Lincoln

by Gore Vidal

  They pulled three chairs close together in front of one of the windows that looked onto crowded Sixth Street. Propriety obliged Booth to explain Miss Hale’s presence in the lobby of his hotel. “Her father was not re-elected to the Senate, so they have given up their house and moved in here. Poor girl. She cannot bear the thought of returning to Rochester, New Hampshire. I was consoling her.” He turned to John. “You, sir, are a Surratt of Surrattsville?”

  “That’s right. Only now we are all of nearby H Street.”

  “You have served our country well,” said Booth. “I have heard you spoken of in many interesting places. I am looking for a farm to buy.”

  “I know them all, in that area, anyway.”

  “I should like to be on a road—out of the way but good enough—to Richmond.”

  “I know all the roads, sir, that lead to Richmond.”

  Booth fixed his dark, honey-colored eyes on Surratt; then he seemed to come to a conclusion. “Let us go to my room and partake of the house specialty, milk-punch and cigars.”

  ON THE morning of December 6, 1864, William Sprague entered the long, half-empty bar of the National Hotel. He was eager not for milk-punch but for gin. He was less eager for his meeting with a man who had identified himself in an unsigned note as “a friend of Harris Hoyt, with urgent news.”

  Sprague seated himself in the darkest corner of the bar and ordered gin; then he glanced at the day’s business of the Senate. The Attorney-General, Mr. Bates, had resigned at the end of November. Lincoln had then appointed James Speed of Kentucky to take his place. Since James Speed was the brother of Joshua, a Springfield crony of the President, the Senate Judiciary Committee decided that it might have a salutary effect on the newly reelected President if he were obliged to wait a few days while they did their best to find out just who Mr. Speed was. Also, the Radicals were not happy that such an important post had gone to a man from a border-state which had voted for McClellan. Sprague was taking no part in this game. Sprague was not interested in attorneys-general. Sprague was interested in cotton.

  A swarthy Southerner, dressed like a Baptist minister on circuit, sat himself down beside Sprague. “Senator, I’m pleased to meet you at last. Mr. Hoyt speaks so highly of you. As does Mr. Prescott. As does Mr. Reynolds. As does your cousin Byron.”

  “That’s natural,” said Sprague, “that Byron should.”

  The Southerner ordered straight rum. He sat in almost sacerdotal silence until the rum had gone, in one single swallow, from glass to stomach. Then he said, “You know that the Sybil was caught by the navy, two weeks ago.”

  “Yes,” said Sprague, “I know.” The Sybil was a British ship, en route from Matamoros to New York. The ship’s hold was full of cotton for Sprague and his colleagues. As always, there were no records of any kind aboard the ship to show where the cotton was destined other than the Custom’s House at New York, presided over by the amiable Hiram Barney. In the past, once a shipment had arrived, Byron or Reynolds or Prescott would pay a call on Barney; and the cotton would be released. But, lately, there had been problems. In response to accusations of improper bonding and bribery, a congressional committee was now holding hearings into Custom’s House affairs. Since the war was apt to be over long before the hearings ended, Sprague was not much concerned. Besides, the Custom’s House was a Republican spoil; and the Congress was securely Republican, as was the President. There was no cause for alarm. He ordered his second gin.

  “Then I suppose you also know that our friend Mr. Charles L. Prescott has been arrested by the military authorities at New York.”

  Sprague gasped. The pince-nez fell from his nose onto the table; a lens cracked. “You broke your glasses,” said the messenger of ill tidings.

  “How …?” was the only word that Sprague could get out.

  “We don’t know. Maybe the army traced the cargo through the ship’s London owner. Or, maybe somebody at the Custom’s House tipped them off. Anyway, I was able to get to Prescott. He’s scared to death. He thinks Hoyt double-crossed him. He’s fixing to give a complete confession today.”

  “Complete?” Sprague’s nearsighted eyes squinted as if his life depended on making out the shape of the approaching danger.

  “He will tell the commanding general of the Department of the East the whole story.”

  “Dix.”

  “What was that, Senator?”

