Lincoln (108 page)

“I expect he’s going to fetch General Grant.” Lincoln pointed to the bluff above the river port. “Grant’s headquarters are up there.”

“Is Robert a
real
captain?” asked Tad, aiming his revolver at the Commander-in-Chief.

“Of course, he is, Taddie,” said Lincoln. “And don’t aim guns at people like that.”

In due course, General and Mrs. Grant and Robert were rowed alongside the
River Queen
. “How common she looks,” murmured Mary.

“Now, Mother.” Mary did not like the way that Lincoln had used exactly the same tone with her that he had used with Tad.

Mary embraced Robert while Tad climbed onto his shoulders. Grant shook hands with the President first; then with Mary. She noted that he did not look either of them in the eye. On the other hand, Julia Grant was not able to look anyone in the eye since one eye was permanently turned toward her aquiline nose while the other looked as if it would like to escape the wild gaze of its neighbor.

Lincoln led the Grants into the salon, where all the lamps had been lit. “We were poisoned by the ship’s water on the way down,” said Lincoln. “But we got us some decent water at Fortress Monroe.”

“The water’s foul here,” said Grant. “We boil it.” Mary wondered if Grant ever actually drank a substance so insipid. In the full light of the salon she studied him carefully. He
appeared
to be clear-eyed and sober. Of course, the presence of Mrs. Grant was known to be a guarantee of sobriety.

“Welcome to City Point, Mrs. Lincoln.” Julia Grant was gracious in a way that Mary did not entirely like. It was as if City Point—and the army—were hers.

Mary smiled and bowed; and did not answer. Lincoln wanted to go
ashore right then and there, and though Grant told him there was little to see at night, the President insisted.

Mary was then left alone with Mrs. Grant, who proceeded to make herself at home by sitting down on the only sofa in the salon. Mary said nothing; but she was certain that her glare was sufficient to convey to Mrs. Grant the enormity of her breach of etiquette. No one could sit, unbidden, in the presence of the First Lady. Slowly, and silently, Mary lowered herself onto the sofa. The two ladies were now so close to each other that their skirts overlapped.

Mary sat erect, looking straight ahead. After a moment’s uneasy silence, Mrs. Grant moved from the sofa to a small chair opposite. “Did you have a pleasant journey?” asked Mrs. Grant.

“Yes,” said Mary.

There was another, somewhat longer, silence; then Mrs. Grant said, “I believe General Sherman arrives tomorrow. He comes by sea from North Carolina. It will be the first that we have seen of him since he took Atlanta and Savannah.”

“That will be nice for you,” said Mary. But then she could not resist adding, “I hope he will explain why three months after he occupied Atlanta, he then burned the city down.”

“He thought it was necessary, to protect his rear as he moved north.”

“Obviously, he must have thought it necessary. But he has made negotiating a peace much more difficult for my husband.”

“I do not think, Mrs. Lincoln, that there will be a negotiated peace now. The war will not end until my husband has taken Richmond.”

“How often have we heard that!” Mary gave Julia Grant a wide smile; and blinked her eyes, to show what a good humor she was in. She was pleased to see Mrs. Grant grow somewhat red in the face. A highly satisfactory silence settled in the salon; and remained settled until Tad came rushing in to say that he had been ashore. “But I came right back. We were stopped, Mr. Crook and me, by soldiers who said, ‘Who goes there?’ and ‘What’s the password?’ and things like that. When I said, ‘It’s me,’ they didn’t know me. So I told Mr. Crook we better come back here before they shoot us.”

“Such a … charming boy,” said Mrs. Grant.

“Yes,” said Mary, aware of the calculated hesitation before the adjective. “We have met
your
oldest boy,” she added; and characterized that supremely plain child not at all.

Three days later Lincoln, Grant, Sherman and Admiral Porter met in the ship’s salon while Mary took to her bed with certain preliminary signs of The Headache.

“I cannot tell you gentlemen what a pleasure it is to get away from Washington,” said Lincoln.

“That’s why I asked you, sir,” said Grant. “I had a feeling you might want to take a trip, and get some rest.”

“And what more restful place to be than at the front?” Lincoln smiled.

“We expect Sheridan any time now.” Grant had placed a map of Virginia on a table. “He is making an arc from the valley here to Harrison’s Landing there. At the moment he is crossing the James River just below us. Once he and his cavalry arrive, we should be able to take Petersburg—at last.”

