughs. David knew of a mixture that would reduce the coughing if not cure the disease, whatever it was. Had there ever been any money in the Herold family, he could have become a doctor, he thought, reaching for the whiskey bottle; or a lawyer, maybe. Mr. Surratt turned to David, “Who comes in?”
“Who comes in where?”
“Thompson’s.” Mr. Surratt turned to the stout man. “Davie is a prescription clerk at Thompson’s Drug Store on Fifteenth Street, right near the White House. The Lincolns use the store, and so do a lot of members of the Cabinet.” He turned to David. “So, just who comes in?”
“Well, there’s Mr. McManus. He’s been the White House doorkeeper for twenty years. He acts like he knows a lot. This morning, for instance, he said there’s a map of Charleston Harbor on an easel like a picture in the President’s office. Then there’s Mr. Hay, the President’s secretary. He’s a young fellow, very snappy looking. He doesn’t talk much. Then there’s this high-yellow woman, Lizzie Keckley. She’s a dressmaker to Mrs. Lincoln, and she spends quite a while every single day at the Mansion, or so old McManus says. He don’t like her ’cause she’s thick as thieves with Mrs. Lincoln, who suffers bad from the headache …”
“What does Mr. Lincoln suffer from?” asked the stout man.
“He has trouble sleeping. So we mix him the Thompson’s special, which is mostly laudanum. And his bowels don’t ever move properly, so we fill him up with blue mass. Otherwise, he’s all right. The two little boys just had the measles, a light case. Then there’s Mr. Seward, practically next door. He suffers from the headache, too, but different from Mrs. Lincoln. His come from all the brandy he drinks. So we have to settle his stomach for him, too. Mrs. Gideon Welles …” As David described Thompson’s distinguished customers and their various ailments, Mr. Surratt and the stout man exchanged a glance; and the stout man looked well pleased.
When David ran out of data, Mr. Surratt said, “The boy was asking me how he could help the cause. I said stay right where you are, and listen.”
“I concur. Young man, you can be of real value to us just by keeping your ears open, and getting to know better the folks at the Mansion—and at Mr. Seward’s house. He’s the real boss of the government. Sometimes, we may have something specific we’ll need to find out, and we’ll get the word to you through Mr. Surratt here.”
“Or through Annie in case I am no longer here.” The withheld series of coughs now erupted; and the old man buried his face in his hands, shoulders heaving with pain. Whatever was wrong, David decided, it was not the consumption.
David turned to the stout man. “I could be useful as a courier, couldn’t I?”
“We have enough of those. Besides, you don’t want to lose your job at Thompson’s.”
“I guess not.” David was disappointed. He had seen himself riding hard through the enemy’s line, with coded messages in the heel of his boot.
When Mr. Surratt was done with his coughing, he rose, shakily; and took leave of the stout man. “I might, on a Sunday, say, send you Davie here.”
“Take good care of yourself, John.” The stout man did not accompany them to the front door. Outside the tavern, David said, “I got to go deliver medicine now.”
“That’s good, Davie.” Mr. Surratt nodded. “When Virginia secedes, which could be as soon as tomorrow, thanks to what I just had my friend put on the telegraph, you’ll probably need a pass to go back and forth across the Long Bridge, and they’ll hand out one, easy as can be, to the boy from Thompson’s.”
“Then I might be a courier yet?”
“Why not? But as our friend said, keep your job. That’s where you can help, really help our country!”
David could no longer contain his curiosity. “What was it that you gave him, that he’s put on the telegraph? Or is it a real secret?”
“Well, it’s a secret now but it won’t be tomorrow. We got our hands on a proclamation that Old Abe is issuing tomorrow, calling on all states, including Virginia, to send him troops. They’ll send him troops all right.” Mr. Surratt laughed and coughed simultaneously. “They’ve just been waiting for something like this so as to leave the Union. Maryland, too.”
David was excited to be almost a part of the secret service of the Confederacy; and, again, he saw himself riding through a dark and moonless night on some crucial mission. Exhausted and near collapse, he would give Jefferson Davis himself the vital, heretofore inaccessible information that the South needed to win the war. Head high, he walked toward Alexandria; and sang “Dixie” almost aloud.
CHASE SAT sat at his huge black-walnut desk and contemplated on the wall opposite him the portrait of the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, whose problems were negligible compared to his own. Chase was a meticulous man who enjoyed hard work. This was fortunate, as the President had said, with considerable sympathy, when Chase had told him what a nightmare it was, trying to make order out of the finances of the United States in the vast Treasury Building, where only three hundred eighty-three clerks presided over the finances of each of seven governmental departments, as well as the Customs Department, the Lighthouse Board, the Marine Hospitals, the Coast Survey and a dozen other miscellaneous activities that had accrued to his department.
