to the front in your condition. We're at an impasse, Mr. Brady." Long pause.
"I have a proposition for you, sir."
"I know what it is." Brady opened the medicine cabinet and took out a
bottle of lavender lotion to slap on his face. "You want to go to the front and
take the pictures of the last great battle, and bring the horror of war to every
home in the North. And all you want is the credit'photograph by Gardner'
and you'll let me have half the proceeds from the sale. Go to hell."
Gardner started to breathe deeply, and seemed to Foons to be near tears.
"Hell, then, is where I will go. I'll take a wagon and go to the front without a
pass and if I get arrested, so be it."
"Do that!" Brady slammed the chest shut. "Good luck."
Gardner crumpled. "You know I can't. Go ahead, Brady, you do the job
yourself. You go to the last great battle of the war. If your eyes fail, if you
miss the shot, if Foons cannot get the colloids ready just at the moment
needed, or the pictures developed within ten minutes, then photography can
wait until the next war."
After a long silence, Brady said, "Now I have a proposition to make to
you. I'll get you a pass from Stanton and give you the wagon and equipment
stereos mainly, some eight by ten plates. I'll give you Gibson as your
assistant." Good choice, thought Foons, who was just as glad not to have to
go; as O'Sullivan had guessed, he had no freedman's papers. Gibson had done
some fine work in the Peninsula.
"And it will be 'Photograph by Brady' as usual," said Gardner, thankfully
but helplessly.
"The album card will say 'Brady's Album Gallery' in big letters," said
Brady. "Along the lower edge of the print, in lettering too tiny for me to see,
it can say 'Photograph by' whoever."
"And I'll have the copyright."
"Or Gibson will, if he took it."
"Fair enough. More than fair, Mr. Brady."
"The proceeds of all sales, of course, go to Brady and Company," the boss
added. "You're on salary, if and when the money comes in."
"I'll leave within the hour," Gardner nodded, as if the money were not
important. "Homer Bates in the telegraph office says that the fight has al-
ready begun at a ridge near Sharpsburg, about six hours' ride in the wagon.
McClellan's never been so aggressive; he's forced his way through the gaps
and told the President he's on the verge of a great victory." Foons had never
seen Gardner show such excitement.
"And what did the President say?"
"He invoked God's blessing on the troops, and said, 'Destroy the rebel
army if possible.' "
"Sounds like Lincoln, all right," said Brady. "Get going before the war is
over. Shoot faces, not houses."
Gardner bolted out. Brady took off his thick glasses, folded them and put
them in the pocket of his long chemise. He leaned forward and held. his head
in his hands.
"That man owes you a lot, Mr. Brady."
"He says it but he doesn't mean it. He'll take the great pictures and open
his own place and drive me out of business if he can."
"Why do you let him, then?"
"Ah, Foons, they'll be great pictures. He has the eye." Brady sighed and
added bitterly, "And he has the eyes."

CHAPTER 21

ANTIETAM VI
DESTROY IF POSSIBLE
South Mountain's gaps had been forced. As George McClellan had expected,
the Confederates under Harvey Hill put up a fierce fight, emulating the
Greeks at Thermopylae, delaying the Union advance a full day before falling
back into an obviously prearranged defensive position behind a rust-brown,
meandering creek called the Antietam near Sharpsburg. McClellan welcomed
Lee's choice of battlefield; the Southerners would have a narrow stream in
front and the wide Potomac at their back. It was as if Lee, unconcerned about
a line of retreat, dared him to attack.
The Federals had at last won a battle, and for the first time since May were
following up the fighting with a general advance. After notifying Halleck that
Lee had been "shockingly whipped" at South Mountain, McClellan could not
resist sending a telegraph message to old Winfield Scott, in retirement at West
Point, saying: "R. E. Lee in command. The rebels routed, and retreating in
disorder." So much for Scott's first choice to head the Union forces.
The Gorilla had been heard from: "Destroy the rebel army if possible."
McClellan put that exhortation from Lincoln in his pocket with a wry smile:
for the first time since he had reassumed command, and only as a result of his
victory at South Mountain, the Union Army's general had an order making
legitimate his very presence in the field. It seemed to him that whenever he
succeeded, he was said to be carrying out orders; but if he failed, he would be
prosecuted for exceeding his authority. He felt as though he were fighting
with a noose around his neck.
The general scribbled out a message to Nellie, who he knew would be
worried: "the army has gained a glorious victory. We are pursuing with the
greatest rapidity, and expect to gain great results." He could almost hear her
telling him to rein in his enthusiasm. Plenty of fight was left in Lee, and
Pinkerton was certain that even this split portion of the South's forces out-
numbered his own. It was a risky business, attacking 90,000 rebel troops
behind a natural water barrier, with only 80,000 men of your own, with
maybe 20,000 out sick. But if he was going to strike at all, McClellan knew he
would have to strike quickly before Jackson's corps, including A. P. Hill's
division30,000 more Confederatescould return from their victory at Har-
pers Ferry to join with Lee's main force behind Antietam Creek.
The bad news was that Harpers Ferry with its 12,000 defenders had
promptly fallen, proving McClellan right and Halleck a dolt. Still, McClellan
had to grant that the garrison and all its supplies had served as bait, causing
Lee to make himself vulnerable by splitting his force.
"Is the headquarters to your liking, sir?"
He nodded approval to Colonel Key and Captain Custer. They had chosen
a two-story brick house on high ground about a mile from the Creek. Camp
chairs, telescopes, and a flagpole had been unloaded from the wagons and set
up in the front yard, augmented by armchairs belonging to the house's owner,
a man named Pry. The general had an unobstructed view of the long slope to
the river, where his army was slowly assembling. He would have a panoramic
view of the battle.
He put his eye to the telescope on the lawn. Three bridges across the
stream were visible. At the south end, to his left, a substantial stone bridge
invited crossing. In the center, another stone bridge was heavily defended by
artillery; that was where the rebels evidently expected the main attack. A mile
and a half northward, to his right, a third bridge would be sheltered from
rebel artillery fire by a dip in elevation; still farther upstream, the creek
appeared shallow enough for Federal infantry to ford.
A plan of battle formed in his mind. Joe Hooker was his most energetic
leader, especially with Burnside fretting about his authority these days; he
would send General Hooker's division across the north bridge toward the
white building he could see through the glass, dominating the high ground.
"What's that white building?"
"That's a Dunker church," said Captain Custer.
"A what?"
"The Dunkers. They're a religious sect, against war," Colonel Key ex-
plained.
McClellan grunted. "Why no steeple?"
Custer deferred to Key, who said, "I suppose they think it's arrogant to
have a steeple. None of the Dunker churches do."
He would send Hooker and his men there to make a sharp left southward
parallel to the stream, and then roll up the rebel defense line. At the same
time, at the stone bridge farthest south he would send Burnside's corps
across, which would prevent Lee from swinging his forces over to stop
Hooker. He would hold Porter's men in reserve, and if needed apply the
crusher with a thrust into the center. Or, if the battle went badlyif Jack-
son's force had already arrived back from Harpers Ferry and the rebel army
was unitedand Lee counterattacked across the Antietam, Porter and his
11,000 men would be there to make the stand to save Washington.
"Where's Burn?" McClellan was irritated at Burnside: he had been four
hours late getting into position two days before, and McClellan had to send a
sharp message calling him to account.
"He feels slighted and he's sulking," said Custer. "Thinks he should have
the command you gave Hooker."
McClellan gave a small groan. Burnside, with his odd-shaped cheek whisk-
ers, was a man whose reputation McClellan had been saving all his life. First
at West Point, helping him with his examinations; later, in civilian life, hiring
him for the Illinois Central Railroad because Burnside couldn't succeed as an
inventor. And now, when Burn seemed gripped by some mental paralysis, he
would have to carry him again.
"I have Jake Cox under him," McClellan said. "Get word to Cox to get the
Ninth Corps into position to take the bridge as soon as Hooker attacks in the
north." Lee had the advantage of interior lines, but a coordinated attack
could defeat him; the settlement of the war would follow.
"Will that be today, sir?" Custer asked. "Hooker's ready now, it's not yet
noon."
McClellan was torn: on one hand, there was the need for speed, with the
rebel forces at Harpers Ferry finishing their job of paroling the Union prison-
ers and heading back to join Lee. On the other hand, he felt the constant tug
of the need for better preparation: his artillery pieces were not yet properly
positioned to take full advantage of his firepower. Burnside needed time to
reconnoiter the stream around the southmost stone bridge; maybe it was
fordable.
Another doubt assailed him: was he right to attack at all? Lee's invasion of
the North had been stopped at South Mountain; the Gray Fox no longer
seemed to be in the mood for an offensive.
He thought of Lincoln's order in his pocket: "Destroy the enemy, if possi-
ble." It was surely possible, and despite Lincoln's mistake in withdrawing
from the Peninsula, the President did understand the need for a grand,
pitched battle between the armies preparatory to any sort of settlement. His
troops scented victory.
McClellan decided to carry the battle to the enemy. Honor as well as
politics demanded that the invader be forcibly repelled, and not permitted to
withdraw without punishment. The general was aware that the decision he
had just made was the most important of his life. It would put to rest all false
charges of treasonable timidity. He would strike the superior rebel force
where it awaited him.
But not impetuously, not foolishly. To Custer's question about an attack on
this day, he replied, "Tell Hooker to put an advance party across the creek
upstream this afternoon." He would delay the attack until the morning. "To-
morrow," he declared, "tomorrow we fight the battle that will decide the fate
of the Republic."

CHAPTER 22

ANTIETAM VII
TO THE DUNKER CHURCH
George Smalley was aware of Stanton's order banning all correspondents
from battlefields. Accordingly, the Tribune reporter sought out the general
most likely to be in the thick of the fight to offer his services as a volunteer
aide-de-camp.
His choice was "Fighting Joe" Hooker. Smalley dressed properly for the
occasion of meeting the general, setting aside his linen jacket and lavender
pants for a blue suit that could easily be adapted to a Union uniform. He rode
up to the general at dusk as Hooker prepared to launch a reconnaissance in
force across the Antietam and briefly introduced himself, not so much as a
correspondent as a volunteer. Smalley assumed that anyone who encouraged
the sobriquet of "Fighting Joe" was eager for all the recognition he could get,
and this judgment was confirmed when the general gave him all the creden-
tials he needed with a casual "Come along with me."
The cavalry, in the lead, splashed across the creek far upstream, led by
Hooker on a white horse, two divisions of infantry following in water no
deeper than their knees. Smalley was instantly as thrilled by Hooker as he
had been disappointed earlier in McClellan. Hooker played the game of war
as the youngest member of a football team plays football, showing a joy of
impending battle that the reporter had never observed in McClellan.
Hooker's countenance glowed when the battle began. Rebel muskets
flashed at them in the gathering darkness, backing Hooker's lead cavalry,
including Smalley, into the Federal infantry in the rear.
"If they had let us start earlier, we would have finished them tonight," the
general muttered, freely criticizing his commander's decision to wait until the
next day for a general attack. But even Hooker could not fight an unknown
foe on unknown terrain after dark. The Union troops lay down on the ground
within a stone's throw of the rebel skirmish line. Smalley slept with his
horse's bridle wrapped around his arm.
At four in the morning, as soon as a man could see the sights on his rifle, a
sergeant roused Smalley with a kick on the soles of his boots. The reporter
did not have time to shave before the battle of the Antietam, or the battle of
SharpsburgSmalley did not know what to call it yetbegan.
Three divisions abreast, Hooker's corps drove the rebel pickets back to-
ward the white Dunker church, taking a withering fire along the thousand
yards. Smalley saw the puffs of smoke and heard the bursts that indicated the
source of most of the rebel fire as coming from an adjoining cornfield. Hooker
reined in his horse and with his sword waved at his batteries of artillery.
Thirty-six Union fieidpieces began blazing canister and shell into the standing
corn, chopping itand the rebels firing from withinlike a long scythe.
From across the creek, longer-range Federal guns joined in the barrage. After
five minutes of the worst artillery hell Smalley had ever heard about, General
Hooker called a halt to the firing and led his infantry forward.
They were met by a new sheet of rifle fire; the Federal barrage had not
dislodged the rebel infantry. An officer in front of Smalley dropped off his
horse, the animal bolting forward until it, too, stumbled and dropped. He
could hear the hail of bullets, and realized why it was called "hail"the lead
was whizzing through the air before thudding into flesh or dirt. Military
formations were lost as the two armies grappled man to man. His eyes
smarted from the smoke, his ears were deafened by the boom of nearby guns.
Some crazed artillerymen were firing into the engaged infantry as if not car-
ing which side's men were being killed and maimed.
But Hooker's troops kept on, swarming ahead toward the objective, a
whitewashed church now peeked with rifle fire. The Confederate line at last
broke, soldiers in butternut gray-brown trying to scramble over turnpike
fences and being impaled as bullets caught up with them. Northern voices
were roaring as the tide of battle seemed to turn.
Then the Texans hit them. The yelps of the countercharging rebels sent a
shiver through the ranks as Hood's troops emerged from the woods, pulled
up short, and at point-blank range decimated the Union ranks. In horror,
Smalley saw men falling all around him, felt himself in the vortex of blood
and death. He fought back a sudden urge to evacuate his bowels.
"The enemy are breaking through my lines!" Hooker shouted. "Fall back!"
Smalley's horse took a bullet in the neck, reared backward, and the re-
porter slipped out of the saddle before the horse collapsed on him. He ran to
the rear with the others, all the way back to where the Federals had begun the
charge a thousand yards and two thousand casualties ago. General Hooker,
seated against a tree, looked dazed, one foot oozing blood, the fight gone out
of him. But the massed Federal artillery saved the day: when the Texans
whooped and charged again, Union canister ripped into their ranks and the
rebel line melted away.
Hooker could not bring himself to assemble his men to mount a new
charge. Some had deserted, others were separated from their units, thousands
were dead or wounded; his corps was shattered. Another Union general came
by, a white-haired manSmalley assumed it was old Mansfieldand the
bleeding Hooker waved him and his fresh troops ahead toward the Dunker
church.
The terrible slaughter began again, without the mercy of a lull, the two
armies stepping on their own and each other's dead, attacking and counterat-
tacking. In the end, about noon, a gray-faced force of bluecoats held the
ground around the church, too exhausted to press their advantage. The men
in gray farther down the slope, many firing from the cover provided by
corpses, were too whipped to throw more bodies into the carnage.
Longstreet rode down the line from the north. Stonewall Jackson, newly
arrived from Harpers Ferry, having ridden far in advance of his own infantry,
had helped stop the Federal assault, thanks to Hood's Texans.