“At last,” Lincoln repeated. He turned to Sherman. “Certainly, when your army joins that of General Grant, it will be all over.”

“Yes, sir.” Sherman was a slight wiry man, with uncombed wiry red hair and the pale eyes of, suitably, a bird of prey. “There’s nothing left of the rebellion, except Johnston in North Carolina and Lee up here, and Lee can’t have more than fifty thousand men.”

“So we outnumber him three to one right now.” Lincoln looked at Grant, who nodded. “Then there will be one more battle, at least.”

Grant nodded, again.

“It would be good to avoid it, if we can. There’s been so much bloodshed.” Lincoln turned to Grant, “When Richmond falls, or even before, what is to prevent Lee and his army from getting on the cars and going south to North Carolina, and joining up with Johnston? They could live off the country down there and go on fighting us for years.”

“For one thing, sir, they won’t be able to take the cars.” Sherman’s voice was light but emphatic.

“What’s to prevent them? They still control at least two railroad lines to the south and to the west.”

“They don’t control them where we have been, and we’ve been everywhere now except this last stretch from North Carolina to here.”

“Yes,” said Lincoln. “You have been there but you are now
not
there. You are here, or you soon will be. Well, the railroads are still where they were.”

“Oh, the roads are still there,” said Sherman, “but the rails are gone. We have torn them up. They can’t be used.”

“It’s not hard to put the rails and the ties back down again. We did that at Annapolis when the war was new.”

Sherman chuckled. “I don’t think you understand my boys. What was wood they burned, and what was metal they put in the fire and made corkscrews of. There’s not a railroad out of Virginia that Lee could ever use.”

Lincoln whistled, comically. “You don’t do things by halves, do you?”

“No, sir,” said Sherman. “You remember when we first met four years ago?”

“Of course I do.” Lincoln spoke somewhat too quickly. “With your brother Senator Sherman, wasn’t it?”

Sherman ignored Lincoln’s hesitancy. “I said to you then that this would be a long and terrible war, and you said you didn’t think it would be all that long and, anyway, you supposed that even if it was, you’d manage somehow to keep house.”

“Did I say that?” Lincoln shook his head with wonder. “Well, I am only a politician, you know, and we tend to say stupid things. What’s worse, of course, is we do them, too. Well, you were the better prophet. So tell me, what do you prophesy next for us?”

“This time, sir,
you
are what the prophet must contemplate. Because once the fighting stops, the future is going to be what you make of it.”

Grant stared hard at Lincoln. “Sherman’s right. You’ll have to decide everything. Like what do we do with the rebel armies? With the generals? With the politicians? What shall we do with Jefferson Davis?”

“Mr. Davis …” Lincoln’s face lightened. “That reminds me of this man who took the temperance pledge. Then he went to the house of a drinking friend who tried to tempt him, but he would not be tempted. He asked for lemonade. So the lemonade was brought to him. Then the friend pointed to a bottle of brandy and said, ‘Wouldn’t it taste better with some of that in it?’ and the temperance man said, ‘Well, if it is added unbeknown to me, I wouldn’t object.’ ”

The three men laughed. Admiral Porter said, “In other words, if Mr. Davis were to escape to another country you wouldn’t mind?”

Lincoln merely smiled; then he said, “I am for getting the Union back to what it was as quickly and as painlessly as possible.”

“You will have your problems with Congress,” said Sherman, a senator’s brother.

“Well, that is my job. I must say, Sherman, I’d feel safer if you were back in North Carolina with your army.”

Sherman laughed. “I promise you it will not disintegrate that quickly.”

Lincoln stretched his arms until there was a creaking sound from the vicinity of the shoulder blades. Then he said, suddenly, “Sherman, do you know why I took a shine to you and Grant?”

“I don’t know, sir. I do know you have been kinder to me than I ever deserved.”

“Well, it’s because, unlike all the other generals, you never found fault with me.” Lincoln rose. “At least not so that I ever heard.”

Lincoln then took a long fire-ax from its bracket on the bulkhead. “Let’s see if you fellows can do this.” Lincoln grabbed the ax at the end of its haft and held it away from his body, arm outstretched and parallel to the deck. One by one, the others tried to do the same but, in each case, the weight was too great. “It is a sort of trick of balance,” said Lincoln.

