leek, who is in his office at 16th and Eye street, scratching, always scratching,
but specific information is supposed to come from the generals at the front.
Lincoln has been to the telegraph office across the street four times today, and
once in the middle of the night last night, to see if he could suck some news
through the wires.
Earlier today, the Hellcat came in to my office. Since her husband did not
want to go to church, she wanted Stod to send a carriage for Orville Brow-
ning. That defeated senator from the political disaster land we used to call
Illinois needs not so much a ride to church but a ticket to a permanent place
in government. Both Lincolns want him to stay in Washington, but it is
getting difficult to appoint the hometown crowd to more of anything.
After church, Browning came by the office to express his worry about
casualties in the rumors that were floating up from Virginia. He asked the
Tycoon about the strength of our army, considering the losses we were sup-
posedly taking.
"With Sigel's corps, which has just joined Burnside," the Prsdt told him,
"it numbers 170,000 men." He sighed and added, "But that's darkie arithme-
tic."
When his friend asked what "darkie arithmetic" was, Lincoln interrupted
his pacing to relax into a story. "Two young contrabands, as we have learned
to call them, were seated together when one said, 'Jim, do you know
'rithmetic?' Jim answered no. It's when you add up things,' said the first.
'When you have one and one and puts them together, they makes two. When
if you have two and takes one away, only one remains.' Jim replies, ' Tain't
true den; it's no good. S'pose three pigeons sit on that fence, and somebody
shoot one of dem, do t'other two stay dar? No, sar, dey flies away quicker'n
odder feller falls.'
"And Orville, trifling as the story seems, it illustrates the arithmetic you
must use in estimating the number of troops we have and the losses we are
supposed to take in battle." He obviously hoped Browning would take back
the point of the story to the worriers in Congress. "Don't believe the count of
killed, wounded, and missing at the first roll call after a battle. It always
exhibits a greatly exaggerated total, especially in the column of missing."
He may be cheering himself up, readying himself for the worst. It is true
that many of the men at first listed as missing later return, and Lincoln
carries around figures in his hat to prove it, but every attempt to prepare
himself, his friends, and the public for bad news has failed.
I refuse to join the general gloom; perhaps I lack the necessary sense of
foreboding. The Army of the Potomac, which has never scored a decisive
victory, may yet find its first on the banks of the Rappahannock.
7 P.M.: My optimism, and Burnside's, may be misplaced. I have just joined
the general gloom. No substantial word from the generals, but the first re-
ports from the newspaper correspondents are coming into the telegraph office
for censorship and Stod says that Homer Bates says it does not look so good.
Most of the press is all too delighted to emphasize the negative, however; it
makes one wonder which side they are on. I sent word to Homer to keep an
eye out for any dispatches from the Tribune. Uncle Horace's journal, at least,
did a fair-minded job at Antietam.
9 P.M.: Quartermaster General Herman Haupt, the railroad man who
makes the army's trains run on timeStanton thinks of him as a logistical
genius, and Anna Can-oil agrees, so I guess he iscame in to the War De-
partment from the battlefield and Stanton sent him over here.
"Extremely heavy losses," he reported solemnly, "with no substantial gains
of the high ground to show for them."
Lincoln took him to the map table, and Haupt laid out in some detail the
order of battle and the progress made so far. Lincoln pressed him on the
counsel that Bumside was receiving, and on his state of mind. Haupt thought
that the subordinate generals were wise in wanting to stop the slaughter, but
that Bumside was determined to make a final, decisive assault, and that he
was of sound mind and bodybrave, too; ready to lead the men up the hill.
Lincoln wanted specifics, and for the better part of an hour the quartermaster
read from his notes on the disposition of our forces and the relative strengths
of the rebel positions.
They were interrupted by Senator Henry Wilson, who came in to worry
about what a defeat would do in the Senate. He fears that anti-Seward senti-
ment is growing in the august body in which he serves, and all those who
would like to stick a thumb in the President's eye by going after his closest
adviser are looking for an event to trigger a crisis. Wilson says that a big
defeat at this point could topple the President, whatever that is supposed to
mean.
"What makes you think we face defeat?" I asked, since neither Lincoln nor
Haupt wanted to volunteer the bad news or register false optimism.
"I've just come from the bar at Willard's," he said, "Smalley of the Tribune
is there. He's fresh in from the battlefield and sent his dispatch to New York
only a few minutes ago. Says we took a terrible licking."
"Get his dispatch from the telegraph office," Lincoln said to me, and then
told Senator Wilson to fetch the reporter from the bar at Willard's and bring
him to the Mansion.

CHAPTER 32

FREDERICKSBURG v
WITH LINCOLN
Lincoln wondered why the Tribune dispatch had not yet been received at the
telegraph office. Probably there was an interruption down the line in Virginia.
Fredericksburg was only forty-five miles away, halfway between Washington
and Richmond, and a man riding hard could make that in a few hours,
beating his own dispatch.
Henry Wilson showed up with correspondent George Smalley in tow. The
President did not let on that he had been searching for his message to the
Tribune in New York, nor did he show his concern about a possible setback.
The Tribune man was in his battlefield dress, romantically grimy, smelling
of tobacco and whiskey. He was obviously embarrassed about being
dragooned into the presence of the commander in chief in such a state of
dishevelment. Smalley looked to Lincoln like an aristocrat, unlike most of the
war reporters who called themselves the Bohemian Brigade. He stood straight
and tall in front of the President, weaving just a little, when Wilson presented
him in the second-floor reception room.
"I am much obliged to you for coming," said Lincoln, pumping Smalley's
hand heartily, "for we are very anxious and have heard very little."
When Hay said his dispatch had not yet arrived in Washington for censor-
ship, Smalley looked a little guilty, hemmed and hawed, then finally admitted
that it was his plan to avoid the telegraph entirely, since he had had so much
trouble with that method of communication during the battle at Antietam. "I
sent it by special messenger on the night train to New York," he confessed,
"to make sure it got there in time."
Lincoln read the ulterior motive immediately: the correspondent wanted to
circumvent Stanton's censorship. Smalley would have kept that from almost
anyone on earth, but Lincoln had learned it was hard for most men to lie
directly to the President.
"What is the news, then?" Senator Wilson pressed. "Have we won the
fight?"
"Bumside is defeated and in a terrible plight," Smalley reported with cer-
tainty. "The worst of it is that he doesn't know it."
The President, who had learned not to accept the immediate judgments of
newspapermen, would not let himself believe that. He asked the correspon-
dent to say only what he knew from his personal knowledge, and to tell him
in general outline what had happened. Smalley, from exhaustion and the
drinks he had imbibed at Willard's after sending his dispatch, talked in a
slurred voice butLincoln was dismayed to admitwith a vast command of
the facts.
The three Grand Divisions under Hooker, Franklin, and Sumner had at-
tacked the heights, which were defended by Jackson on the right and Long-
street in the center and left. Old General Sumner had struck hard and been
repulsed with devastating losses, leaving nearly a third of his men dead or
bleeding on the field in his retreat. General Franklin attacked feebly and soon
withdrew. General Hooker had done all that bravery and devotion could do,
Smalley said, having objected at first to the suicidal charge he had been
ordered to make, but having followed his orders until the withering fire from
the entrenched positions had driven his men back. "At the day's end," Smal-
ley concluded, "we were back where we had started, thoroughly and bloodily
repulsed."
"Casualties?" asked Wilson.
"I don't say in my dispatch," the correspondent stated carefully, "but for
your private information, I should guess between twelve and fifteen thousand
men. It was a slaughter."
"I hope it is not so bad as all that," said the President. He then proceeded
to question the Tribune man in detail for more than a half hour. What were
Longstreet's defenses? How vulnerable was the rebels' present artillery com-
mand of the town and river? What were the physical condition and morale of
the Union troops before and after the fight? What were the chances of success
of another attack from each wing? What was the feeling about a renewal of
the attack among the general officers?
Smalley laced his answers with censure of Bumside, but Lincoln was care-
ful not to imply criticism of the commander in any of his questions. He also
discounted Smalley's praise of Hooker; Thurlow Weed had told him after
Antietam that the Tribune reporters were mainly Chase-Hooker men.
"Mr. President," Smalley said, when the questioning was at an end, "it is
not for me to offer advice to you, and the truth is that I am not feeling very
well at the moment and may regret my presumption later."
Lincoln waited for him to say what was on his mind.
"It is not only my conviction, but that of every general officer I saw before
and after the fighting, that success is impossible." Lincoln's judgment was
that the man was sincere. "The worst disaster yet suffered by our forces in
this war will befall the Army of the Potomac if the attack is renewed, and
unless the army is withdrawn at once to the north side of the river."
Retreat. Did the reporter know what he was counseling? What would the
country say? If Grant had listened to that despairing advice at Shiloh after
the first day, the West would be lost today.
Lincoln thanked him, giving no hint of his opinion of the advice. Senator
Wilson assisted Smalley out. Hay volunteered to get word to Horace Greeley
to treat his correspondent's dispatch the way he had a similar report of
disaster at first Bull Runthat is, by editing out the worst of the news, which
otherwise might cripple morale in the nation's largest city and feed red meat
to the Seymour forces.
At midnight, Hill Lamon brought in word that Governor Curtin of Penn-
sylvania had sent in word that he had just returned from a visit to his state's
troops at Fredericksburg and wanted urgently to see the President. Lincoln
lifted Tad off the couch in the office where the boy had been sleeping, handed
him to Mrs. Keckley, and told Lamon to fetch Curtin. He knew the Penn-
sylvanian to be a cool and sensible Union man, among the most stalwart of
the "war governors," a regular provider of troops.
Governor Curtin entered with General Haupt. "Mr. President, it was not a
battle, it was a butchery," the governor said bluntly. He recited what he had
seen in grim detail and this time Lincoln had no questions. The President,
listening, felt his control of the war and the country slipping from him.
Lincoln sat on the couch, head in his hands, breathing deeply, in no mood
to put up a brave front to General Haupt and Governor Curtin. This was his
defeat, a bloody refutation of Abraham Lincoln's military judgment, and it
would open the gates for all his enemies in the Congress and in the peace
movement to move in for the political kill. The demands in the next few days
for a negotiation to settle the war would be loud and strident, and they could
not be ignored. If the disaster worsened, if Bumside's army attacked and
failed again, if Lee counterattacked and took tens of thousands of prisoners
that would surely be the end. Everyone would say it could never have hap-
pened under McClellan, and to Lincoln the worst of it wasthat was the
truth. Even assuming the army could be withdrawn without further disaster
and the extent of the losses could be concealed for some time, the political
storm could not be averted.
He raised his red-rimmed eyes to look at Curtin, who had not realized that
his harsh recital came as the culmination of a day of hammer blows. The
governor sat on the couch next to the President, took his large hand in his,
and made a belated effort to soften the blow. Lincoln had not felt so stricken
after Pope's defeat; this was of a different order of magnitude of despair, a
wave of depression he had not felt since Willie died.
"I am deeply touched, Mr. President, at the distress I have caused you,"
Curtin was saying. "It may not be as bleak as I saidno doubt my impres-
sions are colored by the sufferings I have seen."
Lincoln nodded, not looking up. He felt the shortness of breath, the pain in
his head and chest that signaled the onset of the hypo.
"It could well be that matters will look brighter when later reports come
in," the governor added. "I wish1 would give everything I have to rescue
you and our nation from this terrible war."
Lincoln leaned back, jammed his fingers through his hair, and forced the
blackness away from him. The trick to containing the fear and grief was to
tell a story. "Reminds me, Governor, of an old farmer out in Illinois I used to
know."
He told the hog story, about the man who bought a prize hog and put it in
a pen. His two sons taunted the hog, who broke out of the pen and drove one
boy up a tree and was closing in on the other boy. The only way the boy could
save himself was by holding on to the hog's tail. "The hog wouldn't give up
his hunt nor the boy his hold," said Lincoln, animation returning to his face
in recounting the familiar story, "and after they had made a good many
circles around the tree, the boy's courage began to give out, and he shouted at
his brother, 1 say, John, come down quick, and help me let this hog go!' "
That was the hog story, and Lincoln added the point, in case anybody
missed the need for Bumside to disengage from Lee's victorious army: "Now,
Governor, that is exactly my case. I wish somebody would come and help me
let this hog go."
Curtin forced a chuckle, which Lincoln appreciated, and took his leave.
The President, slightly refreshed and determined not to slip back down,
paced the corridor for a while and asked Haupt to walk with him to General
Halleck's office. The general was sure to be there on the night of a great
battle.
At Halleck's, the President told Haupt to repeat what he had learned at the
battlefront, and to repeat the reports of Smalley and Curtin about the danger
to the troops now under the rebel guns. When the precise engineer concluded,
Lincoln said to his general-in-chief, "I want you to telegraph orders to Burn-
side right now to withdraw his army to the north side of the river."
"I will do no such thing," said General Halleck. Into the stunned silence,
he spoke again: "If such orders are issued, you must issue them yourself. I
hold that a general in command of an army in the field is the best judge of
existing conditions."
Lincoln found the situation hard to believe. There they all werein the
middle of the night, with the fate of the army and the nation hanging in the
balanceat an impasse. Lincoln made no reply to the insubordinate state-
ment by this military clerk, whose only job it was to pass along orders
couched in military language to the commanders in the field. As Lincoln had
checked his depression by force of will, he now checked his impatience. He
stood at the fireplace saying nothing, lest Halleck become a devastating wit-
ness before Wade's committee when all this was over.
Herman Haupt moved to resolve the tension. "Perhaps the situation is not
as critical as we imagine it to be," he said, pointing to the limitations of the
Tribune correspondent's view, and the relatively few people that Curtin had
spoken to. Battles, he said, had their ebbs and flows; in the view of this
afternoon's observers, the Federal forces had looked defeated, but tomorrow
might be different. At any rate, Bumside was not a rash commander, no
matter how he sounded to some of his men on this day; he could be trusted to
act in character in the end.
"What you say," Lincoln sighed, "gives me a great many grains of comfort.
Still .  .  ." Smalley had been accurate about Antietam. Curtin had a keen eye
and a good head. He walked back to the Mansion three blocks away, gulping
in the frigid air, wondering if he should intervene in the battle and order
Bumside to get back across those damned pontoons.
Homer Bates, on duty through the night at the War Department telegraph
office, looked up and saw the President in the doorway. He appeared more
haggard than usual. Bates looked to see if any late dispatches had come in
from Bumside, but found none that had not been sent to the Mansion earlier.
"Is there a message you wish to send, Mr. President?"
Lincoln sat down at Major Eckert's desk, where he had spent so much time
working on his proclamation, and fiddled with a pen for a moment. After a
while he put down the pen, rose and without a word walked out, down the
hall, down the steps and across the street to the White House.
A few hours later, just before dawn, clacking came from the headquarters
of the Army of the Potomac. Bates quickly worked out the cipher: Bumside
had decided to use the cover of a storm to withdraw his army to the north
side of the Rappahannock.
The telegrapher thought that important enough to run over to the Mansion
himself. He found Lincoln sleeping on the couch in his office, hesitated a
moment, then woke him with the news of the safe retreat. Lincoln read the
telegraph message, smiled his sad smile, patted Bates on the shoulder, and
went off to his room to go to bed.

CHAPTER 33
GET SEWARD

Anna Carroll darted under the scaffolding supporting the men at work on the
Capitol dome and found her way to the office of the Chairman of the Joint
Committee on the Conduct of the War. Ben Wade, his bulldog features seem-
ing only slightly more ferocious than usual, skipped his customary warm
greeting and announced: "Seward must go!"
She cocked her head in puzzlement: what had the Secretary of State to do
with the debacle at Fredericksburg? In her opinion, if any Cabinet officers
deserved blame, they were Chase and Stanton; those two radicals were re-
sponsible for the mistaken removal of McClellan and his replacement by an
incompetent.
"Did you see this?" Wade went on, thrusting a sheaf of papers at her. She
read the innocuous title page of the disbound government document: "Diplo-
matic correspondence of the United States, 1861." Wade jabbed a stubby
finger at a paragraph circled in red.
"This proves where Seward's heart is," the senator stormed. "Can you
imagine the gall of a man to write a thing like that at the start of the war, a
week before Fort Surnter? And then to rub our noses in it by publishing it this
week?"
Anna read the offending paragraph by Seward in a letter to an American
diplomat abroad. The Secretary of State had held in April of 1861 that Lin-
coln was not likely to force the seceding states to remain in the Union. "Only
an imperial or despotic government," Seward had written, "could subjugate
thoroughly disaffected or insurrectionary members of the state."
"That was not the Lincoln policy at the time," she said mildly. That veri-
fied what Old Man Blair had told her: only the Biairs had supported the
President in the Cabinet when the new President decided to provision Sum-
ter. If put to a Cabinet vote, there would have been no war and no Union. "I
guess the President overruled Seward and decided to defend the fort."
"Goddamn Buchananism, that's what it was!" Wade roared. "That viper
Seward, who now rubs our noses in the proof he didn't want to fight seces-
sion, has been the power behind the throne for nearly two years. And look
right heresee this drivel? This is why we haven't had a proclamation of
freedom yet, and why we probably won't have one on New Year's Day."
The sentence that enraged the senator, and surely would release pent-up
fury in the Joint Committee when it met, jumped out at her: "It seems as if
extreme advocates of African slavery and its most vehement opponents were
acting in concert," read the Seward letter of July 5, 1861, "together to precip-
itate a servile warthe former by making the most desperate attempts to
overthrow the Federal union, the latter by demanding an edict of universal
emancipation . . ."
Seward's statement was, to say the least, impolitic in equating the aboli-
tionists of the North with the secessionists of the South, blaming both equally
for bringing on the war. Anna could not understand Seward's reason for
putting all this out at this time, when the anger of the divisions within the
Republican ranks did not need further aggravation. She had agreed with
Seward's anti-abolition sentiments at the time, but at least she had the good
sense to keep her mouth shut about all that now. Times had changed; the
center of gravity within the party was shifting; one did not admit now to what
one had thought then.
"McClellan in the field and Seward in the Cabinet," said Wade, taking back
the papers and plopping them on his desk, "have brought our grand cause to
the very brink of death. Seward must be got out of the Cabinet. He is Lin-
coln's evil genius."
Anna shook her head; that was going overboard. If anything, the printed
correspondence proved that Seward's influence over Lincoln was not nearly
so great as most people in Washington believed.
Her demurral stimulated another outburst from her friend Wade. "Seward
has been the de facto President. He has kept a sponge saturated with chloro-
form to Uncle Abe's nose all the while, except for one or two brief spells."
"During which Lincoln decided to fight a civil war, and to free the slaves.
Come on now, Benyou've been talking to Chase again."
He glowered, the tucks at the corner of his mouth making him look more
pugnacious; that was the visage that made witnesses tremble. She mock-
glowered back and he settled down a bit. "Some of us pushed Lincoln into
doing the right thing from time to time," he said. "Has Stanton paid your bill
yet?"
She shook her head; she had forwarded to the War Department letters from
Edward Everett and Horace Binney, both respected lawyers, praising her war
powers pamphlet. In a more subtle move, she had placed on the President's
desk her memorial showing how his proposed emancipation edict could be
justified by a loose interpretation of the war power; it was better than any-
thing he would get from his Attorney General. But she was becoming re-
signed to the likelihood that she would not be paid until the war ended.
Thurlow Weed had steered a paying assignment to her, and somehow she was
able to make ends meet. At least, she told herself, she would not have to
support poor Salmon Chase.
"That's not why I'm here," she said. "I want you to get the committee's
attention away from this back-and-forth business between here and Rich-
mond, and focus on where the war can be won."
He did not agree. "The real war this week is right here in Washington.
Forget all your military logistics and strategy, my dear lady. Either the Con-
gress runs this country or Lincoln does. This week, within forty-eight hours,
there is going to be a showdown."
She could tell that the senator was serious, but there was a logical inconsis-
tency in his present anger at the President. "He got rid of McClellan, as you
wanted," she said. "He's freeing the slaves, as you demanded. What is Lin-
coln doing that you want to force a showdown about?"
"We're not to blame for Fredericksburg!" Wade replied sharply, and the
alacrity of his response to an accusation she had not made startled her. Then
the outline of political maneuvering began to come clear: The slaughter on
the Rappahannock was being blamed on Stanton's War Department, and on
the radicals' insistence on replacing McClellan; deservedly so. To take the
heat off themselves, Stanton and Chasewith the active cooperation of the
radical faction in Congresswere trying to direct the public dissatisfaction at
William Henry Seward. She knew Stanton to be a master manipulator who
once before had conspired with Chase to reduce Lincoln's power; Chase had
told her all about that attempted coup that might have succeeded but for
Navy Secretary Welles's refusal to go along.
Evidently Stanton and Chase had been visiting Wade, and probably Zack
Chandler and Maine's William Fessenden too. Wade and the radical Republi-
cans, embarrassed at the failure that followed their replacement of McClellan,
saw that they would soon be placed on the political defensive unless they
attacked again, reasserting their control of the war and its ultimate purpose.
This time the anti-Lincoln forces in the Cabinet were joining with the anti-
Lincoln radicals in the Congress, making the movement more formidable;
and at a time of much greater turmoil, they had chosen a target much closer
to Lincoln. The President had always been ambivalent about McClellan, but
Seward was his closest confidant and political ally.
"You think you can force Seward out?" She was certain of her political
analysis; it was now what she enjoyed most in life.
"Damn right, Anna. Billy Bowlegs is a lukewarm man. Lukewarm on the
war, lukewarm on abolition. Do you really think he'll let Lincoln go through
with the proclamation? Not on your life."
She had some firsthand experience that testified to Lincoln's genuine inter-
est in emancipation. "The President feels pretty strongly that a military ne-
cessity exists for recruiting slaves. And he has the war power."
He waved that off. "Did you read that pusillanimous Message to Congress
couple of weeks ago? Very big on oratory'we cannot escape history' and all
but when it comes to action, maybe the slaves get freed in the year nineteen
hundred. That weaseling was Seward's doing, I'm sure. Seward and Blair."
And Blair. The radical senators were going after the conservatives in the
Lincoln Cabinet. "Not Bates?" she inquired.
"The Attorney General is lukewarm, too."
The senators wanted a wholesale cleaning-out of the Cabinet, the removal
of all who opposed their views. That was an ambitious strike for supreme
power. It meant the end of the coalition of Republicans that Lincoln had put
together soon after his election. If successful, the pressure from the abolition
senators would mean that they would be in the Republican saddle and Lin-
coln would become a figurehead, his power flowing to Chase along with the
next presidential nomination.
"Who do you have in mind to replace Seward?"
"Fessenden." Wade added, "He may not know it yet. And if you tell any-
body, I'll strangle your pretty neck with my bare hands."
William Fessenden of Maine, chairman of Senate Finance, was Chase's
close friend. Cool, principled, eloquent, elegantnot roughhewn like Wade
or Chandler, he had shown himself to be every bit as tough-minded. With
Stanton and Chase in the Cabinet and some shrewd opportunist hke Ben
Butler to replace Blair, Fessenden would help the Cabinet dominate the Presi-
dent. The Senate Finance Chairman was known to favor a parliamentary type
of government, in which Cabinet members served in the Congress. Anna was
familiar with his often expressed view that votes taken in the Cabinet should
determine executive decisions.
She decided to share Wade's confidence. She liked and admired Ben, and
knew she could count on him if all others failed her, but Wade was on the
wrong side of a fight that would weaken the presidency, perhaps bring about
a division of the North, and most likely lead to a negotiated peace. That was
an outcome neither of them wanted. "You know, Ben, this is not the first time
Chase and Stanton have tried to take over from Lincoln."
He dismissed that with a shrug. "Not interested in palace intrigues. This is
fundamental to our democracy. No Presidentespecially not this one,
elected by a flukecan be allowed to flout the will of the people's Congress."
She believed that he believed what he said, and that his profound concern
for human freedom outweighed all considerations of government structure or
personal position. He was a good man with a good brain and good instincts,
but that did not put him above ambition: Benjamin Franklin Wade was presi-
dent pro tern of the Senate, and if the Senate became the preeminent force in
American government, then Wade would be running the country.
She planted her feet squarely and pointed a finger at him. "I think you're
wrong, Ben. It's for the President to set national policy." She knew that in the
overheated state of public opinion after this bloody defeat, Wade and his
powerful clique had a good chance of forcing Lincoln to accede to their
wishes: a dominant Senate might not be so bad, but she was sure that a
reconstituted Cabinet with Chase the leader would undermine the character
of the country.
He shook his head. "It does not belong to the President to devise a policy
for the country."
She was stunned at his conception of an impotent Chief Executive. "If you
force Lincoln to appoint a Cabinet to the Senate's liking, you'll cripple the
presidency forever."
"Better that than let him cripple the country," Wade replied solemnly.
"First he tried to usurp the power of Congress to wage war, and I had to put
a stop to that. You and your pamphlets, you egged him on, and now he thinks
he can decide what this war is all about. No. He's not a dictator. Congress
dictates."
"Nobody should dictate" she began, but the senator would not be inter-
rupted.
"I wouldn't mind his seizure of power if he used it to free the slaves," Wade
said, "but he's using it to keep the damned status quo. He's getting set to back
out of that proclamation, you'll seehis message last week was the signal.
Nineteen hundred, my foot! He's weak, Annaweak on the great moral issue
of our time. He thinks the presidency is a balancing act. We have to knock
him off balance, push him forward."
"You cannot get too far ahead of the country, Ben. The army won't fight
for abolition; they'll pack up and go home."
"The Union Army will fight if it's led to fight!" He stood at attention. "The
people will follow if they're led on the path of righteousness."
She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back to his chair. "The
people just spoke in an election. We lost, remember?"
"We lost at the polls because we've been losing on the battlefield, can't you
get that through your head? And the reason we're losing the damn war is that
we've been led by scoundrels who want to appease the slaveocracythey run
the army and they run the President."
"So now you want to run the President, you and Chase and Stanton."
"If we have to do it, Anna, then, by God, we will. Our boys have not been
dying by the tens of thousands for nothing. Lincoln has been pushed this way
and that, giving us something, giving Seward and his ilk something, as if he's
still at the Chicago convention. The politicking is over, Anna. Lincoln has to
be one thing or the other. We're going to damn well see to it that he's going to
fight this war to a finish and strike down slavery forever. No compromise."
"Who elected you, Ben Wade, to decide that the President of the United
States cannot try for compromise?" He started to reply, but she rolled on.
"You represent a minority. You have no call to demand your way or none.
That's what the Southern traitors did, and that's what Seward meant when he
wrote that the country was being whipsawed between you and them. Don't
you go get purple in the face at meI'm not calling you a traitor, I'm saying
you're just as wrong as they are."
"Young woman, you are straining the bonds of our friendship"
"Those bonds can take it, or they're not worth anything. Chase was in here
bending your ear about Lincoln never freeing the slaves, whipping you up
don't look surprised, it's not such a secretand now you're going to help him
stage a coup. This democracy cannot take that kind of strain, Ben. If you
cripple the presidency, if you make it the creature of the Cabinet or the tool
of the Congress, you'll destroy this government."
"The form of this government is not as important as the cause of human
freedom," he buried back. "If freedom continues to be denied, this democ-
racy will die. If we win this fight for the soul of this nation, then all your
concerns about Cabinets and Presidents and Congresses won't amount to a
tinker's dam."
She could not get through to him with reason, so she jabbed him where it
most hurt. "Chase's puppet, that's what everyone will call you. And they'll be
right. Chase and Stanton are using you to overturn the results of the 1860
convention and election. And you're too bullheaded to see it."
"I love you dearly," Wade said through gritted teeth. "Now get the hell out
of here and shut up about what I told you."
Had she pushed Wade too hard? He was her main congressional protector,
the source of what leverage she had with the other radicals and the cause of
her employment by Weed and Blair. She needed his friendship. She knew, too,
that Wade needed Chase's support in Ohio next month to be reelected senator
by the state legislature.
She laid a hand on his arm and he pulled it away with a curt "Don't touch
the puppet."
"Chase uses people," she warned. "Then he runs out on them."
"You don't have to warn me about him. Some causes are bigger than
individual differences."
She thought the moment had come for her to leave. "If you do go ahead
with this," she told him, "Ben Wade should not be in the lead." She did not
want the coup to succeed, but if it failed, she did not want him to suffer.
"I have Jake Collamer for that. Nobody can call old Jake a radical."
That dismayed Anna further: the radicals' assault on Lincoln's authority
was evidently well planned. If a conservative like Senator Collamer could be
drawn in, perhaps on the issue of senatorial prerogatives, and persuaded to
take a front position, the pressure on Lincoln would be infinitely stronger.
Coming after the slaughter at Fredericksburg and the national disgust with
the military and political leadership responsible, the plot to turn the President
into a figurehead could not be better timed.
She saw the consequences clearly: if Chase and Stanton, working behind
the back of the man who entrusted them with power, could lead the large
senatorial bloc into forcing Lincoln to replace his Secretary of State, the
President would be permanently crippled. If Seward's replacement were Fes-
senden, Chase's closest Senate ally, then Lincoln would be President in place,
but Chase would be President in fact.
A clear and timely warning to the Biairs in Silver Spring would at least give
Lincoln and his loyalists in the Cabinet a chance to plan a counter-coup
strategy. She picked up her large bag and slung it over her shoulder.
"This has been a very successful year for you, Ben," she told him, looking
for a way to regain favor without giving up principle. "The Homestead Act
was yours, and history will remember you as the best friend the American
farmer ever had."
"Be remembered for the Morrill Act," he growled.
"The Wade-Morrill Act is what it should be called," she agreed enthusiasti-
cally. "Thirty thousand acres to every state for every representative it has in
Congress, to endow agricultural colleges. The federal government aiding edu-
cation in America, first time, and Ben Wade's doing. What an achievement!"
"Pretty good for Chase's puppet."
"I only said that is what everybody else is going to think." She could not
leave on that half apology. "You are a great man, Ben, but when a great man
is wrong, he is greatly wrong. Think again, that's all I ask." Anna did not
trust his political judgment, but she trusted him in everything else; he would
be a friend through life even if she could do nothing for him, which was more
than she would say about any other man she knew. She kissed him an(
invited herself to dinner at the Wades' that night.
"Eat with Caroline," he nodded, "I'll be late. Tonight, right after adjourn
ment, the senators meet."

