Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  “I think the President is peculiarly able to rise above his brothers-in-law,” said Seward, swinging his hammock in a sort of semicircle, which made Chase dizzy to watch.

  “I wish he would rise the entire way in this matter.”

  “You would free all of the slaves within the Union?”

  “Yes, Mr. Seward, I would.”

  Seward was enjoying himself. “And in those states that are in rebellion?”

  “I would have the military commanders free them, as each rebel state is brought to heel.”

  “The military commanders rather than the President?”

  “I think,” said Chase, judiciously, “that is the practical way.”

  “I see.” Seward saw that for all of Chase’s passion on the subject of abolition, he did not want the President to get any of the credit for so noble a deed. On the other hand, he would not object to Lincoln taking whatever blame might be handed around.

  “I think, Mr. Seward, it is up to us to guide the President in this matter. He will not act of his own accord …”

  “You may be surprised, Mr. Chase.”

  Chase looked at Seward expectantly. “What form will the surprise take?”

  “I think that Mr. Lincoln is thinking hard, and that means that he is about to make a move.”

  “You are in his confidence, of course.” Chase was polite; but no more. He knew that if Seward had his way, nothing would be done until after the congressional elections in the fall. As Chase rose to go, Seward got out of his hammock with a surprisingly youthful spring.

  “Would that we had a Cromwell!” Seward exclaimed, as he led Chase into the house.

  “You?” asked Chase, who had often heard Seward go on in a similar vein.

  “Or you. Or even Lincoln.”

  “I am sure he could never rise to the stern … necessity.”

  “Could you, Mr. Chase?”

  Chase mopped his brow. The interior of the house was even warmer than the back porch.

  “It is tempting, in a war, to give the leadership to one man. But once the war is over, he must, of course, be executed promptly.”

  “I would avoid that,” said Seward, merrily.

  “Et tu, Brute?” said Chase, thinking not of Shakespeare but of Scripture and of Christ’s suffering on the cross that man might be redeemed through His blood. Now that would be a mighty, worthy fate.

  Hay was at the window of Nicolay’s office when the Secretary of the Treasury emerged from Seward’s house. “They are plotting,” he said to Nicolay. “Chase and Seward are up to something.”

  “We shall survive.” Nicolay was on his feet. He was en route to the cool wilds of Minnesota. Once Congress had gone home, half the secretary’s work mysteriously ceased. Hay watched as Chase drove away in his carriage. Then the newest streetcar, an open affair for summer days, passed in all its cream-and-white splendor beneath the White House and a number of well-dressed gentlemen and ladies waved at the President, wherever he might be; and Hay waved back.

  “I think,” said Hay, half to himself and half to the busy Nicolay, “I shall call on Miss Kate.”

  “Isn’t the boy-governor in town?”

  “No. He’s at Corinth, I think. He’s asked the Tycoon to allow him to explain to Halleck how to wind up the war in the west.”

  “When does Halleck get here?” Nicolay’s carpetbag was now filled up with papers.

  “The twenty-third, he says. He keeps delaying. If I were to be general-in-chief, I’d come running.” Hay sat at Nicolay’s desk. “Miss Kate is more than usually agreeable this summer.”

  “Then beware. She is plotting.”

  Lincoln entered the office. “Well, Mr. Nicolay, you are off today, I see.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hope you’ll get a glimpse of Miss Therena Bates.”

  “If there is a chance, between the Chippewas and the Cheyennes, I will.”

  “Yes.” Lincoln frowned. “You’ll have your work cut out for you. As if we didn’t have enough to do, we’re about to have us an Indian war. Present my compliments to Chief Hole-in-the-Day.”

  “I will, sir.”

  “Offer him your scalp,” added Hay, aware that Lincoln had drifted off. Absently, the President had walked over to the table strewn with newspapers. “It is ominous,” he said, picking up the New York Tribune, “that I’ve not heard from Horace Greeley for a week.”

  “Perhaps,” said Hay, “he is ill.”

