CHAPTER 16
I HAVE READ WITH PAIN
Anna loosened her hold on the pillow underneath her and reached out for
Breck. He wasn't there. She could have sworn that he had come to her late in
the night. It was not like her to have those dreams of a phantom presence in
an empty bed; she had long ago come to terms with the single life. A woman
had to stand in her own shoes and not be dependent on a man's help in life or
his form next to her through the night.
She arched her back and twisted her head around. Breck was seated by the
window, in the bathrobe she had given him to leave in her rooms, reading in
the morning light the draft of her latest pamphlet, the one Attorney General
Bates had asked her to write, A Reply to Breckinridge.
This was the first time in all the nights they had spent togetherat least
twice a week for nearly a year, excepting his visits to Kentuckythat he had
risen first. She returned to the pillow and lay still, turning that thought over.
Sex in the morning enervated her, ruining the morning for work, and the
morning was when she did her best writing; that was why she always rose
first, meeting his outstretched hand with a mug of coffee and giving him a
smiling face that did not betray too many of the wrinkles of a woman on the
far side of forty. Except when he was drinking, Breck was always ready when
it came to sexalways respectful, but always ready, night and morningand
she liked to complain that he needed a younger woman. They both knew he
already had a younger woman, his wife at home in Lexington, and Anna
suspected that he had the worship and perhaps companionship of Lizzie
Blair, also in her mid-thirties. She also wondered about Breck and Rose
Greenhow, who was her age, but would never ask him about other women,
because she had made the point to Breck that neither had any claim on the
other. Still, he had shown up unannounced last night, as if he assumed she
would be sleeping alone. That was true, and she was glad he made that
assumption, although it would be a mistake to compromise her independence
by confirming it verbally.
Why his sudden visit, and why the early awakening this morning? He must
have been lonely and worried. Anna slipped out of bed, jammed her feet into
slippers, hunched into her robe and, without saying good morning, hurried
down the hall. First to the water closet, then the washroom, then the hotel
kitchen for a tray of cakes and coffee. She took a small pot and enough cake
for one, because she did not want talk among the kitchen help; her reputation
as a stern and virtuous maiden lady was important to her.
" 1 have read with pain,' " he read aloud when she returned, " 'the speech
of the Honorable John C. Breckinridge, and now I see him descending from
his high position as a senator and come to Maryland for the purpose of
stimulating and strengthening the Confederate rebellion.' "
"I'm surprised you can read my handwriting," she said, ashamed of her
masculine scrawl, pleased that he was studying her work.
"You write like you make love," he said, and did not elaborate. She would
be damned if she would ask what he meant by that. That she wrote and made
love at great length, or oblivious to any distraction, or with great satisfaction,
blazing climaxes, and no pecuniary benefit? All true, but that subject was not
for light banter; to Anna, lovemaking was something to do with a full heart
and the gaslight on, and near a large mirror if the man was so inclined, but
never to talk about; it was one thing to be free, quite another to be brazen.
"Did you get to the Jefferson citation? That was hard to find, Breck, but it
was meant for you."
He nodded, poked through the pages on the table, and read aloud: " 'To
lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose
the law itself . . . thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.' Good
quote, but I'd have to see the context. And it doesn't answer my argument,
Anna. I'm not a stickler for the letter of the law. I want Lincoln to adhere to
the spirit of the Constitution. George Washington conducted the Revolution
of the thirteen colonies without martial law."
"You don't know what you're talking about," she told the senator from
Kentucky. "He ordered the Tory prisoners held in New York, including the
mayor, removed to Connecticutno trial, no hearing. There was nothing but
martial law all during the Revolution."
He shook his head. "Never like this. Never closing down newspapers who
dare to criticize. Never ignoring the courts, seizing property nowhere near a
war zone. All this is what we conducted the Revolution against."
She felt the bile of hot argument rise in her throat and fought it down.
There was a time to argue with this man and a time to find out what was
troubling him. He did not come to her last night, as he had on other nights, to
use her mind for a sharpening stone and her body for release. He needed
something else, something that he had never sought from her before. She was
eager to give him what he needed, as he had so often given her, if she could
figure out what it was.
She stabbed in the dark: "Everything all right at home?"
He took several deep breaths and said, "My son Cabell, the sixteen-year-
old. He's run away. Mary thinks he went South and joined the rebel army."