“Where,” Chase asked Jay Cooke, who stood now at the window, smoking a cigar and staring at Willard’s Hotel across the avenue, “are we to get the money?”
“Borrow it, like any other business would.” Cooke turned. With dismay, Chase watched as the ash from Cooke’s cigar fell onto the pearl-gray velvet rug that his predecessor had only recently laid down; at the same time, the room’s six black-walnut chairs had been upholstered in what was, to Chase’s eye, a most tasteful blue. The office was far more luxurious and beautiful than that of the President or any of the other Cabinet officers. Particularly satisfying to Chase were the gilded window cornices that displayed the Treasury’s ornate seal, surmounted by Justice’s scales.
“I cannot say that I very much like the idea of the American government being placed in the hands of bankers, if you’ll forgive me, Mr. Cooke.”
“Don’t look at me, Mr. Secretary. I hate the breed. That’s why I’ve just started a bank of my own.”
“I would rather raise the money through a direct tax on income.”
“No Congress has ever allowed such a tax.”
“No Congress has ever been faced with a crisis like this. Here we are, totally cut off from the rest of the world. The telegraph lines are down. The railroads …” Chase paused; he found it hard to believe what he was about to say; but he said it: “If the rebels should attack, we shall have to abandon the city.” Chase looked wistfully around the beautiful office. “But no matter where the government is, we must prepare to finance a most costly war.”
“How long do you think it’ll take us to beat ’em?”
Chase frowned. “A few months
ago, a few months. But Mr. Buchanan would not move against his Southern friends. Now that Virginia has seceded, we’ve lost the Norfolk naval yard. Worse, we’ve lost the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. So it is my guess that it will take us close to a year to defeat the rebels, at a cost of one hundred million dollars.”
“You’re quite the pessimist, Mr. Chase. But if you’re right, then all the more reason that you issue Federal bonds right away. Twenty-year bonds that you can’t cash in for, let’s say, five years, paying a premium of eight percent …”
“Six percent,” said Chase, automatically.
“Make it seven and a half …”
“I am not an auctioneer. Whatever the percent, the lower the better for the country.”
“But the higher the better for the bankers, who are the ones who’ll buy your bonds.”
Chase sat back in his chair; and looked at Alexander Hamilton for inspiration. “I wonder,” he said, somewhat inspired, “if we could entice the people at large to buy their government’s bonds. In that event, each owner of a bond would certainly feel himself involved in the war, and our successes would make his bonds more valuable …”
“But our defeats, God forbid we have any, would make those bonds less valuable and unsalable.”
“You are the pessimist, Mr. Cooke. But I must say, so far, under our war leader”—Chase had vowed to himself that he would never criticize Lincoln, outside the Cabinet; but there were times when he could not hold back—“we do nothing. Last night at dinner, the British minister complimented the United States on its originality in war. Most nations at war, he said, try to do harm to the enemy. But you only do harm to yourselves. Everyone laughed. And I felt ashamed. Because, of course, he’s right. Since the proclamation on Monday, all that we have done is blow up our own arsenal at Harper’s Ferry and set fire to our own Navy Yard at Norfolk.”
“Well, it did keep them out of the hands of the rebels. Kate’s staying with my wife, by the way; at The Cedars.”
Chase contracted his left eye to adjust to the new subject. “I had no idea she was going to stop off in Philadelphia after her positively Roman orgy of buying in New York.” Chase sighed.
“You know I’ll be happy to lend you any amount.”
“No, no, Mr. Cooke. That would not look right. By the way, we must have some sort of written agreement on the carriage. I can only borrow it, you know.”
“I know.”
Chase got to his feet and looked out the window. A horsecar rattled by. The sidewalk in front of Willard’s was empty. “Last week there were a thousand guests at Willard’s. Now there are forty.” But then, as Chase watched, several hundred men with rifles and fur hats came into view from the direction of Lafayette Square. “That must be the Clay Battalion.” Cooke joined Chase at the window. A number of the men stood guard in front of Willard’s, while the rest went inside.
“Who on earth are they?” asked Cooke.
“Mostly Kentuckians. Border men. One group is camping out at the President’s Mansion. In the Mansion. They sleep in the East Room. Imagine! The Pennsylvania boys are camping out in the House of Representatives. I don’t know where they’ve put the regiment from Massachusetts.”
“How badly mauled were they in Baltimore?”
“Four soldiers killed. Thirty wounded by a mob of plug-uglies. They were lucky to get through at all.”
“If Maryland secedes …”
“We abandon the city.” Chase turned to his desk. He picked up a document. “Then there is the business of the spies.” He squinted at the paper. “Of the four thousand four hundred and seventy civil and military officers, two thousand one hundred and fifty-four come from the rebel states.”
“Looks like the South is a bit overrepresented.”
“Particularly in the military. According to General Scott, our best army officer is a Virginian named Lee.”
“The man who caught John Brown?”