  “General John A. Dix. I know him. I don’t run the firm. Byron does. I’m a senator. I’m not in business. Haven’t been since ’sixty-one. I was the first volunteer of the war. I don’t know anything about cotton. Don’t care.”

  “You may not care, Senator, but others care—for their own hides. Prescott’s naming you.”

  “Can’t.” Sprague was now panicky. He put on the cracked pince-nez. “I’ll go to Dix. Where’s Hoyt?”

  “New York City, I think.”

  “Find him,” said Sprague, throwing coins on the table. “I don’t know a thing. What was done in Texas was to help the Union people there. That’s all.” Sprague shook the messenger’s hand; and left.

  There was a crowd in front of Sixth and E. Two policemen came toward Sprague, who nearly bolted. But the two men both saluted, and smiled; and one said, “Congratulations, Senator.”

  Sprague entered the first parlor. Kate, who had not been speaking to him lately, threw her arms about him. “The next best thing!” she exclaimed. “For now, anyway.”

  “What?”

  “Father’s chief justice. The President sent the message to the Senate this morning.” Suddenly, she smelled the gin on his breath. “Why weren’t you at the Senate?”

  “I had a business meeting.” Sprague approached his radiant father-in-law. “Congratulations, sir.”

  “My dear boy!” Carried away, Chase actually embraced Sprague. Sumner and Wade applauded. Kate joined them. She teased Sumner. “You are responsible for this, for putting Father on the shelf. But we shall have the last word.”

  “Now, Kate,” said Chase, “if you can’t get cream, you settle for milk.”

  “He’s worth more to us on the bench for a lifetime,” said Wade, “than in the White House for four years, where all you do is think of the next election like someone I cannot name …”

  “Who has seen the light, however,” said Sumner. “He is also no fool. Lincoln realizes that the two great issues that you will have to deal with are the Constitutional abolition of slavery, which is now at hand, and a defense of our wartime monetary policies, which you invented.”

  “In a somewhat ad hoc fashion,” said Chase, beginning to wonder whether or not he, as chief justice, could annul what he, as secretary of the treasury, had done. In any case, this was a time of perfect joy for him. Kate might think that he had been put on the shelf, but there was no law that said a chief justice could not become the president. Four years was not a long time. Once he had made all of his positions plain on the Olympian bench, he could, if he chose, step down into the battlefield; and seize the ultimate prize.

  On Friday morning, the Senate unanimously confirmed Chase as chief justice. In the afternoon, Chase and his family went up to the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony. Chase wore a new judge’s robe of black silk, a present from Sprague but chosen by Kate. Just before they got to the Supreme Court chamber, where all of fashionable Washington was gathered, they were stopped in the rotunda by Mr. Forney. Beneath the newly painted white-and-lilac dome, Forney said, “I’m afraid, Mr. Chase, we still don’t have an attorney-general, and without him to sign the letters patent, you can’t be sworn in. Not until the Judiciary Committee passes on Mr. Speed can you take your oath.”

  “When will that be?” asked Kate.

  “Tomorrow, I should think. Yes, definitely tomorrow, by noon.”

  “Ah, well,” said Chase, catching a glimpse of his reflection in the glass that covered a large painting of Pocahontas. The black robe was certainly majestic in its effect. Chief Justice of the United States, he whispered to himself
; then he hummed, off-key, a hymn to that aged rock which had so miraculously cleft for him.

  Although there was no attorney-general the next day, the crowd had again assembled. But this time Chase had been warned not to come to the Capitol. The installation was postponed to Monday the 12th.

  There was now a constant procession of callers to Sixth and E, until recently a house to be avoided by the ambitious. Every lawyer of consequence in the United States thought it necessary to come in person to congratulate the heir of Jay and Marshall and Taney.

