Capitalism at its rawest, Lincoln thought unhappily. The weather was raw, too, a wind with winter in it. Hannibal Hamlin, who, being from Maine, knew all about winter, had called a wind like this a lazy wind, because it blew right through you instead of bothering to go around. Lincoln pulled his overcoat tighter about him; he felt the cold more now than he had in his younger days. The wind blew through the coat, too.
He looked around. There, a couple of doors down, advertising itself like all its neighbors, stood the frowzy, soot-stained office of the Chicago Weekly Worker. Lincoln hurried to the doorway and went inside. A blast of heat greeted him. Because the winters in Chicago were so ferocious, the means deployed against them were likewise powerful. He hastily unbuttoned his coat. Sweat started on his forehead.
A bald man in an apron and a visor who was carrying a case of type looked up at the jangle of the bell over the door. "What do you wan-"' he began, his English German-accented. Then he recognized who was visiting the newspaper, and came within an inch of dropping the case and scattering thousands of pieces of type all over the floor. "What do you want, Mr. Lincoln?" he managed on his second try. The type metal rattled in its squares, but did not escape.
"I would like to see Mr. Sorge, if you would be so kind," Lincoln answered, as politely as if he were addressing one of his son's clients rather than a typesetter who hadn't had a bath in several days. "I do understand correctly, do I not, that he heads the Chicago Socialist Alliance?"
"Yes, that is right," the man in the apron said. "Please, you wait here, uh-" He looked confused and angry at himself. He'd probably been about to say sir, and then caught himself because sir was not the sort of thing a Socialist was supposed to say. He set down the type case, grunted in relief at being rid of the weight, and hurried into a back room.
A couple of printers and a fellow who, though he was surely a Socialist, too, looked like most of the other reporters Lincoln had seen over the years stopped what they were doing to gape at him. Then the typesetter came out of the back room with a lean man in his fifties, a fellow whose wary, hunted eyes said he'd made a lot of moves one step ahead of the police in the course of his lifetime.
"You are Abraham Lincoln," he said in some surprise. "I wondered if Ludwig knew what he was talking about." Like the typesetter's, his speech had a guttural undertone to it. "And I, I am Friedrich Sorge. I have had to flee Germany. I have had to flee New York City — Democrats can be as fierce in their reactions as Prussian Junkers. But I will not flee Chicago. 'Hier steh' ich, ich kann nicht anders.' "
"I don't follow that," Lincoln said. "I'm sorry."
"Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise," Sorge translated. "Martin Luther. A progressive in his day, aiding the rising bourgeoisie against the church and the feudal aristocracy that supported it. Now, Mr. Lincoln-why do you stand here?"
"Because it has been made painfully clear to me that the Republican Party is not and cannot be the party that represents the laboring class in the United States," Lincoln answered. "I believe that class deserves representation. I believe this democracy will fail unless that class has representation. If the Republican Party is not up to the job, then the Socialists will have to be."
Friedrich Sorge and Ludwig the typesetter exchanged several excited comments in German. After a minute or so, Sorge returned to English: "This is what we have been doing since founding the party ten years ago."
"I know," Lincoln said. "I've watched you. I've watched your progress with no small interest. I would have watched it with even greater interest had there been more progress to watch."
"Too many American workers are in love with the status quo to make progress quick," Sorge said with a grimace. "It is the same as it is in Europe. No, it is worse than it is in Europe. In the United States, a man who despairs of factory labour will go and start a farm or prospect for gold in the hope of becoming rich at a stroke. This can never be an answer, but it can look like one, and it gives the capitalists a safety valve to drain off revolutionary energy."
"The safety valve will not stay open much longer," Lincoln said. "The prairies are filling up. Failed miners become proletarians in Western towns instead of Eastern cities, or they stay on as miners for the lucky handful who do grow rich, and serve as labour in the mines of the big companies."
"Yes." Sorge nodded emphatically. "So, as I say, though progress is slow, the revolution will come, and will throw down the capitalists and their minions."
