Lincoln (95 page)

“Well, if I don’t sign it, it isn’t a law. So I guess I’ll just stick it in my pocket.”

“Is this Constitutional, sir?”

Lincoln smiled. “There is no Constitutional question that I know of.”

Hay was convinced that Lincoln’s refusal to act directly in regard to the Wade Bill was a not-so-subtle declaration of war on the radical faction of the party, who were now certain to put up their own candidate for president. As Frémont was already a Republican candidate and Lincoln a National Union candidate, the addition of a radical Republican—Mr. Chase?—would split three ways their party and the Democrat McClellan would win, as a minority president, in just the same way that Lincoln had won in 1860 when the Democrats broke in two. On the one hand, Hay admired the Tycoon’s formidable response to Congress; but he also saw only too clearly that barring some extraordinary military victory, Lincoln would soon join James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce and all the other one-term mediocre presidents of the last third of a century.

At the Sixth Street wharf, they stopped. The first of the transports was now drawn up to the dock. As Lincoln climbed onto a small reviewing platform, the disembarking troops began to cheer. Lincoln raised his hat. The cheering was taken up by the men in the second transport; the sound was thunderous. As always, Hay was mystified by the magical effect that the Ancient had on the troops. Since they had no way of fathoming him except through newspapers, which, knowingly or unknowingly, misrepresented him, it was nothing short of miraculous that Old Abe or Father Abraham could inspire so much affection. Of course, it did not hurt that he looked very much like that somewhat ambiguous cartoon figure “Uncle Sam.”

Lincoln had now removed his hat, which he held in his left hand. As he stood, very straight for him, brown face glowing, wide mouth smiling, he waved with his right hand to the men who filed by him down the gangplank. Presently, he was joined by the Sixth Corps commander, Major-general Horatio Wright, who saluted him; and said, “Reporting for duty, sir.”

“We are relieved, General,” said the Tycoon. “In every sense.”

Lincoln might have stayed there all morning had not the stern Lamon appeared with the President’s forgotten military escort. “I shall resign, sir, if you go off like this again,” grumbled Lamon.

“I’m sorry, Lamon. But we could not stay put, Mr. Hay and I.” Lincoln then turned to General Wright. “I think, General, you should install yourself at Fort Stevens as soon as practical.”

“That is my plan, sir.”

“If the rebels were to make a push now, before you get there, there could be a lot of breakage at the Capitol, which we’ve only just finished fixing up.”

When General Wright asked where the rebels were mainly concentrated, the President said that no one knew but he suspected at Silver Spring, just three miles north of Fort Stevens. As Lincoln and Hay, surrounded by the President’s cavalry guard, rode back to the White House, Lincoln said, “There is only one danger now …” He stopped, to take a satisfied look at the Capitol’s new dome.

“The rebels will steal everything that’s not nailed down.” Hay knew that this had been going on for several days: guns, horses, silver, gold, food … The nearby towns of Rockville and Tennalytown had been stripped by the rebels; and the frightened inhabitants had fled to Georgetown, where they were obliged to sleep in the open.

“No,” said Lincoln. “It is the seventeen thousand prisoners that we’re holding at Point Lookout. That’s what Lee wants more than anything, and that’s what he must never get.”

The next day all the telegraph lines to the city were down, and the railroads were blocked. For the second time in the war, the capital was isolated. But this time, the mood was cheerful at the White House. The President himself had visited Fort Stevens the day before; and he had watched as Early’s men exchanged fire with the newly arrived Union troops. It was the first action that the Tycoon had seen during the war.

After a brief noon meeting of the Cabinet, Lincoln was eager to return to the action; and Major Hay was eager to go with him. But it was not Hay but Madam who went forth to battle on the afternoon of July 12.

Although Mary had been suffering from a bilious attack, the thought of a military outing cleared her head most wondrously. The President had said, firmly, that under no circumstance was she to go with him to Fort Stevens, while Lamon had said that under no circumstance would he allow the President to return to Fort Stevens. So, as a compromise, all three now rode up Seventh Street Road, with a company of cavalry, sabres drawn.

