Lincoln (85 page)

As the beautiful voice of Everett went on and on, Hay looked out over the battlefield. Trees had been smashed into matchwood by crossfire, while artillery shells had plowed up the muddy ground. Here and there, dead horses lay unburied; as they were not yet turned to neat bone, the smell of decomposing flesh intermingled with the odor of the crowd was mildly sickening. Now, in the noonday sun of an airless sort of day, Hay began to sweat.

When Everett sat down, Lincoln pulled out his sheet of paper; and put on his glasses. But there was a musical interval to be endured; and so he put away the paper. The Baltimore Glee Club intoned a hymn especially written for the occasion. A warm breeze started up, and the American flag began to snap like a whip cracking. Opposite the speaker’s platform, a photographer had built a small platform so that his camera would be trained straight on the President when he spoke. He was constantly fiddling with his paraphernalia; raising and lowering the cloth hood at the back, and dusting his glass plates.

Finally, there was silence. Then Lamon stood up and bellowed, “The President of the United States!”

Lincoln rose, paper in hand; glasses perched on his nose. He was, Hay noted, a ghastly color, but the hand that held the paper did not tremble, always the orator’s fear. There was a moment of warm—if slightly exhausted by Everett—applause.

Then the trumpet-voice sounded across the field of Gettysburg, and thirty thousand people fell silent. While Everett’s voice had been like some deep rich cello, Lincoln’s voice was like the sound that accompanies a sudden crack of summer lightning. “Fourscore and seven years ago,” he plunged straight into his subject, “our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

That will please the radicals, thought Hay. Then he noticed two odd things. First, the Tycoon did not consult the paper in his hand. He seemed, impossibly, to have memorized the text that had been put into final form only an hour or so earlier. Second, the Tycoon was speaking
with unusual slowness. He seemed to be firing each word across the battlefield—a rifle salute to the dead?

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation—or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated—can long endure.”

Seated just to the right of Lincoln, Seward began actually to listen. He had heard so many thousands of speeches in his life and he had himself given so many thousands that he could seldom actually listen to any speech, including his own. He, too, noted Lincoln’s unusual deliberateness. It was as if the President was now trying to justify to the nation and to history and, thought Seward, to God, what he had done.

“We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who have given their lives that that nation might live.” Seward nodded, inadvertently. Yes, that was the issue, the only issue. The preservation of this unique nation of states. Meanwhile, the photographer was trying to get the President in cameraframe.

“It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.” Lincoln was now staring out over the heads of the crowd to a hill on which a row of wooden crosses had been newly set. For an instant, the hand that held the speech had dropped to his side. Then he recalled himself, and glanced at the text. “But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or to detract.” Lincoln paused. There was a patter of applause; and then, to Seward’s amazement, a shushing sound. The audience did not want to break into the music until it was done.

Seward studied the President with new—if entirely technical—interest. How had he accomplished this bit of magic with his singularly unmellifluous voice and harsh midwestern accent?

Lincoln was now staring off again, dreamily; this time at the sky. The photographer was under his hood, ready to take the picture.

“The world will very little note nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.” The hand with the text again fell to his side. Hay knew that the Tycoon’s eyes had turned inward. He was reading now from that marble tablet in his head; and he was reading a text written in nothing less than blood. “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated, here, to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave …” Hay was aware that the trumpet-voice had choked; and the gray eyes were suddenly aswim
with uncharacteristic tears. But the Tycoon quickly recovered himself. “… the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve,” the voice was now that of a cavalry bugle calling for a charge, “that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall,” he paused a moment then said, “under God …” Seward nodded—his advice had been taken.

Nico whispered to Hay, “He just added that. It’s not in the text.”

“… have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln stood a moment, looking thoughtfully at the crowd, which stared back at him. Then he sat down. There was some applause. There was also laughter at the photographer, who was loudly cursing: he had failed to get any picture at all.

Lincoln turned to Seward and murmured, “Well, that fell on them like a wet blanket.”