CHAPTER 34
SENATE COUP
Senator Ben Wade's considered judgment was that Lincoln meant well but
lacked backbone.
To the senior senator from Ohio, Lincoln's emancipation policy seemed to
promise immediate freedom one day, a delay to the end of the century the
next. His crackdown on traitors was fiercely proclaimed one day and carried
out languidly the next. The Old Capitol Prison and Fort Lafayette bulged
with seditionists, as Wade thought it damn well should, but the traitorous
likes of Clement Vallandigham and Horatio Seymour were permitted to hold
public office as Congressman and governor.
Worse, Wade suspected Lincoln was losing his determination to fight the
war to the finish. The President was two-faced: he would assure good radical
Republicans that no peace without union and abolition was possible, but tell
some confounded conservatives to look into the peace feelers. As a result,
Wade concluded, nobody seemed to be in command, the country was adrift,
the war was being lost by incompetence if not by design, and something
drastic had to be done.
Thus, with the army cowering on the banks of the Rappahannock and the
President's chair occupied by a man afflicted with moral paralysis, it was up
to the Senate of the United States, and to Benjamin Franklin Wade in particu-
lar, to take charge of the conduct of the war at a time of unprecedented peril.
Anna Can-oil's point about crippling the presidency had troubled him for a
few moments. But weakness in the institution of the presidency, such as it
was since Andy Jackson left the office, did not necessitate weakness in the
execution of policy set by the Congress; it simply meant that Congress would
have more to do. The senator was certain that no special "war power" existed
in the Chief Magistrate; the very thought was slavish and un-American.
Wade found his original conviction unshakable: Lincoln was little better
than Buchanan. With the Executive floundering, the Legislature was forced
to take control not just of policy but its execution. Let those of faint heart and
pettifogging constitutionality call that extreme, but when the nation's life was
at stake, extreme measures were necessary and became right. As Lincoln had
written in his most recent message to Congressthe damnable back-tracking
document setting up a postponement of the proclamation of freedom"we
must think anew and act anew, and then we shall save our country."
To Ben Wade, thinking anew meant extending the power of the Congress,
especially the Upper Chamber. When the Executive branch was gripped by
fear, the Legislative branch, with its constitutional power to advise, must
advise the Chief Executive to throw out the lukewarm men around him. The
time had come to turn to those with the passion to vigorously prosecute the
war and to end the abomination of human slavery. Wade was sure that most
members of the Senate agreed with him that Lincoln had failed. With the
army falling apart in Virginia, and Bragg and the traitor Breckinridge in
Tennessee likely to strike back up toward Ohio any moment, further delay
meant disaster.
The Senate had to exert its inherent power. The President had demon-
strated he would bend in the direction that the wind blew strongest. Wade
had backed Lincoln into a corner on McClellan, and the President had acqui-
esced and belatedly fired the pro-slavery coward. Now the time had come to
force him to toss Seward overboard.
Wade was confident his consecutive approach would work. First the army,
then the Cabinet, and finally, if need be, the Senate would replace the vacillat-
ing elected leader with a temporary dictator. Ben Wade would not flinch from
his duty: step by step, control in this emergency would devolve upon the
institution dominated by the men who represented the best instincts of the
American people.
In the high-ceilinged Senate reception room, Wade nodded to Lyman
Trumbull of Illinois, chairman of Judiciary, who called the meeting of Repub-
lican senators to order. No helpers or reporters were present. This was a
secret caucus.
Trumbull, lean, tall, with gold spectacles and a demonstrated willingness to
denounce the automatic Lincoln supporters within Republican ranks as
"courtiers" and "sycophants," was Wade's choice to take the lead. He was a
better debater than Wade, came from Lincoln's state, and made no bones
about wanting to subjugate the slavocracy. Wade recalled with satisfaction
the way he branded Breckinridge a traitor and engineered his expulsion.
Trumbull had a trick of tearing up little pieces of paper while listening, which
disconcerted those debating him.
"This meeting has been called," said Trumbull, "to ascertain whether it is
our duty to take any action with regard to the present condition of the coun-
try. As we all know, the terrible disaster at Fredericksburg has occasioned
great excitement. Many of us believe that now is the time for the Senate to
take some action to quiet the public mind."
Wade could count votes. In the Thirty-seventh Senate, Republicans held
thirty-one seats, which he divided into seventeen radicals and fourteen con-
servatives, though someold Jake Collamer of Vermont, for example, the
best lawyer in the Senatedrifted between the camps. Some senators voted
mainly on radical-conservative lines, where Wade's Committee on the Con-
duct of the War held sway; other Senate votes were influenced by sectional
pressures, East against West, and Wade also chaired the pivotal Territories
Committee. In the new Senate Chamber, the conservatives might ally them-
selves with Democrats to slow down the radical moves toward a war for
human freedom, but here in the Republican caucus, Wade held the whip
hand.
Deploying his senatorial troops like a general the Union Army never had,
Wade signaled Wilkinson of Minnesota, a born pessimist, to express his feel-
ings.
"In my opinion, the country is ruined and the cause is lost," he announced
gloomily. "Maybe the Senate could save it, but I can't see us uniting on
anything unanimously, and without unanimity we're stuck." He looked at his
colleagues in dismay, started to sit down, caught Wade's glare, then added:
"Of course the source of all our difficulties is obvious. The man who exercises
a controlling influence on the mind of the President is Secretary Seward, who
never believed in this war."
"The country is by no means lost," added Foster of Connecticut. "But no
improvement can be made with Seward in the Cabinet. The answer is to get
him out."
Not one of the conservative bloc in the ensuing discussion, Wade noted
with satisfaction, had a good word to say for the Secretary of State. Not even
Preston King of New York, a fat, waddling toady with hanging chops who
made his home in Thurlow Weed's pocket, resisted the tide in the room. Wade
caught the eye of Grimes of Iowa and indicated it was time to put in the first
resolution, one he knew was too extreme to succeed. That down-the-line
radical rose to offer a resolution "that the Senate expresses a want of confi-
dence in the Secretary of State and advises that he be removed from the
Cabinet."
Wade heaved himself out of his chair and raised his arm to call for recogni-
tion. "The way this war has been conducted is a disgrace. The President is
directly responsible and there is no blinking that away. Lincoln has placed
our armies under the command of Democratic generals and Southern sympa-
thizers, who do not believe in the policy of the government."
His direct attack on their Republican President was more than this party
caucus could swallow, he was well aware, and so was his next recommenda-
tion. But Wade pursued his strategy: by leaning hard to the radical extreme,
which happened to reflect his true opinion, Wade would shift the center of
gravity of his party over to the radical side. To take charge of the Executive,
he needed more than a slim majority of Republican senators; he had to have a
general consensus.
"What is needed now is a lieutenant general," he proposed, "of higher rank
than any officer now in service, endowed with absolute powers to crush the
rebellion and its pernicious institutions."
Wade knew that this group was not yet ready for a Republican general
given emergency despotic power, but earlier that day, over in the House,
Vallandigham of the peace movement had introduced a bill making it a high
crime for anyone to propose to "clothe any federal officer with arbitrary or
dictatorial power." This was his answer to that miserable little traitor. Wade
restrained his fury and directed his point to the matter at hand.
"I do not believe it is advisable to strike directly at the President at this
time." That, for Wade, was being the very soul of reason and patience. "How-
ever, we must tell him he must remove the evil genius of his procrastination.
Seward must go!"
As arranged, Jake Collamer of Vermont followed Wade with a less impas-
sioned speech. Collamer, at seventy, was regarded with respect and even
affection by his peers; Sumner liked to call him the "Green Mountain Socra-
tes." He was no firebrand and was known to harbor a genuine affection for
the President.
"I believe, gentlemen, that the difficulty is to be found in the fact that the
President does not have a Cabinet, not in the true sense of the word." Wade
had to lean forward to hear Collamer's reedy voice. "Yet a real Cabinet
council is traditional in both the theory and practice of our government."
Collamer reviewed the development of the Cabinet system, concluding "it is
notorious that this President has departed from that tradition. He does not
consult his Cabinet councillors on important decisions. Indeed, I understand
that he has said on occasion, 'My policy is to have no policy,' and to let each
Cabinet member attend to the duties of his own department. This is unsafe
and wrong. The Senate has a responsibility to set it right."
Bill Fessenden's turn. The Finance Committee chairman from Maine was
an inside man, seldom in the newspapers but always in the most important
Senate decisions. Wade could never warm up to the austere money expert,
who liked to think of himself as a "moderate," but he knew him to be reliable
when it came to the dominance of the Congress.
"The Senate can no longer content itself with the discharge of its constitu-
tional duties," said Fessenden. "A crisis has arrived that requires an active
interposition in the execution of the laws. I have been told by one member of
Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet"Wade and just about everyone in the room knew he
meant his friend Chase"that there is a backstairs influence which often
controls the apparent conclusions of the Cabinet itself."
Howard of Michigan interrupted. "Is the name of that backstairs influence
William Seward?"
"No name was given," said Fessenden. He preferred to remain mysterious
about his source, although Chase had been using that same word picture,
"backstairs influence," to describe Seward to most of the senators present.
"At any rate," Fessenden continued, "I have no doubt that measures must be
taken now to make the Cabinet a unityto remove anyone who does not
agree heartily with our views in relation to the war."
Wade looked for the opposition to the resolution from Seward's only sup-
porter among Senate Republicans. Preston King promptly provided it.
"As a senator from New York," said the man who, Wade suspected, would
soon rush over to Seward's house with the news of this caucus, "I must
protest against this proceeding. It is unjust, unwise, hastyand all predicated
on mere rumors. Perhaps it would be wiser to appoint a committee to have an
interview with the President."
Such a direct confrontation was precisely what Wade wanted. Orville
Browning of Illinois, considered by Wade to be a contemptible pro-slavery
friend of the President's, but without the courage to defend Seward to his
fellow senators, seconded King's suggestion.
Wade looked at Browning's ruffled shirt with distaste. The recently de-
feated senator, grubbing for appointive office from the President, would not
be missed in the Senate; he had been afflicted with fits of the constitutional
ague when it came to stripping rebels of their property. Wade believed that
even a Democrat would be better than Lincoln's resident bootlicker. He
asked Browning if his proposal of a meeting of the Senate delegation with the
President meant that he supported the retention of Seward.
Browning hastened to disavow such an unpopular intent. It was not a
matter of purpose but of seemliness. Perhaps the caucus's goal could be
achieved in a way that did not embarrass the President. "This would be war
between the Congress and the President, and knowledge of this antagonism
would injure our cause greatly in the country. However, a deputation from
the Senate to the President, as Senator Wade suggests, is in order."
Wade figured if the President's best friend in the Senate was that reluctant
to defend the Secretary of State, it meant that the radicals had Seward on the
run. But Wade wanted that deputation to have a written ultimatum to read
and to place in Lincoln's hands. That way, the Senate's point could not be
filibustered by the President with his interminable jokes.
"Let's vote on the resolution," said Fessenden.
Wade signaled no. The votes were not in his pocket for the extreme resolu-
tion, and Wade did not want to put anything to a vote that would lose. The
resolution was grossly insulting as it stood. Now was the time to let the
conservatives water it down enough to make them think they had won some-
thing for Lincoln.
"I have a substitute resolution," Ira Harris said. He had taken Seward's
New York seat in the Senate when Bowlegs moved into the Cabinet. "We
don't have to name names." To the accompaniment of Turnbull tearing slips
of paper, he read it out: "Resolved, that in the judgment of the Republican
members of the Senate, the public confidence in the present administration
would be increased by a reconstruction of the Cabinet."
That picked up wider support, but John Sherman of Ohio, who had
stepped into Chase's seat in the Senate, said he did not like it. "That could be
construed as saying we want all present members of the Cabinet out. Nobody
wants Mr. Chase to leave the Treasury. I say we march directly into the
President's office and tell him what's wrong with his Cabinet and himself."
Wade shook his head again. He wanted to go into the President's office to
present a united Republican Senate front in writing, which Lincoln could not
wriggle away from.
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a special hater of Seward, pleased Wade
with his prompt move to wed Sherman's march-in-there proposal to the Har-
ris resolution to remake the Cabinet. "Resolved, that a committee be ap-
pointed to wait upon the President in behalf of the senators here present and
urge upon him changes in conduct and in the Cabinet which shall give the
Administration unity and vigor." Excellent. Lincoln was directed not just to
throw out Seward, but to change his own conduct. "Unity" meant an end to
the balancing act.
"Let's have the resolution amended," added Fessenden, "to 'partial' recon-
struction of the Cabinet." That made sure Chase stayed in. The Harris and
Sumner proposals were merged and the Fessenden amendment accepted.
Wade then called for a vote, looking hard at Orville Browning, who averted
his glance.
Twenty names were read out, and twenty said "aye." The twenty-first was
Lincoln's friend Browning, who hesitated and said "aye." The twenty-third
was Preston King of New York, who owed his place to Seward and could
hardly be expected to vote for the resolution to ruin him. But King had
already slipped out of the caucus room: He would not go on record as calling
for his patron's resignation, but he could not spoil the unanimity of the
caucus with a vote against the historic resolution. Collamer recorded him as
"not voting."
Wade sighed his satisfaction; his caucus strategy had worked perfectly. In
all, twenty-eight Republican senators cast votes to direct the President to end
the coalition Cabinet and replace its conservatives with radicals satisfactory
to the senators. Never in nearly a century of American history had there been
such a bold move to shift executive power; all that remained was Lincoln's
acquiescence to the inevitable.
Browning said he would take the written resolution to Lincoln immediately
and bring back a time for the confrontation. Wade agreed to that; he thought
it would be a good idea for Lincoln to learn of the Senate's new strength and
resolve from one of his own wishy-washy friends.
"What's the matter, Henry?" Wade said to Henry Wilson of Massachusetts
as they filed out of the Senate reception room. "You look sick."
"I'm glad you and Collamer and Fessenden and Sumner are the deputa-
tion," said the worried Wilson. "That's not a meeting I want to be part of. If
Lincoln agrees, he's finished; if he doesn't agree, God knows what will hap-
pen next. Impeachment, maybe. Right in the middle of a civil war. What's to
become of us?"
Wade told him to cheer up. He had never felt more sure of himself or the
rightness of what he was doing. With more than a little gratification, he
watched Browning race down the steps of the Capitol to his carriage.
Orville Browning had often seen Lincoln looking haggard and anguished,
but never like this. In the days after Willie's death, the man was in despair,
but now he seemed driven to distraction.
"What news from our army?" the senator asked. He instantly regretted the
question, because the subject was hardly one to reassure the President.
"I don't know what is to become of it," Lincoln said hopelessly. "One
hundred and seventy thousand men, including SigeVs corps. It crossed the
Rappahannock, fought a battle with an entrenched enemy at great disadvan-
tage, and with great loss." He dug his fingers in his wiry hair. "And without
accomplishing any valuable result. Now it cannot advance, or even stay
where it is."
"Senator Wade intends to visit General Bumside soon," Browning told the
President, which seemed to deepen rather than diminish his gloom.
After a moment, Lincoln looked up at him. "Were you at the caucus?"
Browning was surprised that Lincoln knew of the secret session before-
hand. He hoped nobody had revealed his failure to vote against the resolu-
tion. He said yes, he had been there. Lincoln was evidently waiting for his
report.
"What do those men want?"
"I hardly know, Mr. President, but they are exceedingly violent toward the
Administration." Browning felt the need to explain why he had gone along
with the resolution. "What we did was the gentlest thing that could be done.
We had to do that or worse."
He recounted the details of the secret caucus without minimizing the hos-
tility of the senators toward Lincoln which was being directed through
Seward. It pained Browning to deliver this harsh news to Lincoln in his
current state of anguish, but the President had a right to know the force of his
party's move against him. Browning concluded with a reading of the demand
of the Senate Republicans to meet with Lincoln at once "for the purpose of
getting him to change his policy and to reconstitute a portion of his Cabinet."
One purpose, two actions.
"They wish to get rid of me," Lincoln said bitterly, "and I am sometimes
half-disposed to gratify them."
"Some do, that's true, but"
"We are now on the brink of destruction." Lincoln sat forward, hands
limply hanging over his knees, staring at the floor. "It appears to me the
Almighty is against us, and I can hardly see a ray of hope."
This was no time for Lincoln to sink into the hypo. If the President took
that familiar emotional plungeand it seemed to Browning that his friend
was already on the way down into that emotional morassthat would take
him out of action for at least three days. Lincoln could not afford three days
of despair and numb resignation while the Senate seized his power.
"Do not let them drive you from your post," Browning told him. That was
what the senators, led by Wade and Fessenden, secretly urged on by Chase
and Stanton, were trying to do. "To relinquish the helm now would bring
upon us certain and inevitable ruin." He did not add what it would do to his
own hopes for appointment to the Supreme Court.
Did Lincoln, in his present state of mind, understand the danger? "Those
men," as the President defensively called them, were staging a coup. They
were trying to drive him out of the presidency, and Lincoln's only response
was to say he was half-inclined to let them do it.
Browning was sure he knew the cause of it all. By appeasing Wade and his
crowd with an emancipation proclamation, the President had won no sur-
cease of radical pressure; at the same time, the attempt to placate the left had
been rebuffed by the electorate. Now the same men, abolitionists he had
appeased, were demanding more. "You ought to have crushed the ultras last
summer," Browning told him. "You could have done it then and escaped
these troubles."
Lincoln looked up at him in such visible pain that Browning was compelled
to stop telling him how wrong he had been. The President did not need
political instruction or recrimination at this point. Rather, he needed plain
sympathy. "But that is past. Let us be hopeful," Browning said, hand on his
friend's arm, "and take care of the future. Mr. Seward appears now to be the
especial object of their hostility." Lincoln nodded numbly. "I believe Seward
has managed our foreign affairs as well as anyone could have done," Brown-
ing went on, an opinion he knew he had failed to express in the caucus. "Yet
some of them are very bitter upon him." He had to add, "And some of them
very bitter on you."
"Why will men believe a lie," Lincoln cried, "an absurd lie that they could
not impose upon a child?" He seemed not to be able to imagine why the
senators held the conviction that Seward exercised a malign influence over
him. "They cling to it and repeat it in defiance of all evidence to the con-
trary."
Browning felt it would be unkind to state the obvious: that the senators
based their belief of Seward's malign influence over him on the testimony of
Salmon Portland Chase, repeated over and over again, substantiated by Ed-
win Stanton. Chase was the instigator; if Lincoln did not know it, Browning
was not going to be the one to break the news that a viper was nestled in his
bosom. Certainly Lincoln must know it; the man was simply not strong
enough, under the battering of the war, to admit the duplicity of Chase to
anyone, including himself.
Worse, Lincoln seemed to miss the point. The supposed belief held by some
about the "malign influence" was not the problem; that was merely the device
that Lincoln's attackers were using to get at the President himself.
Browning rose to leave. Lincoln did not get up. He asked the Pngident:
"You will see the deputation of senators?"
"Not right away. Tomorrow night."
"Seven o'clock, then. Lincoln, I hope I have not distressed you by the
account of the proceedings of the caucus. It is important you know the truth
about the senators' state of mind."
"I don't want to talk about it. Maybe we can just keep things along."
"You can't keep them along," Browning told him. "The Cabinet will go to
pieces."
"I have been more distressed by this," Lincoln said, at the end of his rope
not coming to grips with the danger, "than by any event of my life."
Browning bade him good night and left feeling helpless to prevent thi
destruction in store.

CHAPTER 35
YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISERS
Lincoln was startled by Nicolay's hand on his shoulder. "I knocked, sir, but
you didn't hear. Senator King is here, with Secretary Seward's son, Freder-
ick."
"What time is it?" He had dozed at his desk, not a habit with him, and he
felt a clutch of guilt at escaping to sleep in the face of adversity. The gaslight
was on; it was still night. "News from the front?"
"Ten o'clock, sir. No news from Burnside's headquarters, all quiet there. I
told Preston King and Fred Seward you were about to retire for the night, but
they said it was urgent. I can tell them to come back in the morning."
Lincoln rubbed his face, pushed his fingers through his hair, started to rise,
then sat back again. "Send them in."
Seward's son was a serious-minded soul, with little of his father's sprightii-
ness and self-assurance, but Lincoln liked him. He wished his own son Robert
wanted to work closely with his father, but all that young man wanted was to
get into uniform. He envied Seward for being able to weather these storms
with his son at his side as Assistant Secretary of State. Other than Thurlow
Weed, there were few men William Henry Seward could trust. Why did such
a good man attract such a swarm of bitter enemies?
Pasty-faced Preston King was out of breath. Father Blair wanted King to
replace Stanton at the War Department, and was pressing hard for such a
switch, but that would tip the fine balance in the Cabinet over to the conser-
vatives. Besides, Lincoln relied on Stanton as a lightning rod for criticism of
military affairs, and never so much as now. Orville Browning had already
reported to Lincoln about what had happened at the Senate caucus; what was
King so excited about?
"I have just come from Secretary Seward's home," Senator King puffed,
"where I told him of the perfidious action of my fellow senators."
Seward would surely keep cool about it all, Lincoln assumed; the Secretary
had long since grown accustomed to the hostility of his fellow Republicans.
"And what did he say?"
"My father said that in view of the current misfortunes," Seward's son put
in, "the senators were thirty for a victim. He said he was not going to let
them put the President in aTalse position on his account."
Lincoln nodded; Seward was like a rock.
"He immediately wrote out his resignation," said King, "and told me to
bring it to you." The senator handed the paper to Lincoln.
"He told me to submit mine as well," said Frederick Seward.
Lincoln was stunned. Just when he needed most the people he could trust,
the Cabinet member most trusted felt it a point of honor to remove himself.
Maybe, like Lincoln, Seward was half-inclined to oblige his enemies. He read
the paper: "Sir, I hereby resign the office of Secretary of State, and beg that
my resignation may be accepted immediately."
There it was, in Seward's hand, but Lincoln could not grasp the import of
what he read. "What does this mean?" he asked the two men.
"It means that he believes he can serve you best," said Senator King, "by
going home, and taking some of the poison out of the air."
A fresh wave of desolation washed across Lincoln's general distress. He
needed Seward's presence and counsel, especially now; he had come to trust
the New Yorker as nobody else over the past eighteen months; after the rough
beginning, they had worked out a relationship of mutual loyalty that could
not be replaced. He would not permit the Secretary of State to quit aity more
than he would permit himself the luxury of standing aside.
Lincoln unwound from his chair, picked up his tall hat, and signaled to the
others to follow him. Marshal Lamon fell in step behind as they headed
across Lafayette Park to the Seward home.
William Seward was standing in front of the fire, elbow on the mantel,
cigar in hand, making an effort to look his usual imperturbable self.
"What does this mean?" Lincoln repeated, holding out the resignation.
"It's to the point, and should be self-explanatory," Seward said.
Lincoln could see that his Secretary of State was inwardly in turmoil but
was determined to present a faade of calm self-sacrifice. Not even New York
politics, which Lincoln was prepared to concede were the most fractious in
the nation, prepared a man for the sort of relentless vilification Seward had
been taking. The President knew what it was to be patronized, held in con-
tempt, dismissed as a bumpkin elected on a fluke; but Seward was seen as
smart and sophisticated and evil by his rivals, which made him preeminently
an object of hatred.
"Frankly, Lincoln, it will be a huge relief to be freed from official cares."
"Ah yes, Governor, that will do very well for you," Lincoln said, "but I am
like the starling in Sterne's story. 1 can't get out.' "
Seward smiled tightly at Lincoln's literary reference; the President had
read the story at Seward's suggestion. Lincoln could talk in a personal code
like that with his Secretary of State; nobody else could supply that kind of
intellectual intimacy.
"That," said Seward, pointing to the paper Lincoln held, "frees you from
all embarrassment. It is a weapon you can use as you see fit, or be your peace
offering to Senator Wade and his ever thirsty friends."
"I cannot accept this," Lincoln told him.
"You must. In my judgment, I am more an albatross around your neck
than a help at this point. It is time to go. Frederick, look to the packing."
Lincoln did not try to argue. He was not reacting quickly anymore and
needed time to think it over, just as Seward needed time to cool down. The
trouble was that enough time was not available for deliberation or the natural
ebbing of a man's anger. Events were crowding in at the worst moment for
decisions. At this time, the commander in chief should be devising a way out
for Bumside and the Army of the Potomac; and on the political front, the
nation's political leader should be concerning himself with a way to contain
the hurricane of public indignation certain to come when the still-censored
correspondents made known the terrible story of Fredericksburg and its four-
teen thousand boys lost for no gain. But Lincoln had no chance to marshal
his thoughts. His instinct was to hold his Cabinet together.
Outside the Seward house, the President was surprised to find a carriage
waiting, the horse breathing puffs of vapor into the December air. Father
Blair was in the back, motioning Lincoln and Lamon in. There was no room
for the corpulent Preston King, so they left him behind.
Lincoln was not surprised at the Old Man's presence. The Biairs had a
network to alert them to high-level machinations, and Blair knew that Lin-
coln valued his judgment.,
"What would your Jackson have done?" Lincoln grunted, jamming himself
in the carriage seat and pulling the blanket across his lap.
"If confronted by a congressional challenge?" The elder Blair was certain:
"Same thing he would have done with anybody who challenged his authority
within the party. He would have shown the senators the door, told them to go
straight to hell. That's what Andy Jackson would have done."
But President Jackson had not served in the midst of a civil war, losing
battles on top of losing midterm elections. How would Old Hickory act in
circumstances that afflicted Lincoln now? As if reading his thoughts, the Old
Man added, "Of course, times are different now. You don't have the luxury of
telling off the radicals. You have to outmaneuver them. Seward quit just now,
didn't he?"
Lincoln nodded confirmation. The Biairs were no friends of Seward, with
the roots of their political enmity running deep through the years, but they
had been on the same conservative side of late, and in politics one's useful
friends are one's current friends.
"I thought he would," Blair nodded, "he's too damn proud. But it will help
you in the counterattack."
Lincoln made himself look interested. Although he was deeply troubled at
the prospect of the loss of the key member of his coalition, and heartsick at
the loss of a man who had become a confidant, he had to think ahead.
"First, take McClellan back to the Army of the Potomac." When Lincoln
did not reject that advice out of hand, the Old Man continued: "We must look
to the Army as a great political as well as war machine. The soldiers are to
give us success in the field and at the polls. McClellan is dear to them. He can
bring them to the support of the country and to you."
Hire McClellan again? After Burnside's failure? What a colossal admission
of error that would be, making the President appear hopelessly indecisive,
weakening him when he most needed strength. But the older Biair's counsel
was usually sound; Lincoln did not know what to think.
"After that, get rid of Stanton. He has aligned himself with Chase and the
ultras. Replace him at the War Department with Preston King, or, if you
need a Democrat, John Dix."
Everybody was remaking his Cabinet, including members of the Cabinet
and their families. Ultras like Chase wanted it remade their anti-slavery way,
conservatives like Blair wanted it remade on a "Union as it was" basis. Lin-
coln wishedvainly, he now fearedthat he could keep the Cabinet as it
was. Up to now, he had been able to maintain control by playing each group
against the other, all in his sight, easily watched, in balance. Now it seemed
impossible to hold that position, with the country in an uproar and more bad
news on the way; one side or the other had to triumph.
If the victors were Chase and Wade, they would effectively take over the
government and put in somebody like General Hooker as dictator. If it were
the Biairs and Seward, the same thing might happen in the other direction,
with "McNapoleon" as dictator. Either way, if the momentum to break up
the coalition became unstoppablewhether pushed by the senators led by
Wade, or by the Biairs and others in their suggested counterattackthe result
would be an end to civilian rule. That was as bad as an end to majoritl;rule; it
would mean that democratic self-government was indeed an absurdity, that
the American experiment had failed. The bottom was out of the tub, the dirty
water slopping over everything.
"Pardon my zeal," said the elder Blair as the carriage drew up in the snow
in front of the Mansion. "It is love for the cause and you. No selfish prompt-
ings."
Lincoln took that with a grain of salt. Father Blair never plotted any
strategy without considering how it could help his two sons.
Nicolay and Hay were waiting at the door. Lincoln thanked the Old Man
for the advice, bid him good night, and went inside with Lamon. He felt
bone-wearily alone. Nicolay had something for him to sign about putting off
until after Christmas the execution of the Indians who had led the Minnesota
uprising, and Hay had something about an order supposedly issued by Gen-
eral Grant about expelling all Jews from the area of his command. It was past
midnight. He waved them away and stumbled upstairs, Lamon behind him.
He stopped on the landing, hand on the wooden railing.
"I have a white elephant on my hands." That did not express his travail
vividly enough. "I have a fire in my front and in my rear."
"Richelieu," said Lamon, a secret student of history. "It was said of him
that he was the first man in Europe, but no hero in his own country."
"Far from it!" Lincoln argued, figuring he had it much worse than the
French cardinal. "Richelieu never had a fire in his front and rear at the same
time. He had a united constituency, which it has never been my good fortune
to have." His own constituency was the United States, riven before he took
office; his specific voting constituency was the Republican Party, of which the
abolitionist half wanted to force his resignation and the other half was allied
with the "Union as it was" Democrats. Cardinal Richelieu never knew what
real trouble was.
He trudged up the stairs feeling sorrier for himself with each step. "This
improvised vigilance committee to watch my movements and keep me
straight," he said, the picture of Ben Wade's angry-bulldog face in front of
him, "appointed by Congress and called the Committee on the Conduct of
the War, is a marplot. Its greatest purpose seems to be to hamper my action
and obstruct the military operations."
Now Wade, the chief marplotter, would go down to Fredericksburg and
interview Bumside. Would the general admit that the frontal assault was his
own idea, not Lincoln's? Probably. Bumside was good about accepting re-
sponsibility, which meant that Lincoln could not blame him for anything and
would have to treat the disaster as an unavoidable accident. But the country
would not hold still for that.
He hoped to find cessation of despair in sleep. This was no time for the
hypo to descend on him, Lincoln reminded himself, not with the Senate
coming down on his head the next evening. "This state of things shall con-
tinue no longer, Hill," he said with more assurance than he felt, "I will show
them at the other end of the Avenue whether I am President or not."
But Seward had resigned and would have to be replaced. The Senate would
confirm only the nomination of one of the ultras to head the State Depart-
mentthe unctuous Sumner, probably, or that cold fish Fessendenand that
would mean the end of his coalition, followed by a general smashup.
Who could govern this country then? A military dictator was a solution as
bad as the problem itself. What new coalition, what political deal? A thought
crossed his mind that perhaps he should stop courting the radicals and reach
out in the opposite directionnot merely to the conservative Republicans
and War Democrats, but beyond them to the Peace Democrats. Perhaps he
could make some sort of an arrangement with Horatio Seymour in New York
to take the anti-war pressure off now in return for an orderly transfer of
power later.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob of his bedroom. He still had a
card or two to play. His support in the presidential election of 1864 was one;
if he could not be king, he could be Warwick, the kingmaker. The Emancipa-
tion Proclamation was another card; if the radicals deserted him, or tried to
seize his power, he could postpone the edict in return for support elsewhere
on continuance of the war. Maintaining the Union came before everything
the slaves, his second term, the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers, every-
thing. Whatever he would do must be done with that goal fixed in his mind.
A dramatic political deal across partisan lines began to take shape in his
mind. For that, he needed the shrewdest deal-maker he could find, a man
intimately acquainted with the state of New York, and someone who could
keep a secret forever.
"Weed," he said aloud. "Hill, I want you to tell Nicolay to send for Thur-
low Weed in Albany."
"Wasn't he on his way back to London?"
Lincoln nodded, and said, "But he's still in Albany. First thing tomorrow,
send for him. Not directly from me, but in confidence through Nicolayhe
knows how."
A few weeks before, Seward had intended to send Weed abroad again to
help keep Britain and France from recognizing the Confederacy. The editor
had packed his bags and gladly booked passage to London, but Greeley and
his radicals had raised the roof about "Seward's wirepuller" abroad, which
forced Sewardwho had sensed impending weaknessto rescind the assign-
ment. Thurlow Weed, grumpy about that rebuff from the same Republicans
who lost the state of New York because they wouldn't listen to his advice, was
still in New York.
Lincoln thought he might get Weed to prevail on Seward to stay. At the
same time, perhaps the old wirepuller had a private wire of communication
into the Seymour camp through the Democratic boss, Dean Richmond.
Those two were not above doing a little business together.
Lincoln's hopes, rising at that thought, sank again. Weed could not get
down to Washington before the confrontation with the senators. At best, even
if he came and agreed to act as agent in a desperate scheme, what Lincoln had
in mind was a long-range answer to what was an immediate emergency.
Lincoln dreaded the meeting with the senators scheduled for the next eve-
ning. He had no powerful arguments, could call no surprise witnesses, and
faced a hostile jury. The President of the United States could merely listen,
and delay, and let the prosecution take its time making the case. Maybe then
he could come up with an idea for the defense.
He bade Lamon good night. He had long since given up attempts to dis-
suade the bodyguard from sleeping at his door. Lincoln slept badly that night
and wasted most of the next day worrying.
William Pitt Fessenden of Maine followed Jacob Collamer of Vermont into
the presidential office promptly at seven in the evening, followed by Trum-
bull, Grimes, and Wade. Sumner made his entrance breathlessly a moment
later.
At the President's cordial invitation, the deputation from the Senate Re-
publican caucus sat themselves in the wooden armchairs around the long
black walnut table in the center of the room. Fessenden noted the disarray of
the office: maps and papers piled on the President's desk and on the sofa
nearby. He fumed; that was not the way the nation's principal executive office
should look. Then again, the present occupant was hardly an executive.
The President greeted each of them with what Fessenden thought was his
usual urbanity. The senator counted Lincoln as a shrewd if limited lawyer
and put no credence in the newspaper folderol about "Honest Abe," the
country bumpkin. He counted on the President's good sense and practicality,
especially in light of his seriously weakened position in the country, to resolve
the crisis without undue acrimony. Lincoln's recognition of the locus of real
power was painful but necessary if the Cabinet was to be remade and the war
policy reset.
Collamer solemnly read the resolution that the Republican caucus had
passed the night before. "The theory of our government is that the President
should be aided by a Cabinet council," the Vermonter intoned, "and that all
important public measures and appointments should be the result of their
combined wisdom and deliberation."
Lincoln's eyebrows rose slightly, as if that theory was new to him. Fes-
senden was aware that such a reading rested on a brief discussion at the
Constitutional Convention, a century before, of a privy council. Against that
theory was the fact that the founders had put nothing about a Cabinet in the
Constitution, and no presidents had heretofore been bound by majority votes
of their principal aides. On the contrary, the tradition of arguing advisers was
set by George Washington, who liked the creative tension that developed
when he balanced Hamilton against Jefferson.
But such diversity was disruptive in wartime. In Fessenden's view, the
American system of government was flexible enough to take the change from
an advisory board to a directory board right now. Traditions had to have a
beginning, and there was no time like a civil war to start one. In his eyes,
much mischief could have been avoided if the founders had stuck to their
original intention of having Congress appoint the Executive.
Fessenden watched Lincoln listen impassively to Collamer's unity charge.
"The Cabinet should be exclusively composed of statesmen who are the reso-
lute, unwavering supporters of a vigorous and successful prosecution of the
war." It was well known that Seward was lukewarm; he had to go.
"In the present crisis of public affairs," Collamer concluded, with all the
weight of the united majority party of the Senate behind his words, "the
Republican senators of the United Statesidentified as they are with the
success of your administrationbelieve that changes in the membership of
the Cabinet should be made. This will secure to the country a unity of pur-
pose and action."
Lincoln made no response. He sat in his chair at the end of the table,
waiting for more.
Since the President seemed immobilized, Fessenden took the floor. He ex-
pressed the confidence of the Senate in the patriotism and integrity of the
President, and disclaimed any wish on the part of the senators to dictate to
him with regard to the Cabinet. He felt that such a disclaimer would make
the fact of their dictation more palatable. Fessenden had no wish to unneces-
sarily humiliate a man who was, after all, being forced to give up a significant
part of his powers.
"We are your constitutional advisers," he reminded the President. He was
on unassailable ground with that; little could be done in appointing anyone to
any executive office against the advice and consent of the Senate. "We claim
the privilege laid down in the Constitution to tend you our friendly counsel
when, in our judgment, an emergency of sufficient importance renders it
necessary."
Now to the point. "A belief exists that you do not consult the Cabinet as a
council. In fact, it is well known that many important measures are decided
by you without the knowledge of its members."
He awaited a response on which he could build an argument; Lincoln just
looked back at him. Fessenden became more specific: "It is believed that the
Secretary of State is not in accord with the majority of the Cabinet. In fact,
we believe he exerts an injurious influence upon the conduct of the war. Such
is the common rumor." That was a grave charge to make in the midst of a
civil warhe had given "injurious influence" much thought, short of imput-
ing treasonbut it did not get a rise out of the President.
"The war is not sufficiently in the hands of its friends," Fessenden said with
greater severity, hoping to get through the seeming numbness of his target.
"You have systematically disgraced every anti-slavery general officer in the
Army. General Frtmont, General Hunter are but two. It is time to change
this state of affairs, and to let the war be conducted by its friends."
He knew he was making an effective case. The other senators were as one
with him as he attacked the President to his face, but with the utmost respect
and civility. "Let us face it, Mr. President, we are going to get no help in
waging this war from the Democrats. General McClellan has been used by
them for party purposes, and is even now preparing an attack on us in the
court-martial of Porter"
The mention of McClellan seemed to wake up Lincoln. With the immedi-
ate subject no longer Seward, the President rose and produced a large bundle
of papers that was evidently his correspondence with the deposed general.
Taken aback, Fessenden allowed Lincoln to develop the case, which was of
great interest to Wade. That, he soon realized, was a mistake.
For close to half an hour, Lincoln read from this correspondence, showing
how McClellan had been sustained by the government to the utmost. Fes-
senden knew what Lincoln was doing: changing the subject and pretending
the attack was on his dealings with his already dismissed general rather than
with his Cabinet. The President went on and on, defending a position which
was not under attack.
Senator Sumner at last interrupted to refocus on Seward. He complained
about the Secretary of State's correspondence. "He has subjected himself to
ridicule in diplomatic circles at home and abroad," charged the chairman of
the Foreign Relations Committee. "He has uttered statements offensive to
Congress and has spoken of it repeatedly with disrespect in the presence of
foreign ministers. He has written offensive dispatches which you, Mr. Presi-
dent, could not possibly have seen or assented to."
"It is Seward's habit to read dispatches to me before they are sent," said
Lincoln mildly, "but they are not submitted to a Cabinet council, that's true."
"What of this infamous dispatch of July the fifth, of last year, in which"
"I just don't recollect that one," Lincoln said, which Fessenden thought
unbelievable; Seward's insulting equivalence of "abolitionist" with "secession-
ist" was hardly something he would forget. For the better part of three hours,
the meeting dragged on, with the senators making the same basic accusation
that the Cabinet was divided, and that Lincoln had to fire the lukewarm
membersand Lincoln ducking, changing the subject, arguing obliquely,
playing for time.
Fessenden was certain that everyone in the room, including the evasive
Lincoln, knew that the Senate's information was correct. It had been pro-
vided by Treasury Secretary Chase, who ought to know because he sat in the
councils that were divided and had reported unequivocally that Lincoln over-
rode and often ignored the Cabinet's advice.
"You know why the Republican Party lost the election last month, Lin-
coln?" The harsh voice was Wade's. "I'll tell you why: you placed the direc-
tion of the war in the hands of bitter and malignant Democrats."
"That reminds me of a story," Lincoln began, but Ben Wade was having
none of that.
"That's all it is with youstory, story, story!" Wade rose and leaned across
the table to look Lincoln in the eye. "You are the father of every military
blunder that has been made during the war. You are on your road to hell, sir,
with this government, by your obstinacy. You're not a mile off the road to hell
this minute!"
"A mile," said Lincoln softly. "Senator, that's about the distance from here
to the Capitol, is it not?"
The attempted witticism drew no laugh. Wade snorted that the meeting
was a waste of time, grabbed up his hat and cane, and slammed the door on
his way out.
To the others, in the ensuing silence, Lincoln dropped his attempts at
humor and said, "I will examine and consider very carefully the paper you
have submitted. I want to express my satisfaction with the tone and temper of
the committee."
The President was in trouble and he knew it, Fessenden judged. Wade
should not have blown up, but that was Wade, and Lincoln had successfully
provoked him. The Senate had made its case forcefully; Lincoln had stalled.
Now the next move was up to him. Fessenden was hopeful that the rumors of
Seward's resignation were true; that would demonstrate the party's power
while saving the President's face.
Fessenden left with the others, gratified at a good night's work changing
the nature of the relation between Congress and the President. Lincoln was
proving to be a tougher bird than he had thought. The President gave you
nothing, not even a loss of temper, to help your case. But this would be
decided by the application of power, not argument, and the senators had the
upper hand. At the next meeting, which Fessenden supposed would be the
next night, the surrender of autocratic power would have to be tendered, and
it  would be  graciously  accepted.  The  Presidentsoon to be primus inter
pares, first among equals, the Chairman of the Council of State, but no longer
Chief Executivewould be treated with all due respect by the men who had
stripped him of misused power.
George Smalley, at the New York Tribune office in Washington, had not felt
so frustrated since he could not get his copy filed from Antietam.
"Seward has resigned, I'm sure of it," the correspondent fairly shouted at
Adams Hill, the bureau chief, "and the whole Cabinet is splitting up. And we
cannot move the story?"
"Telegraph censorship," said Hill. "Stanton is treating it like news of a
battle."
"But the senators were in with Lincoln tonight telling him how to set up
his Cabinet. The Administration is in crisishell, in extremis. They're ad-
ministering extreme unction. Greeley will break out the champagne when he
hears of Seward quitting. It's been his fondest wish for years."
"I've been at the War Office, the telegraph room," said Hill wearily. "I
argued with Eckert. I told him this is not what military censorship was
supposed to do, that this was political newsbut when Stanton says no, it's
no. They will not pass it."
Smalley did not know who was worse, the censors in Washington or his
editor in New York. A few days before, his exclusive story about the debacle
of Fredericksburg had been at first softened by the censor, then finally killed
in New York. The Tribune editornot newsman Sydney Gay, but the pohti-
cian-editor Horace Greeleyhad been at the forefront of the clamor for
McClellan's scalp and could not bring himself to print a heart-stopping report
on the disaster that had befallen his replacement.
"I'll take the story up on the train," Smalley volunteered. "The govern-
ment is coming apart. At least Sydney Gay should know about it. Maybe he
can talk Greeley into running something. This isn't our fault."
"They know about it in New York already, I'll bet," said Sam Wilkeson,
another Tribune reporter who had sauntered in. "Seward probably sent word
up last night. He'd tell Thurlow Weed right away."
"Why hasn't it been in the paper, then?" Smalley wanted to know. Some
newspaper would be interested; if not the Tribune, then Bennett's Herald.
Wilkeson had a theory about that. "Soon as word gets out, stocks are going
to drop," said the worldly reporter, "and the price of gold is going to shoot
up. Lot of money can be made by people in the know on the news of an
upheaval in the Cabinet. And if I know Seward and Weed, they're cashing in
right now."
CHAPTER 36
ARRAIGNMENT

