Lincoln (109 page)

“Who is that?” asked Mary.

Mrs. Grant said, “It is Mrs. Ord, the general’s wife.”

“She is riding next to my husband.”

“She is actually,” said Mrs. Grant, gently, “riding next to
her
husband, General Ord.”

Mary turned to General Meade for assistance but he had moved away to the telegraph hut at the end of the reviewing stand. In his place, there was a solicitous colonel. “Sir, has that woman been riding with the President all during the review?” Mary watched his face very carefully; she knew that she could tell in an instant if he was lying; it was as if her eyes could see with perfect clarity straight past his dull face and deep into his brain.

“Why, yes,” said the colonel.

“Actually, she is with
her
husband, Mrs. Lincoln …” began Julia Grant.

“I am quite capable of calculating the distance—look now!” Mrs. Ord was indeed alongside the President. “My God!” Mary exclaimed. “
She is pretending to be me!
They will think that that vile woman is me! Does she suppose that
he
wants
her
at his side like that?”

A young major rode up. The colonel said, quickly, “Here is Major Seward, the nephew of the Secretary of State …”

“Mrs. Lincoln.” The Major saluted Mary.

“I know all about Mr. Seward,” Mary began, noticing the young man’s parrot’s beak of a nose, so like that of his uncle, her enemy.

Major Seward was aware that they had been watching the President and Mrs. Ord, who were now riding side by side. “The President’s horse is very gallant,” said Major Seward, with all the corrupt insolence of his uncle. “He insists on riding by the side of Mrs. Ord’s horse.”

“What,” Mary cried, pushed now to the very edge of public humiliation, “do you mean by that?”

Major Seward’s response was an abrupt retreat. Meanwhile, President and generals had moved off the field toward the Petersburg front while Mrs. Ord rode toward the reviewing stand. Mary could not believe her eyes. The woman’s insolence was beyond anything that she had ever had to endure in her life. The woman dismounted; and walked over to the reviewing stand. “Welcome, Mrs. Lincoln,” she said.

Mary rose in her place. She felt exalted. At last, she could strike at her enemies a mortal blow. “You whore!” said Mary, delighted that she was able to control so well her voice. Then, word by word, sentence by sentence, effortlessly, she told the slut what she thought of her and of her behavior. Mary felt as if she were floating over the landscape like a cloud, a thundercloud, true, but a serene one. All that needed to be said to this
now scarlet-faced woman was said. From high up, the cloudlike Mary saw the tears flow down the vicious face; saw the Colonel as he tried to divert her from her necessary task; saw Julia Grant as she dared to interrupt her.

In a way, Julia Grant was the worst, of course. Whores were whores everywhere and the good wife could always manage to shame them or, if they were truly shameless, to drive them away. But Mrs. Grant was a threat. Mrs. Grant was the wife of a hero—a butcher-hero, of course, but still a hero to the stupid public. Mrs. Grant was also insolent. She had sat unbidden in the presence of the First Lady. But then it was no secret that she was already scheming to be herself First Lady one day. “I suppose,” said Mary, with incredible cunning and the kindliest of smiles, “that you think you’ll get to the White House yourself, don’t you?”

Mrs. Grant—whose eyes were as crossed and flawed as her character—dared to answer, “We are quite happy where we are, Mrs. Lincoln.”

“Well, you had better take it if you can get it.” Mary was delighted with her own subtlety. She was, however, somewhat taken aback by the sound of a woman screaming. Could it be Mrs. Ord? No,
she
was weeping silently. Mary wondered where the screaming was coming from as she said, coolly, “It’s very nice, the White House.” Then Mary saw the fiery nimbus around Julia Grant’s head; and then Mary realized that the screaming that she heard was herself. Then Mary ceased to be conscious of where she was.

But it was not The Headache, because that same evening, aboard the
River Queen
, Mary was almost herself again. Naturally, she had been humiliated by Mrs. Ord in public view; and insulted by Mrs. Grant in private. But Mary presided at the dinner table with, she thought, admirable poise. She did find it disturbing that she could not recall how she had got from the reviewing stand back to the ship. In fact, as they sat at dinner with six staff officers—and Mrs. Grant to the President’s right and General Grant to Mary’s right, she was not entirely certain how the dinner had begun. But now that everything was going so smoothly, she felt that she could murmur to Grant, “I hope that you will, in future, control Mrs. Ord, whose exhibition today, in pursuit of my husband, caused so much unfavorable comment.”

