"Not at Antietam. Lost more men than Lee, I suppose because we were on
the attack, for a change. They say the carnage there is unbelievable."
"Brady is going to show the pictures at his emporium here and in New
York," she noted, from the paper. " 'Exhibit of the dead at Antietam.' I don't
want to go." That was unworthy, to use her father's favorite word. "Perhaps
we should visit a hospital today, together."
"Too horrible for you, Katie. And we'd only be in the way." He read
further and changed his mind: "They say General Hooker is at the Insane
Asylum, which has been taken over as a hospital for the wounded. That's not
far from here. I want to meet Hooker. He may be our man to replace McClel-
lan."
She pulled him to his feet. "We're off." After the serenade at the White
House tonight, she was planning to bring back a dozen or so couples for a
reception, reminding everyone that emancipation was a great Chase victory.
Wine and cake in the late evening made an appropriate entertainment, and
cost much less than a sit-down dinner. She wanted to have something provoc-
ative to report, and "Fighting Joe" Hooker, wounded at the battle, would
surely have something to say. "You get our boarder," she said. "I'll get a
bonnet and parasol. Or parasite."
The "boarder" was her father's houseguest, James Garfield of Ohio, a
major in the Union Army. More important, the major was newly nominated
to be a Congressman. If elected next montha certainty, in the most Republi-
can district in Ohiohe would probably remain in the army and delay taking
his seat, but he was guaranteed the role of delegate to the '64 Republican
convention. Kate enjoyed the company of the mercurial, handsomely bearded
Garfield, and had happily endorsed his move from the Willard to their home
at Sixth and E; at thirty, he was almost her contemporary.
Kate and the moody major had already shared one intimate moment: re-
turning from a ride in the Silver Spring countryside, she had broken through
his reserve and listened to his complaints about his prissy wife back home and
his love for a girl who had been his former schoolmate in Florida; it was
deliciously complicated by the guilt he felt toward his wife after the death of
their infant a few months ago. Kate flirted with Garfield out of habit, but her
feeling toward him was comradely.
Major Garfield had no money, no connections other than in Ohio politics,
and in her mind no great prospects, and he was already married, unhappily or
not; still, he was a fine second man to have around the house this season. She
liked to compare him to John Hay: brooding where John was sparkling,
constrained and respectful where the younger man was lustful and irreverent,
as easily drawn completely into Chase's orbit as Hay had been into Lincoln's.
She sent the servant up to fetch their houseguest for what she called "our
mission to succor the wounded." When the major came down, her father
bravely set the tone of the day by praising Lincoln for taking his advice on
slavery at long last.
"Strange," said the major, "that a second-rate Illinois lawyer should be the
instrument through whom one of the sublimest works of any age is accom-
plished."
She came only slightly to the defense of the President by recalling Wendell
Phillips's perfect characterization of Lincoln as "a first-rate second-rate
man."
"No, I mean that," Garfield insisted, and related what he had heard from
Edward Stanly, military governor of North Carolina, when that conservative
had stormed into Washington to protest to Lincoln about the devastating
effect of the proclamation on Union sentiment in that state. "The President
told him that emancipation had become a civil necessity to prevent the radi-
cals from openly embarrassing the government in the conduct of the war.
Lincoln said he'd prayed to the Almighty to save him from this necessity,
said he'd asked, 'Let this cup pass from me,' but his prayer had not been
answered."
Chase blanched at that evocation of the Bible in a direction opposite from
that taken by Lincoln in the Cabinet Room. But Kate refused to let them
become surly on what was a day of public celebration; she took the arms of
both men and they set out merrily for the Insane Asylum.
The general did not look like a wounded man to Kate. She presented him
with a basket of grapes and peaches which she had arranged herself, after
calculating what was the proper thing to bring to a wounded hero. General
Joseph Hooker was not in bed but lying on a couch, his bandaged foot inside
a large slipper.
The doctor was optimistic enough: "The general's wound is as little dan-
gerous as a foot wound can be," he told them cheerily. "The ball passed
through the fleshy part just above the sole and below the instep, without
touching a bone."
"I would suggest trying Dr. Forsha's Balm," said Chase, trying to be help-
ful. To the general, Chase said: "General Hooker, if my advice had been
followed, you would have been in command this summer when the Union
Army stood before Richmond."
"If I had commanded," Hooker took the opportunity to reply, "Richmond
would have been ours."
"What happened at Sharpsburg?" Garfield put in. Kate noted that he
spoke not as a major to a general, but as a future Congressman to a soldier.
"The tragedy was that I was wounded in the morning, leading the first
attack. If I could have remained on the field three hours longer," Hooker
spoke with certitude, "our victory would have been complete. I had already
gained enough ground, and seen enough, to make the rout of the enemy
sure."
"Who did McClellan replace you with?" asked Garfield.
"George Meade, a fine man, butwell, let me just say this. After I had
been carried off the field, McClellan sent for me to lead an advance in an
ambulance. That's how much that field of battle needed a fighting general."
Kate looked at the slightly injured foot and marveled at how little it took to
change the course of a battle.
"McClellan is surely no fighter," her father said. "He and Stanton, they
say, are like oil and water."
"McClellan is unfit to lead a great army," Hooker said. "He is timid and
hesitating where decision is necessary. The Battle ofAntietam was near being
lost by his way of fighting it. If the attack had been simultaneouswith
Burnside's corps attacking along with me, and Porter in the centerthe rout
would have been complete. For God's sake, Governorexcuse me, Miss
our force in the battle exceeded the enemy's by thirty thousand men! McClel-
lan lost the chance to finally defeat the enemy."
"There's some talk," Chase said carefully, "of elements in the officer corps
urging McClellan to come to Washington to intimidate the government. Espe-
cially after the Emancipation Proclamation. Do you place any credence in
that?"
"It's not true that he has the support of the whole army," Hooker said
obliquely. "Just two corps, Porter's especially, and those men are indulged
and protected."
Kate wondered how many men were in two army corpsenough to seize
Washington? Hooker relieved her mind: "Besides, McClellan is not audacious
enough for a coup," said the general with his foot in the slipper, obviously
eager to show his contempt for a commander in disfavor with Chase. "He'd
think that Lincoln had two hundred thousand troops defending the Mansion.
McClellan is just not dictator material."
As they left, Chase stopped the doctor in the hallway of the Insane Asy-
lum, jammed with moaning wounded attended by nurses who seeded not to
know what to do. The doctor was a military surgeon who had considerable
battlefield experience, her father had told her. "What is your estimate of the
wound?"
"He'll be walking in a week."
"What's your estimate of the man as a general?"
"Brave, energetic, full of life."
Garfield asked, "Were you at Antietam?" When the surgeon said yes, the
major asked, "Was General Hooker skillful on the field?"
"Yes." It was a tentative yes, with a "but" underneath. "Not comprehen-
sive enough, perhaps, for the plan and conduct of a great campaign. But he is
surely a better soldier than Bumside."
The surgeon went on to recommend a colonel for appointment to general,
which Chase noted down. Everybody, Kate observed, wanted something; it
made her feel justified in her own long list of wants. What her father wanted,
having been so disappointed in John Pope, was a general capable of replacing
McClellan right away; she knew that Bumside, the other main possibility,
had turned down the command a month ago, pleading inadequacy. What
General Hooker wanted was a political sponsor to press his cause when a
Republican replacement for McClellan was needed. What the doctor wanted
was a general's star for a friend, and perhaps a high place on Hooker's staff.
What Garfield wanted was an introduction to Washington power, a whiff of
Republican radicalism, a taste of sophistication. Coming full circle, what
Chase wanted in Garfield was an active supporter in his home base for the
Republican nomination against Lincoln, and in Hooker a general who would
be obliged to him for his command.
And what did she want? In the carriage back to the Executive Mansion,
where the President was to be serenaded by a crowd enchanted by his emanci-
pation edict, Kate changed the "what" to "who": she wanted, first, her fa-
ther. She wanted his unalloyed affection, shared to a slight degree with her
younger sister, Nettie, but unchallenged by any other potential official host-
ess.
That meant Kate Chase would have to counter Addie Douglas, widow of
Stephen Douglas, cousin to Rose Greenhow; she seemed to be connected in
some way to everyone who counted in Washington. The mail to her father
from Addie had stopped; that probably meant she was writing to Salmon
Chase at his office, to avert Kate's interception of correspondence. Addie,
however, was just a charming socialite; more ominous were the frequent visits
of Anna Carroll, who was a political force operating on a level of intellect and
influence that Kate had not yet reached. Miss Carroll was troubling because
she was smarter than her father and did not let him know it. Did her father
call on Miss Carroll? Did he write her letters in reply to her interminable
political polemics? Kate did not know, but sensed that this womanMiss
Carroll must be nearly twice her agecould seize the prize position that
rightly belonged to the elder Chase daughter.
Kate was prepared to make great personal sacrifices on the way to becom-
ing what the newspapers had begun to call "first Lady." Calculation was
central: when she learned that a crowd was planning to serenade the Presi-
dent at the Mansion that night, it was her idea that the crowd be encouraged
to march over to the Chase house and serenade the Cabinet member who had
persuaded Lincoln to take the step toward emancipation. That, in turn, led to
the opportunity for a reception inside the house for the people who counted
in Republican and military ranks.
The prospect of a party with a purpose of sharing the credit for abolition
excited her. Lord Lyons would be there, and Roscoe Conkling, and Governor
Sprague, her three most public beaux; Major Garfield would be looking at
her, as he always did, as if she were an especially ripe piece of forbidden fruit;
and John Hay would come over with the crowd from the Mansion. Red wine
was the suitable beverage; thirty people, by her estimate, would consume at
least two cases on a festive occasion. Sprague, she sighed, would handle a
couple of bottles by himself.
John Hay stood several paces behind the President and Mrs. Lincoln on
the front porch of the Mansion. He positioned himself next to Ward Hill
Lamon, whom the Tycoon had appointed marshal and who had promptly
appointed himself presidential bodyguard. Like so many people from Spring-
field, Marshal Lamon and Hay were related by marriage: John Hay's uncle
Milton was Hill's brother-in-law. The burly Lamon was looking out into the
crowd at dusk, searching for unfriendly faces, but there seemed to Hay to be
none. This was an exuberant crowd, mainly Republicans, some negroes, al-
most all men, orderly and with a core obviously practiced in the ant~;slaveryy
songs of the day.
The Hutchinson Family Singers were there at John Hay's personal invita-
tion. This group had given a concert to the Army of the Potomac one night,
and George McClellan had later ordered them out of the army lines perma-
nently. Their sin had been to sing the song they were singing right now, to the
tune of a Martin Luther hymn, the words by Whittier:
What breaks the oath
Of the men (>' the South?
What whets the knife
For the Union's life?
Hark to the answer: Slavery!
Those abolitionist words had been too provocative for McClellan. The
Hutchinsons sang them with extra fervor tonight, with the hint of a threat of
another armynot Lee's but McClellan'shanging over Washington.
"Fellow citizens," the President began his response to the serenade. Hay
was not surprised: when he had asked Lincoln if he was planning any re-
marks, the President had said no but his second secretary knew he would
have to say something.
"I have not been distinctly informed why you do me this honor, though I
suppose it is because of the proclamation." That brought a laugh and ap-
plause.
"I can only trust in God that I have made no mistake."
"No mistake, all right!" cried a voice.
"I shall make no attempt on this occasion to sustain what I have done or
said by any comment."
"We understand," said somebody; Hay thought it sounded like a revival
meeting. He also knew that the President's disclaimer meant he would have a
thought to offer.
"It is now for the country and the world"Hay hoped that reference
would get to the correspondent of The London Times"to pass judgment on
it, and, may be, to take action upon it. I will say no more. In my position I am
environed with difficulties."
"That's so," said a sympathetic voice. Hay marveled at the use of the word
"environed"a great, King James biblical, mysterious verb; he vaguely re-
called Lincoln reciting some Shakespearean passage with the phrase "envi-
roned he was with many foes." Lincoln surprised him from time to time with
his use of archaic language slipped into the modern tongue.
"Yet they are scarcely so great as the difficulties of those who, on the
battlefield, are endeavoring to purchase with their blood and their lives the
future happiness and prosperity of this country. Let us never forget them."
(Long applause.)
"On the fourteenth and seventeenth days of the present month there have
been battles bravely, skillfully and successfully fought." Lincoln then called
on the crowd to give three cheers to "the good and brave officers and men
who fought those successful battles." He did not mention the name of the
general in charge.
Hay followed the crowd to the Chase house on E Street, a ten-block stroll
on a lovely fall evening, marred only by the sight of ambulances coming back
from Frederick behind tired horses on the way to local hospitals. As the
singing begana little more organized this time, after the practice at the
Mansionthe Secretary of the Treasury came out on the front lawn, accom-
panied by his two daughters. Hay swallowed at the sight of Kate dressed in
dark green silk with a golden sash around a waist that his hands had held
much too long ago.
During the singing, he spotted Anna Carroll at the edge of the crowd,
standing with Senator Ben Wade and his wife, Caroline, waiting for the sere-
nade to end before going in to the reception. Hay knew that Chase and Wade
were rivals in Ohio, but allies of a sort in Washington in the badgering of the
President to strike down slavery. He joined the group.
"Harrah for Old Abe and the proclamation," said Wade, not too enthusias-
tically. "You can tell him I said that, young fellow. About damn time. Not far
enough, either, but I'm surprised Billy Bowlegs and the Biairs let him go this
far."
Hay let that go; Wade was too important an ally, flaying McClellan as
Chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, to offend in any way.
"You think, Senator, that the Proclamation of Freedom will have the mili-
tary effect the President intends?" That was innocuous enough, Hay thought;
maybe diplomacy would be his future. He also wanted to see whether the
grand-sounding "Proclamation of Freedom" would catch on.
"The country is going to hell," Wade said, "and the scenes witnessed in the
French Revolution are nothing in comparison with what we shall see here."
"He's a little bloody-minded tonight," said his wife, as if to apologize for
the senator's extreme hostility toward the South. "He's heard that the army
officers are plotting to ease up on the rebels."
"The rebels must be made to feel the horrors of war," Wade growled.
"They won't give up until they've lost their slaves, their homes, their sons. We
need a general who knows that, and then we'll have peace."
Hay nodded vigorously and turned to Anna Carroll. "Miss Carroll, your
plan on colonization will be issued by the Attorney General day after tomor-
row," he complimented her, knowing that she had prevailed on Wade to
support Lincoln on the shipment of freed slaves to Chiriqui. Hay thought the
deportation scheme was a barbarous and hideous humbug, so he changed the
subject promptly: "We have another proclamation to put out first, making it
hot for agitators."
"Good," said Wade. "If there is any stain on this administration, young
man, it is that you have dealt too leniently with these traitors at home."
"You'll like this proclamation, then," Hay assured him. "It is aimed at the
Democrats who will say that they signed on for Union, but not for abolition.
We expect they'll oppose the draft."
"Mercy for traitors is cruelty to loyal men," said Wade. "Remember that."
Hay would; the senator spoke in epigrams.
When the serenade ended, the Treasury Secretary made an earnest speech
about the proclamation of future emancipation. He did not have a way with
the crowd such as Lincoln had shownthe stump debates with Dcuglas had
long ago taught the President how to play off a crowd's reactionbut he gave
an impression of gravitas and trustworthiness. Hay listened for any hints of
personal disloyalty to the President, any suggestions that Lincoln had not
gone as far as Chase preferred on emancipationin fact, the truth was the
opposite. But Chase's remarks could not be faulted; Hay flashed a smile and
waved in the direction of Kate, hoping she would see him.
