by Gore Vidal
Lincoln then disappeared into his own office while Hay joined Nicolay in the secretary’s office, where Lincoln’s first message to Congress was strewn across Nicolay’s desk. The Tycoon had already written and rewritten it a number of times. Certain sections had been shown to the Cabinet officers involved. Bates had helped with the section on habeas corpus, while Chase had justified not only the raid on the Treasury but the various bond issues that they hoped would finance the war. Seward had contributed some flowery passages on foreign affairs and, to Seward’s disgust, Lincoln had carefully pruned the loveliest of those blossoms.
“All in all a noble document,” said Nicolay, assembling the pages as if they were his own.
“How is it delivered?” Hay was curious.
“How is what delivered?”
“Well, does the Ancient go down to the Capitol and knock on the door, and then read it to Congress, or what?”
Nicolay frowned. “I don’t know. Ask Edward.”
As always, Edward was instructive. A somewhat prim colored man, he regarded the inner workings of the Executive Mansion as comparable to those of Heaven; and as immutable. “Mr. Jefferson was such a bad public speaker that he used to write out his messages and send them over to Congress, where one of the clerks would read them. All of the later presidents have done the same.”
“But how, exactly, do we get the message to them?”
Hay was inspired. “We give it to the Postmaster-General, Mr. Blair …”
“You,” said Edward, who did not much like levity in these high matters, “Mr. Nicolay, will present yourself at the door to the House of Representatives. The Sergeant-at-arms will then approach you, and you will say, ‘I have a communication from the President of the United States.’ The Sergeant-at-arms will take the message, while the Speaker interrupts the business of the House, so that the Senate can be summoned, and the message read to all of Congress by Mr. Forney, the Clerk to the Senate.”
“That is very satisfying,” said Hay.
“Thank you, Mr. Hay,” said Edward, returning to his post as the waiting room’s helmsman.
“I wonder who they’ll elect Speaker?” Nicolay was now assembling the pages of the message inside a vellum cover.
“The Tycoon thinks Frank Blair can be elected, but he’ll have to give up being a colonel, which he probably won’t.” The previous year Hay had worked for Frank Blair’s Missouri Democrat, acting as its Springfield correspondent. Although Blair had been a Bates man at the Chicago convention, the family had quickly shifted to Lincoln; and Hay had done his part to make sure that Missouri was kept informed of Lincoln’s candidacy. Of all the Blairs, Frank was the most appealing to Hay—even romantic. When Frank fell in love with the same Maryland girl that one of his brothers wanted to marry, Frank’s solution was typical; he promptly moved west to the Missouri Territory, where he more or less invented the state, with some assistance from a third brother, Montgomery. In imitation of Frank, the other brother went off to sea; and the now-entirely Blair-less girl dropped from history.
Hay retired to his own small office, uncomfortably shared with William O. Stoddard, known, familiarly, as Stodd, a recent acquisition whose difficult task was the management of Madam, who now regarded Nicolay and Hay as, collectively, the enemy. At twenty-five Stodd was an amiable youth with a sensibly worried expression. He had written a Lincoln-forpresident editorial in 1859 for the Central Illinois Gazette; he had then sent this rousing document to hundreds of newspapers; and many had used it. Hay had always thought that the Tycoon had put Stodd up to writing the editorial at a low moment in Lincoln’s political career, but Nicolay was inclined to the view that it was the Tycoon’s law partner, Billy Herndon, who had arranged the matter. Herndon was a newspaper-reading addict who thought in headlines. Years before Lincoln was spoken of as a serious candidate, Herndon was busy proposing his candidacy to the newspapers.
“Is Madam in good spirit?” Hay enjoyed teasing Stodd.
“We’re going to Long Branch in August.”
“Where’s that?”
“New Jersey, I think. By the sea.”
“Will the precious children go?”
“Yes.”
“How quiet the White House will seem, with only us and the war.”
