CHAPTER 9

JOHN HAY'S DIARY
JULY 18, 1861

The Hellcat's Southern kin are causing no end of snide comment. A sister of
Mrs. L. from Alabama imposed on the Lincoln hospitality long enough to
supply the rebel forces with a load of desperately needed quinine, slipping it
through the lines with a pass from the President and then crowing loudly
about how she had outwitted "brother Lincoln."
The Tycoon, however, seems not to take notice of the sly digs and instead
insists that his wife's Southern affiliations might actually do some good in
cementing border-state affections. He has said he would like to have God on
his side, but he must have Kentucky.
Frankly, I find it hard to see how a state can be both pro-slavery and anti-
secession, as persnickety Kentucky seems to be, but the Ancient is willing to
take the most egregious abuse from the abolitionist Jacobins among the
Republicans rather than offend the peace Democrats who still profess to be
loyal.
Fortunately, "Mrs. President"1 hate it when she makes people call her
thathas one of her Western kin, rather than her Southern kin, living at the
President's house. Her favorite cousin, Elizabeth Todd Grirnsley of the
sainted state of Illinois, is her constant companion even as our forces are
massing in Virginia to crush General Beauregard at Manassas. Mrs. Grirnsley
is about as deep-rooted a family guest as can be found: she was a bridesmaid
at the Lincoln-Todd wedding lo these almost twenty years ago, both as a
cousin of the bride and a good friend of the groom. The Tycoon likes her
not only for her common sense, but because she is very talland this kins-
woman from Springfield is one of the only women in the world that he can
talk to at a levee without his wife seething with jealousy.
Mrs. Grirnsley has a relative, maybe through marriage to her Kentucky
husband, named John C. Breckinridge. That wavering senator is also a dis-
tant cousin of the Hellcat, or so they call each other; Kentucky stock all runs
together, it seems. He came to tea today. That cousinly gathering struck me
as highly nervy of all of them, since the senator earlier this week had been
denouncing the Prsdt as a despot for being beastly to the traitors in our midst.
The Tycoon took it, however, not as nervy but as a good opportunity to
win over the most influential man in the most worrisome state. When I
mentioned to the Tycoon that the ladies were entertaining Breckinridge down
the hall he suddenly developed a yearning for tea and cookies. We loafed into
the upstairs dining room (the entire downstairs is taken up with hordes of
office-seekers and contract-grubbers) and the Hellcat immediately exploded
with "This poor man, my own flesh and blood, has been under attack all day
by that boor from Ohio, Ben Wade."
"Wade has been after me, too," the Prsdt said to Breckinridge, while deliv-
ering a peck on the cheek to Grirnsley, to whom he must be grateful because
she takes up so much of the Hellcat's time. "Says I don't have the proper
abolitionist zeal."
"People in the South respect 'Bluff Ben' Wade," the senator responded, to
general surprise. "He says what he thinks. There was that time a couple years
ago, after Sumner was beaten with a club in his Senate seat"
"Dastardly act," Mrs. L. put in, "Charles was crippled in that bully's
attack." She likes the vain Sumner, who butters her up outrageously.
"Wade invited one of the Southerners who applauded the attack to chal-
lenge him to a duel," Breckinridge recounted. "When Bob Toombs of Geor-
gia made the mistake of taking him up on it, that meant Wade got to name
the weapons. Ben chose squirrel rifles at twenty paces, each man to wear a
white target patch over his heart, and if they missed on the first shot, they
were to advance a couple paces closer and shoot again until one or the other
was dead. That scared hell out of Senator Toombs, who only wanted to shoot
off a popgun in the meadow from a mile apart for honor's sake. He came over
to Wade's desk and asked, 'What's the use of two grown men making damned
fools of themselves?' They're friends now."
Lincoln had a good laugh out of that, and the Tycoon laughing is some-
thing to see. He leans over in his chair, grabs his knobby knees, rocking back
and forth, his high voice hollering, "Hee, hee, hee!" This embarrasses Mrs.
L whose expression of merriment is a short snort.
"I like the time," said the Prsdt, who never lets a funny story go un-
swapped, "when they were arguing the Kansas-Nebraska bill that denied
slavery in that territory. Some old Southern senator asked, 'You mean when I
go to settle in Nebraska, I can't take my old black mammy with me?' And
Ben Wade shot back at him: 'No objection to taking your old black mammy
to Nebraska, Senator, what we object to is your selling her when you get her
there!"
More general rocking-back-and-forth by the men, a laugh from Mrs.
Grirnsley and a snort from the Hellcat. After recovery, at a nod from the
Prsdt, Mrs. L. rose and said to her visiting kinswoman, "I must show you the
new chandelier in the dining room downstairs. I bought it in New York."
When they hustled off, the Prsdt said to me, "Did the bill come in on that
yet?"
I had it my pocket. "One hundred sixty-six dollars."