In the last of the presidential cars, Lincoln stood on the rear platform. He waved to the assembled crowd with his right hand while his left hand clutched Lamon’s arm. Nicolay and Hay stood just back of the President. In the elaborately appointed car there were red-and-green plush armchairs with lace antimacassars, a long horsehair lounge and, everywhere, much inlaid wood and crystal and brass. A green Brussels carpet covered the floor, while the rows of brass spittoons shone like gold.

Politicians crowded the car, each eager to get the President’s attention. Like a man in a dream, Lincoln had gone through a lunch with Governor Curtin, followed by a reception, followed by a sermon at the Presbyterian church. Then he had boarded the six-thirty evening cars to Washington. Now, as the train pulled out of the Gettysburg depot, Lincoln and Lamon stepped into the car. Sweat was streaming down Lincoln’s pale yellow face; the eyes were out of focus; the wide mouth trembled. Lamon looked almost as ill, from fear. “Boys,” he whispered to the secretaries, “get these people out of here. Don’t let them near the President.”

Lincoln said nothing. Propped up by Lamon, he stood swaying with the movement of the train. Nicolay led the disappointed Simon Cameron from the car while Hay asked Seward if he could persuade the others to go. The President had work to do, said Hay. There was news from Stanton. Seward got the point; had seen Lincoln’s face. Exuberantly, he proposed to his fellow-politicians a banquet in the restaurant-car.

When the car was cleared, Lamon picked up Lincoln, who must have weighed no more than a farmer’s scarecrow to such a powerful man, and carried the half-conscious President to the lounge, where he stretched him out. Nicolay found a blanket and placed it over the shuddering form.

“What is it?” asked Nicolay.

Lamon shook his head. “I don’t know. The fever, I think. Malaria?”

“But he has never had it,” said Hay, a lifelong victim of that recurrent disease.

“Well, he can always catch it, I reckon,” said Lamon.

Lincoln’s eyes were now shut. Lamon found a towel, which he wetted from a water carafe; then he placed the towel on the Ancient’s face. Suddenly, Lincoln said, in a clear voice, “Something has gone wrong.” He took a deep breath and slept; or fainted.

AS AGREED
, David met Booth in front of the bulletin board in the National Hotel lobby. Here, as at Willard’s, wire-service dispatches were posted up at regular intervals, and there was never a moment when a crowd was not gathered to read the latest news from the front or from Congress or, now, from the White House, where the President had been ill for some days with scarlatina. No one was allowed to see him outside of the immediate family. There were rumors that he was dying.

David had not seen Booth since their first meeting. It was Miss Ella Turner who had appeared at Thompson’s. As she ordered throat lozenges from David, she whispered, “Our friend says to meet him in the lobby of the National at noon.” Then she was gone.

Booth was at the bulletin board. A place called Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga Valley had just fallen to “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Apparently, under Grant, “Fighting Joe” had finally learned to fight. The rebel army was now in retreat. Booth turned on David with a scowl. But then when he recognized him, scowl was replaced by brilliant smile. “Davie, I’m glad to see you! I’m leaving today.” Booth led David to one of the lobby’s full windows, where two leather armchairs, side by side, commanded a view of a rank of hacks in Pennsylvania Avenue. A light, curiously feathery snow was falling. Since Congress was at that moment in session, the lobby was deserted save for palm trees in ceramic cachepots. Through a nearby door, barbers and shoeshine boys could be seen practising their necessary arts.

“My God, Davie, you are a great man in Richmond!” Booth’s voice was low; but his face was ablaze with excitement.

For an instant, David could not believe his ears. He, David Herold, a great man?

“How did you do it? What did you use? Or is that a secret? If it is, I shall respect it and ask no more.”