The crowd marched off to bellow their songs at the Attorney General's
house down the street and to force Mr. Bates to say something. Hay took
Anna Carroll's arm as they went into the Chase reception, partly because he
admired the woman, mostly because it would irritate Kate, who had made
him lonely when she skedaddled to Saratoga for an interminable month.
"Hello, abolitionist," Anna said to Secretary Chase, who first looked star-
tied, then grinned at Wade and said, "That's what we are, aren't we?"
Gleefully, merrily, they all called one another abolitionists, not mere eman-
cipationists or Free-Soilers, and it seemed to Hay that they enjoyed the novel
sensation of appropriating that hitherto dreaded label. All those at the party
seemed to feel a sort of new and exhilarating life; they breathed more freely;
in a way, the President's proclamation had freed them as well as the slaves.
"This is the most wonderful history of an insanity of a class that the world
has ever seen," Chase told them after a few glasses of wine, savoring the
moment and his part in it. "No party, no public feeling in the North," Chase
went on, "could ever have hoped to touch what the rebels have madly placed
in the very path of destruction."
"Incredible," said Anna Carroll. She looked at him with the conspiratorial
respect that Hay assumed had worked wonders on a couple of former presi-
dents.

CHAPTER 8

JOHN HAY'S DIARY
SEPTEMBER 25, 1862
Isachar Zacharie has established himself with the top levels of this adminis-
tration as no medicine man before. He was in today to affix a splint and
bandage to the Prsdt's still sprained wrist, on the theory that if he can give
relief to one appendage, he can give relief to all.
Mr. Lincoln sent him to Seward to cut that gentleman's corns. Now Dr. Z
is the only doctor in the country with a second testimonial, this one signed by
both the President and Secretary of State, saying, "We desire that the soldiers
of our brave Army may have the benefit of the doctor's surpassing skill." As a
result, Stanton has given him a pass through the lines for thirty days to cut
his way through the vast cornucopia of Federal marching feet. The pass takes
him from Fortress Monroe clear down around New Orleans, where it is
intended that General Banks will replace General Butler. The Prsdt has had
several long talks with Dr. Z, and I suspect that something more is afoot.
Chase was slightly troubled by the "other" proclamation this week. Thinks
it may unduly bend the Constitution to set up a band of civilian provost
marshals, as Stanton plans to do in the discouragement of dissent, to carry
out the decree of martial law. In fact, Stanton now has unlimited power to
create new offenses such as "constructive treason" and jail and prosecute
offenders, subject only to the President's review. The Democrats are scream-
ing, especially Horatio Seymour and a few other friends of McClellan and his
West Pointers in New York, but they had better not scream too loud, lest they
arouse Stanton's ire and into the hoosegow they go.
Chase furrowed his large brow at Lincoln about this: "We are doing more
to destroy self-government by these arbitrary arrests and illegal punishments
in the North," he pontificated today, "than the Confederates of the South in
their attempt to wipe us out as a nation."
Our high-minded Treasury Secretary can assume that noble posture be-
cause he has only to raise money, not troops. The Ancient of Days did not let
him get away with that:
"This thing reminds me of a story I read in a newspaper the other day. It
was of an Italian captain who ran his vessel on a rock and knocked a hole in
her bottom. He set his men to pumping and he went to prayers before a figure
of the Virgin in the bow of the ship."
Lincoln, as he does when telling a story like this, grew all animated. Chase,
at the sound of the word "Virgin," looked pained.
"The leak gained on them," continued the Tycoon. "It looked at last as if
the vessel would go down with all on board. The captain, at length, in a fit of
rage at not having his prayers answered, seized the figure of the Virgin and
threw it overboard.
"Suddenly the leak stopped. The water was pumped out, and the vessel got
safely into port. When docked for repairs, what do you suppose they found?
The statue of the Virgin Mary was found stuck head-foremost in the hole!"
Chase frowned some more. He was mildly unhappy with the arbitrary
arrest policy, but he must have been most unhappy not to get the joke. "I
don't quite see, Mr. President, the precise application of your story."
"Why, Chase, I don't intend precisely to throw the Virgin Mary overboard
and by that I mean the Constitutionbut I will stick it in the hole if I can.
These rebels are violating the Constitution to destroy the Union, and I will
violate the Constitution, if necessary, to save the Union."
"To give Stanton the power to imprison anyone for as long as he likes on
mere suspicion of disloyalty," Chase persisted, sounding to me like a resusci-
tated John Breckinridge, "seems to be a terrible encroachment on individual
rights. The Constitution says"
"I suspect, Chase, that our Constitution is going to have a rough time of it
before we get done with this row. But we can't fight the rebels with elder-
squirts and rosewater."
CHAPTER 9
THE KEY EPISODE

"The witness is here, Mr. President," said George Nicolay. "You sent for
him."
Lincoln looked up, pulled his chair in and sat up straight. "Send the wit-
ness in."
A nervous officer on Stanton's staff stood at attention in front of the com-
mander in chief's desk. Lincoln did not ask him to sit down.
"Your full name?"
"Levi C. Turner, sir; Major, Judge Advocate Corps."
"I am informed, Major," said Lincoln formally, "that within the past week
you propounded a question to Major John Key of General Halleck's staff."
He picked up a slip of paper. "The question was, 'Why was not the rebel
army bagged immediately after the battle near Sharpsburg?' Did you ask such
a question?"
"Yes sir, that's what I asked him."
"And what did Major Key reply?"
"As well as I can remember, sir, that that wasn't the game. It was a private
conversation, sir. I happened to mention it to the Judge Advocate, who
passed it up the line, I suppose."
"Please just answer my question, Major," said Lincoln, "and try to be quite
specific. What exactly did Major Key say to you? What were the words he
used?"
"He said, 'That is not the game.' I think those were his very words, Mr.
President."
Lincoln nodded encouragement to the witness. "And then what else did he
say? Be specific."
"He said that the object is that neither army shall get much advantage of
the other; that both shall be kept in the field till they are exhausted, when we
will make a compromise."
Lincoln shook his head at what he knew to be a deliberate omission. "I am
told there was more to it. You left something out of the conversation as
originally related."
The nervous officer took a deep breath and began again. "Major Key said
that the game was that both armies should be kept in the field till they are
exhausted, when we will make a compromise and save slavery."
"Anything else?" Lincoln asked.
"That was the substance of the conversation, sir. We were just talking, sir,
as friends, in my room late at night. I don't think he meant anything serious
by it, it was just talk."
"Thank you, Major Turner. Keep yourself available in your office across
the street."
The troubled officer saluted and left. Lincoln wrote down the incriminating
statement by Major Key and addressed a letter to him, concluding, "I shall be
very happy if you will prove to me by Major Turner, that you did not, either
litterally or in substance, make the answer stated."
He called in Nicolay, whom he preferred to have working on this serious
business than the easygoing Hay. "Make a copy of this, and deliver the
original to Major Key right away. When he has read it, bring him here."
Lincoln waited. He picked up a newspaper and read that the Confederate
Congress had authorized President Davis to conscript men between thirty-
five and forty-five; evidently his counterpart in Richmond was having the
same trouble as he was in squeezing the civilian population for troops. He
recalled that Jeff Davis had months ago applied martial law to areas of the
Confederacy, a good answer to those who claimed that his own proclamation
of military rule this week was unprecedented. That reminded Lincoln of his
arguments with Senator John Breckinridge over encroachments on individual
liberty that were required by national security.
Breck. He had heard that Breckinridge, now a rebel general, was back in
his native Kentucky with Bragg, threatening an invasion of Ohio; he wished
he could be more confident that General Don Carlos Buell could stop them.
Buell, heading the Department of the Ohio, was now evacuating central Ten-
nessee, falling back to defend Louisville and Cincinnati. Even if successful in
defense, the cautious Buell would probably be content with stopping the
invasion, as McClellan had stopped Lee at Sharpsburg, without destroying
the rebel army. Such was the state of mind of all his generals, it seemed.
Was the Union Army's leadership loyal? Lincoln remembered George Mc-
Clellan's fury when he confronted him with rumors of his disloyalty. He
concluded that Little Mac thought he was loyal, but his allegiance was to the
people in general and not to their elected commander in chief. That was
dangerously wrongheadednot traitorous in intent but treasonable in effect.
The clique of West Pointers and political officers, with their ties to old class-
mates and friends leading the rebel army, had infected George McClellan
with the notion that the army should have a voice in the settlement of the war
on the basis of "the Union as it was." McClellan's Harrison's Landing letter
against emancipation was an example of that presumption. Now the Union
could never be as it was.
McClellan's popularity with his troops worried the President. Lincoln had
to give the man credit where it was due: when the nation had a bone in its
throat and was on the brink of strangling, George had responded correctly:
the general had not flinched or sought deals or promises, or even the author-
ity that his President could not give him, but instead had taken a hundred
thousand defeated, dispirited men (whose defeat his sulking had unforgivably
helped bring about, but that was another matter) and whipped them into an
army capable of finding and fighting to a standstill the best of Lee's veterans.
Those bloodied but victorious men were now his constituency; would they be
loyal, in a crisis, to their beloved commander in the field, or to the com-
mander in chief who had just offended many of them by promising to free the
blacks?
Lincoln supposed that McClellan was now facing the choice of remaining a
patriot, subject to removal by civilian authority, or becoming the central
figure in a military coup d'6tat. But Lincoln also knew the man: caution was
his middle name. If George McClellan could be persuaded that the President
had no fear of the Federal officer corps, he would ask himself why the Presi-
dent had no fear; that would lead McClellan to wonder if Lincoln had some
hidden strength, perhaps troops assembling near Washington. To help Mc-
Clellan choose patriotism and civilian rule, Lincoln felt himself compelled to
demonstrate executive authority in the most vivid manner.
Nicolay brought in the accused. Lincoln remained seated, returning the
salute with a nod. He let the officer, a bookish-looking man in his early
forties, stand in the middle of the office. "Now bring in Major Turner, Mr.
Nicolay."
Both majors stood before him, looking straight ahead, not at each other.
"You have my letter, Major Key. Did you give the answer stated therein?"
"Sir, I have never uttered a word that might not have been addressed to
you without giving ofFense," said Key. "The conversation held with Major
Turner, in his own room, was with him as a friend"
"Did you say," interrupted Lincoln, familiar with evasions in a witness
box, "what you are accused as having said?"
"I have no recollection of the expression, as reported."
"Are you saying," said the interrogator, making his voice and eyes cold,
"that Major Turner here is not telling the truth?"
"I have no doubt, Mr. President, that Major Turner so understood me."
"Then you do not deny the accuracy of the statement attributed to you?"
"Sir, I have often remarked," said Key, panic in his eyes, "that the rebels
would never let this contest be decidedif they could help itby a decided
battle between us. It's true I've said that they hoped to protract this war, as
they hoped to make a compromise in the end, and that they were fighting
with that end in view."
"You're evading the question." Lincoln turned his eyes toward the accusa-
tory witness. "Major Turner, please repeat what you told me before about the
specifics of that conversation."
"As I remember, sir," Turner said with evident reluctance, "the conversa-
tion was, I asked the question: why we did not bag them after the battle at
Sharpsburg?"
That was what Lincoln had asked Pinkerton the other day, and received a
simpering reply from a man it was too easy to fool. "And what was Major
Key's reply?"
"Major Key's reply, sir, wasthat was not the game; that we should tire
the rebels out, and ourselves, that that was the only way the Union could be
preserved, we come together fraternally . . ."
Lincoln waited, looking at him.
".  .  . and slavery be saved."
The President nodded grimly; sometimes in court the best question was no
question. "Major Key, I am going to give you the opportunity to cross-
examine Major Turner. You may proceed."
Key, his career at stake, was rattled. With no opportunity to consult coun-
sel or to examine the evidence against him beforehand, he was obviously
unprepared to controvert or shake Turner's damning allegation. Lincoln was
aware of the unfairness of his kangaroo court, but was hardly going to turn
this over to the military for a court-martial and sure acquittal. The defendant
was a lawyer. This was as fair an examination, he felt, as the mutinous
situation warranted. Much more was at stake here than an individual's ca-
reer.
"Major Turner," Key began haltingly, "have we talked often aboutthe
current troubles?"
"Yes," Turner replied. "We've had many conversations about the war."
"And have I ever said anything that sounded disunionist to you?"
"No. I have never heard you utter a sentiment unfavorable to the mainte-
nance of the Union."
"This particular conversation," asked Major Key, gaining confidence from
the friendly witness, "was it intended to incite anybody to anything?"
"No, it was a private one. And I have never heard you utter anything
which I would consider disloyalty."
Key looked to the judge behind the President's desk. "Mr. President, I
don't know what else I can say." To Lincoln's silence, he hurriedly added, "I
solemnly aver that if this war terminates in the entire destruction of the South
they have brought it on themselves."
Lincoln cut through the amelioration with, "Are you attempting to contro-
vert the statement of Major Turner?"
"I don't see how I can, other than to say again, to assure you, that I am
true to the Union. I have no recollection at all of talking about a
'game'. . ."
"If there was a 'game' ever among Union men," said Lincoln slowly, "to
have our army not take advantage of the enemy when it could, it is my object
to break up that game."
Lincoln reached for a quill, dipped it in the inkwell before him, and wrote
out his verdict. He rose and read it aloud:
"In my view it is wholly inadmissable for any gentleman holding military
commission from the United States to utter such sentiments as Major Key is
proved to have done. Therefore let Major John J. Key be forthwith dismissed
from the military service of the United States."
Key staggered; Turner's head dropped in dismay. Lincoln handed the pa-
per out to Nicolay, with the words "To the Secretary of War. Good day,
gentlemen." The secretary took them out.
Lincoln went to the window and thought out his next step. He would send
for Montgomery Blair, McClellan's staunchest supporter in the Cabinet, and
tell him of Major John Key's dismissal for speaking of a policy that some men
around McClellan might be actively pursuing. Blair knew that the major's
brother, Colonel Thomas Key, was McClellan's closest confidantsome said
the "evil genius" behind McClellan's reluctance to destroy the enemy. Judge
Blair would be the best person to interpret Major John Key's dismissal to the
general in the field: that the President would brook no such disloyal "games"
from his subordinates, and that he was making an example of Major Key for
McClellan's benefit.
Nicolay put his head in. "Sir, Major Key started to leave, and came back.
He wants another moment of your time." The secretary came to t incoin's
desk and added, "His son, who was a captain in the Fiftieth Ohio, with Buell
in Tennessee, was killed the other day."
Lincoln braced himself against the appeal. "Send him in." He folded his
arms and sat on the edge of the desk; when the still-stunned officer came in,
he motioned for the major to sit down.
"Mr. President, sir, I just can't believe this is happening to me." He
slumped forward in the big chair, head in his hands, then rose and made an
effort to pull himself together. "Just by a dash of the pen, you've ruined my
life. It's a terrible disgrace."
Lincoln nodded; it was.
"I come from a family, sir, of patriotic Americans. All of us are brought up
that way. One of us wrote the poem, the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' another is
married to the Chief Justice. My brother Tom just fought at Antietam, and
we're told is ill from some disease contacted there. How can I face the people
I love? My son Joe" His voice broke.
"I sincerely sympathize with you in the death of your brave and noble
son," the President said.
"I'm a loyal Union man, Mr. President, I have been all my life. I don't
deserve this, being cashiered in wartime, disgraced foreverfor what? For
something I'm supposed to have said to a friend that may have been misun-
derstood? Please, sir, consider this again. You're ruining my life, you're sham-
ing my whole family"his voice broke, but he continued"and I'm as loyal
a soldier as serves in the United States Army."
"You misunderstand me," Lincoln said after the officer had composed him-
self.  "I did not charge, or intend to charge you with disloyalty." Lincoln
wondered whether this man, a pawn in a "game" other than the one he had
unfortunately spoken of, deserved an explanation of the reasons of state in his
punishment. He decided, especially in the light of the recent loss of his son,
that the man did.
