Lincoln (98 page)

“Do you think he will mention the well-known secret meeting in New York?”

“I think he will speak of nothing else.” Lincoln poured himself yet another glass of water from the brilliant Waterford glass carafe. Seward wondered if the President had any idea of just how much money his wife was spending of public as well as of private money. Certainly, the newspapers were keeping careful track of her visits to the stores in New York and Philadelphia. But those were not the sort of stories that Lincoln would ever look at. Currently, the press was making much of the fact that while viewing the dead on a battlefield, Lincoln had asked Lamon to sing him some ribald songs. The story was curiously repellent; and so believed by many. But Lincoln would not read any version of the story, much less answer it. “In politics,” he had said to Seward, when the subject came up, “every man must skin his own skunk. These fellows are welcome to the hide of this one. Either I have established the sort of character that gives the lie to this sort of thing, or I haven’t. If I haven’t, that is the end.”

The end seemed now to be approaching, thought Seward, as he watched Lincoln dry his lips with a napkin. For the first time in some months—well, hours—Seward wondered what might have happened had he and not Lincoln been elected in 1860. The war would certainly be over by now, due, if nothing else, to Seward’s superior guile. He would have seduced the South back into a more voluptuous, if not perfect, Union. But at what cost, he could not hazard. Certainly, if he had had to bear what Lincoln now bore, he might have resigned and gone home to Auburn. There were times when Lincoln seemed to him like some bright, swift-burning substance that, once ignited, could not be extinguished until it had burned itself entirely out, according to its own peculiar and circumscribed by time, nature.

“Will Horace Greeley publish your correspondence with him?”

Lincoln shook his head. “I insisted that certain passages must be deleted.
I felt that he would only aid the rebels by giving too gloomy an aspect of our case—not to mention the Democrats. He has backed down. I don’t think he wants them published, anyway. They make him look more than ever a fool. Hay writes me that the Niagara meeting was a comedy of errors. The so-called commissioners had no authority, and Mr. Davis is not about to agree to any terms. As usual, Greeley wasted everyone’s time; and nothing came of it.”

“He was at the secret meeting last week.”

Lincoln suddenly smiled. “You know, when Johnny Hay was leaving Greeley’s office at the
Tribune
, guess who was coming in the door?”

“Mr. Chase?”

“You have second sight, Governor. But I attach no importance to that, as long as Mr. Taney lies on his deathbed—interminably breathing, to be sure!”

“Well, I don’t want to cry out like Cassandra—how Mr. Blair brings out the classicist in me!—but, if you’ll forgive me, I think you’ve fallen into a trap. I don’t think Greeley had the slightest interest in those two rebels at Niagara. I think he was trying to smoke you out as an abolitionist, and I think he succeeded. He got you to state, more plainly than ever, that if the South does not absolutely abandon slavery as a pre-condition of peace, the war will go on. As a result, there’s been all hell to pay in New York. Archbishop Hughes is tearing his hair—or, I guess, to be more precise, his miter—to bits, and my good Irish supporters are now saying that they will never fight for any nigger’s freedom.”

“They do precious little fighting as it is.” Lincoln’s face set. “They are the least disciplined and most cowardly of our troops. They are welcome to support McClellan, and an instant bad peace.” Lincoln pushed back his buckthorn chair from the table. “You are right, I suppose, about Greeley smoking me out. But I was already out after the Reconstruction proclamation, and the last message to Congress, and the reply to Wade.”

“You have never before said that if the South were to come to you and say ‘we will lay down our arms and rejoin the Union,’ that they could not do so until they set free their slaves.”

“If they rejoin the Union, those slaves
are
free—freed by me.”

“As a military necessity. Well, that necessity will have gone.”

“Naturally, we would hold a convention of some kind if they were to return, as you suggest. I have always been for reimbursing the slave-owners. Everyone knows that.”

“Oh,
I
know what you mean. But will the archbishop’s parishioners understand? Greeley has lined you up with the abolitionists, and there will be hell to pay.”