David started to tell the truth; and then saw no reason to alter his usual policy in these matters. Since last he saw Booth, there had been only one
opportunity to poison the President. Two days before Lincoln went up to Gettysburg, Old Edward had come over to Thompson’s with a list of prescriptions for the Lincoln family. David had already decided that the taste of cyanide, added to the blue mass, would be barely detectable, and swift-acting. He would, of course, vanish from Washington as soon as the poison had crossed the avenue. But Old Edward had said, “No more blue mass, Mr. Thompson. Mrs. Lincoln has decreed castor oil to make himself’s bowels move. So castor oil it is.” At such short notice, David could think of nothing that could be added, safely, to that clear viscosity. Admittedly the taste of castor oil would have neutralized even arsenic’s bitterness, but the clarity of the mixture would have betrayed the presence of a granulated poison. So pure castor oil had gone to the President. Then, a few days later, when the President became ill, David assumed that now his time had come. But he was not allowed to prepare any of the medicines for the White House because Lincoln’s own physician chose to work with Mr. Thompson in the back room. Together they had prepared a number of mixtures in the hope of curing what was, at first, a mysterious disease, involving high fever and a body rash like scarlatina—or poisoning. The mystery was solved when the symptoms changed to those of smallpox. Needless to say, the White House would not admit what it was that the President had. There were already sufficient rumors that he was dying to depress the sale of war bonds and inflate the price of gold. So scarlatina was the official illness.

“I can’t really say just what it is … what it was I used,” said David, taking the cigar that Booth offered him. “But, like you see, he didn’t take anywhere near enough of the medicine. If he had, he would’ve been dead on the way up to Pennsylvania.”

“There will be other chances. You are unsuspected?”

David nodded, with what he hoped was a secret sort of smile in spite of the bucked teeth that made even his subtlest smile turn into a silly grin. “No one’s got the slightest idea I’m involved because the medicine was a patent one, which means none of us mixed it. Also, the symptoms are pretty much like the smallpox, which half the town has got. I did hear his doctor talking to Mr. Thompson,” David was inspired to invent, “and there’s still a chance he’ll die.”

“My God, Davie! You are a treasure. There will be statues to you one day, and that is a promise.” But then Booth frowned. “If we win, that is. I’m going up to Pennsylvania tonight. I’ve got some oil fields that I mean to sell. Then I go to Canada to talk to the Confederate commissioners. If Lincoln dies meanwhile, you are to go straight to Richmond, where I will
join you. But if he lives, stay here and wait for orders from me—or the Colonel.”

“Do you really know the Colonel?”

Booth nodded. “I
think
I know him. Anyway I know how to reach him, and he me.” Booth leapt to his feet. He always leapt. But then David had noticed, with admiration, that offstage Booth was the same as on. “Come on to the bar. We must celebrate.”

There was no celebration at the White House. Hay worked on the presidential message to Congress, which Lincoln and the department heads had more or less assembled. Technically, it was a report on the Union’s state during 1863. But as a result of Lincoln’s illness, the Tycoon had not been able to pull together all the strands. So Stanton’s report on the war was a separate message, while Usher’s report on the Interior had to be rewritten. The only new note was Lincoln’s first intimation of how he would go about reconstituting the South. In the teeth of such radicals as Wade and Sumner and Stevens, he would admit to full citizenship anyone who swore an oath of allegiance to the Union. When a tenth of the voting population of any of the rebel states chose to accept the Emancipation Proclamation, they could send a delegation to Congress. On this point, the radicals were prepared to fight Lincoln. For them, eleven states had ceased to exist when they left the Union. Once defected, those eleven states were to be treated as occupied enemy territory; and their leaders punished. In Lincoln’s view, as they had once been part of the Union and would be so again, it was a somewhat metaphysical waste of time to fret over just
where
it was that they had been in the meantime. Once the rebellion was crushed, he stood on Article Four of the Constitution, which empowers the president to grant protection to the states
in
the Union. Seward had objected to this construction on the ground that as everyone, including Lincoln, had been so free with the Constitution lately, this was hardly a tactful argument since it raised yet again the delicate question of
in
versus
out
. Unhappily, Lincoln agreed to forget about Article Four.