  Since the country’s beginning, there had been only five chief justices—as opposed to sixteen presidents. Of the three co-equal branches of government—executive, legislative and judicial—only the judiciary, at whose apex was the Supreme Court, served for life; and only the Supreme Court could determine the mysteriously elastic Constitution’s meaning. This was the ultimate power in a republic, thought Chase. Nevertheless …

  On Saturday morning, Sprague received a telegram from a friend in New York City. By order of General John A. Dix, the Provost Marshal had arrested Byron Sprague and William H. Reynolds “for furnishing aid and comfort to the enemy.” The two men had been stopping at the same hotel in New York City. Now they were at Fortress Lafayette, with Prescott.

  A second telegram, half an hour later, reported the arrest of Harris Hoyt. Could a senator be arrested? This was the Constitutional issue of most poignant interest to Sprague. When he casually mentioned the subject to his father-in-law, who was answering letters and telegrams, Chase had replied, absently, “Oh, never! Unless, of course, you’ve committed murder or—” Chase held up a letter. “An autograph from Mr. Whittier! At last! Where was I? Oh, murder—or treason. Katie!” Chase called out.

  Sprague hurried to his own study at the other end of Sixth and E, where he wrote a dozen different versions of a telegram to be sent to General Dix. The burden: do nothing until I write a letter of explanation. Plainly, he was the next to be arrested.

  That afternoon, the telegram dispatched, Sprague sat at his desk, writing a letter to General Dix which would reveal that his only interest in the matter was political and, of course, familial. He had had no connection with the cotton business since the beginning of the war, whose first volunteer he had been. The firm was in the charge of his cousin Byron, which was why he was now writing. He felt that an interview between himself and General Dix would clear up an admittedly confused matter. He was certain that his cousin had broken no law. As for Byron’s associates, he could not vouch. Needless to say, the political ramifications were such that everyone must proceed with a degree of caution in order not to embarrass the President or the new Chief Justice. Sprague was careful to omit from the letter any reference to Harris Hoyt.

  At five o’clock, the letter was finished. He had already arranged for a friend to take it the next morning on the cars to New York. He had also given the friend verbal instructions for Hoyt, who posed the only real danger to him. If Hoyt were to say that Sprague’s interest in the matter was simply to be useful to the Union, Hoyt would be freed. Sprague did not say how. Sprague did not know how. But Hoyt must not tell what he knew; at least not until after Monday. Chase must first be sworn in.

  Kate entered the study, a folded newspaper in either hand. “What have you done? These papers—they all but name you by name.”

  “Nothing. It’s a mix-up. Byron’s been arrested. So has Reynolds. Prescott. Some nonsense about getting cotton illegally from Texas. I don’t know.” Sprague sealed the letter; his hands were shaking.

  Kate saw the hands. “You do know.”

  “I don’t. I will, though. I’ve written General Dix, asking for an explanation.”

  Kate read from the Providence Press: “ ‘ … our streets have been full of rumors to the implication of certain prominent citizens engaged in contraband traffic with the rebels.’ That is treason.”

  “Well, that’s not me. Can’t be. I run the Providence Press.”

  “Do you run the New York Times, which says …”

  “Since when are you such a believer in newspapers? Look what they write about your father …”

  “Byron’s in prison. Your own cousin. The man you picked to manage the business, your business. Oh, you are deep in this.”

  Sprague stood up. “If I am deep in this, then so are you, Mrs. Sprague.”

  “What does that mean?” Kate’s face was now scarlet with anger.

  Sprague was icy. “Just that you are my wife. For better or for worse. Well, this is worse. Yes, I have been getting cotton from Texas. How do you think I keep my mills running? Your father wouldn’t give me a permit. So I get the cotton, illegally, through the Custom’s House in New York, with the help of your father’s friend and appointee Mr. Hiram Barney.”

  “You are …” Kate was breathing hard, as if from some huge physical exertion. “You are a traitor!”

  “That’s the legal word. But I’m not going to be hanged if I can help it.”

  Kate stared at him, as if he had suddenly ceased to exist for her as husband or even acquaintance. Then she said, deliberately, “But you deserve to be hanged.”

  “I don’t like that, Kate.” Sprague wrote his own name on the envelope, thus franking it. “It is ungrateful. I’ve done a lot for you. For your father …”

  “For yourself!”

