Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  Seward was at the door. Lincoln motioned for him to come in. “Hold back the crowd for another twenty minutes,” he said to Hay, who shut the door behind him. Seward congratulated Lincoln on letting go Blair. “Now I assume that we shall soon be joined by Horace Greeley, the heir of Franklin, as the Pope is of Peter.”

  Lincoln laughed. “I’m afraid that is not meant to be. I’ve just sent a telegram to William Dennison in Ohio, to the effect that he is now Postmaster-General; and I want him here quick.”

  Seward frowned. “He is a friend of the Blairs.”

  “He is a friend to man, Governor,” said Lincoln sweetly.

  “How will Greeley take this?”

  “I never committed myself to him. Anyway, the worst is past, as far as the Tribune goes. Unless Butler runs, they have no one else but me. The problem in that area—your area in more ways than one—is not the ?ribune but the Herald.”

  “James Gordon Bennett.” Seward pronounced the three names as if they were the witches in Macbeth.

  “The very man.” Lincoln opened the window. The wind was from the north; and the air, for once, fresh and wholesome. Lincoln took a deep breath. “I am told that now that he has got all that money can buy, he would like those things that money cannot buy.”

  “What on earth can they be? And if they are on earth and not in Heaven, tell me.”

  “Well, I’m not exactly up on these matters either, but I believe something called social position means a lot to him—or to his wife.”

  Seward nodded. “I am sure that it does. But that’s for sale, too, like everything else in New York.”

  “Maybe the price is a mite high or maybe he doesn’t want to wait. We need the Herald on our side.”

  Seward nodded. “They could easily support McClellan—or the Emperor Maximilian, for that matter.”

  “This can come from you, Governor, as Secretary of State. For Mr. Bennett’s editorial support, he can be minister to France or wherever he would like to go.”

  Seward whistled. “That’s a big price.”

  “That’s a big circulation the Herald’s got. Since Bennett and Weed are now on speaking terms, I suggest you use Weed to get the word to him.”

  Seward had never seen Lincoln quite so direct in his indirection. “What happens if the Herald supports you, and you are reelected?”

  Lincoln grinned. “Well the Emperor Napoleon will just have to spend four years looking at two of the most crossed eyes he ever saw. He may find the sight horrifying but it will be better than a war over Mexico.”

  “Perhaps,” said Seward, “he can have both Mr. Bennett and a war.”

  “No, no. At current inflated prices, one Bennett is the equal to one war. We cannot afford both. Besides, we must first win our war.”

  “And election …”

  “And election,” said Lincoln. “I begin to feel that we may have got—almost—to the other side of the Jordan.”

  Chase was very much on the wrong side of his Jordan River; and saw no way across. But Sumner did. That morning, October 12, the spirit of the Chief Justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney, fled its eighty-seven-year-old earthly envelope. “I tell you for certain, Mr. Chase, that you have my support. You have Mr. Fessenden’s support. You have, best of all, Mr. Stanton’s, and he is more with the President than any other man.”

  “But Seward is not with us.” Chase was filled with melancholy, unlike the plaster bust of himself on the mantelpiece. While still at the Treasury, Chase had, most graciously, he thought, allowed a sculptor to make a plaster bust of his features which would then be cast in bronze, to be paid for by a subscription of Treasury employees. Since the bust would be the property of the nation, forever on display in the Treasury’s main hall, it had never occurred to him that there would be the slightest objection. But misfortunes tend to flock together. Maunsell Field was now fearful that this bust might never be cast, as the subscription was, thus far, inadequate, and his successor, Mr. Fessenden, indolent. “Seward, I am told, wants Montgomery Blair, who hates him with a true passion.”

  “We ignore Mr. Seward’s chicaneries. We ignore Mr. Blair’s. They are nothing to us.”

  “Welles favors Blair.” Chase’s mood was as dark as the twilight now gathering. Unoccupied all summer, the house was damp and uninviting; the fireplaces did not draw properly; the chimneys needed cleaning. Kate was at the North, suffering from a cough that had lingered since spring. He dared not think what that might mean. Worse, the marriage with Sprague was a disaster; husband and wife had quarrelled furiously in his presence at Narragansett. Chase blamed himself for everything. But what good would that do? “Bates favors Bates,” he added.