“That depends on whether or not the President has seen all the bills from the New York stores.” Stodd was grim. The New York press had enjoyed describing “Mrs. President’s spring spending spree.” Although Stodd gave no details to his rivals Hay and Nicolay, it was plain that he was worried; also, the as-yet-unconfirmed Commissioner of Public Buildings had told Hay that he found alarming the grandeur of Madam’s vision of what the White House must be. Thus far, the Tycoon seemed to be unaware of the gathering storm of unpaid bills, both private and public. But then there were other storms. Congress was in the city …
NINETEEN
Onward to Richmond!
“I wish,” said Mary, from behind her silver tea service, “Mr. Greeley would leave the war to Mr. Lincoln.”
“So do I, Cousin Mary,” said John C. Breckinridge, late Vice-President of rather more United States than his successor was Vice-Presiding over. Breckinridge was now the newly elected senator from Kentucky. “With Mr. Lincoln in absolute charge, Mrs. Davis will be pouring tea in this room by the end of the month.” Although Breckinridge’s blue eyes were bright with what was meant to be good humor, they did not quite negate his thin-lipped smile.
“Oh, Cousin John!” Mary maintained what she thought of as her own small correct Queen Victoria smile. She must, at all costs, charm her turbulent cousin. “How you tease me, sir! Sugar?”
Breckinridge indicated two lumps. They were seated in the Blue Room. As usual, the Chevalier Wikoff acted as lord-in-waiting. As usual, there were more men than women at Mary’s levee. The Washington ladies who had been so eager to snub the Lincolns were now themselves snubbed; and denied the glitter of her social gatherings, where Sumner was almost always to be seen, as well as such statesmen as Fessenden and Trumbull from the Senate, and Thaddeus Stevens and Frank Blair and Elihu B. Washburne from the House of Representatives.
The return of Breckinridge to the Senate had caused a sensation. Although Kentucky was being held in the Union by Lincoln—with both hands, as he had observed somewhat grimly—the new Senator Breckinridge was suspected of favoring secession. “I’ve already had several pleasurable meetings with President Davis, Cousin Mary.”
Breckinridge’s large round face against the dark blue of the room’s wall resembled, Mary decided, the full moon at midnight. She responded with exquisite sweetness, “I don’t know of any president called Davis, Cousin John.”
“Oh, there’s such a president, all right.” Appreciatively, Breckinridge looked about the newly papered and gilded Oval Room. “He’ll be much in your debt for going to all this expense. Or at least Mrs. Davis will. You know what they’re saying all over the South now? ‘Onward to Washington.’ ”
“If one rebel gets as far as this room, Cousin John, he’ll have me to contend with! With a rifle, sir.”
“What if the soldier’s Ben Helm? Or one of your own brothers?”
“I would,” said Mary coldly, “shoot him dead for a traitor.”
“Well, you are a Todd, after all.”
“When, sir, will you be joining Mr. Davis?” Mary allowed the Queen Victoria smile to fade entirely.
“Why, I’m a Union man. You know that. In my way, that is. I’m also curious to see how this session of Congress goes.”
“They will support the President, entirely.”
At the other end of the room Elihu B. Washburne was not so certain. “The President will only get about half of the four hundred million dollars that he wants.”
“But,” asked the English journalist, “will he get the four hundred thousand men that he’s asked for?”
Washburne had been prepared to dislike William Howard Russell, the stout, florid, London Times correspondent, but in life, if not in prin
t, this somewhat prickly chronicler of wars from the Crimea to India proved to be a most engaging if hard-drinking and plain-speaking man. Washburne nodded. “We’re doing well with new volunteers …”
“But not so well with your three-month enlistment lads. Just now, as I was coming out of Willard’s, one of them came up to me and begged me for some pennies to buy whiskey.”
“Did you give them?” asked the slender young army captain who had gravitated to England’s greatest observer of warfare.
“Certainly not!” Russell laughed until his face turned the color of Washington’s indigenous brick. “I do want you people to win. But you’ve got to train your men better. They are rabble. Not like the Southerners. I was impressed with them, let me tell you.”
“You’ve been at the South—lately?” Washburne was surprised.
“I’ve only just got back. I went everywhere. Saw everybody. Pleasant chap, Mr. Davis. But looks sickly. No wonder. That climate! Those mosquitoes! Even so, they’re spoiling for a fight. I’ve never seen any people like them.”
