Lincoln (25 page)

Hay was almost relieved to be taken away from the French corner by plain Cousin Lizzie, who said, “I wish you’d talk to Cousin Lincoln about sending the family North.”

“The family won’t go, Mrs. Grimsley. You’ve heard Madam … I mean Mrs. Lincoln.” Hay stammered; the nicknames were only for Nicolay and himself. Fortunately, Cousin Lizzie thought he was referring to the fire-work’s display of French beneath the portrait of Mrs. Monroe. “Oh, Cousin Mary can jabber for hours in French. She went to this French academy in Lexington, run by two marvelous old things called Mentelle. Then she was given these special lessons by this old retired Episcopal bishop, who thought her smart as paint, which she is.” An usher served them fashionable French cakes—to go, Hay thought, with the conversation as well as the tea. A large woman, who liked her food, Mrs. Grimsley had become noticeably larger during her extended stay in the Mansion. “Cousin Mary has the courage of a lion, I must say, and won’t leave if there is any danger. But I tell her, you have the two small boys! What happens to them when the rebels attack the city?”

“We hope that won’t happen,” said Hay, who was reasonably certain that if the rebels did not attack before the arrival of the northern regiments in the next few days, the city was safe. But he tended to agree with the President that if he were the rebel general, he would attack as soon as possible—immediately, in fact; because, despite General Scott’s official optimism, the only part of the city that could be held for any length of time was the White House and its neighbor the massive stone Treasury Building, where howitzers had been placed in the corridors and grain stored in the cellars. Preparations for a siege had begun.

“Well, I would appreciate it if you were to put a word in Cousin Lincoln’s ear. At least send the children North.”

“How?” Hay rather enjoyed alarming Mrs. Grimsley.

“Well, by the cars, I suppose.”

“There are no trains to the North. There are no ships available because of our blockade.”

Mrs. Grimsley’s mouth twitched involuntarily. Then she laughed. “The roads South are open, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes. There are even boats still, in spite of the blockade.”

“Then the boys can be sent to Lexington. Kentucky’s certain to stay in the Union.”

“Mr. Lincoln got only two votes in Lexington. The rest voted for Breckinridge.”

“Cousin Mary and I are still trying to guess who the two were. We
think
one was her oldest half-brother … Oh, Ben Helm has agreed to come pay a call.” Hay’s blank look inspired Cousin Lizzie to a genealogical flight. “He’s the husband of Little Sister, that’s Cousin Mary’s half-sister Emilie, whom she adores. Anyway, Emilie married Ben Hardin Helm, who graduated from West Point, and Cousin Mary has been doing her best to get them to come here and accept a commission in the Union army. Anyway, we just got word from a Kentucky friend, who arrived at Willard’s Thursday, that the Helmses are on their way!”

“To accept a commission?” Hay had heard a great deal about Madam’s secessionist family, particularly her three half-brothers and her three half-sisters who still lived at the South, many of them in Lexington, under the vigilant matriarchy of Mrs. Lincoln’s stepmother.

Mrs. Grimsley helped herself to another of Gautier’s confections. “Yes, I believe so. For Cousin Mary, I pray so. It’s embarrassing for the President, for one thing.” She looked at Hay, as if she wanted him to say that it was not; but he did not. She went on, jaws grinding evenly. “And it is heartbreaking for her to have all those brothers and sisters so much younger than she, the ones that she looked on as if they were her own babies, at war with her.”

“I can think of nothing more tragic,” said Hay, honestly.

“Once Little Sister and Ben are here, I’m sure that things will be better. Anyway, I can’t stay forever. Cousin Mary’s threatening to go to New York some time next month, to do some shopping for this”—Mrs. Grimsley looked around the shabby but unmistakably, despite the marks of greasy hands and tobacco spit, Blue Room—“depressing old house.” She lowered her voice. “I wouldn’t live here if I was paid a fortune! We’ve better places, let me tell you, in Kentucky, let alone Virginia. Anyway, once we’re in New York, I’ll try to take the cars for Springfield.” Mrs. Grimsley looked across the room at the glowing Mary, still talking French. “I fear for her in this place.”

“Because of the rebels?”

“Oh, no. She’s a Todd. She can handle an invading army just fine. No, it’s these terrible Washington ladies, who have no manners. But then, as
her stepmother Mrs. Todd says, it takes seven generations to make a lady. Most of the
women
here are at the first jump.”

