Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  It had been agreed the evening before that Chase and McDowell would go together to the White House, where McDowell would present, for the first time, his plans for the immediate invasion and conquest of Virginia.

  “Is General Scott now in agreement?” Chase sat at his desk, its gleaming black surface covered with a blizzard of white paper representing a thousand applications for jobs as Treasury agents.

  “Oh, General Scott is seldom in agreement. He still resents my appointment.” McDowell seemed not in the least disturbed. Chase admired enormously the man’s cool ease with everything and everyone. Chase also knew what a difficult time McDowell had had since his promotion over General Scott’s favorite, General Mansfield, the conqueror of Alexandria and the Potomac Heights; also, because McDowell did not wish to incur the jealousy of his fellow commanders, he had rejected a major-generalship. It was as a brigadier that he now set about the task of preparing the army for a response to the cry that was, if not shouted each day, read each day in the press, particularly in Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune: “Forward to Richmond!”

  “I should think that we have them pretty well encircled on three sides.” Chase had always felt that he had a military capacity as yet untapped in a career that had been nothing if not pacific. Nevertheless, he dearly loved a map. “We have General Butler at Fortress Monroe. That takes care of the coast. We have General Banks in Maryland—which is, in effect, under martial law. I never thought,” Chase drifted from his subject, “that Mr. Lincoln would have so much audacity as to suspend habeas corpus and arrest all those chiefs of police.”

  “When he decides to do something, he does it. Or so,” said McDowell, cautiously, “it seems to me.”

  “The problem is always to get him to move; and in the right direction. What do you know of General McClellan in the West?”

  “I knew him in Mexico, of course. He’s eight years younger than I. He graduated from the Military Academy in ’forty-six; and went straight to Mexico with General Scott. We both came out of that war captains.”

  Chase admired the serenity with which McDowell noted that McClellan was a captain at twenty while he was a captain at twenty-eight. “For a while, he taught engineering at the Academy. I seldom saw him. Then he quit the army …”

  “To become,” Chase spelled it out sonorously, “the chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad.” Chase pushed all the applications on his desk into an orderly military pile at the center. “I believe Mr. Lincoln knows him.”

  McDowell smiled. “And I believe that McClellan was a Douglas man.”

  “Such a loss, such a loss!” Chase hummed softly. The death in Chicago, three weeks earlier, of Stephen Douglas had saddened the capital. All flags had been at half-mast. Chase had not entirely approved; but even he appreciated the fact that the Little Giant had died in the service of the Union. Douglas had literally driven himself to death, speaking in the border-states, commanding fellow-Democrats to rally round his one-time rival Lincoln. “I hardly know McClellan,” said Chase. “It was my successor as governor of Ohio who made him a major-general, despite his youth …”

  “Thirty-five is old for a general, as Julius Caesar would have been delighted to explain to us. Certainly, at forty-two, I am very old …”

  “And General Scott at seventy-five?”

  “Oh, he is simply a memorial to other times. Anyway, McClellan is an excellent officer. He has managed to separate western Virginia from the rest of the Confederacy.”

  “With a good deal of assistance from the inhabitants. You know that they wish to organize themselves as a separate state. I have advised their leaders to do the sensible thing and attach themselves to Ohio. But they are stubborn.” Chase rose. “Shall we walk?”

  “By all means, Mr. Chase. My aides are already at the Mansion. So I am unencumbered.”

  As they crossed the long anteroom where six clerks sat at desks, each communicating with a particular department of the government, McDowell unexpectedly asked, “What is Mr. Seward’s military policy?”

  “I pray,” said Chase, “that it is like mine. None at all. We are in your hands, sir.”