Chase had been given a full report from Senator Bill Fessenden, whom he
trusted completely, of the confrontation between the Republican senators and
Lincoln. He had heard from Stanton that the New York Tribune correspon-
dent was trying to telegraph to Greeley the news of the resignation of Secre-
tary of State Seward.
The Treasury Secretary had good reason to be pleased. The snowball he
had given the first push to was gathering speed and weight. Seward was
already out, and the senators were demanding moreit would not be long
before Blair and Bates volunteered to step down, and finally it would be
possible to force out Navy Secretary Welles, who seemed to put personal
loyalty to the President before all common sense.
At that point, Chase was certain that with Stanton's help he would be in
effective control of the Cabinet. That newly unified and rejuvenated Cabinet
council would, by majority vote, determine the national policy. From there to
the Republican nomination and the Presidency were only a few short steps.
The nation would at long last be in firm and capable hands. The precedent of
a council wielding executive power did not trouble him; as President, Chase
would make sure to appoint as department heads those of like minds, who
would reflect his own vision.
He was not surprised to receive the message from George Nicolay that the
Cabinet was being called into extraordinary session at ten-thirty that morn-
ing. In the future, he was certain, Cabinet meetings on all important matters
would be the order of the day. Lincoln, put in his proper place, would no
longer be able to take action without the approval of the nation's governing
council.
Chase showed up promptly and was gratified to see the Secretary of State's
place empty. Chase prepared his face to greet any seeming revelations of news
with innocent surprise.
"What I have to communicate," said Lincoln, looking more forlorn than
usual, "should not be the subject of conversation outside this room."
The President reported to his colleagues that he had first received Secretary
Seward's resignation, and had then been visited by a committee of senators.
"While they said they believed in my honesty, they seemed to think that when
I had in me any good purposes, Mr. Seward contrived to suck them out of me
unperceived."
Montgomery Blair asked the President if Senator Wade and the committee
had been looking for any more scalps beyond Seward's. Lincoln said no.
"Some not very friendly feelings were shown toward one or two others," the
President allowed, and Chase knew that specifically included Blair, "but no
wish that any but Seward should leave."
Lincoln then read aloud the secret paper left by the Republican senators
calling for a unified Cabinet pledged to vigorous prosecution of the war.
Chase knew it almost by heart; he and Fessenden had gone over it often
enough, tempering Wade's fulminations until this reasoned document had
emerged.
"A plural Executive is really not our system of government," Bates offered,
but Chase and Stanton frowned him silent.
"What sort of mood were these senators in," Montgomery Blair wanted to
know. "Angry?"
"Earnest and sad, I should say," Lincoln answered with what Chase con-
sidered an earnest sadness of his own. "Not malicious or passionate." That
was not what Chase had heard about Wade's remarks from Fessenden. "See
here," Lincoln added fervently, "I don't want any of you to take this as a hint
to retire also. To be frank, I cannot afford to lose you. I don't see how I can
get along with any new Cabinet, made of new materials."
Chase was almost embarrassed for Lincoln, at the way the man clung to
the Cabinet he had begun with, as if the loss of Seward and the other luke-
warm members would leave him disconsolate. The coalition Lincoln had so
laboriously put together last year was finished, dead, a thing of the past,
because it had always been inherently unstable. Why couldn't Lincoln adjust
to the new reality?
"I told them how we have always gone on harmoniously," the President
went on, with what seemed to Chase a pleading note in his high voice, "what-
ever had been our previous party feelings. I said I had been sustained and
consoled by the good feeling and the mutual and unselfish zeal that pervaded
the Cabinet. I do not see how it is possible for me to go on, if faced with the
total abandonment of old friends."
Hogwash. If Lincoln could not get on without Seward and Blair and Bates,
then he should step down right away. No; that would mean Hannibal Hamlin
at the head of the table, and Chase preferred the tamed Lincoln. He looked
portentously at Stanton, the other man in the room he knew agreed that this
sentimental drivel about a harmonious Cabinet was an insult to what intelli-
gence existed among the divided group around the table.
The President was floundering; it seemed obvious to Chase that the man
simply did not know what to do next. He could not choose a new Secretary of
State without the senators' advice and consent, and they would insist on a
Chase-approved selection. Lincoln was neatly boxed in. Chase was beginning
to enjoy the play of executive power.
After some desultory conversation, Lincoln suggested that the Cabinet
should join him that evening in meeting with the committee of senators.
"No," said Chase abruptly. "I do not believe that would be appropriate at
all." Better that the congressional pressure should remain directly on the
President alone. This was a fight between the Senate Republican caucus and
the Republican President; for the Cabinet to mix in would be unseemly and
might help the President get off the hook. Because Lincoln had not used the
Cabinet as an effective force to govern, he did not deserve its defense against
those who demanded unified leadership. Let Lincoln face his critics in the
solitude he had sought.
"I don't see that any good would come of our being there," agreed Bates.
Chase nodded vigorously at this unexpected support from the Attorney Gen-
eral.
"I really think the President is right," Montgomery Blair said to Bates. "It
would be well for all of us to be present when he meets the senators. Seward
won't be there during the discussion, which will be largely about him, so
there won't be any personal embarrassment."
Chase looked at Stanton to refute Blair, but evidently the Secretary of War
did not see any harm in the department heads being present at the political
capitulation of the Chief Magistrate. Chase did not like that, but he told
himself he was being unduly wary. And he could not deny a lively interest of
his own in seeing the long-arrogant Lincoln in the dock.
"If the President wishes us to attend, gentlemen," said Navy Secretary
Welles into his long beard, "then it is our duty to do so."
Chase wondered if Lincoln had any tricks up his sleeve. Before he could
think of a good reason to block the joint meeting, the distraught President
said with feeling, "Good. Half past seven this evening."
The Postmaster General picked his way over the frozen mud of Pennsylva-
nia Avenue to the Blair house opposite the Mansion to consult with his
father. The Old Man kept pulling on his arthritic fingers, cracking his knuck-
les, listening to his son's summary of the Cabinet meeting. Monty Blair could
not recall ever having seen his father so tense.
"The President stressed the need for secrecy," Montgomery said, "so
maybe he thinks he can talk Seward into changing his mind."
"That's not the point," the Old Man snapped. "Seward wants to stay. He
wants Lincoln to reject his resignation, but Lincoln can't do that, not now.
He has to have a good reason to hang on to Seward, something that will
satisfy Wade and his crowd, or something to make them back off."
"Why can't Lincoln just tell the Senate to go to hell?" Montgomery knew
that was impossible in the weakened state of the government after the Freder-
icksburg debacle, but he wanted to hear the answer from his father, who liked
to counsel presidents privately at times like this.
"They have the tickets," the elder Blair said, using the old word for "bal-
lots"; he liked those archaic political terms. "At this stage, the radicals can
cripple Lincoln, impeach him, free the slaves, do whatever they want. That's
why he's being so nice and respectful. I bet he wanted to throw Wade out the
window."
Montgomery added an afterthought about the Cabinet session: "We're get-
ting together with the senators tonight."
The Old Man looked up sharply. "Whose idea was that? To have the
Cabinet there."
"Lincoln's. I suppose he wanted company in the lions' den."
"Did anybody object? Stanton?" The Old Man seemed to pounce on what
his son thought was a point not all that consequential.
"Stanton didn't say anything either way, Father." After a pause, he re-
membered: "Chase objected."
The elder Blair thought that over, as his son marveled at the essence of
political calculation that appeared on the wizened features. When a grin
finally crossed his face, the Old Man looked positively Machiavellian.
"I think I see the plan. Oh, Monty, he's a cunning bastard, is Honest Abe."
The grin disappeared. "Now, son, here is your position in that meeting with
the senators: the Cabinet is the soul of harmony, never any bickering. All is
mutual respect."
"But you know that's not true, Father." When that objection did not seem
to make an impression, he added: "I believe, and so do you, that the President
rules, not the Cabinet."
"Sure, Monty, but sometimes it is important to deny a little reality in order
to uphold a great institution. Rememberif Lincoln wants to preach har-
mony, you become part of the choir. Deny any dissension, cut the ground out
from under the senators."
"It won't work, Father. They know the truth as well as we do."
"The truth has nothing to do with this!" His small father reached up and
took his lapels in his hands and shook him. "I think the plan is to embarrass
Chase, to flush out the sanctimonious bastard. To make him lie in front of his
friends rather than take on Lincoln directly. Divide and conquer, the way the
Lincoln men did at the Wigwam. Oh, that cunning bastard. I hope it works."
"Wade's the problem. He'll force the Cabinet division out in the open."
"You're right, Monty. Fessenden is the brains of the crowd, and Collamer
has the necessary gray hairs, but that son of a bitch Wade has the backbone."
He thought about that, pacing the room slowly. "Maybe we could get a friend
of Wade's to urge him to go to the front immediately, to see General Burn-
side. I'll work on that. I don't want him in that meeting with Lincoln tonight.
Remember, Montyharmony. When they complain about disunity in the
Cabinet, you give them the sweetest smile you can muster and say, 'What
disunity?' "
Montgomery Blair enjoyed the startled expressions on the faces of the
senators entering the room. They expected to be meeting privately again with
the President, but found themselves facing Lincoln and his entire Cabinet.
Only Seward, the ostensible target of their attack, was absent.
"I have asked the Cabinet to join us tonight," said Lincoln, taking his place
at the head of the black walnut table and getting right to business, "to demon-
strate to you its unity."
Blair was amazed and amused; Lincoln was prepared to profess that black
was white, just as his father had predicted.
"The necessities of the times, of course," Lincoln went on, "prevent fre-
quent or long sessions of the Cabinet, and not every question is submitted for
detailed discussion. But although these men could not be expected to think
and speak alike on all subjects, they have all acquiesced and come together
once a matter has been decided."
Blair did not believe Lincoln could get away with this argument. The
senators were lawyers, mainly; they had been in courtrooms, and seen defense
attorneys spin a tale wholly divorced from the facts.
Jake Collamer was the committee chairman. He apologized for Ben Wade's
absence, explaining that the chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct
of the War had found it necessary to be with Burnside in the field. Blair
wondered how his father had been able to arrange that, but was thankful that
Wade was not present to bellow the truth back at the President.
"There is truth in the maxim," said Collamer, "that in a multitude of
advisers there is safety. What we want is united counsels, combined wisdom,
and energetic action. It is the feeling of my colleagues, Mr. President, based
on" he hesitated"reports, that you do not employ the Cabinet in such a
manner."
"Indeed," Senator Fessenden put in, "we have been informed by the most
reliable authority"Blair noted that he did not look in Chase's direction
"that the Cabinet rarely meets and is not consulted on the gravest questions
of the war and of the abolishment of slavery. You take those decisions your-
self."
"And what would be wrong with that?" Blair heard himself asking.
"Everything, as the management of the war has demonstrated," Fessenden
replied, "and as the delay in abolishing slavery suggests. The President is not
a monarch. He is primus inter pares, and he cannot presume to run the
country single-handed. That is not our constitutional tradition."
Blair did not want to turn this into a debate if Lincoln's strategy was to
appear conciliatory, but that unsupported assertion could not go unchal-
lenged. "Where is the tradition that has the President answering to the Cabi-
net?"
"It was my honor to serve with John Quincy Adams in the House of
Representatives," said Fessenden. "You will recall that he returned to the
House after he had been defeated for reelection as President by Andy Jack-
son. A measure came up on the House floor that was passed during President
Adams's administration, and he told me that the measure was adopted
against his wishes and opinion, but he was outvoted in Cabinet council by
Henry Clay and others. That was how the country was governedby com-
bined wisdom."
"Perhaps that was why John Quincy Adams was so readily defeated by
General Jackson," said Blair. When Lincoln shot him a look of caution, Blair
added, "Though in his later years in the House, Mr. Adams grew in stature
opposing slavery." No sense offending the radicals on their favorite subject.
"Wait a minute," Trumbull interjected. "Lincoln here says the Cabinet is
unified, and approves of all decisions. You say it isn't important whether the
Cabinet agrees or not. Mr. Chase, tell usdoes this Cabinet count in the
President's deliberations or not?"
That put the fat in the fire. Would Chase testify to the deep division of
philosophy in the Cabinet, and of the fiercely conflicting goals of the men who
made it up, as he had been surely telling the senators all weekor would he
loyally lie in support of the President and the Administration of which he was
a part?
He did both. "I endorse the President's statement fully and entirely," the
Treasury Secretary said ponderously, and then qualified that support with
"though I regret that there is not a more full consideration of every measure
in open Cabinet."
Some of the senators began to squirm. Chase was the instigator of this
coup, and it was hard for them to believe he would refuse to take a solid
position on the central complaint.
"That was not our understanding, Chase," said Trumbull ominously. "We
were informed unequivocally that this Cabinet was split down the middle,
and that it was treated with contempt when it came to making great deci-
sions."
Chase reddened, showing both his embarrassment and annoyance. "I
would not have agreed to come here tonight," he said, "if I had known I was
to be arraigned before a committee of the Senate."
Blair thought "arraigned" was the perfect word. The meeting, sought by
the senators to force Lincoln to bow to senatorial pressure, was turning into a
preliminary trial of Chase's veracity. Arranging the full-dress confrontation
had been a brilliant idea. Either Chase would have to back up Lincoln, agree-
ing that the Cabinet was carefully consulted and essentially unifiedwhich
was a lieor disagree with Lincoln to his face, showing himself to be the
disloyal Cabinet member, which Blair suspected Chase did not have the stom-
ach to do.
Fessenden came to Chase's aid. "Nobody is being arraigned here. Indeed,
Mr. President, it was no movement of ours that brought your Cabinet to this
meeting. When you suggested such a meeting with the Cabinet the other day,
we did not think it was a good idea. We did not suspect or come here for that
purpose."
Lincoln remarked innocently how it seemed a good idea to him for every-
one to get together. He looked at Chase, as if the Treasury Secretary had been
rudely interrupted.
"I would answer yes, that questions of importance had generally been
considered by the Cabinet," said Chase, choosing to be the loyalist, "though
perhaps not so fully as may be desired."
"Unity?" Trumbull glared at him.
Chase swallowed as he thought about how to handle that. "There has been
no want of unity in the Cabinet," he said finally. "We have generally acqui-
esced on public measures. Once the President has decided on a measure, no
Cabinet member has opposed it. To that extent, there has been unity."
Lincoln moved in at that point, smoothly admitting, "There have been
occasions in which important action was taken without consultation with my
Cabinet." Blair liked the subtle use of the possessive in reference to his Cabi-
net, and the disarming way Lincoln conceded a point that could not be de-
nied. "Placing the army under McClellan's command after his return from
the Peninsula, for example. The Banks expedition, too."
The President had chosen to send General Banks to New Orleans, where
he could help Grant pose a threat to the Mississippi River forts rather than
reinforce the hapless Bumside in Virginia. Having failed so dismally in the
East, Lincoln was now looking to the Westto Grant and Sherman around
Vicksburg, to Rosecrans in Tennesseeto save the Federal Army's reputa-
tion. The President had said nothing to the Cabinet that Blair could recall
about that sudden shift in military plans.
Chase, who normally sat upright, slumped in his chair as Lincoln em-
barked on a long speech about harmony in the Cabinet, about Seward's ear-
nestness in the prosecution of the war, about how Seward and Chase had
often worked closely together on official correspondence. He called on any
Cabinet member to speak out if there had been any want of unity or sufficient
consultation, and Blair noticed how Chase looked in suppliance at Stanton,
who looked away. Not even Caleb Smith, who had flatly opposed the Eman-
cipation Proclamation"th-th-there goes Indiana!"had a word to say after
Chase had refused to wash the Cabinet's dirty linen in front of the Senate.
Though it was growing late, Lincoln went on and on, not rambling, never
taking the slightest umbrage at what seemed so obvious to Blair was the
Senate's attempted usurpation of executive power, but holding to the shaky
hypothesis that the senators were misinformed about the lack of consultation
or absence of unity. He refused to take up the real challenge, ignoring it as he
construed the senators' complaints much more narrowly. He refused to dis-
pute their presumption to dictate, preferring to correct their reasons for dic-
tating.
The more Lincoln leaned on Secretary Chase's words, emphasizing the
grudging "unity" admission and minimizing the qualifiers attached, the more
Chase looked pained and Trumbull looked furious. Blair was glad that Wade
was not at the meeting to thunder at the trickery of the President and the
hypocrisy of the Treasury Secretary; had Anna Carroll persuaded him to visit
the front that day?
"As for the proclamation of freedom," Lincoln concluded, "Mr. Seward
had fully concurred in it after I had resolved on it. Isn't that so, Governor
Chase?"
Chase was obliged to nod in agreement. "As a matter of fact, it was Seward
who suggested amendments to strengthen the proclamation," he volunteered,
"such as the pledge to maintain the freedom of those emancipated. 'Maintain'
was Seward's word, and it gives force to the document."
Lincoln, in his long speech, had evidently worn Chase down; the Treasury
Secretary was no longer trying to straddle honor and loyalty. In front of his
Cabinet colleagues and the President, he could not be forthright to his senato-
rial friends about his true feelings. Chase's backstabbing was limited to small
gatherings with Lincoln not present.
Fessenden, the intellectual leader of the party's Senate group, backed off
slightly on one point after the President had finished. "I never said that the
President was bound by any decision made by his Cabinet. I maintain only
that all important questions must be discussed in Cabinet council."
Blair sensed the beginnings of senatorial retreat and thought of himself as
harassing cavalry. "The Cabinet has no voice, and should have no voice," he
said, "except when the President calls for it. Unlike you, we have no constitu-
tional mandate. We are a creature of the presidency, an extension of him,
deriving our authority from his powers and with no independent power."
Fessenden started to object but Blair was not finished. "He might require
our opinion in writingmy father informs me that was what President Jack-
son preferred, Senator Fessendenbut he is under no obligation to defer to
what we think. In a Cabinet vote, the only vote that counts is the Presi-
dent's."
Lincoln gave him no signal to stop, so Blair went on. "Now about Gover-
nor Seward. I have differed sharply with Seward over the years, as you all
know, and I have my differences with him today. But I believe him as earnest
as anyone in this war. The charge that he is lukewarm' is sheer nonsense. I
think it would be injurious to the public service to have him leave the Cabi-
net, and with all due respect, gentlemen, I would add this: the Senate had
better not meddle with matters of this kind."
Lincoln shook his head at that last point, and hastened to assure one and
all he did not think the senators were meddling. Blair had said it; Lincoln
could disavow it and remain conciliatory, but Blair was certain it would help
Lincoln to have the Senate leaders know that their overreaching was recog-
nized as such.
"Seward's presence is what is injurious," said Grimes.
Senator Sumner picked that up and launched into a condemnation of
Seward as a diplomatist. "The correspondence he has had in the name of this
administration is an abomination, and its publication was a deliberate insult
to all of us who have stood foursquare for the Union and against slavery."
Sumner spoke longer than Lincoln had, listing all of Seward's shortcomings.
The theme of the meeting had changed from a general disapproval of the way
Lincoln was executing his office to a specific demand for the ouster of the
Secretary of State, who had already resigned.
"Not all the senators present have given me their opinions on that," said
Lincoln, looking around the table.
"You have mine," said Grimes. "Out."
"I'm not prepared to say," Jake Collamer wavered.
Blair understood what the President was looking for: any lack of unanim-
ity. He thought that taking a kind of vote on Seward was a tactical mistake,
but at this stage Blair was willing to trust Lincoln's political sagacity.
"I studied law in Seward's office," said Pomeroy of Kansas, "but I've lost
confidence in him. He ought to go."
"Considering the state of the parties in New York," said Ira Harris of that
state, who was not a Seward man but who, Blair assumed, was worried about
Democrat Horatio Seymour's leadership of the peace movement there, "and
Governor Seward's popularity with the anti-Seymour forces, I'd have to ad-
vise against his removal."
Lincoln looked at Fessenden, who shook his head. "I do not think it is
proper to discuss the merits or demerits of a member of the Cabinet in the
presence of his associates."
Chase was out of his chair like a shot. "I think the members of the Cabinet
had better withdraw."
Blair hated to leave, but Lincoln seemed in control of himself and his
presidency now that Chase was exposed to his own allies as all too ready to
flinch. The Postmaster General politely held the door for Chase, Stanton,
Smith, and Bates, threw a half salute at the President, and closed the door on
the senators.
Fessenden knew he had been outmaneuvered by the lawyer from Illinois.
Chase had been placed in a near impossible position, and his understandable
equivocation had weakened the force of the senatorial move. Sneaking the
Cabinet in, unbeknown to the senators, was a trick, but Fessenden could not
charge Lincoln with anything more than discourtesy.
"I wish to know," he said with the Cabinet members gone, "whether you,
Mr. President, intend to follow the wishes of the Republican senators on the
Seward matter, when ascertained."
Lincoln, to Fessenden's disgust, told a long and vulgar story that was not
to the point. Its lengthy recounting served only to give the President a chance
not to answer the question, and no Wade was present with the equivalent
boorishness to shut him up. Fessenden did not laugh and nod sagely, as
others did, when the President tried to show how the story applied to the
situation at hand.
Fessenden then used the information he had not yet admitted he knew: that
the decision facing Lincoln was not to oust Seward, but to accept the resigna-
tion Seward had already submitted.
"There is a current rumor that Secretary Seward has already resigned."
"I thought I told you last evening," said Lincoln disingenuously, "that Mr.
Seward had tendered his resignation." Fessenden did not remind Lincoln he
had told them no such thing. That highly relevant fact weakened the Presi-
dent's position, and he was giving the Senate nothing. "I have his resignation
in my pocket but have not yet made it public. Or accepted it."
"The question, then," stated Fessenden, "is whether Mr. Seward should be
requested to withdraw his resignation."
Lincoln did not evade the question. "Yes."
"As the fact of his resignation cannot be concealed," Fessenden told him,
"and its cause will be well understood, then all the harm done in dividing the
Republicans in New York has already been done. No withdrawal of his resig-
nation will heal that breach. I strongly advise that you accept it."
Lincoln nodded, which Fessenden could not tell meant that he understood
or agreed.
The senator from Maine played his last card. "Shall I canvass my fellow
senators on whether you should accept Mr. Seward's resignation?" Lincoln
had, after all, been canvassing the senators in this room tonight on whether to
fire Seward, but he had been careful not to obligate himself to follow the
views he had solicited. If Lincoln agreed to that casually made suggestion,
Fessenden could take the question of accepting a Seward resignation to an
advisory caucus vote which Lincoln would be forced to treat as a Senate
decision. That not only would lock out Seward, but would establish a new
order in the Senate's relationship with the President. And not just for now;
perhaps for the life of the Republic. Fessenden was aware of the stakes.
"I think not." Lincoln's reply matched the informality of Fessenden's sug-
gestion. Not a blunt "no," not some sort of indecisive evasion, but a casually
decisive "I think not"as if to say he would just as soon hold on to his
power, if the senators and the Republican Party would not mind.
It was I A.M. Fessenden was convinced that nothing more could be ex-
tracted from this man. The President had seemed to gain strength as the night
wore on, as the others faded in fatigue. Fessenden rose, aware of the senators'
defeat. "I take it you will make no change in your Cabinet?"
"If I let Seward go, I have reason to fear a general smashup."
"And why is that?"
"Chase would withdraw too, and I cannot do without him at the Trea-
sury."
Fessenden shook his head in wonderment. Now Lincoln was telling a group
of senators, including the man known to be Chase's closest friend, that he was
expecting a resignation from Chase. That would surely get around and put
pressure on Chase to quit. Fessenden thought it would be a good idea to leave
before Lincoln came up with any other tricks.
On the way out, Trumbull took Fessenden by the arm. "Your friend Chase
sang a different tune when he was alone with us," he said bitterly. "How in
hell could he sit there and say that all was sweet harmony in the Cabinet?"
Fessenden did not want to reply, but old Judge Collamer answered quietly
for him. "He lied." Fessenden, who had until that night counted himself
Chase's main ally in the Senate, could not disagree.
"I think I'll just tell the President that right now," said Trumbull, whirling
and heading back toward Lincoln's office. Fessenden made no effort to detain
him. Had Chaseand Stantonproved brave and true, great good might
have come of this, but the only good result of this long night's work, he told
himself coldly, was that it unmasked some selfish cowards.
Navy Secretary Welles returned to the President's office next morning as
soon as he thought Lincoln would be finished with breakfast. He wanted to
say that he believed Seward should not be allowed to resign. Welles knew that
the Secretary of State did not want to leave the Cabinet, regretted his impul-
sive act, and was piqued that Lincoln had discussed the resignation with the
senators.
Chase and Stanton were already there, waiting for Lincoln. Welles told
them what was on his mind: "To yield a presidential prerogative to the Senate
would be an evil example. It would be fraught with incalculable injury to the
government and the country."
His two Cabinet colleagues, standing in front of the fire, met this with sour
looks, but Lincoln, walking in, said he quite agreed: "If I let the senators have
their way, the whole government must cave in. It could not stand."
The President stood next to the fireplace, arm on the mantelpiece, along-
side the disgruntled radicals, as Welles took a seat on the sofa near the east
window, in the morning sunshine.
"The session last night," Chase complained, "was a harrowing experience.
It had come as a total surprise to me," he said, which Welles knew was
untrue, "and affected me most painfully." That part was true.
Lincoln offered no sympathy and waited for him to go on.
"In fact, I have even prepared my own resignation as Secretary of the
Treasury."
Chase was not resigning, Welles noted; merely hoping to shock Lincoln by
saying he had "prepared" a resignation.
Lincoln's face lit up. "Where is it?"
Chase was taken aback. "I brought it with me," he answered, tentatively
taking a sealed envelope from his breast pocket but not offering it up. "I
wrote it this morning, but"
"Let me have it," said Lincoln eagerly. He reached his long arm across the
fireplace and held out his hand. Chase was reluctant to hand it over. Lincoln
fairly snatched the paper out of Chase's fingers, tore open the envelope, and
glanced at the paper inside.
The President let out a whoop, slapped the letter on his leg, and turned to
Welles. "This cuts the Gordian knot!" He plunked himself down in the chair,
motioning for Chase and Stanton to sit. "I can dispose of this subject now
without difficulty. I see my way clear."
Welles fully understood the reason for Lincoln's delight. All of Washington
was reshuffling the Lincoln Cabinet, and Stanton's censorship could not keep
it out of the newspapers much longer. He did not have enough public senti-
ment behind him to refuse Seward's resignation. But by inducing Chase to
resign as well, he could refuse bothmaintain his Cabinet without change
and retain his position as the fulcrum of the contending forces in his party.
Welles observed the dismay on Chase's handsome face, and the contrasting
total lack of concern on Lincoln's part for the pain he was causing the Trea-
sury Secretary. Stanton, who, Welles suspected, was using Chase as a stalking
horse, huffed, "I wish you, sir, to consider my resignation at this time in your
possession."
"You may go to your department," the President said impatiently, since
Stanton seemed to miss the whole point, "I don't want your resignation. This
is all I want," he waved the letter in his hand. "I will detain neither of you
longer."
That was as peremptory a dismissal as Welles had heard come from the
President's lips since he had known him. The two trooped out.
"Now I can ride," said Lincoln with relief. "I have got a pumpkin in each
end of my bag." Welles found that word picture amusing: a farmer riding to
market with pumpkins in each saddlebag, balancing his load as Lincoln was
balancing the interests of the factions in his administration. He would now
publicly make known the two resignations, and refuse to accept either.
Seward would be relieved and grateful, somewhat less imperious in the future,
and even more of a Lincoln man; Chase might still be angling for the Republi-
can nomination in 1864, but would be weakened with the radicals who had
seen him wither under fire.
"A masterstroke," Welles told him without any hint of flattery.
"I do not see how it could have been done better," Lincoln agreed. "If I
had yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward, the thing would have
slumped over one way"Lincoln dropped a shoulder and slumped to illus-
trate"and we would have been left with a scant handful of supporters.
When Chase gave in his resignation just now"he held up the paper in
triumph"I saw that the game was in my hands. Now I have the biggest half
of the hog."
He went to his desk to write out the two refusals. Welles was astounded at
the way this man, assumed by all to have been politically devastated and in
such a depressed mental state, could have shown such resilience in the face of
a vigorous challenge from the assembled powers of his party. Native shrewd-
ness, he supposed, combined with some hidden sources of strength and divine
obstinacy.
The Navy Secretary was satisfied that the President could survive the polit-
ical attacks from within his party, whether in Congress or in his Cabinet. He
wished he could be as certain that Lincoln could survive the blunders of his
generals, and the continued staggering losses to his forces in the field. Public
sentiment had never been so low. Something had to be done to resist the
rising pressure of the defeatists and copperheads, who were angrily clamoring
for peace and were all too willing to pay its price of disunion.