For Mary, the thought of battle was, mysteriously, a tonic. Mysteriously because the most homely of thunderstorms could set her to screaming, usually from beneath the nearest bed. Now Mary would face real guns
with real bullets. Defiantly, she wore a dark-red dress. “To disguise my bloody wounds,” she had said to Keckley, who gasped.

Lamon spoke to neither President nor First Lady. Furious at the needless risk, he simply glowered at them.

? mile before the Soldiers’ Home, the street became a road and then a dusty trail through sparse unsettled woods.

“That’s where my carriage struck the trees!” Mary recalled, without panic, the swift deathlike darkness. “Did they ever decide who it was who loosened the driver’s seat?”

Lincoln shook his head. “There are so many people in and out of the stables.”

“There
were
,” said Lamon.

As they passed the Soldiers’ Home, they could smell the smoke of burning houses up ahead; and hear artillery’s peculiar slamming sound.

A cart piled high with furniture passed them, with a large farmer and larger wife in the driver’s seat. Behind the cart, a half-dozen children shepherded a procession of livestock. The President raised his hat to the farmer and his wife, who stared, stonily, at the source of their ruin.

“How ungracious!” Mary exclaimed. “How ungrateful!”

“Well, Maryland has never been exactly my state,” said Lincoln, putting his hat back on.

“How could General Grant have let this happen?”

“Well, he
is
down near Richmond, Mother. This is more General Halleck’s department.”

“He’s hopeless, too!” Mary could never understand Lincoln’s tolerance of bad generals. Mary’s original high hopes for Grant had ended when he lost more men at Cold Harbor than anyone had dreamed could be lost in so short a time. The man was a butcher—of his own men. For some time, Mary had had her own ideas of how the war should be prosecuted but no one took her seriously. As for Halleck, everyone agreed that he was hopeless but there he remained at the War Department, with his huge watery, drug-dilated eyes. Others might suspect that Halleck used opium, but Mary
knew
that he did. After all, there was little that she did not know about drugs. For years doctors had liked to experiment with her during The Headache and its painful aftermath.

As for Stanton, he had made clear his true allegiance. He had asked Chase to be godfather to his new daughter. Worse, they sang hymns together. Mary was positive that Stanton was working secretly for Chase. Why else did the war go so badly? Lately, Mary had sensed that her husband was beginning to resign himself to defeat in the coming election. The thought made her frantic. At present her debts were more than his
annual greenback salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a year—worth, before tax, less than ten thousand dollars in gold, which he would not take. For Lincoln to be both an ex-president and a bankrupt—thanks to her—was more than she could bear. Fortunately, she was now most subtly at work on Mr. Thurlow Weed to get a mutual friend, Abram Wakeman, appointed surveyor of the port of New York, a rich post which Wakeman was more than willing to pay her for. She would then be able to settle her accounts with the New York stores, particularly with A. T. Stewart, who was long-suffering, but not eternally so. With each Union reverse, not to mention hint that the President might fail of reelection, the bills had become more urgent and their tone more insolent. But once Wakeman got his job, Mr. Stewart’s account would be promptly settled. Meanwhile, she had her eye on a black camel’s-hair shawl from India that Stewart had offered her for only three thousand dollars. As the carriage drove up to Fort Stevens, Mary wondered if she might not, with luck, be shot this very day through that source of all her pain and anguish, the head.

Fort Stevens proved to be not so much a proper fortress as a series of earthworks. Mary had envisaged something with stone walls and parapets and towers, on the order of Fortress Monroe. Instead, at the Fort’s center, there was a mound of earth like a loaf of bread on its side, shored up by wooden latticework. Artillery was in place to left and right.

As the fort commanded the countryside to the north, she was able to see the butternut-gray of the rebels in the pinewoods up the road, and in the two small farmhouses which had, until two days ago, been in the Union and were now, thanks to Jubal Early, out of the Union.

Just back of the earthen breadloaf, the presidential carriage was met by General Wright, who looked with some displeasure upon Mary. “There are rebel sharpshooters, Ma’am, all around us.”

As if to demonstrate his point, there was a sudden volley from the two houses; to which the Federal troops responded. Mary noted that most of the Union soldiers were from Massachusetts. “Sir, I shall stay well back,” she said, politely. Then she accompanied the President to the top of an earthwork where wooden shields provided an irregular parapet. From this altitude, they could see a green, dusty landscape beneath a gray, smoking sky.

