Lincoln (94 page)

But that evening Tod telegraphed to say that he must decline the office, as his health was not good. “Well, that was unexpected.” The Tycoon was morose.

Hay was anxious. “I think the Senate’s holding a night session, and I think that they might just reject Tod. So don’t you think I should …”

“Yes,” said the President.

The Senate side of the Capitol was ablaze with gaslight; numerous senators and lobbyists were ablaze with drink. But Fessenden was all cold, sea-green, Robespierrian sobriety. Hay met him at the swinging doors to the chamber. “Governor Tod has declined the post. The President thought you should know.”

“Well, that shows the governor’s got better sense than I thought. Who’s next?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

At ten-thirty the next morning, Fessenden was seated in Hay’s office when an usher whispered to Hay that the President wanted him.

Hay found the Tycoon in a buoyant mood. The departure of Chase had rejuvenated him. The President gave Hay an envelope. “Here, John, take this nomination down to the Senate. I think they’ll be pleased, for once.”

“Who is it, sir?”

“Fessenden.”

Hay was astonished. “Why, he’s in my office right now.”

“Well, that’s a nice coincidence, isn’t it? Personally, I think the choice is inspired, if I say so myself. He’s chairman of the Finance Committee. He knows the problems. He is a radical, but he lacks the usual petulance and vicious fractionalism of the breed. He’s also going to have a hard time getting reelected back in Maine if Mr. Hamlin decides to go to the Senate.” The Tycoon was indeed delighted with himself; and Hay thought that he had every reason to be,
if
Fessenden accepted.

“You may go in, Senator,” said Hay to the dignified Yankee, who little knew what fate had in store for him.

At Sixth and E, slipcovers had been placed over all the furniture and steamer trunks crowded the vestibule where once all that glittered in Washington had glittered. Kate moved like a ghost through the hot, dusty
rooms. Since Sprague had ceased, for the moment, to drink, he tended to dourness. Kate had wanted to retreat as rapidly as possible to Europe, but Sprague thought that they should go instead to Newport, Rhode Island, now that Congress was adjourned. Sprague’s speech defending Chase had been a great success, only slightly marred by the fact that Chase had ceased to be Secretary of the Treasury five days before. In any case, since Sprague now anticipated a change in the laws regarding the purchase of Southern cotton, he did not dare go abroad. Kate gave way, more from physical than from moral weakness.

The world has turned unreal, thought Chase, as he made his way through the shrouded furniture to his study, where Senator Sumner waited for him. There were few visitors nowadays. Only Stanton from the Cabinet had been—or so he said—sorry that Chase was gone, erased, as it were, from power if not from History’s dusty tablets. The rest of the Cabinet had responded to his departure with indecent rejoicing. Pomeroy and Garfield were loyal—and Sumner, whose bodyguard was just out of earshot in the second parlor. “Oh, my friend! My friend!” Sumner appeared to have tears in his eyes.

“It is over,” said Chase, with what he hoped was Roman dignity and brevity. For once, the “is” was “is” and not the dreaded inadvertent “ish.”

“You have been with Fessenden?”

Chase nodded. “I do what I can to help him settle in. He is worthy, I think. We both agree that the American people may revolt should we place a tax on their incomes of more than ten percent, but he will hold as steadily to this course as ever I did.”

Sumner nodded. “Where will you go now?”

“Home to where I was born—the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I must think …”

“While you restore yourself, we shall be at work for you here. There is now a plan to hold a new convention at the end of September. Then …” Sumner clapped his hands.

But Chase was torn. As the true Republican candidate for president, he could destroy Lincoln. But then would McClellan not destroy him and all the work that the abolitionists had accomplished? Of course if he did nothing he would probably be chief justice. But was it
right
to do nothing to prevent the reelection of a president whose idiotic notion to colonize the Negroes outside North America was not only immoral but would wreck the national economy? Was it right
not
to oppose a pro-Southern President who had only that week refused to sign Congress’s Reconstruction Bill, which was an outright attack on his own amnesty for the rebels’ program? Was it right to permit Lincoln to allow the rebel states, defeated
in battle, to return to the Union as if nothing had happened and with slavery, in some way, continued or even briefly condoned?