“Ready to be thrown?” Hay could not resist elaborating on this dangerous hunting metaphor.

Mrs. Grimsley chose, after seven generations, to let Hay’s rhetorical question go unanswered. “She also suffers from the vicious press that has no mercy—not to mention an endless talent for invention.”

“Mr. Lincoln has pretty much stopped reading Northern newspapers. He says that since they are filled with nothing but speculations about him, he’d be no wiser.”

“I wish she’d be as wise. But she reads the worst things about herself and the President and takes them so to heart. She needs friends in this place. You’re too young to remember the Coterie …”

“But I know all of you now.”

“But we’re all of us old now. While then we were young, and Cousin Mary was the center of everything, the wittiest and most charming of the lot and, tell this to no one except Mr. Nicolay, she is a devastating mimic. Last night she had us in stitches, imitating a certain proud young lady.”

“Miss Chase?” Hay let the name slip.

“
I
never said the name, Mr. Hay.”

The Blue Room was suddenly made clamorous by the entrance of Willie and Tad, accompanied by Elizabeth Keckley, who spent most of every day at the Mansion, helping Mrs. Lincoln with the renovation of the house, with the children, with the entrenched bureaucracy that ruled the White House inside and out. Both Hay and Nicolay suspected vast corruption on the part of the head groundsman, whose bills were astonishing; and minor corruption on the part of Old Edward, of the housekeeper and of the chief cook. Madam had also asked for her own secretary, to be paid for by the Commissioner of Public Buildings a dignitary whom she had personally selected even though he was a friend of Mr. Seward.

While the delighted parents watched as Willie and Tad annoyed everyone with their antics, Hay asked the President if he might withdraw.

“Yes, Mr. Hay. Yes.” When Lincoln was distracted, he always called him Mr. Hay; in normal temper, he called him John. What, Hay wondered, had Sumner been telling him?

Later that night, as Hay sat at the desk in his bedroom, and Nicolay snored in their common bed, Lincoln appeared in the doorway, wearing an overcoat, slippers, and no trousers. Hay got to his feet. But Lincoln gestured for him to sit down. Then the President sat on the edge of the bed, and crossed his long, thin legs; and asked, “Are you keeping a journal?”

Hay nodded; and blushed, as if caught in some shameful act.

“Well, there should be a lot to write about, worse luck for me. Anyway, tomorrow I want you to go over to the Library of Congress and see what you can find on the President’s wartime powers.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because,” the Ancient sighed, “Mr. Sumner thinks that in the event of civil war, which this certainly is, I can free the slaves as ‘a military necessity.’ ”

“Would you, sir?”

“Well, Mr. Sumner would,” said the President.

F
OR HAY
, the next few days were curiously tranquil. The city was empty. The horsecars ran at whim. The troops were silent as they stood guard at the public buildings, waiting for the enemy and a battle that the Union would surely lose; or for the reinforcements that did not come even though thousands of Union troops were only forty miles to the north in Maryland.

The day that General Scott had promised Lincoln the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment, Tuesday, came and went much like troopless Monday. Tuesday afternoon when Hay entered the President’s office to tell him that Mr. Seward wanted to see him, he found Lincoln standing once again at the open window; he was looking out across the odiferous marshes to the jumbled blocks that surrounded the unfinished shaft of Washington’s monument, which he was now addressing, urgently, “Why don’t they come? Why don’t they come?”

Hay coughed. Lincoln turned; lips still moving but, now, soundlessly. “Mr. Seward, sir. He has a message from the governor of Maryland.”

As Seward entered, Hay withdrew; and Lincoln sat back in his chair. “I only hope, Mr. Seward, the message came by telegraph.”

“No, sir.” Seward sat in the chair to the President’s left, the light in his face. “The telegraph is still down. But General Scott’s couriers are almost as good.”

“Where are the troops?”

“Apparently they landed at the Naval Academy, which they retook as well as that old frigate, the
Constitution.
”

“This is all very good to know,” said Lincoln, impatiently. “But
where
is General Butler now?”

“I can only read between the lines of this message from Governor Hicks.” Seward consulted the much-creased sheet of paper in his hand. “First, he replies to my answer to his proposal that we ask the British minister to mediate between Maryland and the United States in this matter.”