"Where are your men?" Longstreet asked General Hood, who replied,
"Dead on the field." The Texan had started fighting with nine hundred; three
hundred were left. In all, the force under Jackson must have lost five thou-
sand men that morning, probably more than the Federals.
Longstreet knew they could not afford that; in all, Lee had fewer than forty
thousand men at Sharpsburg, not half of what he presumed to be the effec-
tives available to McClellan. The gray line was a wisp, shuttling men up and
down the interior line to meet the uncoordinated Yankee thrusts. Luckily the
southernmost bridge had not been seriously attacked; Longstreet could not
understand why McClellan's favorite, Bumside, was holding back, but he was
thankful that all the attackers did not come at once.
Suddenly the center was in crisis. A sunken road had offered the Confeder-
ates a natural entrenchment, and from that cover the gray troops had been
picking off any Yankees who dared come up the middle. But a Yankee force
had outflanked the long trench and started blazing into it with enfilade fire.
Longstreet looked down into the position and for the first time in his military
career wanted to be sick. Bodies of Southern boys lay next to each other, on
top of each other, scores of corpses shot in the bloody lane, as if prepared for
mass burial.
Slightly to the north of the center, not far from the remainder of Hood's
Texans, a force of bluecoats was pushing back a regiment of North Carolina
men. Longstreet signaled for them to get back into line and return fire, but a
Confederate colonel held up an empty rifle helplessly. His men were out of
ammunition.
Two artillery pieces were standing idle, no gunners to man them. The
general dismounted and told his three aides to follow him and bring the
cannons into line against the oncoming charge. Longstreet held the reins of
the four horses and walked forward to call the shots. When the Yankees
appeared, they were met with a roar of canister from one gun, then in a few
seconds from the other. Longstreet signaled for the otherwise useless North
Carolina men to stay in line and wave their colors; he was determined to
make it seem as if the position were defended by ammunition-laden infantry
backed up by artillery.
General Chilton, Lee's adjutant general, came riding up moments later and
asked, "Where are the troops you're holding the line with?"
Longstreet pointed to his three aides, firing faster than they had ever done
in artillery school, and to the flag wavers. "Over there, but they don't have a
cartridge." Chilton's eyes widened; he struck spurs to his horse and sped to
Lee for reinforcements. Longstreet knew the southern part of the line could
spare them; he silently blessed Bumside for delaying his attack.
Arms folded, contemplating the stone bridge a hundred yards ahead of
him, Ambrose Bumside turned over in his mind the advisability of sending
his men charging across.
"An order from General McClellan," called Colonel Key, dismounting.
That was unlike Mac; he rarely interfered with the decisions of his field
commanders once a battle had begun. Bumside doubted that Hooker, Mac's
new favorite, was being similarly harassed. "Push across the bridge," went
the order, "and move rapidly up the heights."
"Great loss of life involved," Bumside warned.
"Carry the bridge at the point of the bayonet, if necessary," Colonel Key
insisted; "sacrifices must be made." That did not sound like McClellan at all.
Still, Key was the commanding general's right-hand man, which was proba-
bly why McClellan had chosen him to be the carrier of such an unlikely
order. "Every moment is of the utmost importance."
"McClellan seems to think I am not trying my best to carry this bridge,"
General Bumside told Colonel Key. "You are the third or fourth one who has
been to me this morning with similar orders." He waved him off.
For seven hours, Bumside had been probing the defenses around the stone
bridge. Perhaps he should have sent a man ahead the night before to test the
depth of the stream; if it was fordable, he could send his fourteen thousand
men swarming across and overwhelm the rebels sniping from the other side.
Bumside had been determined to get his men across dry-shod, thus better
able to carry the battle up to higher ground, but Key's visit could not be
ignored: He took a deep breath and ordered two regiments to rush the bridge,
never mind the casualties.
The charge, to his surprise, was successful; for some reason, the rebel
defenses were weaker than he had anticipated. With that bridgehead secured,
Bumside ordered another division to attempt to ford the creek farther down-
stream, if it was not too deep. To his chagrin, the men did so with ease; they
could have been across and in the fighting first thing in the morning.
Instead of pressing ahead against the thin Confederate ranksit seemed
that most of Lee's men were defending the other two bridges, in light of the
relative inactivity at Bumside's positionthe Union force stopped just over
the bridge. A colonel came running back to him with embarrassing news.
"We're out of ammunition, General. The men have been shooting at snipers
all morning, and we didn't realize that when we put them across the bridge."
"Ah," said Bumside. He could count on nobody.
When he said nothing else, the colonel asked, "Can we get the cartridges
across to them?"
"No, bring that division back. Send up another division equipped to fire."
That took two more hours to do. Bumside was still irritated at the way he
had been treated by McClellan; it struck him that Mac unaccountably fa-
vored that sneaky military politician Hooker in this campaign. He was fur-
ther annoyed by, and refused to respond to, messages of urgency from the
command post in the Pry house. By midaftemoon he had put only three
thousand of his fourteen thousand New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians across
the stream and into the fighting, but could not see why his steady deliberation
should be cause for McClellan's haste. He wondered if his old friend Mac had
been panicked by the relentless pressure from Stanton and Halleck into at-
tacking a superior force.
Lee did not let it show, but he knew he was witnessing the development of
a catastrophe.
He had no reserves. His left, the northern position under Jackson, could
not withstand another Union assault; accordingly, he ordered Jackson to
deliver an attack of his own. His center was evidently being held by Long-
street's staff aides manning a cannon and a few unarmed men with flags. His
right, which had been stripped to a skeleton force to strengthen the left
against Hooker and those who followed him, now was under pressure as
Bumside's well-rested thousands were pouring across the stone bridge. He
needed a few thousand men to stop Bumside's belated move but could draw
them from nowhere. A. P. Hill's light division was seventeen miles away in
Harpers Ferry, but Lee did not know whether his message to drop everything
and join the battle had made it to him.
"General, are you going to send us in again?" The voice of a cannoneer,
ordered with his comrades to join Jackson in his attack, was familiar. It was
his son, Robert.
"You must do all you can to drive those people back," the general replied.
The boy was in the ranks, as he should be, with no privileges. He was proud
of him.
His right began to cave. Blue flags could be seen on the ridges above,
almost a mile up from Bumside's brigade; they could soon come around and
cut off his line of retreat to the Potomac. In the distance, he could see two
columns of troops in blue uniforms marching along separate sections of the
ridge line. If they were Bumside's men, he might have to consider the possi-
bility of surrender. Longstreet had been right: Lee should not have divided
his army in the presence of McClellan, because Little Mac was not the easily
confusable Pope. Lee did not dwell on those thoughts; if this army was going
to lose, it would lose in glory, and he would take the ragged remnant home to
fight again another day. Only heroes would be left.
"Whose troops are those?" he asked an artillery lieutenant. The officer
offered him his binoculars. "Can't use it," Lee said, showing his bandaged
hands. "Those troops therewhose are they?"
"They are flying the United States flag, sir."
Burnside's men, to cut him off. "And whose troops are those?" he pointed
to the other column approaching from the southwest.
The lieutenant focused his glasses. "Those are blue uniforms, I'm sorry to
say, General."
Lee did not permit himself a groan. The gamble had been his own, against
Old Pete's prudent advice, and he would bear the responsibility not only for
the terrible losses, but for the defeat.
"They're Union soldiers, I think, sir, but they have our flags." The spotter
seemed confused. "Virginia and Confederate colors, General, maybe captured
from us."
Hope surged in Lee. The colors were not captured, the uniforms were
taken along with shoes from the captured Union garrison and worn by the
captors on their forced march to the battle.
Lee nodded calmly, as if that was what he expected. "It is A. P. Hill from
Harpers Ferry." He was not finished yet.

CHAPTER 23

ANTIETAM VIII
A MASTERPIECE OF ART
"In ten minutes the fortunes of the day seem to have changed," wrote Smal-
ley, kneeling, his notepad on his knee. "It is the rebels now who are advanc-
ing, pouring out of the woods in endless lines, sweeping through the field
which their comrades had just left . . ."
The Confederates were wearing blue Federal uniforms, the Tribune man
noted, part of the loot captured at Harpers Ferry, along with boots and rifles
in such short supply. The Rhode Island and Connecticut regiments were
confusedmen in blue shooting at them?and held their fire. A couple of
Ohio regiments were rushed over to help Burnside's men but A. P. Hill's
angry rebels were not to be stopped.
Powell Hill had apparently whipped his men seventeen miles in seven
hours, over rugged terrain, losing two thousand of his five thousand by the
wayside, but the men who arrived, no matter how tired, knew what their
mission was. Their first volley dropped four hundred Connecticut men and
drove the rest to cover. Burnside's line sagged and broke. Bursting shells set
fire to haystacks where men were hiding or resting; their screams mingled
with the sound of musket fire and the yip-yip-yip of rebel yells.
Was the battle over? Who had won? Smalley faced the twin problems of
figuring that out, compounded by the challenge of finding a telegrapher to
send his copy back to the New York Tribune.
A brigadier on McClellan's staff rode up to him. "Smalley! You're a friend
of General Hooker. Ride to him now, tell him to rally his corps and lead it
back onto the field. He can save the dayand save the Union!"
"Hooker is injured," the correspondent replied. "He took a bullet in his
foot."
"Let him get into an ambulance, for God's sake, and drive back onto the
field." McClellan's man, a general who said his name was Wilson, was insis-
tent that Smalley and nobody else carry the message. "We need Hooker now,
to take command. The men need a leader."
What was this general suggesting? That Hooker seize command from Mc-
Clellan, or merely take command of his own mennow under George Meade
and rejuvenate them? He chose to interpret the suggestion as well-inten-
tioned rather than mutinous. "Hooker will go back in action," he responded
with enthusiasm, "I'll answer for it."
He rode back to the farmhouse field hospital. General Hooker was seated
with his bandaged foot elevated on a chair.
"General McClellan wants to know how you are," said Smalley.
"In pain. What news from the battlefield?"
"Our side is no longer fighting," Smalley said. "Bumside cannot get his
troops into the battle. Porter's reserves have not been committed and may
never be. The rebels have suddenly been reinforced, and there's every chance
that Lee will escape across the Potomac."
"All a waste, all those gallant men dead."
"Unless" Smalley let the word hang. Here was this man's opportunity to
become a genuine hero, since McClellan's caution and Bumside's ineptitude
had created a vacuum.
"You need not go on," Hooker said hastily. "You see I cannot move."
The correspondent's shoulders sagged. He left, not knowing whether he
had carried a message from McClellan, or from a group of insubordinate
officers who wanted a fighting general to replace McClellan. Smalley won-
dered for a moment if a newspaperman should be carrying that kind of mes-
sage, then reminded himself that he had wangled his way onto the field as a
general's aide.
But now he had to write and file his story, whether or not the battle was
finally over. No other correspondent was likely to have seen as much as he
had seen. He made a note to remind himself of the critical mistake: "Bumside
hesitated for hours in front of the bridge which should have been carried at
once by a coup de main . . ."
As darkness began to add to the smoke in making observation difficult,
Smalley hurried to McClellan's headquarters at the Pry house. The battle was
stalemated; Lee's men had held at all three bridges. Were the Confederates
exhausted, weak, ready to collapse at one more blow from fresh troopssuch
as those reserves under Fitz-John Porter that McClellan had saved for this
critical moment? Or was Lee playing possum, holding back thousands of
hidden troops of his own, waiting for McClellan to commit his last offensive
reserve so as to strike back hard, win the battle and the war?
He looked at the men gathered on the lawn in front of the Pry house and
made notes on the relevant details: "McClellan's glass for the last half hour
has seldom been turned away from the left. He sees clearly enough that
Bumside is pressedneeds no messenger to tell him that. His face grows
darker with anxious thought." Nobody else would have these details.
"Looking down in the valley where fifteen thousand troops are lying,"
Smalley scribbled, "he turns a half-questioning look on Fitz-John Porter, who
stands by his side, gravely scanning the field. They are Porter's troops below,
fresh and only impatient to share in the fight.
"But Porter slowly shakes his head, and one may believe that the same
thought is passing through the mind of both generals: 'They are the last
reserves of the last army of the Republic; they cannot be spared.' "
McClellan, with Fitz-John Porter at his side, Captain Custer and Colonel
Key at hand, stepped away from the telescope. Bumside's attack downstream
had been a disaster. He should have followed orders and had fourteen thou-
sand men across that bridge at 7 A.M. The strangely lackadaisical, probably
fearful Bumside had finally put a fourth of his force across in midafternoon,
but the delay had allowed Lee to concentrate on stopping Hooker to the
north; now, the portion of Bumside's Federals who had crossed were met and
stopped by A. P. Hill's men in their new Union blue coats.
Little Powell's relatively small force, coming just at the wrong moment,
had effectively stemmed the Union tide; Nellie would find that ironic. It
occurred to McClellan that if he had gone into action a day earlier, Lee
would not have been able to reassemble his divided army. He put that trou-
bling thought out of his mind; today's real problems were caused by the
failures of Bumside and Hooker.
In McClellan's eyes, "Fighting Joe" had received a bullet in the foot and
taken himself out of the action on the most important day of his nation's life
not much fight in Joe. McClellan reminded himself that Albert Sidney
Johnston had died from neglect of a similar wound, but a corps commander's
place in battle was at the head of his troops, unless he was seriously disabled.
He stepped back from the eyeglass to take in the panorama of the battle:
Federal shells were bursting over and in the Confederate lines, as his artillery
outgunned Lee's; the smoke from cannon and muskets obscured the fields
where men were yet grappling in the dusk. Most of the flashes came from his
left, downstream, where Burnside's men were being stopped; to the right,
what was left of Hooker's old command was still putting pressure on the rebel
lines.
Now was the moment, McClellan knew, to gamble all with a charge of
Porter's fresh reserve troops up the middle. If such an attack succeeded, Lee
might well be routed, the war won, McClellan recognized as the worthy
successor to Napoleon.
"Robert Lee has always come up with the troops needed to stop us," said
Porter, reading his thoughts. McClellan rested his arm on the telescope and
looked at the ground; Fitz was the one general he could depend upon. He had
courage and judgment. If McClellan called on him, Porter would lay down
his life, if need be, in breaking that rebel center.
But what Porter had observed about Lee was true: somehow, at every
stage, the aggressive Confederate commander, when forced on the defensive,
had come up with enough troops at the right place to stop the Union thrusts.
McClellan was certain that Lee had more forces than he was showing. How
strong were his reserves? If Porter's men charged the center, would Lee then
commit Longstreet and his corps, who had probably been held secretly in
reserve, to stop them? And if Longstreet did stop the charge, as the rebels had
done all this uncoordinated day, what then?