"You believe the engine is broken and will explode," Lincoln said. Sorge nodded again. So did Ludwig. The ex-president went on, "I believe the engine is broken but may perhaps be repaired. The Republicans would not hear me because I dared to say something was wrong with the engine. Will you now cast me forth because I dare to say it may be set to rights?"
For a moment, he thought Sorge would tell him yes, and that would be that. Then the Socialist newspaperman said, "Come back into my office, Mr. Lincoln. We do not need to speak of these things standing here at the counter like men choosing pickles from the barrel."
The office was small and cramped and dark and full of bookshelves. Most of the books on them were in German, the rest in English and French. The word Socialist looked much alike in all three languages. Sorge had to clear more books off the chair in front of his desk to give Lincoln room to sit down. The desk itself was a disorderly snarl of papers.
Seeing Lincoln take the measure of the little room, Sorge chuckled wryly. "I, you see, will never be a wealthy capitalist. Luckily for me, I never wanted to be a wealthy capitalist."
"Had you wanted to be one, I should be here, or perhaps somewhere else close by, speaking of this with someone else," Lincoln answered, "for the Socialists in Chicago would have a leader, regardless of whether or not you were he. Now to come back to the question I asked out front: will you condemn me for not being revolutionary enough, as the Republicans condemned me for being too revolutionary?"
"Socialist thought is divided on whether the proletarian revolution is inevitable," Sorge said. "The Marxian Socialists, now, believe it is, and-"
"I am familiar with the division," Lincoln broke in. "Not long ago, in Montana Territory, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt accused me of being a Marxian Socialist, and I told him I had to decline the honor. This was before he became a national hero, you understand." His laugh was as wry as Sorge's. "Now, of course, I could deny him nothing."
"Of course," the Socialist answered, his voice curdled with irony. "The only confusion the papers have had is whether to fawn more on Roosevelt or on Custer. If something is before their eyes, they will never look farther. Pah!"
"This digression is my fault," Lincoln said. "I do apologize for it. Let me ask my question a third time: am I too soft for you, as I am too hard for the men of what had been my party?"
Sorge frowned in thought. "I have seen little in the behavior of capitalists to cause me to believe they will not create so much outrage among the proletariat as to make revolution inevitable."
"You have never seen the behavior of capitalists reined in by government regulation, either," Lincoln replied.
"No, I have not," Sorge said. "I have not seen the second coming of Jesus Christ, either. I do not expect to see the one thing or the other while I live, and which is less likely I would not even guess."
"Here in the United States, the power of the ballot box gives the labouring classes a power, or the potential for a power, that they lacked in the days when Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, and in the places he knew best," Lincoln said.
"Marx yet lives. Marx yet writes," Sorge answered in tones of reproof.
"But he does not live here. He does not write here," Lincoln said. "By what I have read of his writings, he does not understand the United States well. You have lived in New York, you say. Now you live in Chicago. Can you tell me I am mistaken?"
He gave Friedrich Sorge credit: the Socialist gave the question serious thought before answering. At last, Sorge said, "No, Marx does not understand this country as well as
he might."
"Good. We can go on from there. Will you also agree this is true of many Socialists in the United States?" Lincoln asked, pressing the newspaperman as if he still were a lawyer questioning an opposing witness. "With the labour problems this country has, would you not have enjoyed greater success if you could have figured out how to make the voting man see things your way?"
"It could be. It is not certain, but it could be," Sorge said cautiously. "I think you are now coming to say what it is your aim to say. Say it, then."
"I will say it," Lincoln replied. "Leaving revolution out of the bargain save as a last resort, I feel the Socialists offer the laborers of this country their best chance to reclaim it from the wealthy. If and when I bolt the Republican Party, I can bring some large fraction of its membership-a third, maybe half if I'm lucky-with me into the fold here. That is not enough to elect a president or senators, not yet, but it is enough to elect congressmen, state legislators, mayors, and it is a base from which to build. When Blaine goes down in '84, as you know he will, more people will see the Republicans are doomed and join our ranks. Now, how does that look to you?"