Seward looked up. Lincoln was shaking his head. Gradually, Seward was beginning to read the moods if not the mind of this curious figure. The present mood was one of intense anger. “It passes all belief!” Lincoln now addressed the portrait of Andrew Jackson over the mantelpiece.

“At least, I think the governor was properly stung when I wrote, declining on your behalf his ingenious suggestion that whatever disagreement any American has with any other American, the agent of a foreign monarchy is hardly a proper mediator.”

“Good. What about General Butler?”

“Apparently, both General Butler’s regiment and New York’s Seventh Regiment landed without incident.”

Lincoln brightened. “That’s two thousand men. And Rhode Island’s just behind. But,” he turned from the Jackson portrait to Seward, “exactly
where
are they now?”

“As of this morning, still in Annapolis. Naturally, the governor objects to the presence of Northern troops …”

“Northern!”

Seward interrupted the President; something that he had, only lately, got out of the habit of doing. “General Butler anticipated you, sir. He, very respectfully, I gather, told the governor that he was never again to refer to Union troops as Northern troops. The governor alludes, somewhat petulantly, to this.”

Lincoln smiled for the first time. “They say he is a great actor, Ben Butler. Do you know him?”

“I do. Butler’s easily the best trial lawyer I’ve ever seen in action.”

Lincoln nodded. “Full of dramatic tricks, they say. With a liking for low criminals, the guiltier the better.” Lincoln chuckled. “Just think, here’s a trial lawyer, commanding troops in a state that’s trying to secede, on his way to save the capital of a country whose president was, until recently, an attorney for the Illinois Central Railroad.”

“While, at the risk of boasting, sir, the Secretary of State is still considered the finest patent lawyer in New York State …”

Lincoln laughed. “Here we are, practically the whole legal profession, running the Administration and now the army, trying to hold together with our fine legal minds a Union that is being torn apart by men who have spent their lives killing animals and one another in duels of honor. If you’ll forgive me, General Jackson,” Lincoln nodded to the picture on the wall, “a renowned duellist …”

“
… and
lawyer,” added Seward. “Anyway, Governor Hicks, whose field appears to be divorce …”

By now, Lincoln was laughing helplessly at the growing absurdity of the situation. When, finally, the laughter ceased, Seward thought that Lincoln looked like a man who had just taken a tonic or received the beneficial shocks of the latest patented electrical machine. But then Seward had already come to understand Lincoln’s almost physical need for laughter. “So Governor Hicks has been reprimanded. We occupy Annapolis. Now what?”

“Part of General Butler’s troops remain. That’s what the governor is objecting to. They are repairing the railroad to the city. He wishes that they would not because of what he calls his excitable people. He also says that because of our restoration of the railroad, the legislature cannot come to Annapolis. Apparently General Butler, always one to have the last word, has said that until the railroad is repaired, our troops cannot leave the city any more than the legislature can enter it. The logic is nice.”

“When is the legislature to convene?” Lincoln sat up in his chair, suddenly alert.

“The twenty-sixth.”

“This is the twenty-third. We have not much time.”

“To do … what, sir?”

Lincoln rose. “I’m not ready to say. So when are we to expect these mythical troops?”

“Tomorrow or the day after.”

It was the day after, Thursday, April 25, that the troops arrived in Washington. Although the railroad had been restored, there were sufficient cars only for the sick, the baggage and one howitzer battery. The main body of the troops departed Annapolis Wednesday morning on foot; and arrived, without incident, at the capital the next afternoon.

The Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island regiments then proceeded down Pennsylvania Avenue, bands playing and banners unfurled, to the White House, proving to the President that there was indeed a
patriotic Northern part of the Union, ready to fight for the preservation of the whole.

Hay watched the glittering display from the front gate of the Mansion, standing just behind the President and Mrs. Lincoln and the two loud boys. The city seemed, mysteriously, to have filled up again. All sorts of people, until now invisible, lined Pennsylvania Avenue in order to cheer the troops.

But David Herold was not one of them. He stood beside Mr. Thompson, who held a small Union flag in one hand but, out of deference to the volatile mixture of his clientele, he did not actually wave the flag. He had shut the drugstore for the day: in celebration or in mourning, depending on his customer’s predilections.