Lincoln (100 page)

The telegrapher reported that Governor Horatio Seymour would deliver the official notification of nomination to General McClellan. Meanwhile, the convention was eager to hear McClellan’s response. For the first time, Lincoln smiled. “I hope they don’t all decide to stay in Chicago until they hear from him. If they do, they had better start looking around for permanent lodgings.”

Seward laughed, more from relief that the President was himself again than from amusement. “One thing,” said Seward, “the Democrats are even more divided than we are. The New Yorkers and McClellan mean to continue the war for the Union, ignoring the slave issue, while the Vallandigham people want an instant peace. I suspect that long before the election, their party will have split in two.”

“As ours is doing now?” Lincoln was quizzical.

“It should be noted that the group that met two weeks ago in New York
with an eye to holding a new convention was supposed to meet again tomorrow. But my spies tell me that they have no plan to meet. I suspect even Horace Greeley has accepted the fact that you are all that we have.”

Lincoln made no response.

Four days later, David Herold was staring, somewhat vacantly, out the window of Thompson’s. In the back room, Mr. Thompson was trying to achieve yet another tonic for Governor Seward, whose morning malaises no longer yielded to the usual mixture of elm bark and bicarbonate while Seidlitz powders had long since been abandoned.

As David watched, he saw the familiar figure of the President cross from the War Department to the Mansion; he was accompanied by Gideon Welles and Marshal Lamon. Sadly, David thought of the recent opportunity that had been missed by a matter of inches, if Mr. Sullivan’s story was true. Everyone was now agreed that it was curious indeed that a man who wandered about as freely as did the President could not be more easily shot. Plainly, Old Abe was a lucky man.

But David did not know how lucky Lincoln was. As the President walked, he held in his hand the flimsy copy of a characteristically dry telegraph message from Grant at City Point: “A dispatch just received from Superintendent of Telegraph in Dept. of Cumberland of this date announces the occupation of Atlanta by our troops. This must be by the 20th Corps, which was left by Sherman on the Chattahoochee whilst with the balance of his army he marched to the south of the city.”

At the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue, the three men paused as the horsecars went by. A number of riders recognized the President. There was a mixture of cheers and boos. Cheerfully, Lincoln raised his hat.

“Every last one will be cheering you tomorrow,” said Lamon, as a single red maple leaf floated toward them on the cool autumn wind.

At the gate to the Mansion, they were stopped by a messenger on horseback. He gave the President a second flimsy. “Mr. Stanton said you would want to see this, sir.” The messenger saluted; and departed.

Lincoln glanced at the message; then broke into a great smile. “It is from Sherman himself. He says ‘Atlanta is ours and fairly won.’ Well, Neptune, I think I shall now declare a day of thanksgiving in honor of Sherman.”

“Don’t forget Admiral Farragut. The navy’s occupied Mobile Harbor.”

“Neptune will be celebrated as well as Mars.”

“And Jupiter?” asked Welles, as they walked up the driveway to the portico. “What of him?”

“Jupiter,” said Lincoln, “has regained his thunderbolts.”

Nicolay met them on the portico. He, too, had heard the news. He shook the President’s hand as if they had not been together all morning.
“You will be elected unanimously!” In Nicolay’s excitement “will” had become “vill”; he was again a six-year-old Bavarian child, newly arrived in America.

Old Edward also shook the President’s hand. “A number of those newspaper writers are upstairs,” he said. “I have told them that you are much too busy winning the war to see them.”

“I shall tell them exactly the same thing,” said Lincoln; and repeated aloud the magical phrase: “ ‘Atlanta is ours and fairly won.’ ”

I
N THE
President’s bedroom, Hay helped Lincoln arrange the pier glass so that the light from the window struck it head-on. Lincoln then pushed the mirror back and forth until he got the exact angle that he wanted. “Yes,” he said. “That is just about the way it was yesterday.” He squinted at his own reflection. “And the way it was back in Springfield.” He pulled an armchair in front of the mirror and placed it just off-center. Then he seated himself. “Now, John, you stand so that you can look in the mirror and see me but so I don’t see you.” Hay kept moving, tentatively, to the right until Lincoln told him to stop. “You can see my reflection?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now then …” Lincoln stared intently at his reflection in the glass. Hay noticed that the Ancient’s hair and beard both needed trimming; he was also thinner than ever and, more than ever, thought Hay, a doughnut-brown.

Lincoln cocked his head; and shut one eye. Then he shut the other eye. Then he frowned. “I cannot see it,” he said at last. “It is the strangest thing. You see nothing?”

“No, sir. Only you, in the chair.”

Lincoln was disappointed. “Yesterday I thought it was happening again, the way it did four years ago at Springfield. For an instant, I saw myself twice, one image was clear; the other was paler and shadowier. In Springfield, it looked as if I was sitting next to my own ghost.”

“Do you believe in ghosts, sir?”

Lincoln smiled. “No, I’m too earthy for that. But don’t tell Mrs. Lincoln. She gets great comfort from charlatans. If she thinks Willie comes to her every night, let her think it. But I
am
interested in phenomena—physical phenomena. I’d hoped to demonstrate this one, with a witness. Because if I saw me and my other self and you did, too, why we would both be scientific ring-tailed wonders. But I don’t; and you don’t.”

“What makes the effect, do you think?” Hay also believed in phenomena; a category that could include almost anything, not to mention everything.