  But Mr. Seward had all sorts of cloudy military plans; and today they were more than ever cloudy since each involved a war with a foreign power. But now, as he sat at his desk, unread dispatches piled high, he was uncomfortably aware that he might very well have a war with England on his hands, a war which was by no means part of his master plan. The latest dispatch from Charles Francis Adams at London was ominous. Mr. Adams had been Seward’s own choice for minister to Great Britain. Although Lincoln had been curiously unenthusiastic about Adams, he had indulged Seward “as you ask me for so little.” Apparently, Her Majesty’s Government was under heavy pressure from a combination of textile manufacturers and old-fashioned imperialists to recognize the Confederate states. The London Times was already commenting, more in joy than in sorrow, on how short-lived the union of the American states had been, remarking that there were still men alive who had actually witnessed the birth of what was now so palpably dying.

  Frederick came in to say that Mr. John Bigelow was waiting upon the Secretary. Seward stumped out his cigar. “You take over, son!” he said; and left the office.

  John Bigelow was a bright, youthful-looking man in his middle forties. He was a part-owner, with William Cullen Bryant, of the New York Evening Post, whose managing editorship he had just resigned in order to become the American consul-general at Paris. Seward and Bigelow were old friends and political allies. As they walked down the dusty gravel path to the President’s house, Bigelow admitted to some nervousness. “I’ve never met Mr. Lincoln before,” he said.

  “Well, he don’t bite.” Seward was airy. “He also has no interest at all in foreign affairs. So you’re not going to be exactly over-instructed. How is Mr. Bryant?”

  “Lately, he seems somewhat aged.”

  “I’d say that he has seemed somewhat aged for the better part of this century. I should tell you that the President likes his poetry more than his politics. So skip the editorials, and quote ‘Thanatopsis.’ ”

  “I don’t know it!” Bigelow moaned in mock despair.

  “Well, Mr. Lincoln’s bound to. He can quote poetry by the yard.”

  But there was no time for either poetry or France in the President’s office. Lincoln sat on the edge of his desk, studying a sheaf of heavily marked maps, as Hay and Nicolay came and went on mysterious errands that usually involved taking a document from or inserting a document into one or another of the pigeonholes of Lincoln’s desk. “You sit right there, Mr. Bigelow,” said Lincoln, absently indicating a chair. Thus far, the President had yet to look at his visitor.

  Seward tried to attract the President’s interest. “Mr. Bigelow just resigned from the Evening Post …”

  “A fine paper as fine papers go.” At last, Lincoln looked up; and smiled the full, white-toothed smile which meant, Seward now knew, that the President had not the slightest interest in the smile’s recipient. “Mr. Bigelow, I am sure that Mr. Seward has told you, as he tells everyone, that I know nothing of foreign affairs.”

  “Oh, no, sir …” began Bigelow, nervously.

  “Well, if he hasn’t told you, you’re the first fellow I’ve appointed to a foreign post that he hasn’t. Anyway, I don’t know much about these matters; and so I leave your mission to you—and to Mr. Seward. I will say that the Emperor Napoleon should never be allowed to forget that we don’t look favorably on any French military excursions in Mexico. But as long as he demonstrates no sympathy with our rebels, we are not inclined to do much of anything for the present. Emphasize for the present. Quote Mr. Monroe and Mr. Adams. Keep him neutral. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  Hay entered to announce, “The Cabinet is waiting, sir.”

  Lincoln gave Bigelow a firm handclasp. “Good luck to you, sir.” Before Bigelow knew what had happened, Lincoln and Seward had entered the Cabinet Room. As Bigelow
stepped into the waiting room, he saw General McDowell standing at the outer door to the President’s Office, talking to a military aide. When the general saw his old friend Bigelow, he said, “There’s still a place for you on my staff.”

  “Only if your command extends as far as Paris.” Once each had congratulated the other on his appointment, McDowell entered the President’s Office, followed by his aide.

  Everyone was seated, except General Scott, who was enthroned near the President. The Secretary of War, Mr. Cameron, was answering a question that the President had just asked. “We have, altogether, in the military, in various stages of training, three hundred and ten thousand men, which makes our military establishment about the largest in the world.”

  “As well as the least trained,” grumbled General Scott. “They are mostly volunteers, Mr. President, with no discipline and no training, and too few qualified officers to make them into a proper army at this time.”

  “Is that your view, General McDowell?” Lincoln turned to McDowell.

