Lincoln (52 page)

Chase glanced at Lincoln out of the corner of his good eye. Had Lincoln heard? Yes, the President had heard and understood the reference; and was not pleased.

Chase cleared his throat. The room grew silent; the whispering stopped. Chase spoke: “General McClellan, we are happy to see that you are now able to resume your duties. Since you do not like
our
plan of action, I suggest that you tell us
your
plan.”

There was a moment of silence, during which General McDowell caressed his paunch as though it were a skittish horse in need of soothing, and the President drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table.

Chase found McClellan’s attitude mysterious. During the general’s illness, Chase had communicated with him on a number of occasions. Chase had also made it as clear as he dared that one man ought not to be in command of all the armies as well as of the Army of Virginia. Personally, Chase would prefer McClellan as general-in-chief and McDowell, perhaps, with the fighting army. But McClellan was not to be advised, while his rudeness to the President was unforgivable, no matter how sorely tempted he might be by a first magistrate who was both indolent and fussy. In Chase’s view, Lincoln was, often, an extremely irritating and vacillating man and if he, as a fellow-politician, found the President maddening, what on earth would a military man think of such a commander?

Plainly, not much, as McClellan now proceeded to demonstrate. “Mr. Chase, I have my reasons for not wanting to discuss my plans with this group.” McClellan’s fierce eye was now on McDowell, who continued to caress his belly.

Why, Chase wondered, would McClellan not tell the President what he had already told him about the Urbana plan? In due course, President and Cabinet must know. As for Lincoln’s inability to keep a secret, McClellan was himself not precisely the sphinx. Chase now affected the new highly reasonable voice that he had only lately learned from the bankers. It was a voice both confiding and noncommittal. It was also a voice that in no way reflected Chase’s fiery evangelical spirit. But the
Lord’s work must be done, and if it meant sounding like Jay Cooke selling watered stock, so be it. “General, whatever your grounds, we have devised a plan which you reject without giving us an alternative. Surely …”

General McClellan sat up very straight. He turned to Lincoln. “If Your Excellency, as my Commander-in-Chief,
orders
me to divulge my strategy, I shall do so.”

“No, no. I won’t do that, of course.”

“Thank you, sir.” McClellan was swift. “I should like to repeat, however, in reference to our recent conversation about the necessity of liberating East Tennessee, that I have ordered General Buell to prepare for an advance.”

Lincoln nodded. “Well, that is something, I must say.” Then Lincoln was on his feet; and the highly, to Chase’s mind, unsatisfactory meeting was at an end.

As Chase walked down the dim second-floor corridor with McDowell at his side, he prayed for guidance. At church the previous day, he had not taken communion as he had found himself too subject to temptation to sin. He wished now that he had had the consolation of the Eucharist.

“Very awkward,” said McDowell, as they descended the empty staircase. The gaslights in the main entrance hall were dimmed; and Old Edward was sound asleep in his chair at the door.

“I wish,” said Chase, “that Mr. Stanton had been there.”

“Do they get on—Mr. Stanton and our general-in-chief?”

Chase nodded. “Stanton tells me that he is devoted to McClellan.”

“Devoted? Well, that is the sort of emotion that commanders like to excite in the bosoms of others, particularly their superiors.”

“I fear that the President’s devotion to McClellan is being sorely tried.”

“Mr. Chase.” McDowell paused at the foot of the stairs. The only sound in the hall was that of Old Edward, snoring in his chair. McDowell murmured in Chase’s ear. “I think—between us—that McClellan is a fool.”

Chase was startled to hear the other state so clearly his own most private fear. “I pray you are wrong.”

“Oh, I do a lot of praying, too, Mr. Chase. And I say this only to you in confidence. After all, for me to say it to anyone else would sound as if I were jealous of a fellow-officer when I am, justifiably, anxious for the country.”

Chase nodded. “I, too, feel the same way.” But Chase left the matter at that. He was not about to confide to General McDowell his own total lack of faith in the President, whom fate had selected to shatter forever the Union and delay, perhaps for a generation, the abolition of slavery.

O
LD EDWARD
did not stir from his chair as David entered the White House. “Go upstairs. Second room to the left,” said the doorkeeper.

