Lincoln (66 page)

On the day that Madam was to leave, she summoned Hay, through Stoddard, who looked more haggard than usual. “What’s it about?” Hay asked; but if Stoddard knew, he was not about to spoil Hay’s suspense; he was not telling.

Madam was telling. Most telling, thought Hay, as he stood respectfully in the upstairs Oval Room while Madam explained to him her plan. “You know the difficulties that we have had in maintaining the Mansion as it ought to be.” Hay acknowledged that rumors had come his way to that effect. But Madam was not listening. Whenever the subject was money, she tended to speak rapidly, as if she herself had become like one of her mediums and the words of some long-dead demon of avarice were now tripping off her tongue. “Today one of the stewards—James Trimble—has told Mr. Watt that he will leave us, as of the first of this month. I see no reason why his name cannot be left on the Mansion payroll, and his salary continue to be collected.”

Hay realized that it was not a dead demon but a living one named Watt who now spoke with Madam’s tongue. “But how can money be collected in the name of someone who is no longer here?” Hay blinked his eyes; innocently, he hoped.

“It has been done since Washington’s time.” Hay was always amazed at Madam’s ignorance of American history in general and of that of the Mansion in particular, whose first occupant had been not Washington but John Adams. “It was certainly done during Mr. Buchanan’s Administration, and Mr. Pierce’s, too …”

And any other president who had had the bad luck to employ John Watt, thought Hay. “I must look into this, of course, Mrs. Lincoln.”

“But I’m leaving today, and so is Mr. Watt. The fact that the steward Trimble is no longer here must
not
be sent on to the Treasury. Otherwise”—she was now sweet reason itself—“they will stop the salary from coming to the Mansion.”

“Who, in theory, do you see collecting the money in Trimble’s name?”

“I shall collect it, of course. The Mansion is
my
responsibility, after all. The money is for the nation, Mr. Hay, not me.”

“I wonder how that will look to Congress.”

“Why should it look like anything to Congress, Mr. Hay?” Madam was now beginning her transformation to Hellcat. The breath came fast. The
cheeks had turned a dull brick-red. The eyes were wide open and glassy. She moved abruptly up and down the room like a bird trying to escape—from herself? “After all, Mr. Hay, this is not exactly unusual.”

“Well, I don’t know about past administrations, of course …”

“I mean, sir,
this
Administration. You yourself are here under the falsest of pretenses. Since Congress does not give the President the money to pay for two secretaries, he has, illegally I daresay
you
would call it, given you a clerkship at the Interior Department to pay you for your work here, which Congress has not authorized. I fail to see the slightest difference between my using Mr. Trimble’s salary to help pay for the Mansion and Mr. Lincoln using the Interior Department’s money for you to work here.”

Hay was stunned by so much specious logic. “There is a difference,” he began.

“None!” The Hellcat finished. “There is none, sir. It is the same. The wording for appropriations remains always the same even though the original uses for the money are altered.” Hay recognized the familiar echo of perfect government corruption in that by-rote-repeated sentence. “You would not allow us to touch the stationery fund, which the First Lady customarily spends as she sees fit, as did my predecessor, Miss Lane. You leave me no choice but to use the steward’s salary, in this same way that the President uses the Interior Department salary …”

At that moment every bell in the Mansion began to ring. “My God!” exclaimed the Hellcat, covering her ears. “What is it?”

The question was the same in every part of the White House. Even the President, standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door to his office, said, “What is it?” to Edward, who did not know, nor did Nicolay. But Hay suspected. He hurried up the steep stairs to the attic where all of the Mansion’s bells were controlled and there, as he had suspected, he found Tad manipulating the network of cords and wires. Somehow, the child had managed to set every bell off at once. Hay gave the delighted Tad as serious a shaking as he dared; and called for help. “It’s really very easy,” said Tad, as one of the White House maintenance men started to work on the confusion of wires. “But you have to know how, of course, it all works, which I do and Johnny here don’t.”

The carriage that drove to the depot First Lady, First Brat, Elizabeth Keckley and John Watt was not at all mourned by the secretaries, who watched the carriage turn right into Pennsylvania Avenue.

“It was a stroke of genius, getting her out of here for the election.” Nicolay held close to his stomach a sheaf of hostile editorials.

