Lincoln (47 page)

“No, sir. I called. But they would not let me in to see him.”

“I had the same experience.”

“I am told that it is typhoid. He’ll be in bed at least a month.”

“I heard the same.” Lincoln frowned. “Others have seen him.”

“Who?”

But Lincoln merely shook his head; and turned to the next visitor in line, the minister from the Hansen Republic of Bremen, Baron Schleiden, a drinking crony, Chase knew, of Seward’s. The redoing of the East Room was almost complete. Kate pointed out to her father what she took to be the most expensive highlights, beginning with the huge velvet rug. “Sea green, with roses,” she said.

“Yes, I see the green. I will take the roses on trust.”

“I rather think that’s how she got the rug,” said Kate, beaming and nodding as the diplomatic corps made the rounds of the room, wishing everyone a Happy New Year. “They say it cost two thousand five hundred dollars.”

“Does she mean to compete with the youthful mistress of Sixth and E?”

“Father! I am economical. Mrs. Lincoln is not.”

“I know. Mr. Stevens tells me she has gone so far over Congress’s budget that the President will have to pay out of his own pocket. He won’t like that. He is a frugal man.”

“Like you.”

“Oh, I am doomed to debt.”

“Shall I marry Governor Sprague, and finance the debt?”

“No, let us be poor together.”

“In debtors’ prison,” said Kate, giving her hand to Lord Lyons, who kissed it while Chase beamed and said, “
Pax est perpetuo!
”

“Oh, let’s hope so, Mr. Chase. Let’s hope so. We’ve done good work, all of us.”

“You and Mr. Seward, particularly,” said Chase.

“Mr. Seward has heard his name invoked.” The small roguish figure was suddenly at Chase’s side, shaking Kate’s hand with his right and Chase’s with his left, while looking at Lord Lyons, who said, “I was discussing the good work we did, you and I, to keep the hotheads from going to war.”

“Simply newspaper talk,” said Seward airily. “Also it helped my having
got to know your government in the summer of ’fifty-nine when I took my grand tour of Europe, and everyone greeted me with such warmth. You see,” he said to Kate, “they thought
I
was going to be the next President.”

“Which is exactly what you thought, wasn’t it?” said Kate.

“Well, let’s say if I
didn
’t think it, I never let on. Anyway, I met the lot, from Queen Victoria, who shows slightly more than an inch of upper gum when she laughs—”

“Sir, this is
casus belli
.” Lyons was stern.

“Sir, in western New York a show of gum is considered the outward and visible sign of God’s especial favor.”

“War is averted. We shall not set the world aflame just yet.” Lyons enjoyed quoting Seward to Seward. “But I must remind you, we are all in mourning for Prince Albert.”

Kate turned to Lyons. “The press tells us that she is mad with grief.”

“Your press will tell you anything, Miss Chase.” Lyons was serene, as always. “The Queen is not mad. But she is in deepest mourning. Curious, isn’t it, Mr. Seward, that the Prince should have died while consulting with the ministry on the
Trent
Affair.”

“I suspect we are all in his debt,” said Seward, graciously. “But I have never been able to fathom just how powerful your powerless sovereigns are.”

“We have the same difficulty,” said Lyons, “trying to fathom exactly how powerful the Secretary of State is in a presidential system.”

“
Touché!
” Kate exclaimed. Then she asked Lyons for news of the journalist Russell. During this, Seward slipped away, having caught a glimpse of the one person whom he most wanted to see.

The short, thickset Edwin M. Stanton stood alone, royally framed by the East Room’s splendid new damask curtains. Stanton’s black frock coat, with fashionable black velvet lapels, was open to reveal a not-so-fashionable black waistcoat with, again, black velvet lapels. Stanton always reminded Seward of the Auburn, New York, bank manager who had murdered his mother. Stanton was gazing about the room through small pebble glasses, his habitual sneer curiously accentuated by the bristly gray whiskers that appeared to be attached to his plump chin as arbitrarily as an Egyptian Pharaoh’s ornamental beard. It was rumored that Stanton kept the ashes of his first wife—or was it his daughter?—on the mantelpiece in his parlor; and that the second wife was obliged to polish, each day, this somber reliquary.