  “Oh, we should have heard that news,” said Lincoln, glancing at the editorial page. “ ‘A great man is fast sinking,’ we’d read. Well, he favors last week’s Confiscation Act, but he says it don’t go far enough. How much further can Congress go than to say that the slaves of any person found guilty of treason are free?”

  Both Nicolay and Hay realized that whenever Lincoln asked questions of a newspaper, he did not expect either of them to speak in the editor’s place. Lincoln next addressed a number of ringing questions to James Gordon Bennett; and then threw down the Herald. “I ought not to read these people,” he said; then added: “Anyway, our Railroad Bill seems popular.”

  “But the New York Times,” said Nicolay, “wonders how, in the middle of the most expensive war in history, you’ll be able to pay for a railroad line from coast to coast.”

  “It’s only from western Iowa to San Francisco …” Lincoln looked, for a moment, wistful. “You know, I really hope to take that train one day. I dearly want to see the Pacific Ocean. It is my last passion.” He turned to Nicolay. “Have you a copy of General McClellan’s letter to me, the one he gave me at Harrison’s Landing?”

  “Yes, sir.” Nicolay touched the strongbox on his desk. “I keep it here, locked up.”

  “You keep it under lock and key, too, John,” said the Ancient to Hay; then he bade Nicolay farewell; and returned to his own office, where Tad promptly started to bang a drum. “My son,” they heard the President’s mild voice from the corridor, “could you not manage to make less noise?”

  “That boy’s run wild since Mrs. Edwards went home.” Hay had his own ideas about the way in which children should be brought up, and the Lincolns failed entirely to meet his standards. Tad was seen, was heard, was everywhere underfoot.

  “I’d hoped she would stay longer,” said Nicolay.

  “Not even she can take the Hellcat.”

  “The scenes never stop.” Nicolay shut his bag. “I don’t envy you, Johnny.”

  “Do you think she’s mad?” This was a recurring dialogue.

  “She is certainly not like other people. She is two people …”

  “She is Hell. She is Cat. And she is the Hellcat. That’s three people.” Since Willie’s death, Hay had gone out of his way to be sympathetic and helpful, but nothing could allay Madam’s suspicions, compounded, as always, by urgent demands for money. Since Watt continued, mysteriously, to work at the White House under a cloud rather larger than a President’s message to Congress, she had turned more and more to the urbane Major French, whose urbanity with each passing month was more and more tested. Meanwhile, she was in darkest mourning. The Marine Band was no longer allowed to play on summer evenings in the President’s Park, while the bedroom in which Willie had died was now off-limits for her as was the downstairs Green Room, where the boy had been embalmed. The President bore his own grief stoically—although Nico had told Hay that immediately after the Ancient had left the death-bed, he had come, in tears, to Nicolay’s office and said, “Well, Nicolay, my boy is gone. He is actually gone. Gone,” he repeated, as if he could not believe what had happened. But there it ended. After that, he shared his grief with no one, as far as Hay knew.

  Nicolay was at the door, carpetbag in hand. “I shall think of you, Johnny, from time to time. Beware the fair Kate.”

  “Like the Medusa.”

  “You’ll enjoy the coming surprise. I wish I were going to be here.”

  “Surprise?” Hay usually knew everything that Nicolay knew. But, lately, he had noticed
that the Ancient and Nicolay were often alone together in the President’s office; and that whenever he had entered the room, they would fall silent.

  “You’ll see. Now I must go. You have the key to the strongbox. All else is in order.” Nicolay shook Hay’s hand firmly; and left the room. Ten minutes later, Hay realized that Nicolay had forgotten to give him the key to the strongbox. Hay hurried downstairs, but Nicolay’s carriage had already departed for the depot.

  The surprise occurred at the Cabinet meeting on July 22. At first Hay feared that he would not be included, but the President, at the last moment, said that he would want notes of what the others said.