"I have been brought to fear, Major Key, that there is a class of officers in
the armyand not very inconsiderable in numberswho were playing a
game not to beat the enemy when they could, on some peculiar notion as to
the proper way of saving the Union." Lincoln had no way of knowing how
many there were; he hoped it was not more than a small cabal.
"When you were proved to me, in your own presence, to have avowed
yourself in favor of that 'game'and did not attempt to controvert the proof
1 dismissed you from the military service. I dismissed you as an example
and a warning to that supposed class." The unfortunate fellow chosen to be
made the example was entitled to the truth. "I bear you no ill will," he
continued, rising from his chair, coming around and laying his hand on the
younger man's shoulder, "and I regret that I could not have the example
without wounding you personally."
"You could show some mercy," Key offered, "then you would have your
example, and I would have the chance to die for my country on some honor-
able field."
Lincoln could not permit himself to dilute the lesson. "Can I now, in view
of the public interest, restore you to the serviceby which the army would
understand that I endorse and approve that 'game' myself?" He shook his
head, no. Mercy would serve the wrong purpose.
"But you know the punishment is unduly severe. At the very most, this
rates a reprimand, not a dishonorable dismissal."
The major was a fair lawyer, Lincoln had to admit, and had attacked the
weak point in the case: the unfairness of the severity involved in "making an
example" of anyone with an unblemished record. But a stern judge could not
concede the point. "If there was any doubt of your having made the avowal,
the case would be different. But when it was proved to me, in your presence,
you did not deny or attempt to deny it. On the contrary, you confirmed it in
my mind by attempting to sustain the position by argument."
No use prolonging this. "I am really sorry for the pain the case gives you,"
Lincoln concluded. "But I do not see how, consistently with duty, I can
change my mind. Goodbye."
When the shattered officer left, John Hay came in, looking pleased. "That
was a trial as prompt as those of Saint Louis, dispensing justice under the oak
at Vincennes," the secretary said. "You were judge and jury, attorney for the
prosecution and for the defense, and on top of all that"he pointed to the
transcripts Lincoln was drawing up for the record"you functioned as clerk
of the court."
"I dismissed Major Key," the President told him, not taking the exposition
of the drumhead court-martial as such a compliment, "because I think his
silly, treasonable expressions were 'staff talk' and I wished to make an exam-
ple."
"Little Mac is not pursuing Lee into Virginia," Hay remarked. "Do you
suppose he's listening to that staff talk?"
"I begin to fear he is playing falsethat he does not want to hurt the
enemy." McClellan ought to be able to intercept the enemy on Lee's retreat
to Richmond; Lincoln resolved to make that the test that would justify his
replacement. He could not replace him until after the elections in November.
Between now and then, he could call attention to his delays and suggest that
the "staff talk" of Key and others might be behind his caution. George Mc-
Clellan would have to go because his goal was not Lincoln's goal: the Presi-
dent wanted to win and reunite the nation on his own terms, while the gen-
eral wanted to work out a compromise peace that would solve nothing.
Lincoln was certain that the message, however much it ill-used one officer,
would get through to the officer class at Antietam, to their instigators and
abettors in the Democratic ranks, and to George McClellan himself. At this
critical moment, driving that message homethat no reluctance to destroy
the enemy would be toleratedwas more important to the fate of the nation
than the career of one major.

CHAPTER 10
SURPRISE VISIT

Alexander Gardner, seething at Mathew Brady's egotism and selfishness,
snapped the reins at the horse pulling the Whatizzit Wagon.
"Not too fast," cautioned Gibson, his assistant, "you'll rattle the plates and
stir up the chemicals."
"We have to get to the Antietam before Lincoln does," Gardner told him,
"or else we won't make Mr. Brady famous again."
The photographs taken three weeks before at the battlefield were works of
art; Gardner was certain that never before had the horror of war been cap-
tured as vividly on wet plates. Shrewdly, Brady had gone beyond the normal
distribution to magazines and newspapers for engravings and woodcuts. To
capitalize on Gardner's work, he had arranged for special shows in his gal-
leries in Washington and New York, bringing crowds into Brady's studios,
stimulating other Brady business, spreading Brady's fame. The New York
Times wrote of the show in that city in words burned in Gardner's memory:
".  .  .  there is a terrible fascination about the battle-field that draws one near
these pictures and makes him loath to leave them."
The reportage of war would never be the same after Antietam, and Gard-
ner knew that the battles to come would see photographers from North and
South rushing to the scene. The artist and social reformer in him wanted to
use his art to show the horror rather than the glory of war, even as his
commercial sense told him there was money in horror.
Although the photographic impresario with the failing eyesight had kept to
his agreement and permitted a credit linein the smallest typeto the opera-
tors who had made the stunning pictures, the photos were presented as a
Brady Gallery special event. The artists who composed the pictures, who
took their lives in their hands to go to the front and accomplished technical
miracles as well, were obscured in the general admiration for the man who
staged the event.
"Are you sure Lincoln will be coming to the battlefield?"
"The President is going to Harpers Ferry first," replied Gardner grimly,
"then he'll pay a surprise visit to the Army of the Potomac. McClellan
doesn't know. The general doesn't tell the President his movements, so the
President isn't telling McClellan."
"If it's going to be a surprise to the commanding general, how come we
know?"
"Hay told me. He has some sense of the historic importance of the visit and
wants the scenes recorded. Wants me to do it; didn't even tell Brady for fear
Brady would send somebody else, or worst of all, come himself."
"I suppose he didn't want Brady to tip off Pinkerton, if it is supposed to be
a surprise," Gibson observed.
Gardner understood from Hay that it was important the public know that
the Army of the Potomac was Mr. Lincoln's army, not General McClellan's
army. And it was urgent that the troops in the field feel the physical presence
of the commander in chief, lest some ofiicers get ideas about taking control of
the direction of the war. No matter that Lincoln on a horse looked like a
clothespin on a line; the country and the army had to know that their leader
was the man in the black frock coat and not the man in uniform.
"We'll take a few pictures of the President with McClellan," Gardner said,
"and one of Lincoln with Pinkerton, to help us get around. Be sure to call
him Major Alienhe thinks he's fooling somebody with thatbut most of
the pictures should be of the President with the other ofiicers and troops."
"Brady wants"
"Don't concern yourself with what Brady wants. The pictures that are
important to the Gardner Gallery are the ones Lincoln wants."
McClellan was at his desk in the Sharpsburg headquarters tent trying to
puzzle out Montgomery Biair's scrawl in a letter just delivered. Pinkerton
slipped in. Pinkerton never entered; he preferred to materialize silently beside
one's elbow.
"I have information, General, that his Excellency the President is about to
honor the Army of the Potomac with a visit."
McClellan frowned. The last time Lincoln had paid a visit to the front was
in the Peninsula, and what followed the President's return to Washington was
an order from Halleck to abandon the position.
"Who's he bringing? Halleck? Stanton?" That would mean greater trouble;
when the President came under their sway, he was impossible, demanding
actions so precipitate as to be suicidal.
"No, sir. Some politicians from Illinois."
That was good: he would probably have John McClemand in tow, a politi-
cian-general who posed no threat. But why would Lincoln drag Illinois politi-
cians out to the battlefields in Maryland?
McClellan posed that question to his intelligence chief, who was ready with
an answer: "He's worried about Illinois in the elections next month. If Lin-
coln's close friend, Swett, loses in his home district, then Lincoln might as
well plan to skedaddle. His own party will have repudiated him." When the
general nodded agreement, Pinkerton added, "The President even has a pho-
tographer coming. Same one as operated the camera last week, taking pic-
tures of the rebel dead. Only the rebel dead, sir."
McClellan approved. Photographs at the field of victory served his purpose
as well as Lincoln's; William Aspinwall, the source of much money and
influence among Democrats, had written to say how impressive his victory
looked to visitors at Brady's Gallery. "Here, you look at this letter, Major
Alien," he said to Pinkerton. "See if you can decipher Biair's handwriting."
Pinkerton squinted at the letter, going to the window to hold it up to the
light. The Biairs were his only friends in Lincoln's inner circle, McClellan
knew, and he would value their counsel if only he could make it out.
" 'The recent action of the President,' " Pinkerton read slowly, "1 sup-
pose Blair means the Proclamation of Emancipation'will undoubtedly in-
cite the radicals to new efforts to secure your removal from command.' Next
few words are hard to make outyou'd think the Postmaster General would
write a letter that was readablebut here it says, If you could make known
the opinion which I suppose you entertain in common with the whole coun-
try, that whilst you supposed the object of the war to be the maintenance of
the Government, yet the natural result would be the extinction of slavery, I
think you would head off your opponents very cleverly.' General, that's a big
step he's suggesting. You've never accepted abolition as a goal of this war."
Biair's idea was clever, but worrisome; was it politic to go along with
Lincoln on abolition? The likelihood was that the proclamation of emancipa-
tion, followed closely by the equally infamous declaration of martial law,
would stiffen the South and protract the war. The officials and financiers from
the Democratic Party, from Femando Wood to William Aspinwall, had
urged him to take no stand on slavery specifically, but to send a signal of his
toleration of its existence by standing on preserving the Union "as it was."
Biair's suggestion that he say a word against slavery might strengthen Mc-
Clellan with the conservatives in Lincoln's Republican Party, but might
weaken him with Democrats.
"Ah, here's why Biair's writing this to you right now," said Pinkerton,
pushing his derby back on his head to see better. " 'The President told me this
morning that Major Key of General Halleck's staff, brother of Colonel Key of
your staff, has said that the reason why the rebel army had not been de-
stroyed at Sharpsburg was that the plan was to exhaust our resources' "
Pinkerton grunted in disgust" 'so that a compromise might be made which
would preserve slavery and the Union at the same time.' "
McClellan slammed his fist down on the table; to catch the younger Key in
the act of speaking treason reflected on the elder Key, and on McClellan
personally. He sent the orderly to get Tom Key from his tent nearby.
"Read that last paragraph from Blair again," the general said when Colo-
nel Key came in, which Pinkerton did, and continued, " 'The President sum-
moned Key,' Blair writes, 'who could not deny that he had used such lan-
guage but protested his loyalty. The President left me saying that he intended
Major Key's dismissal.' "
Judge Key slumped into a chair. "Oh John, you poor fool."
"Your brother deserves to be cashiered," said McClellan harshly, angered
at the indiscretion that reflected on him. "Didn't we agree that just the oppo-
site point was to be made known? Didn't you tell the correspondents that I
was actively discouraging such talk among junior officers?"
"I did, I did," said Colonel Key. "But I never thought to tell my own
brother to keep his mouth shut around Halleck. John is such an innocent. He
was probably just gossiping with a friend"
"Now Lincoln has me at a disadvantage," McClellan said coldly. "Read
Biair's advice in that light."
" 'Even if you had the ambition to be President' "Pinkerton read, "I
wish Blair wouldn't put that sort of thing in a letter, General'this would be
the best course to adopt, for I can assure you that no appreciable portion of
the nation will favor the long continuance of slavery after the war is over, or
will tolerate any guarantee for its perpetuity as the price of peace.' Do you
suppose Lincoln put the judge up to this?"
That drew the general up short: was Blair acting as Lincoln's agent or
McClellan's friend? McClellan had to ask himself: Was slavery doomed, as
even the conservatives near Lincoln now held, or was the Union doomed to
years of war and possible separation if slavery became the central issue?
Would it be politically wiser, as Blair suggested, to go along publicly with
Lincoln on emancipationor more prudent to stay above the partisan issue
and act only as a soldier?
That decision would rest on the extent of Lincoln's support of him now.
McClellan suspected that the President's purpose in coming to the front was
to push him into a premature advance into Virginia. If Lincoln threatened
him with removal again for not following that ill-advised plan to march
before the Army was ready, McClellan might respond with pressure of his
own.
"You recall, Judge, how the men crowded around me yesterday, breaking
ranks to fill the air with cheers. They love me. What a power," he mused
aloud, "that places in my hands."
"Tremendous power," nodded Pinkerton. "And we're less than fifty miles
away from the capital."
"What is there," McClellan put it to Key as if rhetorically, "to prevent my
taking the government in my own handsto bring about peaceful reunion?"
He was not being serious, of course; but it was interesting to turn the thought
over in his mind.
Keyprobably distracted, McClellan assumed, by the prospect of his
brother's and his family's disgraceseemed startled by the thought. "Gen-
eral, don't mistake those men. So long as you lead them against the enemy,
they will adore and die for you. But attempt to turn them against their
government, and you will be the first to suffer."
That was not what McClellan wanted to hear. By promoting widespread
talk of such a possibilityfollowed quickly, of course, by shocked disavowals
of any such disloyal intent, McClellan backers could combat the radical
warhawks demanding his removal. It made sense to remind the world that he
was refusing to be dictator, even as Caesar had. The people would remember
that in the next campaign for President.
Irritated by his aide's obtuseness, the general strode out of the building and
mounted his morning horse, Bums. An excellent mount, in some ways more
responsive than his familiar Kentuckon Dan Webster, Burns had a habit of
bolting for his oats at feeding-time in the afternoon, no matter what his rider
had in mind; consequently McClellan rode him only in the mornings.
Key and Pinkerton came running along behind, organizing a party to go
out and greet the President. McClellan told them to keep the group small;
Lincoln had been heard to say that the Army of the Potomac was "only
McClellan's bodyguard," and the general did not want too many in his entou-
rage.
"Would you please take your hats off, gentlemen? I can't see your faces in
the shadow."
Gardner had set up his camera directly in front of the commanding gener-
al's tent. The President and McClellan were seated inside the tent, a table
between them, a stack of captured rebel battle flags to the left. At the photog-
rapher's direction, the two men had moved to the front of the tent, near the
flap, which had been drawn back as far as possible to let in the light. Gardner
ducked his head under the black cloth and told himself no: there was still not
enough light to see the faces. The hats cast a shadow. At Gardner's urging,
McClellan removed his military cap, Lincoln his stovepipe topper, which he
placed upside down on the battle flags. The photographer had Lincoln in
profile, McClellan three-quarter view, the tent pole dividing them starkly,
which Gardner thought was nicely symbolic of the division known to exist
between the two leaders.
Gardner, still under the hood, raised the angle of the camera to get as
much as possible of the tent, removed the lens cap to the count of ten and
replaced it. Gibson grabbed the heavy plate and ran with it into th? wagon.
"We are going to take the same scene in stereograph," Gardner announced,
remembering Brady's way of asking for another sitting by declaring his inten-
tion with great firmness. To his relief, the Brady technique worked; the
Union's leaders were content to wait fifteen minutes for their next portrait.
The general's aides, and the Illinois party accompanying the President,
remained well out of the picture-taking area. Gardner stood by his camera,
waiting for Gibson to finish preparations of the plate in the Whatizzit wagon.
The photographer could hear the conversation of his two subjects clearly in
the tent. Lincoln's voice was high-pitched with a Western drawl, McClellan's
resonant and brisk, like an Eastern railroad executive.
"You remember my speaking to you," Lincoln was saying, "of what I
called your overcautiousness."
"And I did not accept that. My army is not fit to advance."
"Are you not overcautious when you assume that you cannot do what the
enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal in
prowess, and act upon the claim?"
"You people don't know what an army requires," the general countered.
"The old regiments are reduced to mere skeletons, and are completely tired
out. They need rest and filling up. The new regiments are not fit for the field.
Cavalry and artillery horses are broken down. So it goes"
"You are now nearer Richmond than the enemy is," said Lincoln, tapping
his finger on a map on the table before them, "by the route that you can and
he must take. Why can't you reach there before him? Unless you admit that
he is more than your equal on a march"
"That's enemy country," McClellan explained. "That is country where the
inhabitants furnish to the enemy every possible assistancefood for men and
forage for animals. They tell him about all our movements. In such hostile
territory, we especially need cavalry to be our antennaeand the horses we
have are sore-tongued and fatigued."