The overeommitted Union Army would have no way of stopping Lee's
counterattack across Antietam stream. The Union commander put himself in
Lee's shoes: Let McClellan exhaust his reserves attacking us all day, and then
with typical audacitythrow in Longstreet's fifteen thousand to drive the
Union from the field. Nothing then would stand between Lee and Washing-
ton, or Baltimore, or Philadelphia. With an army of only fifty thousand men,
he could humble the North and end the war.
"How many men do you have for a charge, Fitz?"
"I had eighteen thousand to start. We've been feeding them in slowly all
afternoon, left and right. About four thousand infantry ready to go now."
That decided it for McClellan; the reserve was not great enough to carry
the day on a charge, but it might be strong enough to make a stand and hold
fast if Lee threw in his reserves in the next hour. McClellan could not prop-
erly take the gamble. His historic assignment was to stop Lee's invasion,
which he had done; his task was not to risk total Union defeat on the possibil-
ity of total Union victory. No commander had the right to gamble for per-
sonal glory with his nation's existence.
"We'll hold your men here to stop Lee if he attacks," McClellan decided.
Yesterday and today, he had taken the offensive; he won a victory yesterday
and fought Lee to at least a draw today. The dead and wounded were heaped
on the field in numbers that staggered the mind; the moans of the wounded
could be heard behind the roar of artillery. Enoughthe day's battle was
over, the Republic saved; nobody could ask more of this army.
"Today's battle was a masterpiece of art," Porter assured him.
McClellan agreed. "My only mistake was not in giving to you the com-
mand I gave to Bumside."
He put his eye to the glass and watched the battle slowly become history.
McClellan had found the enemy army, driven it to bay, and attacked a force
that everyone agreed was much larger than his own. His fine army had bled
and caused the enemy to bleed, as never before on this continent. He had
captured a dozen guns and scores of enemy colors, losing, to his knowledge,
none of his own. Plenty of trophies. He had been on the offensive all day;
tomorrow, let Lee take the burden of the offense. McClellan would not leave
the bloodsoaked field; when Lee learned that, he would have to withdraw.
"You'll be criticized by Lincoln and Stanton," Porter reminded him, "for
not being aggressive enough."
That would be the next battlewith the second-guessers in Washington.
But who in that crowd, with bags packed for evacuation, could dispute the
fact that he had saved the country? "I'm going to insist that Stanton be
removed and that Halleck shall give way to me as commander in chief."
"General-in-chief," Porter corrected him. "Lincoln is"
"I will not serve under Halleck, the incompetent fool." He thought of the
twelve thousand Union troops captured at Harpers Ferry, thanks to Halleck's
stupidity and Lincoln's agreementa force that could have been charging the
rebel center right now. "Stanton must leave and Lincoln must restore my old
place to me. Unless those two conditions are fulfilled, I will leave the service."
"They cannot refuse you that."
"I have done all that can be asked, in twice saving the country." That was
the nub of it: McClellan had never campaigned to crush the South and subju-
gate its people. His mission had been only "the defense of Washington," but
he had interpreted that as "to seek out and confront the enemy and save the
country," and that is what he had done this day, here on the banks of the
Antietam. He had demonstrated that neither side could conquer the other;
now was the time for sensible statesmen to work out a settlement to restore
the Union as it was.
With Stanton and Halleck out of the way, he could deal directly with
Lincoln, who was not a bad sort when well advised. McClellan promised
himself to keep the President better informed in the future; he was entitled to
know grand strategy, just as McClellan, if he succeeded Lincoln as President,
would expect to be informed by his subordinates.
He looked through the telescope again at the seemingly vulnerable center.
Who knew how many men Lee had in reserve? The General straightened, and
to Porter shook his head; there would be no gamble.
George Smalley looked again at the speculative line he had written, placing
words in the mouth of one or the other of the Union generals: "They are the
last reserves of the last army of the Republic; they cannot be spared." Was it
fair of him to put that last part in quotations? It was only an observer's
educated guess at what had been said, but perhaps the reader would think
Porter actually was overheard using those words. Smalley liked it; he left it in
quotes. Poetic license. Let the generals deny that was what they were think-
ing.
What about his lead? The Tribune's readers would want to know who won,
but he could not tell them because the battle was not over. Who would
withdraw tonight or tomorrow? Would the exhausted armies, more than deci-
mated by casualties, simply accept a stalemate and go home?
He could start with the casualties: "George McClellan, whose concern
about casualties has caused him to be charged with timidity, today led the
Union Army into the bloodiest single day of the war. Preliminary estimates
are twenty-five thousand men killed, wounded and missing, evenly divided
between the armies despite the South's advantage of interior lines and of
being on the defensive all day . . ." The reporter rejected that before his
editor could; irony did not belong in a lead.
Smalley began again. "Battlefield of Antietam, Wednesday evening, Sept.
17, 1862 . . . Fierce and desperate battle between two hundred thousand
men has raged since daylight, yet night closes on an uncertain field." That
was safer and better. "It is the greatest fight since Waterloo, all over the field
contested with an obstinacy equal even to Waterloo . . ."
Hungry, bone-tired, afflicted with the urge to unburden himself of all the
unreported information cramming his head, Smalley commandeered his col-
league's horsePaige started to object, but Smalley snatched the reins out of
his handsand raced for Frederick.
The Union forces had outrun the telegraph cable, which could only be
strung at a mile an hour. Smalley had heard that McClellan had sent back a
few cryptic messages to Stanton that a great battle was raging, perhaps the
greatest in history. Those had been sent by rider to Frederick, Md., and then
telegraphed to Washington, which would be the Tribune's method of filing.
Smalley whipped his horse like A. P. Hill driving his troops but arrived at
the telegraph office too late. The door was locked and the office dark. Nobody
in the upstairs apartment knew where the telegraph operator lived; the corre-
spondent would have to wait until seven in the morning.
Smalley sat on the front step of the telegraph office and started to compose
his copy. If Bennett's man on the New York Herald had gone up to Hagers-
town and found the telegraph open there, the Tribune would be beaten and
editor Sydney Gay would never forgive him. Should he ride north? What if he
got lost, or the horse stumbled, or the Herald had some unsuspected method
of filing near Frederick? Smalley decided not to move; he would write his
story where he sat, sleep on the telegrapher's doorstep, and file at daybreak.
Covering some battles, a reporter often had to operate with no knowledge of
the competition's resources.
CHAPTER I
Two PROCLAMATIONS
No news from the front in Maryland. Lincoln fretted in his office for a time,
then bolted over to the telegraph office, but the only word Stanton had re-
ceived from McClellan was a brief message relayed through Baltimore be-
cause the Union forces had outrun the telegraph line, "We are in the midst of
the most terrible battle of the warperhaps of history."
He weighed McClellan's adjective: not the "greatest" battle, but the "most
terrible" battle. What did that meanmore casualties than at Shiloh? Typical
of McClellan to think of the hair-raising terror of a battle and not the oppor-
tunity to deliver the blow to save the Union and end the war. Lincoln had
sent him eighteen thousand men with Fitz-John Porter; had that been
enough? Had he been prudent, or criminally timid, to hold back fifty thou-
sand for the defense of Washington? Certainly those fifty thousand could not
hold Washington if McClellan lost to Lee north of Frederick. Lincoln began
to have second thoughts about not giving McClellan all the reinforcements he
sought before "the most terrible battle."
Lincoln had to give McClellan credit for unaccustomed audacity: for the
past two weeks he had been acting like a fighter. What had changed him so?
Lincoln assumed his reappointed general had been aroused to action by the
sort of snubbing he got after Pope's angry charges against him. Certainly
Little Mac had performed well a few days before at South Mountain, the first
real victory the Union could claim since Grant at Donelson more than half a
year ago. If he won today at Sharpsburg, capturing Lee's army, McClellan
would pose a new and different problem: the victorious commander, with the
army personally loyal to him, demanding that his views of peacemaking be
carried out by the President.
On the other hand, if McClellan lost, the war was lost. The government
would have to evacuate Washington and sue for peace on terms of disunion.
Lincoln closed his mind to that; it was not in McClellan's nature to lose
decisively, as he had shown on the Peninsula. If this day at Sharpsburg went
against him, the Young Napoleon would retire in good order, defending
Washington, holding fast to his professional reputation, husbanding the re-
mains of his beloved army. At least he could be depended on not to lose.
That, of course, might be accounted for by more than his cautious nature;
Lincoln suspected that the never-losing, never-winning pattern was part of
the ambitious general's political-military design. Word had reached him of
the talk in the army of stalemate, and negotiation between officers on both
sides who knew and admired each other. And Stanton had reported the
communication between McClellan and the Democratic leaders in New York.
Such insubordination was really intolerablethe President slammed a sheaf
of telegraph messages down on Major Eckert's desk at the thought of itbut
what could be done? No McClellan, no army.
He could do nothing about that internal threat in this dark and doubtful
moment. But Lincoln resolved, at the first opportunity, to rid himself and the
nation of the determinedly irresolute general, and of the element in the officer
corps whose heart was not in the war. The clearing of that particular hard
acre, roots and stones, could not take place after a defeat, when McClellan
would still be needed to defend Washington; nor could it be after a victory,
which would make the general's removal appear to be politically inspired and
might stimulate an army revolt.
Lincoln pondered a third possibility: the ambiguity of a draw. What if the
result of today's battle turned out to be mutual bloodletting and exhaustion,
as at Pittsburg Landing, with no clear victory for either side? In that case,
Lincoln suspected that the pressure from Wade and Sumner and Greeley
would make it expedient to take important command from McClellan soon.
But not too soon; elections were coming and the Peace Democrats needed a
dramatic issue to rally 'round. The second dismissal of McClellan, especially
after any sort of achievement at Sharpsburg, would provide them that issue.
Election Day in most states was only six weeks off; Lincoln could wait until
then, but was determined not to wait a day later.
Meanwhile, if his generals could not win the war, Lincoln knew of one
powerful political action he could take to strike at the secession.
Favoring his sprained left wrist, which was swollen and aching, Lincoln
strode down the long War Department hall to Halleck's office. Senator
Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, a good War Democrat, was there with a
Union captain in tow, obviously dropping some bad news on the general-in-
chief. Halleck was slouched behind his desk, clinging to his elbows the way he
did when he was too scared to give a recommendation. He rose when the
President walked in and told the captain to tell his story again.
"I just rode in from Harpers Ferry, sir. Our cavalry escaped."
"And the rest of the garrison?" Lincoln, as he asked the question, dreaded
the answer.
"Surrendered. Colonel Miles wouldn't put up a fight. He just saw those
rebels up on the heights and he ran up the white flag. Got killed doing it, too
cannonball."
Lincoln dug his hands into his hair; twelve thousand men captured at a
time when the draft was producing no men at all! Tons of supplies now in the
hands of the rebels, when they needed boots and rifles as never before to
supply their invasion of the North. The garrison had been under the com-
mand of an officer convicted of drunkenness at First Bull Run, and this
sudden surrender smacked to Lincoln of cowardice or treason.
"Other Union officers were there," Halleck said to the captain, as if it were
all his fault. "Did they all turn tail when Miles wanted to give up?"
"Almost all tried to argue him out of it, General." The captain was near
tears. "But Colonel Miles kept saying he was not going to be party to a
massacre. We told him that McClellan had sent a relief column, and that we
ought to try to hold out a while if only to tie down General Jackson's men,
but he wouldn't listen."
"It's true he was outnumbered," Halleck said weakly.
"That's when the cavalry made our dash out. We didn't want to spend the
war on parole or in prison."
"You did well to do that," Lincoln told him. The cavalry would have done
better to dash toward McClellan's forces in battle rather than run home to
Washington.
Lincoln shook his head in disgust. He told Halleck he was going out to the
Soldiers' Home for the night, and to send a rider immediately with any
telegraphed word from McClellan. He could not help the war by waiting in
the telegraph office, but he could work on a second draft of one of the procla-
mations in Silver Spring.
"Stanton asked me to remind you about the proclamation on internal secu-
rity," said Halleck miserably. "He expects riots about the draft, and he may
be right if things go badly at Sharpsburg."
Lincoln nodded and walked outside to his horse. Hill Lamon handed him
the reins, and followed him on the forty-minute journey to Silver Spring. The
heat had let up; a thunderstorm appeared to be brewing. The well-armed
Lamon was a comfort, even though Lincoln liked to say he had no need of a
bodyguard.
He could think on the horse. Lincoln tried to direct his mind away from
the battle in Sharpsburg because there was nothing he could do about that
now. He had two proclamations to consider, both of them presidential actions
that would surely affect the outcome of the war. The papers were in his plug
hat, where he had been accustomed to carrying important papers as a lawyer
riding circuit.
One proclamation was the suspension again of habeas corpus, this time on
a much broader and more official basis. Stanton, who had lifted a milder
order when he took over at the War Department, now felt it absolutely neces-
sary. Agitators were everywhere, sowing disloyalty and disunion, undermin-
ing the recruitment of needed troops. When the commanding general at
Cairo, Illinois, tried to find jobs for confiscated slaves sent Northoverriding
the Illinois law against bringing free negroes into the statethere had been a
terrible ruckus. Lincoln judged the courts incompetent to handle such wide-
spread anti-Union activity.
The other proclamation was general emancipation, leapfrogging the provi-
sions of the Confiscation Act. He would work on that first, having wrestled
with it for months, ever since that dismaying session with McClellan at Har-
rison's Landing, coming back from the Peninsula, when he'd had to suffer
instruction from his military commander on political goals.
Seward, Weed, Blair and the rest of the conservatives would continue to
counsel against it, and Lincoln granted the soundness of their expectation
that emancipation would harm some Republican chances in the elections that
fall. But he also knew that emancipation cut both ways: Sumner needed such
an act to help him win in pro-abolition Massachusetts. And Stanton was
denying General Wadsworth combat command because he wanted him to run
for New York governor against the Peace Democrat Horatio Seymour; Stan-
ton said Greeley was sure Wadsworth and emancipation would win, no mat-
ter what Thurlow Weed said.
On the whole, it was Lincoln's political judgment that this fall's elections
would not be damaged as badly by an emancipation edict as Weed and the
Biairs warned. Abolition would hurt the Republicans in Illinois--iis friend
Leonard Swett would have a hard timebut it would be good to have Wade
and Tad Stevens and the rest of the radicals in Congress, along with Stanton
and Chase in the Cabinet, enthusiastic about the Administration's policy. The
abolitionists were still a minority in the country, but Lincoln sensed that their
view had become dominant in the Republican party.