“And muscle,” said Sherman.

The next day President and generals rode out to the main encampment of the Army of the James to witness a grand review. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant followed in an ambulance, which kept to a corduroy road that had been set across a sea of red Virginia mud and swampland. Mary had never in her life known such discomfort, not to mention pain; a headache had now installed itself just back of her eyes and would not go away.

At the back of the swaying and lurching ambulance Mary and Julia Grant sat on a bench, side by side, when they were not thrown together. One of General Grant’s aides sat opposite them, apologizing for the state of the road.

“It’s never comfortable,” said Mrs. Grant, clutching the wagon’s side.

“We can endure the discomfort,” said Mary regally. “But, surely,” she addressed the officer, “we are going to be late for the review?”

“I think not,” said the man. “Of course, the driver is deliberately slow.”

“Then tell him we should like to go faster.”

“But I don’t think that’s wise,” said Julia Grant and the eye closest to Mary turned, impudently, away.

“But we
must
go faster!” Mary exclaimed. The officer gave the order to the driver, and the horses sprang forward just as flat marsh gave way to a section of corduroy road made up of trees of different sizes. The ambulance sprang into the air. The two ladies, as one, left their seat and would have departed the ambulance entirely had the back section not been roofed in. As it was, two large, splendidly decorated hats prevented the heads beneath from breaking open but at the cost of two miraculous examples of the milliner’s craft, now crushed. As Mary fell back into the seat, she screamed, “Stop! Let me out! I shall walk!”

The ambulance stopped. The ornamental pheasant that had been the central decoration of Mrs. Grant’s hat had slipped forward onto her forehead, and one glossy wing now pathetically caressed her round cheek. “Mrs. Lincoln, no! Please.”

Mary was halfway out of the carriage, when the officer pulled her back in. “Madam,” he said, soothingly, “the mud is three feet deep here. No one can walk.”

“Oh, God!” shouted Mary, directly to the Deity, who did not answer her. As she sat back in the bench, head throbbing and eyes shut, she felt,
one by one, the wax cherries that had made beautiful her hat come loose and fall to the ambulance floor exactly as the originals would have done when ripe.

But Mary had predicted correctly. They were late for the review. On a great muddy field, an army division was going through its paces. Mrs. Grant, helpfully, identified the commanding general in the distance, James Ord. Meanwhile, as the ambulance approached the review stand, a slender woman on a great horse cantered past them. “Who is that?” asked Mary. “I thought women were forbidden at the front.”

“They are,” said Julia Grant, “but that is General Griffin’s wife. She has a special permit.”

“From the President himself,” said the aide, with a smile which was, for Mary, lasciviousness writ scarlet in the air. She responded with a scream; and was pleased to see some of the redness go from those hideous, mocking lips.

“
She
has had an interview with the President? Is that what you are hinting at? A
private
interview?” Mary could hear a mocking snigger from Mrs. Grant at her side. They were all in it together. “Yes, that is what you want people to believe. But no woman is ever alone with the President. So tell as many lies as you please …”

General Meade was now at the ambulance. Mary turned to him for alliance. As he helped her down, she said, most craftily, she thought, “General Meade, it has been suggested to me that that woman on the horse has received
special
permission to be at the front, given her by the President himself.”

Meade said, “No, Mrs. Lincoln. Not by the President. Such permissions are given, and very rarely, by Mr. Stanton.”

“See?” Mary wheeled on her tormentors. She addressed the corrupt officer. “General Meade is a gentleman, sir. It was not the President but the Secretary of War who gave permission to this slut.” Mary savored her triumph. Fortunately, General Meade was very much a gentleman, from one of Philadelphia’s finest old families; and so he acted as if nothing had happened as he escorted her to the reviewing stand. But Mary was conscious that her two mortal enemies were just behind her, heads together, whispering obscenities to each other. Well, she would bide her time.

As Mary took her seat facing an entire division drawn up at present arms, she saw the President, flanked by Generals Grant and Ord, begin his ride down the long dark-blue line of troops. As the President came to each regiment, the men would cheer him and he would remove his hat. Back of the three men, there were a dozen high-ranking officers, and a good-looking young woman on a horse.