Lincoln half-rose. "Sore-tongued and fatigued? Will you pardon me for
asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam
that fatigues anything?"
Gardner stood stock-still, trying to disappear. McClellan sat in silence for a
moment, and replied slowly, "The cavalry was in low condition before this
campaign began. While on Stuart's track, it marched seventy-eight miles in
twenty-four hours. The cavalry has been constantly making reconnaissances,
scouting and picketing, engaging the enemy frequently."
"I'm sure there have been things to do, but"
"If you can find, Mr. Lincoln, any instance where overworked cavalry has
performed more labor than mine since the battle of Antietam, I am not
conscious of it."
"Stuart's cavalry has consistently outmarched ours."
"You are misinformed," McClellan told him. "On one raid, Stuart had two
relays of fresh horses to none of ours, which is why he outmarched us. We
need more horses. You do an injustice to our cavalry, its officers and men,
which is just as efficient as that of the rebels."
Lincoln backed off in the face of McClellan's facts and defense of troops. "I
intend no injustice to any. But to be told, after a period of inaction, that the
cavalry horses were too fatigued to move presented a very cheerless, almost
hopeless prospect for the future. It may have forced something of impatience
into my tone."
"My plan is to secure Maryland, and then to pursue Lee down the Shenan-
doah. But we cannot race after him unprepared, inviting a counterattack that
would change the course of the war."
McClellan's plan seemed to aim at Lee around Warrenton, Virginia, in a
month; Lincoln's plan seemed to Gardner to involve an attack much sooner.
The President offered the general more reinforcements if McClellan would
position the army so as to protect Washington while he was attacking Lee; in
turn, the general sought to get Lincoln to understand the urgency of rail
communication as an army prepared for battle.
When the talk turned to politics, Gardner could feel the tension rising.
McClellan said he hoped Lincoln would pursue a "conservative course," and
objected to the proclamation of martial law, saying that it was an unjustifiable
abuse of the Constitution. That criticism stung Lincoln, who explained that
the measure was needed to stop obstruction of the draft, which McClellan of
all people should appreciate.
The general then said something that Gardner did not quite catch, about
an honorable armistice after the defeat of Lee's army, leading to a peace
without humiliation for the South and without complete victory for the
North.
Lincoln did not agree with that at all. He leaned forward and, motioning
with his finger toward McClellan's chest, spoke most deliberately and dis-
tinctly: "I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am
conquered, or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsake me."
"Success, as I interpret it, is the maintenance of the integrity of the
Union," McClellan shot back, "not the achievement of abolition. If we can
put down the rebellion and end the secession, we will have succeeded. You
have said that yourself in your Inaugural, and a hundred times since."
"You may not make war on a government without being hurt," Lincoln
replied. "Blood has been shed. A penalty is called for. We must rip up dis-
union like a dog at a root, so that this may never happen again."
Gibson ran up with the stereograph plates, which Gardner inserted into the
camera. He could feel his subjects watching him fuss with the lens. When the
President spoke again, his tone changed from the taskmaster to the supporter.
"I want to assure you, George, that I am fully satisfied with your whole
course," the President said. "The only fault I can possibly find is that you are
perhaps too prone to be sure that everything is ready before acting."
"That episode with Major Key"
"Was not intended to reflect on you personally. I had to set an example. I
will stand by you against all comers."
"Stanton and Halleck want my scalp," said McClellan directly. "We saw
the way they resented your decision to put me in charge of the defense of
Washington, when they were preparing to surrender Washington. You'll stand
by me? I can count on you?"
"I am entirely satisfied with you," Lincoln repeated. "You shall be let
alone, and I will stand by you."
"On a personal note," McClellan's voice was lower, "I have a request."
Gardner made an effort not to listen, but he could not help hearing, "My
wife, Nellie. I need very much to visit her, to see her and the baby. We are
nothing without each other. As I launch a campaign into Virginia when the
army is outfitted, perhaps you would not consider it taking too much time
from my duty"
"Ready," said Gibson aloud.
"Take a breath," Gardner called out. "Now hold it, please. Hold it. Don't
move. Little longer . . . not yet . . . thank you!"
McClellan rode with the President back through one of the passes in South
Mountain toward the Frederick railroad station. Lincoln was good enough to
say that he did not see how the Union had ever forced its way through that
pass, and that had McClellan been defending it, Lee would never have carried
it. McClellan felt better about the President's surprise visit. He knew he was
being flattered now, after the initial prodding, but did not mind Lincoln's
obvious changes in approach. It had been three weeks since the battle, and he
expected to be able to move in another three, if Lincoln could prod Stanton to
get Quartermaster General Meigs to send up the shoes and horses.
Then an unfortunate coincidence took place: just as McClellan was saying
farewell to the President, who should come up the road toward camp but the
last person he wanted Lincoln to see in camp: William Aspinwall, the New
York Democrat. Lincoln greeted him cordially. McClellan was grateful the
President chose to ignore the likelihood that the New Yorker had come to
talk Democratic politics.
Armstrong Custer was pleased at having been asked by the general to join
the group posing for a picture with the President in front of the headquarters
tent. He stood separate from the group, the only one in a cavalryman's slouch
hat, ignoring the photographer's imperious signal to move closer to the oth-
ers. Captain Custer did not take orders from civilians.
Abraham Lincoln was not his idea of what a President should be. Old Abe
was a laughable sight on a horse, second-guessed his commanders in the field,
and withheld needed supplies and reinforcements from his fighting forces
while dandying up his useless bodyguard in Washington. Worse, he showed
no appreciation for the salvation of the country by a far greater man, George
Brinton McClellan. Worst of all, the President had shocked the headquarters
staff of the Army of the Potomac with his cruel disgrace of John Key, who
was guilty only of saying what everybody was thinking.
Custer could not understand why Little Mac did not simply change front
and seize power in Washington. The troops would be with him, no matter
what Colonel Key said; Key was a strange man, inconsistent, hating Lincoln
and most of the radicals but hating slavery too, wanting McClellan in the
White House but wanting to wait two more years to go through the folderol
of election. Armstrong Ouster's mind was clear: his leader should denounce
both presidential proclamations of last week, march to Washington and take
over, whip Lee at Warrenton to prove which army was better, and offer the
South terms that would end disunion forever.
After the President and his party departed camp, followed by the photogra-
phers in their conveyance that looked like a spiritualist's wagon, Custer was
told to assemble the headquarters staff outside McClellan's tent to listen to
the general's message to the army.
Colonel Key, feverish from some ailment he had picked up a month before
on the battlefield, stood next to Custer to hear General Order No. 163.
"The Constitution confides to the civil authorities," went McClellan's or-
der, "the power and duty of making, expounding and executing the Federal
laws. Armed forces are raised and supported simply to sustain the civil au-
thorities, and are to be held in strict subordination thereto in all respects."
"I hope he says something about the President's meddling in running a
war," whispered the captain to the colonel.
Key shook his head; Custer imagined he'd had a hand in the writing.
"The Chief Executive, who is charged with the administration of the na-
tional affairs, is the proper and only source through which the needs and
orders of the Government can be made known to the armies of the nation."
And not through the commanding general in the field, bitterly added
Custer to himself. He was disappointed in his hero; McClellan was not about
to become a Caesar. "And what about your brother?" he whispered to Key.
"Discussions by officers and soldiers concerning public measures," McClel-
lan's voice resonated, "when carried at once beyond temperate and respectful
expressions of opinion, tend greatly to destroy the discipline of troops. There
must be no substitution of the spirit of political faction for that firm, steady
and earnest support of the authority of the government which is the highest
duty of the American soldier."
"He's doing the right thing," said Colonel Key heavily.
"Damn," said Custer under his breath. "And what about all of us who
didn't sign up to fight for abolition?"
"He listened to Aspinwall, not Blair. Not a word against slavery."
"The remedy for political errors," McClellan was reading out, "if any are
committed, is to be found only in the action of the people at the polls."
The sweating Key took Ouster's arm for support. "Lincoln will stab him in
the back at the first chance," the colonel predicted, "but it isn't treason to run
for President."
Custer shook his head. "If Lincoln tries that, I'll resign and go home. And
so will half the army." But he did not know about half the army; the fickle
troops had been proud to cheer Lincoln as they passed in review. He had a
heavy feeling in his chest that the cadaverous politician, with all his promises
of standing by McClellan against "all comers" of the abolition faction, had
taken his general into camp.
CHAPTHR II
THE DREAM

"Whiskey? Wine?" Mary Lincoln threw up her hands. "What are we going to
do with it?"
Elizabeth Keckley, seated at her sewing in Mrs. Lincoln's upstairs parlor,
looked up with amusement. The President's wife was understandably per-
plexed; two expressmen had arrived from New York with twenty cases of
liquor from an anonymous donor. "I suppose we could drink it," the modiste
observed. "Not all at one time."
Mary Lincoln shook her head emphatically. "We do not entertain here, not
since Willie. And if I accept it, people will say I'm a secret drunkard."
Keckley recognized the truth in that. The President's wife was variously
criticized as a bumpkin or a social butterfly, as a rebel sympathizer and a
spendthrift. All but the last were unfair; the President's wife did have diffi-
culty with money affairs, and her dressmaker knew that bills were sometimes
left for months to be paid, but the attacks on Mrs. Lincoln's loyaltyand her
dedication to emancipationwere as unfounded as they were vicious. No
wonder she was so often afflicted with sick headaches.
"I'll get Stoddard," Elizabeth Keckley said, and went to fetch him.
The sallow young man who was Lincoln's Third Secretary contemplated
the array of boxes and said to the two bored deliverymen, "There's plenty of
room in the basement."
"My husband will never permit that stuff to remain in this house," Mrs.
Lincoln told him. "The first thing he wrote that was printed, when he was
still a boy, was about the evils of whiskey. Can we send it back? Nowhoever
sent it would take offense, and then people would say I'm wasting money."
Keckley gave Stoddard a do-something-quick look, and the young man
rose to the occasion. "Divide it into five lots," he told the men, "and take it to
the head physician at five hospitals. Come with me, I'll give you the ad-
dresses."
Mrs. Lincoln, relieved, added, "Say it's for anybody in pain, from the
Lincolns."
"And bring back the five receipts," added the modiste, who did not want
the expressmen taking the liquor for themselves.
"I like Stod," Mrs. Lincoln said, back in her sitting room, the minor crisis
resolved. "He opens and reads all my mail, you know." Keckley said she
assumed much of it was cruel, and that intercepting the worst was a good
idea, but was surprised to learn that was not Mrs. Lincoln's reason: "It's
because they accuse me of corresponding with the rebels, Lizzie. I want all
my mail read beforehand."
The dressmaker was not in the Mansion that afternoon to work on-a gown;
rather, she was present in her capacity of companion, to accompany Mrs.
Lincoln to the seance scheduled for the early evening. Before Willie died, the
President's wife occasionally went to a spiritualist, as did many of Lizzie
Keckley's clients and friendsas did Mr. Lincoln on occasion, more out of
curiosity than belief, she suspected. Since the death of the boy, however, Mrs.
Lincoln had made it a habit. She would see any medium who would put her
in touch with the ghost of her Willie.
She knew Mrs. Lincoln to be a religious woman, probably more so than her
husband. The first Lady had told her dressmaker how she took the sacrament
in 1852, though Mr. Lincoln would not. He had not joined the church as she
hadLincoln was not a church member to this daybut he paid the dues for
the family pew. And he read the Bible more than most, quoting from it a lot,
especially of late.
Keckley remembered the time, only a month ago, when the President had
met the delegation of preachers from Chicago who had come to tell him, first,
to order his generals to observe the sabbathwhich he didn't want to do
and, even more important, to carry out God's will by emancipating the slaves.
She had been in the anteroom of his office with Mrs. Lincoln and Stoddard,
and had been discouraged at the President's reply: "It is my earnest desire to
know the will of Providence. These are not, however, the days of miracles,
and I cannot expect a direct revelation. Good men do not agree."
The preachers told him, she thought rightly, that the Bible denounces
oppression, and the nation was guilty, and the war was a just punishment.
And he had answered, "What good would a proclamation of emancipation
from me do? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see
must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet." Then,
when the preachers said the blacks would enlist to fight, he had told them
how General Butler in New Orleans had been issuing more rations to fugitive
slaves than to his white troops, adding cruelly, "They eat, that's all."
That had hurt. Freedmen had been flocking to Washington all that sum-
mer, fresh from benighted regions of the plantation, looking for freedom and
had found instead a new bondage of poverty amid the hostile whites of the
North. No perpetual sunshine, only cold neglect. The Africans, no longer
fugitives but only legally free, soon discovered that Yankees looked on their
helplessness as proof that they were members of an idle, dependent race.
Negroes like Keckley could organize some help, prevailing on Mrs. Lincoln
herself to set a public example by contributing, but what if millions came
North? Half the whites were worried the blacks would lie around and wait to
be fed, while the other half were afraid the blacks would take their jobs.
Lincoln had sent the Chicago clergymen away with little hope, saying only
that he had not decided against emancipation. Preaching to the preachers, he
had left himself room to turn around: "Whatever shall appear to be God's
will, I will do."
What had happened to change his mind in a week? She wondered if it
could be that he had deliberately misled them to protect the surprise he had
in mind, or to get them angry so they would cry out more loudly to their
congregations to push his countrymen along the abolition road ahead of him.
She decided that he must have been afflicted with terrible doubts right up to
the last minute, when the Divine will had indeed been revealed to him.
President Lincoln appeared in the upstairs parlor, ducking his head down
to let his wife straighten out his spiky hair, listening to her tell proudly of
how she had handled the challenge of the donated whiskey.
He nodded gravely and said "Madam Elizabeth" to her, but as this was the
first she had seen of him since the glorious proclamation, she felt called on to
say what was in her heart.
"Mr. Lincoln, in your proclamation you carried out God's will."
"God's will," he repeated, slumping down into the sofa in the small sitting
room, taking a small Bible from a stand near the head of the settee.
"I'm glad you listened to those preachers from back home," Mrs. Lincoln
agreed, extending their Illinois home clear up to Chicago, "and to Senator
Sumner, and even to that uppity Greeley. I've never been so proud. The will
of God prevails."
Lincoln shook his head, not so much in disagreement, Keckley suspected,
but in not being sure. "In great contests each party claims to act in accor-
dance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong."
He hefted the small book in his huge hand, opened it, and began leafing
through. "What was that passage you commended to me, Mrs. Keckley?"
" 'Gird up thy loins now like a man,' " she recited, " 1 will demand of
thee, and declare thou unto me.' " She had prayed that he would have the
courage to strike down slavery, and the prayers had been answered. Or at
least promised an answer: by year's end, unless the slave owners did the
impossible and gave up, all her people in the South would be free.
"Book of Job," he nodded. After a moment, Lincoln ruminated: "In the
present civil war, it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different
from the purpose of either partyand yet the human instrumentalities, work-
ing just as they do, are the best adaptation to effect His purpose."
Elizabeth Keckley recognized that as the message of Job, a good man who
could not fathom why God had singled him out for awful punishment. The
Bible had taught her that Job could not know that he was the subject of a
struggle between God and the devil over the issue of the strength of faith. Mr.
Lincoln seemed to be saying that he could not fathom God's will and had
accepted that he might be an agent of a change that he did not comprehend.
"I am almost ready to say this is probably true," the President said, "that
God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere quiet
power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or
destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began." He
closed the book and took a deep breath. "And having begun, He could have
given the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."