  Sumner was not listening. “Yes! Accept!” he exclaimed. “Complete your great reformation by purifying the Constitution, and upholding those measures by which the republic will be saved!”

  “Mr. Sumner, I have not been asked to accept anything yet. I have twice seen the President since I got back, and never alone. He is kind. But he says nothing. I feel that I do not know him.”

  “I do,” said Sumner, with Olympian simplicity. “I shall manage this.”

  But Sumner took the precaution of calling on Mrs. Lincoln first. He found her in the Blue Room, shortly before her afternoon levee. She was talking with great concentration to a dour, bearded man.

  Mary was startled to see the man who, three weeks earlier, had asked the President to withdraw from the election. But Mr. Sumner was Mr. Sumner. Partisan as she was to the point, she knew, of monomania, Mr. Sumner must be humored. Although he was brilliant and cosmopolitan, he was also unworldly. In any case, he had befriended her during that first terrible year in what she sometimes referred to as Secession City.

  “Mr. Sumner, sir. This is an honor, sir. Allow me to present Mr. Wakeman, the new Surveyor of the Port of New York.” Single-handed, Mary had got Wakeman appointed in September; he had now come to express his gratitude. Between the wealthy Wakeman’s good offices and the now reassured reelection of her husband, Mary’s mood was considerably lightened; also, her mailbag. After the fall of Atlanta, the stores had stopped dunning her. Recently, she had even gone to Lothrop’s, and in the pleasant, panelled private room ordered a hundred pairs of French kid gloves, despite Keckley’s muttered warnings. They were safe for four years. She need not look beyond that.

  Sumner was his usual courtly, attentive self. When she teased him about the events of August, he said, naively, “But we were losing the war. We had no choice but to try someone new. Then Mr. Lincoln surprised us. He started to win the war. Our prayers were answered. So now there will be no opposition to him from within our party—even the unspeakable Butler accepts that.”

  Mary enjoyed victory; and this was victory indeed for her husband. As the Blue Room filled up with guests—twice the pre-Atlanta number—she did the honors.

  When the President looked into the crowded room, Sumner was ready for him. Lincoln was as affable as if the mid-August scene had not occurred. But when Sumner started to extol Chase, Lincoln stopped him. “Sumner, I have the greatest admiration for Mr. Chase. As you know, I also admire Mr. Blair. In fact, symmetry might require that Blair, as the lawyer who was counsel for the slave Dred Scott, should succeed the Chief Justice who decided against Scott, and brought me here—and brought us all this big trouble.”

  Sumner became eloquent on the subject of Chase. But when he threatened to become interminable, Lincoln stopped him with a gesture. “I must say hello to the folks now. As for Mr. Chase, I have one fear. He is somewhat insane on the subject of the presidency. How do I know if I make him chief justice that he won’t spend all his time on the bench conniving to be president?”

  “I am shocked, sir …” Sumner began.

  “I would be shocked, too, if this were to happen. Since the chief justiceship is an end in itself, you can’t put someone there who hasn’t got his mind on the shop.”

  “If I were to guarantee that Mr. Chase—”

  “We can n
ever guarantee anyone else and, sometimes, in politics, we can’t even guarantee ourselves. Tell Mr. Chase my mind is open.” Mrs. Gideon Welles approached with two ladies to present to the President. “Tell him,” said Lincoln, almost as an afterthought, “that I’d appreciate it if he’d make a few speeches for us, in Ohio—and, maybe, Indiana, too. Mrs. Welles,” the President beamed, “what have you brought me?”

  To the extent that such a monument to statesmanship as Sumner could be said to slip away, he slipped away; and went to Sixth and E, where despair now not only reigned but deepened; Sumner, however, was optimistic; he was also adamant. Chase must pack his carpetbag and go to Ohio. There were things, he told the wretched Chase, higher than mere personal convenience.

