by Gore Vidal
Seward chuckled. “Oh, they have a sulfurous way with them, our loving cousins.”
“Plainly, the Times has a window onto posterity. Proceed, John.”
Hay continued: “ ‘The Emancipation Proclamation will not deprive Mr. Lincoln of the distinctive affix which he will share with many, for the most part foolish and incompetent, kings and emperors, caliphs and doges, that of being Lincoln—The Last.’ ”
Lincoln chuckled. “I don’t know whether they mean I’m to be the last American president or just the last one named Lincoln.”
“Can I come in?” It was Robert at the door.
“My heir-apparent!” Lincoln exclaimed cheerily. “With no affix at all.”
“All hail the Prince of Rails!” Seward exclaimed; and all proceeded to hail the bewildered Robert, who then put himself in Hay’s hands, and together they made the rounds of Washington’s New Year’s Day parties.
The most elaborate of the open houses was that of Mr. Stanton, who greeted the young men with grave politeness; as did his nonsmiling white-faced wife. Hay looked about for the urn containing the ashes of the first wife, but saw no receptacle that seemed suitable for such rich earth. Robert stood with Hay in a corner of the parlor, and as the people came and went—much the same group that had called on the President—he complained to Hay. “I want to leave Harvard; and enlist. But every time I bring up the subject, Mother …” He did not finish.
“I can imagine,” said Hay, who could. The Hellcat had never been so impossible as during the last weeks of her mourning. Fortunately, she seemed genuinely to like visiting the hospitals; and so, accompanied by Keckley and Stoddard, she was kept away from the Mansion for hours at a time, distributing fruit and flowers from the White House conservatories; and allowing peace to reign in the living quarters. Over Christmas she had been kept especially busy by Mrs. Caleb Smith’s decision to give every man in hospital a splendid dinner as her farewell to Washington: Mr. Smith had quit the Cabinet in order to become a judge. Smith had been replaced as Secretary of the Interior by his assistant, John Usher, another nonentity from Indiana.
As there were more than twenty hospitals in the District of Columbia, the government ladies had all worked hard as waiters, Madam not excepted. But when she was not so employed, there were stormy scenes in the Mansion. She had never forgiven Hay for not allowing her to pocket the steward’s salary. She had also kept on Watt, though he was not on the official payroll. Nicolay and Hay were presently conspiring to capture Watt for the army but, thus far, he had evaded their net. Currently, Watt was the owner of a greenhouse in New York City’s Fourteenth Street; he also performed mysterious errands for Madam.
A colored man brought two plates on a tray. “Mrs. Stanton wants you to try the game-pastries,” he said.
As the young men tried the pastries, Lord Lyons made his entrance, accompanied by a slender youth whose black coat set off the minister’s gold braid and feathers. “How has she been?” asked Robert, mouth full. Hay took two glasses of punch from a passing tray.
“Well, she keeps busy visiting the wounded.” On the subject of Madam, Hay was always tactful with Robert.
“I hear she talks to Willie.”
“Quite often; and to her two half-brothers. One was killed at Shiloh …”
“That was Sam. Aleck was killed at Baton Rouge. ‘Little Aleck’ she called him. She used to say to me that Little Aleck was like her own firstborn, as if I were not.” Robert was morose. Hay wondered whether or not Robert had any liking at all for his difficult mother—as opposed to sympathy. “It is not easy for a highly emotional woman like my mother to live such a life as she has done with my father.”
“I thought it was wonderful for her; and everything that she wanted. Besides, he is remarkably good to—and good with—her.”
“Well, he is open with her, I guess.”
“He is not open with you?” Hay was genuinely curious. The Ancient’s passion for the late Willie and the ever-present Tad was a considerable strain on everyone. But Robert was another matter. He was seldom mentioned by his father; and he was seldom home.
“Father is amiable with me, as he is with everyone. But I rather think he dislikes me.”
Hay was startled. “That is not possible.”