  “Well, why not? Can’t I be as selfish as the pair of you? Forever conniving, with my money!”

  “Money!” Kate hurled the word at him as if it were the ultimate curse. “Damn your money!”

  In the parlor at the other side of Sixth and E, Chase heard the astonishing phrase shouted by his daughter. Fortunately, no one else was within earshot. He had been sitting, alone, reading the oath that he would be called upon to recite next Monday.

  Chase now moved, quickly, toward his son-in-law’s study, not wanting to hear more but unable not to hear more.

  “It’s a little late to damn what you’ve spent so much of. I paid for Chase for president. I pay for both of you to live. I pay for everything. Well, when I pay, I expect some return. That’s business.”

  “You want us to protect you, is that it? You want the Chief Justice to protect you …”

  “He ain’t chief justice yet, and if word gets around before Monday, he won’t ever be chief justice …”

  Chase stood, unobserved, at the study door. What on earth were they quarrelling about this time? It sounded even worse than the explosion at Narragansett Pier the previous summer. And what had he to do with what word getting around?

  “You have been our ruin,” said Kate, as if with wonder that someone so insignificant as Sprague should have brought them down.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Sprague rang for the butler.

  Chase selected that moment to enter the study. “I thought I heard angry words,” he said mildly. “At such a happy time.”

  “It is nothing, Father.” Chase’s eyes were drawn, from force of habit, to the newspapers in Kate’s hands. What new horrors had the press decided to launch? But Kate threw the newspapers onto the fire as if that had been the only reason for visiting her husband’s study.

  The butler appeared. Sprague gave him the letter; and told him where he was to take it. Then Sprague poured himself a tumbler full of brandy. “We were talking about money,” said Sprague to Chase. “It is a dull subject.” He drained the glass without flinching.

  “I know. I know.” Chase was, suddenly, uneasy. Something had gone wrong. Something very serious had gone wrong. He excused himself; and retreated to his own study, expecting Kate to follow. But when she did not, Chase was obliged to send for her. He then went, carefully, through the New York Times, one of the newspapers that she had been holding; and he read the latest dispatch from Providence. Chase was less shocked than surprised that Sprague had been so clumsy. In their common dangerous jungle, the first rule was to cover one’s tracks.

  Kate had been ill, off and on, since the spring. She had lost weight; grown pallid; coughed in a
way that suggested some sort of asthma rather than consumption. But since Tuesday, she had been her old luminous self. Now she had retrogressed. “What is it, Father?”

  “You tell me, Katie.” He pushed the newspaper on his desk toward her. “I think that I have worked it out.”

  Kate nodded. “I wish you had not, especially now.”

  “I’m glad that I have, especially now. Does he say that he is guilty?”

  “ ‘Aid and comfort to the enemy’ is the phrase that describes what he has done.”

  Chase’s head began, slightly, to ache. “Treason,” he said, lisp and all.

  “Yes.” As Kate told her father the story, his headache became more like a breaking open of the skull. When she had finished, he was in such pain that he could hardly speak. “I shall not take the oath on Monday.”

  “You must!”

  “I cannot. I have already been accused of corruption, wrongly, by Blair. I have been accused, wrongly, of selling cotton permits …”

  “You neither sold nor gave one to my husband …”

  “Who will believe that? I clung, mistakenly, I see, to Hiram Barney at the Custom’s House, though he is more Mr. Lincoln’s friend than mine.” Chase rose. “I must go to the President. I must refuse this office.”

  “No! We have worked too hard to get this far.”

  “This far? My child, we shall go right over the cliff if I’m sworn in at the same time my son-in-law is indicted for treason.”

  “You did not know it at the time of the swearing in …”

  “But I do know. It is all over, Kate.”

  “No!” This time the voice was a scream. “If you withdraw now, I will never speak to you again! I mean it. We are one thing, you and I. He is nothing. Forget him. Let him hang. He has nothing to do with us. He never has. From the beginning, I hated him …” Then, to Kate’s plain astonishment and her father’s horror, she vomited. They stood, facing each other, while she tried to hold back the sudden torrent with both hands.