  “Of course, General Scott is right,” said McDowell. Chase was glad that his protégé was so straightforward. “The actual number of trained men available is barely a third of the number that Mr. Cameron mentioned. And of that one hundred thousand, only fifty thousand are available at this city, and as this city must be guarded, not more than thirty to thirty-five thousand of those men can be used for an invasion of Virginia.”

  Lincoln turned to McDowell. “Is that enough, do you think?”

  Seward thought that the President seemed ill-at-ease, placed, as it were, between Scott and McDowell. On the other hand, Chase thought that Lincoln was entirely at ease with McDowell, who was, plainly, the man of the hour. “Yes, sir. In the next two weeks, I can put thirty to thirty-five thousand men in the field. This will be, by the way, sir, the largest military force ever assembled on this continent.”

  “How many men will the rebels be able to field?” Lincoln was staring at the large map of Virginia on the wall opposite.

  “We’re not certain, sir. But fewer than ours.” McDowell was now at the map. General Scott’s eyes had shut. “General Beauregard is here at Manassas. He is known to be drilling some twenty-five thousand. While over here, along this line from Winchester to Harper’s Ferry, General Johnston is guarding the Shenandoah Valley, with ten thousand men.”

  “So their army is just about the same size as ours.” Lincoln frowned.

  McDowell nodded. “But their army is in two parts that will not have time to come together if we are fast enough. After all, Manassas is only thirty miles from here.”

  “General Scott.” Lincoln turned to the old man, who opened his eyes.

  “You know my views, Mr. President. I would make no move until the autumn. The men are not ready, sir.”

  “Some of them are too ready … to go home.” Lincoln sighed. “A lot of the three-month enlistments are coming to an end. If we don’t use the men we’ve got by the end of July, there won’t be an army, and we’ll have to start all over again.”

  “Sir, those men are too green to fight.”

  “Well, the rebels are just as green. So we are all green alike.”

  “They are on their home ground, sir,” said Scott. “I have already submitted my own plan, which requires the splitting of the Confederacy in half by seizing the Mississippi River from Memphis to New Orleans. Each half will then wither on its own, as we squeeze them, like the great anaconda snake.”

  “Ultimately, I think you are right, General.” Lincoln was conciliatory. “But we have a rare chance now to strike a blow at the head of the other … snake. Thanks to General Horace Greeley, ‘Forward to Richmond’ is now on every lip, up North. At least, it is daily on his lips, and everyone, they say, reads the Tribune.” Lincoln glanced at Hay, who smiled. Hay was often obliged to placate the fiery foolish New York editor who never ceased in public and private to bombard the President with eerily bad advice. At the time of the Lincoln-Douglas debate, the Republican Greeley had favored Lincoln but plainly preferred the Democrat Douglas, to Lincoln’s despair. Yet it was Greeley who had given such coverage to the Cooper Institute speech that, overnight, Lincoln was famous. Yet again, at Chicago, as a delegate, Greeley, having fallen out with Seward, voted for Bates. But then, for a time, Greeley had wanted to let the Southern states go. Meanwhile, so extensive was his published and private advice to Lincoln that one entire pigeonhole of the presidential desk was devoted to Greeley. After all, half a million people read the weekly edition of the Tribune, particularly in the midwest.

  Ordinarily, the very fact that Greeley favored a prompt advance on Richmond would almost certainly have impelled Lincoln west to the Mississippi River. But Hay knew what hardly anyone else knew: that Lincoln had been struck by one line in Greeley’s latest outburst. The Confederate Congress was to meet for the first time at Richmond on July 20. If Lincoln could prevent such a meeting, the rebellion would be considerably shortened; and Chase’s war bonds would sell at par; and Seward’s disagreeable relations with those European powers that were threatening to recognize the South would grow more agreeable.