“We are the same, sir,” said the young captain, whom Washburne now recognized as General McDowell’s aide, a rich New Yorker named William Sanford.
“No, Captain, you’re not. That’s the problem. Every single one of those Southerners is fighting for his own country against invaders, which is what you are to him. Of course, the North is more populous, more rich. But where are your soldiers to be found? Mostly immigrants from Europe. Mostly German and Irish, who’ve only just arrived. They are truly alien, sir; and have nothing to fight for except the pennies that you pay them.”
Since this was exactly Washburne’s private view, he was obliged to object strenuously, as befitted an American statesman.
Russell was genial, but unconvinced. “Farmers and hunters will fight for their own land in a way no factory worker will, much less a new arrival who doesn’t even know the language. You know what I heard in Charleston?” Russell chuckled at the memory. “A group of quite serious people told me that if we’d send them a royal prince or princess as sovereign, they would rejoin our empire.”
“I never thought the rebels had that much sense of humor.” But this was something new, and Washburne wondered if some capital might not be made out of the South’s treason not only to the United States but to the great republican principle itself.
“They have no sense of humor, as far as I can tell. They are serious, like you.”
There was a stir as the President entered the Blue Room. Absently, Lincoln held a folder in his right hand, which he then moved to the left hand, as he greeted Mrs. Lincoln’s guests. Finally, he put the folder on a console. “He looks somewhat …” Russell paused.
“Tired,” said Washburne, not about to allow the Englishman a characterizing adjective that might look disagreeable in the hostile columns of the London Times.
“That, too,” said Russell, with a smile.
“My father,” said young Captain Sanford, suddenly, “told me that Mr. Lincoln was the best railroad lawyer in the country.”
“Did he mean that as a compliment?” Russell positively grinned.
“Of course he did.” Washburne was emphatic. “And your father’s right. Is he a railroad man?”
“No, sir. We have mills. In Lowell, Massachusetts. Encaustic tiles. And jean and cotton. But when this is over”—the young man gestured vaguely at a painting of classical ruins which, presumably, represented to him a land at peace—“we shall go into railroads.”
“With Mr. Lincoln as your counsel?” asked Russell, eyes on the President, who was being harangued by Sumner.
“I’m sure Mr. Lincoln is beyond all that now,” said the young man sadly.
Mrs. Lincoln had begun making a circuit of the room, on the arm of Chevalier Wikoff. When she saw Russell, she stopped; and smiled with what Washburne took to be real pleasure. “Mr. Russell, sir! You are back. Did you get the flowers?”
Russell kissed her hand in a graceful gesture which involved, Washburne noted, the actual presentation of his lips not to the back of her hand, as Washburne had always imagined this abominable European transaction required, but to his own thumb. “I’ve already written you a long letter. Your flowers were the first thing that I saw when I entered the two furnished clothes chests that my landlord tells me is an apartment.”
“You’ve left Willard’s?” Mrs. Lincoln gave her hand to Washburne, who did not kiss it, old friend that he was, and to Captain Sanford, who bowed low and looked nervous.
Washburne had heard that Mrs. Lincoln had taken to sending flowers from the White House conservatories to various esteemed personages. He was somewhat surprised that Mr. Russell of the Times should be so favored. For one thing, he was a great friend of Seward. For another, the Times was, editorially, more and more pro-rebel. But the President had gone out of his way to be amiable to the famous correspondent; and Washburne knew that there were times when seemingly ill-matched husband and wife worked smoothly as a political team.
“A powerful newspaper, the Times,” Lincoln had said when he first met Russell; and he had affected wonder. “I can’t think of anything on earth anywhere so powerful, unless maybe the Mississippi River.”
“Is it true,” asked the Chevalier Wikoff, “that the rebels would like to re-join the British crown?”
“That is what many of them told me,” said Russell.
“Poor Queen Victoria.” Mary was serene. “I would not wish them on her.”
“Why,” Russell boomed, “we would handle them just the way we do the Irish!” As all laughed, Mrs. Lincoln continued her circuit, pausing, finally, at a console where Senator Trumbull of Illinois stood. As always, Mary was glad to see him; but she often wondered if he was ever glad to see her. Despite so much idle speculation about her and Judge Douglas, the only man that she had ever loved in youth was the handsome elegant Lyman Trumbull, whose wife, Julia, she could not help but hate, even though they had once been close. Mary spoke to Trumbull of the Coterie days, when they had all been friends. “In another age,” she heard herself say, as she smiled up at him.