He did not finish his argument. She assumed he meant that, like Job, he felt
that God was trifling with him as part of some grander design. She wondered
if that was not a little bit heretical.
He looked under the sofa and drew out a pair of overshoes.
"Where are you going, Father?" his wife asked.
"To the War Department, Mother, to try and learn some news. About
Bragg coming up into Kentucky, which we cannot afford to lose. About Lee
escaping to resupply in Richmond so he can attack us again."
"Don't go alone."
"I'm not a child, Mother; no one is going to molest me." He stopped in the
middle of drawing on an overshoe. "It seems strange how much there is in the
Bible about dreams."
"Mostly the Old Testament," said Mrs. Keckley.
"Sixteen chapters in the Old, four or five in the New," he specified; obvi-
ously he had studied the subject. "And if we believe the Bible, we must accept
the fact that in the old days God and His angels came to men in their sleep
and made themselves known in dreams." He returned to pulling on the shoe
and pounded his foot on the carpet. "Nowadays dreams are regarded as very
foolish, and are seldom told, except by old women and young men and
maidens in love."
"You look dreadfully solemn," said Mrs. Lincoln. "Do you believe in
dreams?"
"I can't say that I do," he returned, in one of those replies that Mrs.
Keckley noticed could go either way. "But I had one the other night which
has haunted me ever since. Like Banquo's ghost, it won't go down. To sleep,
perchance to dreamay, there's the rub!' "
"The one about being on a ship coming close to the shore, and you can't
make out what's on shore? You've had that a few times."
"No, and not the one that's a welcome visitorof the ship drawing away,
badly damaged, and our victorious vessels in close pursuit. I dreamed that
just before Antietam."
His face took on a stricken look. "In this dream, there seemed to be a
deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of
people were weeping. I went from room to room; every object was familiar to
me, but why were all the people grieving as if their hearts would break? I kept
on until I arrived at the East Room."
The President seemed to Mrs. Keckley to be reliving the dream in the
telling; she worried about its effect not on himhe was strong in every way
but on Mrs. Lincoln's mind.
"There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on
which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed
soldiers who were acting as guards. There was a throng of people gazing
mournfully on the corpse, whose face was covered . . . then came a loud
burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream."
"That is horrid! I'm glad I don't believe in dreams," Mary Lincoln said
sharply, "or I should be in terror from this time forth."
Elizabeth Keckley wondered why he had told the troubling dream to his
wife, knowing how impressionable she was. Perhaps he could not stop him-
self.
"Only a dream, Mary. Let us say no more about it, and try to forget it. I
am afraid I have done wrong to mention the subject at all, but somehow the
thing got possession of me." He belatedly tried to make her feel better:
"Don't you see how it will turn out? In this dream it was not I, but some
other fellow who was killed."
Mrs. Lincoln shuddered and said she had to prepare for the seance. When
asked if he wanted to join them, the President declined. He wasn't much for
spiritualists.
Lincoln, at the head of the staircase, heard the sound of a grand march
coming from the Red Room downstairs, where the seances were usually held.
The piano was being played with great authority, and he kept step with the
music until he reached the doorway. He debated with himself a moment
about going in: if the medium was Lord Colchester, he would not have any
part of it. Noah Brooks told him he suspected the medium was nothing but a
mountebank. He had gone to one of his circles in Georgetown, and in the
darkness, as the guests listened to the sound of drums and bells from the
spirit world, the disbelieving reporter lunged for the source of the sound and
caught the medium detached from the circle of hands, making his own noises.
Unfortunately, this had not discouraged Mrs. Lincoln from visiting the spiri-
tualist again.
Nettie Colbum was another matter. She was a delicate young woman with
the voice and demeanor of a little girl, but when entranced came under the
control of other personalities, including "Old Dr. Bamford," who spoke with
an authentic Yankee twang and told salty stories. There was also her inexpli-
cable trick with the waltzing piano: at one seance, Miss Nettie had levitated
the grand piano, which remained three inches above the floor, tilting this way
and that to the music, even after Lincoln and the journalist Fomey sat on top
of it. Lincoln had joked with those present about being part of "the weight of
the evidence" of the little spiritualist's powers, but it certainly defied rational
explanation. Lincoln had been moved to look over the new book, Further
Communications from the World of Spirits, and while he remained skeptical,
he would not deny his wife comfort in communication with Willie; besides, he
knew he always did have a strong tendency to mysticism.
He pulled open the door and stepped inside. The pianist stopped playing.
"So this is our little Nettie, is it?" He walked over and took her hand,
asked a few kindly questions about her mediumship, and saw her lose con-
sciousness and seem to pass under the control of someone or something.
He did not join the circle with his wife; instead, he took an easy chair in the
corner, throwing his leg over the upholstered arm, to listen to Miss Nettie
relay, in a strong, masculine voice, her message from what could be presumed
to be the upper country.
"You have begun to hear counsels against your Proclamation of Emancipa-
tion," said a stentorian voice coming from Miss Nettie. "You are being urged
to delay the final act beyond the first of the year." True enough, but that
pressure for deferral was known to every member of the Cabinet, and to more
than a few newspapermen. Above the piano, which Lincoln was relieved to
note was not moving this time, a portrait of Daniel Webster looked down on
the group. "Liberty and Union," that senator's most famous phrase, was
surely Lincoln's purpose as well, but one did not always help the other.
"In no wise heed such counsel. Do not abate the terms of its issuance,"
said, or relayed, the medium. "It is to be the crowning event of your adminis-
tration and your life."
When the medium came out of her trance, he thanked her: "My child, you
possess a very singular gift; but that it is of God, I have no doubt." He left
before the others.
Trudging back up the stairswonderful, no pain in his toes even when
shod, and his wrist was better, toohe wondered about the handred-day
deadline he had set the South and himself as well. lfMcClellan were to catch
up with Lee and destroy his army, if Rosecrans, replacing the cautious Buell,
should be able to smash Bragg and Breckinridge in Kentucky and Tennessee,
the "military necessity" of emancipation would disappear. Pressure to defer,
on solid constitutional grounds and in the name of making peace with re-
union, would surely increase.
That was the sort of worry he hoped to have. He would deal with any
alternatives to emancipation at year's end in a month, when he would have to
write his annual message to Congress. Certainly the threat of abolishment
was an important move, necessary to hold Republican support, diplomati-
cally well timed, perhaps militarily useful. And slavery was plain wrong.
Next month's election would determine whether the proclamation had been
politically wise.
Was it possible that declaring the rebels' slaves free, when he was in no
position actually to free them, would turn out to be the central act of his
administration? He sat on the bed and turned that over in his mind. He
couldn't say that it would.

CHAPTER 12

JOHN HAY'S DIARY
OCTOBER 8, 1862
On the train back from Frederick, the Tycoon must have been stewing about
the meetings McClellan has been having with Democratic leaders. Irritation
will be expressed, however, not at his political flirtation but at the inexcusable
military inactivity of the Young Napoleon. I make this assumption because no
sooner had he returned than the Prsdt closeted himself with Old Brains.
The upshot of that confabulation was a red-hot telegraphed order from
Halleck at headquarters to McClellan in the field: "The President directs that
you cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy or drive him south. Your
army must move now while the roads are good."
The uninitiated may ask: why, since Lincoln saw McClellan only yester-
day, did he not tell him this himself? The answer is obvious to me: McClel-
lan, in person, has a million good reasons for every delay, and the Prsdt
cannot argue military tactics with him at length. However, McClellan at the
other end of a telegraph line is a different being. He is a soldier to whom
orders are sent, to be obeyed.
Not only that: from the command post of the Executive Mansion, the
President can push Halleck and Stanton out in front of him. Halleck's tele-
graph ended, "I am directed to add that the Secretary of War and the Gen-
eral-in-Chief fully concur with the President in these instructions."
And who do you suppose directed Old Brains to 'fess up to that? The
Tycoon himself, of course, who wants the top brass on the record with him all
the way. Everybody knows that Halleck's order to McClellan to get off his
duff will be examined in due course by Wade's Committee on the Conduct of
the War. The telegraph message is proof that the word from on high to
advance on the enemy was clear and unmistakable, no matter what McClel-
lan says Lincoln told him while the two were passing the time of day in his
tent.
Is this construction of a paper noose fair to the man at Antietam? Perhaps
not, but the Ancient of Days has a strange ambivalence when it comes to
George Brinton McClellan. Although the Prsdt is quite able to be harsh to
somebody's facesee Jessie Benton Fr6mont or Major John Key for testi-
mony to thatwhen it comes to this short (my height), young (thirty-five,
only twelve years my senior) whippersnapper of a general, Lincoln is loath to
crack the whip. Why?
The answer is one part personal affection; one part a concern with Little
Mac's incredible sway over his troops; one part gratitude for organizing an
army twice out of a beaten rabble without asking for a contract; one part guilt
for holding back troops to sit around Washington when they might have been
better employed in front of Richmond and at Antietam; and three parts not
having any general of proven ability to turn to.
That is why, on the very heels of that telegraphed, official order which
must have come as a bit of a shock to the fellow he was chatting with only
yesterday, Lincoln sent a handwritten note to McClellan telling him it would
be okay to slip back into Washington some night to see his wife.
To some, that act of kindness and sympathy following a sharp blow to the
back of the neck would be an anomaly; to me, it is quintessential Lincoln.
There is a curiously appealing personal side to McClellan, and I should re-
cord it here: he loves his wife with an admirable passion. He is not foolish to
do so, because Nellie is intelligent, beautiful, and radiant with her one-year-
old in arms. Tales have reached here of the way the general, no matter what
the military pressure, steals time from sleep late at night to write her long,
intimate letters. I cannot say this is a weakness.
The Prsdt finds this side of the Young Napoleon touching, which is why he
permits him to skulk into town for a feverish embrace when he should be
splashing his way across the river at the head of his vast and expensive army.
Perhaps Lincoln wishes he had a feeling like that for the Hellcat. No impas-
sioned letters for her. I recall my favorite correspondence from the Tycoon to
Mrs. L in New York last summer: "I am here, and well. How are you? A.
Lincoln." Hardly lyrical, but the Hellcat surely does not inspire all that the
lovely Nellie McClellan does.
At any rate, we have to tolerate the insolence of epaulets only until Novem-
ber 4. On Election Day, the Young Napoleon meets his Waterloo. I have no
doubt about his dismissal on the day after elections. It would be impolitic at
this moment to feed the flames of Democratic ire in Pennsylvania and New
York, both of which now feel some gratitude to McClellan for halting Lee
before the rebels swept into those states, by firing their military savior. We are
less worried about the border states, because Stanton has some hush-hush
plans for troops to keep secessionist sympathizers away from the polls, but
Thurlow Weed's whispered eruption about the effect of the Proclamation of
Freedom in New York has stirred the Prsdt's concern. Better to play it safe by
not firing McClellan yetat least not until Greeley's Republican candidate
rolls over the "peace candidate," Horatio Seymour, in New York.
The Democrats are mistaken to make a fuss about the two edicts uf "proc-
lamation week": on emancipation, the fear of a tide of black job seekers will
soon recede, and on agitators, we think the sentiment of the North is swing-
ing toward punishing the South and its sympathizers. The copperheads are
foolish to say that the two proclamations prove that the war is being waged
"for the freedom of the blacks and the enslavement of the whites."
Although the Prsdt, Stanton, et al. think Thurlow Weed and the Biairs are
alarmiste on the possibility of copperhead gains in the Congress, we are at-
tracted to Weed's idea of bringing Horatio Seymour down to the Mansion to
let Lincoln get the measure of the man. After all, Seymour as much as anyone
is the leader of the opposition now that Stephen Douglas is dead. Maybe a
brief exposure to the reality of life in the President's office will have a salutary
effect on Seymour's foot-dragging view of the war.
Nothing would keep me from witnessing that confrontation. Miss Carroll
says she is an old friend of New York Mayor Femando Woodshe calls him
"F'nandy"and she claims that the mayor is persuaded that Seymour has a
chance of upsetting our man in the race for the most important govemorship.
Oh, ye of little faith. The Tycoon is serene: he thinks his two proclamations
and his continued sufferance of McClellan will get him through the late
autumn of discontent.
This war is hitting home. The Prsdt's salary warrant came in today for the
month of September: it is $2,022.33, some $61 less than his previous monthly
warrants. That is because 3% has been deducted as a result of the "income
tax," an abomination perpetrated upon us by the father of the woman I know
at Sixth and E. Even my pittance is being clipped; some birthday present! (I
am 24 today.) An end to that nefarious practice of snatching money from
salaries will be one of the blessings of peace. There is no reason why this
government cannot continue to be run on the revenues from customs duties.

CHAPTER 13
PRISONERS
Commotion in camp: some Orphan Brigade skirmishers had brought back a
pair of runaway slaves, a field hand and his daughter. Cabell Breckinridge,
washing his jeans in a stream, wrung them out as fast as he could, jammed his
legs in and raced to the circle of soldiers.
"Caught 'em headed up toward the Gap and Kentucky," one of the skir-
mishers said proudly. "They made a dash through the woods, but the girl fell
down and the man had to come back for her and we grabbed him."
"Mean-lookin' buck, ain't he?"
"She's a cute one, though."
Cabell looked over shoulders to the runaways in the center. The man wore
overalls and a dark green shirt and hatclothing for escape through the
fields, except for a leg iron, its chain broken. He was short, well muscled,
purple-black, his chest heaving from what Cabell assumed to be either ex-
haustion or terror.
His daughter was in rags freshly torn by her run through the brambles;
slim, with long, scratched legs, breasts beginning to bud, she must have been
about thirteen. Every man in the circle was looking at her hungrilyit had
been a long, lonely march these three weeksbut Cabell knew their normal
lust had to be tempered by a reluctance to get satisfaction out of a slave girl
that young.
A Confederate officer came up before any fun could begin and detailed
Cabell and the sergeant to return the fugitives to the sheriff in Maynardville,
three miles southeast of the camp. The Kentucky Brigade was not due to
begin its march to Knoxville until morning.
The sergeant tied a rope around the girl's wrists, with a six-foot length to
walk her by. The field hand needed no restraints, he explained to Cabell,
because the pappy wasn't likely to run anywhere without the girl. You kept
her, you kept him.
"Ain't gonna hurt you," Cabell told them both, "but if you run, we'll shoot
you dead. That's orders, you hear?"
He knew he wasn't going to shoot either of them no matter what, but they
didn't know that. The owner would be asking after his property, and if Cabell
failed to do his duty, any such failure would be used by General Bragg
against his father. Bragg really had it in for Father.
Walking down the hilly road, the two soldiers and two slaves came on the
body of a dead Yankee. The morning before, a skirmish with some of the
Iowa volunteers had taken place here, and the Federals had drawn off too
quickly to take their dead.
"Take off his shoes," the sergeant ordered the field hand. The man obeyed;
the shoes came off the corpse. The sergeant handed Cabell the girl's rope and
sat down at roadside to try them on. He stood up and stomped around. "Not
bad. Better too big than too small, hunh? I'll just stuff the tip with leaves."
"You want Billy Yank's jacket?" Cabell asked the girl. "Keep you warm, if
you don't mind the bloodstains. You could wash 'em off."
She shook her head, eyes wide with fear. Cabell wondered what sort of life
he was bringing her back to. The Breckinridge family seldom had truck with
slaves, so he did not know if the stories about what they did with young slave
girls was true. It was exciting to think about the terrible acts of the slave
masters, but he was certain that the Yankee book Uncle Tom's Cabin was
exaggeratedabolition talk just to whip up people who didn't know that
nobody smart abused their property more than a normal lickin'.
"Why'd you run away?" Cabell asked the man.
The slave looked at him but silently plodded ahead.
"Speak up when a soldier asks you a question," the sergeant barked,
clomping along in his new shoes. "Did you hear that 'Massa Linkum' set you
free? Was that it?"