“Yes, Mr. McManus.” David crossed the entrance hall as slowly as he dared. He had never seen so much activity in the Mansion. Men in shirt-sleeves were arranging floral wreaths over the doors. Trestle tables were being set up in the state dining room. Silver and plate were being uncrated by an army of waiters. As David climbed the stairs, a dozen naval officers descended.

The second-floor corridor was crowded, and David could see John Hay at the far end, looking into the waiting room. The other secretary was sick in bed. At Thompson’s, the health of the Mansion’s residents was much discussed. Currently, the two children were ill; and David had been entrusted with their medicine.

Keckley received him in the room where the oldest boy, Willie, lay. Mrs. Lincoln sat beside the bed. She did not look up as David entered, but continued to talk in a low voice to the child, who looked pale but lively enough.

“Thank you.” Keckley took the package from David.

“Anything else I can fetch you?” asked David, admiring the loops of material that hung most royally from the posters of the bed, rather the way they had hung in the play
Cleopatra
, one of his favorites.

“No. That’s all.” Keckley reached into her apron pocket and gave him a coin. As David made his way down the stairs, he passed the head groundsman, John Watt, going up them.

“Good morning, Mr. Watt.”

“Good morning, David.” Watt was an amiable man, well-disposed to the Confederacy. He was also said to be one of the richest men in Washington because of his shrewd management of the White House grounds, which he regarded as his own private plantation. All Washington knew of Watt’s arrangements to sell produce to a half-dozen restaurants and hotels, including Willard’s and Wormley’s. Over the years, attempts had been made to get rid of him; all had failed. Watt was a hero to David.

To Mary, Watt was a comfort. She received him in the upstairs oval sitting room. “How are the boys, ma’am?” Mary knew that Watt genuinely liked Willie and Tad; played with them by the hour; taught them to ride and shoot.

“It’s the fever.” Mary frowned. “I don’t wonder. This house is so cold. I think they are better, sir. Oh, I wish I could call off this reception!” Mary did indeed regret the inexorable nature of her first reception in the entirely refurnished and repaired Executive Mansion. Tonight was intended to be her justification to the world for the money that she had spent. Certainly, never in the history of the Mansion had the state rooms been so gloriously decorated. She had seen to that. She had also made an innovation which had, by and large, been much praised: instead of opening the rooms to anyone who chose to come look at the President, she had invited five hundred of the most brilliant personages in the land. She had also eschewed the services of Washington’s ubiquitous Gautier and sent for New York’s finest chef and caterer, M. Maillard. But now both boys were ill; and the Chevalier Wikoff was locked up in the basement of the Old Capitol prison; and she needed money.

As always, Watt was understanding. “In President Buchanan’s time, we often used the stationery fund for … other uses.”

“I know.” Mary was hard. “I have asked Mr. Hay for some of it. He has said, no.” Hardly a day passed now without some sort of scene between Mary and one or the other of the President’s secretaries. Stoddard tried to be helpful but he was no match for Nicolay and Hay.

“It’s always Mr. Hay, isn’t it, ma’am?” Watt looked grim, and chewed the ends of his moustache. “He’s in league with Major French—against us.”

Mary did not entirely appreciate the “us.” But it was certainly true that her only ally in the Mansion was Watt. Periodically, efforts were made to get rid of him as well as of his wife, a stewardess on the Mansion’s payroll. So far, Mary had been able to rout their common enemies. Now Watt wanted to counterattack. “After all, why should you allow a mere boy to tell you what you may or may not do with White House funds? Funds which are almost never used for what they’re supposed to be used for because of the way the times change while the wording of the old appropriations don’t.”

“I’ve always thought Mr. Hay was stealing the funds for the horses’ feed.” Although, it was Watt who had put the idea in Mary’s mind, she had since made it her own. “I know that he was supposed to pay the supplier directly, but never did. I shall bring charges!”

“I wouldn’t do that, ma’am.” Watt was cautious. “Not yet, anyway; we must give him a bit more rope.” Watt stood up. “One way to get some money quick and easy is to sack one of the stewards and then you yourself can collect his salary which will keep on coming every month.”

Mary was astonished at the simplicity of this plan. “
I
can do that?”