Warily, the two men greeted each other. Seward knew that, earlier in the week, Stanton had intended to resign as special legal counsel to the
Secretary of War; and go to New York, where a rich law partner awaited him. But when the word began to spread that Cameron would soon be gone, and that Stanton might succeed him, Stanton had delayed his removal to New York. Presently, he was in a state of irritable limbo. The President had not yet offered him the post that was still unrelinquished by Cameron. Although Seward knew that Chase was doing everything in his power to get the War Department for Stanton, Seward took some pleasure in the fact that Chase did not know that Stanton was also Seward’s own choice. Like Lincoln, Seward wanted pro-Union Democrats in high places. Unlike Chase, he did not want abolitionists anywhere. On this burning issue, Seward tended to admire Stanton’s wonderfully righteous hypocrisy. With Chase and the radical Republicans, Stanton was an abolitionist, constantly railing at the moderate “original gorilla,” Stanton’s much-quoted description of Lincoln, in the White House. With Lincoln and Seward, Stanton simply stood for the Union and deplored radical zeal. Seward also knew something that hardly anyone else knew. It was Stanton who had not only written for Cameron the fatal recommendation to Congress that the freed Negroes be armed but it was Stanton who had convinced Cameron that in this way he could maintain his hold on the War Department, by giving pleasure to the Committee on the Conduct of the War. With Iagoesque skill, Stanton had led to destruction his chief. Now Iago stood, somewhat bleakly, in the East Room, uncertain of his own future.

“I must,” said Stanton, controlling heroically his asthma, “congratulate you on the
Trent
Affair. I thought your … summing-up was masterful.”

“I know so little international law.” Seward played at modesty. “And I know almost nothing about arbitration.”

“But you know everything, sir, about politics.”

“Well, I certainly know something.” One of the things that Seward knew which Stanton did not know that he knew was Stanton’s anger at the Administration for having given way to England. Seward smiled, almost warmly, at the odd but brilliant Ohio lawyer who would soon be joining a Cabinet that, such was his oddness and honesty and irritability—there was no other word—he could never stop attacking in private. “Stanton is two-faced,” a disapproving senator had said to Seward, who was rather pleased with his own classical response: “So was Janus, the god of war.” But Seward was not above torturing, ever so slightly, his highly anxious soon-to-be colleague. “I saw your old friend Joseph Holt at the White House yesterday.”

The look of pain in Stanton’s face gave Seward exquisite pleasure; thus, he began to balance out their accounts with each other. The Kentuckian
Holt had served with Stanton in Buchanan’s Cabinet. Like Stanton, Holt was a pro-Union Democrat; he was also an anti-abolitionist, unlike Stanton, whose second face forever smiled upon the radicals. “The President is more inclined to you than to Holt, of course. But there are great pressures upon him. Great pressures.” Seward frowned.

Stanton scowled. “Mr. Holt is very able, of course. And does not hate the black man as much as people say.”

Feeble, thought Seward; but prompt. “Mr. Chase, of course, is your sponsor in all of this. You are both from Ohio.”

“But I am removed to Pennsylvania.”

“Like Mr. Cameron, yes. You are also Mr. Cameron’s choice, if he should leave.”

“I did not know.”

Seward appreciated the honest and open way that Stanton lied; it was the hallmark of the truly great lawyer, and demonstrated a professional mastery not unlike his own. Otherwise, they had little in common. Stanton was mercurial and vain and compulsively duplicitous; nevertheless, he was incorruptible when it came to money—a matter of some importance in the wake of Cameron and his friends who, like so many carrion-birds, had feasted off the Treasury. Stanton was also a passionate worker; again, a perfect contrast to the indolent Cameron.

“Mr. Blair favors Senator Wade,” said Seward, accurately.

“In order to get him to leave the Joint Committee?” Stanton was quick to respond.

“Well, sometimes it is better to have your critics and rivals working for you than against you.”

“I am sure,” said Stanton, upper lip curling, “that Mr. Lincoln has been a beneficiary of this unusual system.”

“Oh, he has! He has! But there are times when he knows that when all is said and done, the most able man must be appointed.” Seward was aware that he was somewhat overdoing what his critics enjoyed referring to as Seward’s Buncombe; but he could not help himself. “How do you get on with General McClellan?”

“We are very close,” said Stanton. “In fact, he came to me just the other day for a legal opinion on the
Trent
Affair.”

Seward laughed; to disguise his anger. “And here I thought he was busy, twenty-four hours a day, getting the army ready to attack Richmond. Instead, he concerns himself with the laws of nations.”

Stanton flushed. “It was simply in the line of what he takes to be his duty as general-in-chief.”

