Lincoln (33 page)

Lincoln towered over the other three. “I often think,” he said, “that if ever this country is destroyed, it will be because of people wanting jobs with the government, people wanting to live without work, a terrible fault …”

Lincoln looked out the window at the company of New Jersey infantry that was drilling beneath the stern gaze of Tad and of Willie, who was mounted on Nanda the goat. “… A terrible fault,” he repeated, “from which I am not entirely free myself. It was once my dream, twenty years ago, to be American consul in Bogotá. Thank God, I failed to get appointed.

“I guess we’re all in God’s debt,” said Bates.

“Don’t speak too soon.” Lincoln put his finger to his lips. Then he went into his office, followed by Nicolay.

Hay walked Bates down the long corridor, filled today with moustached men seeking army commissions. At the beginning of the private quarters, they encountered Madam and Mrs. Grimsley.

“Mr. Bates, sir!” Mrs. Lincoln exclaimed, with pleasure. To Hay’s cold eye, she looked somewhat pasty of face. But she was, at least, no longer insane. Hay and Nicolay often debated whether or not she was really sick when seized by The Headache, or simply shamming in order to get her way with the Tycoon. Lately, she had begun to meddle once again in appointments, to the dismay of the President’s two secretaries. What the President himself thought of her political activities neither secretary knew.

Hay left the Attorney-General in Madam’s care and went back to his own office to begin the search for a copy of the Constitution.

O
N THE
morning of June 29, Chase received in his office the man whom he regarded as the perfect modern warrior: Irvin McDowell, brigadier-general of volunteers, and commander of the Army of the Potomac. At forty-two, McDowell was civilized so far beyond the military norm that the fact that he was not a bachelor caused Chase an occasional moment of regret when he saw the sturdy figure seated beside Kate on the piano bench at Sixth and E, teaching her a Mozart sonata, or holding forth on Roman architecture, or the landscapes of Capability Brown, or simply withdrawing into French, which he spoke even better than Kate’s highly finished French because he had been educated in Paris, that most civilized of communities whose elegant
Revue des deux mondes
was faithfully read, albeit with difficulty, by Chase himself.

McDowell was one of the few non-Southern graduates of West Point never to have left the army. For gallantry in the Mexican War, he had been breveted a captain in the field. But over the years, as Scott tended to promote only Southern officers, McDowell had vanished into the office of the Adjutant-General. Now he had come into his own. He had established headquarters across the Potomac at Arlington House, the home of the rebel commander Robert E. Lee.

It had been agreed the evening before that Chase and McDowell would go together to the White House, where McDowell would present, for the first time, his plans for the immediate invasion and conquest of Virginia.

“Is General Scott now in agreement?” Chase sat at his desk, its gleaming black surface covered with a blizzard of white paper representing a thousand applications for jobs as Treasury agents.

“Oh, General Scott is seldom in agreement. He still resents my appointment.” McDowell seemed not in the least disturbed. Chase admired enormously the man’s cool ease with everything and everyone. Chase also knew what a difficult time McDowell had had since his promotion over General Scott’s favorite, General Mansfield, the conqueror of Alexandria and the Potomac Heights; also, because McDowell did not wish to incur the jealousy of his fellow commanders, he had rejected a major-generalship. It was as a brigadier that he now set about the task of preparing the army for a response to the cry that was, if not shouted each day, read each day in the press, particularly in Horace Greeley’s New York
Tribune:
“Forward to Richmond!”

“I should think that we have them pretty well encircled on three sides.”
Chase had always felt that he had a military capacity as yet untapped in a career that had been nothing if not pacific. Nevertheless, he dearly loved a map. “We have General Butler at Fortress Monroe. That takes care of the coast. We have General Banks in Maryland—which is, in effect, under martial law. I never thought,” Chase drifted from his subject, “that Mr. Lincoln would have so much audacity as to suspend
habeas corpus
and arrest all those chiefs of police.”

“When he decides to do something, he does it. Or so,” said McDowell, cautiously, “it seems to me.”

“The problem is always to get him to move; and in the right direction. What do you know of General McClellan in the West?”

“I knew him in Mexico, of course. He’s eight years younger than I. He graduated from the Military Academy in ’forty-six; and went straight to Mexico with General Scott. We both came out of that war captains.”

