Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  “Perhaps he’ll retire of his own accord.” But even as Hay said this, he doubted it. “We must get him an army commission.”

  “Over Stanton’s corpse, I fear.”

  The newly repaired bell rang in their office; Hay went into the President’s office. The Ancient was gloomily reading court-martial documents. They came to him at the rate now of thirty thousand a year, and there were days when he and the two secretaries did no other work but study whether or not Private Ezra Smith had really been asleep on duty, and so must be shot dead. Lincoln was generally inclined to mercy, particularly with what he called “the leg-cases,” men who had run away when guns were fired at them. “It is a sensible reaction,” Lincoln had once observed. “And very much my own. I have a good deal of moral courage, I think, but faced with a battery of guns up ahead, I might just find me a nice tree to rest behind.” Stanton was for shooting everyone. Lincoln was for sparing anyone where there might be an extenuating circumstance. “After all, if you take a coward and put him in front of a firing squad, you’ll scare him to death anyway.” Although the President made his jokes—like a tic they sometimes were, thought Hay—he grew grayer and bleaker on those days, as now, when he was obliged to play God and determine who was to live and who was to die. From the beginning, the military had insisted that if cowards were not dealt with harshly and publicly, there might be no army left at all. So at the end of this particular day, there might be a hundred men who would die because the Commander-in-Chief had chosen not to pardon them.

  “Here, John.” Lincoln gave Hay a stack of orders. “These are the ones that I’ve pardoned. The rest …” He sighed; and stretched until the vertebrae cracked. Hay wanted to bring up the subject of Watt, but when he saw how wan the Ancient was he let the matter go. He and Nicolay would have to handle this one together. “Sit down, John, and tell me about Springfield and Cincinnati.”

  Hay had just returned from two weeks in both cities, as well as in his hometown of Warsaw, Illinois. “Well, sir, there is not a good word said of McClellan anywhere, even by the Democrats.”

  “And of me? Is there a single good word said—or, maybe, two?”

  “There is all the usual talk, sir. There are still people who think that Mr. Seward and General McClellan are running the government and that if you would only get rid of them, we’d win the war.”

  Lincoln nodded, vaguely. Hay wished that he could tell him something that he did not know; but this was rare. Lincoln had a habit of asking strangers seemingly idle questions which, like a trial lawyer’s cross-examination, were not idle at all but very much a part of his ongoing education in a thousand matters. He called his meetings with strangers “public-opinion baths.” Lately, he had been nearly drowned in them. Everyone gave him advice. “How will the voting go back home?”

  “It won’t be easy, sir. Our best Republicans are all in the army, while the smartest Democrats are all working to win the state.”

  Lincoln nodded. “And I am criticized for putting too many Democrats in high places. I should have doubled the number; and doubled the blame. I suspect we’ll lose Illinois,” he added in a matter-of-fact way. “Did you see Billy Herndon?”

  “Yes, sir.” Hay smiled. “During the summer he married the fair Miss Anna Miles. He told me that she is a Democrat and pro-slavery but that he has, by masterful argument, changed her mind entirely.”

  “Poor Billy. But then,” Lincoln added drolly, “poor Miss Anna. She’s got her a handful, with Billy and all those children.”

  “They refuse to call her Mother.”

  “Well, she’s about the same age as the older ones. Is he a Good Templar now?”

  “Yes, sir. He has foresworn the demon rum; and preaches against it.”

  “That is to the good. I’ve often thought that if he had not so … handicapped himself in life, he might have been the American Voltaire.”

  “Do we really need one of those, sir?” Hay feigned a bumpkin’s innocence.

  “Now, John, you must never ask a politician such a question just before an election.”

  On Election Day, there was rain. Lincoln received the returns in Stanton’s office, while Hay sat nearby at a clerk’s desk, sorting the telegrams and arranging them according to state. Lincoln lay on the sofa; eyes shut. Stanton, in his shirt-sleeves, wheezed and moaned and addressed God, threateningly. Since the death of his baby son, James, he and God were in constant communication. Washburne sat in a rocker, keeping track of the vote. At regular intervals, military aides would come from the Telegraph Room next door. If the message was significant, Stanton would read it aloud and then Hay would file it with the others.