“Or for any other time. Guess what she’s asked for?” Nicolay guessed
wrong. Hay told him. Nicolay whistled. “Watt’s behind this,” said Hay, summing up.

“We really must get rid of him before …”

“He gets rid of us,” said Hay.

“Before he embarrasses the Tycoon.” Nicolay placed the unfavorable editorials next to the stack of favorable cuttings, which was very small by comparison. “The problem is that Mr. Watt lied to save the Hellcat; and she is loyal. I’m told he’s been able to buy himself a greenhouse in New York City.”

“Perhaps he’ll retire of his own accord.” But even as Hay said this, he doubted it. “We must get him an army commission.”

“Over Stanton’s corpse, I fear.”

The newly repaired bell rang in their office; Hay went into the President’s office. The Ancient was gloomily reading court-martial documents. They came to him at the rate now of thirty thousand a year, and there were days when he and the two secretaries did no other work but study whether or not Private Ezra Smith had really been asleep on duty, and so must be shot dead. Lincoln was generally inclined to mercy, particularly with what he called “the leg-cases,” men who had run away when guns were fired at them. “It is a sensible reaction,” Lincoln had once observed. “And very much my own. I have a good deal of moral courage, I think, but faced with a battery of guns up ahead, I might just find me a nice tree to rest behind.” Stanton was for shooting everyone. Lincoln was for sparing anyone where there might be an extenuating circumstance. “After all, if you take a coward and put him in front of a firing squad, you’ll scare him to death anyway.” Although the President made his jokes—like a tic they sometimes were, thought Hay—he grew grayer and bleaker on those days, as now, when he was obliged to play God and determine who was to live and who was to die. From the beginning, the military had insisted that if cowards were not dealt with harshly and publicly, there might be no army left at all. So at the end of this particular day, there might be a hundred men who would die because the Commander-in-Chief had chosen not to pardon them.

“Here, John.” Lincoln gave Hay a stack of orders. “These are the ones that I’ve pardoned. The rest …” He sighed; and stretched until the vertebrae cracked. Hay wanted to bring up the subject of Watt, but when he saw how wan the Ancient was he let the matter go. He and Nicolay would have to handle this one together. “Sit down, John, and tell me about Springfield and Cincinnati.”

Hay had just returned from two weeks in both cities, as well as in his
hometown of Warsaw, Illinois. “Well, sir, there is not a good word said of McClellan anywhere, even by the Democrats.”

“And of me? Is there a single good word said—or, maybe, two?”

“There is all the usual talk, sir. There are still people who think that Mr. Seward and General McClellan are running the government and that if you would only get rid of them, we’d win the war.”

Lincoln nodded, vaguely. Hay wished that he could tell him something that he did not know; but this was rare. Lincoln had a habit of asking strangers seemingly idle questions which, like a trial lawyer’s cross-examination, were not idle at all but very much a part of his ongoing education in a thousand matters. He called his meetings with strangers “public-opinion baths.” Lately, he had been nearly drowned in them. Everyone gave him advice. “How will the voting go back home?”

“It won’t be easy, sir. Our best Republicans are all in the army, while the smartest Democrats are all working to win the state.”

Lincoln nodded. “And I am criticized for putting too many Democrats in high places. I should have doubled the number; and doubled the blame. I suspect we’ll lose Illinois,” he added in a matter-of-fact way. “Did you see Billy Herndon?”

“Yes, sir.” Hay smiled. “During the summer he married the fair Miss Anna Miles. He told me that she is a Democrat and pro-slavery but that he has, by masterful argument, changed her mind entirely.”

“Poor Billy. But then,” Lincoln added drolly, “poor Miss Anna. She’s got her a handful, with Billy and all those children.”

“They refuse to call her Mother.”

“Well, she’s about the same age as the older ones. Is he a Good Templar now?”

“Yes, sir. He has foresworn the demon rum; and preaches against it.”

“That is to the good. I’ve often thought that if he had not so … handicapped himself in life, he might have been the American Voltaire.”

“Do we really need one of those, sir?” Hay feigned a bumpkin’s innocence.

“Now, John, you must never ask a politician such a question just before an election.”