And emancipation would be an answer to all those in the North, like
August Belmont and that money crowd, who kept demanding something
decisive. Lincoln could declare that it was "my policy to have no policy," and
claim to be driven by events, but a real policy was what people wanted
many of them only to be able to oppose that policy. Drift was the worst thing;
with the military initiative now in Lee's hands, Lincoln could ill afford the
appearance of political drift.
Walking his horse, reins in his good hand, holding his throbbing wrist high
to alleviate the pain, Lincoln was aware that he was making a case for issuing
the two proclamations right away. Still, the blatantly unconstitutional seizure
of property troubled him: of the Founders, Adams and Jefferson had been
abroad when the slavery compromise was made at the Constitutional Con-
vention, but Washington and Madison were present; was it now for Abraham
Lincoln, elected by forty percent of the people, and after having solemnly
promised in his Inaugural not to strike at slavery where it already existed, to
break that compromise?
Yes, he reckoned it was, because otherwise the Union would dissolve. The
governments of England and France were fixing to recognize the Confederacy
Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, had said as much recently. That
would give Jeff Davis the means and method to buy arms, to break the
blockade, to set up in business as a country. But by freeing the South's slaves,
Lincoln would embarrass the British government in the eyes of its own peo-
ple. Prime Minister Palmerston might have to stay put, at least for another
year.
More important, he reasoned, the threat of abolishment would hurt the
enemy where he lived, in the South, on the plantations. He had to hurt them,
and keep hurting them, until they realized that secession cost too much in
lives and treasure. Emancipation might cause hundreds of thousands of
blacks now producing the South's food and cotton to run away. A good
number of young whites would have to be kept at home in fear of a servile
revoltwhich, of course, Lincoln did not intend, but which would be recog-
nized as a danger.
On top of that, he could use Africans in the U.S. Army, first as noncombat
helpers, later as soldiers. By letter from New Orleans, General Ben Butler
reported that he had met with a black delegation and assured him that they
would be excellent fighters.
Of course, there was the plain morality of emancipation: if anything was
wrong, slavery was wrong. He had spoken out against its extension to free soil
all his adult life: it was a monstrous practice, and those who deny freedom to
others deserve it not for themselves. But that moral argument was not con-
trolling in this case: he had pledged time and again not to interfere with the
peculiar institution where it lay, provided only the Union would stand. And if
the Southern states would come back today, he could not insist that their
peculiar institution be abolished. Beyond the moral argument, legallycon-
stitutionallyLincoln knew he did not have a leg to stand on. The only
justification that would hold up in the court of public sentiment was military
necessity. On that basis, anything could be done.
The unconstitutional nature of abolition by fiat did not overly bother him:
the Southern leaders had warred upon their flag, unforgivably calling into
question the central idea of majority rule, and that had to cost something.
That it should cost them the profitable institution of slavery was not all that
distressing.
Lamon was humming. The brawny marshal from back home knew a lot of
songs, both sweet and sad, which he would sing to the rhythm of the horses'
steps. Lincoln asked him to sing "Picayune Butler," a comic ditty he always
enjoyed, as they approached Silver Spring. Lamon obliged, and the President
went back to his thoughts.
The counsel for the defense of the Constitutiona voice in Lincoln's mind
as he was making the case for emancipationhad asked, Was this lawful?
The attorney prosecuting the preservation of the Union, another voice in his
mind, had a ready answer: Constitutional, no, but lawful, yesas a war
power needed to preserve the Constitution itself.
So military necessity is the justification, said the defense counselbut is
military necessity the real reason? Isn't the ulterior motive purely political,
that you are losing your basic constituency in your party, and that without
appeasing your radical Republicans you will not be able to fight on for
Union?
Good question, Lincoln, sitting as judge, said to defense counsel, and
looked to the prosecutor of the war for reply. Stipulated, conceded that fierce
Unionist, surprisingly: let us grant that military necessity is merely a subter-
fuge, enabling the President to justify the political act of holding on to his
noisy core supporters. By so doing, the prosecutor argued ingeniously, the
President rebuilt the political backing needed to carry on the warwhich
transformed that politically motivated action into a military necessity.
Lincoln nodded approvingly. The prosecutor's argument seemed to be the
embodiment of hypocrisy and sophistry, but it was happily freighted with
common sense. Rallying the radicals was a political necessity; if it required
the guise of military necessity, that guise became realitybecause the war
could not be fought without the new war spirit that only abolition or military
victories would bring. The victories were not forthcoming; the action at
Sharpsburg would probably not destroy Lee's army because that destruction
was not McClellan's way; that left only the weapon of abolition.
The Constitution's defense counsel would not give up. What of Blair and
Weed, the best political minds in your party? Don't they warn you that
emancipation would be a political liability, that it would lose congressional
seats in the North to Peace Democrats? Come on now, Lincolnaren't you
really doing this to satisfy some long-held moral imperative against the cru-
elty of slavery, or to trigger a slave uprising that would draw rebel troops
back to the plantations, or to make impossible a negotiated peace that pre-
served slavery?
In the courtroom of his mind, still playing all the roles himself, the presid-
ing Lincoln swung his glance over to the prosecutor, wondering how he
would handle that.
Weed and Seward and the Biairs are mistaken, was the reply. Oh, you may
lose some votes and offend a few pro-slavery generals, but not to act is worse
than to act. Not to act against slavery is to play along with your conserva-
lives, who will ultimately want to join the Democrats to make peace on
Southern terms of disunion if the war drags on. Not to act means to lose your
radicals and become another impotent Buchanan. By acting now to strike at
slavery, you encourage the growing radical minority that can keep the war for
Union going.
It is a coup d'etat, declares constitutional defense counsel. No, it is counter-
revolutionary, concludes the prosecutor of the war.
Lincoln the judge came down on the side of counterrevolution. Yes, he
could analyze his political motive, the moral imperative, the diplomatic need,
the military advantages, but the overriding reason had to do with crystalliz-
ing public sentiment to fight to win.
He would take this desperate step of abolition, necessarily accompanied by
a despotic step of suppression of rights, because it was the only way he knew
to stop losing the war. The cause of Union, which was at the core of his
political being, was being paid lip service by almost everyone else. But after
the disasters at First and Second Bull Run, after the North had good reason
to fear invasion by the South, after an onerous tax on income had been
imposed on the people, after dissent had to be brutally suppressed, the cause
of Union was losing its appeal. A more exciting cause was needed. Slavery
had brought on the war; the abolition of slavery would have to reignite the
war spirit of the North.
The rain came in long, sweeping sheets, but as long as it was this warm, he
could afford to get wet. He could not fool himself: emancipation would mean
a fight to the finish. The abolishment by proclamation would bury what few
loyalists remained in the South and end their peace hopes. It would send an
unmistakable message to Richmond and the world that all possibility of com-
ing to terms was gone forever.
That troubled him most. Was there not a way, first, to use the threat of
emancipationto predict the action to come, and then offer the Southern
leaders an honorable way out? In fact, noan ultimatum would certainly be
rejectedbut in near-fact, maybe: at least he could demonstrate that his
central idea was Union, and that abolition was a weapon to enforce Union.
In the prison camps, he had heard, there was a "deadline"a line drawn
near the prison wall, beyond which a prisoner could not step without being
shot dead. Could there not be a similar demarcation for ending the state of
insurrection, beyond which slavery would be abolished?
That was the way to do it: not to emancipate immediately, but to announce
his intent to emancipate at some future date certain, which states in rebellion
could avoid by rejoining the Union. By acting before the deadline, the South-
erners could keep their slaves, just as loyal border states like Kentucky could
keep slavery. The South would not do it, of courseJeff Davis was hardly
likely to treat this deadline as an incentivebut it would show the North that
abolition was intended to be a military act, not a betrayal of past promises
and a surrender to the moralizing of the radicals.
He would have to prepare both proclamationson emancipation, and on
suspending habeas corpusfor issuance in quick succession. One would
cause explosions of protest that the other would have to cap.
He and Lamon, drenched and dripping, drew up in front of the Soldiers'
Home in the verdant Maryland countryside. Lincoln looked back down the
road to see if any messengers from the War Department were on the way with
news from Sharpsburg. So much was beyond his control. No messenger; he
slid out of the water-slick saddle.
Tad came running out and Lincoln lifted him up with his good arm, kissed
him, and followed the boy inside. He limped in, wondering when he could get
proper attention for his aching wrist and toes, wondering why news of the
greatest battle in history, taking place not fifty miles away, should be with-
held from the President of the United States.
At dinner, Mary told him of a wondrous new medium who could make
contact with the beloved dead, and asked him to join her at a seance that
night. He declined; Lincoln would not ridicule her belief if it gave her com-
fort in her extended bereavement, but he was not much for spiritualism.
Before they finished the spare meal, Homer Bates came racing in, suitably
out of breath, from the telegraph office. He handed Lincoln a long yellow
sheet.
"From General McClellan?" Mary asked.
"No," said Lincoln, looking at the paper in puzzlement, "from a man
named Smalley."
"It's an intercepted cable, sir," the telegraph operator explained. "It was
sent from Frederick, Maryland, to the New York Tribune, but the telegrapher
in Baltimore didn't relay it to New York. Instead, he sent it to the War
Department here."
Lincoln nodded; those were Stanton's orders. "This fellow Smalley says the
day's battle ended with an uncertain field," he summarized as he read, "great-
est since Waterloo . . - it seems that it's a standoff. Awful casualties. Lee's
invasion has been stopped, at least."
Washington was probably safe. He took a deep breath; the war was not
going to be lost today. It appeared that the bloody struggle at Sharpsburg was
not yet a great victory, but at least no defeat. Nobody could gainsay the fact
that Lee had failed in his object of invading the North; perhaps today, right
this moment, McClellan would be attacking again, pinning Lee's forces
against the Potomac. Little Mac was now in the attacking habit, though the
great cost in lives must be torturing him; a thrust now, really hurting the
enemy, could be decisive.
All eyes would soon be on the triumphant McClellan, who would surely
press for his Harrison's Landing terms of unpunished reunion, "the Union as
it was." That settlement, bearing what Lincoln had come to believe were the
seeds of future renewal of the conflict over slavery, was no longer acceptable.
Lincoln, the dispatch from the correspondent Smalley in his hand, saw as
urgent the need to accompany the news of victory with a stunning action by
the President to force the Southern leaders to come to the negotiating table
with hats in hand.
A proclamation of threatened emancipation would do that. End the insur-
rection now or I will free your slaves. On top of the loss of Lee's army, that
threat might crush the rebellion; in the more likely event that Lee's army
would be stopped and turned back but not destroyed, the proclamation would
inspirit the North and dispirit the South.
Lincoln dismissed young Bates with a nod and a smile; there would be no
message to McClellan until the general reported to him.
What if the tide turned, if Lee drove the Federals back? Then he would
forget about proclamations and fight on with another general, hoping to
achieve reunion without abolishment. What if McClellan failed to attack
again, if Lee's army escaped intact? In that case, Lincoln decided, he would
go ahead with his proclamations, extending the deadline for ending the rebel-
lion for sixty days, or perhaps to year's end. The political-military pressure
would come from him; the President, not the Congress or McClellan and his
army clique or the Peace Democrats, would frame the terms for peace.
In that regard, a notion formed in his mind to visit the battle scene soon; it
was not McClellan's army, it was the Union Army, and it would do for the
commander in chief to be with the troops. It would also do to set certain
requirements for quick action which, if not met, would be the basis for reliev-
ing George on the day after elections.
He went to his plug hat and pulled out the drafts of the two proclamations
aimed at enemies North and South. The proclamation suspending habeas
corpus needed no further editing: "Be it ordered, first, that during the existing
insurrection and as a necessary measure for suppressing the same, all Rebels
and Insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all
persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty
of any disloyal practice shall be subject to martial law." Surely it was sweep-
ing"any disloyal practice" could be construed to mean anythingbut
times were hard and recruitment vital. He would sign it as Stanton had
drafted it.
The other proclamation, of emancipation, needed work. He could see what
was wrong with it instantly: in the first draft, written in the telegraph office
and read to the Cabinet in July, he had been trying to hide behind Congress's
Confiscation Act. "In pursuance of the sixth section of the act" was no way to
begin a supreme assertion of executive authority; this was not a case of the
President's carrying out the will of the Congress, but of the President's seiz-
ing the lead in infuriating the Southern rebels.
He brought a quill pen and a bottle of ink to the dining room table and
began to write: "I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of Amer-
ica, and Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy thereof . . ." That was
more like it.
Before threatening to free the slaves of the states in rebellion, he would
make absolutely clear that his primary purpose was not abolition, but union:
". . . do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war
will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional
relation between the United States and each of the states, and the people
thereof, in which states that relation is, or may be suspended, or disturbed."
He would never admit that a state had left the Union. Secession was not
possible; the so-called Confederacy was never to be treated as a nation, lest
that encourage foreign recognition. He paused, quill in mid-air, ?o much
depended on the outcome at Sharpsburg. That was where the South could
make a nation. He wondered if George McClellan realized how much the
American experiment in self-government rested on his ability to hurt the
rebel army. Not merely to make a stand, to stop Lee's advance, but to inflict
such pain on the rebels that they would come to understand that the rule of
the majority was the unshakable political religion of the land.
He returned to the document at hand. The rhythm of the drafted words
threatening to change the status of slaves held by rebels"shall then, thence-
forward, and forever, be free"did not sit well with him. He moved the "be"
up to follow the "shall," lending strength to the concluding phrase.

CHAPTER 2
AFTERMATH AT BLOODY LANE
The Whatizzit Wagon of the Brady studio, with Alexander Gardner in
charge, assisted by James Gibson, reached McClellan's headquarters over-
looking Antietam Creek on Friday morning the nineteenth. Gardner thought
it would be wise to seek out Pinkerton before the detective heard about the
presence of the wagon.
"Is the battle over, Major Alien?" Gardner could hear no sound of firing.
Wednesday had been the day of the great battle; yesterday, he had been told,
both battered and bloody armies had stared at each other across the field,
neither willing or able to mount an offensive.
"The pursuit of the beaten rebels has begun," was the way Pinkerton put it,
in the accent Gardner recognized as Glasgow. "Lee pulled his army out last
night, slipped across the Potomac into Virginia. The field is ours. Great vic-
tory."
"Lee has escaped, then?"
"General McClellan sent Porter's corps after him." Pinkerton evidently
did not like the tone of Gardner's question; the photographer knew he should
not have allowed a hint of criticism to slip into his question. "What are you
doing here instead of Brady, anyhow? I said yes to Brady, no to you."