Anna could think of nothing to say. She had met young Cabell on the day
the electoral votes were counted and his father, as president of the Senate,
had officially declared Lincoln the victor. Despite the divisive campaign and
the dividing Union, the executive power had passed in dignity, with no ran-
cor. Uncle Bob had introduced her to his grandnephew in the gallery and the
boy had impressed her as the sort of son she would have liked to have: sturdy,
thoughtful, potentially rebellious. She had pressed his hand and hurried on,
not wanting to meet the rest of the Breckinridge family.
Breck shook his head, as if to get out of his mind the picture of his son in
uniform, carrying a musket. "I've been against the war in principle," he said,
"but there's something about having your child in the line of fire that lends a
certain urgency to the position."
"Will they use that against you in the Senate, evidence of rebel sympathy?"
He did not seem to care. "I had dinner with Ned Baker last night. We're
going to have at each other today in the Senate."
That was why he had come. Anna knew Senator Edward Baker to be one
of the best debaters in that body, a passionate and sometimes savage orator,
faster on his feet in debate and far more eloquent than Ben Wade or any of the
other radical Republicans. Baker was master of the art of the cutting ques-
tion, and would stack his questions, shortening them as he went on, until the
audience could not bear the tension. She admired that technique, and knew
that his reputation as a fighting officer added to his stature as a political
speaker. The "Gray Eagle" knew how to soar and when to swoop. Anna
suspected that Breck was troubled by the prospect of doing rhetorical battle
with him and would not admit it to himself.
"You know, Breck, opposing the war is like beating a dead horse. Peace is
that dead horse, and there's nothing you can say to bring it to life. It only
makes you sound" She avoided words like "traitorous" or "treasonable"
and chose "unpatriotic."
"One man could stop this war overnight," he replied. "Lincoln tries to
make us believe it wasn't his decision to bring on the war. In your hands, my
dissatisfied fellow citizens,' " he mimicked, " 'and not in mine, is the decision
of peace or war.' What a lie. He knows the South wants only to depart in
peace. Lincoln's advisers all told him that peaceful separation was preferable
to a war that will create hatred on this continent for a century. Isn't that true,
Anna? You know them. That's a fact, isn't it?"
She nodded. Only Blair, of all the Cabinet, had backed Lincoln's decision
for war. She did not add that Tom Scott in the War Department had told her
that Winfield Scott himself had made it clear to Lincoln that an invasion of
the South would not be successful. On that point, Breck was right: had it not
been for one man, the stubborn A. Lincoln, the war would not have come.
Two nations would exist, one slave, one free.
"That's no longer the question," she replied obliquely. "The war is here.
Bull Run has been fought, the South won, and the capital in Washington did
not fall. Now you have to choose sides." She said that gently, she hoped, not
argumentatively.
"Peace is still a side," he replied, shaking his head, "and that is the side I
am on. Lincoln once said the nation could not exist half slave and half free,
and he believes that, no matter what he says now about not striking at slavery
where it exists. I believe that no nation can exist half victor and half van-
quished."
That sort of talk, at this stage, was going to get him in trouble. After the
loss at Bull Run, the senators would not take kindly to any position that
smacked of cowardice or disloyalty. She wanted him to restrain himself, to
stop well short of giving his political opponents the ammunition to disgrace
or arrest him.
"That's a powerful line for a debate, Breck, and I know there's principle in
your position, but you're going to be President of these United States one day.
Probably three years from now, when the war is just a memory. There is no
doubt in your mind who is going to win the war, is there?"
"The Union outnumbers the Confederacy two to one," he said without
hesitation, "and has all the industrial resources. If the people don't get weary
of bloodshed, the North should win. But Annasuch a United States will be
a hate-filled nation, without liberty in the North, and denying liberty to the
South it subjugates."
"You're making that speech again," she said evenly.
"I said something like that in the Senate," he admitted. "Baker is vulnera-
ble on 'subjugation.' It's a word he's used often, and it goes too far."
She decided he needed a shock. "Breck, are you thinking of going over to
the rebels? Joining your son?"
"Of course not. I'm going to keep Kentucky neutral."
"People are saying that your plan is to go South. They say you're staying in
the Senate as long as you can obstruct the war, and then you'll take a place in
Jeff Davis's Cabinet."
"They say that because they can't stand to listen to the truth. They want
blood, and they want to believe that anybody who doesn't want blood is a
traitor."