The man continued to walk, eyes on the ground. The girl, wanting to be
obedient, said "We beared. But that weren't all."
"Well tell us, chile," said the sergeant.
The field hand spoke his first words. "Gwine shoot us in the back," he
warned his daughter.
"No, only if you run," said Cabell. He began to feel badly about his threat.
You had to be careful how you talked to slaves, especially runaways, he
decided; they took anything you said to heart. In their minds, whites were
capable of anything, and that kind of power made him uncomfortable.
It didn't trouble the sergeant. He stopped in his tracks, pointed his rifle at
the man, and shouted, "Talk!"
The man merely looked at the sky and awaited execution. He seemed past
caring. The girl tugged on the rope in Cabell's hands, looked a plea at him; he
let her go to him. She lifted her father's shirt to show the soldiers his back.
Cabell, who had seen his share of wounds at Shiloh, turned away. All the
skin had been flayed off the man's back; black shreds hung from the red
exposed muscles. The vicious beating must have been administered within the
last twenty-four hours. Since then, the man's every movement must have been
an agony.
"Okay, keep walking," said the sergeant, slinging his gun, subdued. "You
ran away before, didn't you?"
The slave, walking, nodded.
"Shouldn't do that, you get punished," said the sergeant. "Massa Linkum
up north, he can say you're free, but that don't make you free down here.
Fact is, up home in Kentucky, he didn't free no slaves. Runnin' there won't
help you. Only place you're 'free,' 'cording to Massa Linkum, is down South
where you're slaves."
That wasn't quite true, Cabell thought; if rebel-state slaves ran into Union
lines anywhere, he had heard the Union military now had new orders not to
return the fugitives to their owners. Times were changing.
In a low voice, Cabell asked the sergeant, "What do you suppose the owner
will do to him now? Can't hurt him much more than last time. Kill him,
maybe?"
"Probably take it out on the girl," said the sergeant. "Be a waste, markin'
up a nice young thing, but some folks get mean when they're crossed."
A few hundred yards further, Cabell said, "You know, we're pulling out in
the morning, all the way down to Knoxville, Tennessee. Owner'd never know
the skirmishers caught 'em."
The sergeant shot him a funny look. "And you the general's son?"
"I don't say we let 'em go," Cabell said carefully. "Just that if they run,
we'd be wasting good ammunition to shoot. We're short on cartridges. Sup-
posed to use the ammo on the Yankees, not on a nigger cripple and his kid."
If it were a straight chase, without shooting, the sergeant would surely fall on
his face in those oversized shoes, and Cabell was not going to be the one to
catch them.
What would his father do? He was a former senator, a former Vice Presi-
dent of the United States, a general in the Confederate Army, a man of the
law. Cabell's grandfather had served as Speaker of the U.S. House of Repre-
sentatives, and with Thomas Jefferson had written the resolution denouncing
John Adams's unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts. Cabell was bred to
revere the Constitutionnow both of themwhich made it all right to own
slaves. He had been taught to obey the law, and no law challenged the right of
people to hold on to their own property. Not even Lincoln's proclamation
had done that. Was it right and proper for Cabell Breckinridge, son of a
candidate who opposed Lincoln on forbidding the extension of slavery, to
look the other way when a law-abiding man's property was running away?
That dilemma came on top of his disillusion with Braxton Bragg, who
seemed to be defending every Southern state except Kentucky. Disgusted
with the unfairness of it all, Cabell Breckinridge snatched his butternut cap
off his head and threw it in the dirt. He and the other fifteen hundred mem-
bers of the Orphan Brigade, under the command of his father, had trudged
over roads, and climbed on and off railroad cars, clear across the Confederate
states from the Mississippi to Cumberland Gap, where the northeastern tip of
Tennessee meets the southeastern tip of Kentucky. And now that they were
finally about to set foot on native Kentucky soil, joining the Confederate
troops holding it free from the Yankee invader, in came orders from General
Bragg to fall back down into Tennessee.
"Just 'cause Bragg got whupped at Perryville," Cabell said bitterly, "he's
givin' up on Kentucky."
The sergeant, from Bourbon County near Lexington, picked up the cap
and chucked it at him. "More than that, Cabe. Bragg hates your pappy's guts,
blames him for losing at Perryville 'cause the Orphans didn't get there in
time. And the folks up home didn't hold no parades signing up for this army.
Bragg is pure Mississippihe thinks Kaintuck is way up north."
"If we ain't got no better generals than Bragg," Cabell agreed, "we're in a
bad row for stumps."
It struck Cabell that wars sure turned around in a hurry. Couple of weeks
ago, General Bobby Lee was roaring through Maryland, scaring Yanks clear
up to New York. At the same time Bragg, Kirby Smith, and cavalryman John
Morgan had the Union on the run in the bluegrass. On top of that, Lincoln
makes a grab for every Southern slave, riling up the people and the soldiers of
Dixie with his proclamation, giving them a new determination to win. Even
the mutinous members of the Orphan Brigade, with their enlistment times up
and fixing to go home, agreed to stay on till the end of the war when they
heard about Old Abe's abolition. From Shiloh in April right up until Sharps-
burg last month, all spring and summer, the war had gone the right way for
the C.S.A.
But the news from Sharpsburg worried the men: McClellan, a soldier's
general, had turned Lee's men around and sent the butternuts home. And at
Perryville, the Yankee general Buell and the first respectable Union cavalry
commander, Sheridan, had fought Braxton Bragg to a standstill. Nobody had
won that battle, Cabell had been told by his fatherBragg had not really
been whuppedbut when you're on a big raid and you don't win, you lose.
Worried about being trapped too far North without a railroad or a river to
supply him, Bragglike Lee in Marylandturned around and hightailed it
out of there.
Now the Federals, east and west, in Virginia and Tennessee, were pulling
together all the supplies and ammunition, horses and brand-new shoes they
needed to invade the South again. It seemed to Cabell that as soon as one side
got into the other's territory, the invader lost for not winning and had to pull
out.
The girl on the other end of the rope stumbled and fell. Cabell reached for
her, his hand accidentally cupping one of her little teats, just as the field hand
turned and leaned down for her. The black man's face was about six inches
from his own, and Cabell didn't want to get a look from anyone like that
again. He backed away and pulled her up by the rope, like a dog on a lead.
His own father was in a sullen mood these days. Bragg was bothering him,
harassing the Orphan Brigade, wiring complaints about Breckinridge as well
as "Bishop" Polk to Jeff Davis in Richmond. His father was worried about
Mother, too; she had malaria, and her letters came from a hospital where she
was a patient rather than a nurse. Cabell would see him sitting up late in his
tent, bottle of bourbon by the lamp, writing home, as if afraid the world after
the war would all be different.
He was thinking hard of what General Clebume had told his father about
the idea of Southern emancipation when he heard a sharp command behind
him.
"Halt! Drop your guns!"
Might be a trick; he looked over his shoulder, unwilling to disarm himself
until he knew the man behind him was armed. Four men in blue uniforms
were in the road behind them, two with guns leveled at them. As the sergeant
and Cabell stood stock-still, other Yankees appeared on the side of the road
and in front of them. The skirmishers of yesterday had returned. These were
live Yankees.
Still holding the rope, Cabell slowly put down his gun. The sergeant did the
same, murmuring, "Libby Prison, here we come."
Libby was the hellhole every Johnny dreaded, as filthy and disease-ridden
as the South's own Andersonville. It made Cabell sad, too, to think that his
parents would think he was dead. But he was relieved at not having to maki
the decision to break the law about the runaway slaves.
"You are hereby emancipated," he said to the girl, and dropped the rope

CHAPTER 14
DEBATE
"You and I are substantially strangers," the President began, addressing Ho-
ratio Seymour, candidate for Governor of New York, in what he intended to
be a mood of friendly formality, "and I have asked you here chiefly that we
may become better acquainted. I, for the time being, am at the head of a
nation which is in great peril, and you are a candidate to become head of the
greatest state in that nation."
"I don't claim any superior wisdom," Seymour replied, "but I am confident
the opinions I hold are entertained by one half of the population of the
Northern states."
Lincoln cocked an eyebrow at that sally; the urbane New Yorker, carrying
the demeanor of man of wealth and executive experience, was apparently
unawed by his presence in the White House and was ready for a rhetorical
scrap. Might be interesting; Lincoln's purpose was to take the measure of the
leader of the political opposition as the election campaign heated up, and he
was secretly pleased that Seymour obviously overestimated Democratic
strength. The President shrugged and allowed as how the election in four
weeks would provide the answer to the candidate's contention.
Seymour nodded with civility. "I intend to show those charged with the
administration of public affairs a due deference and respect," he promised.
"After I am elected governor, Mr. President, I will give you just and generous
support in all measures you may adopt within the scope of your constitu-
tional powers."
His careful qualification did not escape the President. "You have been
asserting that certain military arrests," Lincoln said to draw the man out,
"for which I am ultimately responsible, are unconstitutional."
"I say that your suspension of habeas corpus will not only lead to military
despotism," Seymour replied coolly, "it establishes military despotism. This
action of your administration will determine, in the minds of more than one
half of the people in the loyal states, whether this war is waged to put down
rebellion in the South, or to destroy free institutions in the North."
Lincoln was not going to let him get away with that. "May I be indulged,"
he returned mildly, "to submit a few general remarks on the subject of ar-
rests?"
"You have shown that you think the Constitution is somehow different in
time of insurrection and invasion," Seymour continued, not indulging the
President at all. "I disagree. The safeguards of the rights of the citizel. against
the pretensions of arbitrary power were intended especially for his protection
in times of civil commotion." As Lincoln shook his head, Seymour added:
"You forget, sir, that these civil rights were secured to the English people
after years of protracted civil war, and were adopted into our American
Constitution at the close of the Revolution."
"Wouldn't your argument be better," Lincoln asked, "if those safeguards
had been adopted and applied during the civil wars and during our Revolu-
tion, instead of after the one and at the close of the other? I, too, am devotedly
for them after civil war, and before civil war, and at all times exceptand
here I quote the Constitution'except when, in cases of rebellion or invasion,
the public safety may require' their suspension."
Lincoln thought he had the better of that exchange, but Seymour conceded
nothing. "You are quoting the portion of the Constitution dealing with the
powers of the Congress, not the President. You tried to justify your usurpa-
tion of this power in the Merryman case last year by claiming the Congress
was not in session. Well, Congress is in session right now. If it is so urgent
that those who disagree with you be clapped into jail without a trial, why not
call on Congress to pass martial law? Who are you to override the most
sacred rights of free mensolely when you choose to say the public safety
requires it? You were not elected dictator."
Lincoln recognized the debating tactic: goad your opponent to anger with a
personal dig. "Divested of your phraseology calculated to represent me as
struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative," Lincoln said slowly, con-
taining his temper, "your question is simply a question of who shall decide, or
an affirmation that nobody shall decide, what the public safety does require, in
cases of rebellion or invasion."
"Not so. The Congress can decide."
"The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for deci-
sion, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it," Lincoln corrected
him. "By necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the deci-
sion is to be made from time to time; and I think the man who, for the time
the people have, under the Constitution, made commander in chief of their
army and navy, is the man who holds the power and bears the responsibility
of making it."
"With no restraints? No checks and balances, no appeals? That, sir, is
dictatorial power."
"If he uses the power justly," Lincoln said matter-of-factly, "the same
people will probably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands to be dealt
with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves in the Constitution."
"Do you realize what you are saying?" Seymour uncrossed his legs and
leaned forward. "You are saying, If you don't like my arbitrary arrests,
impeach mebut I can arrest you for speaking out to demand my impeach-
ment.' No despot ever seized more power to mete out punishment."
"The purpose of these arrests is not punishment," the President said pa-
tiently. He realized he was in a dispute with a lawyer who knew his case, but
Lincoln had been writing thoughts for this session on little scraps of paper for
days, putting each arguing point in a drawer to be assembled for his presenta-
tion. "You claim that men may, if they choose, embarrass those whose duty it
is to combat a giant rebellion, and then be dealt with only in turn as if there
were no rebellion. The Constitution itself rejects this view. The military ar-
rests and detentions which are being made are for prevention and not punish-
mentas injunctions to stay injury, as proceedings to keep the peace. Hence,
like proceedings in such injunction cases, they are not accompanied by indict-
ments, or trial by juries, nor in a single case by any punishment whatever
beyond what is purely incidental to the prevention."
"Not punishment? To be arrested for one knows not what; to be confined,
no one entitled to ask where; to be tried, no one can say when, by a law
nowhere known or established, or to linger out life in a cell without trial
you call that no punishment? That is a body of tyranny which cannot be
enlarged."
Lincoln could just hear those words being used effectively in a political
stump speech. It was demagoguery, he knew, but, like all effective demagogu-
ery, contained a germ of truth: Stanton had already appointed a special
provost marshal in Washington to carry out the arrests, with provost mar-
shals in every loyal state with power to ignore local court rulings. That would
strike fear in traitorous hearts, as Lincoln intended, but would also send a
chill into the hearts of the loyal voter.
"Habeas corpus does not discharge men who are proved to be guilty of
defined crime," Lincoln instructed Seymour in the law, "and its suspension is
allowed by the Constitution on purpose that men may be arrested and held
who cannot be proved to be guilty of defined crime. Arrests are made, not so
much for what has been done as for what probably would be donepreven-
tive, not vindictive. In crimes against the state, the purposes of men are much
more easily understood than in cases of ordinary crime."
"Oh?"
"The man who stands by and says nothing," Lincoln said, "when the peril
of his government is discussed, cannot be misunderstood. If not hindered, he
is sure to help the enemymuch more, if he talks ambiguously: talks for his
country with 'buts' and 'ifs' and 'ands.' "
Lincoln watched Seymour burn at that imputation of disloyalty, and as
Seymour said nothing, awaited the question the candidate would have to ask.
Sure enough, Seymour rose to the bait: "Can you not bear to wait until a
crime has been committed before meting out punishment?"
He had him. "Wait until a crime has been committed? Let me give you an
example. General John Breckinridge, as well as others occupying the very
highest places in the rebel war service, were all within the power of the
government once the rebellion began, and were nearly as well known to be
traitors then as now. Unquestionably, if we had seized and held them, the
insurgent cause would be much weaker. But no one of them had then com-
mitted any crime defined in the law. If arrested, they would have been dis-
charged on habeas corpus, were the writ allowed to operate." The President
made his point triumphantly: "I think the time not unlikely to come when I
shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many."
The candidate for chief executive of the state Lincoln counted on most for
men and money shook his head as if in disbelief. "The Constitution provides
for no limitations on the guarantees of personal liberty, except as to habeas
corpus. Even granting you the usurpation of that power from COngF:SS, do
you hold that all the other rights of every man throughout the country can be
annulled whenever you say the public safety requires it? Freedom of speech,
of the press"
"The benefit of the writ of habeas corpus is the great means through which
the guarantees of personal liberty are conserved and made available in the last
resort," Lincoln conceded. "But by the Constitution, even habeas corpus may
be suspended when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may
require it." Through his power to suspend that essential right, the President
held the key to all the other rights.
"Can you be unaware, Mr. President, that the suppression of journals and
the imprisonment of persons has been glaringly partisan? Republicans have
been allowed the utmost licentiousness of criticism, while Democrats have
been punished for a fair exercise of the right of discussion. For supporters of
mine, even to ask the aid of counsel has been held to be an offense."
Lincoln started to interrupt, but the New York candidate pressed on: "An
attempt is being made to shield the violators of law and to suppress inquiry
into their motives and conduct. I warn you, sir, this attempt to conceal the
abuses of power will fail. Unconstitutional acts cannot be shielded by uncon-
stitutional laws."