“Oh, everything’s possible, Johnny. He hates his past. He hates having been a scrub. He hates all this rail-splitter nonsense, even though he uses it to ingratiate himself with the folks. He wanted me to be what he couldn’t be. He wanted me in the east, and at Harvard, and to speak without a midwestern accent. You know, they laughed at the way he spoke when he came to see me at Exeter and started a speech with ‘Misturr Cheermun.’ ”
“But then they applauded him.” Lincoln’s success on his New England tour was now legend.
“Oh, yes. He can win over any audience. But he does not like to seem a bumpkin.” Robert finished his glass of punch; looked sad. “You know that was the only time we ever talked, as two men might. He told me I was going to have all the world he had ever wanted, but I probably wouldn’t have as good a time as he had had …”
“Good time!” Hay thought of the Ancient after Fredericksburg, nearly out of his mind with fear and grief and weariness. “Do you know what his days are like in this place?”
“He meant then. When he was young. On the circuit. He started to tell me how he had always dreamed … But I never found out what the dream was because some of the boys from school joined us and, of course, he had to perform, and so he asked if anyone had a banjo, and someone did, and he sang comical songs. We’ve never really talked to each other since.”
“He’s very proud of you,” said Hay, wondering if this was the case.
Robert wondered, too. “He shows no sign of it. He treats me like a minor politician from Cambridge, Massachusetts. But then he has always been cold that way.”
“Not with me.”
“You’re one of his arms, Johnny. No one is cold to his own arm. But I’m his replacement on earth; and, thanks to him, we are now totally different from one another.”
On this melancholy note, the two young men made their way to the Chase household, where Kate, all in white with real flowers in her hair, made a great play for Robert, who responded delightedly, while Hay listened as General “Fighting Joe” Hooker, in town for the day, declared, “The problem is Halleck. Has always been Halleck. Has been Halleck, as far as I’m concerned, since we were in California together. How can I take charge in the field with Halleck here in Washington, undermining me?”
Hay decided that the famous fighting general was somewhat under the influence of alcohol. But the ladies present were enraptured by their hero; and even Ben Wade listened to the general with every appearance of respect.
At the other end of the parlor, Chase decorously courted Mrs. Douglas while keeping a somewhat nervous eye on his general. He was aware that Hooker had been making the social rounds that day. Every important official was at home to callers on New Year’s Day, according to an old Washington custom. Although Chase, as befitted the exponent of austerity in wartime, served neither food nor drink, while the Speaker of the House wisely served only coffee, other houses specialized in alcoholic punches and eggnogs. Hooker had plainly permitted himself to be made too much of. Happily, it was only a matter of time before Burnside would be replaced by Chase’s general. They were a winning team, he had decided some time ago when Hooker had privately pledged himself, without any urging, to support Chase for president. Chase only wished that his general was less talkative and more discreet. Hooker was constantly criticizing his superiors, a bad habit. Chase decided that he would bring up the matter when they were next alone.
“Is that Mr. Lincoln’s son?” asked Mrs. Douglas, pointing to the short moustached young man talking to Kate.
“Indeed it is. Very much grown up. There is criticism, of course.”
“That he is not in the army? Well, if I was Mrs. Lincoln, I’d keep him out forever.”
“But then you
have secessionist tendencies, Mrs. Douglas.” Adéle Douglas was the best-looking woman of her age in Washington, he thought, by no means for the first time. They, too, could be a winning team. But Kate had said, no. On the other hand, should Kate move out of his house, would he not be obliged to marry? Mrs. Douglas’s shoulders, he noticed, were like those of the Medici Venus, a plaster cast of which had haunted him in youth, largely because he had been warned never to look at it, even though the goddess stood brazenly in the lobby of a principal Cincinnati hotel.
Thaddeus Stevens joined them; and launched a Ciceronian period. “Well, Mr. Chase, I suppose that you and Mr. Lincoln have had a joyous day celebrating the freeing of all those slaves that you cannot free and the continuation of the enslavement of those that you could free.”