  But Sumner did not spell them out. He did not want to. In any case, he was just another of the voices that tormented Chase, who consoled himself with St. Paul’s curious words to the Corinthians: “There are, it may be, so many different kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.”

  ON TUESDAY, November 8, 1864, there was rain at Washington City. The President’s Park was a sea of yellow mud. Only Welles and Bates had shown up that morning for a brief Cabinet meeting. Fessenden was in New York City, negotiating loans. Usher and Dennison were in their home states, voting. Seward was in New York, where he had been campaigning, while Stanton was in bed, seriously ill with the bilious fever. Mary had also taken to her bed with a headache that was midway between her usual nervous headache and The Headache. Tad, in the uniform of a colonel, had been sent off to Georgetown to the house of friends, whose sons were a part of his private regiment. Keckley hovered about the living quarters of the Mansion, ministering to Madam. The waiting room was empty. Edward was gone. Nicolay was in Illinois, getting out the vote. General Dix had helped him find a Negro to take his place in the army; there had been no newspaper scandal.

  Only the Tycoon and Hay were stirring in the gloomy house on Election Day. There had been no visitors, save a Californian journalist that the Ancient had taken to; and Hay had taken against. What had to be done had been done, thought Hay, listing the states in a notebook. Later, as the returns came in, he would record the vote, district by district. He had put the states in alphabetical order, leaving out, he suddenly noticed, the eight-day-old state of Nevada.

  Hay had already noted in his book the results of a preliminary election in October, involving Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio. The most doubtful of the three, Indiana, had been the most pro-Lincoln. Thanks to the confused efforts of Cameron and Stevens, Pennsylvania was a nearer thing. Fortunately, the Ohio and Pennsylvania soldiers in Washington’s hospitals had been allowed to vote. The Ohians were ten to one for the Union. The Pennsylvanians less than three to one. The worst vote of all was from Carver Hospital, which Lincoln and Stanton passed each day. When the returns from Carver were read out, Stanton had fumed, and Lincoln had laughed. “That’s pretty hard on us, Mars. They know us better than the others.” Lincoln’s own military guard voted for him, 63 to 11.

  It was plain to everyone that the soldier vote would be the key to the election. In an extraordinary effort to secure every possible military vote, Stanton had so worn himself out that he was now seriously ill. Those states that allowed their men to vote in the field presented no difficulty. But Illinois—all-important to Lincoln—made no such allowance. Consequently, Grant’s army was being stripped of every Illinois soldier; and the trains were crowded with furloughed soldiers, going home to vote for Lincoln.

  Hay could not make up his mind why it was that these men were all so dedicated to Lincoln and to the Union. If he were a private in the field, he would be tempted to vote for McClellan and peace. In a curious way, Lincoln, privately, held the same view. He was certain that Illinois was lost, and he did not trust in the soldier vote, despite the evidence of October.

  Just before seven in the evening, Hay had found Lincoln at his writing table. He, too, had made a list of the states in alphabetical order. He, too, had forgotten Nevada, which Hay pointed out to him. “It is only three electoral votes, but even so.”

  “Even so, I will need them,” Lincoln agreed, writing in “Nevada.” Then he showed Hay his prediction.

  Hay whistled. “You think it is as close as that?”

  Lincoln nodded. “In the electoral college the most I can get is 120 votes to 114 for McClellan.”

  Hay saw that, of the important states, Lincoln had given McClellan New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois. He gave himself New England and the West. “Then the military vote will make all the difference,” said Hay, handing back the paper.

  “As they make the war,” said the Ancient. “Well, let’s go to the Telegraph Room, and learn our fate.”

  Together, with only Lamon in attendance, they crossed the dark empty street to the War Department. The steamy rain had let up for a moment and in the glare of gaslight the wet sidewalk shone like onyx, thought Hay, whose recent poems had been studded with precious and semiprecious stones. A guard in a rubber cloak saluted as the President bypassed the awkward turnstile which was supposed to control the traffic to and from Stanton’s empire; and went instead to a side door, where a soaked and steaming sentinel saluted him; and opened the door.