“Well, I was planning how to find out. I suspect it is the way that the light strikes upon the glass, doubling the image, but I tell you the
effect
is just like you are seeing your own ghost.” Lincoln stood up. “I will say that I do put some faith in dreams. But then dreams are the self talking to the self. I have one recurring dream that always comes to me the night before some great event. I just had it the night before Atlanta fell.” Lincoln stared at himself in the mirror, as if it were indeed the ghost of himself that he saw; or, perhaps, he was the ghost addressing the mirrored, still-incarnate flesh. “I am on a raft, without a pole or a rudder of any kind. I’m at the center of a river so wide that I cannot see either shore, and since the current is a swift one, I am drifting … drifting … drifting.” He stared dreamily into the looking glass.

“Then what happens?”

“Then …? Oh, I wake up.” The Ancient smiled. “To find that while I was dreaming, the raft has come triumphantly aground, and Atlanta is ours and fairly won.”

“Did you dream your dream the night before last? When Sheridan was massacring Jubal Early at Winchester?”

“No. I think the dream is rationed. Only turning points require its presence.”

The President then went to the Friday Cabinet, while Hay went to Nicolay’s office. Nico was in New York, trying to find Thurlow Weed, who had recently vanished. Stoddard was at the small table that Hay himself used when Nico presided over the secretary’s desk. The usual pile of correspondence had been dumped, as usual, on the floor. The latest consignment of newspapers was stacked on the central table. Back and forth, in the hall, supplicants marched. Some asked to have a word with Major Hay. Hay enjoyed the handsome women; often they flirted with him. Yet Nico claimed that no woman had ever once flirted with him. Hay had said that was because they could see, upon his brow, in letters of fire, the sacred name, “Therena.”

“Look!” Stoddard’s usual worried frown had shifted to a scowl. He gave Hay an official-looking sheet of paper, which proved to be a letter from Frémont, posted the day before, September 22. Frémont was withdrawing as a candidate for president. He would support Lincoln. Nevertheless, he could not approve Lincoln’s course, which had been a failure … Hay read no further. He hurried across the corridor, stumbling over an admiral, who reached for his sword. But before Hay was stabbed through, he was safely inside the Reception Room. All heads turned toward him. Silently, he gave the Tycoon the message. Silently, the Tycoon read it. Silently, Hay left the room.

Seward did his best to guess the contents of the letter. Obviously it was important, or Johnny would not have broken in on them like that. If it had had anything to do with the military, he would have given it to Stanton or Welles first. So the message was political. But Sherman and Farragut had knocked the bottom out of the Chicago nomination convention. McClellan was finished. There was still a faint possibility that the radicals might yet nominate Butler, who was more than willing. Perhaps that was it. Meanwhile, Seward was very much aware that Montgomery Blair had been glowering at him ever since the beginning of the meeting. Although the Blairs tended, as a family, to glower on principle, Seward was uncomfortably aware that today he alone was the innocent object of the family’s collective wrath.

Lincoln ended the Cabinet with a reading from Petroleum V. Nasby’s latest book of drolleries. Everyone laughed uproariously at the jokes except Stanton, who muttered, to Seward’s amazement, “Goddamn it to hell!” Plainly, Chase’s work of Christian conversion was not complete in the case of the War god. As the meeting broke up, Seward started toward the President, but before he could get to him, Monty Blair was at his side; and the two men vanished into the President’s office.

As Lincoln shut the door to the Reception Room, he said, “I’m sorry it had to happen so suddenly.”

“So am I.” Blair held a letter in his hand, signed by Lincoln. “This was waiting for me when I came in from Silver Spring.”

“I had no choice, Monty. Your father also agrees.”

“I will write out my official resignation this afternoon. I see Seward’s hand at work.”

Lincoln shook his head. “He has nothing to do with it. I let Chase go, and offended all the radicals. Ever since, they have been after me to let you go— Anyway, we must unite the party, and when it comes to a lot of folks, you and Frank are like a suit of red underwear to a bull.”

“Then I go.”

“Monty, if it could have been otherwise, I would keep you with me to the end. Your kindness to me has been uniform; and I am deeply grateful.”

“As I am to you,” said Blair.

“What will you do now?”

“Make speeches for you. What else can I do?”

“That is the most, certainly. I am grateful; and will not forget.” On that note, they parted.

Hay entered the office. “Is it true Mr. Blair is resigning?”

“Yes, John. It is true.”

The moment that Frémont withdrew from the race, Blair was let go. Plainly, the Tycoon was now beginning to behave like Machiavelli; and about time, thought Hay. “You knew about Frémont already?”

Lincoln nodded. “I was told last night. Mr. Stanton has just given me this.” Lincoln unfolded a telegram. “ ‘John G. Nicolay, unemployed, has been drafted into the army at New York City. Signed General Dix.’ ”

“My God! Poor Nico. What do we do?”

“
We
don’t do anything except keep quiet about it. I’ve sent word to Nicolay, through Dix, to buy himself, as secretly as possible, a substitute.”

“Let’s hope Mr. Greeley doesn’t get word of this.”

“He is the least of our problems now.” It was true. Ever since the disaster at Niagara Falls, Greeley had been all-out for Lincoln. In person, Hay had found the famous editor odd, but charming. Once it was clear that the peace-mission was nonsense—disavowed even by Jefferson Davis—Greeley had come around to Lincoln. The
Tribune
was now entirely pro-Lincoln; and had been so even before Atlanta—or B.A., as Nico now termed the dark ages of the Administration, while A.A. designated the new victorious era. It also had not hurt that Greeley had, somehow, got the impression that if Blair should leave the Cabinet, he would be the next Postmaster-General. In fact, when the Tycoon had been asked recently by a number of New Yorkers if he would consider Greeley, they had been told that, after all, another editor by the name of Benjamin Franklin had been pretty successful in the job. Greeley, who lusted for public office, had taken the bait; and his editorials now oozed honey.

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.”