Lincoln smiled wanly. “I am very much used to that foul currency, Governor.” Lincoln pushed the plate away from him. “I have always admired Greeley. He helped put me here—perhaps not a cause for general rejoicing or, for that matter, even personal. Now he is like an old shoe—good for nothing. When I was young out west, we had no good shoemakers, so once a shoe got old the leather would rot and the stitches wouldn’t hold and that was the end of it. Well, Greeley is so rotten now that nothing can be done with him. He is not truthful; the stitches all tear out.”

In Seward’s study, Sumner stood, immaculate, before the flower-filled fireplace. In the hallway the ubiquitous bodyguard saluted the President as he entered the study, alone. “Well, Mr. Sumner, it is strange to see you here, in enemy country, and not at Mrs. Lincoln’s house.” Lincoln was amiable. Sumner constrained.

“Sir, I have never been so saddened in my life, as to meet you here.”

“Oh, come now! Governor Seward is profane at times, and temperance holds no delights for him, but he is not the devil, you know.”

“Oh, I did not mean that, sir. Far from it.” Sumner straightened his light-blue coat, whose silver buttons shone in the summer light like new-minted coins. Lincoln was, as always, disheveled. “By the way, I have just had a charming note from Mrs. Lincoln, at Saratoga Springs. She is an accomplished letter-writer, an accomplished lady. I must confess to you that I go to her salon voluntarily, and not from mere sullen duty.”

“Well, Mr. Sumner, we hope to see a lot more of you in the next four years when, I expect, foreign affairs, your specialty, will be occupying us more and internal troubles less.” Lincoln was coolly provocative.

“Oh, sir,
that
is the crux!” Sumner arranged himself in front of Pericles. One lock of blond-gray hair fell across his own marblelike brow. He looked every bit as historic as Pericles; but then he had once declared that even alone, in the privacy of his own house, he would never strike a pose that he would not be willing to strike before the nation in the Senate chamber.

“We shall have to deal, sooner or later, with the French in Mexico. Naturally, I shall follow, as always, the lead of your Committee on Foreign Affairs. Then there is the matter of Spain—”

“Defeat!” Sumner spoke each syllable as if it was itself a word of such awfulness that Heaven might open up and lightning strike them both.

Lincoln had settled into Seward’s own armchair. “You mean yesterday’s election in Kentucky?”

“Sir, I mean for our party and our cause in November.”

“I will admit that things do not go exactly well for us—”

“Or for the cause that we adhere to. Sir, it is not just politics that are
involved. If it were …” With one hand, Sumner made a leveling gesture to express his contempt for all human pettiness. “But there is something larger. There is the morality and the rightness of our cause. The freedom and the enfranchisement of the Negro has been the lifework of many of us. Now that work is about to be undone if not forever for at least a generation, because McClellan will make peace at any price and the price we already know. Human freedom for the black man, human dignity for the black man …” The famous orator’s voice had begun to resound in the small study.

Lincoln broke in before it got out of control. “Now, now, Mr. Sumner, let’s not go leaping overboard, as the steamboat captain said to the widow. General McClellan isn’t elected yet—”

“Pennsylvania will go for McClellan by a hundred thousand majority.” Sumner could be as briskly political as anyone else. “I heard that from your own partisan, Cameron.”

“That is as of today. But the election is a hundred days from now. Things can change.”

Sumner put his hands on his knees; and sat very straight. “Yes, that is what we all want, for things to change. I have been delegated by certain Republican leaders to request you, most respectfully, most … affectionately, if I may be personal … to withdraw as the candidate of our party, so that we can then unite behind someone who can win the election in what is, actually, less than a hundred days from now.”

Lincoln’s half smile was in place as he stared, absently, at Sumner, who was finding it difficult to hold his monumental pose as his plump thighs were now resting on the chair’s extreme cutting edge. “Naturally,” said the President at last, “I have heard of the meeting in New York City—”

“Which I did not attend.” Sumner slid back in his chair.

“But Brother Greeley and a number of other influential abolitionists were all there, as well as Mr. Bryant’s son-in-law. I gather that it is your—their?—your, I see, wish to hold a second national convention next month in order to select a new Republican candidate.”

Sumner addressed not Lincoln but Pericles. “Obviously, if you were to step aside, voluntarily, and allow us to unite behind someone else, there is no doubt we could defeat McClellan, whose main support comes from those unthinking elements which are, simply, sick of the war and care nothing for its morality.” Sumner turned to Lincoln.