  The room was bright; and the air hot. Flies buzzed in and out of the open windows. Lincoln had loosened his tie; and the corded brown neck looked as if it might have belonged to Chief Hole-in-the-Day. All the Cabinet was present save Blair. After a few bits of business, Lincoln removed a document from his pocket; and put on his glasses. But instead of looking at the pages in his hand, he stared at the gaslight fixtures that depended from the ceiling. “I think that we are, in many ways, about at the end of our rope on the plan of operations that we have been following—politically as well as militarily. We are to face a difficult election in November. There’s a possibility we may lose Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Meanwhile, our French friends are busy across the border in Mexico, stirring up trouble, and our British friends are letting the rebels use their shipyards, in violation of our agreed-upon neutrality. In one year, Mr. Chase tells me the public debt has gone from ninety million dollars to a half billion dollars. Personally, I cannot visualize either sum. But I know that we cannot go on much longer as we are without victories in the field and in the world’s political arena.”

  Lincoln glanced at the papers in his hand. Hay could not for the life of him guess what the Ancient was up to. But Seward knew; had indeed discussed the matter with the President. Chase suspected; and was now most uneasy. In a sense, he himself could—with a stroke of Lincoln’s pen—lose his moral superiority to Lincoln. “As you know, I have said, more than once, if I could preserve the Union by freeing all of the slaves everywhere, I would do so. If I could preserve the Union by freeing none of the slaves, I would do so. If I could preserve the Union by freeing some of the slaves but not others, I would do so. Well, I have not the political power to do the first. I have not the inclination nor the need to do the second. So I shall now do the third, as a military necessity.”

  The silence in the room was made all the deeper by the buzzing of the flies—and the bluebottles that swept like artillery shells past Hay’s face. The Ancient had at last seized the moment. Chase was very pale; and perturbed. Seward was in another, pleasanter world, gazing out the window. Stanton scowled. Welles sweated beneath his wig. Bates looked sorrowful. Smith looked indifferent. “I should tell you that I have myself prepared a proclamation of emancipation. I shall, in due course, publish it. And it will be the law. I have not asked you here for your advice, though once I have read you what I have written, you may certainly comment.”

  Lincoln then proceeded to read a most adroit document. To the slave-holding states within the Union, he promised to ask the Congress to provide some means of giving financial aid to those elements which favored the gradual abolishment of slavery. But for those states that were in rebellion against the Union, “I, as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy of the United States, do order and declare that on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or States wherein the Constitutional authority of the United States shall not then be practically recognized, submitted to and maintained, shall then, thenceforward, and forever be free.” The President put down the pages on the table; and removed his glasses; and rubbed his nose.

  Blair entered the room, apologizing for being late. Lincoln indicated, silently, that he read the draft of the proclamation, which he did; not happily, thought Hay.

  Lincoln turned not to Seward, as protocol required, but to Chase. “We all spoke yesterday, Mr. Chase, about a number of military orders that I have had in mind on the question of what is to be done with those Negroes from the rebel states who are now free of their masters, and I think we are all pretty much agreed that they may be employed by us as laborers, and so on. All of us supported the plan to colonize the Negroes in some tropical place except you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Chase cleared his throat; he was suddenly aware that he was nervous, and he wondered why. “I have never taken to the idea that we simply remove three million Negroes from this continent, and send them to Central America or across the Atlantic to Africa. If nothing else, the cost of moving them would be prohibitive.”

  “Well, I have tabled the matter, at your insistence. On the other hand, I part company with some of you on the arming of former slaves. I think that this would have a most incendiary effect in the border-states, and not affect the rebels much one way or the other.”

  “There, sir, we differ.” Chase looked to Seward for aid, but there was none; looked to Stanton, who was with him in this matter, but Stanton chose silence. “As for the proclamation that you have read to us, I would prefer that you leave to the various commanding generals the task of freeing—and arming—the slaves, as these Negroes come within their jurisdiction. But since you are averse to this, I give my entire support to the proclamation, in its place.”

  The President nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Chase.” Then he turned to Montgomery Blair. “You missed yesterday’s meeting, but you now know the gist of it; and you have read the proclamation.”