CHAPTER 37
CHIROPODIST, PEACEMAKER, SPY
For Isachar Zacharie, in the most exciting time of his life, being a Jew was
both a help and a hindrance. Seated in the New Orleans home of the mer-
chant Martin Gordon, a fellow Israelite and an official enemy of the United
States, the foot doctor looked at both sides of that coin:
Less than a month before, Lincoln had given him a letter to take to Gen-
eral Nathaniel Banks, who had taken command of the Army of the Gulf from
Ben Butler. Although phrased as a letter of introduction, Lincoln's letter
hinted at his assignment: "Dr. Zacharie, whom you know as well as I do . . .
might be of service to you in his peculiar profession"by that the President
meant foot-doctoring, which Zacharie understood was merely a cloak for his
other activities"and secondly, as a means of access to his countrymen, who
are quite numerous in some of the localities you will probably visit."
By "numerous countrymen," the President referred to the many Israelites
long resident in New Orleans. What was left unsaid was the common knowl-
edge that the most renowned Jew from Louisiana was Judah Benjamin, the
Confederate Secretary of State.
That channel to the Confederate elite was the helpful part of being a Jew.
He could establish contact quickly with family and friends in Union-occupied
New Orleans, and then to their connections in Richmond, with the purpose
of discovering if any possibility existed of a peaceful solution to the conflict.
The difficulty of being a Jew was alluded to in the conclusion of Lincoln's
letter to Banks: "excepting his case from a general prohibition which I under-
stand to exist."
That "general prohibition" the President had heard about was the result of
General Ulysses Grant's hatred of Jews. Zacharie understood the cause of the
general's animus: some Jewish cotton traders were stealing the Army blind.
Gentile cotton traders were not doing badly at that business either, but the
Jews always stood out. Worse, Grant's father, Jesse Grant had been in busi-
ness with a Jew to take advantage of the Army quartermaster. Grant could
not get even with his father, so he took it out, Zacharie supposed, on the Jew
who was his father's partner, and, as so often happened, on Jews in general.
Six weeks before, in early November, Grant had issued an order to his
transportation officer in Jackson, Tennessee, forbidding Jews from using any
railroad in a southward direction. As a result, it had become common knowl-
edge that Jews were unwelcome visitors to the Western theater of war. This
would have made the coming of Isachar Zacharie to New Orleans, and his
activities there, slightly difficult to explainwere it not, as Lincoln's note
indicated, for his convenient profession. Every army needed a foot doctor.
Zacharie was not unduly troubled by the President's tacit understanding of
Grant's policy or Lincoln's willingness to leave undisturbed the effect of
Grant's detestation of members of the Hebrew race. Like most Northern
Jews, he was embarrassed and angry at the predations of the salesmen of the
reclaimed-wool material called "shoddy," and eager to dissociate himself
from those rotten apples.
So long as the "general prohibition," as Lincoln described it, was unwritten
and informalstrictly a personal act by one general taken on an emergency
basisand was directed at stopping Jewish traders from coming into the war
zone rather than driving local Jews out, Zacharie felt he could live with the
Grant policy. Harsh and unfair, yes, but making scapegoats out of Jews was
nothing new, and Zacharie justified his own acceptance of the worrisome
precedent by telling himself that everybody suffered in wartime.
Not that he liked it, he reminded himself, any more than he liked the
wording of the Sabbath Order that Lincoln had issued about the same time to
pander to the Christian clergy around election time. Over Stanton's objection
that it would interfere with the conduct of the war, Lincoln ordered Sunday
work in the Army and Navy reduced to strict necessity, to preserve "the
sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the
best sentiments of a Christian people." Zacharie knew that Lincoln was no
religious zealot, did not attend church on the Christian sabbath himself, and
signed the order only to gather political support; still, he should not have
made Jews feel like outsiders, guests of a "Christian people." The idea of
mentioning that to Lincoln occurred to him at the time but was swiftly put
aside; that was a matter for more self-conscious Israelites to bother their
heads about. Zacharie was not about to jeopardize his professional and per-
sonal relationship with the President of the United States over parochial
interests.
"I want you to mingle freely with people of all classes, especially with your
own countrymen," General Banks had told him when formally explaining his
assignment. Banks was a good man, a Massachusetts politician but not a
radical like Sumner, self-made, like himself; the "Little Bobbin Boy" was his
sobriquet, attesting to Banks's start in the cotton mills he now owned. Banks
was an all-out Union man, dead set against secession; generally anti-slavery
but not a wild-eyed abolitionistmuch like Lincoln. The foot doctor thought
that Banks would make an excellent President one day, and was resolved to
help bring that happy event about by crediting him with making the peace
between North and South.
That was another reason he could use for not taking offense at the general
prohibition against Jews. Nathaniel Banks was not the sort to fuss about
formal "rights" of individuals when it came to winning the war and saving
the Union. With great pride, Banks had told Zacharie of the day in the
secession summer of a year ago when the legislature of Maryland was sched-
uled to meet to vote their state out of the Union. Lincoln had ordered Mc-
Clellan to arrest the secessionist members before they arrived to vote, and
Banks and Dix had been given the command to carry out the President's
order. As Banks related the episode to Zacharie, he had struck ruthlessly and
effectively, and never mind "states' rights." Obviously, the foot doctor con-
cluded, it would be foolish to complain to such a man about the inconve-
nience being felt by a few Jews; as Lincoln liked to say, you can't make an
omelet without breaking eggs.
"You will ascertain and report the nature of public opinion here," was
another part of his charge from the general. Easy enough. The people here
were eager to pour their past troubles with "Beast" Butler into a sympathetic
Northern ear. "You will pay particular attention to gaining information about
the location and number of enemy troops, the extent of their supplies and
ammunition, and whether his troops are conscript or otherwise." Not so easy;
that was spying. If Zacharie's primary purpose was to establish contact with
the Confederate Cabinet, the sideline of spying might undermine his peace-
making. Not to mention making it much more dangerous. A peace emissary
could be rejected, but a spy could be executed. No matter, Zacharie thought,
he could do it all.
"May victory be our reward," Zacharie had told the general with all due
solemnity.
"Lose no time and spare no expense." Banks had handed him an envelope
containing what Zacharie knew to be five thousand dollars in Confederate
bills. He had resolved to account for every cent, but not in writing.
His contact with the Confederacy was to be Martin Gordon, a New Or-
leans merchant of some prominence in whose stately home he now was visit-
ing. Gordon was registered as an official enemy of the United States. That
status meant that Gordon's business dealings in New Orleans were sharply
circumscribed, but he was not under arrest and could travel safely in the
Confederacy.
"The time is not ripe for a peace offer," his host was saying. "Not after
Fredericksburg. They hear in Richmond that Lincoln's government is falling
apart. Seward out, Chase"
"That's not true, Martin. President Lincoln is a very determined man."
Zacharie knew how important it was to send word to Judah Benjamin
through his sister in New Orleans that the rumor of a breakup of Lincoln's
Cabinet was just newspaper talk. "I discussed this with the President myself,
for hours. He will hold his Cabinet together, he will hold the Republican
Party together, he will hold his Army together, and in the end he will hold
the Union together. Holding things together is very important to him, more
important than anything."
"You and Lincoln talked for hours?" Gordon was not being sarcastic, but
the doubt was in his voice.
Zacharie had never found it difficult to exaggerate, or even to make up
stories completely when necessary. He knew he had a talent for making
people believe his stories; why could he not persuade people that he was
telling the truth when he told the truth?
He had spent long evenings in the President's presence, not counting the
sessions cutting his corns, just talking about life, the world, families. Obvi-
ously Lincoln enjoyed his company; Zacharie laughed at his jokes, but, more
important, the foot doctor had a keen eye for detail, a true ear for the way
people were talking, a thorough grounding in the Old Testament, andper-
haps most needed by Lincolna capacity for understanding the suffering that
some some strong men inflicted on themselves. But who on the outside would
ever believe that the President of the United States spent time discussing the
future with a Jewish corncutter? He pushed forward his only credential, the
note written by Lincoln and countersigned by Seward attesting to his skills as
a practitioner of foot medicine.
"It's kind of a code," Zacharie said conspiratorially. "You'll understand."
At least the commercial endorsement proved that he knew the man and the
man knew him. Gordon could not produce the same evidence of personal
contact with Jeff Davis. Zacharie took back the precious document and re-
turned it to his wallet.
Impressed, Gordon reported that Richmond thought it now had an excel-
lent chance to win the war. "The British Parliament convenes next month,
and Gladstone has already said that the South has made a nation. After last
week at Fredericksburg, and next week at Murfreesboro, the desire of the
European powers to recognize the South will be irresistible."
Zacharie reminded himself that spying was one of his jobs. "Murfrees-
boro?"
"Big celebration going on there now," Gordon told him. "It started at the
wedding of one of the generalsMorgan, the cavalry raider, even Jeff Davis
cameand it will last up to Christmas. Forrest's raiders are hitting Grant in
the West and Morgan, the bridegroom, has just been sent on some secret raid
northward."
Zacharie made mental notes; it would not do to take out a pencil. But the
Stones River area of Tennessee, just south of Nashville, was familiar to him;
bunions, mainly. "I hear that Lincoln is desperate after his defeat in Vir-
ginia," Martin Gordon told him, "and is demanding that his man Rosecrans
go on the attack in Tennessee. If he comes after Bragg in Murfreesboro, the
Federals will get beaten again and the British will recognize the South. That's
the best time to start the peacemaking."
"No." They did not understand Lincoln. He might compromise on emanci-
pation, even delay his proclamation a few months or years if the South
showed signs of coming around, but on secession Lincoln would never com-
promise. War to the knife on that.
"Isachar, my friend, be realistic. All they hear in Richmond is the glorious
victory over the Army of the Potomac, and the call for peace by Seymour and
Vallandigham, and the talk ofSeward's being forced to resign. With all that in
the air, Richmond will not hear of talk of peace without secession."
The time for his great effort was not ripe, Zacharie ruefully agreed. If
Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in ten days, as scheduled, the
South's leaders would be more inclined to fight on. Military fortunes would
have to changeone way or the otherbefore his peacemaking move could
be made. Zacharie's job now was to establish trust, to set up lines of commu-
nication between Lincoln in WashingtonGeneral Banks in New Orleans,
and Secretary Benjamin in Richmondwhich would instantly be used when
one side or the other began to see the futility of further slaughter.
Murfreesboro could be important. He would pass what he had heard just
now to General Banks for transmission to Rosecrans (sounded like a Jewish
name) in Tennessee. It occurred to him that, with all the famous rebel cavalry
racing off to other places, this might not be a bad time for the Union general
to attack Bragg, but that was not really his business.
For the remainder of their meeting, he and Gordon did the sort of business
that would be preliminary to any peace undertakings: trading that established
trust. Gordon submitted a list of grievances of New Orleans families harassed
by the previous Union occupiers, which Zacharie knew he could alleviate
quickly, and asked for information about the whereabouts of General Breck-
inridge's son, missing in action and not reported captured. The chiropodist
promised to forward that query to General Dix, and then wondered aloud
about the drug traffic from New Orleans into the Southern lines.
"No Southern lady worth her salt would hesitate to take a bag of quinine
under her bustle," said Gordon. "You can't search them all, and I'd advise
Banks not to search any."
Zacharie turned to the business of exchange rates between Confederate and
Union currency, which could never be formalized but had to be unofficially
established if New Orleans merchants were to be able to do any business in
the South. After some enjoyable dickering, Zacharie shook Gordon's hand on
a fair deal. The foot doctor departed with the expectation that one day
perhaps not until a military stalemate was established, but one daythey
could be conducting business on the highest levels.
On his arrival at his room at the military headquarters, the chiropodist was
met by a delegation of ashen-faced members of the group that Gentiles would
call his "fellow countrymen."
Zacharie had seen nervous Israelites before, and discounted their fears; he
knew that whatever orders had been put in place by Ben Butler could be
countermanded. He brought them into his office with a generous wave of the
hand.
"Which is the foot that hurts?" he said cheerily.
"Show him the order."
He drew on his glasses and looked at the heading: from Grant's headquar-
ters at Holly Springs, Tennessee, General Orders No. II. "General Orders"
meant it was important, a statement of policy to be carried out in every part
of the army commanded by Grant. The document was dated December 17,
three days ago.
A sense of dread entered his soul as he read the opening words: "The Jews,
as a class . . ."
He went to the window and studied the order. "The Jews, as a class violat-
ing every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also
department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-
four hours from the receipt of this order."
Expelled. Every Jew, whether or not engaged in trade. As a class. Banished
from Tennessee, from sections of Mississippi, from every city and town under
the control of the armies of Grant and Sherman. That was a third of the
Union-controlled Union. Zacharie, unbelieving, read on: "Post commanders
will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to
leave, and anyone returning after such notification will be arrested and held
in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prison-
ers . . ."
At that moment, Zacharie realized he was not an American, not a presi-
dential agent, not a member of the medical profession, but merely a Jew, to be
rounded up and shipped off at the whim of an angry man in uniform.
"There must be some mistake," he said to the others, trying not to let the
dread in his heart show on his face.
"I've just come from Oxford, Mississippi," said a gaunt man. "They didn't
let us sell anything or take anything with us. We were loaded on a cart and
told to get moving. I'm not a cotton trader, I didn't do any business with the
army. My son is serving with the army under Burnside. Nobody would listen.
Orders are orders, they said."
"What next, Zacharie? Will General Banks order the Jews out of New
Orleans? Where will we go then, back to Germany?"
He did not know what to tell them. Banks was no Grant, but this sweeping
order could hardly have been issued without some approval from the War
Department in Washington. He recalled how Charles Dana, Stanton's eyes
and ears in the field, had returned with tales of the infamous speculation in
cotton by army quartermasters and Jews, which had infuriated Stanton and
Halleck.
"The President cannot know about this," said the man from Mississippi.
"Lincoln would never permit it if he knew." On that, there was a general
murmur of agreement.
But Zacharie knew that Lincoln did knowif not of the expulsion order,
certainly of the "general prohibition" of Jews by Grant throughout his com-
mand. And if the President tacitly approved of the one, who could say he
would not look the other way at the next step of expulsion? The foot doctor
felt a terrible personal responsibility. When Lincoln had discussed Grant's
problems with Jews, when he had written of the prohibition in his letter to
Banks, Zacharie had not uttered a word of protest. He had said nothing. It
must have seemed to Lincoln that he approved, and that individual loyal Jews
would not be stricken with fear at the thought of being treated "as a class," to
be arrested the way fugitive slaves used to be. His heart sank further at that
thought. Fugitive slaves now had more rights within the Union lines than
Jews who had lived there all their lives.
"You have to go to see Lincoln immediately, tonight, Zacharie. You say
you know him. He trusts you. Get him to stop this right away."
Zacharie shriveled inside. He could not do it. He was the wrong man,
having acquiesced without objection in the general prohibition to which he
had been an exception. Why, he asked himself in anguish, had he gone along
with such unfairness when he could have spoken up for his people? He knew
why. He was slightly ashamed of his people, the crooked ones, and had not
imagined the restriction against them would get out of hand.
On his conscience at that moment were all the suppressed doubts of the
past few months at the way Stanton and his men had been hacking away at
the freedom of loyal Northerners to complain about the government. He
thought of the arrests of the editors, of the way they were shipped to jail in
silence, and of how he had said nothing. He thought of Watson, Stanton's evil
right-hand man, saying, "Let them prove themselves innocent." That was
wrong, not the way of law in America. Zacharie had known how Stanton had
sent General Stone to imprisonment at Fort Lafayette without trial, because
he was McClellan's friend and to satisfy Senators Wade and Chandler. That
was a terrible scandal, and nobody but a few copperheads like Seymour and
Vallandigham had raised their voices against it.
Should Isachar Zacharie have said something, put a word in the President's
ear when he was working on his foot? He had not wanted to become involved
in other people's injustices, not because he was ignorant of them, but because
that sort of involvement would get him branded a troublemaker, possibly
disloyal. And if that reputation attached to him, he could never do the great
work of making peace. That was how he had reasoned his way into silence.
And now the sudden arrests, the terror of unbridled authority, was coming
after his own people, "as a class." He was afraid not only of what could
happen, but also of his own guilt in not having tried to stop it.
He could not go to Lincoln because Lincoln knew that Zacharie had proof
in writing that Lincoln had known in advance of Grant's policy. The Jewish
leader to see Lincoln would have to be someone who did not know this, who
would believe that no President of the United States could tolerate such
bigotry by an officer of the United States Army. Then Lincoln could profess
ignorance, surprise, and countermand the order with no loss of dignity.
"Kaskel," he said with certainty. "Cesar Kaskel of Paducah, he's the man
to lead a delegation to the President. And he can get there overnight by rail,
whereas it would take me days to sail around the Gulf."
"But you can get right to the President"
"This cannot wait. I'll get a message to the Kaskels by telegraph, and send
another message to Lincoln's secretaries."
"We are not permitted to use the telegraph, Zacharie," said the gaunt man.
"I tried to send a message to General Grant. They would not accept it from a
Jew."
At least, Zacharie knew, he had access to the military telegraph. Cesar
Kaskel was a strong man, the leader of a family that commanded respect
among Jews and Gentiles in Kentucky and Ohio. Lincoln would see him,
unless Stanton or Halleck blocked the way. And if Lincoln saw him,
thenZacharie would not let himself think about what might happen. Grant
was a Lincoln favorite, despite his drunken rages, despite his strange behavior
at Shiloh, because he was a fighter. Perhaps Lincoln would not want to
interfere.
The foot doctor thought of sending a personal message to the President
through John Hay but decided against it. Too presumptuous. If a Jew could
be the one to help make the peace, he told himself, that lifesaving act would
win more respect for Jews in America than anything else one man could do.
Let Cesar Kaskel be the one to see Lincoln to stop the expulsion of Jews; his
own mission, Zacharie persuaded himself, was even more important. Leaving
to send a telegraph message, he hoped the feeling of shame would soon pass.