Chase admired the serenity with which McDowell noted that McClellan was a captain at twenty while he was a captain at twenty-eight. “For a while, he taught engineering at the Academy. I seldom saw him. Then he quit the army …”

“To become,” Chase spelled it out sonorously, “the chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad.” Chase pushed all the applications on his desk into an orderly military pile at the center. “I believe Mr. Lincoln knows him.”

McDowell smiled. “And I believe that McClellan was a Douglas man.”

“Such a loss, such a loss!” Chase hummed softly. The death in Chicago, three weeks earlier, of Stephen Douglas had saddened the capital. All flags had been at half-mast. Chase had not entirely approved; but even he appreciated the fact that the Little Giant had died in the service of the Union. Douglas had literally driven himself to death, speaking in the border-states, commanding fellow-Democrats to rally round his one-time rival Lincoln. “I hardly know McClellan,” said Chase. “It was my successor as governor of Ohio who made him a major-general, despite his youth …”

“Thirty-five is old for a general, as Julius Caesar would have been delighted to explain to us. Certainly, at forty-two, I am very old …”

“And General Scott at
seventy-five?
”

“Oh, he is simply a memorial to other times. Anyway, McClellan is an excellent officer. He has managed to separate western Virginia from the rest of the Confederacy.”

“With a good deal of assistance from the inhabitants. You know that they wish to organize themselves as a separate state. I have advised their
leaders to do the sensible thing and attach themselves to Ohio. But they are stubborn.” Chase rose. “Shall we walk?”

“By all means, Mr. Chase. My aides are already at the Mansion. So I am unencumbered.”

As they crossed the long anteroom where six clerks sat at desks, each communicating with a particular department of the government, McDowell unexpectedly asked, “What is Mr. Seward’s military policy?”

“I pray,” said Chase, “that it is like mine. None at all. We are in your hands, sir.”

But Mr. Seward had all sorts of cloudy military plans; and today they were more than ever cloudy since each involved a war with a foreign power. But now, as he sat at his desk, unread dispatches piled high, he was uncomfortably aware that he might very well have a war with England on his hands, a war which was by no means part of his master plan. The latest dispatch from Charles Francis Adams at London was ominous. Mr. Adams had been Seward’s own choice for minister to Great Britain. Although Lincoln had been curiously unenthusiastic about Adams, he had indulged Seward “as you ask me for so little.” Apparently, Her Majesty’s Government was under heavy pressure from a combination of textile manufacturers and old-fashioned imperialists to recognize the Confederate states. The London
Times
was already commenting, more in joy than in sorrow, on how short-lived the union of the American states had been, remarking that there were still men alive who had actually witnessed the birth of what was now so palpably dying.

Frederick came in to say that Mr. John Bigelow was waiting upon the Secretary. Seward stumped out his cigar. “You take over, son!” he said; and left the office.

John Bigelow was a bright, youthful-looking man in his middle forties. He was a part-owner, with William Cullen Bryant, of the New York
Evening Post
, whose managing editorship he had just resigned in order to become the American consul-general at Paris. Seward and Bigelow were old friends and political allies. As they walked down the dusty gravel path to the President’s house, Bigelow admitted to some nervousness. “I’ve never met Mr. Lincoln before,” he said.

“Well, he don’t bite.” Seward was airy. “He also has no interest at all in foreign affairs. So you’re not going to be exactly over-instructed. How is Mr. Bryant?”

“Lately, he seems somewhat aged.”

“I’d say that he has seemed somewhat aged for the better part of this century. I should tell you that the President likes his poetry more than his politics. So skip the editorials, and quote ‘Thanatopsis.’ ”

“I don’t know it!” Bigelow moaned in mock despair.

“Well, Mr. Lincoln’s bound to. He can quote poetry by the yard.”

But there was no time for either poetry or France in the President’s office. Lincoln sat on the edge of his desk, studying a sheaf of heavily marked maps, as Hay and Nicolay came and went on mysterious errands that usually involved taking a document from or inserting a document into one or another of the pigeonholes of Lincoln’s desk. “You sit right there, Mr. Bigelow,” said Lincoln, absently indicating a chair. Thus far, the President had yet to look at his visitor.