General Grant’s response was not clear. But the President said, “Now, Mother, I hardly knew the lady was present.”

“For no want of trying,” Mary was regal. “Anyway, why should she, or any woman, be here?”

“Ord needs her,” said Grant.

“The way General Grant needs me at times,” said Mrs. Grant.

“Oh, we know all about
those
times,” Mary began. But the President
cut her off. “Mother, the army band is coming aboard after dinner. There will be dancing.”

“We thought it might be gay,” said Mrs. Grant. “In all this horror. To forget for a moment.”

“I am glad if it makes you glad.” Mary was consummately gracious. She turned to Lincoln. “Everyone seems agreed that General Ord is the principal reason why the Army of the James has been stopped here for so many, many months now.” Mary felt that she had now outflanked the Grants. “If he were to be replaced might we not be able to win the war more quickly?”

“Now, Mother …” Lincoln seemed very distant from her at his end of the table. She had some difficulty in hearing his voice but she had no difficulty hearing General Grant, who said, “Ord is a fine officer. I cannot do without him.”

As Mary explained to General Grant the urgent need to replace Ord, she felt a sudden swimming ecstasy that suffused her entire body and mind. Simultaneously, again like a cloud or, perhaps, the moon, she was floating far, far above the table. She was a little girl in Lexington again; and there were her dolls, far below, at a tea party.

ON APRIL 1
, Mrs. Lincoln returned to Washington for a brief visit. Both she and the President had been alarmed by a vivid dream that he had had: the White House was afire. This was the pretext for her return. But she would be back, she said, with a small group of friends, and Keckley.

For several days, Lincoln had installed himself in the telegraph office next to Grant’s log-cabin headquarters. He took delight in personally sending news to Stanton at the War Department; and there was a good deal of news. From all directions, Union troops were now moving against Richmond. The arrival of Sheridan had, in effect, sealed off the city.

“It is a good thing,” said Grant, as he prepared to go to the front, “that Sherman will take no part in the last battle.”

Lincoln gazed down at the small general with some surprise. “Surely,” he said, “there is glory enough for all.”

“There isn’t,” said Grant. “That’s the problem. The army we have here is the Eastern army. More important, it is the
Northern
army. And the war is of special importance to the North. But this army has always failed. If Sherman were to join us, the country will say that the east starts wars that westerners have to finish.”

“You know, General,” said Lincoln thoughtfully, “you have the makings of a very superior politician.”

Grant nearly smiled. “Just as you, sir, have the makings of a very superior military tactician.”

“I am not at all sure just how I am supposed to take that,” said Lincoln, as they walked from telegraph office to headquarters.

“Tell me something.” Grant stopped at the cabin door. He looked very young in the sharp spring sunlight, the brown beard glossy as fox fur and the blue eyes glowing. “Did you at any time in the last four years doubt the final success of the cause?”

“Never,” said Lincoln, “for one moment.”

Grant nodded. “That’s what I told Sherman.”

A kitten appeared at the cabin door. Absently, Lincoln scooped it up and scratched its ears as they went into the busy war-room, where orderlies came and went and all the lines on the map of Virginia now converged on Richmond.

On April 2, General Grant occupied Petersburg: Lee had pulled back to Richmond. It was now urgent that Lee not be allowed to break out of the area.

“It is our fear,” said Admiral Porter to the President, as they rode in the cars to Petersburg, “that he will retreat into North Carolina, and join up with Johnston’s army. If he does, they could hold that state for a long time.”

Lincoln nodded. “It must end now, once and for all.” He stared out the window at the trees in new green-yellow leaf; and at the signs of war—abandoned earthworks, dead horses, skulls, the casings of shells.

At the Petersburg depot Captain Robert Lincoln greeted his father. “Welcome to Petersburg, sir,” he said, saluting the President.

Lincoln returned the salute; and said: “We have taken our time getting here, but we got here, finally.” Lincoln mounted the horse that Robert had brought him. Then, surrounded by a cavalry contingent, they rode through the streets of the town, deserted save for timid blacks.

Grant met them on the porch of the house which he had secured for himself as a headquarters.

Lincoln shook Grant’s hand. “I’ve had a sneaking suspicion for some days now,” he said, “that you were going to wind this thing up at last. Now you’re doing it.”