Seward let the matter drop. “You think him capable?” he asked.

Stanton nodded. “He is certainly preferable to Halleck. General Scott’s … legacy.”

“Yes.” Seward was noncommittal. Then his friend Baron Schleiden approached, and wreathed Seward with compliments for his resolution of the
Trent
Affair. When Seward had accepted the last of a dozen verbal garlands, he turned to Stanton; and found him gone.

“Is that … or
was
that,” asked Schleiden, “the next Secretary of War?”

“Now, Baron, if I didn’t know for certain, I would gladly tell you.” Seward linked his arm through Schleiden’s. “Come by my house later, and we shall play a rubber of whist, and I will give you news that will inflame the Baltic sea, and turn to ashes your native Bremen, the Venice of the north.”

“Actually, we are more the Leghorn of the north,” said the amicable Baron, bowing low to Mrs. Lincoln, as they passed.

Mary gave a courteous nod to Baron Schleiden, whom she mistrusted because of his friendship for Seward; and she gave Seward a sweet smile because of the President’s mistaken trust in him. Then, to her horror, she saw the Chevalier Wikoff enter the room. He stood in the doorway a moment; bowed at Mary, who did not respond; then he withdrew, to her relief.

“I told him not to come.” Resplendent in his uniform as brigadier-general, Dan Sickles had seen the whole mute exchange.

“Would, sir, that he had followed your advice.” Mary carefully set a smile on her lips. As they talked to each other in low voices, her eyes were not on Sickles but on the parade of notables who moved past her, bowing and curtseying. “Why does he stay on in Washington?” she asked.

“Mr. Bennett’s orders.”

“Why does he come
here?
”

“To ingratiate himself, I suppose. He’s asked me to be his defense attorney.”

“
Defense!
” Mary’s smile vanished. She turned to Sickles. “Is there to be a trial?”

Sickles shook his head. “I wish there was. You’d both be safer.”

“We … 
both?
Sir!” Mary was torn between anger and terror.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lincoln. I only meant that since your name will be brought into all this in any case, we could control events more easily in a court of law.”

“Where, if not a law court, is he … are
we
, as you put it, sir, to be tried?”

“Before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives.”

“My God!” Mary wrung the stems of the hothouse flowers that she held in both hands.

“Because they are all my old colleagues, the Chevalier wants me to act as his counsel.”

“But, sir, what do they have to go on? Simply rumors in the vampire press …”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lincoln. I thought you knew. Yesterday the committee obtained a copy of the telegram that our friend Wikoff sent to the
Herald
. There were parts of the President’s message in it, word for word. The telegram was sent four days before the message went to Congress.”

Mary wondered what the effect might be if she were to faint; and to remain unconscious until all of this had passed; or, better yet, to die. Between the Wikoff scandal and the constant turmoil regarding the money that she was spending on the White House, death would be a convenient release. “What,” asked Mary, summoning up every reserve of coolness that she possessed, “will your defense be?”

“I don’t know.” Sickles looked at her, thoughtfully. “What do you think it should be?”

“Whatever,” said Mary, “is the truth, I suppose. Does the Chevalier say who it was that gave him the message?” Mary was pleased with her own show of coolness.

“No,” said Sickles. Then he added, ominously, “Madam.”

“Will he say that it was I?”

“He
must
not.” Sickles stared directly into her eyes.

“I agree, sir. He must not, ever, say such a thing. Can you … see to that, General?”

“I think so, Madam. We are at war.”

“Yes.” Mary was grim. “And we must not give comfort to the enemy, or show any division in our ranks.”

The President approached them, smiling. “Come on, Mother,” he said. “The Marine Band wants to serenade us. Good to see you, General.”

“Mr. President.” Sickles clicked his heels. He was, Mary decided, loyal; and if anyone could manage a committee of this particular Congress, it would be their popular former colleague.

En route to the door, Lincoln paused to whisper something into the ear of an unprepossessing man. “Who is that?” asked Mary. But Lincoln was now distracted by the French princes, who bowed to him but not too low, as befitted their royal birth, while Mary simply inclined her head, as befitted her Republican Queenhood. Absently, the President patted a princely shoulder. As they proceeded to the door, Lincoln said, “Oh, that was Mr. Stanton, who defended Dan Sickles when he shot his wife’s gentleman friend. Hard to say which of the two is best at getting away with murder.”