CHAPTER 38
OFFER TO SUCCEED
Weed was sitting in the Secretary of State's office after a poor night's sleep on
the train, and he had not removed his overcoat. It was cold in Seward's office.
"Thurlow, you look positively grumpy," said Seward. "What took you so
long to get down here? Washington is lovely at Christmastime."
Weed had good reason to be out of sorts. His political partner had impetu-
ously and foolishly submitted his resignation as Secretary of State without
consulting him. Weed well remembered moving heaven and earth, and the
President-elect, to secure that post for Seward two years ago, and he did not
consider it partnerly for Seward to jeopardize the post in such cavalier fash-
ion. Luckily, Lincoln had been able to euchre a resignation out of Chase,
making possible his simultaneous, triumphant turndown of both.
"It's true the swamp here doesn't smell so awful in the winter," Weed
allowed, "but I prefer Albany. Or London."
That was another reason for his grumpiness. Seward had sent word to
Weed only a month before to prepare for a mission to London and Paris at
year's end, and Weed had made all arrangements for the voyage. He told all
his friends of the vast importance of the mission. Then some criticism by
Greeley and Chase of the use of the "king of the lobby" for wartime diplo-
macy had panicked Seward into canceling the trip. This profoundly embar-
rassed Weed by making it appear that he was being punished for not working
hard enough to stop the election of Democrat Horatio Seymour as governor
of New York. The Oreeley crowd had thrown away the most important state
in the Union, and now Weed was being blamed. Frankly, he was glad Sey-
mour had won; teach the damn black Republicans a lesson.
"Sorry about London, Thurlow," said Seward, reading his mind as alter
egos should. "And I apologize, too, for acting peremptorily this week. You
should have had a voice in my decision. But it all happened so fast."
What also rubbed Weed the wrong way was an unjust accusation of corrup-
tion. Word was out in New York that Seward's friends had made a killing in
the Gold Room, acting on advance news of the breakup of Lincoln's Cabinet.
Weed had not even been given enough advance warning by his political part-
ner to make such a killing, and to be accused of doing what he had not time
to do was especially galling.
"I cannot be angry at you for more than a few moments, my good friend,"
Weed said in candor. "It is like being angry with myself. And what of you
now that it's all over, are you all right?"
"I confess to having been somewhat disturbed at the time, Thurlow. Lin-
coln should never have taken my resignation under advisementa true friend
would have rejected it immediately. And he should never have allowed the
senators to come in to vilify me, dignifying their anti-constitutional bid with a
hearing. But he did. And it came out all right. Now, curiously, I feel re-
freshed." He inhaled and exhaled, patting his narrow chest. "The entire epi-
sode has not only proved harmless, but rather reinvigorating."
"And what of the President, Governordid he find the Cabinet crisis
reinvigorating too?"
"Only temporarily. He's a curious fellow. A few days ago, after the terrible
news of Fredericksburg, he was on the verge of1 don't know what. De-
claiming that idiotic poem about the spirit of mortals, quoting bloody scenes
from Macbeth, reciting from the Book of Job, pacing around like a madman
all night long, and then sleeping away the morning in his office. I feared for
his sanity, Thurlow."
Weed wondered aloud how, in that condition, Lincoln had been able to
cope with the assault of the senators.
"That was the most amazing part," Seward replied. "When his authority
came under challenge, every bit of cunning and shrewdness and ruthlessness
came to the fore. He rose to the crisis, met it squarely with no hint of the
hypo showing, and showed them who is master."
"Like you, then, he's feeling his oats?"
"Oh, no, not a bit. Quite the contrary, Thurlow. Lincoln is gloomy, preoc-
cupied. The euphoria wore off in a few hours. That's why he sent for you."
That did not square with what Weed knew. "He started sending for me
before the Cabinet crisis. But I've been sulking for the better part of three
days."
Seward grinned at his half apology. "Don't take off your coat, we're going
to see the President now. Come along. Tell me what you know about Sey-
mour. What sort of inaugural address do you expect from him in Albany?"
Weed observed how they both had stopped calling Lincoln "Lincoln" and
between each other had begun to call him the "President." To the President's
face, of course, he was still "Lincoln." They passed up the carriage and chose
to walk to the Mansion. The mud had frozen and the footing in the snow was
not slippery.
Lincoln shooed his secretaries out of his office, calling for Marshal Lamon
to join him with Seward and Weed.
Weed was not accustomed to meeting with Lincoln except in private, and
frowned slightly as he glanced at Lamon. The President explained that a
point of contact might be needed on a mission he had in mind, and that he
wanted Hill Lamon to know the details. Weed signaled he understood.
Lamon was part bodyguard, part company-keeper and friend, trusted to sleep
at the President's door or to do political errands, and to forget what might be
embarrassing to remember. Not as clever as Hay or as organized as Nicolay,
but more tight-lipped than both.
"Lincoln here was asking me about the man who will soon occupy my old
chair in the governor's office in Albany," Seward began, legs crossed, toe
turning, as if making idle conversation. "We both agree that you were right
about Horatio Seymour from the start, Thurlow. Undignified campaign all
over the state and the like. You saw the disaster coming, and you were the
only one."
Weed, mollified, assumed that the governor was making a difficult subject
easier for the President to broach.
"What will Seymour do about conscription?" Seward wanted to know.
Weed had connections across political lines to Seymour through Dean Rich-
mond, the Democratic leader upstate, and it was natural for Seward and the
President to assume that Weed knew what the governor-elect was thinking.
"He'll oppose the draft," Weed told them. "Don't count on a big contin-
gent of troops from New York." That was what came from basing a Republi-
can campaign on abolition and social revolution, rather than sticking to the
Union as it was, Weed thought.
"We need those troops," said Lincoln.
Weed was tempted to say he should have thought of that on September 22,
and again on September 24. The first proclamation promised to extend black
freedom in the South, the second immediately restricted freedom for whites in
the North. As if on purpose, the pairing of the proclamations infuriated all
but the minority of abolitionists.
"Do you suppose Governor Seymour would interpose state police and mili-
tia," asked Seward, "in order to block the effect of the President's habeas
corpus proclamation?"
"I wouldn't try any disloyalty arrests in New York for a while," Weed
replied. "Seymour made a big issue of that in the campaign, and the fear
many people have of getting clapped into Fort Lafayette for speaking out
against the war helped him win. You heard what Seymour had to say about
dictatorship, Lincoln."
He knew the President would recall the hot words that had passed between
the two men on the subject of the need to restrict each citizen's freedom to
preserve the nation's security. The recent election showed that most New
York voters agreed with Seymourwith what Breckinridge used to say, for
that matterthat treating every dissenter as a traitor corrupted the basis of
the Union and made it less worthy of blood sacrifice.
"Seymour and Femando Wood are already talking about putting out lines
for a negotiated settlement to the war. That means," Weed put it delicately,
"pursuing the suggestions you made in your excellent annual message this
month about gradual, compensated emancipation, rather than in the procla-
mation you have in mind for next week."
"We have some lines out that may be more useful than anything F'nandy
Wood can come up with," said Seward abruptly. That was news to Weed, and
grounds for hope. Perhaps Lincoln would return to reason, stop exaggerating
the power of the radicals in the party, and start to settle the war without
demanding the abject surrender of the South. "Tell us, Thurlowwhat sort
of governor will Seymour be?"
"He is an honorable man," Weed said after a moment's thought. "Seymour
will support the war so long as its purpose is solely to maintain the Union,
and so long as it's conducted within the limits of the Constitution. If it is not,
he won'tsimple as that. Frankly, I think that is being a good governor."
Weed thought he had surprised them with that candid, anti-abolitionist
opinion, but was surprised himself by his partner's next question:
"What sort of President would he be?"
Weed wanted to be sure he was hearing correctly. "Did you ask what sort
of President would Horatio Seymour be? Of the United States?"
"Yes, Thurlow, that's my question precisely."
"He'd be a Democratic President, and we're Republicans." Strange ques-
tion. What was Seward, speaking for Lincoln, getting at? The President had
obviously talked this over with Seward, and Weed knew how Seward's mind
worked, but this line of questioning led into a dense forest. Weed knew Hora-
tio Seymour to be the high-minded sort, burdened with principle, who could
never be seduced into crossing over into the Republican ranks.
"Would he be inclined to preserve the Union," asked Lincoln, "and if so,
would he be able to?"
Weed chewed that over in each of its parts. The President was evidently
considering some far-reaching proposal, and Weed wanted to be sure to con-
vey his best information. "The story that is making the rounds," he said at
last, "is that the Peace Democrats in New York and the West would be
willing to let the South secede. Then what's left of the Union would split up,
with New York and the West joining the South in 'the old Union as it was,'
and letting the abolitionists around Massachusetts have their own country."
"We've heard that story," said Seward. "Any truth in it?"
Weed shook his head. "Not as far as Seymour is concerned. I think he
would resist that, and he's the one Democrat capable of resisting it success-
fully. He's pledged to hold the Union together, in all its sections, and I think
he'd stick to that. Not with abolition, though."
Lincoln nodded agreement of that assessment. Seward seemed to wait for
the President to say something and, when he did not, added a fact to what
little Weed knew about secret communication between the opposing parties.
"Our Democratic friend in New York, Barlow," said Seward, "sent a man in
to see the President not long ago. We assume it was with Seymour's knowl-
edge."
"Sam Barlow is a powerful Democrat." Weed did not add he was the man
trying to persuade George McClellan to run for President on the Democratic
ticket in 1864.
"He wanted the President to abate his emancipation policy, which Lincoln
declined to do, but Barlow's man was told that military law might be made to
relent if some national unity could be achieved." Weed knew instantly what
Seward was getting at. Lincoln, with his own party split, wanted to blur the
partisan lines between Democrats and Republicans.
"I said that issues are swept away so fast by overtopping events," Lincoln
put in, "that no political party will have time to mature until after the war."
Having said that, Lincoln rose and went to the fireplace, poked the logs
with a black fire iron until the flames shot up.
"Governor Seymour has greater power just now for good," said the Presi-
dent matter-of-factly, "than any other man in the country."
"More than you, Lincoln?" asked Seward, giving Weed the impression that
the two of them had gone through this before.
"Yes. Governor Seymour can wheel the Democratic Party into line, and,
because of that, he has the ability to put down the rebellion and preserve the
government."
Long pause, deep sigh, and Lincoln took the plunge. "Weed, tell Seymour
for me that if he will render this service to his country, I shall cheerfully
make way for him as my successor."
Weed always thought that he himself had as good a poker face as any man,
but that offer caused his jaw to drop. For someone already in the presidency
to stand aside for another was the ultimate political sacrifice.
The Albany politician knew how Lincoln had longed to be the first Presi-
dent since Jackson to achieve reelection. And although the war news was
dreadful and the party split, Lincoln had just demonstrated he was not the
sort to fear Chase's bid for the Republican nomination in 1864. Nor was
Lincoln the sort to worry about beating McClellan or whoever the Democrats
put up against him in the next election. Weed assumed that Lincoln felt in his
bones he could take on one after the other and win.
"However stunned my partner may look, Lincoln," Seward was saying,
"the irony of the moment is not lost upon him. Only this summer a cabal in
your Cabinet tried to seize power from you, an aborted undertaking that I am
sure you knew about as well as I, and that was turned aside. A few months
ago the military was on the verge of installing their beloved 'Young Napo-
leon' in your office, and somehow that never materialized. And only yester-
day your party in the Senate gathered its forces in great array and assaulted
your presidency, to no avail. If nothing else, you have proved you cannot be
dislodged."
"And yet," Weed concluded, "having won all those battles over those who
would replace you, you are now prepared to renounce your right to run for
reelection."
"Beyond that," said Seward, delighting in the scheme's daring, "he is pre-
pared to support the leader of the opposition party. That is something this
republic has never seen. In effect, he is choosing his successor, because with
Lincoln's support, the Democrat could not lose."
Instinctively Weed shied away. "I don't like it. It would say to the world
that you cannot win the war without Seymour's help, and for that help you
are willing to pay anything. Everything."
Lincoln nodded slowly. His offer had not been lightly made.
"Come now, Thurlow, it need not say anything of the sort," Seward cau-
tioned. "The world need not know about it yet. The deal would be a gen-
tlemen's agreement known but to the three of us, and to Seymour. Complete
secrecy is essential."
"And if the proposition is declined?" Weed did not want to rush into such
an unprecedented scheme. The Republican Party was only six years old and
this would surely finish it.
"If Seymour declines," said Seward airily, "and I cannot imagine that any
man in his right mind would decline, then we must be in a position to deny
that the offer was ever made. That is why the President has chosen the most
discreet political person in the nation for this assignment."
Weed remembered the day, thirty years before, when he rose to make his
first speech in the New York State Assembly. He had found himself unable to
talkhe was literally speechlessand in his humiliation and chagrin had
vowed never to seek public office or make a public speech again for the rest of
his life. He took that vow because he saw no other course open to him. But
Lincoln, a most resilient political man who had rebounded from defeat to the
House and defeat to the Senate, did not have to undertake an act of political
self-immolation.
"There is another way," Weed said quickly. "Sweep Chase and Stanton and
the other ultras out of your administration and rally the conservative Repub-
licans. Bring back McClellan and dare Wade to impeach you. Give in to the
Democrats on the arrests, and delay your emancipation edict until you can
get a couple of Confederate states to adopt your December proposal"
Lincoln shook his head. Weed looked to Seward, who could not possibly go
along with this final crushing of any hopes left to him to be President one day.
Seward said only, "It's a sacrifice. But it is Lincoln's considered judgment
that only an alliance with Seymour and his peace movement will preserve the
Union, and he is prepared to sacrifice anything for that."
"The conditions are substantially these," said Lincoln, getting specific
about his offer and passing a quill and inkwell across the table to Weed to
write them down. "Governor Seymour is to withdraw his opposition to the
draft. Second, he is to use his authority and influence as governor in putting
down any riots in New York against the war." He slowed down to let Weed's
writing catch up. "Finally, the Governor of New York is to cooperate in all
reasonable ways, including recruitment and financial assistance, with the Ad-
ministration in the suppression of the Southern rebellion."
That, the Albany editor calculated, was asking a lot of Horatio Seymour.
On the other hand, Lincoln was offering even morenothing less than the
presidency in 1864. The proposition boasted a symmetry of conflicting inter-
ests required for a sweeping political deal.
If Seymour went for it, the arrangement would certainly sustain a war of
any length to maintain the Union. A reduction of partisanship in the North
would surely discourage the leaders of the South, who were counting on
rising internal bickering in the North to lead to war weariness and pressure to
let the "wayward sisters" depart. No chance of that if Lincoln and Seymour
came to an understanding about resolute prosecution of the war through this
presidential term and the next as well.
"Seymour will accept, won't he?" Seward was trying to sound certain.
Weed put himself in Seymour's shoes, anticipating the governor-elect's
questions when the proposition was put to him. "Does this mean he would
have to go along with your suspension of habeas corpus in New York?"
Seward nodded. "As the President said, he would be committed to cooper-
ate in all reasonable ways with the Administration's suppression of the rebel-
lion."
That meant yes. The only leeway Weed was being given in the negotiation
was in that hint sent to Barlow that, by degrees, the military edict of emanci-
pation might be made into the gradual, compensated sort that Lincoln had
long espoused. His instructions were clear enough, but Weed wanted to be
absolutely sure before undertaking such a far-reaching political mission that
Lincoln was not acting as a result of depression or miscalculation.
"Perhaps you are unduly shocked by the catastrophe at Fredericksburg,"
he wondered aloud. "It is true that we lost half again as many men as the
enemy, and such bloodshfed is being laid directly at your door. Still, there
have been bloody battles before"
Lincoln shook his head; that was not the problem. "If the same battle were
to be fought over again, every day, through a week of days," the President
said dispassionately, "the army under Lee would be wiped out to its last man,
the Army of the Potomac would still be a mighty host, the war would be
over, the Confederacy gone."
Seward uncrossed his legs uncomfortably and crossed them again at such a
cold-blooded assessment of the carnage, but Lincoln went on: "No general
yet found can face the arithmetic, but the end of the war will be at hand when
he shall be discovered."
Weed had his answer. Lincoln was making this political decision clearhead-
edly, and was not panicked at the news of staggering military losses. He was
prepared to accept the sacrifice of tens of thousands of men to foil secession; it
should not be surprising that he was prepared to make a personal poUtical
sacrifice for the same end.
"I will put the proposition to him," said Weed finally.
"See if you can get Seymour to come down here," said Seward, "this week,
right after Christmas, well before his inauguration." And before any procla-
mation on New Year's Day, Weed understood. "Put it to him at one of your
breakfasts at Willard's, and then if he shows interest, bring him to the Man-
sion."
Lincoln directed Lamon to take Weed to the telegraph office across the
street, to see that his message of urgent summons was sent immediately to
Seymour, and to await a reply.
Weed followed the burly marshal to the War Department. He composed a
telegraph message to Seymour at his temporary office in Albany, where the
Governor-elect was preparing his inaugural address and choosing a Cabinet.
The telegraph operator, a young fellow who, Lamon attested, was entirely
discreetwhich meant he would not show the message to Stantonput the
message through without delay. It called on Seymour to come to consult with
Weed in Washington on a matter of the utmost urgency. Seymour would
know that meant the President wanted him to know something that could not
be sent in writing. Weed added that he awaited a reply at the telegraph office
in the War Department.
A half hour later, the return message came through. Bates handed it to
him. Weed read it and frowned. "Seymour says the distance from Albany to
Washington is the same as from Washington to Albany," he muttered to
Lamon. "I'll have to go see him there." He consulted the watch in his pocket.
"We can catch the noon train to New York."
"The noon train will leave for New York as soon as we get to the station,"
said Lamon. Weed grunted his assent; that was presidential service.
CHAPTER 39
THE PREACHER BRECKINRIDGE
Anna Carroll, on the river steamer Charlie Bowens from Memphis up to
Louisville, consulted her list of things to do.
Get paid for her three pamphlets. That was always at the top of the list and
was never crossed off. It amounted to $6,250 and Stanton's man at the War
Department had told her the most they could pay without a warrant from
Congress was $750. Could she take that without giving up her claim to the
rest? She did not want to think about that now.
Memorial about Vicksburg. She was certain that the Confederate fort
maintaining control of the Lower Mississippi was the single most important
military objective of the war. She would write Lincoln about ignoring the
river fortifications, abandoning all the costly and impractical plans for a wa-
terside assault on the fort overlooking the river, and taking Vicksburg by land
from the rear.
The third item was colonization. That project, duly authorized and con-
tracted for, was the excuse for her current travels. With emancipation loom-
ing, the President wanted a report extolling the prospects for negroes in
Panama. Some felt Lincoln was insincere about this, and Seward certainly
had not helped matters with his abject acquiescence to the protests of Nicara-
gua, Honduras, and New Granada, who did not want an exodus of blacks in
their direction. But to her mind, and to Lincoln's, there remained the clear
need for evidence of serious activity to ship the future freedmen to more
congenial climes. She liked that phrase, "congenial climes"; it implied that
the temperate zone of North America was uncongenial to blacks. In further-
ance of that, she was soon to see the Reverend Robert J. Breckinridge, the
senior agent of the American Colonization Society, a voluntary organization
that had been doing successfully in Liberia what Lincoln hoped could be done
in Central America.
The next item, listed as "boy alive?" was one she could also discuss with
the Breckinridge who was a Presbyterian minister. She had known him as
Reverend Bob all her life. Twenty years ago, when he was preaching in
Maryland, Anna had taken to him all her adolescent fears. Through her
formative years, before his return to his native Kentucky, he had been her
spiritual adviser. Nobody, not even her governor-father, had been closer to
her or more of an inspiration. Robert Breckinridge had been the first of a line
of much older men who had profoundly attracted her, and while there had
been no romance between the preacher and the girl just beginning to stand in
her own shoes, she had daydreamed about him as husband or lover. Years
later, when his tall nephew John was elected to Congress, the Reverend Bob
had commended the young politician to her; then the impossible daydreams
of her youth had been redeemed in another Breckinridge.
The Reverend Bob met her at the landing in Cairo, Illinois, at the junction
of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, to drive her in his carriage to his house in
nearby Paducah, Kentucky. At dockside were nearly five hundred "contra-
bands." The word had been coined by Ben Butler to make legitimate the
freeing of runaway slaves and was now used in sarcasm to describe all newly
free blacks. They sat in the rain, in four rows, wearing leg-irons but otherwise
unchained, awaiting official permission to enter. They were ragged, silent,
soaked, and shaking in the cold; many seemed ill. Anna knew that a month
before, Illinois voters, fearful of losing their jobs to workers who would take
any wage an employer offered, had passed a law to prevent the admission of
more free negroes into the state. When the Federal military authorities ig-
nored the state law, forcing Illinoisans to accept what many feared would be a
wave of black migration, Lincoln's popularity had plummeted in his home
state. Not even a man known to be one of his closest friends could carry
Lincoln's old congressional district.
She had not expected the radical change in Robert Breckinridge's appear-
ance; the twenty years had "whitened his hair and wizened his face. They rode
through the freezing rain almost as strangers. In bringing each other up to
date on mutual friends, some long dead, he alluded to the special pain being
felt in the Breckinridge family, split like their state into rebels and loyalists.
He did not mention his nephew John, and she, though hungry for news about
the man who so moved and infuriated her, felt it wiser not to ask.
At home, at a table in front of the great iron stove throwing off heat in the
kitchen of the well-to-do preacher, the aging Breckinridge went to the heart
of her ostensible reason for visiting him: "Colonization won't work."
"I just cannot understand that, coming from you," she said. "Your society
started work colonizing Liberia forty years ago. You raised the money to buy
slaves, set them free, and gave them a new life in Africa." When he shook his
head, no, she pressed: "In his annual message a few weeks ago, the President
praised the achievements of the Liberians, and only last week, he signed the
treaty recognizing Liberia as an independent nation. You have every reason,
especially now, to be proud of your life's work."
"Did you manumit your own slaves, Anna?"
"I did, and raised the money to buy the freedom of those who were mort-
gaged. You were the one who inspired me to do that, by the example you set."
And I'm still trying to pay those debts, she added to herself.
"Did the slaves you freed want to go to Liberia, or Chiriqui, or Hayti?"
"Well, no, they had family in Maryland, and"
"Forty years the Society has been colonizing Liberia, and do you know
what we have to show for it? Maybe three thousand colonists, total."
"That's a beginning."
"That's the end. Those were people who were often savagely mistreated
here, who had reason to hate their lives in America. They took colonization
as the only hope of escape from unspeakable cruelty. But the slaves being
emancipated now will be free here in America. What reasons do they have to
rip up their roots and go across an ocean to find heaven knows what?"
She would not crumble in the face of that experience. Colonization had to
be made to work. "The reasons would be to find work and to have a land of
their own."
"White men's promises. Anna, I've seen what it is like, over a lifetime, to
move a mere three thousand people from slavery here to freedom there." He
leaned forward and held up three fingers. "You're talking about moving three
or four million or morea thousand times as manyfrom freedom here to
possible starvation overseas. It is impossible. And once you understand that,
as the President must, then to raise the hopes of frightened whites that the
objects of their fear are going to vanish overnightthat is hypocritical."
"And if a little hypocrisy makes it easier to end a great crime and cruelty,
is that hypocrisy such a great sin?"
Anna surprised herself with that retort; as a girl, she had taken instruction
from him with absolute faith. Their relationship had changed, his unques-
tioned authority was gone; she felt no guilt for anything she was doing, from
justifying the extension of the President's war powers to persuading conserva-
tives that colonization was a solution. She knew what side she was on.
"The means, Anna, have a way of becoming the ends."
"Now you sound like your nephew." That was cruel, and she wished she
could recall the words when she saw the pain in the eyes of her old mentor.
"My nephew is a traitor to his country," he said finally, "and I am not."
She hastened to assure him that many in Washington knew of Robert
Breckinridge's staunch loyalty to the Union, and of the way he led his branch
of the family to outspoken support of Lincoln in a state inclined toward the
Peace Democrats. "And even though my pamphlet A Reply to Breckinridge
reduced the position of your nephew to dust and ashes, I made it clear to
everyone that many members of the Breckinridge clan were patriots." That
was true; she hoped he would believe it. Nor, for that matter, had she
dreamed that her widely read paper would contribute to the Senate passion
that resulted in the expulsion of John Breckinridge from that body, branding
him a traitor who would deserve a death sentence.
"Compose your soul, my dear girl. I know how fiercely you oppose my
nephew's views, as I do." He adjusted his spectacles and looked directly at
her. "But I also know how you feel about John himself."
That made her wonder if Breck had said anything to his uncle about the
depth of their friendship. Not likely. The nephew knew that Robert Breckin-
ridge was a stern moralist who would be angered by any relationship between
a married man and an unmarried woman, especially if they were his favorite
nephew and his spiritual ward. Anna was certain that nobody suspected any
attachment of any kindespecially after her attack on him in printyet the
old man seemed serenely confident that she shared his closeness to, and fond-
ness for, Breckinridge the traitor.
"I have been in touch with my young niece, Margaret," he explained. "She
told me of your mutual quest."
That was it; Anna's concern subsided. If Breck's missing son had not been
killed, there was a chance that he would have assumed another name in the
Union prison camps. At the War Department, Anna had scoured the lists for
the name Cabell, which she judged would be the most likely last name taken
by General Breckinridge's son. She had found a prisoner named Cabell listed
as being held at the Johnson's Island prison in Lake Erie.
"I needed the help of someone who would recognize the boy," she ex-
plained, "and someone who could move through the horror of those prison
camps without fainting."
Margaret Breckinridge, in her early twenties now, had always been a gen-
tie, frail young woman, but unlike any in her Kentucky family, she was a
burning abolitionist. Her anger at slavery drove her to do as a field nurse
what most women found too nauseating, and Anna admired that. "My old
friend John Dix has been most helpful, as has Mary Livermore." Anna had
fallen into the habit of mentioning the names of important people who would
do favors for her. She knew it was a bad habit, but she did not have so many,
and this one gave her pleasure. She hoped he knew that General Dix was in
charge of prisoner exchange, and that Mary Livermore headed the army
nurses in the Sanitary Commission. "Have you heard from Margaret?"
"Not for weeks. But you've given us hope," he added, "and perhaps the
family grapevine has passed that hope along to John and his wife, who must
be suffering."
"What news of your nephew?" She tried to make the question sound ca-
sual, not only to conceal the depth of her own interest, but also because she
was aware that a family's communication with traitorous members often led
to charges of treason. Mary Lincoln had not been able to mourn a nephew's
death.
Reverend Bob reached over to the sink, pulled a couple of newspapers off
the counter and pushed them across the table. "Louisville Journal says he was
in Murfreesboro, with Jeff Davis, not long ago, celebrating Colonel Morgan's
wedding. Now Morgan and his raiders are doing their own celebrating, driv-
ing up this way burning and looting, and making Grant look helpless."
Anna felt a sense of dread. At the War Department, she had heard Halleck
and Stanton talking about an attack by Rosecrans in Tennessee. That would
be against Bragg and Breckinridge, now devoid of eyes and ears as their
cavalry went off marauding, delighting the hearts of copperheads. If Breck
went into battle believing his cause was lost and his son was dead, he might
well ride at the head of some suicidal charge and throw his life away. She
read the newspaper article to the end. "What a waste," she sighed. "John
Breckinridge could have been President one day."
"If the South wins," said his uncle bitterly, "he may yet be. But not of the
United States."
"Why did he go wrong? Breck always said he stood firm for the Union, and
I believed him."
"He was against disunion, Anna. Probably still is."
She shook her head, uncomprehending. "Then is he weak, or stupid? He's
not fighting for slavery, he told me as much. And he's not fighting for inde-
pendence, because he believes in one nation. What is he fighting for? Ken-
tucky? Kentucky stayed in the Union. He seems to be fighting for the sake of
fighting, just because his friends are fighting, but he's a man who hates to
fight. Can you figure it out?"
"Did he tell you about his arguments with Lincoln, at the tea table, last
year in the White House?"
She nodded wearily. "Yes. After every one, he recited the entire debate,
both sides. And the more Breck described them, the more I agreed with
Lincoln."
"Why? What persuaded you?"
"Lincoln had one single, great, overriding purpose: to prevent disunion. He
was and is absolutely clear about that. Remember when Lincoln wrote the
letter to Greeley? He wrote that if he could save the Union by not freeing a
single slave, he would do it, and if he could save the Union by freeing all the
slaves, he would do it. Well, the abolitionists pretend now that he didn't really
mean that, he was only teasing Greeley, that he's really been for emancipa-
tion from the start. But the fact isLincoln was telling the truth. That's the
way he thinks."
"I'm told he favors black freedom."
She waved that aside. "That's not the point. He'll stretch the Constitution,
he'll usurp the power of Congress and the courts, he'll change the system
from a collection of states to a national power, he will free or not free the
slaves, he'll grab at every idea I can make up to justify greater war powers, all
to one purpose: to block forever the ability of a minority to break up the
Union."
"You make it seem his obsession, Anna."
She bobbed her head up and down; Lincoln was surely a man possessed by
a single idea. "What else is democracy but majority rule? If secession suc-
ceeds, the majority does not rule. If democracy fails here, it will fail every-
where. Lincoln sees that, and he is willing to do anything to defend it."
"Any means."
"Yes, any means, including getting us all killed. Emancipation is a means, a
military means, to save the Union. He makes no bones about that. He may be
wrong, of courseThurlow Weed and the Biairs think emancipation is a
means to losing the warbut his purpose is pure, clear, unwavering. That's
why I am with him." The logical extension of that occurred to her, and she
spoke it aloud: "John Breckinridge was never able to say what his purpose
was, except to complain about the way Lincoln was doing what he was sworn
to do."
She tried to remember Breck's central theme, and could not; the Ken-
tuckian was complex, tortured, halting, uncertain, a Hamlet who could never
be king. Yet John Breckinridge was no Fillmore, certainly no Buchanan; he
inspired others with confidence in his judgment; he held his own with the best
in debate. It stung her to be so drawn to a man who could not clearly identify
his cause, as Lincoln did, even when Lincoln had to cloak the cause of union
in the garment of emancipation.
"Let me explain something about the family," said the preacher. "Do you
remember my middle name?"
The Reverend Robert J. Breckinridge. "Jefferson," she remembered.
"My fatherJohn's grandfather and namesakewas allied with Jefferson
against John Adams and the Federalists. Jefferson and Breckinridge despised
the notion of a powerful central government, believing it would subvert the
people's freedom."
She shook her head. "A strong executive need not endanger any freedom."
"But in their lifetime, Anna, it did. In a time of great anger and loud
dissent, President Adams proposed and the Congress passed the Alien and
Sedition acts. A citizen could not criticize the government. In the name of
preserving the public order, tyranny took root. At that moment, the first John
Breckinridge put forward the Kentucky Resolutions, challenging and in effect
nullifying the national government's odious attack on the Bill of Rights. He
got away with it. And ultimately the Alien and Sedition acts withered and
died."
He walked to the comer of the kitchen, drew out a ladleful of water, put it
in a pan with ground coffee beans, and set it on the stove. "That was our
proudest moment, but let me tell you a family secret, something my nephew
John doesn't know. His grandfather never wrote those resolutions; he
couldn't write that eloquently."
"Jefferson wrote them?"
"Exactly. And later, when Jefferson became President, he made the so-
called author of those Kentucky Resolutions his Attorney General. So this
Breckinridge family is bred to the bone in the tradition of Jefferson's democ-
racy, in the revulsion toward what you call a 'strong executive' and what we
call a tyrant."
With an effort of will, she did not respond; it was more important, this time
at least, to understand than to refute.
"To young John, the way that a government governs, especially in an
emergency, determines the kind of government it will always be. The proce-
dure is sacred, the Constitution is a covenant. When anybody abuses that
covenant, for whatever endeven when it seems to be for the noble end of
saving the nation's life itselfthen the government has broken faith with the
people."
That was enough; that was sophistry. "There is a commandment that goes,
'Thou shalt not kill,' but murder is permissible before God in self-defense,"
she responded. "That is what secession isthe murder of a nationand
Lincoln's war is self-defense."
"Of course, you're right, my dear Anna," Robert Breckinridge assured her.
He was, after all, a loyal Union man. "But I thought you wanted to know
why John, who has never drawn a traitorous breath in his life, took the path
that we all know to be treason."
She nodded. She was thinking less of the argument than of his evocation of
the family lines. The Carrolls of Maryland included John Carroll, first bishop
and archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States; his
cousin was said to be the richest man in America, the only man to put his
address next to his signature on the Declaration of Independence"Charles
Carroll of Carrollton"so the king would know where to get him if the
revolution failed. Charles Carroll served in the first Federal Congress as
Maryland's senator and later became a sponsor of Henry Clay; her father
became, as if by right, governor of the state. She knew that the Breckinridges
could claim nearly as proud a heritage in the formation of the country. What
a lost opportunity that two such clans could never be joined. She amended
that thought quickly; in a way, they were joined, in a bond that she would not
allow to weaken between her and both the loyal and disloyal Breckinridges.
Reverend Bob did not relent. "John saw the arrest of the Maryland legisla-
tors, the closing of the Kentucky newspapers, the presidential suspension of
habeas corpus, the jailing of protesters, and he judged that the Union was
being saved at the expense of the people's liberty. He thought that was too
great a price to pay, and he refused. Others in the South and in the border
states refused for ignoble reasonsfor slavery, for separation, for spite, for
the foolish glory of battleand they tarnished his cause. I cannot forgive my
nephew for becoming a traitor, but I can understand why he did it. I fight
him, and I suffer with him, and I grieve for him."
"I love that man," Anna heard herself say. She added, ". . . as I love you
and as I love Ben Wade. But I will not suffer for him. Wrong is wrong, and he
chose the wrong side." That said, she continued, "And if you should see him
again, or be in touch with him in some lawful way, tell him I said that. All of
it, the loving him too. The truth is, I miss him, and you."
The preacher nodded and began to make the sounds of ministerial comfort,
but Anna's attention turned to the newspapers on the table. Rosecrans was
advancing on Bragg and Breckinridge south of Nashville; they could be suck-
ing Rosecrans into a trap, and if the Union army in Tennessee suffered the
same kind of defeat inflicted on Bumside in Virginia, Lincoln would have to
either settle the war or agree to the appointment of a dictator. Her eyes fixed
on a headline in the newspaper about Israelites. She asked, "What's this
about Jews here in Paducah?"
"It's a terrible thing Grant is doing," said the Presbyterian minister.
"Throwing them out of here, where families have been for generations
Cincinnati, Louisville, all the way downriver from Cairo to Memphis."
"What's the reason?" She knew Stanton's War Department, and suspected
the reason.
"The predations of the few, taken out on the many," said the Reverend
Breckinridge. "The classic scapegoat people. A friend of mine, an Israelite,
asked for a day's time to sell his belongings, but Grant's headquarters said no.
They confiscated his things and put him and his family on a wagon out of
town. The only Jews left in Paducah are in the hospitals, because they cannot
easily be moved, but I wouldn't give much for their chances of staying long
either. I hope you won't think me disloyal, Anna, but it's a disgrace."
Anna looked at the newspaper masthead: the Louisville Democrat, the pa-
per that took over the presses when the Courier was closed down for being
pro-secesh. She read aloud: "It says 'the Order is certainly the most extraor-
dinary, unwarrantable order we have ever heard ofthat is a Peace Demo-
crat paper, isn't it?"
"Yes, but look at the Journal. It's Republican." He pushed the paper across
the table to her. "Look: 'How many thousand patriotic soldiers of Jewish
descent have laid down their lives upon the altar of this country? And is this
miserable, ungrateful order to be the price of their blood?' That's from a pro-
Union, pro-Lincoln editor."
"You can imagine what Seymour and the copperheads will do with some-
thing like this," she observed. She did not say what she knew: that Grant and
Sherman were not alone in this sweeping decision, but that Halleck and
perhaps Stanton had been encouraging them to go ahead with the policy. It
would surely be taken by them as more evidence that the Constitution was
being flouted by the Administration, that the war was corrupting the Union,
and all the old Breckinridge arguments. Anna was sure that this had been
slipped past Lincoln, much as some military orders on emancipation were put
forward by generals in the field stimulated by mischievous politicians.
"What was the price of cotton," she asked, "when Grant's order went into
effect?"
"Forty cents a pound. I wouldn't ordinarily know that, Anna, but it was
widely remarked that the next day the Army lowered the price to twenty-five
cents a pound."
"Meaning the Jewish cotton traders had to dump their supplies immedi-
ately, at a ruinous loss. Somebody must have made a lot of money on this."
"I hadn't thought of that. I was more concerned with the moral corruption
of stigmatizing all the practitioners of one religion. It's not right. These peo-
ple are Kentuckians."
"What are they doing about it?"
"I hear the Kaskel brothers, the merchants in Paducah and Cincinnati,
have set out to see Congressman Gurley in Washington. I don't think they
have much hope for changing the policy. Lincoln would not want to counter-
mand an order of Grant's, would he? Grant is the only Union general who
seems to win. If Lincoln can put up with his carousing, he can put up with
this."
Grant's Jew Order would have repercussions in New York, she thought;
the newly elected governor, a Peace Democrat, would seize on the issue.
Unless the President reversed this policy quickly, real damage could be done
by all those who delighted in calling him a dictator for the arrests and his
seizure of property with the emancipation edict. But wouldn't Stanton and
Halleck at the War Department resist the embarrassment of a commander in
the field? The last time Lincoln forced a general to rescind an order, it had led
to the Fr6mont uproar.
"Your friends the Kaskels should go directly to Lincoln," she advised.
"This is surely a surprise to him. He won't put up with it."
He fidgeted in his chair, the way he had when she was a girl and he was
trying to think of a way to come to a sensitive personal subject.
She knew what he wanted to know. "And what of you, my dear," she said
in a mock-deep preacher's voice, "why is it that you never married?"
He stopped squirming and beamed. "I would never have asked that. But
now that you brought it up, are you happy, Anna? Are you the woman you
wanted to be when we used to talk at Kingston Hall?"
"What you want to know," she answered crisply but not unkindly, "is: Can
a woman be happy and fulfilled without a husband, without children, without
a real home and roots? Is it enough to be successful and respected, and
listened to on important matters by important men, and financially indepen-
dent?" She threw that last item in, not because it was true, but to round out
the question.
The preacher smiled. "What I sought to know was only what I asked, but I
am also interested in the answer you want to give to the question you have
often asked yourself."
"Life is incomplete without a partner, no denying that, for a woman even
more than a man." Having granted that, at this point in her prepared answer,
she was to have made a strong case for standing in your own shoes, but she
found herself going on into what she had never let herself think aloud.
"I get lonely. And most of the time I wish there was somebody to stand up
for menot part-time like Ben Wade, but all the time. And I know this
sounds silly, but I'm little. I'm a small person, I get jostled in crowds, and I
am frightened on the streets at night, so being alone is a real problem, a
physical problem."
She told herself to stop before she mentioned other physical problems.
Reverend Bob helped with a question that directed her to specifics. "But
you've known some men well, I'm sure. A woman of your attraction cannot
have been alone always. The choice of singleness was yours, was it not?"
"I am my father's daughter," she asserted, "and there are not many men
like Governor Carroll. The kind of men who interested me, who still do, are
engaged in great enterprises."
"Important men."
"Men in important jobs, I've found, are not always important men." She
thought of presidents Fillmore and Buchanan. "Nor are they prepared to
share the important part of their lives with their wives."
She thought of Lincoln, the only one of the three presidents she knew with
whom she had no personal relationship, but who treated her with a mixture
of condescension and affection. Then the tall figure of Chase loomed in her
mind. "Recently I thought there was one man who needed me for what only I
have to offer: political sagacity, powerful contacts, and a zest for accomplish-
ment."
"As well as an upright moral character."
"Yes," she nodded, breathing deep, "and a good figger, too."
"And what happened to him?"
She groped for a way to put it. "He married for money." She laughed at
that. "Look, Reverend Bob, you know me, I'm still the same free-minded
woman you saw when I was such a trial to the family. I'm a lot happier living
the independent life, standing in my own two shoes, doing man's work in a
man's world, than if I had to be the sweet Maryland belle in the house of a
domineering man."
"Pity it has to be that choice," he said, and put his finger on the problem:
"The time is out of joint, as Hamlet said."
"There may come a time for an upstart, disrespectful, pushing, smart
woman next to a great man," she said.
"You're not that way, Anna."
"And now," she said with a sudden rush of savage honesty, "you want to
know if your nephew and I have ever been in love, and if I had illicit relations
with a happily married man younger than myself, and if we ever think of each
other as anything but loyalist and traitor"
He put up his hands in horror. "Sometimes you are that way, Anna!"
CHAPTER 40
JOHN HAY'S DIARY
DECEMBER 28, 1862
Talk about tempests in teapots. You might think, with a battle we cannot
afford to lose shaping up in Tennessee, and with Senators Sumner and Brow-
ning in and out of here every day telling the Tycoon to sign or not to sign the
final emancipation edict, that trivialities would be brushed aside. But the
whole of this dark and bitterly cold morning was spent pouring soothing
syrup over the sensibilities of people in a snit about offenses committed by our
generals in the fieldofficers who are, after all, trying to protect their backs
as they face the enemy.
Our esteemed Attorney General, Mr. Bates, brought in a Missouri constit-
uent, the irate pastor of a Presbyterian church in St. Louis, who had been
kicked out of the state by the occupying military for his sympathy with the
rebellion.
"Here is a military order from General Curtis," said Bates, because his
friend the Reverend MePheters was too sputteringly outraged to know where
to begin, "exiling this clergyman to the South because he is a Southern sym-
pathizer."
"True?" Lincoln, reading the order, asked the man, who was purpling
before our eyes.
"I have signed the Union loyalty oath, as required. I have constantly
prayed in church for the President and the government, just as I did before
the war. It is my position that my personal sympathies are none of the gov-
ernment's business."
The Tycoon did not dispute that. "I don't see that anything specific is
alleged against you. The charges here are all generalthat you have a rebel
wife and rebel relations, that you sympathize with rebels, that you exercise
rebel influence, whatever that means."
"Some Lincoln men in my parish demanded that General Curtis do some-
thing about a churchman who dared to express his yearnings for peace,"
MePheters charged.
"Frankly, I believe this fellow does sympathize with the rebels," the Prsdt
said to Bates, "but the question remains whether such a man, who cannot be
charged with violating his oath, can be exiled upon the suspicion of his secret
sympathies."
"My opinion is that he cannot, on those grounds," said the Attorney Gen-
eral.
Lincoln agreed, and said he would write to General Curtis suspending the
order. He did not go so far as to revoke the military order, but the general
would catch the President's drift. "The U.S. Government must not undertake
to run the churches," Lincoln said. "Let the churches take care of them-
selves."
Our Presbyterian friend left satisfied. Bates remained behind a moment to
submit his written opinion on a proposal, pushed through the Congress by the
Jacobins, to split off the northwestern part of Virginiawhich we now oc-
cupyand admit it to the Union as a separate state. At the instigation of
Bates, Lincoln had asked each member of the Cabinet to submit written
recommendations on this thumb in the eye to General Lee and his ilk. The
Prsdt is especially anxious this week to impress the Senate with how thor-
oughly he consults the Cabinet. I imagine Chase and Stanton will be asked for
more paperwork than they bargained for, and they might not like going on
the record with every opinion.
"I advise a veto of the bill," said Bates. "I understand that Blair and Welles
agree."
True, the three conservatives in the Cabinet stand as one in not infuriating
the South with this punishment of Virginia. But I have the written opinions in
hand of Chase and Stanton, who most vociferously urge the signing of the
legislation setting up a new state of West Virginia. Seward, who knows he is
hanging on to his job by a thread and cannot further offend the radicals, will
side with Chase and Stanton. And Caleb Smith, stumbling out of the Cabinet
to a judgeship next week, has no opinion. That leaves the vote in the Cabinet
three to three, which shows how it would be to run the Executive branch by
committee.
Lincoln will sign the bill if he decides to go ahead with the Proclamation.
That's because the bill admitting West Virginia has in it a requirement that
the state gradually emancipate all slaves within its new borders; no steady
abolition, no statehood. This week, the trick is to ameliorate the abolitionists,
who were rebuffed in their grab for power last week, while not riling up the
Peace Democrats, who fear the Edict of Freedom will prolong the war. The
business of soothing has become the be-all and end-all of government. He
must calm public sentiment at both extremes to keep the rocking ship of state
from capsizing.
"Public opinion is never spontaneous with the people," Bates retorted, "it
is always a manufactured article." When Lincoln looked interested at that
observation, one of the few original thoughts to come through that scraggly
beard for some time, Bates continued, "I would hope you not be overly
influenced by what some peoplewho claim to represent public opinion
might say if you vetoed West Virginia, or modified your Proclamation next
week."
"If I refused to issue that Proclamation," the Prsdt said, "there would be a
rebellion in the North, and a dictator placed over my head in a week." (The
latest radical candidates for dictator, I am told by a gossipy but ravishing
young woman who consoles me for my loss of Jephtha's daughter, are
"Beast" Butler and "Fighting Joe" Hooker; while the conservatives and
Democrats still like McNapoleon.)
"But these two blows at the South, taken together, will make negotiations
impossible," warned Bates. He was aware of a letter sent to Lincoln that week
from General McClernand in Illinois, reporting that a messenger from high
officers in the rebel army had approached him seeking the restoration of
peace. It's a good thing the Femando Wood crowd in New York were not in
touch with the McClernand people in the West to compare peace feelers, or
that both did not know of the probing that the Prsdt has permitted General
Banks in New Orleans. Such a comparison of notes would make it appear
that serious negotiation was in prospect, and that Seymour's honey would
attract more Southern flies than Lincoln's vinegar.
Ah, but now was the time for the hint in the other, more accommodating
direction. "Let the people of the South adopt systems of apprenticeship for
the colored people," the Prsdt said, tossing in that familiar half promise to
delay abolition, "conforming substantially to the most approved plans of
gradual emancipation. Then, with the aid they can have from the general
government, they may be nearly as well off, in respect to this, as if the present
trouble had not occurred."
An awe-inspiring straddle. To those anti-abolition Peace Democrats rock-
ing the boat because they want peace negotiations now, he offers subtle assur-
ances that emancipation means merely a nominal "freeing" of slaves in rebel
states who would then remain indentured apprentices until the end of the
century, with money paid to every slaveholder by the federal government for
property seized. Gentle evolution.
To those at the other extreme, the vindictive Jacobins who want to subju-
gate the damned secesh, he offers freedom for the slaves by virtue of military
necessity and a lopping-off of a huge chunk of disloyal Virginia. Radical
revolution.
And he is doing this balancing act at the moment of his greatest military
and political weakness. Something for everyone; nobody happy, but nobody
so unhappy as to bring about what the Tycoon likes to call the general
smashup. (Good name for a general.)
"I hope to stand firm enough not to go backward," he told Bates, "and yet
not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause." Bates left half-
satisfied, which is the most we can do for anybody.
However, the soothing of the Presbyterian minister with treason in his
heart, but only in his heart, was as nothing compared to the soothing needed
to calm the storm that was raised by the next delegation waiting in my
anteroom. General Grant, it seems, has the Hebrews upset. The Israelites,
offended by his policy of excluding them from his area of military operations,
have gone to the press and the Congress to complain.
"The New York Times calls this 'one of the deepest sensations of the war,' "
I told the President as I passed him the paper. Whatever has possessed such a
true-blue loyalist as Henry Raymond to run such stuff? His New York Times
has supported us staunchly even when Greeley wavered. But this editorial
borders on hysteria, perhaps reflecting the population of Israelites in that city,
which, I am told, numbers over ten thousand. "It is a humiliating reflection
that after the progress of liberal ideas even in the most despotic countries has
restored the Jews to civil and social rights, as members of a common human-
ity, it remained for the freest government on earth to witness a momentary
revival of the spirit of the medieval ages . . ."
A Rabbi Wise of Cincinnati had stirred up Ohio Congressmen, and a House
resolution was introduced by Congressmen Gurley and Vallandigham to cen-
sure Grant. Grant's sponsor, Washburne of Illinois, prevailed on Tad Stevens
to stop it on a close vote, 56 to 53. In the Senate, Powell of Kentucky was
angry at what had happened to his constituents in Paducah, and moved the
same resolution, which Sumner was able to table. The voting pulled over
Congressmen who ordinarily did not rise to the usual Seymour-Vallandigham
bait about arbitrary arrests. It gave the Peace Democrats a new weapon to
bludgeon us withreligious persecution.
I detect a delicious irony in all this, evidence of my advancing maturity.
There go Seymour and Vallandigham, who don't give a damn for the freedom
of blacks, taking up the cudgels for the rights of Jews. And there go Tad
Stevens and Charles Sumner, who want to abolish slavery and punish the
slaveholders, defending a general who treats Jews as having as few rights as
slaves. Says something about moralists.
Fortunately, the Prsdt was not on record as approving the Grant policy
banning Jews. We knew about it, of course, and turned a blind eye because the
cotton speculation was of real concern to Grant. When Stanton sent Charles
Dana down to Memphis, that roving Grant-watcher reported the corruption
of the army quartermaster corps was something fierce. I have his report here:
"Every colonel, captain, or quartermaster is in secret partnership with some
operator in cotton; every soldier dreams of adding a bale of cotton to his
monthly pay." Dana blamed Jews and Yankees for corrupting the military;
Grant has nothing against Yankees.
When Lincoln sent Zacharie, the foot doctor, down to New Orleans, he
referred to the "general prohibition" he knew to exist. Banks has the original,
and Zacharie has a copy of that letter, but they are good eggs and should
cause no trouble. It should not be hard to deny knowledge of the policy.
Certainly we did not know Grant was going to make a great public show out
of it. The only part of the policy that the Prsdt even tacitly approved had to
do with prohibition against entry of Hebrews, not expulsion of those Israelites
already in the area.
So here we are, with Congressman Gurley in the anteroom with Cesar
Kaskel, a merchant from Paducah. The Tycoon went out the door, greeted
them heartily with "I'm always glad to see my friends," and brought them in.
Kaskel is a tall fellow, not more than thirty, mustache and no beard, deep
voice, dignified, carries himself like a successful man. (Why isn't he in uni-
form? Why aren't I in uniform?) Quite a different sort from Zacharie, the
only other Hebrew I have ever met. The foot doctor is mercurial, filled with
visions and the excitement of being a presidential agent, eager to please. The
merchant is more distant, very serious, respectful but not obsequious.
"We sent you a telegraph message," Kaskel said after thanking the Presi-
dent for receiving him on short notice. "When we received no answer in
Paducah, my friends delegated me to come to the Congressman here, and Mr.
Gwley brought me to you."
Lincoln looked at me; I had received no telegraph message. Could it be that
it was not forwarded by the War Department? That outfit was not at all
happy with the reaction to Grant's order, especially since it had been issued
with the knowledge of some people here. Probably Halleck, maybe Stanton.
That's irritating; it is not for Stanton to decide which telegraph messages
addressed to the President to deliver. Censorship is supposed to go the other
way.
Kaskel laid on Lincoln's table documents from leading Kentucky citizens,
including the Reverend Robert J. Breckinridge (the loyal Breckinridge, who,
Anna Carroll thinks, should be the next senator from Kentucky), from Re-
publican leaders and military authorities, attesting to the patriotism and war
efforts of the Jews in Paducah.
As the President perused them, Kaskel read from the message that had not
been delivered: "General Orders No. 11 expels all Jews without distinction.
We feel greatly insulted and outraged by this inhuman order, the carrying out
of which would be the grossest violation of the Constitution." He cleared his
throat and went on. "The order places Jewish families as outlaws before the
world. We are loyal, respectable citizens, and pray for your effectual and
immediate interposition."
The Prsdt smiled. "And so the children of Israel were driven from the
happy land of Canaan?"
"Yes," said Kaskel, nicely picking up the biblical tone, "and that is why we
have come unto Father Abraham's bosom, asking protection."
"And this protection they shall have at once." Lincoln wasted no time
writing a short note to Halleck, directing him to telegraph instructions to
Grant to cancel the infamous General Orders No. II. "I don't like to see a
class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners," he added to
Kaskel, and told me to take Kaskel to General-in-Chief Halleck directly.
The Prsdt did not disclaim knowledge of Grant's policy, but he left the
impression that it all had been news to him, and added specifically that he felt
no prejudice against Israelites. The alacrity with which he acted to counter-
mand the order showed his understanding of the need to defuse this issue
before Seymour in New York or the Peace Democrats in Congress could turn
it into more of a cause c616bre.
I took Kaskel and Gurley down to Old Itchy Elbows, who pretended to
disbelieve that the order had ever been issued. Halleck looked at the paper
from Grant's headquarters as if it were a forgery, and wrote to Grant the
most begrudging recision imaginable. "A paper purporting to be General
Orders No. II, issued by you December 17, has been presented here. By its
terms, it expels all Jews from your department. If such an order has been
issued, it will be immediately revoked."
I gave a copy to Kaskel so he wouldn't be arrested on the way home. Later,
Halleck sent another message to Grant in apology, which he had to show us
since he laid the responsibility on Lincoln: "The President has no objection to
your expelling traitors and Jew peddlers, which, I suppose, was the object of
your order; but as it in terms proscribed an entire religious class, some of
whom are fighting in our ranks, the President deemed it necessary to revoke
it."
That Jew Order was impolitic of Grant, though I suppose he could be
excused for going ahead with the expulsion after nobody complained about
his general prohibition. They are a touchy bunch, the Israelites, and it seems
they have influence in the press and in the legislature beyond what might be
expected from their numbers. Grant's putting the policy in writing was the
bad thing; many understandings are better left unwritten.
Among the things not to be put in writing are communications between
this office and the leadership of the opposition party now taking office in New
York. The Ancient of Days has been playing his favorite game of shut-pan
with Nico and me on this subject, but something has been afoot with wily old
Thurlow Weed as intermediary.
I suspect this because Hill Lamon received a telegraph message delivered
personally by Bates across the street, an unusual procedure neatly circum-
venting Stanton, Nico and me. Lamon took it in to the Prsdt, who looked at
the paper, exploded with an expletive, crumpled it in his large hand, and
threw it angrily in the waste bucket. That was an uncommonly intemperate
response for the Tycoon. He doesn't react that way when we lose elections or
battles. Something of great moment had gone awry. Then he spent a couple of
hours on the draft of the final Proclamation, inclining me to think he will sign
it.
Later, after he had gone to dinner with the Hellcat, curiosity drove me to a
depth of snoopery that I rarely display. I fished around in the bucket next to
the Prsdt's desk and came up with a crumpled telegraph message that was so
cryptic it had needed no encoding:
"Proposition declined. Weed."
After dinner, Mayor Opdyke of New York, a Seymour supporter and gen-
eral political troublemaker, came by to see the Prsdt and made the mistake of
demanding Seward's removal. Lincoln is a man with a temper, but he usually
hides it; this time, he gave his temper full rein and literally threw the mayor
out of the office. That will offend the Seymour Democrats; the Prsdt suddenly
does not seem to care.
At the end of this strange day of smoothing-over and blowing-up, I asked
the Tycoon about General Sam Grant, whom he has never met. Alexander
McClure has been telling the story at dinner parties that when Grant's de-
tractors told Lincoln of Grant's drinking, the Prsdt replied, "Let me know
what brand ofwhiskey he drinks, and I'll send a barrel to my other generals."
Since I knew what the Prsdt's real response was when word came from a
trusted newspaper source that Grant was a drinker (he sent a worried query
to Congressman Washburne to find out how true the charge was) I asked the
Prsdt if send-the-others-a-barrel was a story he had told.
He shook his head and spoke with his accustomed expertness about humor.
"That's a hardy perennial, like most jokes. Dates back to King George III,
who was told that General Wolfe, in command of the English forces in Can-
ada, was stark raving mad. The king said he wished Wolfe would bite some of
his other generals."