“The same. Old Mr. Blair is a great friend of his. On Thursday, when Mr. Blair offered Colonel Lee the command of our army, Lee said that although he believes secession is wrong, and slavery worse, he can be no party to an invasion of his native state. I don’t understand Southerners, do you, Mr. Cooke?”
“I can’t say I ever tried.”
Chase’s mind reverted now to business. “I shall attempt to place a tax on personal incomes.”
“I don’t think you’ll be exactly popular anywhere, if you do.”
“Oh, a two- or three-percent tax will hardly be noticed. Naturally, anything higher will be out of the question.”
“I hope you’re right. But don’t forget, we’ve got to get you elected in ’sixty-four.”
“If it’s not too late,” said Chase grimly. He was certain Maryland would secede within the next few days; nevertheless, he was careful to sound more cheerful and confident than indeed he was on the ground that the financial community was a delicate and skittish animal in constant need of reassurance. Privately, Chase was in a state of panic. Once Maryland was gone, the city would be abandoned by the government. Once the capital had been lost to the rebels, there would be a movement, probably successful, to impeach Lincoln. Once Lincoln was gone, Seward would seize power; particularly if the capital should be moved anywhere north of Harrisburg. Once Seward was in power, an election in 1864 would be a moot affair. Chase could think of no way to stop the chaos that had begun to envelope the never-entirely-stable North American republic, which had been so arranged in its very Constitution that everyone ruled so that no one could rule, save the unexpected tyrant—a small, smiling, gray New Yorker who smoked cigars.
BUT THE SMALL, smiling, gray New Yorker who smoked cigars was not at all in a tyrannical mood when, the next morning, he and his son left the nearly empty church of Saint John’s, and together walked in silence over to the White House gate, where smart-looking soldiers of the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment now stood guard. As father and son tried to enter, they were stopped. “Who goes there?” asked a sergeant. From the portico Old Edward shouted, “Mr. Seward.”
The soldiers saluted as the Sewards walked up the driveway not to the Mansion but off to the right, where dingy glass conservatories made curiously ugly the prospect. In the woods of the President’s Park just off the Mansion’s west wing with its glass attachment stood, side by side, the old War and Naval Department buildings, while opposite the east wing of the Mansion a small red-brick building housed the State Department, literally in the shadow of the Treasury’s palace.
Two sailors stood guard at the Naval Department. Here father and son separated; son to go to the State Department; father to go to a meeting which was so secret that it was being held not at the Mansion, where spies reported everything that went on, but at Gideon Welles’s establishment.
Seward was recognized by the sailors; and he took their salute with a wave of his cigar. In the small office of the Secretary of the Navy, the President was already at the head of the table, the hair on his head already in a state of alarm. Except for Chase, the entire Cabinet was now present. Overflowing a special armchair to the President’s right was General Scott, his huge gouty leg resting on a stool. Hay and Nicolay sat beneath a watery painting of John Paul Jones.
As Seward took his seat beside the President, he murmured, “There’s a rumor that all the telegraph offices in the North were raided yesterday.”
“Well,” said Lincoln, “that’s the first rumor I’ve heard this week that’s founded on fact. Yesterday, at three in the afternoon, I ordered every U. S. marshal in the country to seize the original of every telegram that has been sent and a copy of every telegram that has been received in the last twelve months.”
Seward whistled softly. “The legal basis for this seizure …?” He cocked an eye, comically.
“The broader powers inherent in the Constitution.” Lincoln appeared to savor the word “broader.” “Anyway, now we’ll have a better notion of just who and where our enemies are, particularly in this part of the world.”
General Scott raised high the many chins attached to his massive head. “The first part is true. I was asked to transfer my allegiance to Virginia. The second part is untrue. I declined. I also told them that, henceforth, the soil of my native Virginia is enemy territory.”
Lincoln nodded. “I thought as much. Have you made any headway with Colonel Lee?”
“None, sir. I spoke to him. Then Mr. Blair spoke to him. Colonel Lee was the soul of courtesy—and of honor. This morning I received a dispatch from Richmond. Colonel Lee is now a commander of the rebel army.”
“It will be interesting,” said Lincoln, “to see what sort of commander he will make, since he claims to abominate slavery and to regard secession as treason.”
“He will fight very well, sir,” said General Scott, gloomily. “It is a matter of honor.”
“I see,” said Lincoln, who plainly did not, thought Hay, as he made his notes. “Now I’ve called what will, I hope, prove to be a secret meeting in order for us to begin the financing of the war.” Lincoln unfolded a piece of paper and put it before him; then he turned to Chase. “As there exists a state of armed insurrection against the Federal government, I shall now ask you to withdraw from the Treasury two millions of dollars, which will be sent in the form of money orders to …” Lincoln put on his glasses and read off the names of three men. “They are all located in New York City. The addresses I will give you.”