Grant took his time lighting a large cigar. Then he said, “Mr. President, at eight-fifteen this morning, General Weitzel accepted the surrender of Richmond. Last night, Mr. Davis and his so-called government moved on
to Danville. General Lee is now trying to escape to the south. But we won’t let him. At last, we have him where we want him.”

Lincoln stood in the hard, dried mud of the street, frowning at the ground. As he continued mysteriously to lose weight, he had grown more stooped; he was now, he liked to say, a close student of the earth. But then he looked up, and said, “It looks, General, as if our work is just about done.”

“We took too long, sir. But we started in perfect ignorance, both sides.”

“We are not ignorant now,” said Lincoln. “If anything, we know too much of war, and all its costs … I shall myself telegraph the news to the nation. I, who have brought so much bad news to so many people, can now at least proclaim the end of this vast trouble.”

The next day, aboard Admiral Porter’s flagship, the
Malvern
, Lincoln and his party steamed upriver and into Richmond harbor, where the ship promptly went aground. But Admiral Porter was ready with a twelve-man ceremonial barge to transport the President to the enemy capital.

On the wharf there was a large crowd of Negroes, who kept asking, “Who is it?” When told that the man was President Lincoln, they could not believe it. But then when Lincoln stood up and, Tad’s hand in his, stepped ashore, they began to cheer and some of them, shyly, asked to shake his hand, while others wanted only to touch him.

With Admiral Porter at his side, Lincoln moved up the street, guarded by twelve edgy sailors, armed with carbines.

As they moved down the center of the trafficless street, crowds began to form; there were now whites as well as blacks. Every telegraph pole had men clinging to it, eager to glimpse the incarnation of Yankee evil, Old Abe—or Old Nick—himself. Tad’s guard, Mr. Crook, kept murmuring into Lincoln’s ear, “I don’t like the look of this crowd.” But although there was no sign of greeting, there was no notable expression of hostility. Nevertheless, at one point the nervous Admiral Porter said, “Sir, why don’t we stop here at this hotel, and wait for General Weitzel’s men.”

“Oh, I find this more interesting, Admiral,” Lincoln pointed to a section of the main street where a public building had been so shelled that only its highly ornamental façade still stood. “We have done a lot of damage to this city,” said Lincoln, with a certain wonder.

As they passed through the ruins, a light wind started up and, suddenly, down the street, like thousands and thousands of large square leaves, government documents swirled. “What begins in paper,” said Lincoln wryly, as his ankles were wrapped round with government records, “ends in paper.”

Then they turned a corner and the undamaged Greek temple of the
state capitol was now visible on its hill. As the Union flag went up the flagpole, the sailor-escort cheered—and Crook leapt in front of Lincoln, arms spread wide so that his entire large body could shield the President’s narrow one.

Lincoln looked up at the window where Crook had seen danger. “There’s no one there,” he said.

“There was, sir. A man with a gun, sir.”

“I have
my
pistol,” said Tad, delighted.

“You won’t need it today, Taddie,” said Lincoln, continuing his walk.

Closer to the capitol, they stopped in front of the notorious Libby Prison. When someone shouted, “Tear it down,” Lincoln said, “No. We will leave it as a monument.” Then, to Admiral Porter’s relief, a cavalry escort appeared, making it possible for the President to ride the rest of the way to an austere gray stucco house with a pillared doorway.

Here the cavalry commander stopped. “It is the Confederate Executive mansion, Mr. President. It is now yours.”

Lincoln dismounted. For a moment, he paused to dry his face with a handkerchief; then he and Tad and Admiral Porter entered Jefferson Davis’s house.

They were met by an elderly black man, who said, “I worked for Mr. Davis, who told me to keep the house nice for the Yankees.”

“I am sure that you have.” Lincoln opened a door into a room with a long table surrounded by chairs. From habit, Lincoln seated himself at the head of the table.

“That was Mr. Davis’s chair,” said the old man.

“It is now Mr. Lincoln’s,” said Admiral Porter.

“Could you bring me some water, please?” was Lincoln’s only request. As the old man hurried from the room, General Weitzel, sweating heavily, entered and saluted the Commander-in-Chief. “Richmond is yours, sir. I’m sorry we were not at the dock to meet you but you arrived ahead of schedule.”