Sorge licked his lips. He was tempted; Lincoln could see as much. The prospect of some actual power hit the newspaperman like a big slug of raw rotgut whiskey. Playing to win was a game very different from playing to agitate. Slowly, Sorge said, "This is not something I can decide at once. Also, this is not something I can decide alone. I shall have to talk with some men here and wire others what you propose." He dug through the rubbish on his desk till he found a pencil.
After licking the point, he scribbled for a minute. Then he said, "If I understand you, what you have in mind is…"
"Yes, that's right, nor near enough," Lincoln said when the Socialist had finished reading back his notes. "Off the record, Mr. Sorge, how does it strike you?"
"I am more revolutionary than you; you are right about that," Sorge answered. "But you are also right in saying we have not done as much as we might have. Maybe-maybe, I say-this will show us the way."
"This is how the Republican Party was born, more than a generation ago," Lincoln said. "Antislavery Whigs, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, even a few Northern Democrats who couldn't stomach the extension of slavery-we all joined together to work for a common goal. I think this new coalition may do the same in regard to wage slavery."
"I hope you arc right." Sorge gave him a keen look. "President Blaine will call you a traitor, and, when he loses the next election, he will say it is for no other reason than that you and your followers left the party."
"President Blaine is not in the habit of listening to what I say, no matter how hard a time I have convincing people that that is so," Lincoln said, sadly remembering John Taylor's miscalculation. "I sec no reason why I should be obliged to take notice of what President Blaine says, especially when, from this day forth, we shall no longer be members of the same party."
Friedrich Sorge pulled open a file cabinet behind his desk. When his hand came out of the drawer, it was clutching a whiskey bottle. More rummaging in the cabinet and in his desk produced two tumblers, mismatched and none too clean. He poured a couple of hefty dollops, handed one glass to Lincoln, and raised the other high. "To Socialism!" he said, and drank.
Lincoln drank, too. The whiskey was bad, but it was strong. "To Socialism," he said.
Brigadier General George Custer rode along bare yards south of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, the border separating Montana Territory from Canada, along with a troop from the Fifth Cavalry. Bare yards north of the border, not quite in rifle range but not far out of it, a troop of red-coated British cavalrymen rode along dogging his trail. Neither side had fired a shot since General Gordon took his mutilated army of invasion back over the border. Both sides were ready. For his part, Custer was eager.
Several reporters rode along with the Fifth Cavalry. One of them, an eager young fellow named Worth, asked, "How does it feel, General, to have your brevet rank made permanent?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Charlie, it beats the hell out of going to the dentist to get a tooth yanked," Custer quipped. Charlie Worth and the rest of the reporters laughed appreciatively. Custer held up a hand to show he wasn't through. The newspapermen fell silent, to hear what other pearls of wisdom might fall from his lips. He went on in a serious, even a bombastic, vein: "My only regret is that the promotion comes as the result of a battle from which we could not seize the full fruits of victory because of the cease-fire's having gone into effect. Absent that, we should have pursued to destruction the ruffians who dared desecrate our sacred soil."
Awkwardly, the reporters scribbled as they rode. "God damn, but he gives good copy," one of them muttered to another in admiring tones. The second man nodded. Custer didn't think he was supposed to hear. His chest swelled with pride. Truly he was the hero of the hour.
He waved to Charlie Worth. The reporter, honored at being shown such a confidence, rode up close to him. Custer said, "Do you mind if I make another foraging run amongst your cigars, Charlie?"
"Why, not at all, General." Worth held out a leather cigar case. Custer took a fat stogie from it and reined in so he could strike a match. He coughed a couple of times after he got the cigar going and sucked smoke into his mouth. Before the battle by the Teton River, the only tobacco he'd smoked had been in a few peace pipes handed him by the leaders of Indian tribes he'd smashed.
A reporter asked, "What is your view of the cease-fire, General?"