CHAPTER 41
STONES RIVER

Bragg was still incensed. The night before, on the eve of a great battle, his
division commanders had refused to stop a display of maudlin sentimentality
that would surely erode the discipline and fighting spirit of the troops.
It had begun with "Yankee Doodle." General Rosecrans's Federal troops,
forty-five thousand of themover ten thousand more than the forces Bragg
could muster, thanks to the unfortunate decision President Davis made to
send men west to defend Vicksburgwere encamped the night before on the
north side of Stones River, just outside Murfreesboro. One of the bands, in
the cold and fog, began playing "Yankee Doodle." In return, one of the
Confederate bands replied by playing "Dixie's Land." Bragg was certain it
must have been under Breckinridge's command, since he was the leader of the
conspiracy to undermine Bragg's authority dating from the execution of the
Kentucky deserter. Then another Union band took up "Hail, Columbia," and
another on the Confederate side (too damned many men with instruments,
who would better serve carrying ammunition) played "The Bonnie Blue
Flag."
That sort of serenading was bad enough, revealing positions unnecessarily,
but when a band in blue played "Home, Sweet Home," the bands in gray had
joined in. Soldiers on both sides of the river could be heard bawling out the
emotional "Be it ever so hum-ble, there's no-o place like home." It was
enough to make a disciplinarian sick.
The battle would be won, he had decided then, by the army that attacked
first. Bragg estimated that the Union general, currying popularity as "Old
Rosey" with his troops, would probably allow his men breakfast before a
day's fighting. Accordingly, Bragg had ordered the attack at daybreak.
Before breakfast, with the first light showing over the Tennessee hills, he
sent Folk's and Hardee's divisions smashing into the Federal right. That was
twenty minutes ago; he could hear the guns and screams but did not have a
way to see the battle.
He held Breckinridge and his six thousand men in reserve. One reason was
that Bragg distrusted the fighting quality of the "orphans," supplemented by
the reluctant riffraff drafted in Kentucky. More to the point, but not to be
admitted to anyone, he placed Breckinridge as his reserve because Bragg was
confident of victory and did not want the Kentucky politician to share the
glory. If Breckinridge were so much as on the field of battle, Bragg was sure
the venal press would pour on him the sort of adulation ordinarily reserved
for Robert Lee, while the dogs of detraction would be loosed on Braxton
Bragg for not caring about the lives of his men.
Casualties would be heavy today. The months of maneuver were past. In
the present order of battle, little of consequence could be accomplished with-
out the expenditure of blood. He was glad that Jeff Davis understood that, if
few others did. Certainly the pack of whiners who were the general officers in
his command did not: "Bishop" Polk was an ass, "Old Reliable" Hardee
could be relied on to move sluggishly, and even the newly promoted fearless
Irishman, Clebume, had been spending all too much time with the chief
malcontent in the Confederate Army, Breckinridge. He trusted none of them;
if the army lost on this day, Bragg was quite prepared to blame the result on
his incompetent division commanders.
v He could not, however, find fault with what remained of his cavalry. Al-
though Forrest and Morgan had been sent elsewhere at Davis's orders, the
horsemen left behind under Joe Wheeler had ridden clear around the oncom-
ing Union Army, ripping up Rosecrans's communications, destroying his
supply and ammunition trains, and capturing enough guns and ammunition
to arm a brigade. His cavalry had returned in time to join the Confederate
attack on a Union Army whose commander mistakenly thought he had time
to take the offensive after breakfast.
A rider came up with good news. "The Federal right has caved, sir.
They've fallen back into a wedge-shape line, with the point at that round
forest. Hardee's been assaulting the point of the wedge but is taking heavy
casualties."
Bragg scowled. He would have to use Breckinridge on the other side to
divert the Union strength from the point. He sent an aide to order a modest
advance by the Kentucky and Alabama troops. In moments, the rider re-
turned with word from Breckinridge that he had been told by cavalry that a
strong force of the enemy was in his front.
The Kentucky politician was a damned coward, Bragg decided; he proba-
bly did not want to attack the Union Kentuckians under Crittenden, his
boyhood chum, facing him across Stones River. Bragg switched a couple of
Breckinridge's reserve brigades to Hardee for his attack on the Federal strong
point, which was resisting furiously in a rutted, wooded area offering good
protection for defenders. He sent word to Breckinridge to stay where he was.
Bragg decided that the round forest into which Union troops had been
forcedhis troops were calling it "Hell's Half Acre"had to be taken at any
cost. He watched as Hardee buried his men in, wave after wave throughout
the interminable afternoon, at more than acceptable loss of life on both sides,
without dislodging the Federals. One of his generalsCheatham, looking
red-faced and drunkshouted "Give 'em hell, boys!" every few moments,
and Bishop Polk, the prissy old fool, echoed with "Give 'em what General
Cheatham says, boys!"
Bragg then calculated that Breckinridge would be useful in wearing down
the salient before darkness closed in; no time for a victory today, but time for
mutual punishment. As Rosecrans began a Union counterattack from Hell's
Half Acre, Bragg ordered in Breckinridge and Cleburne to stop it. The "or-
phans" held together well enough, to Bragg's surprise, pushing the Federals
back into the cedars before stopping to regroup.
The Kentuckian came to him for permission to suspend the attack. On
Bragg's orders, the Kentucky brigades had been fed into the battle piecemeal
and had been chewed up one at a time. "The Federals are supported by
numerous batteries, and we have no artillery we can wheel in there," Breckin-
ridge reported. "Their lines have the protection of the railroad cut, forming
an excellent breastwork. I deem it reckless to continue."
Bragg shrugged his assent; the battle was won, the majority of the field in
Confederate hands, and he was just as glad that Breckinridge was not under-
taking anything heroic; better that he should be quoted in the reports as
having been overly cautious. By nightfall, the fog mingled with the smoke and
the darkness made further attacks impossible. He could permit the exhausted
men to bivouac.
"I expect the Yankees to abandon the field during the night," Bragg told
his commanders triumphantly. "I have notified Richmond that Rosecrans has
been driven from every position except his extreme left, and that tomorrow
our Army of Tennessee will present a great New Year's gift to the Confeder-
acy."
His commanders, characteristically, did not applaud or offer congratula-
tory toasts. Hardee looked disgusted, Polk exhausted, Cleburne glum. Breck-
inridge, probably still smarting at the loss of a few Kentucky conscriptshe
had fussed about legal niceties when Bragg had pressed them into service
made some remark about the screams of the wounded and his hopes of send-
ing out rescue and burial parties in the early morning. He had the temerity to
suggest that the Confederate commanders thought they had the battle won
after the first day at Shiloh.
Not one of the sorry lot caught what Bragg knew to be the significance of
his victory: it applied the crushing blow to Union hopes on the very weekend
before Lincoln's desperate proclamation of abolition on New Year's Day.
When news of this Confederate victory reached London, the British would be
sure to recognize the South and begin active assistance. Let Old Abe "liber-
ate" the western portion of Virginia and play the hypocrite by approving its
secession from Richmond; as Bragg's forces moved north through Kentucky,
that area would soon be back in Southern hands.
Bragg was certain that not a single one of these malcontents under him
appreciated the genius of his decision to despise defensive positions and to
attack the attackers instead, just an hour before their planned assault. These
generals were all envious of him; in his report, he was determined to detail
their weaknesses in carrying out his orders.
"When Rosecrans withdraws tomorrow, be prepared to march north to
recapture Nashville, " Bragg announced. Too many of that city's inhabitants
had welcomed the Yankee invaders; for those disloyal Southerners, the time
for retribution had come. "I want no talk of tired men and burial details. We
march."
To Breckinridge, he added with a certain glee: "President Davis informs
me that next month he will suspend habeas corpus throughout this area. We
will be able to arrest and hold the Northern sympathizers among the civilian
population without the delay of courts."
Bragg grinned up at the tall Kentuckian. "He asked me especially to break
that to you gently."

CHAPTER 42
TAIL OF THE ARMY

"This the river steamer to Aquia Creek?"
"That's our run, soldier," the riverboat captain replied. "From our nation's
capital to General Bumside's headquarters, just a couple of hours from peace
to war."
"I should be pleased to go with thee tonight," said James Stradling of
Mechanicsville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, sergeant in a New Jersey cav-
alry regiment.
"No room. You can see how we're loading up."
Stradling had not anticipated that possibility, and looked perplexed. "Here
are my furlough papers," he said to the boat captain. "Thee will notice that
my furlough expires tomorrow, on the first day of the New Year. I am anx-
ious to get to my unit at the front."
"Should of thought of that beforehand. We have some brass coming on
board tonight. They take up a lot of space. Can't help you."
"But if I remain over here in Washington," the sergeant explained pa-
tiently, "the provost guard will pick me up and hustle me off with a lot of
deserters to the front, and I don't want to go that way."
The captain was as unyielding as he was unconcerned. With an effort,
Sergeant Stradling resisted the impulse to think ill of him. He picked up his
bag, walked awhile up to the Capitol, moved through that half-finished edifice
with his neck craned to see the sights, came out the back facing Pennsylvania
Avenue. He hefted his bag up on his shoulder and walked down the long hill,
wondering what to do.
If he showed up a day late, his lieutenant would be very disappointed, and
might even think he remained in Washington to take part in New Year's Eve
revelries. Stradling had earned a reputation as a responsible soldier, which he
did not want to lose because transportation to the front was hard to come by.
The other Quakers in his regiment would be more severe than the officers,
because his actions reflected on them.
He came to the white house where the President lived, and stopped. A
thought struck him: why not see the President? He would knock on the door,
and if the President was not in, Mrs. Lincoln would probably know how soon
he would be back and would ask a soldier to come in and abide awhile until
Mr. Lincoln returned.
At the front door, however, two policemen were on guard. He had not
expected that and looked at them blankly, shifting his bag off his shoulder to
the ground.
"Well, country boy, what do you want?"
"I want to see the President."
They nodded him into a large room filled with people. The sergeant was
puzzled at the size of the crowd. He asked a man near him if the people had
assembled to hear the President make a speech. The man said that the people
were assembled to see the President, all right, but not to hear a speech.
Everyone had to wait his turn for a personal interview. It was that day of the
week.
The sergeant thanked him, and looked around to see if the crowd contained
anybody he recognized. Presently he saw a tall soldier with flowing blond hair
and a commanding bearing: that was General "Fighting Joe" Hooker. He
recognized him from a parade. General Hooker went to a side door, knocked,
and a guard opened it and passed him inside.
"Where do people land when they go in that side door?" the sergeant
inquired of a guard.
"Why, greeny, that goes to the President's room."
"Well, look, I'm a soldier in distress. Can you help me? I've been home on
furlough, and"
"You want to get it extended, I suppose. I don't think the President will do
that." Sgt. Stradling told him the dilemma. "Oh, that's an Indian of another
skin," said the guard. Stradling asked him what that meant, and the guard
said, "It's like a horse of another color. You are green, aren't you?"
"That's what everybody always says," Stradling admitted, "but if I can get
a chance to put my case before the President, I bet I can get him to help me.
All I want is to get to the front tonight."
"Damn all steamboat captains," said the guard, who, Stradling supposed,
had had difficulty with them himself. He took the furlough papers and went
through the side door.
There followed a long wait, something the Quaker sergeant was accus-
tomed to, having served in the army almost a year. While he was waiting, a
well-dressed, fierce-looking short man came to the side door, showed the
guard his card, and was passed in. Stradling asked who that was and was told
it had been United States Senator Ben Wade of Ohio.
In a half hour, a man about the sergeant's age with a mustache came out
and said, "I'm the President's secretary. I gave your furlough to the Presi-
dent, with a note that you were trying to get to the front instead of away from
it. We don't get many requests like that."
Stradling told him that the fact that the President was warmly inclined
toward soldiers who remained in the army, and stayed near the front, had
trickled down through the army. As the possibility of actually meeting Lin-
coln face to face began to become real, the sergeant began to feel queasy.
Another long wait, during which a couple of other generals slipped in
from Franklin's division, he thought, where most of the ruckus about Bum-
side was being kicked up. Just about everyone in the army knew there was a
feud going on at the top, what with the court-martial of General Porter to
make Little Mac look bad.
"The President will see you in a few minutes," said the pleasant secretary,
who took him inside to what Stradling at first imagined must be the Presi-
dent's office. It did not look as grand as he thought it would. The secretary
went into the other room, leaving the door open, and Stradling could hear the
generals running down old Bumside, calling him incompetent and bungling;
worse, Burn was planning an attack across the river again, which the generals
thought would bring another disaster. It seemed to Stradling that they could
well be right, but it didn't seem fitting for generals to sneak out of camp and
talk to the President behind Bumside's back. He'd hate to have any of the
corporals under him talking that way to the lieutenant.
"General," said a high, strong voice, "we shall expect to hear some good
news from you soon. I shall take what all of you have told me under advise-
ment, and give you my word that this shall be kept in confidence." That must
have been the President himself speaking; Stradling's throat went dry. The
secretary motioned him in as the others left. Stradling saluted them. They did
not look at him.
"Take a seat," said the man with the beard behind the big table.
"I'd rather stand, if you don't mind, sir."
The President then rose, and Stradling did not think he would ever stop
going up. He was the tallest man the sergeant ever saw. He came around the
t~ble and extended a hand that seemed to be fully three times as large as his
own, with a grip on him like a vise.
"What can I do for you, my young friend?"
Stradling coughed, regained his composure, stated his business, and sa-
luted. Lincoln took his furlough papers, and said aloud what he wa~ writing
across them: "To any steamboat captain going to the front, please give bearer
transportation." He handed the papers back, with "If I have any influence
with steamboat captains, that should take you to the front."
The sergeant turned to leave but the President told him to hold on.
"Wade," the President said to a fierce-looking little fellow seated in the corner
of the room, "we have had the heads of the army here a few minutes ago, and
learned from them all they cared to tell. Now we have here the tail of the
army, so let us get from him how the rank and file feel about matters." He
turned to Stradling, adding, "I mean no reflection on you, Sergeant, when I
say the tail of the army."
"I understand what thee are driving at," he told the President.
"A great many men have deserted in the past few months," Mr. Lincoln
told him. "I am endeavoring to learn the cause. There must be some good
reason for it. Either the army is opposed to me, or to the generals, or to the
Proclamation of Emancipation that is supposed to be signed tomorrow." He
turned to the man he called Wade with an aside: "None of the generals desert
or resign, and we could spare a number of them better than we can spare so
many privates."
Stradling was feeling better about everything, and drew himself up to tell
the President what the army thought.
"Mr. President, the army has the utmost confidence in thee, in thy honesty,
and thy ability to manage this war." That was true, no flattery, and a good
beginning. Well launched, he went to the heart of what the President had
been discussing before. "The army has no faith in the ability of General
Bumside. He appears to us as a general with no military genius whatever. He
fights his battles like some people play the fiddly, by main strength and awk-
wardness."
"Were you there at Fredericksburg? Did you see much of the battle?"
The sergeant nodded vigorously, and reported: "When the fog lifted, you
could see nearly the whole line. It was on a long and level plain, what they
call in Virginia bottomland. The rebels were entrenched on the low hills
looking down on the plain where we were. They had filled a sunken road full
of sharpshooters. There was no way of our winning that battle, sir, but Gen-
eral Bumside launched Hooker's corps, the flower of the army, against those
positions. You know the result, for I can observe the great gloom which still
hangs around you on account of that battle."
"That great gloom comes from our fears about another fight entirely," said
the senator in the corner, "in Tennessee. But at Fredericksburg, was there any
excuse for such a blunder?"
"You really want my view?" Stradling did not want to get in trouble with
the lieutenant.
"Go ahead," said the President, "this is very interesting to me, and to
Senator Wade."
"It was open country," the sergeant recalled. "Both flanks of the rebel
army were susceptible of being turned. Ap assault straight ahead was sure to
fail. We knew about that sunken road, because we of the cavalry had been
over that road with General Bayard a few months ago, and he must have told
General Bumside about it. I don't see a whole lot of excuse for that blunder."
"And such a disaster that followed," said the President, "still makes my
heart sick."
"Our duty is not to criticize," Stradling allowed, "but to obey even if we
get our heads knocked off. Which is what happened."
The President passed his big hand across his face, then changed the subject:
"You have said nothing about how the soldiers feel toward the Emancipation
Proclamation."
"I know how thy heart is set on issuing that document, sir. So far as I'm
concerned, I'm all for it. I was born a Quaker, and we're just about all anti-
slavery. When I was a boy, I attended two or three debating societies a week
in Bucks County, and that's where I learned to become a full-blooded aboli-
tionist."
"What about your comrades?" asked the senator in his gruff way.
"Most of them say that if they had known the war was to free the niggers,
they never would have enlisted. That's why so many have deserted." When
Wade made a humphing sound, Stradling added a fact he was sure the senator
did not know: "Others say they won't desert, but won't fight, so they get in
the ambulance corps or the quartermaster's department, to get out of fight-
ing."
"And when the slaves are freed?" Wade asked. "How will that sit?"
Stradling did not know how to lie or even soften the hard truth. "When
you issue that proclamation tomorrow," he told the President, "a lot more is
going to desert. Between that and General Bumside having no respect, it's a
wonder so many of us stays." The sergeant was a little surprised at the firm
sound of his own voice, but he had been invited to the feast and he had his
say.
Senator Wade humphed, and walked to the window, staring out angrily,
hands clasped behind his back. Stradling looked toward the President. Had
he gone too far?
"Sergeant, I am glad indeed to have your views. I shall take this opportu-
nity to make a few remarks which I desire you to convey to your comrades.
"The Proclamation is, as you state, very near to my heart. I thought about
it and studied it in all its phases long before I began to put it on paper. I
expect you're rightthat many soldiers who care nothing for the colored
man will seize on the Proclamation as an excuse for deserting. But I do not
believe the number of deserters will materially affect the army."
"On the contrary," Senator Wade put in, "the issuing of the Proclamation
will probably bring into the ranks many who otherwise would not volunteer."
"I agree," said the President, who seemed to be talking as much to Wade as
to the sergeant. "After I had made up my mind to issue it, I commenced to
put my thoughts on paper, and it took me many days before I succeeded in
getting it into shape so that it suited me."
He looked directly at Stradling, and the sergeant told himself this was
important to remember, so that he could pass it on to the entire company.
"Please explain to your comrades that the Proclamation is being issued for
two reasons," Mr. Lincoln said. "The first and chief reason is this: I feel a
great impulse moving me to do justice to four or five millions of people."
Well, good for him. Man should do what he believes in, and people said
that's what Lincoln wanted all along. Stradling prepared his mind to remem-
ber the second reason because when he wrote all this in a letterJx) John
Gilbert in Mechanicsville, his peacetime boss in the tannery, Johh would
want to know exactly what the President said. It was a pretty big responsibil-
ity, passing along to his comrades in the field and his friends at home what
the President himself thought.
"The second reason I am issuing this Proclamation is that I believe it will
be a club in our hands with which we can whack the rebels. In other words, I
have faith that it will shorten the war by many months." He looked at Wade,
who nodded enthusiastically.
The President extended that giant hand and said, "I trust you will reach
the front in the morning. Remember: first, emancipation does justice; and, it
will shorten the war."
Mr. Lincoln bade him farewell, and the sergeant thought how sad, woebe-
gone, and gloomy-looking the President was. His face did not smile or lighten
up once during the visit. Stradling felt proud that he had gone straight to the
top, and would have much to tell his comrades, but at the same time could
not rid himself of the impression he had been to a funeral.
"Sergeant, hold up." The President's voice caught him at the door. "How
do you suppose your comrades would feel about our arming some of those
freed slaves, and putting them in our army?"
Stradling frowned; that wasn't in the proclamation he'd read about a few
months back. He couldn't see sleeping right next to black men on bivouac,
and it might be, if they were supposed to be holding the flank next to you,
they'd cut and run at the first sound of firing. To be truthful, that's what he
had done the first time, but the second time he'd held his ground.
"My guess is that it would set well," he said, surprising himself. There was
a tune the Irishers sang about it. "If this is going to be a fight for the nigger,
sir, he ought to be in it getting kilt along with the rest of us."
At that, Wade got up and pumped his hand, escorting him outside the
office before he could say anything else.
On the way downstairs, the sergeant thought it curious that the President's
most important reason for freeing the slaves was to do justice to the black
man, and his second reason was to end the war sooner. From all Mr. Lincoln
had said before, that Stradling could remember reading, it was the other way
around. Abolition was always presented as a practical matter, a military
necessity, that just happened to be right, too. He thought it was a good thing
that Mr. Lincoln thought it was right, first, and useful to boot. It struck him
that if you are going to act justly, then it makes no sense to go around
apologizing for it, even if a bunch of malcontents were going to use it as an
excuse to desert.
The guard who had passed his request in was still on duty. "You need not
call me 'greeny' anymore," said the sergeant, "for I have learned more today
than many people learn in fifty years."
He hefted his bag and headed out to look for a food counter, to enjoy his
last meal without hardtack for what would surely be a long while. After that,
he walked to the boat and showed the captain his furlough papers with the
President's notation on it.
The steamboat captain raised his eyebrows at the signature. "Git aboard,"
he said.
CHAPTER 43
HELL'S HALF ACRE

