Lincoln (60 page)

Chase thought
himself
a saint for concurring so wholeheartedly in Lincoln’s plan to emancipate the slaves of the rebel states. Granted, he had no alternative, for the President had been uncharacteristically firm. Lincoln had assembled the Cabinet in order to tell them what he intended to do. Since Seward was plainly behind him, pulling the strings, Chase was outnumbered. More than ever, he was convinced that Seward was the mind of the Administration to the extent that such a haphazard and themeless government could be said to have a mind. Since he himself was not permitted to create grand strategy, he could at least continue to be the voice of conscience—seldom heeded, of course, by these conscienceless politicians.

As the conversation became desultory, Chase struck one of his themes. “In the matter of the currency …”

Lincoln gave a long sigh; and all the others save Stanton smiled.

The President’s inability to cope with even the idea of the national finance was a sign, if nothing else, of his incompetence, thought Chase, who did understand the precarious nature of fiat money in general and of the so-called greenbacks in particular. “I know,” said Lincoln, “that in the matter of the currency, we have, always, too much of it, which means too little of it. This is highly metaphysical, as my old law partner, Billy Herndon, would say.”

Hay had a sudden image of Herndon at Sal Austin’s; and he wondered if the old man had married the young girl that he had been courting; and
if he had, he wondered if Herndon had given up whiskey, as promised. He hoped so, for the Tycoon’s sake.

“I did not mean to advert to the metaphysical,” said Chase, with what he hoped was a polite smile. “I did not want to bring up again to the Cabinet my personal desire to have printed on our bank notes the same phrase that I devised for our coinage. I mean, of course, ‘In God we Trust.’ ”

“Surely,” said Bates, a constant antagonist in these matters, “the Constitutional separation of church and state makes such a phrase highly irregular if not illegal.”

“Well,” said Lincoln, getting to his feet, “if you are going to put a Biblical tag on the greenback, I would suggest that of Peter and John: ‘Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee.’ ” In the ensuing laughter, the President withdrew to his office and Chase realized that, once again, he had not managed to get a straight answer from the President on an issue of signal importance to every God-fearing Unionist.

Seward put his arm through Chase’s, a gesture that Chase deeply disliked but endured, as he did so much else, for his country. “The President is not the free-thinker you may suspect he is.”

“I suspect nothing.” Chase was aware of the smell of stale cigar smoke from the small figure at his side; also, a hint of port upon the breath.

“Well, you have your emancipation,” said Seward comfortably, as the two men made their way down the crowded hallway. Every step or so, a petitioner or well-wisher stopped one or the other or both. Seward’s responses were merrily elliptical. Chase’s responses were gravely vague.

“It is not
my
emancipation. There are still the border-states.
I
would have freed all the slaves everywhere.”

“Then I pity
your
poor Secretary of the Treasury, because he’d never sell another Treasury bond anywhere on earth.”

Chase gave Seward what he hoped was a cold eye; certainly, it was an eye that was nearly blind in its central vision. On the other hand, the peripheral vision saw everything with fine clarity.

Saw Kate, radiant, in the front parlor, with the young Ohian general who had just moved into the house for the summer. He sprang to his feet as Chase entered the room. He was tall, with blue eyes and a quantity of curling golden hair as well as an equally golden beard. When Kate had suggested that he had gilded at least the beard, he had cut off a lock, suitable, he said, for analysis or a locket or both. Kate had declined the trust on the ground that he must be as true as gold, if not steel, to his young wife, Lucretia, back in Hiram, Ohio. If only, Chase had thought more than once, William Sprague had half the charm and learning of James A.
Garfield or, put another way, if only General Garfield had a tenth of Sprague’s fortune, he would indeed, at the age of thirty and unmarried, be a suitable son-in-law. But nothing is ever as it should be. Garfield was married; and poor.

Kate presided over lemonade; asked her father what had happened at Cabinet; listened attentively to his report, which did not include the secret emancipation proclamation.

“I’m receiving today,” said Kate, finally, as Chase drank deeply of the lemonade. “I said I’d be home to what’s left of the town, now that Congress has gone.”

“Well, there’s the military left,” said Chase.