"Now hold on." He did not appreciate being warned. "In this time of
national peril, I would have preferred to meet you on a level one step higher
than any party platform. But not all Democrats have denied me this. The
Secretary of War, on whose discretionary judgment the arrests are being
made, is a Democrat, having no old party affinity with me. And from all
those Democrats who are nobly exposing their lives on the battlefield, I have
heard from many who approve my course, and not from a single one con-
demning it."
If Seymour caught the subtle import of his pointthat those Democrats
doing the complaining were not the patriots doing the fightinghe ignored it
airily. "I shall not inquire what rights states in rebellion have forfeited, but I
deny that this rebellion can suspend a single right of the citizens of loyal
states. I denounce your doctrine that civil war in the South takes away from
the loyal North the benefits of one principle of civil liberty."
Lincoln wondered if the man would go as far as to threaten the national
authority, and was astounded when Seymour did: "In the event that I am
elected governor next month, I will make it plain that it is a high crime to
abduct a citizen of the state of New York. I will admonish my sheriffs and
district attorneys to take care that no New Yorker is imprisoned or carried by
force outside the state without due process of legal authority."
The man was a danger to the Union. Seymour was, in effect, promising
insurrection of another sort: a "high crime" was an offense of state, and could
lead to the arrest, impeachment, and imprisonment of the arresting federal
officer. And New York's police forces, added to local militia, would be more
than a match for the thin federal forces in that state. If elected governor,
Seymour would have the military power on the scene to back up his threat to
federal authority.
"I can no more be persuaded," Lincoln told him, hoping a practical argu-
ment would take hold, "that the government can constitutionally take no
strong measures in time of rebellionbecause it can be shown that the same
could not be lawfully taken in time of peacethan I can be persuaded that a
particular drug is not good medicine for a sick man because it can be shown
not to be good for a well one. Nor am I able to appreciate the danger that the
American people will, by means of military arrests during the rebellion, lose
the right of public discussion, the liberty of speech and the press, the law of
evidence, trial by jury and habeas corpus any more than I am able to believe
that a man could contract so strong an appetite for emetics during temporary
illness as to persist in feeding upon them during the remainder of his healthful
life."
"I suppose those homespun metaphors go over well with juries, Mr. Lin-
coln, but ask yourself this: did you approve of President Folk's war with
Mexico?"
Lincoln frowned, not getting his opponent's sudden shift of argument. He
reluctantly shook his head. Like many good Whigs in the 1840s, he had
faulted Polk for provoking the war at the behest of the Texans.
"During the war with Mexico," Seymour recounted, "many of the political
opponents of the Administration thought it their duty to denounce and op-
pose the war. With equal reason as you give now, it might have been said of
them that their discussions before the people were calculated to discourage
enlistments and to induce desertions. Were these people, yourself included,
'warring on the military,' to use your own phrase, and did this give the
military constitutional jurisdiction to lay hands upon them?"
"I dislike to waste words on a purely personal point," answered Lincoln,
"but you will find yourself at fault should you ever seek for evidence to prove
your assumption that I opposed, in discussions before the people, the policy of
the Mexican War." Lincoln had privately spoken forcefully against the start
of Folk's war, but had refrained from speaking out publicly for fear of jeopar-
dizing his political career in those early days. He realized now that as a young
Congressman, he had been wise to stay silent; anti-war oratory would have
come home to haunt him now. Nobody could make him feel guilty now about
not speaking out then. Time for an anecdote.
"Seward says that one fundamental principle of politics is to be always on
the side of your country in a war," Lincoln drawled. "I remember Butterfield
of Illinois was asked, at the beginning of the Mexican War, if he was not
opposed to it. He said, 'No. I opposed one war and it ruined me. I am now
perpetually in favor of war, pestilence, and famine.' "
Unfortunately, Seymour was too worked up for Lincoln's attempt to re-
duce the animosity to have the desired effect. "Do you seriously think that
arresting the outspoken opposition," asked the New York candidate, "is go-
ing to preserve the public safety? I think the opposite. I think all authority is
going to be weakened by your repression. Government is never strengthened
by the exercise of doubtful powers: it always produces discord, suspicion, and
distrust. If that is what you feel you must do, Lincoln, that is what I must run
against."
Lincoln fingered the mole on his cheek; although he had flushed Seymour
out and learned the campaign strategy, he was unhappy with what he had
learned. He rose from his couch and walked to the desk, half sitting there.
"This civil war began on very unequal terms between the parties. The insur-
gents had been preparing for it more than thirty years." Anna Carroll had
documented the activities of the Knights of the Golden Circle in her pam-
phlet exposing Breckinridge. "Their sympathizers pervaded all departments
of the Government, and nearly all communities of the people. Under cover of
liberty of speech,' liberty of the press,' and 'habeas corpus,' they hoped to
keep on foot among us a most efficient corps of spies, informers, suppliers,
and aiders and abettors of their cause in a thousand ways."
"I find it hard to believe that a President of the United States swallows
such a"
"Hear me out, Seymour. They knew that in times such as they were inau-
gurating, by the Constitution itself the habeas corpus might be suspended; but
they also knew they had friends who make a question as to who was to
suspend it; meanwhile, their spies and others might remain at large to help on
their cause."
"The person who first raised that question was the Chief Justice of the
United States," Seymour said hotly. "Are you accusing him of being a part of
a conspiracy to"
Lincoln kept on going. "Or if, as has happened, the Executive should
suspend the writ, without ruinous waste of time, instances of arresting inno-
cent persons might occuras are always likely to occur in such casesand
then a clamor could be raised in regard to this, of service to the insurgent
cause."
"For God's sake, Lincoln, what about the courts? I'm not talking about
arrests of bushwhackers and guerrillas in a war zone, I mean arrests of dis-
senters in those areas where judges now sit, empowered to hear cases."
"Nothing is better known to history than that courts of justice are utterly
incompetent to such cases," Lincoln held. "Civil courts are organized chiefly
for trials of individuals, or at most a few individuals acting in concert, and
this in quiet times. Even in times of peace, bands of horse thieves and robbers
frequently grow too numerous and powerful for the ordinary courts of justice.
But what comparison, in numbers, have such bands ever borne to the insur-
gent sympathizers even in many of the loyal states?"
"Why are you, a lawyer, afraid of judges and juries?"
"A jury frequently has at least one member more ready to hang the panel
than to hang the traitor," the President shot back. "Thoroughly imbued with
a reverence for the guaranteed rights of individuals," he went on, "I was slow
to adopt the strong measures indispensable to the public safety. Remember,
Seymour: he who dissuades one man from volunteering, or induces one sol-
dier to desert, weakens the Union cause as much as he who kills a Union
soldier in battle. Yet this dissuasion or inducement may be so conducted as to
be defined as no crime in civil court."
"Your reverence for the rule of law is overwhelming, Mr. Lincoln. I take it
that you believe all of us who strive to protect the right of dissent are weaken-
ing the cause of the Union. You have become so obsessed with holding the
Union together that you have forgotten that the purpose of the Union is to
preserve individual freedom."
"Your own attitude, therefore," said the President, unrelenting, eager to
make clear the political danger in the line Seymour had been taking, "encour-
ages desertion, resistance to the draft, and the like, because it teaches those
who incline to desert and to escape the draft to believe it is your purpose to
protect them, and to hope that you will become strong enough to do so."
"We have nothing further to discuss," said Seymour, rising. "Your preten-
sions to more than regal authority are contemptible. You claim to have found
within the Constitution a germ of arbitrary power, which in time of war
expands at once into an absolute sovereignty wielded by one man, so that
liberty perishes at his discretion or caprice. I will stand for election in New
York, sir, and refute you. The American people will never acquiesce in your
extraordinary doctrine."
"We shall see." Lincoln judged this fellow to be stronger than he had
thought, and no demagogue, but felt confident he could take him in debate in
'64 if it came to that, just as he had taken Stephen Douglas in '58. If he felt
like debating, that was a President's prerogative. Greeley was certain that
Seymour had no chance of winning the govemorship next month, but Weed
was worried about the undignified and unprecedented way he was travehng
all over the state of New York, running instead of standing for election in the
traditional way. "We shall see. I'll just have to keep pegging away."

CHAPTER 15
THE GOLD ROOM
On the wide landing of the stairs, her hand resting on the railing, Kate Chase
listened to the familiar voices in the library below.
"I congratulate you on the rise of your seven-thirties, my dear Cooke," her
father was saying, "and now I want to be a borrower myself. Will you lend
me two thousand dollars, in the shape of your draft on New York?"
"Of course." Jay Cooke was always accommodating; but the Treasury Sec-
retary had made Cooke's Philadelphia firm the exclusive agent for the gov-
ernment's bond issue, Kate was persuaded, only because Cooke had proved
himself to be the most effective salesman of bonds in the land.
"I want it to pay on the account of a store I am rebuilding on Katie's
property in Cincinnati," her father explained.
"Say no more," Cooke told him; "I'll write the draft now."
Scratching of quill. Kate waited on the landing; now was hardly the time to
make an entrance.
"I must remind you again," her father told Cooke sternly, "of the necessity
of putting a little more form in the address of your letters to the Secretary of
the Treasury. I don't like to have private and public matters mixed. Please
commence all your letters on public matters to him with 'Sir.' Write separate
letters on private matters, or those in which you are trusted as a confidential
agent, with 'Dear Governor' or 'Dear friend' or as you will. But let those
personal letters contain nothing on public business or vice versa."
"Of course," said Cooke again. "Here you are1 hope the store is a great
success."
"The store? Oh, on Katie's property. Yes."
Humming "Picayune Butler" as she walked down the stairs, Kate entered
the library and kissed them both.
She ensconced herself on the part of the couch that needed coveriiig. "Tell
me about the Gold Room," she said to Cooke. "I hear it's a terrible scandal,
and you should be ashamed."
Kate had read that a group of brokers in New York had formed an ex-
change to set the price of gold, and she knew that Jay Cooke would find
pleasure in explaining it to her. It would help Father, too, who was sometimes
too proud to seek financial instruction.
"Early this year your father put out the greenbacks, remember? The paper
dollar is supposed to be worth a dollar in goldand so it is, for paying the
new tax on incomes, but foreign countries insist on payment of their debts in
gold. That makes a gold dollar worth somewhat more than a greenback."
"And the more greenbacks we print, the less the paper dollar is worth
against gold," her father put in.
Cooke nodded. "In January, gold was worth one dollar and three cents.
Today, it's one dollar and twenty-five cents in the Gold Room. Since the
nation would rather borrow than tax, the paper greenback will buy even less
gold next year."
"Well, why do you let those money changers in the templethose gamblers
make all the money that we need to finance the war?" Good question: she'd
worked on it.
The young financier, smiling, shook his head. "In gambling," Cooke ex-
plained, "an artificial risk is created. But in gold speculation, a genuine risk is
inherent in the situation. Since the price of gold against the dollar is sure to
go up and down, depending on the fortunes of the North in the war, some-
body is needed to accept the risk. If it isn't the speculator, it has to be the
importers and other businessmen who must use gold in trade. The speculators
perform a service taking that risk, which is why they should profit from it."
She shook her head warily. "There must be politics in it. I hear the 'Cop-
perhead bulls' sing Dixie right in the Gold Room on news of a rebel victory,
and the 'Union bears' sing 'John Brown's Body' when the North wins a
battle."
"The reason for that," Jay Cooke explained, more to the Secretary than his
daughter, "is economic, not political. When rebels win, confidence in the U.S.
dollar drops, which means it takes more dollars to buy goldso the price of
gold goes up. The 'Copperhead bulls' are betting that the rebels will win and
the price of gold will shoot up."
"Lincoln doesn't understand that," said her father. "He thinks the tail
wags the dog, that the gold traders put the price up because they want the
South to win. He banged the Cabinet table the other day"Chase banged the
table and imitated Lincoln's high voice" 1 wish every one of them had his
devilish head shot off" "
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Cooke, no longer smiling. "If Lincoln tries to
control that market, or put the gold speculators out of business because he
thinks speculation is unpatriotic, he'll bring our foreign trade to a halt. And
then goodbye to your revenues from customs duties."
"Fear not," said Chase. "He does that to show Thad Stevens and that
bunch he's one of them, against the vile bankers with their diamond stick-
pins."
A servant came in to announce that Miss Anna Ella Carroll had dropped
by and was waiting in the front parlor. Kate, who had expected to be out all
day, seethed; she was glad now that she had changed her plans, and glad her
father looked discomfited.
"Were you expecting her, Father?"
"No, but Miss Carroll is always"
"You two continue your important business," she said to the men. "I'll see
her first, and bring her in when you've finished."
"We're finished," said Cooke, being helpful, then catching Kate's glare
added lamely, "well, there are a couple of confidential details left, I suppose."
"Don't let her go," said her father; "I want Miss Carroll's thoughts on next
week's elections. We didn't do too well back home in Ohio this month in our
early elections, except for Major Garfield." Turning to Cooke, he added,
"that young man won by a two-to-one margin, you know. Ashtabula is the
most Republican county in the state, of course, but it shows James Garfield
has a great future."
"Will the major take his seat, or remain in the army?"
Chase looked uncertain; Kate said, "He'll stay in the army awhile, if he
gets a decent assignment. He thinks a good war record is the most important
thing in the long run, and, of course, he's right." She had talked with him
intimately and at length on a recent horseback ride toward Annapolis. Gar-
field was an attractive, passionate, in some ways mysterious man.
"I have an assignment in mind for him first," Chase told Cooke. "Stanton
is going to get Lincoln to approve the convening of a court-martial of General
Porter, for his disgraceful conduct toward Pope at Second Bull Run."
"McClellan will never stand for that," said Cooke. "Porter is his pet."
Kate nodded approvingly; she had explained that to Jay the night before. She
taught him more politics than he taught her economics.
"McClellan is finished," said Chase with finality. "It is inexpedient for
Lincoln to remove him before the elections, because that would be miscon-
strued by most conservatives as a sop to those of us who have long demanded
an end to slavery. Come Election Day, McClellan will be removed."
"But if he's hot on the tail of Lee at the time"
"No matter. That's not the point. His delays are dreadful, and that's an
excuse for sacking him, but McClellan and his crowd must be removed be-
cause of all the compromising on slavery they stand for."
"I can see why Lincoln wants to wait past the elections," Cooke said. "The
man did save the country at Antietam, a lot of people in Philadelphia think
we were certain that Lee was on the way."
"McClellan failed to win the war at Antietam," Chase said sternly. "And
after he's been removed, the court-martial of his man Porter will commence.
That's why it is important for an officer with political judgment to represent
us on the court-martial board. Major Garfield will see that justice is done."
"The major is not as sanguine as you about the elections," Kate said. She
hoped she did not seem to her father to know too much about Garfield's
thinking; she knew better than he that Garfield as judge would come down
hard on Fitz-John Porter and drive the last nail in the coffin of McClellan's
reputation.
"The unfortunate results of the early elections in Ohio and Pennsylvania,"
pronounced her father, "were influenced by the fear of Southern invasion.
November's elections will reflect the enthusiasm for the emancipation and the
relief at the defeats of Lee and Bragg."
"That might help in New England," Kate said, eager to put forward her
political thoughts before Miss Carroll had a chance, and to show Jay Cooke
how well she had been informed by Major Garfield, "and in California."
"We'll pick up seats in Congress," Chase said confidently, "and governor-
ships as well. Greeley assures us that his man Wadsworth will trounce the
Peace Democrat, Seymour, in New York." A frown crossed his fine brow.
"But Illinois, of all places, might prove a problem. Leonard Swett, Lincoln's
close friend running in Lincoln's old district, predicts a close race. Strange.
Maybe Miss Carroll knows why."