Gardner silently handed him an envelope addressed to "Major Alien" in
Brady's fluid script; Pinkerton unsealed it and read the contents. Satisfied
that Gardner was still working for his friend rather than in competition with
him, the detective said, "You can set up right over there."
"We'd like to go out into the battlefield, if we can."
"No, the burial details are just setting out," Pinkerton said. "You can't
make pictures of the Federal dead; it would start a panic in the North."
"How about just the dead rebels?" Gardner had a notion that the essence
of this battle was its cost in human life. It was being said that this had been
the bloodiest day of the war, worse even than at Shiloh. Gardner thought of
himself as less a photographer of events than an artist interpreting universal
suffering, which set him apart from Brady and the others.
Pinkerton shrugged. "I hope you have a strong stomach. Does your wagon
horse know how to pick his way around bodies? It's no pretty scene out
there."
The practical Gibson asked Pinkerton to point out the landmark scenes in
the battle. The detective took them to a telescope in front of headquarters,
near the flagpole.
"Burnside's bridge was important," Pinkerton explained. "If Burn had
crossed it in the morning when Mac ordered him to, at the same time Hooker
was charging from the other side, Lee's retreat would have been a rout." It
seemed to Gardner that the McClellan staff was expecting criticism and had
defenses ready.
Pinkerton swung the glass around. "The Dunker church. Be more famous
than Shiloh."
"The what?"
"Dunker," Pinkerton repeated slowly. "They're Germans. The word has to
do with the way they baptize their babiesthey just dunk 'em in."
Small arms fire erupted in the distance. "That's Fitz-John Porter's men,
chasing what's left of A. P. Hill's brigade," the detective said. "We're destroy-
ing the enemy. Tell that to your newspaper friends, Gardner. And take my
advice, stay away from Bloody Lane."
"What's that?"
"You can't see it from here, because it was a sunken road. Sesesh used it as
a trenchLee isn't much for digging trenchesand it's like an open grave
now." Pinkerton removed his derby, mopped his head with a red handker-
chief, and replaced the hat. "If you want to see dead rebs in stacks, that's the
place. You're welcome to it."
Gardner and Gibson climbed back aboard their wagon. The dour detective
turned away, then back. "Wait, you two1 have a trophy for Brady." He
reached in his inside jacket pocket and took out a cigar. "It's a secech cigar.
Don't smoke it yourself, be sure to give it to himI'll ask Brady if he got it
later. Had something to do with the battle." He carefully wrapped the cigar
in the envelope Brady had addressed to him and handed it over.
A cavalryman raced in with bad news: Porter's pursuing force had been
caught at the Potomac and smashed by A. P. Hill's rear guard. Maybe three
hundred dead Federals, many floating downriver. Nor was Pleasonton's
Union cavalry doing much better; the new rifled guns taken by the rebels at
Harpers Ferry were all too accurate. The infantry now had an advantage over
cavalry.
Gardner did not wait for the reaction from McClellan headquarters be-
cause he did not want any changing of minds about the approval to photo-
graph the battlefield. He told Gibson to make for the Dunker church first.
They crossed one of the stone bridges and followed the pointed fingers of the
gaunt-faced men seated on the ground staring at one another. Gardner was
not new to scenes of battle, but this landscape was like nothing he had seen.
Every vista was dotted with death. The stench of decaying bodies, humans
and horses, fouled the air, relieved only occasionally by the smell of the
residue of gunpowder and clinging smoke.
"Make the wet plate," Gardner ordered, taking the reins. Gibson, as soon
as the wagon stopped, slipped back into the darkroom in the back; he coated
a sheet of glass with collodion, the guncotton dissolved in alcohol and sulphu-
ric ether mixed with a little bromide and iodide of potassium they bad com-
pounded the night before. Gardner trusted the careful Gibson to allow the
plate to dry to the proper tackiness.
Gardner set up the camera in front of the church. Odd, a house of worship
with no steeple. Gibson appeared from the back of the wagon with the wet
plate in its lightproof holder and together they inserted it into the camera.
Gardner ducked his head to the eyehole, moved the camera, tripod and all,
six inches back to get a dead horse in the composition, and removed the lens
cap. He counted to ten, covered the lens, and Gibson pulled the plate out and
raced back to the wagon to develop it. In this hot, humid weather, the entire
operation had to be completed within ten minutes or the plate would be
spoiled.
Gibson came out into the light and signaled that the plate was okay. Gard-
ner nodded, picked up the camera, loaded it onto the wagon, and they set out
for the Bumside Bridge. Halfway there, in what had been the center of the
rebel line, the horse refused to step forward. Gardner stood up to see what
was causing the horse to shy and then sat back abruptly.
"Bloody Lane." The sunken road offered a stark spectacle he was certain
he would not forget as long as he lived: hundreds of corpses neatly lined up in
rows. The bodies in butternut brown had been fighting men before they were
mowed down by the enfilade fire. He tied the wagon securely to a tree lest the
horse bolt at the stench. He went through his picture-taking routine with
Gibson once again, both eager to get away but unable to hurry.
In one half hour, they took three photographs of the heart-stopping sight.
The burial detail was far away. A couple of Federal soldiers came and looked
at the carnage, but would not stand still, and Gardner knew they would be
blurred in the last photo.
"Let's get out of here," said Gibson finally.
Forty yards from the Bloody Lane, a cluster of corpses in blue uniforms
were lying, obviously shot trying to storm the rebel position when the sunken
road had offered a potent defense. Gardner, obeying Pinkerton's rule about
Union bodies, passed them by until he heard a moan. He pulled back his
reins. One of the Federal soldiers on the mound in front of the sunken road
was alive.
"We'd better bring him in," he called to Gibson, who had heard the sound
from the back of the wagon.
"Not our job," said Gibson. "When we get back, we'll tell them to send an
ambulance."
"Just this one," said Gardner. The man could die in the time it would take
for doctors to arrive. They rolled the moaning man over. He had taken a
bullet in his upper leg, but the blood and his uniform material had clotted
into a kind of bandage, and his eyes were focused.
"Thought you'd never get here," the man whispered hoarsely as they lifted
him into the wagon, alongside the plates. "What in hell kind of ambulance is
this?"
"We're war photographers," said Gardner.
"Like Brady?"
"We work for Brady."
The wounded soldier thought about that. "You gonna take a picture of
me?"
"No, we're just going to take you to the field hospital. Can't waste plates."
Gardner looked at the man's sleeve. "Where you from, corporal?"
"Twenty-seventh Indiana Volunteers. We beat the Johnnies, didn't we?"
"The rebels have left the field, pulled back across the river," Gardner told
him. "Lee's invasion is over."
"We beat 'em. You know why? We knew every move Lee was going to
make. Thank God for Little Mac," said the corporal.
They rode in silence for a few minutes, the bumping surely causing the
soldier pain. He said what struck the photographer as a curious thing:
"Lordy, what I'd give for a good cigar now."
Gardner couldn't say no. He took out the envelope with "Major Alien"
written on it and handed over the cigar meant for Brady.

CHAPTER 3

JOHN HAY'S DIARY
SEPTEMBER 22, 1862
Any number of rumors are flying around about the McClellan conspiracy.
Some say he plans to play the man on horseback, riding to Washington in
triumph to take over the country, which may seem farfetched but you never
can tell.
I have been passing these rumors on to the Prsdt, of course, only slightly
embellished, but this morning I was told of a new and most disturbing one
from the Tycoon himself.
"I heard of an officer who said that the army did not mean to gain any
decisive victory," Mr. Lincoln told me, "but to keep this running on so that
they, the army, might manage things to suit themselves."
I asked him what he planned to do about such treason. He said, "I will
have the matter examined and if any such language had been used, his head
should go off."
That's the spirit. The cabal around McClellan is a danger to the Republic.
Certainly his decision not to pursue the rebel army fits in with that plot to let
the war run on until Little Mac can take over or make a deal to split the
country peacefully, under a Democratic administration in the North with
himself at the head.
Big success for me this morning. The Prsdt has been limping in pain be-
cause of his corns. Stanton's assistant, Watson, sent me a note about a man
who performs wonders on the feet. At my urging, Lincoln today saw the
corncutter, who calls himself a "chiropodist." The fellow has been seeing
Stanton about organizing a corps of foot doctors to work on the army's feet
(which I understand are in terrible condition), when the Young Napoleon
ever gets around to giving the order to march.
The doctor, if you can call him that, is an Israelite born in England and
speaks in a cadence that I have never heard before. I scheduled Isachar
Zacharie a half hour with the Tycoon this morning before the Cabinet meet-
ing.
"They tell me you have a testimonial from Henry Clay," the Prsdt said in
greeting. "He was my idol when I was a Whig."
"Hammertoes," said Zacharie, shaking his head in recollected sympathy. I
had heard Henry Clay described many ways, but never as one who suffered
from hammertoes. "Very painful. He could hardly stand up in the Senate to
make a speech. I fixed it."
"Your idol had feet of Clay," I observed, which drew a hearty laugh from
the Tycoon. My best line of the day.
Lincoln sat in his desk chair, took his shoes and socks off and at Zacharie's
direction placed his giant feet gingerly on his desk. The doctor took out a
towel and a little black bag and asked me to bring a pan of water. Forewarned
by Watson at the War Department, I produced the medical equipment in-
stantly.
"General Banks says you're an old friend of his," the Tycoon made conver-
sation as Zacharie massaged one of his feet, which is presumably the way a
foot doctor gets acquainted with a new patient. Nate Banks had been Gover-
nor of Massachusetts, but had not fared as well as a general against the
unpredictable Stonewall Jackson. Lincoln knew Banks to be a capable admin-
istrator, scrupulously honest, and appointed him to command the troops
remaining around the military district of Washington when McClellan took
the army up to reach a stalemate with Lee. (Little Mac now claims those
troops should have been with him, but he thinks of reinforcements as moth-
er's milk.)
"Good man, fine family," said Zacharie of Banks.
"I'm thinking of sending him down to New Orleans," said the Tycoon, "to
replace General Butler."
That was news to me; "Beast" Butler had been drawing plenty of criticism
from people in the North about corruption and arbitrary arrests, and election
time was drawing near. Sending Banks down there would placate Democrats
in Massachusetts and might even calm things down in Louisiana, now a
liberated state.
"Butler? Not such a good man," Zacharie opined, "if you'll pardon my
saying so."
"You know him?"
"I have relatives in the South, mainly Savannah. And there are plenty of
Jews in New Orleans, trading, banking. What I hear about Butler is not
good."
"Give me specifics," Lincoln said, wincing but not looking away as a
tender corn was touched by the surgeon's blade. It surprised me that he was
talking of such confidential matters with a man he hardly knew, but perhaps
direct contact with the foot engenders intimacy.
"Messer, Hyde and Goodrich are the principal jewelers in New Orleans,"
said Zacharie matter-of-factly. "They made out a check to a relation for five
thousand dollars, the proceeds to be paid to clerks for salary. General Butler
intercepted the mail and found the check. He made the relation cash the
check and give Butler the cash. He claims he gave the money to the poor, but
I doubt it."
Lincoln was interested in that. A specific charge is always more useful than
accusatory generalizations, which is all we'd been hearing. He grunted when
Zacharie finished with one toe, put that foot in the pan of water for more
soaking, and took out the other foot, knotting the towel around it tightly. No
blood; I supposed that spoke well of his skill at chiropody, if that is the word.
The comcutter changed the subject, with a line of patter that kept his
patient's attention from focusing too intently on his foot. "You did us a favor
the other day, Mr. President. I see in the papers you appointed the first
Jewish chaplain, Frankel of Philadelphia. I know him, know the whole fam-
ily."
I confess that I had primed Zacharie to say that. Fewer than 150,000
Israelites can be found in the whole country, North and South, two thirds of
them piling in during the past decade. Those in the United States Army don't
always identify themselves as such, so they don't really need a chaplain. But
the law called for chaplains to be of some "Christian denomination" and
some Jewish leaders didn't like that. Vallandigham, the copperhead, had
taken up this issue in Congress, making it seem as if religion was being
unconstitutionally established. So the law's wording was changed to "reli-
gious denomination" and the Tycoon appointed this fellow Frankel as a uni-
formed chaplain the other day. Zacharie, who is the first Israelite I have met,
apparently sees the appointment as most significantthe first time his people
got something they wanted from the Federal government. (It was easy
enough; Lincoln never turns down anybody who wants to get into uniform.)
"Abraham Jonas was one of my earliest political supporters," said Lincoln,
in oblique response to the mention of the chaplain appointment. "He came
from Kentucky, as I did, and we met in Quincy back in thirty-eight. Like
you, born in England. I appointed Jonas postmaster of Quincy last year."
The Israelite gave a that's-nice smile and stopped chatting because he came
to some important part of his operation on the left big toe. "This is some big
foot," was his only observation.
Zacharie switched the position of the feet in the pan and the towel. "You
know, a lot of our soldiers have this same kind of trouble, even worse, Mr.
President. I talked with Mr. Stanton about attending to the feet of our boys. I
told him we could organize a corps of chiropodists to go from camp to camp
to cut corns and treat diseases of the feet."
"Foot soldiers," the President said before I could.
"You make jokes," said the Israelite in reproof, "but I hear Lee's army had
a terrible problem with stragglers in Maryland. Why? Because their feet were
killing them, they couldn't keep up. Hill's division, seventeen miles in seven
hours from Harpers Ferry to Sharpsburg. Could you imagine yourself, with a
heavy pack and gun on your back, marching that far that fast on these feet?"
Lincoln looked impressed with Zacharie's specific instance again. Few peo-
ple brought him hard facts to buttress their arguments. "I'll talk to Mars
about that after the Cabinet meeting. Dr. Zacharie, something you said ear-
lier interests me. You said you had relatives down South, and you obviously
know a great many people in trade."
"My profession has taken me to every major city in the nation, Mr. Presi-
dent. My office is in my bag."
"Do the Israelites generally stay in touch with one another, more than
most?"
"I know what you are getting at, Mr. President. I have friends and rela-
tions everywhere."
"New Orleans? There are a great many of"he searched for an inoffensive
word "your co-religionists in that city. As you know, it is the only major
Southern city that we occupy."
"Jews are in soft goods there, and in the money business. Although Gen-
eral Butler, like General Grant, doesn't have much use for us. Couple of
rotten apples among our people spoil the barrel. But given the chance, we
could do a lot for the cause of reunion. We know how to deal with both
sides."
Lincoln wriggled his toes in thought. "The time may come for that. I have
a proclamation in work that might bring about the need for some informal
communications. You're finished? Is that all there is to it?"
"Step down on the towel."