“You know who is just a mile from here?” Lincoln pointed to the woods that served as cover for the main body of rebels.

Mary knew. “Cousin John Breckinridge. I suppose he’s come to take over the White House for the Davises.”

“Well, he’s just one day too late, thanks to General Grant.”

A surgeon from a Pennsylvania regiment showed them the sights; and
gave his opinions: “As I see it, sir, this is more in the nature of a raid now. Once all the men General Grant sent are here, they will high-tail it into the brush. But I’m sure that if General Wallace hadn’t held them up for one whole day, fighting the way he did at Monocacy Bridge, they would have swept right into town, because there never were enough of us to—”

The surgeon did not finish what had promised to be a lengthy analysis. Rifle fire sounded. The surgeon gave a sudden cry and fell in a heap at Mary’s feet. To Mary’s amazement, she did not herself scream. Instead, she looked down at the man whose face was now twisted with pain. “Sir …?” she began.

But two orderlies had appeared. The surgeon looked up and said to Mary, “It is not serious. My left ankle’s struck.” To the orderlies: “Help me up. Do forgive me, Mrs. Lincoln.”

“Of course, sir. I am sorry, sir.” Mary was uncertain as to what was proper battlefield etiquette. Then Lincoln put his arm around her. “I think you better go back to the carriage.”

“Oh, no, Father! Not now. I want Cousin John to get a good look at me. Remember how I told him they’d have to fight me personally before we gave up the Mansion? Well, give me a gun, and I’ll start shooting.”

“Mother, you amaze me.”

But Mary was ravished with excitement. “No, Father, I mean it. I was a marvelous shot as a girl. I could kill a squirrel at thirty yards—through the eye.”

“You
are
bloodthirsty. But things grow …” Simultaneously, the Federal artillery went off to the left and the right of them; and acrid smoke made their eyes stream. Lincoln motioned to a young Massachusetts lieutenant-colonel to escort Mary back to the carriage. Half blinded by smoke and half deafened by cannon, she was now not unwilling. Nevertheless, Mary felt cheated that Cousin John had not seen her on the parapet, firing directly at him.

Lincoln stood alone, looking out between two wooden palings. Sharpshooters on both sides went about their lethal work. General Wright moved up and down the fortifications, giving orders. The sight of the President plainly gave him no pleasure. But Lincoln had now turned to a fresh-faced lieutenant. “You came yesterday from City Point?”

“Yes, sir,” said the young man, with a smile that suddenly enlarged, before Lincoln’s eyes, to a scarlet mass as the bullet that struck the center of his face caused him to pitch forward, dead, some three feet from where the President stood. With that, as if from nowhere, the tall young officer who had escorted Mrs. Lincoln back to the carriage seized the President. “Get down, you damned fool!” he exclaimed; and he shoved Lincoln
below the parapet. As the President landed on the base of his spine, he observed, “Well, Colonel, since you put it like that …”

The snipers had now got their range. There was also an excellent possibility that they had recognized the only six-foot-four-inch American president in the world. They were now firing in regular volleys. The young officer squatted beside the President. “What is your name?” asked Lincoln.

“Holmes, sir. And I wish you would leave us to our work.”

“Holmes. From Massachusetts. No relation to Oliver Wendell Holmes?”

“I am his son, sir.”

“How curious! I am a great admirer of his verse.” As the sniper fire continued about them, Lincoln recited from Holmes’s poem “Lexington.”

That’s the part,” said Lincoln, gray eyes suddenly misty, “where I always find it so hard to go on.”

“I never learned it, sir. But then my father quotes himself so much better than I can—and so often—that I leave the recitations to him.”

“I once thought that I had some gift for poetry. I suppose all young men do at a certain time of life. But Blackstone knocks it out of you.”

“That’s what will knock it out of me, sir, if the next bullet I get does not.”

“You have already been wounded?”

“Yes, sir. At Ball’s Bluff.”

They were then joined, not by General Wright, who had been disturbed by the arrival of a second general and a fresh brigade, but by Gideon Welles and Senator Ben Wade.