Seward tried to attract the President’s interest. “Mr. Bigelow just resigned from the
Evening Post …
”

“A fine paper as fine papers go.” At last, Lincoln looked up; and smiled the full, white-toothed smile which meant, Seward now knew, that the President had not the slightest interest in the smile’s recipient. “Mr. Bigelow, I am sure that Mr. Seward has told you, as he tells everyone, that I know nothing of foreign affairs.”

“Oh, no, sir …” began Bigelow, nervously.

“Well, if he hasn’t told you, you’re the first fellow I’ve appointed to a foreign post that he hasn’t. Anyway, I
don’t
know much about these matters; and so I leave your mission to you—and to Mr. Seward. I
will
say that the Emperor Napoleon should never be allowed to forget that we don’t look favorably on any French military excursions in Mexico. But as long as he demonstrates no sympathy with our rebels, we are not inclined to do much of anything for the present. Emphasize for the present. Quote Mr. Monroe and Mr. Adams. Keep him neutral. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Hay entered to announce, “The Cabinet is waiting, sir.”

Lincoln gave Bigelow a firm handclasp. “Good luck to you, sir.” Before Bigelow knew what had happened, Lincoln and Seward had entered the Cabinet Room. As Bigelow stepped into the waiting room, he saw General McDowell standing at the outer door to the President’s Office, talking to a military aide. When the general saw his old friend Bigelow, he said, “There’s still a place for you on my staff.”

“Only if your command extends as far as Paris.” Once each had congratulated the other on his appointment, McDowell entered the President’s Office, followed by his aide.

Everyone was seated, except General Scott, who was enthroned near the President. The Secretary of War, Mr. Cameron, was answering a question that the President had just asked. “We have, altogether, in the military, in various stages of training, three hundred and ten thousand
men, which makes our military establishment about the largest in the world.”

“As well as the least trained,” grumbled General Scott. “They are mostly volunteers, Mr. President, with no discipline and no training, and too few qualified officers to make them into a proper army at this time.”

“Is that your view, General McDowell?” Lincoln turned to McDowell.

“Of course, General Scott is right,” said McDowell. Chase was glad that his protégé was so straightforward. “The actual number of trained men available is barely a third of the number that Mr. Cameron mentioned. And of that one hundred thousand, only fifty thousand are available at this city, and as this city must be guarded, not more than thirty to thirty-five thousand of those men can be used for an invasion of Virginia.”

Lincoln turned to McDowell. “Is that enough, do you think?”

Seward thought that the President seemed ill-at-ease, placed, as it were, between Scott and McDowell. On the other hand, Chase thought that Lincoln was entirely at ease with McDowell, who was, plainly, the man of the hour. “Yes, sir. In the next two weeks, I can put thirty to thirty-five thousand men in the field. This will be, by the way, sir, the largest military force ever assembled on this continent.”

“How many men will the rebels be able to field?” Lincoln was staring at the large map of Virginia on the wall opposite.

“We’re not certain, sir. But fewer than ours.” McDowell was now at the map. General Scott’s eyes had shut. “General Beauregard is here at Manassas. He is known to be drilling some twenty-five thousand. While over here, along this line from Winchester to Harper’s Ferry, General Johnston is guarding the Shenandoah Valley, with ten thousand men.”

“So their army is just about the same size as ours.” Lincoln frowned.

McDowell nodded. “But their army is in two parts that will not have time to come together
if
we are fast enough. After all, Manassas is only thirty miles from here.”

“General Scott.” Lincoln turned to the old man, who opened his eyes.

“You know my views, Mr. President. I would make no move until the autumn. The men are not ready, sir.”

“Some of them are too ready … to go home.” Lincoln sighed. “A lot of the three-month enlistments are coming to an end. If we don’t use the men we’ve got by the end of July, there won’t be an army, and we’ll have to start all over again.”

“Sir, those men are too green to fight.”

“Well, the rebels are just as green. So we are all green alike.”

“They are on their home ground, sir,” said Scott. “I have already submitted my own plan, which requires the splitting of the Confederacy
in half by seizing the Mississippi River from Memphis to New Orleans. Each half will then wither on its own, as we squeeze them, like the great anaconda snake.”