Lincoln put his feet on the towel, gingerly at first, then more confidently.
"That feels better. By jings, that feels pretty good."
"The test is with the shoes on," said the doctor. "No, not the slippers, try
on leather shoes." He examined the canalboats that passed for Lincoln's
shoes, and said he would recommend a shoemaker who made different shoes
for each foot, but signaled for the President to go through what was always
the painful process of encasing his feet.
The Prsdt drew on his socks and inserted his feet in his rarely used shoes.
He stood up, always a slow, unwinding process.
"It doesn't hurt." He took a few steps, then walked back. "The terrible
pressure is off. These old feet haven't felt so good in years." He gave one of
those great grins that light up the countenance so rarely. "Zacharie, you're
remarkable."
"It would be a great honor, and helpful to me in my profession, Mr.
President, if you put something like that down on a piece of paper."
The Prsdt did not hesitate. He walked, almost skipped, to his desk and
wrote out a brief testimonial: "Dr. Zacharie has operated on my feet with
great success, and considerable addition to my comfort. A. Lincoln."
Zacharie read it and beamed. "I'll come back this afternoon? After you've
talked to Mr. Stanton?"
"You have to see Seward, toonot about your foot soldiers, about his feet.
He has the same trouble I had. I'll tell him about you."
After the good doctor marched out, Lincoln stood in the middle of the
room, rocking on his heels. Though his wrist was still swollen, with his feet
miraculously cured of the dread corn affliction, he was not in such bad shape
for a man of fifty-three. "When Dr. Zacharie comes back, I think I'll ask him
about my wrist, too."
Since he was in such a good mood, I handed him a copy of a new book that
had been sent by Charles Farrar Browne, the humorist whose nom de plume
is "Artemus Ward." His face lit up even more, and he sat down and immedi-
ately started reading it.
Fifteen minutes later, I came back in and he was chuckling away. It's not a
good idea to interrupt the Tycoon when he's having a good timethose times
come so infrequently these daysbut I had something of importance to im-
part.
"Allan Pinkerton is in my office, fresh from the front," I said. "He came to
see me, thinks I'm his source of inside information about all those nasty
fellows around here out to get his revered general. He wants to pump me, but
he most especially does not want to see you. Shall I drag him in?"
"I'd be pleased to receive him," the Prsdt nodded solemnly.
"Cabinet meets at noon," I reminded him. "You have about twenty min-
utes."
The Tycoon nodded from the couch where he'd been reading Ward and set
the book aside. He was already thinking about the questions to be put to
McClellan's man Pinkerton. That worthy gentleman, if he ever heard the
words "McClellan conspiracy," would think not of the army's disloyal officer
corps and its desire for a coup d'6tat, but just the oppositeof a cabal of
elected officials out to unhorse his idol. It is in the ambitious McClellan's
interest to make much of the affair at Antietam; it is in the nation's interest to
minimize the victory, to treat it as the mere overture of the grand symphony
to be played out at Cabinet today.

CHAPTER 4
MAJOR ALLEN'S INTERVIEW
Pinkerton forced the smile of the pursuer pursued. The head of the Secret
Service of the Army of the Potomac had hoped to pry information out of
young Hay without having to undergo interrogation from the President in the
next office. That gamble failed, but not all was lost: Perhaps Lincoln, in his
line of questioning, would reveal the truth about the cabal's intentions toward
the man who had just saved the nation.
"How are the plums and nuts today, Pinkerton?"
"Heh-heh. You remember that still, Mr. President."
That damned coded message would haunt him all his life. It's only saving
grace, he told himself, was the way it reminded the President that Pinkerton's
vigilance had saved his life in Baltimore on the way to the Inauguration.
"I want you to tell me all you know about the movements of General
McClellan's army," the President said. "And whatever I ask, I ask not in the
spirit of criticism. Please understand that."
That sounded suspicious; beware of questioners who protest that no criti-
cism attaches to their questions. Pinkerton had done that often enough him-
self.
"South Mountain, Antietamthose were great and decisive victories,
achieved under great difficulty," the President said. "General McClellan has
accomplished all he set out to do. He's pushed the rebels out of Maryland and
freed the capital from danger."
Pinkerton relaxed a bit. "I wish everybody understood that as well as you
do, sir."
"The nation owes him a deep debt of gratitude," Lincoln went on,, "and I
personally owe him morehe took command of the army at a time C-f great
peril, when the army was suffering great defeats, and he took that army out to
meet the foe. We can never repay him for that, Pinkerton."
The secret service chief nodded enthusiastically; this was just what he
wanted to hear. He decided he would not ask the President to refer to him as
Major Alien, in the light of Lincoln's unfortunate amusement at code names.
He took out a pencil and paper to make notes, so that the general would have
the well-deserved praise as it came from the President's lips.
"I'm desirous of knowing a few things, which1 suppose from all the
pressure on the general's mindhe hasn't advised me about, or perhaps
thinks of minor importance. If your duty to General McClellan permits it,
and if you know the answers, I'd like to ask you about them."
"The general relies on having the full confidence of the President," Pinker-
ton began, "and so relying, often does not deem it necessary to burden you
with detail that"
"The surrender of Harpers Ferry. Had everything been done to relieve the
garrison there promptly?"
Pinkerton brightened. He had a good answer for that. "I happen to have
right here in my pocket a copy of a dispatch from General McClellan to the
commander of Harpers Ferry. Here, read it."
Lincoln did so and expressed his relief: "Many have tried to impress me
that the general might have done more than he did for the relief of the
garrison. Yes, this breathes his spirit, and I recognize the signature. At Antie-
tam, what were the number and condition of the opposing armies?"
Pinkerton was certain about that one, too; he began to think he was wise in
coming to the Mansion that day. Perhaps some detective's sixth sense had
drawn him to Lincoln's office. "Enemy strength one hundred and forty thou-
sand, ours ninety thousand, one army as eager to fight as the other."
"I believe the rebels have that many. I would estimate our strength at one
hundred thousand," Lincoln observed, "but you're probably right. Tell me
about the battle."
Pinkerton described his patron's strategy and bravery. Lincoln kept nod-
dingPinkerton assumed that meant he agreedand almost in passing
wanted to know, "Why didn't the army fight on Thursday?"
Pinkerton explained the exhausted condition of the army Wednesday night,
and the presence of the enemy in line of battle all day Thursday. No general
short of a butcher could fight a battle on top of the very bodies of the dead
and wounded, which had to be cleared from the field; long-range artillery
ammunition, which had given McClellan the greatest advantage the day be-
fore, was in short supply; there was great need for caution lest the enemy,
with its larger forces, counterattack and gain final success.
The President launched into praise of McClellan's skill, repeating that his
questions were in no way evidence of criticism, rather of averting the criti-
cism of others. Pinkerton felt much better about the man: it could well be that
the cabal had not taken charge of the mind of the President, as he had feared.
"I wonder if you could tell me, without betraying General McClellas's
confidence, how come the rebels escaped across the Potomac?"           t
Pinkerton assured him that the general wanted him to know the facts. That
on Thursday night orders were given to bring on a general engagement the
next day. That the stage of the water level made it easy for Lee's infantry and
cavalry to cross the river anywhere. "I accompanied Captain Custer on a
cavalry patrol Wednesday afternoon," he was able to add, "and had my sorrel
horse shot out from under me."
At the President's praise of his personal bravery, Pinkerton made a defer-
ential gesture. Lincoln wanted to know why, if the water was so easy for Lee
to cross, it had been so hard for our troops to cross in pursuit.
"Oh, on our side, time was needed to probe enemy positions, to bring up
ammunition, and to care for the wounded," Pinkerton explained. "Even so,
on Friday, after Lee had crossed the river, General Porter's brigade pursued
him into Virginia with great vigor and rapidity."
From the expression on Lincoln's face, the Secret Service chief got the
distinct impression that he had put the President's mind at ease. He allowed
himself a small smile as he jotted down Lincoln's commendation of McClel-
lan's caution, along with the President's mild-spoken request that the general
keep him more fully informed. "For example," said Lincoln, "I knew nothing
of the position of Antietam Creek in relation to the two armies until I read
about it in the newspaper."
Pinkerton promised to tell the general of the importance the President
attached to seemingly insignificant details of minor skirmishes.
Secretary Stanton entered the President's office. Lincoln said something
about being grateful for what sounded to Pinkerton like the corn cuttings,
and asked him to sit down. The Secretary of War took one look at Pinkerton,
said he supposed the President wanted to see Major Alien alone, and left. The
detective suspected that Stanton felt uncomfortable about him, perhaps be-
cause he knew that Pinkerton knew about the Secretary's hidden support of
the unconscionable release of Rose Greenhow.
Hay came in and reminded Lincoln of a Cabinet meeting in a few minutes.
The detective, satisfied that Lincoln was not nearly as disaffected as the gen-
eral feared, put on his hat and took his leave. He heard Hay ask if the
President needed any papers for Cabinet that day.
"Couple of proclamations," the President replied, pulling some papers out
of his desk drawer and inserting them in his plug hat. Pinkerton stood re-
spectfully waiting for him to walk out the door first, which Lincoln started to
do, then snapped his fingers and came back. "I'll take the Ward book, too.
Cabinet will get a kick out of it."

CHAPTER 5
THE YOKE OF OXEN
Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, could not believe his ears. Here was the
President of the United States of America, his nation rent by civil war, casu-
alty lists stunning the cities of the North after the bloodiest day of t~ttttt war,
traitorous agitators undermining the military draft, the Union Army's\)fficer
corps a snake pit of conspiracy to subvert the Confiscation Act and seize
executive power, his Treasury nearly empty, Congress fed up with his vacilla-
tion, and his Republican Party support threatened by the looming elections
and what was he doing? Preparing to read a comical book to his Cabinet!
"The chapter I was reading just after I had my corns cut," Lincoln was
saying, "and Stanton, I want to talk to you about making the talents of this
fellow Zacharie available to our men in the fieldis called 'High-Handed
Outrage at Utiky.' Ward is really very funny. Listen:
" In the Paul of 1856, I showed my show in Utiky, a trooly grate sitty in
the State of New York.
" 'The people gave me a cordyal recepshun. The Press was loud in her
prases.'
"The spelling is humorous, too, which you're missing," said the President,
as the Secretary of War writhed in his chair, awaiting the discussion of a
proclamation imposing martial law. "But let me go on," Lincoln continued,
and did. Stanton thought it would never end.
Toward the end of this exercise in dialect humor, Lincoln broke out laugh-
ing, slapped his leg, removed his glasses to wipe his eyes, and returned to
finish: " 'The young man belonged to I of the first famerlies in Utiky. I sood
him, and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson in the 3rd degree.' "
The Secretary of War pointedly did not join in the chuckling around the
Cabinet table. Not for him to participate in such sycophancy; he despised
Seward, the toady, for laughing out loud. Of the others, only Chase main-
tained his dignity in the face of this foolishness by the Chief Executive. Stan-
ton glared his disapproval.
"Gentlemen, why don't you laugh?" Lincoln looked suddenly sorrowful.
"With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I
should die. And you need this medicine as much as I do."
With that, Lincoln set the book aside and said in a grave tone, "Gentle-
men." What now, Stanton wondered, a recitation of his confounded poem
about the spirit of mortals being proud? A proclamation was on Lincoln's
desk that would give the Secretary of War the power he needed to slam down
the lid on agitation. "All persons discouraging volunteer enlistments," Stan-
ton had written, "resisting militia draft, or guilty of any disloyal practice"
would be denied the coddling of the civil courts and made subject to Courts
Martial. It was the only way to stop the coming riots; what was he waiting
for?
"I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this
war to slavery," the President began. "You all remember that, several weeks
ago, I read to you an Order that I had prepared on this subjectwhich, on
account of objections made by some of you, was not issued."
Stanton looked sharply at Seward, who had scotched the proclamation of
emancipation in July, supposedly because it might look like "the last shriek,"
as someone had called it, of a desperate nation in retreat. At that time
Seward's henchman, Weed, had come in to give an abolition edict the coup de
grdce with his political nervousness. Today's topic was a surprise to Stanton:
instead of discussing the proclamation suspending habeas corpus, Lincoln
was talking about emancipation.
"Ever since then," Lincolne continued, looking at his folded hands, "my
mind has been much occupied with this subject. I have thought all along that
the time for acting on it might very probably come. I think the time Jias come
now."
A new vista opened to the startled Stanton: the defeat of Blair and Seward
in the Cabinet on the paramount issue of the age, followed by the removal of
McClellan and his clique from military command. An act of abolition now
would sweep away all talk of negotiations and compromise with the slavoc-
racy. At last Lincoln was becoming a serious man.
"I wish it were a better time," the President was saying, "I wish that we
were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not
been quite what I should have best liked."
Stanton cautiously nodded agreement; as Secretary of War, he did not want
the vast engagement at Antietam to be considered another defeat, but at the
same time he was damned if he would credit the traitorous McClellan with a
victory. The emphasis in public had to be placed not on the salvation of the
North from Lee's invasion, but on the failure of McClellan to destroy Lee's
army. No gratitude could be shown the Young Napoleon, lest his set of
Democratic generals be encouraged to settle the war on terms that would
preserve slavery in the South. Lincoln was right in speaking of the recent
fighting as an "action" rather than a military triumph; Sharpsburg was to be
described as merely a modest victory, only a limited action, which under a
decent commander might have given the valiant Union troops a decisive
victory.
"But they have been driven out of Maryland," said the President, "and
Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the rebel army was at
Frederick, I made a vowa covenant that if God gave us the victory in the
approaching battle, I would consider it an indication of Divine Will. I said
nothing to anyone, but I made the promise to myself," he said, and in an
aside Stanton could hardly hear, "and to my Maker."
Was Lincoln suddenly getting religion? Stanton wondered if all the spiritu-
alism surrounding his wife had affected him, and promptly decided not; this
was a politician saying he was following God's will. Stanton did not care how
Lincoln explained his change of mind, so long as he did it.
Lincoln looked at Seward, seated to his right. "The time for the enuncia-
tion of the emancipation policy can no longer be delayed. Public sentiment, I
think, will sustain it, and many of our warmest friends and supporters de-
mand it." He shifted his attention toward Chase, considered by all the most
overtly pious man in the room, adding, "And I promised my God that I
would do it. It might be thought strange that I submitted the disposal of
matters this way. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill
that promise. God has decided this question in favor of the slaves."
Chase listened impassively, annoyed at Lincoln's uncharacteristic evoca-
tion of divine guidance. The Treasury Secretary had hoped that Lincoln
would let the military business of freeing and recruiting fugitive slaves be
handled by military commanders in the field, as Fremont and Hunter had
tried to do. If the damnable McClellan had won overwhelmingly at Sharps-
burg, no such emancipation edict by the President would have been justifiable
militarily. The lead in freeing slaves could have been taken by Congress c the
military commanders.