The President’s left eyebrow had so ascended that now left eye perfectly matched right. When this phenomenon occurred, the habitual dreaminess of the gaze was metamorphosed to the hunter’s glare, which he now turned on Sumner, who sat back in his chair as if, for safety’s sake,
to increase the distance between them. “I do not follow your logic, Mr. Sumner. If you select an out-and-out radical Republican like Mr. Chase—or yourself even—you will split this two-headed party that I have done my best for years to hold together. The moderates—of which I am one—will desert you, while the peace-at-any-price folks will vote you down, and McClellan in.”

Sumner removed a white, scented, cambric handkerchief from his sleeve and touched each of his now lightly glistening temples. “I cannot speak as to the likely choice of a convention not yet called. But I am reasonably certain that my friend Mr. Chase would
not
be selected. After all, we do want to beat McClellan, and that could be done with a greater military man, like Grant or Butler or Sherman, with someone like Admiral Farragut as vice-presidential candidate.”

The now brilliant gray eyes were staring straight at Sumner, who squirmed slightly. “I am no expert in these things.” The voice was even. “But in the past, from George Washington to Andrew Jackson to Zachary Taylor, victorious generals were elected president only after they were victorious and their particular war was won. This war is still going on—and on. McClellan may win against me by default, because the people cannot endure another day of war. That is a possibility. But he cannot prevail as a military hero, because he is not one. He is simply a failed general, whom I was obliged to discard.”

“Sir, General Grant could have had by acclamation the nomination that you won at Baltimore. All he had to do was put himself forward.”

“Well, he
was
put forward. By Missouri, and he did not get any other votes.”

“The convention, of course, was managed by you—”

“What else would you expect a man whose work is only half done to do? Of course, I controlled the convention. After all, I am our party’s leader.”

“You lead one wing—”

“The larger wing, Mr. Sumner.”

“I know that, sir. That is why I beg you to stand aside, as a patriotic duty for which you will be forever remembered, and let us win the election with, let us say, Grant.”

“So it is Grant.” The half smile was gone; the glare remained. “I do not think that he will make the race. He has not yet finished his appointed task. He certainly will not run against me.”

“Sir, all the more reason that you withdraw, that you … that
you
nominate Grant, as the better man. Then, your place in history secure, we can finish the greatest task of all.” Sumner stopped abruptly. The only
sound in the room was the musical chiming of the clock in the hall. For once, even the flies were still.

Finally, Lincoln spoke. “I was unanimously nominated at Baltimore by our party. Now you want me to withdraw from the contest in order to make room for a better man. I wish I could. I mean that, Sumner. Because I am sure that there are many better men than I for this work. But they are not here, and I am here. Now let us say you find this better man, and I step aside. Can he—endorsed by your hollow if pure true Republicans—unite the party and then the country? I think it most unlikely. The factions opposed to me would fall to fighting among themselves, and those who now want me to make room for a better man would get one whom most of them would not want at all. My withdrawal would probably bring on confusion far worse than anything we now know. God knows, I have at least tried very hard to do my duty, to do right to everybody and wrong to nobody. There are those who say I prolong the war because I lust for power. Well, that is nonsense, as you know. I may once have wanted—even lusted—for power, but all that has been burned away. There is nothing left of me. But there is still the President. He must be allowed to finish the work that he was chosen to do. So leave me in peace. Once that is done, you and your better man are welcome to my dangerous place. In fact, you and your better man can come to my funeral, for I have known for some time now that when this conflict is over, I end.”

The President got to his feet. Sumner also rose. So did Seward’s dog, Midge, who had been sleeping, unobserved, beneath her master’s desk.

“I am sorry,” said Sumner, gravely shaking the President’s hand.

“So am I, Sumner. But then sorrow is something we have an abundance of.”

Seward had been sitting on a bench in Lafayette Square. As soon as he saw statesman and muscular shadow depart, he hurried home, where he found Lincoln stretched out on a sofa in the study, eyes shut. Midge’s greeting of Seward was so noisy that Lincoln opened his eyes and said, “I have just been asked to withdraw as a candidate.”