“I have not been celebrating, sir. I was stunned at the exception of those Virginia counties. Because”—he turned to the superb Mrs. Douglas—“when I regained Norfolk for the Union, I promised the Negroes of Norfolk, right in front of the Custom’s House, that all of them would be freed. Now, of course, nothing has changed.”
“The President is really a sort of shyster,” said Stevens.
“You put that too harshly, Mr. Stevens,” said Chase, reprovingly.
“But he has put it well, I think,” said Mrs. Douglas. “I can’t think that there is much of anything for the true abolitionists—and I’m certainly not one—to celebrate.”
But on North Twelfth Street, in the heart of the Negro encampment, bonfires had been lit; and hymns were being sung. Together David and John Surratt looked out over the ramshackle shanties and fragile tents, made to appear even more insubstantial by firelight. Most of these colored people were from the Confederate states; and they had freed themselves. Technically, they were “contraband,” to use the military euphemism. Over a thousand of the ten thousand in the city lived here at the city’s edge.
David and John were armed. But only for self-defense, for, as John put it, “We won’t ever have to do anything to these niggers, as the Yankees are fixing to kill them all.” Like most natives of Washington, David had been amazed by the Union soldiers’ hatred of all Negroes. By and large, Southerners got on well with them. After all, they grew up with niggers; and they liked—even loved—the ones who kept their place. But the Yankees seemed to hate the very idea of blackness; proof, to David, that Yankees tended to be a bit on the crazy side. After all, wasn’t that what the war was supposed to be about? how the institution of slavery gave the South an advantage over the North’s so-called free, if ill-paid, labor. Yet hardly a day passed that blacks were not beaten up, even killed, by soldiers. The convalescent men at the Soldiers Rest were the most vicious in this regard; possibly because they were the most bored.
“We dare not lose this war,” said John, as he and David left the Negroes, now singing “Jesus Christ Has Made Me Free.”
“Why not? Not that there’s much chance of our losing.”
“Well, just look at them; those apes! And then think of them all free, the way they are now, right here in this city, thanks to Old Abe. My God, Davie! Don’t you realize how they damn near outnumber us in half the South?”
“But if they were really free, they’d all go North.”
John shook his head. “The Yankees are too smart. They won’t let them anywhere near their states. No, we’re the ones who are going to end up having to live with them, and they’ll be the masters then. He’s gone pretty far, Mr. Lincoln has,” said John. Suddenly, a dozen wild horses came cantering down the dirt avenue. David and John leapt to safety on the porch of a farmer’s house.
“Why,” said John in a low voice, “don’t you poison the President?”
“But you was just saying he was the best thing we got on our side.”
“I’m changing my mind.”
“What does the Colonel say?” Both David and John spoke of the Colonel as if they knew him.
“He says, no. For now, anyway.” John frowned. “He’s bound to change.”
“Well if he does, then I’ll go and kill Old Abe.” David had never before been so excited by anything that he had himself said.
But Lincoln, unaware of the ongoing threat from nearby Thompson’s Drug Store, continued to please the shadowy colonel. Grant’s assault on the rebel stronghold at Vicksburg had failed; and he had returned to his base near Memphis. He was planning to dig a canal through the peninsula across the river from Vicksburg so that the navy could then go around the Confederate batteries that had made the river impassable at this point. Meanwhile, Grant’s rivals—particularly the political generals—continued to accuse him of drunkenness.
Lincoln called in Washburne at the end of January. Washburne found the President in a surprisingly good mood; and said so. “Well, if I am, it is for no sensible reason, Brother Washburne. Perhaps I have really taken leave of my senses. They say that when you go truly mad, you never know it.”
Washburne cleared his throat; and wondered at Lincoln’s wisdom in mentioning a subject of such personal delicacy.
“Anyway, Brother Washburne, I think the time has come for you to go down to Memphis and renew your acquaintanceship with General Grant, and then give me some idea of how he is doing, and if he is doing it sober or drunk. If drunk, I shall distribute casks of whiskey to all my generals. If sober, I will be relieved.”