On Election Day, there was rain. Lincoln received the returns in Stanton’s office, while Hay sat nearby at a clerk’s desk, sorting the telegrams and arranging them according to state. Lincoln lay on the sofa; eyes shut. Stanton, in his shirt-sleeves, wheezed and moaned and addressed God, threateningly. Since the death of his baby son, James, he and God were in constant communication. Washburne sat in a rocker, keeping track of the vote. At regular intervals, military aides would come from the Telegraph
Room next door. If the message was significant, Stanton would read it aloud and then Hay would file it with the others.

The loss of New York State came as no surprise to Lincoln; but it was a matter of bitterness to Stanton, who had persuaded a friend, the politician-general Wadsworth, to run for governor. Now Wadsworth was defeated, and the Democrat Horatio Seymour was elected. “It is tragic!” Stanton cried.

“And, like all classic tragedy, to have been expected,” said Lincoln on his sofa. “There are one hundred thousand New York men in the army, most of them Republicans, away from home; and unable to vote.”

“Wasted!” exclaimed Washburne; he was surprised at the extent of the Republican defeat in New York.

“Well, not entirely wasted,” said Lincoln, with the beginning of a smile. “Mr. Stanton here has placed those very same loyal Republican New Yorkers all around the border-states, where they will make sure that we get proper majorities.”

Stanton struck his desk a great blow. “We will, too! In Delaware alone, I’ve got three thousand men supervising the polling places.”

“And Tennessee?” Lincoln—as Jupiter—enjoyed teasing Mars.

“Oh, General Grant will follow your orders to the last comma. You told him ‘to follow forms of law
as far as convenient
.’ ”

“Did I say that?” Lincoln pretended surprise.

“I hope you put it even more strongly,” said Washburne, who had now noted Tennessee’s clean sweep for the Republican Party. “There is nothing like the presence of bayonets to get the pro-slave element to vote right.”

“Well, I did send General Grant a message, saying that we should elect only men of good character, and loyalty to the Union, like our military governor Andy Johnson.”

“Between Johnson and Grant, this should be a highly bibulous election for Tennessee.” Washburne could not resist the comment.

“Well,” said Lincoln, “we must give old Andy credit for going against his own state’s wishes and staying put in the Union when all the others skedaddled off to the South, like Breckinridge. I don’t know why Andy is so loyal to us but he is, and I’m grateful.”

Between messages, they discussed McClellan. Washburne was curious about the nature of the political advice that McClellan had given Lincoln at Harrison’s Landing. But Lincoln only smiled. “I’ve locked all that away,” he said.

“But what,” asked Washburne, “did you think of this unsuccessful general, giving
you
advice?”

“Nothing,” said Lincoln. But then his face lit up. Hay saw a story coming. “I will say that it made me think of the man whose horse kicked up and stuck his foot through the stirrup, causing the man to say to the horse, ‘Well, if you are going to get on, I’m going to get off.’ ”

As the night wore on and the news from around the country got worse and worse, Lincoln discussed his favorite Shakespeare play,
Macbeth
. “Even though I have never seen it in a version I liked, not that I’ve seen all that many plays, of any sort.”

Lincoln was quoting from the fifth act when the loss of Pennsylvania was announced. Lincoln then spoke of the West; as if by hopeful association. “If I am remembered for anything, and if we lose this war, I shall be, I pray, totally forgotten.”

“We … win …!” Stanton was now in the throes of a serious asthma attack; but since those present were so used to them, no one showed the slightest concern.

“I
think
we’ll win, too, Mars,” said Lincoln. “Only it’s not done yet. But if, say, we lose, I will take pride—posthumous, I’m sure—in just two things. The railroad across the continent …”

“Jay Cooke and Company are ready to start selling shares,” said Washburne, who was more than ready himself to subscribe, “for what they call the Northern Pacific Railway, which doesn’t exist yet, of course.”

“What matters is that there will be, one way or another, a railroad that joins the whole Union into one … union. Without such a railroad we have no nation, in the modern sense …” The President sat up in the sofa. “What was that again about Jay Cooke, Brother Washburne?”

“There’s a rumor going around that he wants to get into the railroad business, in competition with Union Pacific.”

“Well, the more the merrier. If he can sell railroad shares the way he sells government bonds, we will have our railroad pretty fast.”