Chase appealed, silently, to the Lord of Hosts to show him a sign; but all that he got was an historical analogy from Senator Sumner. “Of all the rulers of recent times that I can recall Lincoln is most like Louis XVI. The storm is all about him, but he does nothing.”

“I had not thought of him as Louis XVI, but it is quite true that when he likes to say ‘my policy is to have no policy’ or ‘I do not control events, events control me,’ he certainly resembles that … headless monarch.”

“Just as you resemble the king’s brilliant finance minister, Necker. And I predict that, like Necker, he will be forced to ask you back.”

“If Lincoln were king, I might agree,” said Chase. “But he is not king but politician. And I am gone for good.”

O
N SUNDAY
, July 10, 1864, shortly before midnight, John Hay was awakened by Robert Lincoln getting into his bed. “What’s happened?” was Hay’s first sleepy response.

“Stanton,” said Robert; he wore only his shirt. “We were all ordered out of the Soldiers’ Home. The rebels are at Silver Spring. God, I hate this place.” Then Robert turned onto his side and went to sleep; and slept, thought the now wide-awake Hay, like his father. All night long there were sighs and moans; so unlike Nicolay’s familiar snoring, rhythmic as a steady rain. But Nico was at the west, enraging the Indians; and now Robert lay in Nico’s place.

At dawn, Robert sprang out of bed, fresh and rested, while Hay was exhausted. As they took turns shaving at the single mirror in the bathroom, Robert asked if the Canterbury girls were still performing
The Bushwhackers of the Potomac
, a singularly lewd production which they had both enjoyed several days earlier. In fact, thanks to Hay’s Virgilian knowledge of Washington’s circles of infernal pleasure, they had actually met and supped with a number of the girls. Hay knew where at least one of
them was always to be found. But, “We may all be leaving the city today,” he said.

“Oh, I don’t think Father has any intention of budging.” Robert carefully reshaped the corners of his moustaches.

“Look,” said Hay, pointing out the window. Back of the Smithsonian Institution, a gunboat rode at anchor. “That’s for the evacuation of the White House.”

“The unspeakable Stanton?” Robert tended to blame the Secretary of War for keeping him out of the army when, actually, it was his mother who had seen to that.

“The War Department, anyway. For once, Stanton isn’t tearing his hair out. But things are bad. Yesterday the rebels whipped us at Monocacy Bridge …”

“Why, that’s practically here in town!” Robert frowned. He had nicked his chin. There was now a drop of blood forming. Hay found it interesting that such an important defeat had
not
been mentioned by the Ancient to his family at the Soldiers’ Home. But then Madam was easily excited.

Hay proceeded to alarm Robert. “Rebel pickets were seen last night in Georgetown, while the Blairs have fled yet again from Silver Spring.”

“You know, in a way, it would be nice if they burned this bloody city to the ground,” said Robert, the Boston Brahmin. Carefully, he dried his face with Hay’s only towel, leaving a thin streak of fresh blood on the clean side. “It was a terrible notion, having the capital of the country in this stinking swamp—and in the South.”

“Well, the swamp certainly stinks today,” said Hay, as a warm summer breeze filled the bathroom with a particularly sickening odor of stagnant canal, jasmine and offal from the slaughterhouse.

“Anyway, you’ll be up in Saratoga, cutting a swathe,” said Hay, folding the towel to hide the royal blood. Robert had just graduated from Harvard. Madam had attended the ceremonies. Now he was enrolled in Harvard Law School because Madam had said that if he were to go into the army, she would go mad. Since no one doubted her word, Robert was the most famous and sullen “shirker” of the war.

“At least, Father says I can go down to Fortress Monroe next week and
watch
the war.”

Hay found the Tycoon in his office, spyglass in one hand, studying the river for signs of the reinforcements from Grant at City Point. The Tycoon was as angry as Hay had ever seen him. “What goes on in Stanton’s mind is sometimes unfathomable to me. He obliges me to flee
in the middle of the night from the Soldiers’ Home, and now he’s trying to evacuate me from the capital.”

“I think that was Admiral Porter’s idea.”