He winced and asked Breckinridge what his senatorial salary amounted to
each week. The senator told him sixty dollars and Lincoln allowed as how
about three weeks' work was now hanging over the dining room table. Then
they got down to business.
"Is there a plot afoot, John, to take Kentucky out of the Union?"
"Probably. But Kentucky will stay in, if you let us stay neutral. If you
invade, or try to raise troops to fight in your war, you'll push Kentucky into
secession."
"No state has a right to secede," said the Prsdt, and the fat was in the fire.
"Every state has always been a sovereign entity," the Kentuckian dis-
agreed. "They came together voluntarily. The individual states granted the
federal government certain powers, and reserved all other powers not specifi-
cally enumerated to themselves. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that
the bond is permanent, or that the national government can force a state to
remain when it decides it has just cause to secede."
"That is sophistry," Lincoln said flatly, "sugar-coating rebellion. Southern
leaders have been drugging the public mind of their section with that for
more than thirty years."
"So says a President elected by 40 percent of the people," Breckinridge
replied, forcefully but not disagreeably. "Your saying so, and Andy Jackson
having said so, does not change the Constitution. The Framers were dealing
with sovereign states, doling out a small portion of their sovereignty to a
central government."
"The word 'sovereignty' is not in the national Constitution," Lincoln ar-
gued, moving from name-calling to lawyering, "nor in any of the state consti-
tutions. Except for Texas, which gave up its independent character when it
chose to come into the Union, no state has ever been a state out of the
Union."
Breckinridge started to challenge that, but Lincoln had his facts straight.
"The original states passed into the Union before they cast off their British
colonial dependence. Having never been states, either in substance or in
name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of 'state
rights,' asserting a claim of power to destroy the Union itself?"
"You and Jackson are the only presidents to make such an attack on the
rights of the states that considered themselves sovereign when they formed
the Union." Breckinridge leaned forward, pushing the tea plates and cookies
out of the way. "Read the accounts of the debates of 1776: they called them-
selves 'states' before they unitednot colonies, not lands, not territories
and they put that sovereign word in the union they formed, United States.
Words meant something to the Founders, if not to you." Breckinridge shook
his head, as if overwhelmed by the absurdity of Lincoln's attack on Jefferso-
nian beliefs. "Your reach for national power is not bottomed on constitutional
law. You must have been talking to my cousins, the Biairs."
Lincoln did not deny that. "If the Founders had meant to make the Union
a temporary arrangement, subject to a walkout by a minority, they would
have provided such means of dissolution in the document. Besides, be practi-
cal," said the Prsdt. "If one state may secede, so may another; and when all
have seceded, none is left to pay the national debt. Is that fair to creditors?"
"You would seriously use such a penny-pinching argument to launch a
bloody fratricidal war? The colonies did not concern themselves with En-
gland's national debt when they declared their independence and named
themselves 'united.' " He added, "And if all you are worried about is the debt
left behind by the seceding states, I will volunteer to lead a delegation to
negotiate ajust settlement of obligations left behind." (I fear he got the best of
that point, and Lincoln did not raise it again.)
"I did not launch this war," Lincoln responded, never letting that accusa-
tion go unanswered. "By the affair at Surnter, the rebels forced upon the
country the distinct issue: 'immediate dissolution, or blood.' "
"You created that incident to lay the blame on them," Breckinridge came
right back, "and it worked in igniting the war spirit of the North. But you are
obscuring reality: The seceding states want to leave in peace. They are not
making war on the North. Only you insist on war. Right at this moment, it's
no secret, senators are renting carriages to ride out to Manassas Sunday to see
the great victory. Your troops are invading Virginia. Virginia is not invading
you."
This fellow is a better debater than we thought. The Prsdt, I think, decided
about then to stop trying to make points and to start trying to persuade a
member of a jury. He did, after all, want to win this man over.
"Our popular government is an experiment, John. Two points in it, our
people have already settledthe successful establishing, and the successful
administering of it. One point still remains: its successful maintenance against
a formidable effort to overthrow it."
Breckinridge started to object that nobody was out to overthrow the gov-
ernment in Washington, but Lincoln held up his hand and continued his line
of reasoning. "It is now for us to demonstrate to the world that those who can
fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion. We must demonstrate
that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no
successful appeal back to bulletsthat there can be no successful appeal
except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. If we fail to demonstrate
that the majority rules, then the great experiment in democracy that is this
republic will have failed." He let that terrible prospect sink in, rubbing his
hands slowly on his knees, adding, "Such will be a great lesson of peace. It
will teach men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they
take by war."
"I understand and respect that, Mr. President. I believe in this experiment
in personal freedom as fervently as my grandfather did, serving in Jefferson's
Cabinet." (That's where he gets his fear of a strong central government, I
guess.) "But no majority can long rule over a beaten minority and remain a
democracy. The sections are in a state of profound disagreement, and the
hotheads are in the saddle, North and South. But we are not yet really at war.
There has been no vast bloodletting in battle, no terrible hatred generated yet.