  The loss of New York State came as no surprise to Lincoln; but it was a matter of bitterness to Stanton, who had persuaded a friend, the politician-general Wadsworth, to run for governor. Now Wadsworth was defeated, and the Democrat Horatio Seymour was elected. “It is tragic!” Stanton cried.

  “And, like all classic tragedy, to have been expected,” said Lincoln on his sofa. “There are one hundred thousand New York men in the army, most of them Republicans, away from home; and unable to vote.”

  “Wasted!” exclaimed Washburne; he was surprised at the extent of the Republican defeat in New York.

  “Well, not entirely wasted,” said Lincoln, with the beginning of a smile. “Mr. Stanton here has placed those very same loyal Republican New Yorkers all around the border-states, where they will make sure that we get proper majorities.”

  Stanton struck his desk a great blow. “We will, too! In Delaware alone, I’ve got three thousand men supervising the polling places.”

  “And Tennessee?” Lincoln—as Jupiter—enjoyed teasing Mars.

  “Oh, General Grant will follow your orders to the last comma. You told him ‘to follow forms of law as far as convenient.’ ”

  “Did I say that?” Lincoln pretended surprise.

  “I hope you put it even more strongly,” said Washburne, who had now noted Tennessee’s clean sweep for the Republican Party. “There is nothing like the presence of bayonets to get the pro-slave element to vote right.”

  “Well, I did send General Grant a message, saying that we should elect only men of good character, and loyalty to the Union, like our military governor Andy Johnson.”

  “Between Johnson and Grant, this should be a highly bibulous election for Tennessee.” Washburne could not resist the comment.

  “Well,” said Lincoln, “we must give old Andy credit for going against his own state’s wishes and staying put in the Union when all the others skedaddled off to the South, like Breckinridge. I don’t know why Andy is so loyal to us but he is, and I’m grateful.”

  Between messages, they discussed McClellan. Washburne was curious about the nature of the political advice that McClellan had given Lincoln at Harrison’s Landing. But Lincoln only smiled. “I’ve locked all that away,” he said.

  “But what,” asked Washburne, “did you think of this unsuccessful general, giving you advice?”

  “Nothing,” said Lincoln. But then his face lit up. Hay saw a story coming. “I will say that it made me think of the man whose horse kicked up and stuck his foot through the stirrup, causing the man to say to the horse, ‘Well, if you are going to get on, I’m going to get off.’ ”

  As the night wore on and the news from around the country got worse and worse, Lincoln discussed his favorite Shakespeare play, Macbeth. “Even though I have never seen it in a version I liked, not that I’ve seen all that many plays, of any sort.”

  Lincoln was quoting from the fifth act when the loss of Pennsylvania was announced. Lincoln then spoke of the West; as if by hopeful association. “If I am remembered for anything, and if we lose this war, I shall be, I pray, totally forgotten.”

  “We … win …!” Stanton was now in the throes of a serious asthma attack; but since those present were so used to them, no one showed the slightest concern.

  “I think we’ll win, too, Mars,” said Lincoln. “Only it’s not d
one yet. But if, say, we lose, I will take pride—posthumous, I’m sure—in just two things. The railroad across the continent …”

  “Jay Cooke and Company are ready to start selling shares,” said Washburne, who was more than ready himself to subscribe, “for what they call the Northern Pacific Railway, which doesn’t exist yet, of course.”

  “What matters is that there will be, one way or another, a railroad that joins the whole Union into one … union. Without such a railroad we have no nation, in the modern sense …” The President sat up in the sofa. “What was that again about Jay Cooke, Brother Washburne?”

  “There’s a rumor going around that he wants to get into the railroad business, in competition with Union Pacific.”

  “Well, the more the merrier. If he can sell railroad shares the way he sells government bonds, we will have our railroad pretty fast.”