Now the President, a consummate politician, was raising emancipation to a
high moral plane, taking full credit for finally doing what enlightened Repub-
licans had been clamoring for him to do for over a year. Chase fought down
the resentment rising in him, which he quickly deemed unworthy, at the
adept way the President was able to run off with the radicals' clothes; on the
contrary, he told himself, he should feel elated at the conversion of Lincoln to
his cause.
"I have got you together to hear what I have written down," said the
President with finality. "I do not wish your advice about the main matter
that I have determined for myself." Typical Lincoln, Chase bristledtreating
a Cabinet like his personal rubber stamp.
"This I say without intending anything but respect for any one of you,"
Lincoln added, perhaps sensitive to Chase's frown, "but I already know the
views of each on this question." He regarded the papers in front of him. "If
there is anything in the expressions I use, or in any other minor matter"
Chase noted how he emphasized the "minor""which any one of you thinks
had best be changed, I shall be glad to receive the suggestions."
Then Lincoln made what Chase considered a curious and gratuitous point:
"I know very well that many others might, in this matter, as in others, do
better than I can. And if I were satisfied that the public confidence was more
fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and if I knew of any constitu-
tional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would
gladly yield it to him."
That same obsequious point again, Chase thought, remembering the last
time Lincoln offered to "resign his plan" or place. Why does he have to insult
us and then fawn on us this way? Why doesn't he read the proclamation and
get on with it?
"But though I believe that I have not so much of the confidence of the
people as I had some time since," Lincoln went on deliberately, "I do not
know that any other person has more." Time would tell about that. "I am
here. I must do the best I can." He looked at Chase, who looked back at him
squarely; neither man's eyes wavered.
So he is finally going to take the plunge into the political unknown, Seward
observed. The Secretary of State recrossed his legs and unsteepled his fingers.
Pity that McClellan had not been able to score a more smashing triumph,
which would have forced the British leaders to scrap their plans to recognize
the Confederacy and run the Union blockade. Now it will be Lincoln's aboli-
tion of slavery, rather than the Union Army's destruction of the Southern
armies, that will hold the British and French at bay: the sentiment of work-
ingmen over there would now be firmly on the side of the North. Unless, of
course, the slaves revolted and started raping white women; then Lords Palm-
erston and Russell, eager to manufacture the Southern cotton, would enter
the war on the Southern side for what they would call humanitarian reasons.
Who was advising the President to do this? Not Chase, surely, who would
lose much of his political following by it. Stanton? Yes, but Lincoln used him
to absorb unpopularity in n~naginggg the war, and paid little attention to his
political judgmentsStanton had his own foolish Democratic ambitions any-
how, which was why he so feared McClellan's success. Certainly not the
Biairs, or Bates or Seward or Weedall had counseled the oppos-te course.
Remarkably independent and strong-willed fellow, this Lincoln; chis situa-
tion was similar to Surnter, where all the wise heads save Blair advised
against precipitating a civil war, but Lincoln accepted war. Seward freely
admitted his misjudgment of the man; at the start, he had been certain he
could control the unsophisticated President, and rule while Lincoln reigned.
That had been a mistake. He sighed profoundly as Lincoln proceeded to read
aloud the draft of his proclamation.
"/, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Com-
mander-in-chief of the Army and Navy thereof . . . "
If he's bound to do it, Seward conceded to himself, that's the way; as
Bonaparte had advised, if you are going to take Vienna, then take Vienna.
That assertion at the beginning was to call attention to his war power; as
Lincoln read on, Seward approved of the way he unequivocally reiterated
that the goal of the war remained preservation of the Union, which was
intended to remind one and all that he had not changed the purpose to
abolition.
"That it is my purpose to again recommend the adoption of a practical
measure tendering pecuniary aid to states which may voluntarily adopt imme-
diate or gradual abolishment of slavery . . ."
The familiar bow to the border states: Lincoln was going through his litany
of gradual, compensated abolition. Seward assumed he would next put in the
usual nonsense about deportation.
".  .  .  the  effort  to  colonize  persons  of  African  descent  will  be  contin-
ued ... "
Yes, there it was; Lincoln, in the midst of what surely was an unconstitu-
tional coup, was nothing if not consistent about all his previous offers.
"Hold it," Seward interrupted. "Put in 'with their consent.' "
Lincoln nodded, wrote in those words on the draft, and continued: "That
on the first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and sixty three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of
a state, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States shall
be then, thenceforward, and forever free . . ."
That dry legal tone was probably best for a coup, Seward judged, but
showed a frown at Lincoln's next line: "and the executive government of the
United States will, during the continuance in office of the present incumbent,
recognize such persons as being free. "                     i
"That won't do."
Lincoln looked up and took off his spectacles, waiting for Seward's objec-
tion.
"Where you say, 'during the incumbency of the present President'I'd
strike that out. You're issuing a state paper, not a personal message." Seward
thought, but did not say, that Lincoln's qualifier seemed to invite the next
President to revoke the whole thing. Chase piped up to say he liked Seward's
suggestion, as Seward had assumed he would; the Treasury Secretary would
prefer the proclamation be issued by anybody but the incumbent.
Seward also saw the weakness in Lincoln's proposal: the Presidents was
merely personally "recognizing" freedom during his term without saying' he
would actually deliver it permanently. "Where you say that you 'will recog-
nize such persons as being free,' I'd change that to 'will recognize and main-
tain the freedom of such persons.' " In for a dime, in for a dollar; if Lincoln
was going to stage a coup, he should do it with firm resolve.
"I considered that," said Lincoln, "but it's not my way to promise what I
am not entirely sure I can perform."
"You ought to take that ground," Seward told him with great assurance.
"Recognize by itself isn't strong enough."
"I'm not prepared to say that I think we're exactly able to maintain this,"
said Lincoln dubiously.
"Seward's right," said Stanton, though Seward knew it must have pained
him to go along with a Cabinet rival.
"Put in maintain," agreed Chase. "The Proclamation does not, indeed,
mark out exactly the course I should myself prefer." Seward rolled his eyes at
the understated truth of that; Chase would probably have preferred an anony-
mous whisper in the night. "But I am ready to take it just as it is written, and
to stand by it with all my heart. I think the suggestions of Governor Seward
very judicious, and shall be glad to have them adopted."
Lincoln looked around the table and agreed to go along with the change.
He rewrote the phrase as Seward had suggested. He continued reading a
section that Seward considered ballastcalling attention in laborious detail
to the Fugitive Slave Act and the Confiscation Act, inserting in the proclama-
tion the printed sections of the legislation. Why all that?
Seward's puzzlement ended with the reading of the final paragraph: "And I
do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the military and naval
service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce, within their respective
spheres of service, the act and sections above recited. "
Ah, that was why Lincoln felt the need to quote from previous acts of
Congress: to send a message to George McClellan & Co.: in this Executive
proclamation threatening to free the slaves of rebels, he was building upon
laws duly passed by both Houses. By ordering McClellan to obey the laws
passed constitutionally, and enumerating them, Lincoln apparently hoped the
exhortation would slop over to his unconstitutional coup of the seizure of the
property of everyone who lived in the South, rebel or not. Shrewd.
But it troubled Seward that a President should have to "enjoin" the na-
tion's armed services to obey the laws; that was surely unprecedented. "En-
join" meant "command" or "direct" in Seward's lexicon: possibly Lincoln
was worried about a counter-coup by the army, feeling its oats after its
achievement at 'turning back Lee's invasion, and he wanted to remind the
sure-to-be-angered officers who had not signed up for abolition that the recent
acts in that direction were swathed in constitutional legitimacy.
When the President was finished reading, Seward, who realized his com-
ments had been peripheral, looked to Blair for the much-needed political
rebuttal. Although Lincoln had said his mind was made up on the central
question, surely he was not impervious to comment from his Cabinet on the
substance of the move.
Blair, however, merely looked at the ceiling. Seward assumed the Postmas-
ter General had been adviser by his sagacious father that the Biairs should
not be in the forefront of opposition to the shift in the center of gravity of the
partyespecially if Seward was willing to take on that onerous task.
Because nobody else was making specific suggestions on a fairly important
document, much less challenging its basic wisdom, Seward said 'coloniza-
tion. Isn't the Attorney General working on something along those lines?"
He knew that the redoubtable Anna Ella Carroll was working with Bates on a
policy statement about the emigration offreed blacks. They would be sent out
as emigrants, not as colonistswithout the protection of the mother country
in order to make their arrival more palatable to the Central American
countries.
"I'll have that by the end of the week," said Bates.
"So where you say 'the effort to colonize persons of African descent will be
continued upon this continent, or elsewhere,' " Seward suggested, "add 'with
the previously obtained consent of the governments existing there.' That will
be the import of the Attorney General's memorial when it arrives, I under-
stand, and it should conform with your proclamation."
Lincoln nodded and put it in, adding "That's an important point, Seward.
How come you didn't bring it up right away?"
Seward shrugged.
"You remind me," smiled Lincoln, leaning back, "of a hired man out West
who came to the farmer with the news that one of a yoke of oxen had
dropped dead. And after chewing the fat for a while, and hesitating, the hired
man said the other ox in the team had dropped dead, too. The farmer asked
him, 'Why didn't you tell me at once that both oxen were dead?' and the man
answered, 'Because I didn't want to hurt you by telling you too much at one
time.' "
Seward had not heard that one before; Lincoln seemed to have an inex-
haustible supply of tension relievers that were entirely apropos. He joined in
the laughter and then Stanton had his say.
"I want it known that I support this measure to the fullest," Stanton said,
without equivocation. "This brave act will infuse new spirit in the forces of
the Union, and it will strike fear in the heart of the rebellion. It will win the
war. It will set right a terrible wrong."
Stanton looked around the room fiercely. "This act is so important, and
involves consequences so vast, that each member of the Cabinet should be
called upon to give distinctly and unequivocally his own opinion of it."
"Some of us have spoken up," said Seward cheerfully.
"Two gentlemen," Stanton replied, glowering in victory, "have not been
sufficiently explicit, though they seem to concur. I refer )to the Secretary of
the Treasury"Chase looked startled and then offended, a sequence of reac-
tions Seward thought he was especially good at"and to the Secretary of the
Navy." That, thought Seward, was Mars getting even with old Neptune for
making him look like a fool in the abortive Cabinet coup last month. "And I
have in mind another member," Stanton added ominously, "with whom I am
not in full accord on many policies." That, Seward knew, meant him; he
airily waved it off.
"I must admit the subject came upon us unexpectedly," Chase expostu-
lated, on the defensive. "I was surprised. As you all know, I have long es-
poused the arming of blacks, and this proclamation goes a step further banan I
had ever proposed. But I am prepared to accept and support it." Chase
looked to Stanton for approval, which was withheld, so he went on: "I am
glad the President has made this advance, which he should sustain from his
heart." Seward made no effort to conceal his amusement as the distraught
Chase, trying to cover his lack of enthusiasm, went on to make an impromptu
argument in favor of emancipation in the rebel states.
Stanton nodded; then, like a strict teacher demanding that his pupils recite
their lessons, glared at Navy Secretary Welles.
"The President does not misunderstand my position, Mr. Secretary,"
Welles responded solemnly, "nor that of any other member of this Cabinet. I
assent most unequivocally to his measure as a war necessity."
"I am an emancipationist from principle," Blair felt constrained to put in.
"At some personal sacrifice, at a time when many who are now all-out for
abolition were silent, I defended the slave Dred Scott in court. You will recall
I helped John Brown get a fair trial after he was captured at Harpers Ferry."
Seward nodded; that established his bona fides, with a nice dig at the come-
lately Stanton.
"But I have doubts of the expediency of this executive action at this partic-
ular juncture," Blair said. At last; Seward was beginning to doubt if anybody
would have the courage to stay Lincoln's hand from this bluhder. "We ought
not to put in jeopardy the patriotic element in the border states, already
severely tried. Elections are coming in a month. As soon as this proclamation
reaches the border states, it will carry over those states to the secessionists."
"I have considered that danger," Lincoln said, "which is undoubtedly seri-
ous. But there are two sides to it. The difficulty is as great not to act as to act.
For months I have labored to get those border states to move, in vain. We
must make the forward movement, and they will acquiesce, if not immedi-
ately, soon."
"Why?"
"Because they will realize that slavery has received its deathblow from
slave owners," Lincoln explained, as if it had always been apparent to him
that by seceding, the South had given up its constitutional right to perpetuate
slavery where it existed. "Slavery cannot survive the rebellion."
That was a sweeping conclusion, Seward thought, but Blair was not fin-
ished making his case against emancipation now. "There are also party men,
politicians in the free states who are striving to revive the old party lines and
distinctions. We're putting a club in their hand to smash the Republican
Party."
"That does not carry much weight with me," said Lincoln. "Their clubs
will be used against us, take what course we might."
"I would like to ask your leave," said Blair stubbornly, "to file a paper with
you against this policy. Time, and the course of the war, and the elections,
may cause you to change your mind."
"I have no objection to that," said Lincoln.
Seward, who had hoped earlier in the meeting that Blair would pose the
necessary objections, now worried that he had held his ground too long; it
would not do for conservatives to appear to be against emancipation, if that
was to be the policy. The aboMionists would lacerate them for not jumping
when Lincoln did. Did Blair mean to file his objections privately, or publicly?
Privately would be meaningless; publicly would invite his dismissal.
"Think twice about filing written objections, Judge," Seward said
smoothly.
"I am worried," Blair replied, "about the effect of this proclamation on the
army."
Nobody said a word at this allusion to the unspoken fear in the Cabinet of
a coup by McClellan, only one day's march away. Seward thought the mo-
ment propitious for the protection of the Biairs, his allies in the Administra-
tion, against the memoirs and diaries and backstabbings to the press of the
radical faction. "But you are emphasizing your personal belief, Mr. Blair,
that slavery should not be perpetuated, and that it should be struck down in
the states in rebellion, and only in those." Seward leaned forward and held a
finger up, to be certain Blair caught the political warning. "Your objection is
purely on timing."
"Of course. Yes," Blair responded. "That is my position exactly. Let no-
body misconstrue it."
Stanton harrumphed, got everyone's attention, and looked hard at Seward.
The Secretary of State alone had not really tipped his hand, not counting
Caleb Smith of Interior, who had been heard to say, "Th-th-there goes Indi-
ana."