"Breck, you know I love you, and I have your best interests at heart." She
had never mentioned to him or to herself that she loved him, which she
realized was true, and she just threw it out in passing. "You're a politician,
and you have to be practical. Let's examine the possibilities." She ticked them
off. "If you do go South1 know, but let's just assume that you talk yourself
into itand the state of Kentucky doesn't follow you, then your career is
finished no matter who wins the war."
He nodded agreement, adding, "The senators in the seceded states would
at least be honored at home, if the South loses. I would be a pariah at home
and a traitor in the North." He obviously had done some thinking along
those lines.
"Will Kentucky go South?" she asked, knowing the answer was no.
"Kentuckians will split, like the Breckinridge family. Brother against
brother, son against father. The state won't leave the Union unless Lincoln
tries to free the slaves."
"Which I have heard him say a dozen times he would not do," she added.
"So Kentucky stays in. Let's assume you stay in with your state, and you lay
low in the Senate. You can be the conscience at times, and do your duty as
you see it on habeas corpus, but by and large show your loyalty to the
Constitution, and smite the radicals like my friend Ben Wade when they try
to turn this into a war for abolition."
"That is what all my friends in the Senate suggest, Anna. John Forney has
told me that a hundred times. What then? What about the rivers of blood that
nobody raised a hand to stop?"
She knew Forney, a Pennsylvania newspaperman who badgered Simon
Cameron into getting him the juicy plum of Secretary of the Senate. Sharp
mind, good soul, excellent connections, but a drunkard. He was not a good
influence on Breck, who could hold his whiskey with any man, but no ordi-
nary hard drinker could hold his own with an experienced drunk.
"Here is what then," she said. "No war lasts forever. This war may drag on
for a year, and neither side will be the winner. The South will be exhausted,
no shoes for the soldiers. In the North, nobody, especially not Lincoln, is
going to hold together the Douglas Democrats, the Breckinridge Democrats,
the radical Republicans, and the conservative Republicans. I mean, it just
cannot happen. That's the moment for a peacemaker."
"You think the nation must lay me down and bleed awhile.' "
"Lincoln was born in Kentucky," she said. "Jeff Davis was born in Ken-
tucky. More than any part of the country, more than my Maryland even, that
state is half North and half South, half slave and half free. When the moment
comes for peacemaking, you're from the state that understands, the home of
Henry Clay, the great conciliator. And the man who makes the peace will be
the next President."
She drew herself to her full height, certain she was right. She would never
have this man as husband, but she would have him in more important ways:
political partner, conspirator, sharer of power. She could help him in ways
that suited her experience. She had helped Millard Fillmore by enlisting the
legions of Know-Nothings in his cause, only to be disappointed by that pusil-
lanimous ingrate. She had provided political support to "Buck" Buchanan,
until that confirmed bachelor withdrew behind the palisades of power. Breck
was more secure as a man and as a politician than either of those presidents,
and indeed had attacked her Know-Nothing crowd at its zenith, when even
Lincoln was being cautious about offending the powerful "Sams." Anna
wanted to be there when he made it to the top, and she was certain that this
time, this once, she would not be disappointed. She was so tired of dealing
with men in power's place who changed radically from the same men on
power's path.
"I have a lot to think about," Breck said, riffling the pages of her pamphlet,
not committing himself to discretion. "I see you kept all the family secrets to
yourself."
Anna nodded solemnly. He referred to the notes and letters in her posses-
sion of many of the Southern leaders, who had been plotting secession for
more than a dozen years. As a power in the Native American Party, she was
privy to many of the secession movement secrets, but had taken care to keep a
certain distance, never to expose herself as a member of any conspiracy. She
could write some stunning revelations of a decade of treasonable conspiracy if
she chose to, but this was not the time, and she did not want to embitter her
Reply to Breckinridge with suggestions of treason. With proper bounds, their
disagreement would serve them both well, and certainly remove any suspicion
about their relationship.
"You're going to walk to the Hill, so you can think about ways to stop the
sedition bill without coming out for secession?" she suggested. She wanted his
horse.
"Good idea. You can take my horse, it's in the back. I assume you're
coming."
"I'll be in the gallery. Wouldn't miss Ned Baker in debate with anybody.
Don't, for God's sake, let him bait you into saying anything good about
secession."