  “Yes, sir.” Blair’s naturally fierce face was made more ferocious by the bright sun that caused his eyes to shine like polished gray marble. “I think you know my views. I want all the slaves freed at the end of the war; and then I want every last Negro shipped off to Africa or New Granada or wherever we can find a country for them. The people, Mr. Chase”—Blair turned his glare on the bland Roman bust of the Secretary of the Treasury—“will find the money to transport them from this continent where they never should have been brought, which is why this war is the Judgment of God on us for bringing them here in the first place.”

  “That’s very eloquent, Mr. Blair.” Lincoln was dry. “And much my own view, but the issue at hand is the proclamation. What is your view of it?”

  “My view, sir, is that if you publish it, we will lose the November election, and you will be faced with a Democratic Congress.”

  Lincoln seemed taken aback by Blair’s directness. But before he could speak, Seward broke in. “I fully support the proclamation, which the President intends to publish in any case, and I think it will do us more good than ill, particularly in our relations with the European powers. But I would suggest, Mr. President, most respectfully, that as we are plainly not winning the war—and going bust in the process—that you postpone the proclamation until you can give it to the country supported by military success. Otherwise, the impression will be, in the light of so many reverses, of our last shriek on the retreat.”

  Lincoln stretched his arms, always, Hay knew, a sign that he was past the worst of some encounter. “I think that’s eminently sound advice, Governor, which I shall take.” Lincoln gave the pages to Hay. “Mr. Hay, put this away in the strongbox.” Hay felt slightly ill. Where was the key? “We shall keep all of this a secret until such time as I am able to celebrate a victory. What news”—the Tycoon turned to Stanton—“of General McClellan?”

  “The Great American Tortoise remains in place.”

  “He is consistent,” said the President, wearily. “Well, soon we shall have General Halleck here as general-in-chief. At West Point, he is known as Old Brains, and he is, yet again, General Scott’s choice. I’ve also been reading General Halleck’s Elements of Military Art and Science; it is most serious, most serious.”

  The conversation turned to General Pope, who was everyone’s idea of a fighting general. Chase had got very friendly with him;
he had even shepherded the fiery general around the Capitol, where he had made an excellent impression on the abolitionists. Pope’s father had been an Illinois district judge in whose court Lincoln had practised. But Lincoln had done nothing to promote him. Pope had succeeded quite on his own in the West, under Halleck. While Lincoln was with Scott at West Point, Stanton had summoned Pope to Washington and offered him the command of a new army, to be known as the Army of Virginia, with McDowell and Frémont and Banks under him. Pope had accepted the command. He was a magnificent-looking man with a vast beard. Unfortunately, he took an immediate dislike to McClellan, who reciprocated. As a result, the armies of Virginia and of the Potomac were now commanded by two rivals. Thus far, Lincoln chose not to notice the irritabilities of his commanders. But then after Hay had read the letter that McClellan gave Lincoln at Harrison’s Landing, he had come to the conclusion that the Ancient was a saint. Unable to take Richmond, McClellan had had the audacity to present the President with a letter filled with political advice to the effect that the noble war to preserve the Union must not be fought against the Southern people or their property, which included slaves. It was plain to Hay that this document was intended to be the platform from which McClellan would run for president in 1864. It was also plain to Lincoln, who made no comment other than a wise smile when others made the same comment.

  Chase thought himself a saint for concurring so wholeheartedly in Lincoln’s plan to emancipate the slaves of the rebel states. Granted, he had no alternative, for the President had been uncharacteristically firm. Lincoln had assembled the Cabinet in order to tell them what he intended to do. Since Seward was plainly behind him, pulling the strings, Chase was outnumbered. More than ever, he was convinced that Seward was the mind of the Administration to the extent that such a haphazard and themeless government could be said to have a mind. Since he himself was not permitted to create grand strategy, he could at least continue to be the voice of conscience—seldom heeded, of course, by these conscienceless politicians.