  A messenger arrived with a stack of telegrams, which Stanton was now in no state to read. He gave them to Hay, who read them quickly; then feeling like the messenger who was bound to be executed for the news he brought, he announced, “As of the latest returns, we have lost Ohio and Indiana. Wisconsin is split. New Jersey remains Democratic.”

  There was no sound in the room but the rain beating on the window; and Stanton’s gasping. Hay had never seen the Ancient look so sad or sound so confident. “The other thing,” he said firmly, ignoring message and messenger, “that we can take credit for is the Homestead Act. No other nation has ever done such a thing, giving a man a rich farm of at least a hundred and sixty acres in the Western territories, with no conditions other than he farm it for at least five years. We will gain five, ten, twenty million good farmers from Europe, and fill up the whole West.”

  It was close to dawn when they were joined by Seward, red of face from what must have been a long convivial evening. He had followed the returns through the wire-services. “Well, Mr. President, as midterm congressional elections go, this is not a great victory. But all is not lost.”

  “Well, Governor, maybe not all, but a great deal is lost, you must admit.” Lincoln was now on his feet, restlessly pacing the room. Washburne’s eyes were shut. Hay was trying to figure out the provisional if not the final vote for the Congress. Stanton now looked to be dead behind his desk.

  “I’ve worked it out, Mr. President. We control the Senate, naturally. And we shall control the House by eighteen votes.”

  “That means,” said Lincoln, “the Democrats have gone from forty-four seats to seventy-five.”

  “But we hold our majority, thanks to Michigan, Kansas, Iowa—which I thought we’d lose—Minnesota, Oregon and California.”

  Lincoln shook his head. “They gave us the additional seats, but it is the border-states, thanks to Mr. Stanton, and New England, that control the Congress. But …” Lincoln struck his right fist into his left hand. “Oh, it is hard! We lost New York and the other great states because our best people are away at war, and because the press does everything to inflame the average person against us.”

  “It is not for want of us trying to shut down those voices of treason,” said Seward, magniloquently. Hay rather hoped that he would make one of his dazzling, tipsy speeches.

  But Lincoln spoke through him. “What we have had to do we have done and I hope that we have done it fairly. I have suspended habeas corpus throughout the Union, and on January the first I shall free the slaves in the rebel states. Yet I am told that I do not go far enough. Oh, it is hard!” Lincoln turned to Stanton, who had now returned to a blue-faced lazarene sort of life. “Mr. Stanton, tomorrow you will relieve General McClellan, as commanding general of the Army of the Potomac.”

  “With pleasure, sir; and relief,” said Stanton, in a normal voice.

  “This is great news,” said Washburne.

  “I could not do it before the election for fear people would think that I was bowing to the radicals, who’ve been asking for his head.”

  Seward was suddenly uneasy. “By the same token,” he said, allowing himself to strike slightly the Jesuitical note, “there will be those who say that you did not dare remove him before the election for fear that you would lose the support of the moderates, not to mention the lovers of slavery—and of McClellan—in the border-states.”

  “Whatever I do, Governor, will be misconstrued by most.” To Hay, the Tycoon seemed now to be relieved at last of some heavy burden. “In any case, I gave McClellan every possible opportunity. Fact, I made a little bet with myself. If McClellan didn’t cut off Lee on the way to Richmond, which could easily have been done in the last two weeks, then he did not mean to bust the enemy, for whatever reasons. Well, he did nothing, as usual. And now he is gone.”

  Stanton had already written out the order of dismissal. He himself left the room to see that it would be taken, as rapidly as possible, by courier to McClellan.

  “Who will take his place?” asked Washburne.

  Hay looked at Lincoln, aware that the President had now spent months talking to generals, communicating secretly with Winfield Scott at West Point, asking Halleck pointed questions. With Lincoln’s eerie bad luck in military matters, Old Brains was now no more than a head clerk. After Pope’s debacle at Bull Run, Halleck had simply given up. Once again Lincoln was his own General-in-Chief, supported vigorously by Stanton, the only good thing to have happened to the Tycoon since the war began. But as Hay had said to Nico, two sly lawyers do not an Alexander make; and both agreed that Lincoln’s political skill and strength of character were of no use to him when dealing with generals. He simply did not have the experience to know which commander was capable and which was not. He had endured McClellan because Little Mac was good at drill; and a born engineer. Also, there were urgent political reasons for keeping him on; reasons that had now vanished beneath the stack of telegrams on Hay’s desk.