“Worse luck,” said Garfield. “Everything’s beginning, at last, to happen and I’m here in the city—waiting.”

“Well, it’s nice for us, if not the war,” said Kate.

“You won’t wait long,” said Chase. But he stopped speaking while the manservant dressed in a linen coat with gold braid and gold buttons—Kate’s latest innovation—put out cakes on a tea-stand. When the man was out of earshot, Chase murmured, “I think I’ve got you the Florida command. But it’s a secret.”

“That’s what I most want!” The youthful face was animated—Apollo, the ladies called General Garfield. “The war will be decided when the western troops join the eastern troops
below
Richmond.”

“But, first, we must wait for General Halleck to arrive. He’ll make the final decision. Stanton likes him, and the President
thinks
that he will like him.”

“Oh, he’s first-rate, Old Brains. A born general-in-chief, if not a born field commander. Everything that we’ve won in the West was actually won by Grant …”

“… and Pope,” said Chase.

“Your latest enthusiasm,” said Kate.

“Pope, too,” said Garfield, politely. “But I was with Grant at Shiloh, on the second day, the bloody day. I saw the way he was pounded and pounded …”

“… the way he killed and killed,” said Kate, shuddering.

“Yes,” said Garfield, “that is what we do in a war.”

Kate’s guests began to arrive; and Chase withdrew to his study, missing John Hay, who arrived just as the sun began, gloriously, to set.

Hay had seen Kate several times during the summer. They had gone three times to the theater, twice in the company of others. But the last time, the two of them had attended an operetta, followed by supper at Wormley’s. Hay found Kate endlessly attractive in her person. He found
less attractive the shrewd political mind that never ceased to plot, so reminiscent of the Tycoon if Herndon were to be believed; and certainly reminiscent of her father, who was constantly alert to his own advancement. Yet Hay liked the way that Kate would often ask him a direct question of the sort that no lady would but a politician might.

Hay now sat beside her, aware that the saffron light of the setting sun had turned each to gold. In the front parlor, the bebuttoned servant was lighting candles. “We must go riding Sunday,” said Hay; he could feel the heat of her forearm on his left hand which now clutched, modestly, his right elbow.

“Oh, Atalanta’s being shoed then, poor beast!” Kate looked at him and her ordinarily golden-hazel eyes were now like Spanish doubloons in the spectacular last light of day. “But during the week, if I haven’t gone North …” As she raised her arm to indicate that Garfield should join them, the smooth skin touched Hay’s fingers for an instant and he felt an electrical shock to his system.

Garfield, all gold to begin with, looked somewhat brazen in the light. Hay found him amiable enough; but then Hay was also somewhat jealous. Of course, Garfield was older than he—thirty, at least; and married. But Garfield, who had been a state legislator, was now a distinguished general; and the President’s second secretary felt very small in that glittering presence. Worse, Garfield possessed a most good-humored if highly generalized charm. “I know your uncle,” he said to Hay’s surprise. “I saw him last in Columbus, where we all used to live.” He turned to Kate, who smiled at him as if, thought Hay, she were in love, always a sign, he now knew, that she was not. Kate Chase loved only her father; and, perhaps, herself.

“Some of us lived there more happily than others,” she said. Kate turned to Hay. “If Atalanta’s shoed in time, we could go riding in the afternoon.”

“I’m always at your disposal,” said Hay.

“The one man who is not.” Garfield was amiable. “You keep late hours at the White House. I’ve seen your lights on at midnight—and after.”

“The confusion never stops,” said Hay, affecting a weariness that he only occasionally felt.

“How is Mrs. Lincoln?” asked Kate, with a worried frown that Hay had come to know meant that she was up to mischief.

“She’s at the Soldiers’ Home now, she and the boy.”

“Still in deep mourning, they say.” Garfield seemed genuinely sad.

“She speaks to the child.” Kate’s frown did not alter. “I know. I’ve met Mrs. Laury, the medium. Apparently, the boy is happy on the other side.”

Garfield responded in Greek. The voice was musical; and the accent precise. But then he had been a professor of Greek and Latin literature before he went into politics.

“What is that?” asked Kate, not as “finished by school” as Hay had supposed.