General Pat Clebume worried that his friend Breckinridge might not survive
this battle for Tennessee.
Last night, Bragg had announced a great Confederate victory, but the
Federals under Rosecrans had not crept away from Murfreesboro as they
were supposed to. This morning, there they were, just across Stones River,
wet and freezing, tending their wounded and digging in, waiting for Bragg to
launch another assault.
Why? The word was about that Rosecrans had spotted some fires behind
him, assumed he was surrounded, and had decided to make a last stand.
Clebume wished he could send a man over under a flag of truce to say the
line of retreat was wide open, that those fires were set by a few mischievous
cavalrymen, and would General Rosecrans kindly take his Union Army and
leave.
Clebume was concerned about Breck because the Kentuckian's troops had
been selected by Bragg to bear the brunt of driving the Federals from their
well-prepared positions. The order was to take the high ground to the left of
Hell's Half Acre, and a bloody murderous charge it was sure to be. Clebume
had a theory that he called the Irish Theory of Luck in Battle: If you go into a
battle fearful of being killed, or worse, hopeful of being killed, then killed is
what you get; if you go in positive that you will live, or fiercely determined to
live, then you live. The theory did not apply to everyone, but it had applied to
him very well so far.
What troubled Pat Clebume was that Breck had the look about him of a
man who no longer gave a damn. Bragg's unnecessary execution of the Ken-
tucky boy, intended to send a chill of fear through the Orphan Brigade, had
bred lasting resentment instead, infecting Kentuckians clear up to their com-
mander. Surely that had been a searing experience for Breck, associated in
some way with the dimming of hopes that his missing son might be alive and
a prisoner. The bleakness of personal and national prospects showed in the
man's eyes; Cabell was the future, and Clebume suspected that the Kentucky
boy who was shot for desertion and the Kentucky boy who was missing had
become fused in Breck's mind.
And the famed orator who would expound, after a couple of glasses of
good bourbon, on the dastardly corruption of freedom under the despot Lin-
coln, to the edification and inspiration of his troops and friends, had fallen
silent of late.
Clebume knew why. First there had been the South's military conscription,
even of men in occupied portions of Kentucky, a state that had chosen to stay
in the Union. Then came the pervasive control of the economy, with Confed-
erate Government ownership of the most important commodity, cotton, as
the central government in Richmond declared itself capable of overriding the
decisions of the states. And now the South was treating itself to arbitrary
arrests of citizens by the military for the crime of thinking disloyal thoughts.
All the despotic inroads on individual liberty that come under the abolition of
habeas corpus, which Breck nearly alone had decried in the U.S. Senate, were
coming to pass in the Confederacy. All that and slavery too.
Clebume's personal cause was Southern independence, national freedom,
which he was persuaded had an even chance of being achieved. He worried
for his friend, whose family cause had always been resistance to tyranny.
Personal freedom was not doing so well on either side during the war. How
much freedom must citizens give up to preserve a nation dedicated to free-
dom? Not much, was Breck's answer; let justice be done though the heavens
fall. Plenty, was Lincoln's answer, and Davis's too: a life is never wisely given
to save a limb.
And once the President had war powers, wouldn't he have much-expanded
peace powers too, taken from the people? No wonder Breck looked so dis-
tracted these days. He was not merely a statesman without a state, he had
become a crusader without a cause. In adopting the methods of the Union to
protect itself from the Union, the South had become in a crucial way the
same as the Union, and the requirements of national survival had ground the
bedrock of constitutional principle into shifting sand for men like John
Breckinridge.
Clebume walked over to the Bragg headquarters tent, where Breckinridge
was arguing against the plan to send his division charging up Van Cleve's hill.
With a stick in the dirt, the Kentuckian was trying to show how the assault
could be blown out of the field by the Federal artillery placed alongside the
planned route of the charge. Clebume overheard it all and nodded agreement
with the Kentuckian; such an attack would be suicidal.
"Their ground is higher than mine," Breck was saying, "and the Federal
artillery is placed to hit any direct charge both in the front and in the flank.
It's a trap. That is exactly where they are waiting for us to attack. It would be
a disaster."
"Your division was chosen," Bragg pointed out coldly, "because it suffered
so lightly in comparison with the others day before yesterday."
"I'm not suggesting somebody else undertake this," Breck pleaded, "I'm
saying nobody should be forced to commit suicide. Two rows of infantry
cannot charge fifty guns uphill across an open field."
"Sir, my information is different," Bragg replied. "I have given the order to
attack the enemy in your front and I expect it to be obeyed. I expect you to
lead the charge, General Breckinridge."
Clebume stared mournfully at the lines scratched in the frozen dirt and
came to the conclusion that Bragg wanted Breckinridge dead. He was sur-
prised to hear his own name mentioned. "I am ordering General Clebume to
assist you because he has proved his bravery, and I want that hill taken."
Breck and he were in this together. When their eyes met, it was to acknowl-
edge that the Union grapeshot would rip through a great many of their men
before the attackers came within musket range of the Union lines.
"Polk will open an artillery barrage at three forty-five this aftefi icon, and
fifteen minutes later you will begin the charge," said Braxton Bragg. His
parting words were: "The signal will be a single shot from the. center of my
line."
Clebume walked with Breck back to his headquarters, just in front of his
own. The brigadier, a Kentuckian named Hansen, had a solution to their
problem: "I'll go and kill Bragg. Then you can court-martial and shoot me.
I'll be dead either way, but we'll save thousands of lives." The officer was
serious. They refused to take him seriously.
Muttering a string of Gaelic curses, Clebume returned to break the bad
news to his command. He resolved to approach the charge as an action that,
with luck and grit, and perhaps some heavy artillery support of the South's
own, could succeed by virtue of its daring. It seemed to him to be the whole
war in a nutshell: Southern courage against Northern iron, Confederate des-
peration to win quickly before Union advantage in men and arms could take
effect. And on Emancipation Day, too; that was fitting. If Clebume had had
his way, the blacks would be fighting on the side of the South, but now
Lincoln had beaten them to that vast source of manpower. Clebume was
angry at that but refused to let himself become embittered. He was not af-
flicted with Breck's curse; he had the cause of independence, freedom of the
South and West, to carry him up the hill to Hell's Half Acre.
At his tent, he was met by a Wheeler cavalryman in charge of a group of
forty blue-clad prisoners taken in a sweep behind the enemy lines.
"You're all paroled, ye lucky lads," Clebume called out, as the Yankee
prisoners broke into smiles at the good news, and at the surprise of a Confed-
erate officer speaking in a brogue. "We have no facilities for prisoners here.
Swear you won't take up service again, and be on your way home. War's over
for you."
"Will you be servin' us lunch, General Paddy?"
"General Clebume to you, former soldier, and there'll be no free food for
the likes of Billy-boys. On your wayNashville's thirty miles up that road."
The Union soldiers turned and started tramping up the frozen path, all but
one. It was a woman, not masquerading as a man, but in the full skirt and
apron of an army nurse under her open overcoat. She was tall, very pale, in
her early twenties, and Clebume judged she was on the verge of collapse.
"I will not take a parole, General. I am your prisoner."
"And why is that, dear girl?"
"I wish to be exchanged, and I will serve the Union again another day. The
wounded need me, and this is my calling."
That captivated him. He looked closely at her face, with its prominent
forehead, wide-round eyes, strong jaw. "Why do I think I know you?"
"I am Margaret Elizabeth Breckinridge. My traitor cousin John is in your
camp."
"I will take you to him."
She shook her head, then swayed. He moved to her side and took her arm
to hold her up.                             '
"I am ashamed of him and what he has done to our family," she said when
she could. "I do not want to see him. But I have news about his son, my
cousin Cabell."
Clebume brought the young woman into his warmed tent and sat her
down. If her news was bad, he would keep it to himself and pass it along to
Breck after the battle.
"Reverend Bob asked me to look for Cabell in the prisoner camps. I've
been to Libby and the others," she said, shuddering from the cold or at the
memory, "and a lady who is a friend of General Dix's sent me to Johnson's
Island and I found him there."
"Is the boy well?"
"He took his first name and used it as his last. That's why it was hard
finding him. I don't blame him, changing his name, after bringing disgrace on
us all, him and his damned father."
"Nurse, spare me the family feuding, just sayis the boy all right?"
"He had the camp fever, and he's thin, but he'll survive. General Dix, who,
I think, knows John, said Cabell would be part of the next exchange."
"General Dix served in the Buchanan Cabinet, when your cousin was Vice
President of the United States," Clebume told her, annoyed at her attitude
even as he was relieved at her news. "A great many people that you respect,
who disagreed with his choice of sides in this war, think of your cousin not as
a traitor but as a good man."
She shrugged. "That's what Reverend Bob says, and he's loyal and for
freedom, but I see Cousin John as the Breckinridge who stood for slavery in
the election. He's leading the fight for slavery right now and I despise him for
that."
Clebume checked his temper. "But you agreed to search for his son."
"I agreed to help find the boy, because he was too young to know his own
mind, and he's kin"the young woman's face was as implacable as it was
exhausted"though I will never forgive John Breckinridge for betraying his
country to keep human beings in chains."
A long war it would surely be. That decided him. The abolitionist Union
nurse was not to be the bearer of the good news. Clebume ordered an aide to
let her use his bed and tent, which he would not need soon again. If victorious
that afternoon, Bragg's army would break camp to pursue the enemy, and if
not, the camp would be overrun.
Returning to Breckinridge's headquarters tent, Clebume found the Ken-
tuckian with General Gideon Pillow, the corrupt coward who slipped out of
Fort Donelson. The dastard's political connections in Richmond kept him in
service, if not in command of troops.
"General Pillow is with us in this charge," said Breckinridge, and laid out
the order of battle assignments. Clebume knew exactly what Bragg was do-
ing. Pillow was a dishonored political troublemaker; Bragg wanted him per-
manently out of the way. This charge was to be an execution of generals who
defied Bragg's authority or whom the commanding general considered in-
competent. Clebume considered his own inclusion in the group as a kind of
honor, although he wished Pillow were not a part of itthat skedaddle artist
would probably hide behind the nearest tree when the first bugle blew.
"Breck, I need to see you alone on a personal matter."
"And I you." They walked outside into the sunny, cold, all-too-clear Janu-
ary morning, the sort of weather artillerymen pray for.
Breck spoke first. "Pat, you were born lucky, and you're going to come
through this with your honor brighter than ever, so there is something that I
want you to remember." Breck looked out at the long slope up to the Federal
lines, and Clebume knew he could sense the enfilading fire that would come
from the Union cannon on the left. "This attack is made against my judg-
ment, and by the special orders of General Bragg. Of course we all must try
to do our duty and fight the best we can. If it should result in disaster, and I
be among the slain"this was the first time Cleburne had ever heard his
friend mention the possibility of death before a fight"I want you to do
justice to my memory. I want you to tell the people that I believed the attack
to be very unwise, and tried my damnedest to prevent it."
"It's a lucky thing you're telling me this and not somebody else," said
Cleburne, more heartily than he felt, "but it will sound pretty silly when
we're standing at the top of the hill and the Yankees are running down the
other side."
The Kentuckian smiled. "I'm glad you're with me, Pat, but I'm sorry for
you that you were included among the orphans."
"Cheer up, lad, I have good news for you about your son. Some of Whee-
ler's boys brought in a bunch of Federals, including a cousin of yours who is
an army nurse. She says she saw your boy at the prison in Johnson's Island,
looking fine and healthy, and he'll be exchanged in a week."
"Cabell alive?"
"Not only alive but well, and his good health vouched for by a nurse who
knows him." A slight exaggeration about the boy's condition, Cleburne felt,
was called for. "General Dix sends his compliments, and Miss Carroll too. I
think she had a hand in it. They'll get your son back in jig time."
Breck stood silent for a few moments. He walked over to a tall cedar,
leaned against the trunk, and began to weep. Cleburne followed him over,
standing close, to appear to be in military consultation to any lookers-on.
Damn Bragg would probably consider it evidence of drunkenness or coward-
ice before a battle. Breck could not stop crying, and Cleburne punched him in
the shoulder so he would get control of himself.
After a moment, he did. "Margaret Elizabethis she still here?"
Cleburne shook his head. "Fine lass, set on going back to her wounded, so
I gave her one of my horses. Looks like you, she does, but in a nice way."
"Did she say anything about" Breck stopped, started that again. "The
other side of the family, what do they say about the Senate action?" He was
the first Breckinridge to be officially branded a traitor.
"She said they disagreed with your decision to go South," he lied stoutly,
"but that they all understand your reasons and there's not a man jack among
them who won't defend your integrity. Is one of them a Reverend Bob? He's
especially in your corner."
He would tell the man what he deserved to hear, what should be the truth
rather than what was. After the war, with the South independent and slavery
on the way out, the Breckinridge clan could all make up along those lines
anyway. Cleburne had no doubt that Margaret's bitterness would fade, the
Kentucky family's cleavage would heal, and one day she would feel the way
Cleburne reported she felt in the midst of the war. He was not lying; he
thought of it as merely getting ahead of the truth. The two great nations
would be natural allies, and the border between the Confederacy and the
Union would not separate families and friends.
"I want to send a messenger back to Murfreesboro to tell my wife," Breck
said, signaling for an aide. When the man came running up, the general
hesitated, then sent a message to one of Bragg's aides asking for more artillery
support at three forty-five. To Clebume, he said, "Let's tell Mary after the
battle."
The South's only Irish-born general understood. His friend wanted to be
certain that the news to Mary would show that at least one Breckinridge male
had come back from the dead.

CHAPTER 44
DAY OF JUBILEE
"Happy New Year, Mr. President."
The voice was William's, the spindly colored boy he had brought with him
from Illinois to attend to his needs in the early morning. Lincoln opened his
eyes, focused on the crack in the bedroom ceiling, then turned his head on the
pillow to see William with the large tray. The bowl of hot water for shaving
would be on the tray, along with the breakfast dish of warm corn pone, and
the boiled cabbage. He took a deep breath to draw in the smell of the cabbage.
Food didn't mean much to him but he did look forward to cabbage every day.
Lincoln rolled out of bed and slid his feet into the carpet slippers. It oc-
curred to him that the Israelite corncutter, now in New Orleans with Banks,
would find it difficult to locate any rebel leader willing to talk with him about
peace after the event of today. He sat in his nightshirt for a couple of minutes,
saying nothing, watching William set the bowls on the table and whip up a
lather in a cup for shaving.
"This is the great day for my people," the young servant said cheerily. "Big
jubilee everywhere last night, Jubilee Day today. You ain't changing your
mind?"
"I am a slow walker," Lincoln said, yawning and combing his hair with his
fingers, "but I never walk back. The signing will be right after the levee this
noon, William. You can count on it."
He had put William Johnson on the Treasury payroll as a laborer for six
hundred dollars a year. When the boy finished his service as a valet in the
Mansion in the morning, he worked as a messenger at Treasury in the after-
noon. Lincoln watched him lay a freshly pressed black broadcloth morning
coat on the bed next to the underwear and shirt and silk tie. To properly
impress the diplomatic corps, the Congress, the men in uniform, and just
about everybody else who was passing through town, Lincoln had to dress
carefully for the annual reception from eleven to noon that New Year's Day.
That levee was one of the few national traditions, and it could not be avoided.
Mary would still be wearing her black v'elvet mourning clothes, with the
black gloves and fan, in memory of the light that had gone out in her life. He
shook off the memory of the way Willie would race in andjumpon the bed on
New Year's morning, before that thought of happier times could take hold
and ruin the day.
William had standing orders to wake him at six, so that he could be at the
telegraph office to be in touch with General Burnside in Virginia, and with
General Rosecrans in Tennessee before seven. This morning, Burnside was in
Washington to testify at the court-martial of Fitz-John Porter, and would be
at the Mansion first thing, probably to complain about the way his generals
were complaining about him.
Lincoln had some sympathy for Bumside, who had failed out of ineptitude.
He had less for Porter, who had succeeded all too well in helping his friend
McClellan undermine poor John Pope at Second Bull Run. Had he been
wrong in replacing George on the day after the elections, just as the victor of
Antietam was showing signs of shaking off the slows? He decided not. De-
spite the debacle at Fredericksburg that followed, the President had to estab-
lish the principle that the Army could not set up shop for itself. Orville
Browning had been in the other day to seek clemency again for Major John
Key; Lincoln's answer was again an unequivocal no. And the Porter court-
martial would go forward, driving home the same lesson again. Only one man
could be commander in chief.
More important than Bumside's visit would be any word from Rosecrans,
whose army had finally moved from Nashville toward the rebel concentration
at Murfreesboro. At this moment, with England eager to recognize the Con-
federacy, the Union could ill afford to lose another battle, but last night's
reports about the fighting at Stones River were not encouraging. The newspa-
pers, especially the Times and the Tribune in New York, had been preparing
the nation for a great victory, to wash away the terrible taste of Fredericks-
burg. If disaster lay ahead today at Murfreesboro, public sentiment would
turn even more sour on the war and the pressures to let the wayward sister
states depart in peace would become unbearable.
New Year's Day. Horatio Seymour was being inaugurated as Governor of
New York. In that smoldering state, the Union's prime source of men and
money, a grand jury had been convened to consider the indictment of Secre-
tary Stanton for breaking state law with his arbitrary arrests. The governor-
elect had been going around saying that it was a "high crime" to abduct a
citizen of New York, and he left no doubt he considered Stanton or Lincoln to
be high criminals. That would be a crippling confrontation; he could not fight
a civil war on two fronts.
William was ready to shave him but Lincoln did not move, thinking of the
challenge from New York. Lincoln had done all he could to placate Seymour,
offering a share of political power as no other American President ever had;
what more did the man want? Seymour's peremptory rebuff transmitted
through Weed"proposition declined"still stung.
These copperheads were not interested in a go-slow-on-abolition compro-
mise to save the Union. Rather, Lincoln was convinced, they wanted to pre-
tend that Jeff Davis was ready to restore the "Union as it was" if only he were
allowed to keep slavery. But the copperheads did not know Jeff Davis. He
was just as foursquare for independence, for disunion, as Lincoln was for
union.
Independence, especially for Americans brought up to revere Washington
and Jefferson, was always a more popular cause than union, which smacked
of imposing a yoke on an unwilling minority. As the American colonists
fighting the better-equipped British had demonstrated, wars were ultimately
won or lost by public sentiment, by the fighting spirit of a people. Such public
sentiment could be rallied only by a great cause. If an ideal was attractive
enough, it would define not merely itself but the essence of the opposition. In
that way, the Southern cause of independence was making the Union cause
appear to be anti-independence, and would make Abraham Lincoln look like
a modern George III.
That was why he had come to the conclusion during the summer that
union, seen all too often as anti-independence, was not enough of a cause to
sustain the fighting spirit of the North. By raising high the banner of emanci-
pation, he would define the enemy cause as slavery. Most people, even many
of those against abolition, were disgusted by slavery.
Lincoln knew that was why, little by little, he had let himself be led into the
illegal seizure of property called emancipation. Never mind that a majority of
the North was against it, as the elections showed; and never mind that too
many of Sergeant Stradling's friends would desert rather than "fight for the
nigger"; the political fact was that the most active and articulate faction of
the North demanded an end to slavery with a fierceness and dedication that
would resist all pressures for a settlement.
Time was what he needed, time to wear down the Southern forces by
weight of numbers and mutual casualties. The newly embraced causenot
his original, central cause of majority rule, but the new rallying cause of
human freedomwould bring that time. On the brink of being broken, when
other gamblers were tempted to reduce losses, Lincoln was prepared to
double the stakes.
He moved in his nightshirt from the bed to a chair, drew a sheet around
him, tilted his head back, and stuck out his chin to let William begin the
shaving. The Proclamation was on his mind; he had worked on it again
yesterday, letting the Cabinet make final suggestions, accepting Chase's pious
emendation invoking "the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious
favor of Almighty God"; that would please the folks who did not want the
soldiers fighting on Sunday.
Lincoln had added his own "warranted by the Constitution upon military
necessity" to satisfy, or at least palliate, those legal minds who doubted the
edict's foundation in law. He admitted to himself that his call upon the freed
slaves, all behind Southern lines, "to abstain from all violence, unless in
necessary self-defense" was more than a little disingenuous; it could be read
on Southern plantations as a call for slaves to defend themselves with violent
means when threatened, as many of them so often were, by the lash. The step
was short from such individual self-defense to a general uprising. He would
not encourage such a race war, indeed would publicly deplore it; but if an
uprising came, it would come, demoralizing the Southern troops at the front
and shortening the time of bloodshed.
One final amendment had been his own surprising adoption of the Chase-
Stanton position on arming freed blacks. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Just as
he swallowed the principle of secession in breaking off West Virginia yester-
day, he could stare down the objections of conservatives to the provision of
guns to former slaves to fire at their former masters. With Seymour and his
ilk hopelessly beyond reach of a deal, he had no more compunctions about
using black men as soldiers. "And I further declare and make known," the
final Proclamation read, "that such persons of suitable condition will be re-
ceived into the armed service . . ."
His Emancipation Proclamation was a weapon, all right, to whack the
rebels with. He would put a weapon in every freed black hand capable of
carrying one. Jeff Davis would surely be drawn into issuing a furious counter-
proclamation. Lincoln was ready to seize on the expected excessive language
to suspend all prisoner exchanges. The exchange of prisoners favored the
South, with its smaller population base. Up to now, he had to consider the
opinion of relatives of captured Northern boys, but an intemperate reaction
by Davis to his Proclamationthe Edict of Freedom, Hay wanted to call it
would give him the moral standing to make a cruel decision.
As he thought about it, Lincoln envisioned his Proclamation as more than
a weapon to cause disruption in the enemy camp. It would be more, too, than
a means of reinvigorating public sentiment in the North, more than a way to
block international intervention, and more than a new source of manpower.
He granted that the hundred-day-long threat of emancipation had not suc-
ceeded in coercing the Southern leaders. He had a hunch, however, that
emancipation as a fait accompli might have a mysterious power of its own.
Lincoln sensed that the Proclamationwhich he always knew would cause
bitter controversy within the North, as it deepened the bitterness between
North and Southmight be of greater import than he had at first imagined.
He no longer felt troubled or defensive about its illegality. An event that
caused a biblical jubilee in the streets of the North, as well as fervent, if silent,
exultation in the slave quarters of the South could have an extraordinary
effect on people everywhere.
The act seemed to be taking on a life of its own. Lincoln could not gauge its
effect through the land, but he realized he had underestimated its effect on
himself. Surely carping would come from the right, holding that it was so
unconstitutional as to be despotic, and the left would argue that it freed only
those slaves that he could not reach, leaving the slaves in the border states
still enslaved. Those arguments missed the point.
The point was that if the war was finally won, this single proclamation
could turn out to be the most memorable act of his administration. The new
birth of freedom might be remembered not merely as the means of gaining
time to keep the Union together, vital as that device was, but as the reason
that the Union had a right to be held together. Although he had to justify his
unprecedented seizure of property in the stilted and formal language of mili-
tary necessity, the freeing of millions of human beings from bondage was a
moral justification for the terrible bloodletting. That was what the abolition-
ists like Garrison had been saying for years, as they heaped abuse upon the
Constitution as "a covenant with death" because it permitted slavery. Those
provocations and threats of abolition might have helped goad the South into
rebellion, but now the fact of abolition was needed to put down that rebellion.
He opened his mouth and stretched his upper lip to aid William's shaving
razor. He knew that his war power, by itself, was inadequate; he had no
power to wage a war for the principle of national cohesion if the people grew
tired of war. But the war power, as the key to unlock the shack's of the
slave, could release a power greater than any President could claim to find in
a Constitution. Right did make might if it disenthralled and inspirited the
populace.
That took him a long way from his old Whig principles, Lincoln realized.
Henry Clay would never approve, and Jefferson would spin in his grave at
this use of an incendiary issue to establish a strong central governmenteven
to save the life of the Union itself. Lincoln's long political apprenticeship had
been spent opposing Jacksonian high-handedness and the central-government
philosophy of Andy Jackson's Democratic successors. But Alexander Hamil-
ton, Lincoln concluded, had been right in The Federalist 23 to argue that the
nation's war powers "ought to exist without limitation," over Jefferson's ob-
jections; and Andrew Jackson had been right to stretch the executive powers,
the sainted Clay and his Whigs to the contrary notwithstanding.
Political kinship with the likes of the centralizing Hamilton and Jackson
made the old-line Whig in Lincoln uncomfortable. As soon as public senti-
ment would permit, a constitutional amendment would be needed to build a
foundation for emancipation less ephemeral than the presidential powers that
disappeared with peace. It bothered Lincoln profoundly that the Democrats,
in opposition, could win elections by embracing the Whig principle of defend-
ing the people from the power of their governmentin plain words, from
him.
Seymour would probably be telling his inaugural throng today that Lincoln
was enslaving the whites to free the blacks. The President bridled at that
unfair but effective catch phrase. He was not taking freedom from the whites
to give freedom to the blacks; on the contrary, he was freeing the blacks to
make it possible to hold the whites together. The issuance of the Proclama-
tion later that day would give him a negotiating tool. The pace of emancipa-
tion was available for compromise, and seizure of slave owners' property
could be changed to purchase at a fair price; the only thing that could not be
negotiated was the dissolution of the Union.
Of course, he was using the issue of black freedom to subjugate white
rebels, but there can be no freedom for any body politic without subjugation
to the will of the majority; the slaves, when they became free in fact as well as
in theory, would learn that. No independence would ever be possible for any
nation that did not hold fast to indivisible union, just as no freedom could be
maintained by any individual unwilling to put his personal sovereignty into
the general pot. A government too weak to maintain its own existence would
hardly be strong enough to maintain the liberties of its citizens.
When William stripped back the sheet, Lincoln washed and looked at his
face in the glass. He looked awful. To cheer himself up, he told the young
manservant the story of the fellow who once presented him with a fine-
looking knife. The man who owned it said it had been given to him as the
ugliest man in the world, and he had promised to pass it along if ever he met
an uglier man, so he was giving it to Lincoln. William dutifully laughed, but
then disagreed about the ugliness. In fact,, Lincoln usually liked the way he
looked, and took special pride in his height as well as the strength in his arms,
but he had to admit that these days his face looked lined and sallow, old for a
man of fifty-three.
Lincoln asked himself: If emancipation was such a cause for jubilee, and if
the hunch was possessing him that it would stave off defeat and carve a niche
for the Lincoln administration in the history of the republic, why was he
burdened with worry and guilt about the New Year's Day ahead?
He told himself he was worried because too much rested on the Army of
the Cumberland facing the onslaught of Bragg and Breckinridge in Tennes-
see. Why did Rosecrans not have the good sense to attack first? Why should
so much depend on Breckinridge, of all rebels, a man he had failed to per-
suade in face-to-face argument here in this house?
He felt guilty because he had to deal with Ambrose Burnside this morning,
who had turned out to be all too right in his modest assessment of himself as
a commander, and had no support from his own generals in an attack he was
planning. The guilt came less from seeing Burnside's insubordinate subordi-
nates yesterday, behind the general's back, than from having to restrain the
commander of the Army of the Potomac from doing what he had been sent to
do in replacing McClellan. Lincoln felt ill at ease worrying about army mo-
rale and the effect of casualties, holding a general back when the man wanted
to smite the enemy. In playing the cautious, wait-for-preparation role with
Burnside, Lincoln saw himself acting like the general he complained of hav-
ing "the slows."
He thanked William and walked down the hall to his office, where Gener-
als Burnside and Halleck were waiting. One look at the bristling Burnside,
fluffing out his muttonchop whiskers, told him nothing good was in store.
"I have attemped a movement upon the enemy," said the commander
without so much as a New Year's greeting, "at your repeated urging, in which
I have been repulsed."
Lincoln nodded; he needed no reminder of Fredericksburg. Burnside had at
least taken full responsibility and not tried to blame him; for good and for
bad, he was no McClellan.
"I am convinced that the army ought to make another move in the same
direction," the general continued, "but I am not sustained in this by a single
grand division commander in my command."
When Lincoln said he was aware of that, Burnside asked how he knew.
Lincoln saw no harm in telling him frankly that several of his generals had
come up to visit him yesterday to predict that Burnside's ideas about re-
newing the attack would lead to disaster.
Burnside looked stunned. "Since my subordinates now have direct access
to the President," he said, "it is impossible to manage my command. I ought
to retire to private life."
"Which generals were here to complain?" asked Halleck, siding with Burn-
side. Lincoln said he would not breach the confidence of the officers who
came to him with their fears, which caused the general-in-chief to say, "They
ought to be arrested and cashiered."
Lincoln waved that aside; niceties about the chain of command did not
trouble him at the moment. "It is my wish that you go with General Burnside
to the ground at Fredericksburg," he told Halleck. "Confer with the officers,
and say that you approve or do not approve of his plan."
Halleck shook his head, no.
Lincoln realized this was not going to be easy. "Your military skill is
useless to me," he pleaded, "if you will not do this."
"I request that I be relieved from further duties as general-in-chief."
The New Year was not starting well. Last week, the Cabinet resignations;
now the heads of the Army. Lincoln told them abruptly he refused both their
resignations and did not want to discuss it further, as he expected all of
Washington in the White House in a few hours for the annual reception.
He could not afford another defeat and would not attack again with Bum-
side. He could not now depend on the Union army to give him a weapon with
which to whack the rebels, nor could he depend on much of his Republican
Party for political support, or the state of New York for troops or money.
Walking downstairs to find his wife, who would be distraught at this first
levee since the loss of Willie, Lincoln felt a curious sense of relief mingled
with satisfaction at one thing he would do this day. He would set free the
rebels' slaves and invite some of them into the Union Army. That would stir
the pot. The worse everything else became, the better that idea looked to him.
Right made might.
If emancipation worked in bringing new hope to the North and new fear to
the South, and if the military picture turned around in some way, the occa-
sion would be remembered as historic. However it had to be wrapped in
military necessity, setting four million human beings free was a noble and
uplifting act. He would rather be remembered for that than for bringing on a
war to avoid disunion.
If emancipation failed, howeverif it unified the South and split the North
he would have no apologies for reaching beyond his powers. His country-
men would know that the sixteenth President of the United States had left no
stone unturned to defeat the enemy.