Washburne joined the President and Sumner at the window through which could be seen the President’s Park. The area around the unfinished obelisk had recently been made into an abattoir for the army. Here, in plain view of the White House, cattle and hogs were daily slaughtered; then hung on hooks. As a result, the blocks of white marble were now all splattered with blood and when the wind was from the south the stench of blood combined with the odor of the stagnant canal was overpowering.
Sumner was trying to draw out the President on the timing of the attack on Richmond. “The New York Herald says that the rebels expect an attack before their so-called Congress meets, but our own Daily Morning Chronicle predicts a Fourth of July attack.”
“Do they?” Lincoln gazed absently out the window. Since at least one congressional committee had been shown McDowell’s plan, Washburne wondered just why Sumner was so pressing. Of course, no date had been given. But there were rumors that McDowell would not be ready in time to stop the Confederate Congress from meeting. Certainly, a Fourth of July attack was out of the question.
“I realize,” said Sumner, “that the press is hardly reliable.”
Lincoln turned from the window; suddenly, he grinned. “Oh, yes, they are. They lie. And then they re-lie. So they are nothing if not re-lie-able.”
As Washburne laughed, he was pleased to note that the humorless Sumner had remembered to smile. Then Breckinridge joined them. Lincoln was amiable: “Well, sir. I’m always glad to see a brand-new senator from my native state.”
“I’m always happy to see you, sir—as Cousin Mary’s husband, naturally.”
“Naturally. Anyway, your presence in this session of Congress is bound to … elevate the tone of the discourse.” Lincoln was courtly. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Sumner?”
“Tea,” said the most eloquent man of his time, “does wonders for the dyspeptic.” Sumner stalked away, in the
general direction of the silver urn.
“I shall do my best to represent … our state, sir.” Breckinridge made the “our” sound very dramatic indeed.
But Lincoln chose to ignore the drama. “I’m sure you will. And I’ll be curious to see how you react to my Message to the Congress, which is …” Lincoln held up both hands, as if one of them might contain the document; then, anxiously, he felt his coat pocket. “What did I do with it?”
Washburne motioned to the console where Mrs. Lincoln had been standing; but stood no longer. “You put it down there. On that table. I saw you.”
“But where is it?”
Suddenly, Chevalier Wikoff was at the President’s side. He presented the folder to Lincoln. “I thought it wise, Your Excellency, to hold this for you.”
“Well, that was good of you, Mr. Wikoff. And careless of me.” Lincoln put the folder under his arm. He turned to Wikoff. “What news of our friend Mr. Bennett?”
Washburne knew that for over a year Lincoln had been doing his best to woo James Gordon Bennett, the publisher of the New York Herald, the most powerful of the country’s newspapers and the most read in the European capitals. Everyone was agreed that Bennett was a singularly coarse and repellent man. To the extent that he was at all political, he was a pro-Southern Democrat. The previous summer, when Lincoln had begun his wooing of Bennett, Washburne had advised him to write Bennett off. But Lincoln was stubborn. “I must bell that cat, somehow,” he said. The first attempt was a complete failure. Bennett had supported the Democratic party in the election. Lately, Thurlow Weed had been conducting secret negotiations with the publisher, who had everything on earth a man could want in the way of power and money but lacked the one thing that he ought not to have cared about but did, a position in the world of the brightest society.
To Washburne’s disgust, Lincoln was now ready to offer Bennett the ambassadorship to France. “That is a small price to pay, Brother Washburne, for a good account of the Union in Europe.” So far, the bait had not been taken by His Satanic Majesty, as Bennett was known to even the few who liked him. Since Chevalier Wikoff was Bennett’s personal ambassador to the White House—and as the Chevalier was equally enamored of both Satanic majesty and Republican excellencies—he was often able to mediate between the warring powers. He did so now. “Mr. Bennett would like to give his yacht to the revenue service.”