“It is Achilles in the underworld,” said Hay. “He is telling Odysseus he would rather be a serf among the living than king of all the dead.”

“What paragons I know!” Kate was enchanted; and, thus, enchanting. But the golden evening light had gone. The candles were now lit. Through the windows fireflies flashed in the backyard. William Sanford presented himself to Kate, who smiled, and said, “We were speaking Greek, Captain Sanford.”

“Well,” said the rich young man, “that’s Greek to me.”

“Oh, three paragons!” Kate exclaimed; then leapt to her feet. “It is General Pope!” The hero of the hour was indeed in her parlor; but not to see her. Plainly a busy and preoccupied man, he greeted the guests en masse and disappeared into Chase’s study. As the door closed, Garfield said, “There’s the key to the lock. He is our best general—in the West, at least,” he added with a politician’s care.

“Better than Grant?” asked Hay, genuinely curious. He could not make up his mind which set of generals was worse—the West Pointers who had spent their careers making money in the railroad business or the politicians on horseback, looking for renown. Although Grant was a West Pointer, he had gone into the saddlery business, where he had attractively failed.

“He’s a better all-round general than Grant. But Grant is best in the field. I know you disapprove, Miss Kate, of how he never lets up but that’s the way it’s done. The two sides lost more men at Shiloh than were ever before lost in a single day of modem warfare. That was because Grant would not retreat, even though the rebels had the advantage.”

In Chase’s study, Pope was saying the opposite. “Grant is hopeless. When not drunk, he is in a sort of stupor. At Shiloh, he was surprised by the enemy. He was unprepared. He barely survived. He is no general. But then McClellan’s worse.”

Chase nodded. “I have come to the conclusion, General—and this is just between the two of us—that McClellan has no intention of harming the South in any way. If possible, he would like them back in the Union by ’sixty-four, so that he could then get their votes as the Democratic candidate.”

Pope combed his thick black beard with thick red fingers. “I would not be surprised if you are right. Certainly, he has acted curiously. Imagine
being within six miles of Richmond, and not taking the city. I don’t think he wants to fight at all, and your reason is the best I’ve heard—cowardice to one side. But
I
mean to fight. I’ve told the troops not to worry about lines of escape and all the rest of it. We shall see only
their
backs, I promise you, I said.” Pope strode up and down the study, and Chase felt confidence at last—or at least for the first time since McDowell. He thanked Heaven yet again that the general who would defeat the South was a dedicated abolitionist; and partisan to him.

Pope wanted to know exactly where Lincoln stood on the matter of abolition. “I shall be inheriting thousands of black souls as I lead the Army of Virginia into Virginia. What am I to do with them?”

For an instant, Chase was tempted to tell him what he had sworn not to tell—about the Emancipation Proclamation. But that weak instant passed. “I would,” said Chase, voice very low, “in the wake of victories—and I expect
you
to take Richmond with or without McClellan’s aid—
I
would free the slaves on my own initiative and include them, if possible, in your army, even arm them if you choose. That is what
I
would do, of course. I concede that. It is not what Mr. Seward would do.”

“Which means the President?”

“Which means the President.” Chase nodded. The seed had now been planted. He prayed that it would take proper root and flourish. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation would then be a legislative afterthought to Pope’s bold freeing of the slaves.

“I understand you, Mr. Chase.”

“I think we understand each other, and what Heaven commands us to do. In my small way, I know what it is like to conquer an enemy city—as I did at Norfolk—and to see the black slaves all around me, beseeching me to strike their chains. But I had not the authority that day. You will. Your victories in the field will be your orders.”

“I shall not disappoint you, Mr. Chase.” Pope took Chase’s hand in both of his. They were allies, committed to Heaven’s work.

During their solemn pledge, William Sanford proposed to Kate in the front parlor. “I plan to leave the army the first of the year. We could go to France. There is a house there I’ve had my eye on since before the war. At St. Cloud, near Paris. We could have a wonderful life. I’d study music. You would be at court, if you wanted that.”

Kate’s eyes glowed in the candlelight. “You are good to ask me, Mr. Sanford. I am honored. I am touched. If there was no war, and if my father were not so deeply involved in public affairs, I cannot think of a happier life …”