There is still time for compromise."
"Compromises are often proper," said the master of them, "but no popular
government can long survive a marked precedent, that those that carry an
election can only save the government from immediate destruction by giving
up the main point of the election. Only the people, and not their servants, can
reverse their own deliberate decisions."
A look of pain crossed the Kentuckian's face; I believe the man was actu-
ally suffering, in his inability to sway the resolute President. He is surely not
one of those arrogant fire-eaters that usually do the arguing for the secesh
more of a Hamlet, this one is, which is why the Tycoon is spending the time
to save his soul from political perdition. "Do not recognize the Confederacy,"
Breckinridge suggested, "recognize only the need for a period to cool off.
During a period of peaceful separation, the natural bonds that you spoke of so
eloquently in your Inaugural will have a chance to rebind."
When Lincoln did not immediately rebut, the Kentuckian went on: "Noth-
ing will separate us more permanently than war. And it will be a long war,
Lincolndon't believe what the Biairs tell you about the unionist Southern
masses rising against the few conspirators. I know the South better than
Father Blair, or Monty or Frank. If you attack and try to conquer those
states, you will force the people of the South to rally together, to fight you
and to hate you."
"Follow your peaceful secession argument to its conclusion," Lincoln
countered. "The Southern states secede. Then there is further disagreement
and Georgia secedes from the Confederacy, and then a section of Georgia
secedes from that state. That way is anarchy, not democracy. If the experi-
ment that is our nation is to succeed, the dissatisfied elements must submit to
the will of the majority."
"By carrying any idea to an extreme, you make it absurd," Breckinridge
answered. "It is true that the people of the North and South are brethren. I
know that in my own family, and you in yours. But the South has become
distinct. It is not so much a section of the whole as it is a world of its own,
with a way of life different from the cities of the North, with different com-
mercial interests and crops and social patternsslavery, for example. To
most Southerners, Yankees are more foreign than Englishmen." He drew a
deep breath. "And when a people become distinct from their brethren, they
deserve a distinct national identity as well."
He was quoting Benjamin Franklin on that, which the Prsdt must have
known. "When it comes to slavery," Lincoln promised, as he always has, "I
have no purpose, direct or indirect, to interfere with the institution of slavery
where it exists. I have no lawful right to do so and I have no inclination to do
so." It was Lincoln's turn to sigh, because I suspect he feared he was losing
his case. He added only, "You have become a disunionist, then."
"I have resisted every pressure to support secession, you know that. For the
past year, I have opposed disunion. Now, on the very eve of battle, I want to
avoid the permanent disunion that comes from war. If you insist on war,
Lincoln, you will sow the seeds of hatred that will divide this continent for a
century. But if you permit peaceful separation now, the people, in time, will
come back together, as their commercial and social intercourse increases."
Lincoln slowly shook his head. "I have no moral right to shrink from my
duty to preserve this Union. And you, John, have no right to pursue a policy
of 'armed neutrality' for Kentucky. You would be building an impassable wall
along the line of separation, and this would be disunion completed."
"If the people of a state choose not to fight," the Kentucky senator replied,
"no national power can force them to fight. By our example of remaining at
peace, of offering men of goodwill an honest broker, perhaps we can save you
from yourselves."
"No. That would take all the trouble off the hands of secession. Your
notion of neutrality recognizes no fidelity to the Constitution, no obligation to
maintain the Union." Lincoln paused, sat straight, and looked directly at his
man. "While many who favor it are, doubtless, loyal citizens like yourself, it
is, in effect, treason."
That word lay between them like a grenade. To ameliorate it, the Tycoon
added, "My wife calls you 'Cousin John,' and I wouldn't be surprised if you
and I were Kentucky kin as well. In a larger sense, we are all the same family,
and if you could use your great influence with the border-state men to win the
war before it gets worse, you would do your kin and mine a service that our
common native state would never forget." The Tycoon always likes to remind
Kentuckians he was born in their state.
The ladies returned, Miss Grirnsley nattering about the beautiful chande-
lier, which caused the Ancient to roll his eyes heavenward, or chandelier-
ward.
"I hope you will come back again soon, Cousin John," the Prsdt said
warmly. "Cousin Lizzie here is to be our guest for at least six months, clear
through to Christmas."
"Cousin Lizzie, I would not like you to be disappointed in your expected
stay at the White House," said the gallant Kentuckian, adding a shocker: "So
I will now invite you to remain here as a guest if the Confederacy takes
possession."
"We will be only too glad to entertain her until that time, Senator," said the
Hellcat, obviously troubled at the touch of bitterness that underlay the Breck-
inridge charm. But when the possibility of treason is raised, even in the nicest
way, I suppose it tends to make a person think of ropes.
"Perhaps when next we see each other," the senator said in shaking hands
with the President, "we can discuss the suspension of the writ of habeas
corpus."
"I'll be around," said Lincoln, not giving an inch on principle, but not
giving up on Kentucky or its favorite son.