“Miss Harriett Lane did it all the time when she was mistress here.”

Mary saw the vista beginning to brighten. “I shall see to that, Mr. Watt. Thank you, sir.” Mary drew a letter from her reticule. “You remember Mr. Waterman, whom we met in New York City last fall?”

Watt nodded. “A very rich man, they say. And most loyal to you and the President.”

“See that this gets to him.” Mary gave Watt the letter. “I don’t want it sent from the White House.”

“I’ll get it to him by courier, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Mr. Watt.” Mary smiled. It was good to have one friend at least. But Watt had something on his mind. “I’ve been to Old Capitol prison,” he said.

“How is he?”

“They’ve practically got him in chains. He’s in a sort of closet …”

“This is all Mr. Seward’s doing! God, that man is vile!”

“Yes, ma’am, he is. Five days from now, Mr. Wikoff will go back before the House Judiciary Committee. They will ask him how he got a copy of the President’s message.”

Mary began, faintly, to see a corona of flame around Watt’s head. Could this be The Headache? “He will not answer them, will he?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Lincoln. But I think that you should speak to the President.”

The flames flared like the sun during an eclipse. “I cannot, sir.”

But Seward could speak to Lincoln; and did. Lincoln listened carefully, feet on the writing desk, a handkerchief in his left hand which he used to rub ink from the fingers of his right hand. He had spent the morning signing military commissions, an endless task made even more disagreeable by a singularly oily paper that resisted ink.

Seward paced the office, as if it were his own. “Anyway, Dan managed to get the Committee so enraged that they’re now threatening to bring charges against
him
, for contempt of Congress, and throw him into the Old Capitol, too.”

“It would appear that General Sickles was not the best of all possible defense attorneys.” Lincoln stared, thoughtfully, at Seward. “Why did you pick him?”

“Mr. Wikoff chose him.” Seward was prompt. “But I trust Dan. He’s loyal. He’s clever. He’s popular in Congress …”

“So popular that they are about to lock him up? And just think what that will do to us! A brigadier-general, a former congressman, arrested!” Lincoln threw down his handkerchief. “When does Wikoff testify?”

“February tenth.”

“What will he say?”

“What he has already said, that he is sworn to secrecy.”

Lincoln sighed. “That will not do, Mr. Seward. That will not do at all.”

“Then should he name someone?”

Lincoln nodded. “I think he will have to, unless we can arrange something with the Committee, to get them to drop the matter.”

Seward felt the slight voluptuous tingle that always preceded, nowadays, any exercise of inherent powers. “I believe you could, simply, order them to drop the investigation; and they would have to comply.”

“I suppose I could. But then we’d never hear the end of it. No, we must find a way to approach the chairman of the Committee.”

Seward and Lincoln discussed in considerable and unflattering detail the character of one John Hickman, a Pennsylvania politician who had left the Democratic Party to become not only a fierce abolitionist Republican but the sworn enemy of all moderates, beginning with the President. It was agreed that Seward would try to involve Thaddeus Stevens in the affair. Meanwhile, every effort must be made to get from Wikoff the truth. “Because,” Lincoln said, “he plainly stole the message. Now since that is a crime, he pretends that he was given it, which is not a crime. But by his silence, he indicates that the giver of the message was Mrs. Lincoln, which makes her the criminal. But she did not give it to him. I am certain of that. So either he will have to confess to theft—and I to carelessness—or he must tell us who it was that really gave him the message.”

Seward said, “I think I have an idea.”

“Good. But don’t tell it to me. I’m not made for secrets.”

Seward smiled. Actually, he had never known a man so secretive as Lincoln when it came to keeping to himself the direction that he planned to take in some great enterprise. On the other hand, Lincoln tended to be quite free with the secrets of others. Seward paused at the door. “How are the boys?”

“The fever lingers. Willie is particularly weak. I hate the winter here,” he added, as if that somehow explained the darkness of the times.

Seward said good-bye, and left through the door into the Cabinet Room, avoiding the usual mass of supplicants. He was reasonably certain that Mrs. Lincoln was the guilty party. He was also certain that there was an interesting way out of the imbroglio, one in which a number of birds might crash to earth as the result of a single flung stone.