  McDowell spread out his own map of Virginia on the Cabinet table. Everyone—except General Scott—rose and leaned over the map as McDowell explained his strategy. “Beauregard is here at Manassas with over twenty thousand men. He protects this railroad line, which is the northern link of the entire Southern railway system. He is now placed between two depots. The one closest to us is here at Fairfax Courthouse. The one farthest from us is at Manassas, which is also a point of junction between two lines, the Manassas Gap Railroad and the Orange & Alexandria line. I propose to move on Fairfax from three directions, with some thirty thousand troops. At Fairfax, our forces will converge. Then we move on to Germantown and Centerville, where we engage the enemy.”

  Chase nodded appreciatively. This was the sort of terse bare-boned briefing that he would have given had he been the commanding general. In a sense, there was no great difference between what he was obliged daily to do at the Treasury and what McDowell was doing now. Each commanded men; each added and subtracted numerous sets of figures that represented resources. Finally, Butler and Banks and Frémont were all politicians, and though he himself had no particular liking for any of the three, he took some collegial pride in the fact that they were, at the moment, the most illustrious of the Union generals.

  On the other hand, Chase felt truly secure with McDowell. Here was a perfectly trained soldier in the French style. Chase looked at Seward. The constant schemer seemed to be scheming—or, perhaps, only daydreaming. Seward chewed, idly, an unlit cigar; nodded at all the wrong moments during McDowell’s discourse; pulled at one of his huge ears as if to reassure himself that that all-important-to-a-politician organ was in place, not to mention in good working order.

  Chase was aware that the relationship between Lincoln and Seward had somehow altered. The prime minister was less offhand with the sovereign than before. He tended to interrupt Lincoln less in Cabinet; unfortunately, as if in compensation, he interrupted his colleagues more. Gideon Welles and Blair both openly despised Seward, while Chase was quite aware of the unscrupulous way that Seward and his familiar Thurlow Weed influenced the politics of the North. Although Chase could never be an admirer of Seward, he was perfectly willing to be an ally. In politics, the years move more rapidly than in ordinary life. Soon it would be 1864. Since Chase was reasonably certain that Seward would not put himself forward as a presidential candidate, the party was left with only one viable candidate, Salmon P. Chase. Thus, like it or not, Chase and Seward were potential allies; also, Chase had made it clear to Seward that he was perfectly willing to share in a sort of consulate with him. But Seward had never again adverted to the matter. Had he given up the idea? Or had he worked out some new modus operandi with the symbolic—Chase had yet to find a more descriptive word—president? What, he wondered, was in Seward’s mind?

  At that moment, there was nothing of any great moment in Se
ward’s mind. He was hoping that McDowell knew what he was doing. Although Seward had more than once used Winfield Scott for his own political ends, he respected the old man as a soldier, if only because Seward knew nothing of warfare and, unlike Chase, he did not see himself as a Bonaparte-in-waiting. Seward assumed that Scott’s knowledge of warfare equalled his demonstrable ignorance of politics. In any case, Seward’s use of the old man had ended with the rejection of Scott’s advice to abandon Fort Sumter, prompted entirely by Seward, who had believed then and still believed that, given a foreign war, the seceded states would return to the fold. But Lincoln had undone this policy. Seward was still not certain just how it was that Lincoln had taken the initiative from him but he had. Now Seward must wait for the new Congress to assemble next week. Since a third of the membership belonged to states that had seceded, there would be a Northern Congress, with a large Republican majority. Unfortunately, the firm of Seward and Weed would control not much more than the New York delegation. Worse, powerful committees of the House and Senate were dominated by hard-core abolitionists like Sumner. Although these powerful chairmen had little respect for the cautious Lincoln, they positively hated Seward. To a man, they favored Chase. Seward looked across the table and found that Chase was looking at him with the curious myopic intensity which usually meant that Chase was undertaking a new move in their game of political chess. Seward smiled benignly. Chase dropped his eyes to the map; plainly, in some distress at being observed observing.

  McDowell had finished his explanation; and his aide folded up the map. Lincoln looked about the room. “Are we all … satisfied?” he asked. Everyone looked grave and martial, except General Scott, who seemed to be asleep. No one spoke. “Very well, General McDowell.” Lincoln shook the general’s hand. “It rests with you now.”