  A half-dozen orderlies came to brief attention. The Tycoon waved at them; and they went about their business. The business of one of them was to give the President the returns from Indianapolis—a majority of 8000 for Lincoln; since this was higher than that of the October vote, the Tycoon brightened. But he did not believe the next message from Forney. “You will carry Philadelphia by ten thousand votes.” Lincoln shook his head. “I think he’s a little on the excitable side.”

  They went upstairs to the Telegraph Room, where Lincoln made himself comfortable on a lounge. Originally, this large room had been a library, connected by a door to the office of the secretary of war. One of Stanton’s first acts had been to move the army’s telegraph headquarters from General McClellan’s command to the War Department. Just off the Telegraph Room was a small office, where the military codes were kept. The man at the machine greeted the President, who asked for Major Eckert.

  “Here he is,” said the army’s chief telegrapher. In the doorway stood the young major, covered with mud.

  “Thank God Mr. Stanton can’t see you, Eckert.” The Tycoon shook his head with mock horror. “These things are progressive, you know. The first wallow in the mud is carefree, and joyous. But the next is less so. Finally, you cannot stop. Wherever there is mud, there you will be, Major, rolling and twisting and rooting like a hog!”

  “I fell, sir. In the street. I was watching somebody up ahead who was slipping and sliding so comically that I started to laugh, and fell on my face.” An orderly brought Eckert a towel. As he mopped up, the Tycoon told of the evening of the day that had decided the contest for Senate between him and Douglas. “It was a night like this. I’d read the returns, and knew I’d lost. So I started to go home, along a path worn hog-back and slippery. Then one of my feet slipped and kicked the other and I fell, but I landed on my feet anyway, and said to myself, ‘Well, that was just a slip not a fall.’ ”

  The next return was an estimate. Lincoln would carry the state of Maryland by 5000 votes; the city of Baltimore by 15,000. “That is a pleasant surprise, if true,” he said.

  Hay kept his notes. The California journalist Noah Brooks joined them. Previously, he had worked in Illinois, where the Tycoon had first known him. He flattered the President outrageously; and treated the President’s secretaries with disdain. Nicolay was not only positive that Brooks was angling for the job of secretary in the second term, but “He is welcome to it,” Nicolay had said.

  The suspicious Lamon had reluctantly allowed a half-dozen highly partisan officers to keep the President company. Gideon Welles had also joined the long watch.

  At nine o’clock the serious returns began. Although storms in the midwest interrupted and delayed the Illinois returns, by midnight it was clear that L
incoln had carried his home state. He immediately sent an orderly to the White House. “Tell Mrs. Lincoln. She’s even more anxious than I am.”

  As Hay recorded the satisfactory returns from Massachusetts, Lincoln was telling Brooks, “I’m enough of a politician to know when things are pretty certain, like the Baltimore convention. But about this thing I’m far from certain.”

  “You should feel pretty confident now,” said Brooks. The air of sycophancy was too much for Hay. He hoped it would be too much for the Tycoon during the second term, which seemed now to be at hand.

  As New Jersey began to slip toward McClellan, the Tycoon grew philosophical. “It’s strange about these elections I’m involved in. I don’t think of myself as a particularly vindictive or partisan man but every contest I’ve ever been involved in—except the first for Congress—has been marked by the greatest sort of bitterness and rancor. Can it be me, I wonder, that provokes all this, without knowing it?”

  “I should think it was the times, not you, sir,” said Brooks. “And lucky for us, you are there to mediate.”

  Hay decided that, for once, the Tycoon showed alarming bad taste in his companions. Was the second term to be one of vague complacencies and intrigue? Was the simple good Ancient that Hay knew, to be corrupted by youthful flatterers? Perhaps he himself should stay on. But then he thought of the Hellcat; and realized that he could not stay at the White House four more months, much less years. In fact, he had made up his mind that after the first of the year he would move to Willard’s and then some time after the inaugural in March, he would go—as would Nicolay.

  Seward arrived at midnight, in time for the supper that Major Eckert had had prepared in the War Department kitchen. The premier was in an exultant mood. He had returned on the so-called Owl Train from the North. “We shall take New York State by forty thousand votes,” he announced.