But Lincoln had put down his telescope. “I can get no news from the War Department. No one seems to know where the rebels are. When I ask Halleck—”

Edward ushered in the Postmaster-General, whose Blairian rage made Lincoln’s anger seem like high good humor. “General Jubal Early’s men are now burning my house at Silver Spring. They are burning my father’s house. But first the bastards stole everything they could get their hands on, from the silver to all my father’s papers. You can see the smoke from here.”

“We seem to have been outsmarted again,” murmured the Ancient.

“It is Halleck. He is a coward. He is a traitor. He should be hanged.” There was much more of this Blairesco to which neither Lincoln nor Hay gave much attention. As callers began to arrive, Lincoln did his best to try to understand what had happened.

Apparently, Jubal Early and John C. Breckinridge had been given an army of no one knew how many men. They had come swiftly up the Shenandoah Valley, seized yet again Harper’s Ferry and, yet again, isolated the capital; then, on Saturday, they had defeated General Lew Wallace at Monocacy Junction, and burned much of Silver Spring. They were now encamped two miles north of the Soldiers’ Home, with only the somewhat ramshackle defenses of Fort Stevens between them and the Seventh Street Road, at whose terminus was the White House itself. Hay began to look with a more friendly eye on the nearby gunboat.

Grant’s troops were expected to arrive sometime during the early morning, but no one knew when. “If they are not here by noon, it is all over,” said Blair. “Because we don’t have the men to stop them. How,” he exclaimed, “could this have happened?”

Lincoln’s response was that curious mocking smile which Hay had noticed at other moments of crisis. “I think, Mr. Blair, we should first find out
what
is happening. The ‘how’ we will explore at our leisure.”

Blair gave a sudden cry of rage. “My father’s papers! The letters from Andrew Jackson! From Henry Clay! All gone!”

“I think I may have written him, too,” said Lincoln, who was again at the window. Then he beamed: “Here they come! The transports from City Point.” He turned back into the room. “I think I’ll go down and meet our rescuers.”

“But if General Early breaks through Fort Stevens—” Blair began.

“We’ll have a real fight on our hands, won’t we?” The Tycoon motioned for Hay to accompany him; and motioned for Blair to stay. In the outer office, there was a messenger from the Treasury. “Sir, before the telegraph went out, gold was being quoted at two hundred eighty-five dollars. Mr. Fessenden wants to know what we should do.”

“Personally, I would shoot every last devilish gold-dealer. But since I’m not allowed to, tell him that we’ll shoot rebels today, and then the price of gold will fall back.”

Pennsylvania Avenue was dusty and full of flies. The streetcars had ceased to run. For once, there were no soldiers in view. Every able-bodied man, and a good many from the hospital who were not, had gone to the various forts that encircled the city. “The city is never so tranquil,” observed the Tycoon, “as when it is being besieged.”

“It also helps that Congress has adjourned.”

“Yes, that is a blessing.” To Hay’s amazement, Lincoln was now more interested in Ben Wade’s bill, which had passed both houses of Congress, than he was in the danger at hand. It was as if he knew, instinctively, what was truly dangerous and what was not. A rebel raid on the capital was embarrassing. But unlike Blair, he was not unduly agitated. Although he had made up his mind some time ago that the war would be absolutely won, he was still not certain on what terms the Union would then be restored. He knew what
he
wanted; but he also knew that he was in a minority within his own party’s vengeful congressional majority.

As the sky to the north grew dark with smoke from Silver Spring, and the sounds of artillery and rifle fire echoed in the valley between Seventh Street Road and the Capitol, Lincoln spoke of the radical problem. “They are trying to force me to devastate the rebel states, which I will not do. Naturally, I will punish certain individual rebels but I cannot—and I will not—punish a whole people. That’s why I shall stick to my ten-percent formula.”

“But Congress has rejected that.”

“So I must use what weapons I can. In wartime, my proclamations must be obeyed. As President, I could not free the slaves. I had not the right; and neither has Congress. But as a
military
necessity, I could free them; and did. Now I want a Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, which will take care of that problem once and for all. I’m also satisfied that we now have acceptable government in Louisiana and Arkansas.”

“But Congress isn’t satisfied; and Congress can keep the Louisiana and Arkansas delegations from taking their seats.”

“Well, the whole thing is very curious. Since I accept a part of Ben
Wade’s bill, I won’t veto the whole. But since I don’t accept the rest of it, I won’t sign it.”

“So what happens?”