With a sense of the occasion, Seward rose to his feet. "I'll take that docu-
ment," he said to the President, who obediently handed it to him. "And I
shall have the formal phraseology of attestation added, along with the Great
Seal. I'll have it back here early this afternoon for your signature, and it can
be released to the newspapers for publication tomorrow morning." He flashed
a big smile at Stanton, and the meeting began to break up.
"Stay a moment, Stanton," Seward heard the President say. "I want to go
over the other proclamation with you. And I want to ask you," he added,
"what are we doing about the ailments of our soldiers' feet? That fellow you
sent over was amazing."
"Wait," said Chase, shuffling through a stack of papers in front of him, "I
should like to discuss a plan for the central purchase of all cotton, sugar,
tobacco and rice, in which a certificate would be given, redeemable at the end
of the rebellion, to"
"That's entirely too important for decision without reflection," Seward told
him gently. "That should be the first item at our next meeting." Threatening
to free the slaves in Secessia by New Year's Eve unless the rebellion ended,
followed by assuming dictatorial powers of arrest, was enough for one after-
noon.

CHAPTER 6
GETTING RIGHT ON EMANCIPATION
Old Man Blair took the lengthy memorial prepared by his son Montgomery
and read it through. The handwriting was near-illegible, making it hard on
the old man's eyes. The reasoning was typical of Monty, sound and lacid; the
arguments themselves, taken one by one, he found persuasive. The Proclama-
tion of Emancipation, if carried out as yesterday's preliminary proclamation
promised to do come January I, would transform the war in a way that
Lincoln had said must never be permittedby turning an answer to insurrec-
tion into "a remorseless revolutionary struggle." But now it was the North on
the side of revolution.
"Brilliant," he pronounced. Monty looked pleased; Frank, who had hur-
ried over from the House of Representatives to join them for lunch at the
Biairs' Pennsylvania Avenue house across the street from the Mansion,
smiled at his brother proudly. "Now, Monty," the Old Man said, handing the
document back to his elder son, "tear it up."
The boys looked perplexed. "Tear it up, tear it up," the Old Man insisted.
"Into little pieces. You never wrote it. No copies exist, do they? Good. You
didn't pass this around for comment? Thank God."
"I feel strongly about this, Father," said the Postmaster General. "I was
thinking of issuing my objections publicly. If you think that making it public
is a mistake, I can understandit might weaken the President's hand at a
difficult time. But I see nothing wrong in handing it to him privately, so that
the President will have the argument against emancipation at this time in
front of him."
"What in hell good would that do? The decision's been made. The procla-
mation is in all the newspapers."
"But it is provisional. His plan will not take effect for a hundred days, and
plenty could happen in that time. Lincoln might yet be dissuaded. At least I
want my objections on file."
"Horseshit," said the old man. He picked up the New York Tribune, which
Monty had brought over from the railroad station. The headline read: "God
Bless Abraham Lincoln!" Greeley's editorial was ecstatic.
"But look at these," his elder son protested. "From the New York World, an
abolitionist sheet which thinks that Lincoln did not go far enough: '. . . the
President has purposely made the proclamation inoperative in all places
where we have gained a military footing which makes the slaves accessible.
He has produced emancipation only where he has no power to execute it.' "
That was the whole beauty of the thing. The elder Blair was irritated at
Lincoln both for ignoring his advice and for not warning him in advance. But
the way the President had done it was ingenious: threatening to free slaves
only in those areas in rebellion, where he was unable to free any slave. The
maneuver was designed to rally the radicals without permanently estranging
the conservatives. The Old Man's mind wandered to a curious fact his son
had noted: from the issuance of the proclamation to the date it was supposed
to be carried out was one hundred days, the famous length of time in which
the returning Napoleon Bonaparte drove the French king out of Paris. Did
Lincoln plan it that way? Did he know that much about history?
"And from the other side," Monty was going on, "Bennett's Herald: 'a sop
to the abolitionists.' "
Frank held up a telegraph message: "Here's the reaction from the South.
The Richmond Examiner calls it 'more an act of malice toward the master,
than one of mercy to the slave.' And Jeff Davis is quoted this way'A
restitution of the Union has been rendered forever impossible by the adoption
of a measure which neither admits of retraction nor can coexist with union.'
This means war to the bitter end."
"We cannot know where it will lead," the Old Man told his sons, "but
emancipation is now a fact. A political fact." He asked himself: was it? Lin-
coln had left himself an out if the South agreed to surrender, but that was
most unlikely. What about a peace probe, with terms calling for no emancipa-
tion in return for reunion? Possible, if McClellan went on to new victories;
Lincoln had created a strong bargaining position, and had placed himself
rather than his general in command of the ultimate resolution of the war.
Smart. "And I do not want any Blair on record on the wrong side of the
slavery issue."
"We don't want to ruin my chances for national office, Monty," said Frank
sensibly. "Your memorial would be construed by our enemies as a Blair
family stand against emancipation. You could put in all the qualifiers you
like, but that's what people would say."
"Frank's right, Monty," the Old Man said. "We lost. For the time being,
conservative Republicans will have to take a back seat to the likes of Greeley
and Wade and Sumner. Good generals like McClellan and Porter, who want
both Union and peace, will be under pressure from incompetents like Hooker
and Hunter and poor Burnside, who want abolition and conquest. That's the
way it is, son. Don't run from reality."
Monty's face and body sagged. "This is all wrong. Half emancipation is a
compromise that won't bring peace, it will bring war to the knife. If Lincoln
wants to abolish slavery legally, why doesn't he propose an amendment to the
Constitution?"
"Because he doesn't have the votes," said Frank, who had been carefully
taught how to count the House. "And after November, he'll have even fewer
abolition votes."
"What's done is done, Monty," said the Old Man. "Now let's look ahead.
First, we want to be on the right side. There's a serenade to Lincoln tonight
outside the Mansion and a reception at Chase's afterward1 want both of
you to be there, and not looking glum. Agreed?"
Monty nodded reluctantly, adding, "There's a crisis brewing in the army,
Father. We suspect that this emancipation announcement may be the match
needed to light a revolt. The army is fifty miles away and in love with its
commander. If the troops move on Washington, are you for McClellan or for
Lincoln?"
"We're for both," said the Old Man unhesitatingly, speaking for the three
of them. He had worked out the politics of this in his head during a long talk
with the President. "First, we are for constitutional government and the man
the people elected, Lincoln. An army coup is anathema. I'd stand out there in
front of the Mansion with my old musket and let them shoot me down first."
"What a way to go, for a Jackson man," Frank said admiringly.
"Next: we're also for McClellan because he is the best general in the army
and because we're the only people close-to Lincoln who don't want to see this
war end with the bloody conquest of the South. A hundred years of hatred
would be no reunion. So we have to persuade McClellan not to do anything
stupid that would get him fired."
"He's a very angry man," said Monty. "Stanton and Halleck never so
much as congratulated him. They're picking apart his victory, even spreading
rumors that he secretly met with Lee to work out a stalemate. Mac has
provocation."
"Then we'll just have to unprovoke him." A family of influence did not
merely react to events, it took concerted action to shape them. "Little Mac
wants to be President, doesn't he? In sixty-four, the Republican candidate
will be Lincoln, if the North has won the war. But if the war drags on, Chase
will challenge Lincoln for the nomination and that damned trimmer may just
take it from him."
"Country would be sick of war by then," Frank agreed.
"Either way," the elder Blair concluded, "the Republican candidate will be
greatly unpopular in the North. That means a Democratic victory, and Mc-
Clellan can have the Democratic Party's nomination for the askingif he
behaves like a patriot now and not like a would-be dictator."
"We're for Lincoln," said Frank slowly, trying to get it straight. "But if the
radicalsChase, Stanton, Ben Wade, Tad Stevens, the whole abolitionist
crowdtake over the Republican Party, then we switch over to McClellan
and the Democrats. But what about Horatio Seymour? He's the Democrat I
like."
"Each of us will decide for himself," said the Old Man piously, since
Monty was showing signs of unfilial independence, "but Seymour would have
to win Governor of New York this year, and that's a long shot even with all
the resentment against abolition." He abandoned the pretense of individual
action; the Biairs would stick together to put Frank in the White House.
"Here's the family plan: step one is to warn McClellan away from trying to
set himself up as dictator, which would probably fail and would ruin him in
sixty-four. The President is stronger than the army, and Lincoln told me he
means to show it."
"The suspension of habeas corpus," Monty nodded. "He'll have that proc-
lamation tomorrow. Stanton wants the power to jail anybody who says any-
thing against the war. To protect the draft, Lincoln is backing him up."
"Not that," the Old Man shook his head. It was true that the anti-dissent
proclamation would add to the impression of a tough-minded president, but
that was not the demonstration of authority Francis Preston Blair had in
mind. "He's going to make an example of a disloyal officer here at the War
Department. Lance the boil, challenge the crowd that wants McClellan to
take over. Show 'em a strong President, like Jackson."
"The officeranybody we know?"
"Have you heard of a major named Key?"
Monty frowned. "There's a Colonel Key, Thomas Key, who's the judge
advocate for McClellan. More than that, he's Mac's right arm, drafted that
Harrison's Landing letter. He must be at Antietam now."
"May not be the same man that Lincoln's after. But you run the Post
Office, Monty. Get a letter off to McClellan tonight. Tell him we've been
talking to Lincoln, which is true enoughthat he's caught a major here in
the War Department named Key who said that McClellan's plan was to hold
back his troops to make a compromise with the rebels for Union with slavery.
Going to make a public spectacle of the man. This might be a good time for
McClellan to say something critical of slavery."
"He won't want to," said Frank. "Mac believed all that stuff about the war
being for the Union and not for abolition. He's as much against 'subjugation'
and 'conquest' as cousin Breckinridge ever was."
"Put it this way, write this down," the Old Man dictated to his older son.
" 'Even if you had the ambitions to be President, George, this would be the
best course to adopt, for I can assure you that no appreciable portion of the
nation will favor the continuation of slavery after this war is over.' Got that?"
Monty was scribbling fast. "You're certainly a President's man, Father."
"And when McClellan becomes President legitimately, I'll be his man. The
Biairs are no dictator's men, though. Tomorrow, I'll write Mac a letter, too.
End of the week, you do too, Frank. Don't hint that one of these days he may
be getting a surprise visit in camp from Lincoln."
"Did the President say he'd do that, Father?" asked Frank.
"No, he's playing what he calls 'shut-pan' with me, but now I know how he
thinks." Francis Preston Blair resolved not to be caught napping again by a
bold Lincoln move to protect his power. The President no longer had any
intimate advisers to influence himnot the Biairs, not Weed, not Browning
or Swett or any of those he used to lean on; he was his own man totally,
confiding in one man for one purpose, using another for something else.
The Old Man saw how Lincoln subordinated every interest to his central
idea of majority rule, with terrible punishment to those who tried to subvert
it. The man was now President in his bones, prepared to use everyone to help
him coax public sentiment toward defending that noble but unrelenting end,
with little regard for personal affection or political loyalty. Blair noted that
leaders, as they matured, trusted themselves more and others less, and found
themselves at their most effective unencumbered by the barnacles of grati-
tude.
Even as he hated to be edged out of what had been an innermost circle,
Blair admired that implosion of confidence he could see in Lincoln. As a
family, the Biairs, too, had a central ideato put Frank in the White House,
which the Old Man granted was not as high-minded as majority rule, but
from which could flow great things for the Republic. Strength of character,
he had learned, was always more important than brilliance of mind in a
democracy, and he was sure his youngest son had the Blair character. He
hoped the boy would develop, in time, the shrewdness Lincoln was showing
in jabbing sharp elbows into the sides of all the political forces pressing in on
him. Perhaps one day the leader of an embattled democracy would find a way
to defend the system more democratically, but that seemed a long way off to
the man who had watched Jackson and was watching Lincoln.
Intimacy was not all, however; more satisfying than to be told a secret was
to figure out a secret. Blair saw Lincoln's view of his main problem as the
impatience of radical support: that had been taken care of by the tentative
proclamation of emancipation, with the angry reaction suppressed by a proc-
lamation suspending habeas corpus. _Now a new problem would be from an
angry officer corps dominated by Democrats who disagreed with his ap-
proach to the war.
"Do you know what I would do if I were President?" He looked from one
son to the other. "First I would challenge the disloyal element in the military
by slapping down some loudmouthed staff aide, loudly and publicly. Show
authority, that's what they understand." He would not like to be in the shoes
of this Major Key, whoever he was.
"And then you would do some local politicking," said Monty, understand-
ing. The Old Man wished Frank had caught on as quickly.
"Exactly. I would go right to the source of the trouble with a sudden
review of the army in the field." Blair could see Lincoln at his most serious
and kindly, visiting the wounded, praising the brave, urging on the generals,
establishing by his presence the fact of civilian control to the troops, and the
fact of his military control to the people. "It's Mr. Lincoln's army, you know
not McClellan's. Not yet, not till he's elected President. It's up to us to save
Little Mac from unwise counsels." At Antietam, the young man had earned a
second chance to lead the armies.
Frank reached for his brother's memorial to the President on the table and
looked at it again. "What are you going to do with this, Monty?"
The Postmaster General took it from him, and to their father's great satis-
faction, slowly tore it in half, then in half again. The President would be
denied some excellent advice he did not want to get, and the Biairs would not
run the risk of being seen as standing in the way of emancipation.
"See you both at the party tonight at the Chases'," the Old Man said
proudly. "Remember to smileit's a celebration."

CHAPTER 7
SERENADE

Kate Chase, fresh from an exhilarating month-long sojourn at the Saratoga
spa, felt guilty about her lack of participation in the war. Most of Wash-
ington's women of note had something noble to do, from rolling bandages to
visiting hospitals; she had no role to talk about in a self-sacrificial way, and
she told her father it troubled her.
"But you do a great deal, Katie," he replied, glumly reading the God-bless-
Lincoln editorial in the New York Tribune. She knew he had been in a stunned
state ever since Lincoln's political masterstroke. "Your long talks with Lord
Lyons have done more to keep England out of the war than anything Seward
can claim."
"I'm a parasite," she murmured. That was what John Hay had called her
and she hated him for it because it was true. Why did he want to hurt her?
Probably because she paid too much attention to Major Garfield and when
John objected, she had called him a draft-dodger.
"Parasol? You already have a dozen of them."
She sat on the arm of his chair and kissed his massive, balding head. Father
and daughter read the newspaper together, as they often did. He pointed to
an article about casualties in the battle for Maryland: more than 20,000 killed
and wounded on both sides, not counting the captured. The bloodiest single
day of the war.
"I thought McClellan prided himself on maneuvering, keeping casualties
low." she said.