Anna did not enjoy being sidetracked, but she could not refuse a cup of tea
in the parlor with the lady of the house while the financial conference was
concluding in the library. Kate Chase appeared drawn, not the radiant center
of attention of the levees. The young woman apparently had something to say
and Anna let her take the conversational lead.
"I understand, Miss Carroll, that you have been approaching several mem-
bers of the Cabinet with your claim that the government owes you money,"
Kate Chase said abruptly, silver teapot in hand.
Anna waited for her to go on.
"Six thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars," Kate specified, pouring the
tea. "That's a great deal of money."
Anna had not mentioned the sum to her father. Had Bates told her? Stan-
ton? John Hay? "Yes," she replied. "I laid a great deal of money out myself,
in the production of pamphlets."
"I know this is a rude question, Miss Carroll, but are you a woman of
means?"
"You're right, Kate," she said, using the younger woman's first name to
assert her seniority. "That is a rude question."
"I felt free to ask it, because I'm not. Not a woman of means."
Anna sipped her tea.
"Many women," Kate went on, "many single women, assume that because
my father is Secretary of the Treasury and deals in millions of dollars, the
Chase family is rich. It's not true."
Anna's eyes roamed the walls of the elegant parlor, took in the paintings
and draperies, pointedly noted the breakfront with the expensive china, and
continued sipping her tea. The young woman certainly knew how to brew and
serve a cup of tea; it was a talent Anna had never mastered.
"All this is a fagade, Miss Carroll," said Kate after Anna's eyes returned
from their tour. "I thought you ought to know. It is not something my father
would confide in you, or in Addie Douglas, or in any of the women who have
set their cap for him. But it is the truth. Salmon Portland Chase, once a
wealthy man, is now as poor as"
"A church mouse, the expression is."
"Thank you. In telling you this, I am taking you into my family's confi-
dence. It would not do for the city of Washington to know that we have to
scrimp and save to meet the bills. Because my father trusts you, I trust you."
"Your predicament will never pass my lips."
"It would therefore be advantageous," Kate continued, "for my father to
marry a woman who can present a bill for six thousand, two hundred and
fifty dollars to the government every now and then. It would pay for my
winter wardrobe. Are you quite prepared, Miss Carroll, to help support the
Chase familythere's Nettie, too, my sisterin the manner to which we are
accustomed?"
Anna put down her cup and sat back. "Young woman, you seem to be
suggesting, with some puerile drawing-room irony, that I am running after
your father for his money."
"I am glad you took my point."
"You're young, you're possessive, and you're wrong."
"If you could see the house accounts"
Anna waved aside the details. "Your pecuniary problems are of no interest.
I believe you, that you're short on ready cash, and, yes, it's a surprise to me.
But your problem is not in protecting your father from avaricious women.
Your problem is to create a life for yourself independent of your father."
"How d''
"I dare because I've always dared to stand in my own shoes. You're filled
with fear because you've always stood in your father's shoes. Grow up and
get out on your own."
"I have worked, Miss Carroll, and been charming, and fought, and
scratched, and lied and spied and done damn-all for a chance to be hostess in
the Executive Mansion, and no society widow, or, or"she struggled for a
suitable capsule of Anna Carroll"concubine of past presidents who never
wears a dress with a decent bodice is going to deprive me of it!"
Kate's face was flushed, her chest heaving. Anna remained cool, choosing
to deal with the insults obliquely. "I was flat-chested, like you, when I was in
my teens," she said pseudosympathetically. She breathed deeply and arched
her back. "Be of good heart. Over the years, figgers change."
After a moment, Kate recovered. "I would like you to stop seeing my
father," she was able to say calmly.
"That's natural," Anna replied. It was time to stop fencing with the girl. "I
resented every woman who came into the house after my father was widowed.
We were very close, and I was a great support to him, just as you are to the
governor. But what you want for your father, and from your father, is not my
concern. That is between you and him."
She felt like rising to make her point, but then Kate would rise and tower
over her, so Anna remained seated. "Your father is a self-made man and I am
a self-made woman. We admire each other. We like each other. We can be
helpful to each other. Perhaps we will get together someday, perhaps not
that's as much my choice as it is his."
"But neither of you knew the other was poor."
"And do you know what that means, Kate? It means that we both know
how to keep up appearances."
Kate neither dissolved nor started whining. "I will fight you. I am more
worried about you than about the society ladies."
"Good, that says a lot about your father's sense of himself, and it shows
you know where you are weakest."
Kate looked puzzled, probably because she did not want to disagree with a
compliment.
"You can share his ambition," Anna went on, "but you cannot share his
life. He has needs that go beyond those that can be supplied by an official
hostess, and those needs it would be"she paused for emphasis, knowing
precisely the word to use"unnatural for you to provide." He had not yet
expressed that need to her in any of their meetings, which Anna was not
about to tell his daughter; let her suspect the worst. From the tension of her
last meeting with him, she had hopes the worst would come soon.
"You think of me as a belle of parties, Miss Carroll, the hostess of a
matinie dansante. But I will surprise you. I am prepared to make sacrifices to
reach my goal, and to help Father reach his. More sacrifices than you have
ever made in your life."
"Let him go. Make your own way."
Kate rose. "I'll show you to the library."
"No, I'll wait here. If they're not finished with their bond issue in a few
minutes, I'll go along." Since Kate did not offer more tea, Anna poured
herself a cup. She wished it were a glass of wine. What in God's name was a
matin6e dansante? Dancing in the afternoon, with the drapes drawn, by can-
dlelight? Is that what these people did after lunch?
As she expected, as soon as Kate withdrew, Chase and Cooke came in to
join her, accompanied by Major Garfield, the Chases' houseguest. That was
the sort of political man Kate should be seeing, had he been single; not Lord
Lyons, a professional bachelor, or John Hay, a comparative boy she could
manipulate at will. Kate needed a man to share both ambition and bed. Anna
was prepared to admit that so did she, but at least she was aware of it.
"The President is afflicted with the notion that the way to take Vicksburg is
to send General McClerland, an Illinois politician, down the Mississippi,"
Anna Ella Carroll told them. "That's ridiculous. Grant should attack the fort
by land, from the rear; that's what the Tennessee plan had in mind from the
start. If the subject comes up in the Cabinet tomorrow, Governor, here's my
idea ..."

CHAPTER 16

JOHN HAY'S DIARY
NOVEMBER 5, 1862
Yesterday was Election Day and the results coming in today amount to a
national calamity.
I knew that political disaster was imminent. I was home in Illinois last
week, partly for some unobtrusive sparking but mainly to help Leonard Swett
and other family friends get organized to turn out the Republicans on No-
vember 4.
Away from the federal city, in touch with the West, I was able to read the
signs. I wrote Nicolay to tell the Tycoon how badly the political currents
were running in Illinois. With stunning prescience, I predicted that the inac-
tion of McClellan and Buell and the ill success of our arms would have a
terrible effect. I pointed out that all our energetic and working Republicans
are in the army. The district "captains of ten" and "captains of 100," who
have always done our best vote getting, are all soldiers in the field and not
enough were furloughed. I warned that the State of Illinois was in great
danger.
But even I, fresh from the grass roots, had no more than an inkling of what
turned out to be the sad state of public sentiment in the nation.
With the Prsdt lounging on his couch, as he does when flirting with the
hypo, and Tad and the kittens unable to shake him out of his gloom, it was
my task to take in the messages brought over from the War Department
telegraph office by William Slade, our trusty colored messenger.
New Jersey was the first shock. A Douglas Democrat took the governor-
ship by 61,000 to 46,000 votes, an upset of staggering proportions; on top of
that, Peace Democrats took four of the five House seats and gained control of
the Jersey legislature. Then came Delaware, just as bad in a smaller way,
following in the pattern dismayingly set by our defeats in Pennsylvania, Ohio,
and Indiana.
Hoping to break the chain of bad news, I went across the street to the
telegraph office to get the word from Michigan, where I was certain that old
Zack Chandler would deliver. He did, and I forgave him for his dalliance
with John Barleycorn as I started back with the one small piece of cheer in
the dismal landscape.
In the hall of the War Department near Stanton's office I came across
Major Garfield, Chase's house guest, who is sort of hanging around waiting
for a military post that will enshrine him in the eyes of Ohioans, meanwhile
playing chess with Chase and mooning after Kate. Since he was one of the
few winners in the congressional racesit would be impossible for us to lose
Ashtabula1 asked him for some more good news to take to the Prsdt.
Congressman-elect Garfield was no help. "The news is most dishearten-
ing," he said heavily. "Several of the most important states seem to have gone
secession."
"Word from New York? The defeat of Seymour would be a good sign, if by
a large margin."
"Not yet. But Roscoe Conkling lost his seat, that was unexpected."
I was of two minds about that; Conkling was another one of Kate's admir-
ers, but was one of the President's stalwarts in the House from New York.
I hazarded the view that all was not going well.
"There will be ajubilee in Richmond," Garfield responded miserably, "the
like of which has not been seen since the first battle of Bull Run. At this rate,
we will be overpowered by treason at home."
Since he was in Chase's orbit, I asked the major's opinion of the cause of
the calamity.
"Democratic generals," was the response. "Having failed to buy up his
enemies by kindness, Mr. Lincoln has been driving away all his friends by
neglect."
I said I presumed he meant that he and his radical allies in the army had
not been given the positions they wanted. "Please tell the President this," he
urged. "If these disastrous elections act as a spur to give him some ~otion,, I
shall welcome them as messengers of mercy though they come in the guise of
terrible disasters."
I thanked Garfield for that solace and ducked back into the telegraph office
for any late word from Illinois.
"Not good," said Homer Bates. "The legislature has gone Democratic."
That meant that Orville Browning, who had been appointed to the Senate
after the 1860 election by the legislature, would lose his seat to some Peace
Democrat. It also meant that he would be badgering Lincoln for a Supreme
Court seat that Lincoln had in mind for David Davis, his 1860 campaign
manager. Two intimate friends, both deserving, but only one job; that meant
trouble.
I asked about Leonard Swett, known as Lincoln's best friend back home,
running in Lincoln's home district.
"Defeated," said Bates. He handed over the dispatch from the correspon-
dent of the Chicago Tribune. The voters in our own backyard have rejected
Republicanism and Lincoln. The Prsdt would take that hard.
"Frank Blair won in Missouri," said Bates, to perk me up. That was a
foregone conclusion: the Biairs owned the big newspaper in that state, in a
season when most other newspapers were killing us. William the messenger
arrived, looking for fresh returns; I told him to await new results in the
telegraph office, especially from the governor's race in New York, while I
hurried back to the Tycoon. He had gone down the hall to the Cabinet Room.
I followed with my bad news.

CHAPTER 17
BE RELIEVED FROM COMMAND
"The defeat of the administration is your own fault," Carl Schurz was lectur-
ing him, "You placed the army, now a great power in this Republic, in the
hands of its enemies."
The election defeat a result of neglect of patronage? Lincoln refused to
accept that. "I distributed to our party's friends as nearly all the civil patron-
age as any administration ever did. The war came. It so happened that very
few of our friends were of the profession of arms." Even so, he added, "I have
scarcely appointed a Democrat to a command who was not urged by many
Republicans and opposed by none. It was that way with McClellan."
Carl Schurz and Stanton were in the Cabinet Room with him, not commis-
erating, but blaming Lincoln for the poor results. Schurz was the human
rights leader who had been tossed out of Germany after the revolution of
1848, and who swung great weight with the German vote here; accordingly,
he was listened to, and had been appointed Ambassador to Spain after Lin-
coln's election. Schurz was bored there, however, so a military command was
found for him, in charge of German regiments, of course, near Washington.
Lincoln liked Schurz. Even if a bit ultra, he had been a thoroughgoing
Lincoln man, unlike Wade and Stevens; on top of that, Lincoln was comfort-
able with a lively fellow who spoke his mind with a refreshing absence of guile
unt der unmistakable accent.
"But you sustained those generals after they had been found failing," in-
sisted Schurz, as Stanton nodded. "Am I wrong in saying that the principal
management of the war has been in the hands of your political opponents?
McClellan, in eighteen months, has succeeded in nothing except the con-
sumption of our resources with the largest and best appointed army this
country ever saw."
"The Democrats in the country were left in a majority by our friends going
to the war," Lincoln explained. "Our newspapers, by vilifying and disparag-
ing the Administration, furnished them all the weapons to do it with."
"The President is right about the damned newspapers, Schurz," conceded
Stanton. "Look at Iowa. The only reason we won in Iowa is that I put the
two Peace Democrat editors in Fort Lafayette for seditious agitation. Should
have done a good deal more of that."
The German, now a general, disagreed. "That some of our newspapers
disparaged and vilified the Administration may be true. But however that
may be, I ask youwhat power would there have been in newspaper talk had
the Administration been able to set up against it the evidence of great mihtary
success?"
Lincoln dug in his heels: "I certainly have been dissatisfied with the slow-
ness of McClellan, but before I relieve him, what successor would be better?"
"One who sympathized with your political aims."
"I need success more than I need sympathy," Lincoln said heatedly.
"The people had shown confidence in you," Schurz pressed, "and reaped
disaster and disappointment. They wanted change in military leadership, and
yesterday sought it in the wrong direction."
Lincoln suddenly didn't much feel like arguing. "We still have a Republi-
can majority in the Congress."
"I entreat you, Lincoln," said Schurz, "do not attribute to small incidents
what is a great historical event. You appointed generals who have no heart in
this war. See the fact in its true light: the election results were a most serious
and severe reproof administered to the Administration."
The President would not take that slumped in his couch; now he felt a
surge of resentment at the unfairness in the accusation. He had done all that
the radicals had asked him to do about emancipation and more; that, and not
a failure of patronage, was what had cost the party dearly at the polls. Blair
and Weed had been proved right in their dire predictions, Stanton and Sum-
ner and Greeley wrong in their easy assurancesand now the radicals, in-
stead of accepting political responsibility for emancipation's unpopularity,
were searching for arguments to blame Abraham Lincoln.
He rose up and struck back: "I certainly know if the war fails, the Admin-
istration fails, and that I will be blamed for it whether I deserve it or not. You
think I can do better, therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do
better, therefore I blame you for blaming me." He poked his long finger in the
German's chest. "Believe me, my dear Schurz, there are generals who 'have
their heart in this war,' as you put it, that think you are performing your part
as poorly as you think I am performing mine."
The German started to say something, swallowed, turned and departed
without another word. Stanton looked at the floor.
Distraught at the election results, angry at himself for lashing out at a loyal
friend who happened to be mistaken, and whose continued political backing
was important, Lincoln stood uncertainly in front of the open-grate fireplace.
He rocked back and forth in his gigantic morocco slippers until his testiness
subsided, then he told Stanton, "Go bring him back."
When the Secretary of War ushered the troubled Schurz back into the
room, Lincoln put his hands on the German's shoulders and shook him
gently. "I gave it to you hard, didn't I? But it didn't hurt, did it? I didn't
mean to."
Lincoln forced a laugh. "It's just that all the criticisms coming down on me
from all sides chafed a little. You happened to be the one to sum up all the
criticisms and offer me a good chance for reply. I know you are a warm anti-
slavery man and a good friend to me." He shook the man's shoulders again
until Schurz smiled.
At that moment William appeared with the latest from the telegraph office.
Lincoln looked at the message, laid it down on the Cabinet Room table, went
over to the window looking out on Pennsylvania Avenue, and crossed his
arms. He heaved one of those profound sighs that seem to come up from the
Mansion basement. The opposition now had a leader in a position to chal-
lenge his executive power.
Stanton picked up the message and read aloud: "Horatio Seymour has been
elected Governor of the State of New York."
After a moment's silence, Schurz took his leave. Lincoln asked Stanton to
stay and they went down the hall to the President's office. He pointed to the