"I regret that it came when it did, as it prevented us from punishing the British as they so richly deserved," Custer replied. "I also regret it even more on general principles, for it has humiliated us before the nations of the world for the second time in a space of less than twenty years."
His stomach knotted at the thought. He had loved his country longer and more faithfully than he had loved his wife. Now, as in 1862, the United States were going down to mortifying defeat, and that despite his victory, a victory which, had he learned of the cease-fire in time, would never have happened. When he'd married Libbie after the War of Secession, he'd promised to stop cursing and stop drinking.
He'd held to the promise till he learned his victory counted for nothing. He'd stayed drunk for days after that, and let out all the oaths he had in him. He was still drinking, he was still swearing, and he'd taken up smoking for good measure.
Camp that evening brought everybody up close to everybody else; men stayed near the greasewood fires for warmth. To the north, the campfires of the troop of British cavalry were a constellation of brightly twinkling stars on the horizon.
Custer and his troopers wolfed down salt pork and hardtack. Some of them crumbled the biscuits and fried them in the grease from the pork, of which there was always an adequate supply. "How do you people eat this stuff day after day, week after week, and live to tell the tale?" one of the reporters asked.
"So sorry, boys," Custer said. "Next time you ride along with us, we'll make sure we cater the affair from Denver."
That got a round of laughter, as he'd hoped it would. Then one of the reporters-it was Charlie Worth, damn him-asked, "How did Colonel Roosevelt and the Unauthorized Regiment take to Army rations?"
"I'm afraid I really don't know," Custer answered, his voice all at once as cool as the breeze hissing down from the north. "I never discussed that with Mr. Roosevelt." He laid the tiniest bit of stress on the civilian title.
The reporters, of course, made their living noticing tiny stresses. "Come on, General," one of them said. "What do you really think of Colonel Roosevelt"-he laid the tiniest bit of stress on the military title-"as a soldier? What do you think of the men of the Unauthorized Regiment as soldiers?"
"Have mercy, gentlemen," Custer said. "I've answered those same questions a lot of times over the past weeks." And I'd like it a lot better if you asked them a damned sight less often. Having to share the limelight with the boy colonel gave him worse dyspepsia than salt pork and hardtack gave the reporters.
They wouldn't leave him alone. He might have known they wouldn't leave him alone. "Come on, General," Charlie Worth coaxed. "Give it to us straight. You can do that."
"I can only repeat what I've said a great number of times," Custer answered: "Colonel Roosevelt and his volunteers were gifted, patriotic amateur soldiers, and fought as well as men of that sort could be expected to fight." Every word of that was true. If the reporters judged the tone to be ever so little on the slighting side, was that his fault?
One of the newspapermen said, "General, isn't it a fact that the Unauthorized Regiment performed better against the limeys than the Fifth Cavalry did?"
"Like hell it's a fact," Custer snarled, "and if Roosevelt has been saying that, he's a damned glory-sniffing liar."
"No, General, I never heard it from him," the reporter said hastily. "But didn't the Unauthorized Regiment fight Gordon's cavalry to a draw and then chase the redcoats halfway back to Canada after the what-do-you-call-'ems-the Gatling guns-chewed them to smithereens?"
"The Unauthorized Regiment," Custer said, as if lecturing on strategy at West Point to a class of idiots, "engaged the enemy forces pursuant to my orders. Had I placed them in the center and us on the wings, we would have done as well against the British cavalry, but they would have fared far worse against Gordon's foot. Since my men were fighting dismounted at the battle by the Teton, they were not so well positioned to pursue as were the Volunteers."
All that was true, too. Had Theodore Roosevelt been sitting by the campfire, Custer was sure he would have agreed with every word. (Custer was also sure he would have tried to aggrandize himself one way or another, though; that trait being acutely developed in him, he had an eagle eye for spotting it in others.) But reporters were not after agreement. Agreement didn't sell papers. Argument did. "What about the-Gatterling? — guns, General?" another news hawk asked.
How Few Remain (great war) Page 61