  Lincoln had trusted McDowell; but then obliged him to go into battle with a green army. Lincoln had accepted Pope at Pope’s own high evaluation of himself; also, Pope was pleasing to Chase and the radicals. Now the Ancient was faced with a choice between Ambrose E. Burnside and Joseph Hooker. Neither general liked or trusted the other. It was all too reminiscent, thought Hay, of the McClellan-Pope rivalry, which had led to the Union’s worst disaster.

  If nothing else, Burnside was, a splendid-looking figure, with ferocious, much-imitated moustaches that connected with the whiskers at his ears. This extraordinary display of facial hair was now known far and wide as “burnsides,” and much imitated. Burnside had been Governor Sprague’s choice to lead the first of Rhode Island’s regiments. Later, he had served with distinction in North Carolina. The previous summer, Lincoln had offered him McClellan’s place, and Burnside had declined it; partly because he was then on friendly terms with McClellan, and partly because he did not think that he had the competence to direct an entire army. He was not yet forty years of age; he was a martyr to chronic diarrhea. But Burnside did think of himself as a fighting general, and Lincoln inclined to such men.

  Joseph Hooker was in his forties; and his career had followed the by-now-usual pattern for nonpolitical generals. He had graduated from West Point; fought in the Mexican War; resigned from the army and gone west to California, as had Halleck, whom he detested. Hooker was reputed to be a heavy drinker as well as a bold, even reckless, conversationalist. He was close to Chase, always a bad sign in Hay’s eyes. Chase’s wooing of generals was one of the scandals of the city. Whenever a general looked as if he might indeed be the leader the war required, Chase would draw close to him and befriend him. If the general was also politically correct in Chase’s eyes, the Secretary of the Treasury would then go to work on Ben Wade and the other Jacobins of the Joint Committee. All this, Hay knew—and, presumably, Lincoln knew, so that the winning general would stand at Chase’s side in the election of 1864.

  During October, another of Chase’s protégés, William S. Rosecrans, had been given command of the Department of the Cumberland. Previously, under Grant, Rosecrans had done mo
derately well at the battles of Corinth and Iuka. There were times when Hay thought that the secret master of the armies of the United States was Salmon P. Chase, who, in turn, affected to believe that the actual master of the nation was Seward. In political circles, little credit was given Lincoln for anything, which, in Hay’s eyes, was probably a good thing for the present. Let Chase and Seward take the blame for the Union’s long series of military defeats. Sooner or later, the Tycoon would assert himself. The war would be won. He would be reelected; and Hay would be a poet—or something.

  The President was at the map of Maryland when he answered Washburne. “I have chosen Burnside to take McClellan’s place. He is a fighting general, you know. I have faith in him.” But Lincoln sounded, to Washburne, curiously listless.

  As they crossed to the Mansion, a small crowd cheered the President on the Republican victory. Then Lincoln paused to speak to the secretary of the Senate, who was also the editor of Washington’s daily Chronicle, John Forney, known to the Democratic northern press as “Lincoln’s dog.” “It will be a difficult year for us in Congress,” said Forney, sadly.

  “Well, that seems to be the usual condition for us,” said the President. Hay clutched the telegrams; and tried not to yawn.

  “What did you feel when we lost New York?” asked Forney. This was easily the most idiotic question that Hay had heard since the last journalist had questioned the President.

  But Lincoln rallied nicely. “Somewhat like that boy in Kentucky who stubbed his toe while running to his sweetheart. The boy said he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh.” Those in the street all laughed at this; and Lincoln bade them good-night.

  As they entered the Mansion, Hay asked, “Did you have that prepared, sir?”

  “Have what prepared, John?” Lincoln was bent over, studying each step as they walked up the main staircase.