CHAPTER 45
RECEIVING LINE
He crooked his arm for Mary, who was trembling, to take hold. He told Tad
to stop poking Roberttheir student son was down from Harvard for the
holidays, and at least was trying to look dignifiedand the Lincolns pre-
pared, as a family, to enter the Blue Room for the annual reception.
He had not held so much as a ten-minute private conversation with his
eldest son since coming to Washington nearly two years before. Lincoln per-
suaded himself that the absence of intimacy was the boy's fault, not his;
Robert just never opened up to him as Willie had or Tad did. He was glad
only that his son had not shown the traits of cruelty and ignorance he remem-
bered in his own father. Robert might not warm up to his presidential father,
but Lincoln was satisfied that the remote young man was at least being pro-
vided with the best education at a time when other boys his age were fighting
and dying. He was determined the boy would have no cause to refuse to
attend his father's funeral, as Lincoln had done so long ago.
His spirits rose as the first wave of guests pressed in. This was the diplo-
matic corps in full costume, medals twinkling, impressed with themsdves and
each other on the cold, brilliantly sunny morning. Lincoln enjoyed-a good
levee, just as he did his twice-weekly "public opinion baths," and thought it
unfortunate that Mary's extended grief for Willie kept them from having
more receptions at the Mansion.
The New Year's greeting of Washington officialdom, however, to be fol-
lowed by the open house to all the public at noon, was not an event that the
first Lady, as the newspapers were calling her, could properly cancel. The
house belonged to the people, and the people had a right to come in as the
year began. Last night, the eve of the New Year, Mary had gone with old
Isaac Newton to see a spiritualist in Georgetown, to commune with the ghost
of their lost boy, and had brought back the spiritualist's prediction that the
Cabinet would soon have to resign. Lincoln wished the spiritualists would
stick to spirits.
He faced these hours of handshaking with equanimity; he would see faces
he wanted to see, perhaps swap a few stories, pick up political gossip. The
duty of receiving offered a respite from the war, from having to restrain
Burnside in Virginia and to exhort Rosecrans in Tennessee"Old Rosey," he
feared, might be destined to preside over the final Union disaster in the field.
Afterward, when the Pennsylvania defachment acting as provost guard
shooed the last of the guests out of the Mansion, he would go upstairs and
sign the controversial Proclamation. No special ceremony, no correspon-
dents; just his necessary co-signer Seward, and whoever else was around.
The diplomatic corps was shepherded by Seward and his son into the Blue
Room and formally introduced, each in turn, by Marshal Lamon. Lincoln
knew his friend Hill liked the task, listening to the whispered names and
booming them out, because it gave him a chance to show off his stentorian
voice while enabling him to stick by the President's side as a mixture of
friends and strangers moved through the house.
England's Lord Lyons, as Lincoln expected, stopped long enough to ask
about the action in Tennessee, saying nothing about the effect of the procla-
mation of freedom on the abolition-minded British people. Lincoln did not
enlighten him on the battle at Murfreesboro because he did not know the
results himself, but he expressed confidence in Rosecrans and reminded the
British ambassador that the rebel general, Braxton Bragg, had not done all
that well hurling attackers at the Hornet's Nest at Shiloh. Lincoln was un-
abashed about anticipating victory; if "Old Rosey" managed to recover and at
least not lose, a great victory was what Lincoln would claim. He could not do
that after Antietam for fear of boosting McClellan, but he was unworried
about making a hero out of Rosecrans. And his Proclamation could cause no
military harm to Rosecrans in Tennessee; Lincoln had exempted the whole
state from the edict. That in effect guaranteed Tennesseans that their property
in slaves would remain untouched.
After the diplomats, the justices of the Supreme Court and of the Court of
Claims filed in. Then the governors and military and naval officers came
through the line, looking grimly optimistic. When Halleck came by, Lincoln
gave him a frigid look and offered no pleasantry. Bumside did not appear.
Pumping away, drawing the person in front of him to his right to move the
line along, the President met the unofficial guests invited in before the public.
Elizabeth Keckley was the first of them to come through the receiving line.
Mary, who had begun to sag, leaning her weight on his left arm, perked up
and told the modiste that she expected to see a great many of her dresses on
the ladies that day. The black hand he held far longer than a moment was
strong and calloused; he liked that hand, and the woman who had been such
a source of strength and comfort to his wife. He recalled how the tall colored
woman had sat up with him some nights when he was afflicted with his hypo.
"We will never forget today," Mrs. Keckley said, looking at him directly,
head high. "We will never forget what you have done."
He swallowed. Mary was saying something about the contraband relief
association that Lizzie had formed, and it occurred to Lincoln that if more of
her race had the intelligence and self-reliance of Mrs. Keckley, little need
would exist for colonization. The opening of opportunity available to her had
been narrow, but she had squeezed through; perhaps others of her race would
as well. The sincerity of her gratitude affected him.
She introduced the man behind her as someone who was a contributor to
her contrabands. Wendell Phillips was a name familiar to Lincoln. He was an
early and outspoken abolitionist oratoran advocate, with editor William
Lloyd Garrison, of separation from the Southand the source of the widely
quoted comment that Lincoln was a "first-rate second-rate man." He bore the
man no grudge for that; it was a well-turned phrase, although entirely wrong.
Phillips thanked him for the coming Proclamation, offering a half promise
of political help: "If we see this administration earnestly working to -~ee the
country from slavery, we will show you how we can run it into another four
years in power."
"Oh, Mr. Phillips, I have long ceased to have any personal feeling or
expectation in the matter," Lincoln white-lied, "so abused and borne upon I
have been."
"Nevertheless," persisted the abolitionist, "what I have said is true. We
hope you will find a use for John Fremont in carrying out your proclamation
in border states."
Lincoln remembered the unpleasant visit with Fremont's wife, and of the
first Republican candidate's premature proclamation of freedom. "I have the
greatest respect for Fr6mont and his abilities," he told Phillips, who struck
him as a second-rate second-rate man, "but the fact is, the pioneer in any
movement is generally not the best man to carry that movement to a success-
ful termination."
Of course, that same principle could be applied to a second Lincoln term.
The unofficial reception line was not yet long, so the President amused him-
self with a biblical simile. "It was so in old times, wasn't it? Moses began the
emancipation of the Jews, but he had to make way for Joshua to complete the
work. The fact is, the first reformer has to meet such a hard opposition, and
gets so battered and bespattered, that afterward, when people find they have
to accept the reform, they will accept it more gracefully from another man."
That man, it occurred to Lincolnthe Joshua leading a reunited Union with-
out slaverycould have been Horatio Seymour. Lincoln was glad now that
the proposition of succession made through Weed had been declined, because
this time Moses was going to be right there on the scene when his people
entered the Promised Land.
He felt Mary grow rigid next to him, and guessed that the next person in
line was either Adele Douglas or Kate Chase.
It was Kate, looking more defiantly lovely than ever on the arm of her
fiance, Governornow Senator, once GeneralSprague. She gave her usual
fish-eye to Mary, which Lincoln thought was getting tiresome, and said to
him, "The Proclamation is a step in the right direction, Mr. President. I hope
you have retained, in the final draft, the reference to the Deity."
So Chase was spreading the word that the high-sounding words in the
Proclamation were his own; soon the Treasury Secretary would be persuading
everyone that he had pressed for its adoption all along. Lincoln recalled how
lukewarm Chase had been in the first Cabinet discussion; no wonder, it took
the wind out of his radical presidential sails. At the last minute, only yester-
day, Chase had submitted an entirely new draft of the Proclamation, avoiding
the statement about violence in self-defense on the grounds that it was too
incendiary, and leaving out any reference to the military employment of
blacks, which he had advocated for months. His new approach, Lincoln
thought, would gut the message of practical, military meaning. Only Chase's
nicely phrased line about the Deity would be in the document he would soon
sign, and Lincoln assured his daughter it would be there.
A hundred handshakes later, Henry Raymond of the New York Times
appeared, looking burdened with news. Lincoln always enjoyed skirmishing
with him, because the editor-politician was strongly pro-Lincoln and anti-
Seymour. Raymond's newspaper did not offset the damage being done to
Lincoln in New York City by Bennett's World, nor did every word of his
editorials weigh a ton, the way Greeley's did in the Tribune, but Raymond
could be relied on. He halted the line and drew the publisher aside to hear the
latest.
"I have been with the army in Virgina," Raymond reported urgently, "and
Burnside's subordinates are standing in the way of a general advance, slan-
dering their commanding general."
"I shouldn't wonder," Lincoln murmured. Slander or not, that army was
not going to assault the heights above Fredericksburg again.
"Burnside has prepared an order dismissing from the service Hooker,
Franklin, Baldy Smith, and six other generals." Lincoln felt his eyebrows
rising; that was something that Burnside had failed to mention earlier that
morning.
"Mr. President, the dismissal order is well grounded in military discipline.
You have no idea of the disparaging way Hooker speaks of his commanding
officer."
Lincoln put his hand on the publisher's shoulder and spoke close to his ear,
returning the confidence: "That is all trueGeneral Hooker does talk badly.
But the trouble is, Hooker is stronger with the country today than any other
man, including me."
The New Yorker looked aghast. "How long would Hooker retain that
strength, if people knew his real character and conduct?"
"The country would not believe anything said against him," Lincoln re-
plied. "They would say it is all a lie." Joe Hooker, the would-be dictator, the
favorite of Chase, was everybody's answer to the failure of Burnside. And
public sentiment could not be ignored in a military crisis.
"But when I told Burnside that Hooker might resist a dismissal order,"
said the journalist, "Burnside said he would 'swing him before sundown.' "
Lincoln biinked. "Burnside said that?"
"Yes. That means he'd hang Hooker for disobedience in the face of the
enemy, and I believe Burn is just furious enough to do that. Beware the fury
of a patient man, and all that. Do you realize all this is happening down there
within a rifle shot of General Lee and his army? I admire your equanimity,
Lincoln, but it really seems as if things are getting out of hand."
Raymond went his way shaking his head. He would be shaking it harder,
Lincoln thought, if he knew that both Burnside and Halleck had just tried to
resign, and that the government did not know what was happening to the
other Union army under Rosecrans at Stones River.
Mary left his side to try to get Tad to stop playing near the huge
punchbowl before the near-hysterical boy fell in. She staggered forward,
swayed, and Lamon caught her before she fell. Fortunately, Elizabeth
Keckley was in sight, and she came forward quickly to take Mrs. Lincoln to
her, room. The line moved on, the President and his son Robert greeting the
guests.
"My dear lady."
Anna Ella Carroll, with her animated face and low-cut dress, pumped his
hand. She was a persnickety woman, and a bother about money, hit she
produced better-written work than any woman he knew, and most men too,
and he had to admire her for that. Her Reply to Breckinridge pamphlet had
come just in time to counter all the talk about abuse of presidential powers)
and her recent report on colonization was impressively voluminous. He com-
plimented her on that, and added that he had signed a contract only the day
before for the transport of five thousand freed slaves to lie i Vache, a depen-
dency of Haiti.
"Will you refer to your colonization plans in your Proclamation today?"
He said no, explaining he could not very well ask negroes to join the Army
and leave the country at the same time. As soon as he had decided to go all
the way with the radicals, arming the freed slaves, the decision about coloni-
zation had taken care of itself. Maybe some would go, maybe not; he could
not solve every problem at once.
She stood on tiptoe and beckoned for him to bend forward, which he did,
glad that Mary was no longer there to glare at him for it. "I'm just back from
the West," she whispered in his ear. "Grant's plan to use gunboats on the
Yazoo River to take Vicksburg is a mistake. The rebels can put logs in those
little streams and foil our gunboats easily. Have to take Vicksburg by land
from the rear."
He nodded noncommittally; Grant would do it his own way, but if his river
plan failed to break the rebel hold on the Mississippi fort, Miss Carroll's
alternative would have to be explored. She had come up with some surpris-
ingly good military ideas before, probably because of her background promot-
ing railroads. Lamon introduced the man with her, a lanky former Congress-
man from Texas named Lemuel Evans, hired by the War Department at Miss
Carroll's suggestion to provide information about Southern plans. Her com-
panion held her arm possessively, which she did not resist; Lincoln assumed
the independent lady had found herself a man, if she wanted one.
The photographer Alexander Gardner came along, his boss Mathew Brady
in tow. Lincoln was glad to see they were still together, though it was sad to
see Brady's need for help in moving about. He had read somewhere that the
German composer Beethoven had gone deaf late in life, and a comparison
could be made to a photographer going blind. Hay had said something about
Gardner and others striking out on their own, in competition with Brady;
Lincoln could understand that, and would surely patronize Gardner, with
whom he. felt more comfortable. He hoped the parting had not been acrimoni-
ous.
The gun on the lawn boomed noon and the people who had crowded
outside were allowed to pile in. The ebullience of the people on the bright,
cold day and their obvious delight at being in the nation's house and shaking
hands with the nation's Chief Magistrate infected Lincoln. He felt they were
with him to a manstrong for Union, pleased enough at the Proclamation,
optimistic about the coming year. Though his giant hand was beginning to
numb, his feet did not hurtthank you, Dr. Zacharieand he was uplifted
at the sentiments sometimes shyly expressed, sometimes boisterously voiced
with a squeeze of the arm. Lincoln hoped Robert would absorb some of this
strength, but he could not tell from the boy's expression whether he grasped
the intensity of the moment or the meaning of the day. Robert made himself
hard to know.
As the time neared for the reception to end, Lincoln extended his swollen
hand to Colonel McKay, an old political ally friend from the West, whom
Lincoln remembered as a good dialect storyteller. McKay said he had heard a
new one, and Lincoln leaned forward to hear.
"Seems a darky preacher was trying to explain the Emancipation Procla-
mation to his congregation as being based on 'military necessity,' " the colo-
nel related, "and an old patriarch with white kinky hair got up and said,
'Bredren, you jes' listen to me. Massa Linkum he eberywhar. He know eber-
yting. He walk de earf like de Lawd.' "
McKay waited for the laugh, but Lincoln did not crack a smile. "It is a
momentous thing," he said as much to his son standing at his side as to his
story-swapping friend, "to be the instrument under Providence for the libera-
tion of a race."

CHAPTER 46
HEART IN HIS BOOTS
John Fomey hurried to keep up with the President's long strides. The New
Year's levee was ended. Before attending to the Proclamation, Lincoln
wanted to know what was happening to the Army of the Cumberland fighting
at Stones River, near Murfreesboro.
Fomey followed Lincoln across the street to the War Department, with its
big Maltese cross over the entrance, two objectives in mind: first, to find out
what was happening to his traitor friend, John C. Breckinridge, who, he
heard, was one of Bragg's commanders in the clash of armies in Tennessee.
And then to get the President to undo an injustice done by General Grant.
"Why don't you get the signing out of the way first?" he asked, trotting to
keep up. "All the morning papers want a copy for tomorrow's editions."
"Not because of any uncertainty on my part," Lincoln said, "but hours of
handshaking is not calculated to improve a man's chirography." Fomey had
never heard the word "chirography" before, and assumed it meant penman-
ship. Why was Lincoln explaining away the shakiness of his handwriting?
In the telegraph office, Lincoln took what Fomey knew to be his regular
position at Major Eckert's desk, next to the window facing Pennsylvania
Avenue. "This is where I wrote the Proclamation," he said, to the proud nods
of the operator, Bates, and the cipher translator, Tinker.
"The South had fair warning," he told Fomey sternly, "that if they did not
return to their duty, I should strike at this pillar of their strength. The prom-
ise must now be kept. I shall never recall one word."
Forneynewspaperman, Senate clerk, President Buchanan's Pennsylvania
crony, abolitionist for decades, and confirmed alcoholicwas not so befud-
died by the four cups of wine punch served that morning as to keep him from
observing how Lincoln felt the need for reassurance. Here was a man who
turned back assaults on his power from the Cabinet cabal, from a near mutiny
by the West Point clique in the Army, and from a majority of his party in the
Senate; who was quite prepared to turn the Constitution on its head to.harass
his enemies; who changed his Union horse for an abolition horse in mid-
stream rather than drownbut who was concerned about the way his signa-
ture would look on a document.
"What news from the front?" Lincoln's favorite question.
Bates shook his head. Nothing yet from Tennessee. The President tilted the
chair against the wall and put his feet up on the table in the center of the
room, a long reach, settling in for a wait.
"You mean we don't know anything," Fomey asked, genuinely surprised at
the lack of information in the nerve center of the war, "after two days'
fighting?"
"As you see, the government is no better informed than you are about the
results of Stones River," Lincoln replied, as if that were the normal state of
affairs. The buoyant mood of the levee was gone. Now he seemed to expect
bad news.
"Do you think we'll win?"
Lincoln startled him further with the lugubrious remark that "I cannot see
how either of our plans, East or West, will succeed." He pulled out a map he
kept in Eckert's desk and showed the plan of campaign against Richmond,
which had been unsuccessful before. He pointed to Grant's position in the
West, seeking to reduce Vicksburg by pushing big gunboats up small streams
near the Mississippi. He said some of his trusted military advisers had told
him the Yazoo approach would never work.
"If you feel so confident of disaster in these movements," Forney asked
him, "why do you permit them to be made?"
"I cannot prevent it."
"You are commander in chief."
"My dear Forney, I am as powerless as any private citizen to shape the
military plans of the government." Lincoln stared out the window at the
throng still assembled on the White House lawn. "I have once or twice at-
tempted to act on my own convictions and found it was impracticable to do
so. I see campaigns undertaken in which I have no faith and have no power to
prevent them. And I tell you that sometimes, when I reflect on the manage-
ment of our forces, I am tempted to despair. My heart goes clear down into
my boots."
Forney did not know what to say. Lincoln had bounded McClellan into
fighting, then pulled him out of the Peninsula, then selected Bumside to
march overland toward Richmond, and was now expected to replace him
with Hooker. The President had involved himself more each month in every
major military decision and now was claiming he had no control at all. Why?
Were his top generals squabbling, or quitting, or letting him down at a time
like this? If that were so, if the military situation was as bleak as the President
painted it, then his Emancipation Proclamation was one enormous bluff. For-
ney wished he had a drink.
"Of course," Lincoln added, "we are speaking in confidence, as friends.
None of this must get into print, or be repeated."
Forney nodded his assurance of secrecy. The President, in his despair, had
said too much. He waited a moment, figuring how best to bring up the subject
of Grant and the newsman, then jumped when he heard the telegraph ma-
chine start to clatter.
The operator said, "Rosecrans headquarters, Army of the Cumberland,"
and Lincoln's feet came down off the table. Forney knew it would take a few
agonizing minutes to receive the message and decode it.
Forney thought of Breckinridge, and of his own prediction a year ago that
his friend of such great promise would go South and never come back to the
Senate. Breck had said the only reason he would cross the lines would be to
retrieve his young son, who had run away to join the rebels. But Senator
Breckinridge got caught up in the rhetoric of his Senate speeches, haranguing
the war hawks about the protections guaranteed by the Constitutionwhen
it was the desperate need to fight a war that had forced Lincoln to tramp all
over civil liberty. Fate made the choice for Breck, Fomey concluded; the big
Kentuckian was doomed to follow the sound of his own voice. Now he was
leading rebel troops on some cold and godforsaken battlefield, and the man
whose election he had so dutifully certified was here waiting for news of the
battle.
But Lincoln made his own choice. Which one made the right decision?
Who had the higher cause? Lincoln did, of course, and the Union did; the
loyal Fomey had never any doubt of that, largely because Lincoln was so
certain that democracy in the world depended on the fight here and now for
majority rule, and that on occasion freedom could be freedom's worst enemy.
Then what could have attracted a good and intelligent man like Breck to
fight against his country, even against most of his home state, just as Fomey
had gloomily foreseen? There must have been a reason. Perhaps Breck's rea-
son had disappeared in the course of the war and left behind only the reluc-
tance to fail one's comrades.
Into the wait for deciphering, Fomey inserted his business: "Sherman ar-
rested another correspondent, court-martialed him as a spy. Grant is going to
throw him out of the war zone or put him in prison." When Lincoln said
nothing, Fomey added, "A committee of correspondents asked me to get you
to revoke the court-martial sentence."
"I'm not on the spot to judge." Lincoln wanted no part of it. Fomey did
not back away; he knew that Lincoln liked most of the reporters he was
acquainted with but had little respect for journalists as a class. In some ways,
Breck had been right about Lincoln: with him, the Union was flesh and
blood; the Constitution, shadow and spirit.
"It's Tom Know of the New York Times. "
That was different; Lincoln knew the man to be a responsible correspon-
dent. The President pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote a message, showing
the sheet to Fomey. "I'm making this conditional on the approval of Grant,"
he said, "but he knows I'm interested."
Fomey was satisfied; with Lincoln these days, except for his fixed idea of no
secession, it was not so much the principle of the thing as it was the practical
end accomplished. War had a way of knocking the comers off a man.
Bates had handed a take to Tinker for decoding, and the boy was working
oa it. "Just tell us," said the President.
"Rosecrans reports that General Van Cleve has turned back a vicious rebel
assault on the hill he was holding." Tinker worked some more on the cipher.
"Six thousand rebels under Breckinridge charged, about half were killed or
wounded." The young man looked up, struck by the weight of hiawords;
three thousand men cut down on a single charge. He continued: "Our Ken-
tucky and Tennessee troops under Crittenden are investing the rebel posi-
tions."
"Our casualties?"
"Not as heavy as yesterday. Our artillery enfiladed the rebel charge and not
many of them made it to our lines. Cannon wiped them away."
The clattering continued. Rosecrans reported his belief that Bragg's army
would now withdraw, but that Federal forces were too exhausted to pursue
them. Lincoln's face darkened at that.
"Any general officers lost?" Fomey asked the operator.
"None of ours, sir. A rebel, Major General Cleburne, was reported killed in
the charge."
"General Breckinridgenews of him?"
"It is thought that Bragg, Breckinridge, and Hardee are planning to set up
a new rebel line, south, at Duck River."
"Cleburne is a big loss for them," said Fomey, relieved at Breck's escape
from the carnage. "They were calling him the 'Stonewall of the West.' Irish-
man."
"Breckinridge was a friend of yours," said the President. When Fomey
nodded, Lincoln said, "I was fond of John and I was sorry to see him take the
course he did. I regret that he sided with the South. It was a mistake."
After a silence, Lincoln wrote a message to be transmitted to Rosecrans.
"God bless you and all with you." He added: "You gave us a hard-earned
victory, which, had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have
lived over."
The President pulled himself up, squeezed Bates's shoulder, wished the
cipher man a happy New Year, and led Fomey back across the street.

CHAPTER 47
WITHOUT COMPUNCTIONS
Lincoln was pleased to see everything in readiness for the signing. All morn-
ing, through the meeting with the failing generals, through the hours of the
reception, he had felt himself in the presence of an impending event of greater
moment than he had at first imagined. A metallic sound seemed to be in his
head, which could be the glorious striking of shackles or the terrible clash of
bayonets.
Frederick Seward held a large portfolio under his arm. His father told him
to spread the Proclamation sheet out on the Cabinet table for signature by the
President and the Secretary of State. Stoddard, the third secretary, had al-
ready prepared a couple of copies at Lincoln's direction, one to have in the
office and the other to give to the press.,
With William Henry Seward at his side, and about a dozen people in the
room, the President considered the document, flexing the swollen, thoroughly
squeezed fingers of his right hand.
Seward examined the portion of the document that exempted specific coun-
ties of rebel states, now occupied by Union soldiers, from the decree. He
remarked that the President's decision of the day before, to accept the west-
ern counties of Virginia as a separate state, meant that the slaves in that vast
area would not be freed.
Lincoln nodded; he had approved the secession of part of a state from a
state, which seemed to go against his principle of majority rule, but he saw a
clear distinction between secession that helped keep the Union whole and
secession that would break it up. His decision to go along with the dismem-
berment of Virginia pleased the punish-the-rebel crowd, while the loyal peo-
ple in the western portion of that state were glad they could hold on to their
slaves, because the emancipation decree did not run to loyal states. Something
for everybody in that one.
He found himself gripped by a sense of the occasion. Lincoln had signed
thousands of state documents, decrees and appointments and messages and
pardons, but it struck him that not one had been nearly so far-reaching as
this, despite the compromises. He picked up a pen, dipped it in the inkwell,
held it a moment, tried to get his mind around the notion of four million
actual people, and then removed his hand from above the document and
dropped the pen on the table.
He stretched his fingers, rubbing his right hand with his left. "I never in my
life felt more certain that I was doing right," he explained to the friends in the
room, "than I do in signing this paper. If my name ever goes into history it
will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it."
He massaged his right shoulder and upper arm. "But I have been receiving
calls and shaking hands since nine o'clock this morning, and my right arm is
stiff and numb, almost paralyzed. Now this signature will be closely ex-
amined, and if they find my hand trembled, they'll say, 'He hesitated, he had
some compunctions.' "
What was he waiting for? Why was he making excuses for delaying the
moment, he wondered. Here, with a stroke, he would set freein theory,
perhaps one day in actualityfour million human beings. But looked at an-
other way, Lincoln knew he was also seizing more property than any despot
in history, putting forward a bill of attainder that shook the foundation of
common law, and perhaps inciting a wholesale massacre of innocent whites
by blacks emboldened to vengeance that would make this act remembered in
history as among the bloodiest and most monstrous.
Who could be sure of the consequences? He freely admitted to himself that
this Proclamation abolishing the South's cherished institution was his
counter-revolution taken at a time of desperation, his bomb of unknown
power rolled into enemy territory. He knew it would be seen as a device to
recapture the war spirit and would surely end the hopes of a negotiated peace.
As the trial became ever more fiery, he was doubling the stakes with this
Proclamation, lengthening the war, forcing a fight to the finish. At the time
nearly two years agoof his decision to provision Fort Surnter, he had only a
vague idea of the bloody consequences; but now, defying the Union's military
weakness and proclaiming a revolution, he could see the Bloody Lanes filled
with bodies stretching into infinity.
Why, then, was he not paralyzed, as he had pretended for a moment his
fingers were? Why did he feel instead an unaccustomed serenity toc'ay, de-
spite the crowding-in of disaster? The answer was on the table in front'of him.
He recognized that his extra-constitutional device, his seemingly empty threat
of terrible vengeance, his grand subterfuge, was at the same time the greatest
moral act of his life.
If human slavery was not wrong, nothing was wrong. The punishment for
rebellion was the loss of slaves, and the ennoblement of the carnage would be
the emergence of freedom for an entire race. If every drop of blood drawn by
the lash had to be paid for by the sword, that was not the fault of the
President of the United States but was the judgment of God. Lincoln knew he
was risking more blood, years of conflict, permanent hatred, unimaginable
divisions, andhe could not deny ita temporary loss of personal liberty for
many, to attain a fusion of great purposes: a permanent democracy in which
every person would be free.
He placed his hands on either side of the document and looked it over for a
last time. Its roots were not in the cool compromises of the Constitution, but
in the heat and fervor of the Declaration of Independence. He was in the end
at one with the revolutionaries of 1776, at odds with the compromisers of
1789. He had lived with the act of abolition, in all its permutations, for six
months. He had been ready to abandon it at the first sign of some Southern
submission to emancipation's threat, willing to delay the edict if the North's
Peace Democrats were willing to coalesce in a compact to put first the fight
against secession. The Proclamation's threat had failed; he could hope that its
reality would not fail.
The key words leaped up at him: "/ do order and declare that all persons
held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and
henceforward shall be free . . . "
Not "forever free"; he had dropped the word "forever" in the final draft.
That was not his phrase originally but had been in David Hunter's premature
order; it was presumptuous, toowho could promise anyone freedom "for-
ever" ? Freedom would have to be reearned, perhaps fought for, down to the
latest generation.
"Anyway, it is going to be done," he said to the small group around the
table. He picked up the pen and dipped it into the ink again.
Slowly, he did his best to lay across the parchment a bold and clear signa-
ture, his whole first name reflecting solemnity. He looked at the freshly inked
name, not completely satisfiedit seemed to quaver a little, but there were no
second chancesthen allowed a smile to light his face. "That will do."