“I’ll go as soon as this session’s out of the way.”
“Congress.” The President looked out the window at the tents of his Pennsylvania regiment, pitched on the long-since vanished lawn. “I hear you want to tax the banks …”
“Well, they’re holding all those greenbacks of yours. At the very least, we should tax them.”
“We are in debt seven hundred twenty million dollars.” Lincoln shook his head. “I cannot fathom such an amount. But Chase is unfazed.” Lincoln then questioned Washburne in some detail about a speech made in the House by Clement L. Vallandigham, a recently defeated representative from Ohio. When first elected, Vallandigham had been a Douglas Democrat. But since the beginning of the war, he had been leader in the House of those antiwar Democrats known as the Copperheads. He held that Lincoln’s war measures were illegal and unConstitutional and so far worse than the defection of the Southern states.
“It was a stormy speech,” said Washburne, who had a grudging admiration for the fiery youthful enemy. “He said George Washington was also a rebel, and that we are all descended from rebels against an oppressive and tyrannical government.”
Lincoln chuckled. “It will be interesting to see how history deals with that great cruel tyrant James Buchanan, against whom those states went into rebellion. What other marvels did he display?”
“The war is not free labor against slave labor so much as it is about two attitudes toward life, and that the Southrons and the Yankees are like the Cavaliers and the Roundheads in England, born antagonists.”
Lincoln nodded. “I would not entirely disagree.”
“He also said that if New England so disliked slavery, they should leave the Union.”
“He is most humorous.” Lincoln whittled at a pencil with his pocket-knife.
“He made one novel point. He said that if the South does maintain its independence, the entire northwest will go with them, and they will together form a great nation.”
“I wonder if there is any basis to that.” Lincoln swept the pencil shavings from his lap; and put away his knife. “Well, this is his last session, I’m happy to say.”
“Oh, we’ll hear more from him,” said Washburne.
Nicolay appeared at the door. “It’s General Hooker, sir.”
“Send him in.” Lincoln rose. “When Congress adjourns, go down to Memphis for me, and scout the situation.”
“Yes, sir.” Washburne left as Hooker, bright of eye and red of cheek, marched into the office; and saluted the President smartly.
“General Burnside has given you your orders?”
“Yes, sir. But I wanted to speak to you before I
accept the command of the Army of the Potomac.”
“That is sensible.” Lincoln sat now on the window-sill, the gray-steel sky behind him.
“I had—I have great esteem for General Burnside …”
“We all do. He has been under a great strain. Yesterday when he was here, he wanted to resign from the army. But I would not let him. I’m sending him to Ohio.”
“Naturally, I have had my disagreements with him.” Hooker now left the chair that Lincoln had placed him in and began to march from chair to window-sill and back to chair; he grew more and more ferocious with each trip. “I don’t know whether you were told that when I criticized him for this last madness, the so-called mud-march, when he nearly wrecked the army, that he wrote out an order dismissing a number of high-ranking officers, starting with me!”
“I heard about this. He was not himself, of course. No one can remove you except the War Department—or me.”
“Did you also hear that when someone suggested that I might resist the order, as I would have, he said he’d have me hanged?”
Lincoln nodded, sadly. “This, too, was reported to me. I then sent for him, and relieved him of his command and told him to give you your orders, as the new commander.”
“I think he is mad, sir.”
“But you also have the greatest esteem for him, don’t you? As do I.” Lincoln’s slightly mocking tone did not penetrate Hooker’s martial self-absorption.
“Fortunately, he is now gone. I will take his place, but on one condition.”
“Oh?” Lincoln looked mildly surprised. “And what is that one condition?”
“General Halleck must go, sir.”
“Why must General Halleck go?”
“Because he will do anything to harm me, once I am in the field. We were adversaries in California …”
“A turbulent state, plainly,” said Lincoln. But Hooker was not listening to the President; he was entirely intent on his retreat from window to chair.
